What a thoughtful article Peter Gomes has written. He clearly knows how important this next appointment is for Harvard. His article outlines the options, if the Corporation makes the wrong appointment again, the future is too terrible to contemplate. He knows the stakes too well.

His point is clear. The Board of Oversears must resist the pressures of the Corporation to close this search now. Spend the time to get the right person. Look outside the University, for someone who can inspire and persuade, for someone who can repair the deeply damaged moral climate of the University.

In the meantime, bank on Bok, he is doing a good job, is able and --perhaps?--- is willing to stay on to allow Harvard to make the right choice. Gomes is clearly indicating that the three names now floating as candidates: Faust, Hyman and Kagan, are not what Harvard needs to save itself from the future too terrible to contemplate.
 

Aren't we being silly? A future " too terrible to contemplate" if one of these obviously competent, sincere or hardworking people is appointed? Harvard will be rich, influential, and an assembly-line of good work in science and humanities for at least another century even with an idiot in charge
 

It may be all those things with an idiot in charge, but why pick an idiot or even the competent, sincere and hard working alone? Why not strive for excellence---which is supposed to be the coin of the realm, is it not? If Harvard holds "best in the world" standards for its professors, however often they fall short, and best and brightest for its students,ditto, why should it set a lesser standard for the university's leadership. Are you KIDDING ME????
 

OK, I'm kidding - a little. "Excellence" should indeed be striven for. But a future "too terrible to contemplate" still seems silly, over-blown, rhetorical.
 

GRANTED.
 

Harvard will not be all these great things with an idiot, a mere competent or a ganster in place. Have you noticed the damage that just five years caused to the University? Have you noticed the performance of the endowment last year? Have you noticed that several of the leading candidates Harvard was considering for the Presidential post did not wait around to be asked but said they had not interest in Harvard? You call this greatness? It looks more like the signs of a number of leading Wall Street firms just before the last crash. Some of them were once rich and influential.
 

Gomes has issued a powerful warning. The Corporation may have boxed themselves into a situation where they will appoint a woman in whom there is precious little confidence based on past achievements,someone who has few convincing qualifications for the challenges Harvard faces right now. But does the Corporation have any alternatives left?
 

Rev. Gomes has the ability to breathe eloquence and luminosity into the most basic illustrations of hyperbole, yet retains the ability to grasp the essence of concern with clarity and candor. That being understood, Gomes, perhaps more so than anyone else on faculty, can express such concerns while not facing an appreciable threat of retribution. In short, he's untouchable.

Similarly, once might suggest the same of the FAS faculty. Larry Summers confronted them and lost, Neil Rudenstine capitualted to them and survived. The question then is this: Who amongst the current candidates is willing to work with them, is able to work with them, but is not intimidated by them?

For what it's worth, I believe the inevitiability of confrontation and conflict has influenced many legitimate outside candidates to say "thanks, but no thanks."
 

The audacity and severity of the letters written by Rev. Gomes should be fully appreciated.

Rev. Gomes knows he has the trust of the alumni. He is known as someone who cares about ethical and moral issues. He does not often speak publicly about Harvard. His choice to publish his statement on the Crimson now is in itself a statement of profound significance of the gravity he places on the crisis at Harvard.

The content of his statement is equally significant. In effect he is asking the Board of Overseers to rebel agains the Corporation. To break with a long tradition of playing a perfunctory role in Presidential appointments. Gomes seems to be saying to alumni: This crisis is too serious. Only you can stop the Corporation from making the mistake of appointing someone unsuited to solve it.

He is speaking clearly about the nature of the crisis. He talks about ethical and moral challenges, he is asking that the Corporation works harder finding the kind of person who will be able to understand how deep the problems are and who has the qualities to address it. He is saying explicitly that Steve Hyman, Elena Kagan and Drew Faust do not measure up to the task at hand.

What Gomes has done is simply extraordinary. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures and courage. It is time for Derek Bok to follo Gomes.
 

