Contemporaries Disagree With Mansfield Remarks

Keith A. Saunders '75 lasted just one year at Harvard.

Now a dancer with the Dance Theater of Harlem, Saunders, who is Black, said he left after his first year, 1971-72, for several reasons, including academics.

"I only spent one year there," said Saunders from his New York City apartment this week. "My grades certainly weren't inflated, I'll tell you that."

But in the January/February issue of Harvard Magazine, Thomson Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53 suggested they might have been. Mansfield linked grade inflation to the arrival of larger numbers of Black students in the 1960s.

"Grade inflation was very much a phenomenon of the late sixties, when it was consid

Thomson Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53 sparked campus controversy this semester with comments linking grade inflation to increased Black enrollment in the 1960s and '70s. But students, professors and administrators of that time say they disagree with him and offer their own theories. Some blame the Vietnam War; others talk about a cultural change in attitudes toward grades. But with both sides unable to present statistical evidence, anecdotes and observations dominate...

ered a 'power move' for a professor to grade a student," Mansfield said. "Grade inflation coincided with the arrival of large numbers of black students on the Harvard campus; many white professors were unwilling to give C's to Black students, so they also wouldn't give C's to white students."

Asked last night whether he would add to or amend his remarks, Mansfield said, "Let it stand."

But in interviews this week with The Crimson, faculty members, administrators, former teaching fellows and Black students from the late '60s and early '70s expressed little support for Mansfield's views.

Even the man credited with coining the term "grade inflation," Ford Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus David Riesman '34, said the trend was the result of the "counterculture of the 1960s" and predated increased Black enrollment in the College.

Black alumni, in particular, vehemently and unanimously rejected Manfield's assertions. Some blasted him for what they called racism, and in some cases they offered personal testimony to the lowness of their grades.

"As I recall, the first year I got three C's and a D," said Michael D. Robinson '71, a banker in New York City who served as president of Phillips Brooks House as an undergraduate. "I was Group II thereafter; an A, two B's and a C was pretty typical."

Some professors present at the time said the race of a student occasionally may have influenced grade decisions, but they stressed that this alone could not be responsible for the broader trend.

"I think there was a tendency to give obviously bright, motivated African-American students the benefit of the doubt," said James D. Wilkinson '65, director of the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. But such tendencies were not limited to Black students alone, he said, and were linked more to students' level of pre-college academic preparation than race.

Some Black graduates and professors interviewed said they believed Mansfield should present concrete numerical evidence for his assertion, which he has not done.

Pressed on his evidence for this claim during a March 11 panel discussion at the Institute of Politics, Mansfield said he had anecdotal evidence to support his contentions.

"I can prove it with my own observations and the observations of others," Mansfield said. "I saw this in my TFs, and I even felt an impulse in myself to do this."

But many graduates and professors said these observations aren't sufficient proof for what they consider to be an extraordinarily strong statement.

Carlton L. Guthrie '74, president of a metal stamping firm in Lansing, Michigan, called Mansfield's statement "weird" and said he believed grade inflation was the result of a "reevaluation" of higher education and its missions during that time.

"I know a lot of Black students who got C's-myself included," said Guthrie. "That's a pretty dubious statement, unless he has some evidence to prove it."

Some Black alumni said they were personally affronted by Mansfield's comments. Asked about the professor's statements, William F. Kuntz II '72, a partner in a Wall Street law firm, proceeded to recite his resume, which included three post-graduate degrees and a stint on New York City's police civilian review board.

"It's just sad that Mansfield feels that way," Kuntz said.

Although former students like Kuntz reject the notion of a link between race and grade inflation, there is universal acknowledgement that grades rose on campuses nationwide during the '60s and '70s.

Studies performed by the Carnegie Council for the Advancement of Teaching found that while 35 percent of all grades were B or above in 1969, by 1976, 59 percent of all grades were B or above. Carnegie also found that the average grades received by college students rose every year from 1964 to 1974.

A survey of 50 universities nationwide conducted in 1974 by the Office of Institutional Research at the University of California Berkeley yielded similar results. The survey found that the percentage of A grades more than doubled, from 16 to 34 percent, between the early '60s and 1974, according to Arthur E. Levine, chair of Harvard's Institute for Education.

A smaller study of 16 universities performed by the same office found that the mean grade point average rose from 2.47 to 2.94 during the same period, on a 4.0 scale.

But Levine, who has written extensively on the grading, says this inflation predates the arrival of large numbers of Black students at universities.

"The grade inflation actually begins before the influx of minority students," Levine said.

