Positions At Top Still Have Few Minorities

If one cause has defined Neil L. Rudenstine's tenure at Harvard, it is race-based affirmative action. But while aggressive recruitment practices in Byerly Hall's admissions office have been successful in diversifying the student body, Harvard's senior administration has not been as effective in changing its demographics.

At the highest levels of its 10 schools, Harvard has had only one minority dean without "assistant," or "associate" in his title, Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences Dean Venkatesh Narayanamurti. But because his department is within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, even Narayanamurti isn't technically on the level of the dean of the Divinity School or Graduate School of Education.

Minority students and faculty say this lack of diversity is more than embarrassing--it leaves Harvard without potential minority mentors and role models.

But the roots of this problem--like Harvard's difficulties hiring women at the same high levels--lay in the demographics of academia in general and Harvard's tenured faculty in particular.

The deans of Harvard's schools are nearly always drawn from the ranks of senior faculty--and more often than not, from within senior Faculty at Harvard.

Without many minorities in senior faculty positions like department chairs, some say it could remain hard to find qualified candidates to fill these top positions.

The Color of Crimson

Officials say none of Harvard's 10 schools--including the graduate schools and FAS--have ever been led by a minority dean.

"The fact that there aren't any [minorities] doesn't tell the whole story," Rudenstine says.

Rudenstine says that, in several searches for new deans, women and minorities have made it onto his short list but not gotten an offer.

"We care very much about women and minority representation, " Rudenstine says. "We take it into account at every stage [of hiring deans]."

In 1992, Rudenstine appointed a black woman, Linda Darling-Hammond, as dean of the Graduate School of Education. After first accepting the position, however, Darling-Hammond turned it down before taking office.

Besides Darling-Hammond's appointment, Rudenstine has filled the deanships of all Harvard's schools except the Law School and appointed three provosts. Every one of these appointments has been a white male.

Narayanamurti, being the dean of a Harvard division that is under the faculty of arts and sciences, was appointed by Knowles.

According to Harvard's Affirmative Action Plan Summary for 1999, Harvard has been successful in hiring minority faculty members in the last few years. As of 1998, the University had 452 minorities in non-medical faculty positions, compared to 353 in 1995.

But even below the highest levels of the administration, minorities have lagged behind women.

According to the plan summary, 54.5 percent of Harvard's "executive/ administrative/ managerial" employees--a category that includes middle and senior level administrators--were women. By contrast, only 7.6 percent of the employees in this category were minorities.

The Color of Learning

On April 14, 1997, the Association of American Universities (AAU) adopted a statement in support of affirmative action. Rudenstine helped draft the statement, which ran in both The New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Every Ivy League institution is a member of the AAU, with the exception of Dartmouth College.

"We speak first and foremost as educators," a portion of the statement reads. "We believe that our students benefit significantly from education that takes place within a diverse setting."

"Diverse setting" in this context refers to diversity within the student body. But the same kinds of problems attracting minorities have beset universities hiring for their top positions.

Universities used to excuse a small minority presence by pointing to a lack of minority professors and Ph.D. candidates.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education's 1997-1998 Almanac, nearly 14 percent of those who received doctorates in 1995 were minorities.

And, according to the Almanac, in 1993, 14 percent of the nation's full-time faculty at colleges and university were minorities, and about 14 percent of the nation's college and university administrators were minorities.

Cheryl Fields, the executive editor of Blacks in Higher Education, says that a study by her publication a year and a half ago revealed that there are about 140 black college presidents in the nation. That number includes junior colleges. Of the 140, 116 work at historically black institutions, and the majority are men.

Universities are conscious of this lack of minority faculty and leadership, Fields says, but large obstacles to promotion remain for many minority candidates.

"The path to these types of careers is often a very tricky path for people of color," she says. "Some people get catapulted into these positions before they are ready. Some are overlooked when they are ready."

Although many schools follow the popular trend of talking about diversity, not all follow through, Fields says.

"There are some institutions that do walk the walk and talk the talk," she says. "There are others, however, that allege a commitment to diversity, but when you look at the diversity of senior administrators, it doesn't resonate with what they say they believe in."

She says this situation is "shameful for institutions whose responsibility it is to create and groom that talent."