Peter Gomes would make an excellent President for a time when the greatest need is inspiration and attention to moral values...
 

This is a time in which all Harvard Fellows and Overseers would do well to review Gomes' writings.

In 'The Good Life' he writes of Derek Bok pondering on the lessons he had drawn from Watergate:

"The moral impact of the saga, with its cast of heroes, villains, and victims, also had a part to play in the nation's colleges and universities, which heretofore had been obsessed with their own parochial political intrigues. On Monday morningg, October 29, 1973, President Bok, in office since 1971, took the pulpit of the College chapel at a service of the daily Morning Prayers...

President Bok took as his text Exodus 23:2 'Thouh shalt not follow a multitude to do evil...' and through it asked the question of the day: 'When the occasion demands, can we summon the courage to stand alone and refuse to do what we know is wrong?"...

"Mr. Bokk went on to say "within the University communiity from whence he came, for the University must be sensitive to everyting that bears upon the moral education of its members."

It is no lesser good that is at stake now, that the moral education of Harvard's members. Gomes is asking the Fellows and Overseers, each one of them invididually, to summon the courage to stand alone and refuse to do what they know is wrong.
 

With eloquence and intelligence Gomes is offering a luminous path ahead for members of the Corporation: Ask Derek Bok to stay on until you complete the job. Take your time.

"The temptation will be great to hurry up and get this appointment settled. This is a temptation stoutly to be resisted: festine lente, or, as the ancients said, make haste slowly. We have the benefit of the elegant and able leadership of Derek Bok. Take good advantage of this time, don’t rush, and get it right. When all is said and done, we can only hope (and pray!) that the powers-that-be do their duty, and thereby the right thing. If they don’t, the future is too terrible to contemplate. If they do, our best years are ahead of us."
 

Gomes is speaking because he knows how much of the current crisis at Harvard is manifest in the many setbacks in race relations:

"No one knows more of failure in America than the African American. By this I do not mean to suggest that the African American is a failure or that success is unknown to the African American. What I do mean to say is that for no one more than the African American has the American hope or experrience failed in its ability to deliver on its promises...That white America still resists this, albeit less blatantly than in the days of the Ku Klux Klan, is a continuing paradox. The artful campaign against the notion of 'affirmative action' as an effective remedy to centuries of white benefit at black expense is realloy not a debate on a flawed policy: it is a fear, and it is a failure to recogninze the fundamental flaw that cries out for redress' (page 94 in The Good Life. written in the early years of the Summers Presidency).
 

In a remarkable twist in the saga that has become the Presidential Search at Harvard The members of the Harvard Corporation and the Members of the Board of Overseers, announced today, after a weekend of intense discussions, that they had decided to ask Derek C. Bok to serve as Harvard President for the next three years, and that they had asked him to appoint Peter J.Gomes as Harvard's next Provost.

Will the Globe surprise us with such a story next week?
 

Richard's book 'Harvard Rules' proves again to be prophetic. In the book Richard talks about the tensions and problems inherent in the Corporation having assumed the powers of the Overseers in matters such as Presidential appointments. The resolution of this crisis rests upon an intelligent resolution of that tension.
 

I agree Mr. Bradley Pomona President David Oxtoby would have been a bold option to consider...

"And so, what should the Fellows of Harvard College be looking for?
Archangels and saints being in short supply, perhaps they should look among the ranks of small, liberal arts college presidents, people perhaps a little short on high-level experience, but who have imagination,courage, and, above all else, the capacity to inspire and persuade."
 

In May 2004, three years into the Summers Presidency, Rev. Gomes invited James Earl Jones to give the annual Gomes Humanitarian Lecture at Memorial Church.

The topic? racism. Why was Rev. Gomes so much more concerned with Race Relations during the Presidency of Summers than during Bok's or Rudenstine's?

This is how the Gazette reports Jones' talk on that occasion:

James Earl Jones was a student at the University of Michigan when he first encountered racial prejudice aimed at him personally. A professor pointed out a misspelling in a paper Jones had written and said: "Why are you trying to be something you're not? You're just a dumb son of a bitch, and you don't belong at this university."