College officials said this week the number of Black students increased slightly during most of the 1960s, reaching 55 in 1968. The next year, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and a strong minority recruitment effort, Black enrollment began to increase at a much faster pace.

But College officials say that the conjunction of the two trends was merely coincidental.

"I think you'll find Blacks got a range of grades including C's, and it was a real struggle as their grades improved as they spent more time at Harvard," said Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, who is conducting his own investigation of Mansfield's thesis.

Dean K. Whitla, director of the Office of Instructional Research and Evaluation and a longtime Harvard administrator, said the rise in grades can largely be attributed to academically stronger student bodies and faculty legislation that liberalized pass/fail policies.

"I think that Harvey is not right," said Whitla. "The real important thing to show is some evidence. This idea [of Mansfield's] has been around for a long time."

Professors, students and administrators present during the '60s and '70s generally agree there was a change in attitude toward grades during the period. Many attributed that shift to the turbulent times and the general questioning of authority prevalent then.

"I certainly don't think it has anything to do with race at all," said Adams House Master and Loker Professor of English Robert J. Kiely, who was a professor at the time. He attributes rising grades to "a sort of questioning of the whole grading system in general" by professors, undergraduates and graduate students during the period.

Donald L. Fanger, Porter Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature, links rising grades to the "egalitarian" attitudes of the time.

John T. Dunlop, who was dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1969 to 1973, said he could not recall any discussion of race as a factor in inflation. He said, instead, that rebellious teaching fellows and younger professors may have been responsible.

"There was this tendency among teaching fellows and younger faculty to give high grades as a form of protest," Dunlop said.

Fanger said he recalls speaking to a colleague in the early '70s who "thought a teaching fellow in his class had automatically given everybody an A."

"I think that might be a sign of those times," he said.

However, some students disagreed with the notion that professors of the time were on the cusp of social change.

"The core of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences were not 24-year-old TFs but professors in their 50s or 60s, and their ideas were not that radical," said Robinson, the New York banker. "They were a lot more like Nathan Pusey than they would like to believe."

Thomas S. Williamson Jr. '68, who said he will soon be nominated to a position in the Department of Labor, said he believed the unusual upward trend would have to have been caused by bigger factors than race.

"There was more a philosophy than anything that had to do with race," Williamson said. "My sense was that grade inflation had gotten well on its way before there was an expansion of minority student admissions."

But one former professor and graduate student suggested that the anti-establishment attitude was nothing more than a facade.

"On one hand, you had a counterculture where people pertended not to be interested in grades," said William Schneider, a pollster for CNN and a former graduate student and assistant professor during the '60s and '70s. "At the same time...it's also the rise of the meritocracy. We had the beginnings of a far more rigorous sorting out, weeding process."

In fact, some professors teaching at Harvard at the time said a stronger concern for high grades, due to increasingly competitive professional school admissions, pushed undergraduate averages higher.

"It was about that time that medical school and law school admissions became more competitive," said Arnold Professor of Science William H. Bossert '59. Before 1965, he said, admission to medical school was virtually guaranteed.

Wilkinson agrees with Bossert and said he remembers one student who reproached him over a low grade in a history class at the time.

"The student said, "I may not be a great historian, but I'm going to be a damn fine doctor, and I resent your keeping me out of medical school," Wilkinson said.

Some professors, however, while asserting Mansfield's original comment over-emphasized the role of race in grade inflation, said that race could have influenced individual professors' grading decisions in certain cases.

"I would suspect it did make a difference to some individuals, along with a number of other considerations," said McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History Emeritus Franklin L. Ford, who was dean of the Faculty until 1968.

But many alumni blasted Mansfield, calling his formulation of the link between race and grades racist.

Lee A. Daniels '71, an Institute of Politics fellow and reporter for the New York Times, said Mansfield was using an old argument to hurt Blacks.

"The attack against Reconstruction was predicated on the assertion that Northern whites were hurting whites to help Blacks," Daniels said. "Harvey hasn't raised a question of whether football players' grades were inflated. This was nothing but an attack against Black students."

Harold A. McDougall '67, a professor at the law school at Catholic University, called Mansfield's comments "unprincipled and irresponsible."

"He's taking a slam at some people who aren't still around to defend themselves," McDougall said.

And Lewis P. Jones III '74, an officer at Chemical Bank, said Mansfield's comments represent an attack on the right of Blacks to be at Harvard.

"There's always some neo-conservative revisionist running around trying to undermine the presence of people of color," Jones said.

Black College graduates interviewed also disputed Mansfield's suggestion that Harvard professors and instructors readily welcomed them during this time. Many said they encountered racist professors and teaching fellows during their time here.

