The Home-Grown Solution

LAST week two professors, one white woman and one Black woman, rejected tenure offers from Harvard. Although it is heartening to see the University making efforts to create a more representative faculty, last week's failures demonstrate that the University must broaden its strategy.

Currently, senior faculty is more than 90 percent white and more than 90 percent male. Although the composition of the junior faculty is somewhat more balanced, it remains among the least diverse in the Ivy League.

There is a broad consensus on campus that this situation must change. Thousands of undergraduates, minority student organizations, a high-level faculty committee and even President Bok have identified recruitment of minority and women professors as a critical issue.

But why bother making a special effort to diversify the faculty? The issue demands attention because of the special role of education in a democracy. In a society that prides itself on equality of opportunity, many of life's prospects hinge on merit and achievement, which grow out of a sound education. A faculty that reflects the composition of society domonstrates that anyone can attain knowledge and power, that no one sex or ethnic group has a monopoly on the truth.

The U.S. is already socially and educationally stratified along racial lines. Creating a diversified teaching force will be crucial to prevent the already precarious position of women and minorities from eroding further over the next generation. Emerging demographic patterns make the imperative even more urgent. By the year 2000, the total number of minority children will have increased by more than 25 percent from what it is today while the number of white children will only increase 0.2 percent.

Currently the University is trapped in a vicious circle on the issue of minority and women representation on the faculty. The effect of the undiversified faculty is to discourage talented young minorities from applying for positions because of a lack of mentorship and networking possibilities. So the faculty remains entrenched, narrow and lacking in role models for a new generation of scholars.

Every element in this situation could be reversed, changing the vicious circle into a virtuous cycle of minority participation and contribution in the Harvard community. Clearly the University must step up its efforts to attract minority and women scholars.

BUT how can Harvard more effectively build a truly representative faculty without compromising the quality of scholarship? One solution is to lure eminent minority and female scholars away from other institutions with tantalizing offers of tenure.

This "quick fix" option has some attractive features. In one fell swoop Harvard acquires a high-profile woman or minority professor who will take a conspicuous place in the elite senior faculty.

However this method will not solve the problem by itself. To begin with, it does not always work. Last week's rejections demonstrate that even the name and resources of Harvard are not irresistable.

In addition, the "hiring away" method is insufficient because it does not make a contribution to the nationwide dearth of women and minority academics. This is not to suggest that Harvard can be faulted for going after the finest available scholars. Academic excellence, after all, is this institution's modus vivendi.

Harvard has an obligation to pursue a slow and costly, but ultimately profitable course. increasing the pool of minority and women Ph.D. candidates who will become faculty of the next decades.

The University got a taste of the fruit that this strategy bears when Associate Professor Hue-Tam Ho Tai indicated Friday that she, unlike the two outside scholars wooed last week, will probably accept Harvard's tenure offer. An expert in Vietnamese history, Hue-Tam Ho Tai received her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1977.

TO turn this limited success into a trend, the University should step up its efforts to recruit minority graduate students. Neither the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Admissions Office nor the individual departments can do the job alone. Rather, their different structure, resources and capabilities should be used to complement one another.

The GSAS admissions office can best provide general information. Its year-old minority scholar recruitment campaign, which provides admissions advice as well as financial aid and cost of living stipend information, deserves increased funding from the University.

Individual academic departments should be given resources to provide more specific services. Mentorship possibilities, an introduction to the departmental network and information on support services are all issues of special concern to women and minority graduate students that can best be addressed on the departmental level.

The Government Department has taken some recruiting initiatives. In an interview last fall, then-Department Chair Robert Putnam said the department had been working "damn hard" to attract minority graduate students by travelling around the country to reach talented seniors.

Unfortunately, not all other departments pursue similar measures. "We don't recruit anybody. We have no recruiting budget," said Economics Department Chair John F. Kain.

It may be unrealistic to expect that Harvard alone can solve completely the nation's or even its own shortage of minority and women academics. Larger institutional changes--such as tax incentives and loan exemption for those embarking on academic careers--will be integral to real progress.

But Harvard can serve itself and our society by transcending the notoriously short American time horizon and continuing to invest in minority and women graduate students. The payoff will take a while. In Putnam's words, "It takes time for people to become major scholars whether they are male, female, black, white or pink." But is that an excuse not to push ahead now?