The experience, Jones said, "left me speechless and baffled." It wasn't so much that the professor thought that he was stupid or that he didn't belong at the University of Michigan. During moments of insecurity, Jones had wondered about these things himself. It was rather the professor's assumption that Jones was aspiring to a goal he could not possibly reach - for what could he possibly know of his student's talents or potential beyond what he had gleaned, or thought he had, from a superficial reading of his appearance?

The ignorance and cruelty inherent in qualitative judgments made on the basis of appearance alone was the theme of Jones' talk at the Memorial Church on Wednesday (April 28). The distinguished stage and screen actor, whose roles have included Othello, King Lear, Jack Johnson, Malcolm X, Paul Robeson, and the voices of Darth Vadar in "Star Wars" and Mufasa in "The Lion King," was at Harvard to deliver the annual Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Lecture and to receive the 2004 Harvard Foundation Humanitarian Award. His talk was titled "The Color of Delusion."
 

Is the implication of this blog that Faust, Hyman and Kagan could not care less about racism and the worsening state of race relations at Harvard?
 

Can you point to one person appointed by Larry Summers who DOES care about those issues?

Furthermore, many who did work hard on race relations were ostracized under Summers. Never mind Cornel W. For an example do you know what happened to Allen Counter and the Harvard Community Foundation?
 

It is not coincidental that at the height of the disillusionment with the Presidency of LHS, the Crimson published the following article in the June 8 Commencement issue of 2005:

As the Class of 1980 readied for graduation, the College released a 150-page report examining undergraduate race relations. Issued shortly before the Miami, Fla. race riots broke out, the report concluded that in spite of improvements, prejudices among students still existed.

Two years in the making, the report also encouraged the College to step up its efforts in recruiting minority faculty and students—a recommendation that came at a time when the Department of Afro-American Studies was widely identified as a trouble spot.

Today, Harvard’s campus continues to debate these issues of minority recruitment and race relations—in House dining halls, in classrooms, during official forums, and in University Hall.

MINORITY REPORT

The Spring 1977 cover of the Lampoon featured a drawing of a black person shining the shoes of the John Harvard statue, the Crimson reported in February 1977.

The Harvard-Radcliffe Black Students Association (BSA) called this and other caricatures “racially insensitive.”

On the heels of these complaints, then-Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III formed a 16-member committee of students, faculty members, and administrators.

The Committee on Race Relations aimed to determine how Harvard would shape students’ racial perceptions, examine the pattern of interaction among white and minority students, and issue recommendations to improve race relations at the College.

To guide their efforts, the committee led a series of focus groups and administered an exhaustive, 251-question survey that elicited responses from about 1,300 students, or roughly 22 percent of undergraduates.

“We were trying to make a real assessment of what race relations was like in Harvard in the late ’70s,” says committee member T. Jake Liang ’80. “The committee tried to assess how much progress we had made and what issues we still had to address.”

The report indicated that distorted perceptions—not separatism—were responsible for problems with race at Harvard.

It concluded that one out of every five students questioned the academic abilities of minorities, that many undergraduates doubted the College’s commitment to affirmative action, and that students perceived more students to be prejudiced than faculty or staff.

But committee member Eugene A. Matthews ’80 describes the racial problems of 1980 as the result of self-segregation rather than overt racial tensions.

“Every individual was different, but a lot of people in the Freshman Union would sit in the springtime with their own ethnic group,” Matthews recalls. “There was no tension on campus, nor was there any preventative collaboration between races. I’ve never heard of any racial problem or any physical violence based on that respect.”

Along with its findings, the Committee on Race Relations also issued 13 recommendations, suggesting that courses on race relations be incorporated into the Core Curriculum and that affirmative action admissions be increased.

But members of Third World organizations expressed skepticism that the report’s recommendations would be implemented, especially in light of Harvard’s consistent lack of support for institutional change.