A'Lelia Bundles '74, an ABC News producer in Washington, said her expository writing teacher-"who was limited"-accused her of plagiarism after she wrote an exceptional paper.

"That's an old racist argument," Bundles said of Mansfield's theory. "This is the neighborhood goes to the dogs when you let Blacks in' argument."

In fact, some Black students at the time believed their grades suffered because of their race.

"On the contrary, there was a widespread feeling that professors were grading down [Black students]," said Daniels. "There's a notion of a conspiracy theory behind that.

Several graduates took exception to Mansfield's statement for statistical reasons. Some said they did not believe the Black population on campus was large enough to put significant upward pressure on grades.

"Minority students have historically been such a small percentage of the student body," said Henry W. McGee III '74, senior vice president of programming at HBO. "I don't believe professors graded based on race. And if you grant [Mansfield] that, minority students were such a tiny percentage anyway."

Rep. Barney Frank '62 (D-Mass) was a teaching fellow and later head section leader in Gov I, the largest class at Harvard during the '60s, from 1963 to 1967. He called Mansfield's explanation for inflation "nonsense," and said the testing process was largely anonymous.

"In some cases, you don't know who the students are," said Frank. "But if Mansfield wants to work himself into a tizzy...better that he spend time talking about this than doing what he usually does."

Race was not the only reason given by Mansfield for grade inflation. In a letter to The Crimson on March 10, the professor introduced another possible explanation: Professors might have inflated grades to prevent students from losing their draft deferments and having to go to Vietnam.

Some experts said they too believe the Vietnam War influenced grades.

"The faculty was very traditional and cautious about giving grades," said Epps. "What changed attitudes towards grades were events connected to Vietnam.

But students interviewed disputed this point, saying that no one flunks out of Harvard.

"That's a scam people would have cooperated with, but you had to work so hard to flunk out," said Kenneth M. Glazier '69, who was chair of the student-faculty advisory council. "If all you were trying to do was stay in College, there were always plenty of courses you could take to do that."

The lasting legacy of Mansfield's statements, however, might not be the search for truth about the origins of grade inflation, graduates said. Comments like Mansfield's, graduates said, serve more to hurt the present sense of community on campus than to give any insight into the past.

"It makes me sad, because I know what a wonderful time people in our generation had at Harvard," said McDougall. "Now to a certain extent, you're being deprived of the same experience."

Grade Inflation

Percentage of Undergraduates who reported cumulative averages at grades A+ through C

Grades  1969  1976A, A+  2  8A-  5  11B+  11  18B  17  22B-  19  15C+  23  15C  18  10C- and less  7  

Thomson Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53 sparked campus controversy this semester with comments linking grade inflation to increased Black enrollment in the 1960s and '70s. But students, professors and administrators of that time say they disagree with him and offer their own theories. Some blame the Vietnam War; others talk about a cultural change in attitudes toward grades. But with both sides unable to present statistical evidence, anecdotes and observations dominate...

ered a 'power move' for a professor to grade a student," Mansfield said. "Grade inflation coincided with the arrival of large numbers of black students on the Harvard campus; many white professors were unwilling to give C's to Black students, so they also wouldn't give C's to white students."

Asked last night whether he would add to or amend his remarks, Mansfield said, "Let it stand."

But in interviews this week with The Crimson, faculty members, administrators, former teaching fellows and Black students from the late '60s and early '70s expressed little support for Mansfield's views.

Even the man credited with coining the term "grade inflation," Ford Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus David Riesman '34, said the trend was the result of the "counterculture of the 1960s" and predated increased Black enrollment in the College.

Black alumni, in particular, vehemently and unanimously rejected Manfield's assertions. Some blasted him for what they called racism, and in some cases they offered personal testimony to the lowness of their grades.

"As I recall, the first year I got three C's and a D," said Michael D. Robinson '71, a banker in New York City who served as president of Phillips Brooks House as an undergraduate. "I was Group II thereafter; an A, two B's and a C was pretty typical."

Some professors present at the time said the race of a student occasionally may have influenced grade decisions, but they stressed that this alone could not be responsible for the broader trend.

"I think there was a tendency to give obviously bright, motivated African-American students the benefit of the doubt," said James D. Wilkinson '65, director of the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. But such tendencies were not limited to Black students alone, he said, and were linked more to students' level of pre-college academic preparation than race.

Some Black graduates and professors interviewed said they believed Mansfield should present concrete numerical evidence for his assertion, which he has not done.

Pressed on his evidence for this claim during a March 11 panel discussion at the Institute of Politics, Mansfield said he had anecdotal evidence to support his contentions.

