Conservatism Closing the Mind

A few weeks ago, as the Verba Report on Affirmative Action was produced and quickly accepted by President Bok, my view was that, at best, it represented a rather weak gesture in view of the paucity of African-American faculty at Harvard. Now, even the meager efforts implied in the Verba Report stand in jeopardy of being weakened by the faculty.

In April, my tenure at the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics was briefly interrupted long enough for me, as President of the National Congress of Black Faculty, to chair our national meeting in Washington, D.C. The delegates there applauded the many initiatives by colleges and universities around the country to increase the number of African-American faculty members.

To return from that scene to Harvard, where students were having rallies in the Yard in order to motivate recalcitrant University administrators and faculty toward diversity in hiring, was indeed an anachronism.

Despite the relatively small available pool of Black faculty, there are still approximately 18,000 today. Since many Ivy League institutions are able to afford the best and brightest of any faculty, the supply question should be mitigated by their resources. So the logical reason which has emerged for the dearth of Black faculty is that they are not "the best" in their fields--or, the meritocracy argument all over again.

Harvard's method for determining the best faculty members in any given field is, at best, a subjective judgment arrived at by individuals, among whom are many who would have great difficulty admitting that Blacks were the very best in any field--except for, perhaps, Afro-American Studies, and even there some would have doubts. Such a program unavoidably and unsurprisingly mirrors the racial paradigm in society as a whole. Nevertheless, what is being slowly called into question is whether Harvard or the society which it serves is best served by such a strict meritorious system.

One of the best arguments for a contrary view was made in a 1982 article in Change magazine entitled, "Excellence--An Excuse to Exclude," by Dr. Charles Willie, professor of education at Harvard. He wrote that, "If diversity is something of value, Harvard and higher education institutions like it will never achieve the fullness of this value in their faculty appointments with the kind of advice that search committees currently receive: seek only the best but search also for minorities if they are the best."

Dr. Willie called attention to the tension between a strict standard of merit for hiring decisions and the value of diversity which should be an important goal of a university or college.

I would argue that there are at least four reasons why faculty diversity is in the interest of the Harvard community. First, the fact that the faculty is the least diverse of all groups within an educational institution speaks volumes about what it values in teaching and research. Ideas of merit, then, come to reflect the perspective of a society which has utilized this criteria in order to historically maintain racial domination, such that objective justice dictates that Harvard should erect a corrective standard which provides equal opportunity. However, if one reads the responses of Harvard's academic leaders to the Report submitted by the University's Association of Black Faculty and Staff, there is a grudging admission that the situation is not yet just. So, the existence of diversity as a legitimate principle which guides the institution is in doubt.

Second, the effect of a more diverse community of scholars upon the academic life of the institution would be important, in that it would be yet another enriching ingredient for the enterprises of administration, teaching, learning and research. How is it possible for truly liberally educated individuals to decide a priori that a great body of knowledge is useless, or that whole groups of people (with some rare exceptions) are incapable of achieving--if, indeed, the search for truth is the issue in every field? And how is it possible to build an anti-racist educational environment where educational leadership is weakened from a lack of diversity?

Third, Harvard serves that public interest and to that extent its faculty and graduates are important activsts in the construction and implementation of policy in both public and private areas. The public interest will increasingly be served as the country becomes more minority in population, in education and in employment, by those who are sensitive and experienced in dealing with a variety of issues involving the role of minorities in virtually every phase of American life. How can Harvard, with fewer representatives of minorities than other institutions, continue to exercise its influence in public affairs given this future configuration of society?

Lastly, it has not gone unnoticed--at least by this observer--that Harvard has traditionally had an inordinate impact upon the practices of other institutions of American higher education. It therefore has inherited a moral reponsibility of national import with respect to the issue of faculty diversity. To some extent, this view is similar to that of those who have struggled so mightily for the Harvard Corporation to divest its stock in companies that are in South Africa. However, in the case of hiring a fair number of Black faculty, there cannot be an analogous counter-argument suggesting that an immediate loss would accrue to the University in any regard--which makes the situation all the more puzzling. Some faculty have tried lamely to suggest that affirmative action breeds Black dependence upon whites, but this smacks of the same sort of disingenuous concern conservatives have manifested for "the suffering Blacks" within South Africa whenever divestment is mentioned.

EVEN after making these arguments, I am certainly not sanguine--especially after all the obfuscation on this issue--that sound arguments will move the faculty to a more positive sense of its mission. Rather, in any institution the techniques of maintaining viability reside in an early recognition of the danger signs.

Most important for the intellectual health of the University, the attitude toward the inclusion of African-American faculty as a legitimizing factor for the Black person and the Black intellectual tradition (not to mention the research which suggests their critical role in the matriculation of Black students) may be a bellweather of openness to other trends.

I am afraid that the force of ideological conservatism among faculty and American intellectuals in general is responsible for closing the American mind much tighter and farther than any other existing attitude toward education at large. Thus, only leadership from the alumni, trustees, the president and progressive faculty members can move this issue off of dead center. In any case, I would hope that Dean of the Faculty Michael Spence exercises the leadership which is often initially necessary to build a lasting concensus among the faculty on such matters.

Dr. Ronald Walters is a professor of political science at Howard University and president of the National Congress of Black Faculty. He spent spring term as a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government's Institute of Politics.