"The excuse that we can't find people who meet our standard seems incredibly naive to me and inexcusable," Fields says. "When the U.S. wanted to go to the moon it didn't say, 'We don't have rockets.' They found the people to build the rockets."

She adds that Asian-Americans in particular have been successful at increasing their ranks in academia, but seem to lack a presence in senior administration.

"Why don't we see more Asian-American college presidents? It appears to me that they're not getting the kind of opportunities they should for making such a large amount of progress in a short period of time," she says.

To Reason Why

Besides the traditional excuse that academia--and especially the rarified ranks of Harvard's tenured faculty--have lacked suitable minority candidates for administrative posts, officials also point to other reasons for this problem.

Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes says that in his conversations with minority students, few have expressed any interest in moving into the field of university administration.

"Most wanted to go on to professional school and make money or do good in a big way," he says. "An office in University Hall does not seem to appeal to our upwardly mobile students."

In addition, once minorities enter the university hierarchy, they are spread thin among committees and university functions that "need" a minority presence, according to Fields.

"We've all been led to believe diversity is a good thing," Gomes says. "If you don't have enough people to diversify, the people you do have tend to get overworked. That tends to drive people away because they tend to not want to be a diversity factor."

The Impact

According to James S. Hoyte '65, Harvard's associate vice president for equal employment opportunity, staff and faculty diversity at Harvard is important because of its impact on students.

"Clearly the student body should have the benefit of a diverse set of perspectives from the faculty and the leadership of the faculty," he says.

Associate Dean of the College Karen E. Avery '87--one of the College's few black administrators--says the faces of the deans, professors and administrators affect students. She says it is important for students to have role models who look like them in important positions.

Shearwood "Woody" McClelland '00, President of the Black Men's forum, says he's not satisfied with Harvard's level of faculty and staff diversity.

"There aren't many black administrators I can talk to about things," McClelland says.

With such a diverse student body, the lack of administrative ethnic and racial variation is more pronounced.

At an October conference to discuss staff diversity, Rudenstine said the University has been very successful in attracting students of all backgrounds and races.

With respect to attracting a diverse staff and Faculty, he said, the University is making progress. McClelland hopes that someday the University's leaders will look like its students.

"I find it disappointing in a way--it's nice to see the people who are teaching you are as diverse as the people who are learning," McClelland says.

Gomes, who is black, says while he thinks it is important for students to have role models, he does not see why having role models who are "ethnic matches" is necessary.

"I can buy the point that you might be more intrigued if the person looked like you, but I don't think that that is a qualifier or an essential or a requirement," Gomes says.

"If I had waited for that, I wouldn't be doing what I am doing," he says. "It's more important to have access to a mentor or role model...I don't think that the mentoring relationship would necessarily be fostered by more minority administrators."

Ali S. A. Asani, professor of the practice of Indo-Muslim languages and culture, says role models are important.

"Some of these positions... they're influential positions which provide the vision for an institution," he says.

"My own sense is that students from different ethnic minority groups at Harvard, when they look at these positions, they don't look at them just in terms of race. But it does become very obvious that the very top tier is not only white, but it's male," Asani says.

An Engineering Success

Narayanamurti says he's been familiar with minority issues in academics since he came to the United States from India as a graduate student at Cornell 38 years ago.

Narayanamurti got a job with Bell Labs--a company he says was a leading institution at that time in promoting gender and racial diversity.

In the science fields, he points out, Asian Americans have always been ahead of other minorities in representation.

But at Sandia National Laboratories, where Narayanamurti worked next, he was the only Indian staff member.

"I know what it means to be a loner," Narayanamurti says. "I just don't think of myself in those terms at all."

What is more impressive about his position at Harvard than his minority status, he says, is that he was hired from outside of the University system.

"Somehow I made it--it's not easy," he says.

Narayanamurti says Harvard's first problem is that it doesn't do enough to recruit minority and women faculty members.

"Maybe they have to be looking more and more on the outside," he says. "Harvard clearly should be able to find people no matter what. Certainly in the sciences and engineering you could find Asians--in other fields you can find women."

Narayanamurti says he works hard in his department to create a faculty that is diverse and that could lead to minority deanships from within.

"What we do want is an increasing number of women and minorities on the faculties," he says. "We are very conscious of looking at that."

He blames the low numbers on a lack of minority mentors already in place.

"You learn from your peers," he says. "You've got to build a pipeline at all levels."