"I can prove it with my own observations and the observations of others," Mansfield said. "I saw this in my TFs, and I even felt an impulse in myself to do this."

But many graduates and professors said these observations aren't sufficient proof for what they consider to be an extraordinarily strong statement.

Carlton L. Guthrie '74, president of a metal stamping firm in Lansing, Michigan, called Mansfield's statement "weird" and said he believed grade inflation was the result of a "reevaluation" of higher education and its missions during that time.

"I know a lot of Black students who got C's-myself included," said Guthrie. "That's a pretty dubious statement, unless he has some evidence to prove it."

Some Black alumni said they were personally affronted by Mansfield's comments. Asked about the professor's statements, William F. Kuntz II '72, a partner in a Wall Street law firm, proceeded to recite his resume, which included three post-graduate degrees and a stint on New York City's police civilian review board.

"It's just sad that Mansfield feels that way," Kuntz said.

Although former students like Kuntz reject the notion of a link between race and grade inflation, there is universal acknowledgement that grades rose on campuses nationwide during the '60s and '70s.

Studies performed by the Carnegie Council for the Advancement of Teaching found that while 35 percent of all grades were B or above in 1969, by 1976, 59 percent of all grades were B or above. Carnegie also found that the average grades received by college students rose every year from 1964 to 1974.

A survey of 50 universities nationwide conducted in 1974 by the Office of Institutional Research at the University of California Berkeley yielded similar results. The survey found that the percentage of A grades more than doubled, from 16 to 34 percent, between the early '60s and 1974, according to Arthur E. Levine, chair of Harvard's Institute for Education.

A smaller study of 16 universities performed by the same office found that the mean grade point average rose from 2.47 to 2.94 during the same period, on a 4.0 scale.

But Levine, who has written extensively on the grading, says this inflation predates the arrival of large numbers of Black students at universities.

"The grade inflation actually begins before the influx of minority students," Levine said.

College officials said this week the number of Black students increased slightly during most of the 1960s, reaching 55 in 1968. The next year, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and a strong minority recruitment effort, Black enrollment began to increase at a much faster pace.

But College officials say that the conjunction of the two trends was merely coincidental.

"I think you'll find Blacks got a range of grades including C's, and it was a real struggle as their grades improved as they spent more time at Harvard," said Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, who is conducting his own investigation of Mansfield's thesis.

Dean K. Whitla, director of the Office of Instructional Research and Evaluation and a longtime Harvard administrator, said the rise in grades can largely be attributed to academically stronger student bodies and faculty legislation that liberalized pass/fail policies.

"I think that Harvey is not right," said Whitla. "The real important thing to show is some evidence. This idea [of Mansfield's] has been around for a long time."

Professors, students and administrators present during the '60s and '70s generally agree there was a change in attitude toward grades during the period. Many attributed that shift to the turbulent times and the general questioning of authority prevalent then.

"I certainly don't think it has anything to do with race at all," said Adams House Master and Loker Professor of English Robert J. Kiely, who was a professor at the time. He attributes rising grades to "a sort of questioning of the whole grading system in general" by professors, undergraduates and graduate students during the period.

Donald L. Fanger, Porter Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature, links rising grades to the "egalitarian" attitudes of the time.

John T. Dunlop, who was dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1969 to 1973, said he could not recall any discussion of race as a factor in inflation. He said, instead, that rebellious teaching fellows and younger professors may have been responsible.

"There was this tendency among teaching fellows and younger faculty to give high grades as a form of protest," Dunlop said.

Fanger said he recalls speaking to a colleague in the early '70s who "thought a teaching fellow in his class had automatically given everybody an A."

"I think that might be a sign of those times," he said.

However, some students disagreed with the notion that professors of the time were on the cusp of social change.

"The core of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences were not 24-year-old TFs but professors in their 50s or 60s, and their ideas were not that radical," said Robinson, the New York banker. "They were a lot more like Nathan Pusey than they would like to believe."

Thomas S. Williamson Jr. '68, who said he will soon be nominated to a position in the Department of Labor, said he believed the unusual upward trend would have to have been caused by bigger factors than race.

"There was more a philosophy than anything that had to do with race," Williamson said. "My sense was that grade inflation had gotten well on its way before there was an expansion of minority student admissions."

But one former professor and graduate student suggested that the anti-establishment attitude was nothing more than a facade.

"On one hand, you had a counterculture where people pertended not to be interested in grades," said William Schneider, a pollster for CNN and a former graduate student and assistant professor during the '60s and '70s. "At the same time...it's also the rise of the meritocracy. We had the beginnings of a far more rigorous sorting out, weeding process."

