Summers Says 'Perhaps'

University President Lawrence H. Summers has responded to growing student demand for both Latino and ethnic studies departments with what appears to be clear ideological opposition. According to Maribel Hernandez ’04, president of RAZA, Summers dismissed the prospective departments as no more than programs that could promote individuals studying their own ethnicity. When Latino studies advocates pointed out to Summers that the department they were demanding is no different from the Afro-American studies department in that respect, Summers allegedly referred to that department as an outermost case that perhaps warranted a separate department.

Perhaps? The Afro-American studies department has been rated the best in the country and is one of the shining jewels in Harvard’s academic crown. The “dream team” of Af-Am professors added both to Harvard’s prestige and to its ability to attract the best and brightest to work and study here. Yet even before the recent controversies surrounding Summers’s dispute with Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74, there was concern about his commitment to diversity from among several senior faculty members, according to one who said in the fall that she feared that Summers wanted to “get rid of Afro-Am.”

That concern has become only more prominent since last December when Summers began to spar with West, allegedly about the quality of West’s scholarship and the role of race in college admissions. After that tiff, it seemed that Summers tried to mend some fences—until West blasted Summers as being the cause of his departure. As West made clear in his statements to the press, his decision was made largely based upon Summers’ failure to take any real measures to keep him. Soon, even DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr. may follow suit and the “dream team” that took years to assemble will have been cast aside after a single year of Summers’ presidency.

As a result, it is clear that Summers needs to do more than tolerate the existence of the Afro-American studies department if he is serious about his commitment to diversity. If he wants to show the Harvard community that he was not just crying crocodile tears at West’s departure, he must take positive steps toward expanding the university’s commitment to the academic study of race and ethnicity. Strengthening the existing African-American studies department and women’s studies committee, establishing departments in Latino, ethnic and queer studies and appointing someone with a demonstrated commitment to diversity to be the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences would be a good start. But making Harvard a truly diverse place, from bottom to top, would require a great deal more.

Summers can learn from the experience of Jews at Harvard. For centuries, Jews had no place as students, faculty, administrators or members of the Corporation. Harvard only ended its discrimination against Jews within the past century and already there is a very large number of Jewish professors and students, Jewish studies classes, a Hillel building that allows for Jewish communal activities and even a Jewish president. It is time that Harvard give the same rights to other groups that have suffered discimination—including women, Latinos, African-Americans, Asians, and members of the bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgender community—by granting them the same institutional recognition. People from all of these groups surely deserve to have space on campus for cultural activities, a diverse faculty that reflects their backgrounds and their cultures recognized as worthy of academic study.

Whether Summers listens to these students and helps others follow in the path that was opened for him is still open for question. The answer, though, is clearly “perhaps.”