Symbolism: It's a Good Place to Start
With help from a $100,000 grant from Larry Summers, the Harvard Foundation Minority Portraiture Project has unveiled paintings of "six minority honorees, including two women,"
as the Crimson puts it.
This is a small but symbolically important move. Harvard's campus really is filled with pictures of old white men—the faculty room has something like 40 of them, and about three pictures of women.
Given Harvard's history, that's inevitable. But it does send a signal, and it certainly doesn't reflect the composition of the university today—not, at least, the student body.
Summers made the right decision to fund the project. Now if he'd only hire some minorities to work for him.