In fact, some professors teaching at Harvard at the time said a stronger concern for high grades, due to increasingly competitive professional school admissions, pushed undergraduate averages higher.

"It was about that time that medical school and law school admissions became more competitive," said Arnold Professor of Science William H. Bossert '59. Before 1965, he said, admission to medical school was virtually guaranteed.

Wilkinson agrees with Bossert and said he remembers one student who reproached him over a low grade in a history class at the time.

"The student said, "I may not be a great historian, but I'm going to be a damn fine doctor, and I resent your keeping me out of medical school," Wilkinson said.

Some professors, however, while asserting Mansfield's original comment over-emphasized the role of race in grade inflation, said that race could have influenced individual professors' grading decisions in certain cases.

"I would suspect it did make a difference to some individuals, along with a number of other considerations," said McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History Emeritus Franklin L. Ford, who was dean of the Faculty until 1968.

But many alumni blasted Mansfield, calling his formulation of the link between race and grades racist.

Lee A. Daniels '71, an Institute of Politics fellow and reporter for the New York Times, said Mansfield was using an old argument to hurt Blacks.

"The attack against Reconstruction was predicated on the assertion that Northern whites were hurting whites to help Blacks," Daniels said. "Harvey hasn't raised a question of whether football players' grades were inflated. This was nothing but an attack against Black students."

Harold A. McDougall '67, a professor at the law school at Catholic University, called Mansfield's comments "unprincipled and irresponsible."

"He's taking a slam at some people who aren't still around to defend themselves," McDougall said.

And Lewis P. Jones III '74, an officer at Chemical Bank, said Mansfield's comments represent an attack on the right of Blacks to be at Harvard.

"There's always some neo-conservative revisionist running around trying to undermine the presence of people of color," Jones said.

Black College graduates interviewed also disputed Mansfield's suggestion that Harvard professors and instructors readily welcomed them during this time. Many said they encountered racist professors and teaching fellows during their time here.

A'Lelia Bundles '74, an ABC News producer in Washington, said her expository writing teacher-"who was limited"-accused her of plagiarism after she wrote an exceptional paper.

"That's an old racist argument," Bundles said of Mansfield's theory. "This is the neighborhood goes to the dogs when you let Blacks in' argument."

In fact, some Black students at the time believed their grades suffered because of their race.

"On the contrary, there was a widespread feeling that professors were grading down [Black students]," said Daniels. "There's a notion of a conspiracy theory behind that.

Several graduates took exception to Mansfield's statement for statistical reasons. Some said they did not believe the Black population on campus was large enough to put significant upward pressure on grades.

"Minority students have historically been such a small percentage of the student body," said Henry W. McGee III '74, senior vice president of programming at HBO. "I don't believe professors graded based on race. And if you grant [Mansfield] that, minority students were such a tiny percentage anyway."

Rep. Barney Frank '62 (D-Mass) was a teaching fellow and later head section leader in Gov I, the largest class at Harvard during the '60s, from 1963 to 1967. He called Mansfield's explanation for inflation "nonsense," and said the testing process was largely anonymous.

"In some cases, you don't know who the students are," said Frank. "But if Mansfield wants to work himself into a tizzy...better that he spend time talking about this than doing what he usually does."

Race was not the only reason given by Mansfield for grade inflation. In a letter to The Crimson on March 10, the professor introduced another possible explanation: Professors might have inflated grades to prevent students from losing their draft deferments and having to go to Vietnam.

Some experts said they too believe the Vietnam War influenced grades.

"The faculty was very traditional and cautious about giving grades," said Epps. "What changed attitudes towards grades were events connected to Vietnam.

But students interviewed disputed this point, saying that no one flunks out of Harvard.

"That's a scam people would have cooperated with, but you had to work so hard to flunk out," said Kenneth M. Glazier '69, who was chair of the student-faculty advisory council. "If all you were trying to do was stay in College, there were always plenty of courses you could take to do that."

The lasting legacy of Mansfield's statements, however, might not be the search for truth about the origins of grade inflation, graduates said. Comments like Mansfield's, graduates said, serve more to hurt the present sense of community on campus than to give any insight into the past.

"It makes me sad, because I know what a wonderful time people in our generation had at Harvard," said McDougall. "Now to a certain extent, you're being deprived of the same experience."

Grade Inflation

Percentage of Undergraduates who reported cumulative averages at grades A+ through C

Grades  1969  1976A, A+  2  8A-  5  11B+  11  18B  17  22B-  19  15C+  23  15C  18  10C- and less  7