Images in the Diversity Debacle: Will Gay and Lesbian Recruitment Be the Next Battleground?

Diversity is the watchword at Harvard and on campuses across the country. In protests by Afro-Am concentrators and teaching boycotts by law professors, hiring and affirmative action have become highly divisive and emotional issues.

These conflicts have traditionally confined themselves to categories of gender and race. But perhaps no longer. At Harvard and elsewhere, many students and scholars are seeking to redefine diversity, to expand the spectrum of groups designated to receive special attention or preference.

If recent events at the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Law School are any indication, recruitment of gay and lesbian students and faculty may prove to be the newest battleground in the war over affirmative action in American universities.

Earlier this spring, the Kennedy School's Committee on Issues of Sexual Orientation released a report calling for, among other things, "actively recruiting gay and lesbian applicants."

The Boston Globe ran a story under the headline, "Kennedy School to Recruit Gay Students and Faculty." Administrative Dean Barbara T. Salisbury told the Globe, "we are openly recuiting for everyone."

Soon after, however, the Kennedy School released a statement that it "does not recruit or admit students, staff or faculty on the basis of sexual orientation."

"The Kennedy School is not actively recruiting gay faculty," says spokesperson Steven R. Singer. "We are removing barriers to gays and lesbians--we are not actively changing admissions or recruiting. The school is wanting to cast as wide a net as possible, but it is not a proactive position."

Singer says the Kennedy School is supportive of the Sexual Orientation Report. But, he adds, many of its recommendations--such as the recruitment of gay and lesbian faculty--cannot be implemented, at least not now.

"Some things are very simple to do within the school, but we are not prepared to accept all recommendations," says Singer.

Since the initial public uproar about the report, Singer has issued a memo reminding all faculty members that Kennedy School policy issues may not be discussed with members of the press without his permission. Although Singer says the memo is just a reminder of a policy that has long been in place, others say it was the committee's report that prompted the action.

"That publicity scared the school," says Bradley R. Carlson, a member of the committee. Carlson says the original press reports were accurate, but misplaced the emphasis onto faculty hiring--forcing Kennedy School officials take a step back.

"The dean doesn't want to appear that he is going over the heads of the other professors involved in faculty recruitment," says Carlson.

But this is a position for which Carlson says he has little sympathy.

"There are no openly gay or lesbian faculty at the Kennedy School. I question if they acknowledge that as a problem," he says. "The school is not interested in recruiting gay or lesbian faculty. I don't think they really consider gays and lesbians as a legitimate group."

And without a single openly gay professor at the Kennedy School, Carlson says important issues of public policy are being ignored or glossed over.

"That is what the focus of our group is--that people don't graduate from the Kennedy School without learning about gay and lesbian issues," says Carlson. "Most professors are not setting a tone that gay and lesbian issues are important."

"There are ridiculous and arcane laws that discriminate against gays and lesbians," Carlson continues. "Sodomy laws are still on the books, marriage is prohibited. If we are going to change these things, we need to know."

But Carlson is quick to add that he and the committee are not calling for affirmative action or tips for gay or lesbian applicants to the school.

"We weren't asking for preferential treatment, we weren't asking for affirmative action," Carlson says. "Recruitment should be distinguished from affirmative action. Recruitment to me means welcoming openly gay and lesbian professors and acknowledgement of the issues."

Expanding Diversity

The Kennedy School is not the only part of the University pressing for increased recruitment of gays and lesbians. For the first time, the issue took a high-profile position alongside calls for Black and women faculty hiring at Law School protests held last week.

"As sexual orientation becomes recognized as being as central to individual identity as race and gender, we'll see a lot more pressure from lesbians, gays and bisexuals," says Morris A. Ratner, an openly gay third-year law student and a member of the Coalition for Civil Rights.

Ratner says that gay students have been calling for more openly gay and lesbian faculty members for a long time, but it is only recently that these calls are being heard. Gays, lesbians and bisexuals, says Ratner, are a long way off from gaining the same acceptance as women and people of color as a "legitimate" minority group.

"It is far more acceptable to voice one's hatred for gays or lesbians than for race and gender," says Ratner. "Sexual orientation is not an established minority."

The dilemma, explains Ratner, is one of public identity.

'The Biggest Problem'

"The biggest problem is that while Black students can easily become a visible group, the traditional invisibility of gays and lesbians has presented a problem in our ability to put the pressure on," says Ratner. "It's depressing to think that gay, lesbian and bisexual issues aren't treated as seriously as race and gender issues."

At Harvard's professional schools, the call for diverse hiring is getting louder, but in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), the debate on this issue, at least, has remained strangely quiet.

Few professors are speaking about it and undergraduate groups have failed to come up with a protest as vocal as the Law School's recent sit-in or a proposal as headline-grabbing as the Kennedy School's report.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Mary M. Steedly, who teaches courses on gender and sexuality, concedes that it is not an issue that gets a lot of attention at FAS.

Like the Kennedy School committee which called for a more tolerant environment, Steedly says she hopes that "recruitment" can be done by examining attitudes at the university rather than by initiating affirmative action hiring.

"It would be ideal to say we don't need a search because we have already hired them," says Steedly.

