Panelists Call for Hiring Of Women, Minorities

Panelists at an Alternative Junior Parents Weekend discussion Saturday said that Harvard not only needs to improve its efforts to recruit minority and women faculty, but that it should also try harder to keep them on the faculty.

The panel discussion, which featured Roderick J. Harrison '70-'71, assistant professor of Afro-American studies and sociology, and Caroliva Herron, assistant professor of Afro-American studies and comparative literature, was sponsored by the Minority Student Alliance (MSA).

The group said it scheduled the panel to conflict with three official Parents Weekend speeches in order to present junior parents with information about the status of minorities on Harvard's faculty. About 90 people attended the alternative lecture.

During his presentation to the parents, Harrison said that the number of some minorties on the faculty were decreasing. While there were four senior Black professors and five junior Black faculty at Harvard when he first arrived at Harvard in 1984, Harrison said, today there are only two tenured professors who are Black and three junior Black professors.

Herron, who said she came to Harvard because she believed the Afro-American Studies Department needed assistance, said she accepted a tenure offer from Mount Holyoke College because the University did not give her the encouragement she needed to pursue her fiction writing.

The professors, both of whom will leave Harvard after this semester, told parents that while they did not encounter any direct discrimination from the Harvard administration, but they felt the Harvard environment did little to encourage their work.

Most parents of Harvard juniors interviewed reacted strongly to the presentations.

"This was a bit of a shock," said Juliana T. Plummer, a junior parent. "I was especially shocked about the decrease in the faculty figures. Obviously people are coming here and leaving because they are becoming disillusioned."

Other parents said they were especially disappointed with what they learned of the Harvard's faculty make-up in the face of the College's stated commitment to internationalization and diversity.

"It was interesting to hear [Dean of the Faculty A. Michael] Spence on his perception of this University 10 to 20 years from now regarding this worldwide expansion, and then to come here and see the need to have more representation of Afro-American professors on the faculty," said Laval S. Wilson, a junior parent and the outgoing superintendent of Boston schools. "I think these issues are critical for staff representation," he added.

"The point is that Harvard has to try much harder. It it has got a commitment to diversity, let them show it on the faculty," junior parent Charlotte G. Baer said.