And Steedly, a recent addition to FAS, says any type of search process itself would prove difficult to carry out. "A search requiring people to identify their sexual orientation is not a positive step," she says.

Massachusetts anti-discrimination laws prevent universities, like any employer, from requiring applicants to state their sexual orientation. These laws, say some scholars, also create barriers to effective recruitment in this area.

With such guidelines, a university can only recruit those gay and lesbian professors who have publicly declared their sexual orientation. At those handful of schools that may someday begin to recruit gay and lesbian professors, being "out" may become advantageous. But, say students and scholars alike, where higher levels of discrimination exist, such openness can be very risky.

'More Open, More Public'

"What seems to me to be most crucial is the establishment of a more open community and more public awareness and visibility of people who are gay or lesbian," says Steedly. "The tolerance seems to be running behind the visibility, and that seems to be the first step to take."

It is a tolerance that will not come easily to Harvard. Even with broad support for "diversity," gays and lesbians are still fighting for the public legitimacy that would guarantee them a place alongside other minority groups.

Thomson Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr., one of the nation's most outspoken opponents of affirmative action for Black and women scholars, says he stands stongly against recruitment of gay or lesbian professors.

"I would be quite opposed to any deliberate recruitment. I don't think that constitutes a point of view or a scholarly specialty," says Mansfield. "It's a misfortune to be gay or lesbian--it is not a basis of a claim to representation at a University."

But Mansfield says that gay and lesbian recruitment could very well make its way to Harvard with "the increasing politicization of the University."

"Many bad things are happening," says Mansfield. "Things could easily proceed that far, but I would hope that at some point common sense would intervene."

For university administrators, the question of gay and lesbian faculty recruitment is not a moral issue, but a legal one. The federal government does not protect gays or lesbians from discrimination nor does it include them in affirmative action reports.

"The fact is that the University would push to enforce all of the legal issues that prevent exclusion from employment," says Ronald Quincy, assistant to the president for affirmative action. "But the federal government does not consider gays or lesbians a minority or subject to affirmative action goals."

Quincy says debates about gay and lesbian faculty recruitment are increasingly becoming a national trend. "I would predict for there to be more efforts by advocacy groups for greater diversity on college campuses, including gay and lesbian faculty," Quincy says.

But for now, the Faculty's affirmative action dean, Marjorie Garber, says gay and lesbian recruitment just isn't hot topic among professors here.

"I am not sure that recruiting is an issue at the departmental level, either positively or negatively," Garber says. "It is not an issue that has been brought to attention in an affirmative action setting."

Yet Garber says the expansion of benefits available to gay and lesbian couples is a question that needs to be addressed now.

"The benefits question is a real question. It is very much worthwhile investigating," says Garber.

The issue of benefits may very well be the next target. If universities want to make their environments more open to gay or lesbian faculty, they may need to begin expanding benefits packages to cover unmarried couples, some scholars say.

But few universities at present seem to be taking the lead. While some institutions, like Yale University, extend library use and gym access to all domestic partners, most do not offer unmarried couples more extensive benefits, such as health coverage.

And health coverage seems to be the most significant issue, say officials at many institutions "It is so important you can't talk about anything else," says Yale's Director of benefits Richard L. Silva.

Gay and lesbian domestic partners in almost all cases cannot receive the medical privileges afforded married couples.

At Harvard, medical coverage is extended to spouses of faculty or staff members, but there is no like compensation for partners of gay or lesbian employees.

According to Harvard's Director of Benefits Joan Bruce, it is an issue that has been questioned by some individual faculty members, although the biggest push has come from staff members with the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers.

"There is no provision for domestic partners," says Bruce. "There is a healthcare advisory committee, and one of its agenda items is to look at the issue. The Union really had been the impetus, but there have been other individuals."

Yale, Princeton University, the University of California system and Stanford University also do not provide health benefits to partners of gay and lesbian faculty.

'No Intention to Move'

"It comes up from time to time, but my impression is that there is no intention to move from our present position," says Yale's Silva.

Spousal benefits were originally intended to aid families where one parent remained home to care for children and thus would not receive his or her own coverage, Silva says. Gay and lesbian partners are not covered, he says, because the university assumes both partners will work and that "children aren't an issue."

"We feel there is not a need," Silva says. "There is no A and B just an A and an A. No one is saying they are depriving the partner of something they couldn't get elsewhere."

Silva says the cost of health benefits is one of the biggest factors behind skyrocketing tuition rates, and "nobody wants to talk about expanding health coverage."

"When they say, 'let's expand health benefits,' everyone's antennae go up," he says. "And when they talk about extending to gay and lesbian couples, double antennae go up."

"Expanding benefits doesn't get a sympathetic hearing, not out of prejudice, but out of the question of where to best spend our resources," Silva continues. "And this is not at the top of everyone's list."

Gay and lesbian benefits and recruitment aren't at the top of the Harvard's list either, but student and faculty activists may soon try to change that. Still, most say, it will be a long while before gay and lesbian issues get the same attention paid to Blacks and women.

"We've got a long road," says the Law School's Ratner. "It's going to be a long fight."