“Third World,” a term that referred to minority students at the time, was a deliberate reference to the 1955 Bandung Conference, where 29 African and Asian nations joined together to promote unity and decolonization, Peter N. Kiang ’80, who was involved in the Third World Center Coalition during his time at Harvard, writes in an e-mail.

“We’ll just have to put pressure on the University to implement them,” former BSA President Eugene J. Green ’80 told the Crimson in 1980. “The University has not shown a willingness to address these problems for years.”

ATTRACTING MINORITY FACULTY

Just as today’s African and African-American Studies department struggles to retain its star professors—many of whom have left Harvard over the last several years—the department faced similar problems back in 1980.

To address this issue, the report proposed that the College intensify its efforts to hire minority staff and faculty.

In an attempt to bolster the Afro-American studies department, then-Dean of the Faculty Henry A. Rosovsky formed an Afro-Am Studies executive committee that sought to strengthen the department in the fall of 1979.

But as the Class of 1980 approached graduation, “all but two chairs remain vacant in 77 Dunster St., the Afro-Am Department building,” The Crimson wrote in its June 5 issue.

In 1980, only Nathan I. Huggins—one of three historians offered tenure to the Af Am department—signed a contract.

The BSA, dissatisfied with the disproportionately low number of black faculty candidates, pushed for a multi-disciplinary committee to increase the number of minority appointments in the faculty.

Partly in response to the BSA, Rosovsky announced plans to investigate potential reasons for the shortage of minority faculty on campus.

MINORITY STUDENT CONCERNS

Coupled with concerns about minority faculty recruitment, undergraduates also questioned the role of minority students on campus.

Responding to pressure from members of Third World organizations, who sought a center that would cater specifically to their needs, then-University President Derek C. Bok formed a committee to investigate this idea.

“We were demanding that if Harvard is going to recruit a diverse student body, it has to feel good for students to be there,” Kiang explains. “That means we have to feel like ourselves, comfortable, strong, like we’re not there for the benefit of others.”

A year later, the committee proposed the creation of the Harvard Foundation for Cultural and Race Relations, an organization that strives to promote cultural awareness.

But some members of the Third World organizations said at the time that the foundation, which still exists, failed to address their initial goals.

“The mission of the foundation was to...have students of color be representative and be ambassadors of their cultural groups,” Kiang explains. “In that framework, students of color were expected to help white students become more aware and sensitive. That’s a fine goal, but that’s not the goal we were demanding that Harvard address.”

Kiang attributes the necessity of such an “infrastructure of support” to the “tokenized” role of minorities on campus.

“Students of color were either completely neglected or marginalized,” he says.

He points to instances of discrimination and insensitivity among student groups like The Crimson and the Hasty Pudding. The Crimson, Kiang says, published a story about a prison riot in New Mexico. The accompanying photo that ran was of African-American students at Harvard with bars superimposed to represent prisoners.

And the Hasty Pudding’s theatrical production featured a racist caricature of a Chinese person, Kiang says.

“These were the mainstream instances,” Kiang says. “It was obvious at that time anyway that the realities of people of color and the presence of people of color on campus made no difference. It was amazing that stuff like that could happen.”

LINGERING QUESTIONS

Matthews recalls filling out his freshmen rooming questionnaire, which at the time asked that students indicate whether or not they would mind living with someone of a different race.

While rooming forms today ask instead about music and tidiness preferences, both alums and current students continue to assess how far Harvard has come in terms of addressing minority issues.

Adela M. Cepeda ’80, a former member of the Committee on Race Relations, contends that race relations have seen significant improvement.

“I think race was more of an issue because there was more class differentiations than, I would say, today,” she says. “For example, my daughter is at Harvard today. She can kind of fit in anywhere there. So the fact that she’s black or Hispanic or anything doesn’t make as much of a difference.”

Looking back on her own experiences, Cepeda says the administration has always been willing to invest its academic and administrative resources, even helping her jump-start a forum on Latino politics at the Institute of Politics while she was an undergraduate.

But Kiang paints a different picture of the College, which he says still has neither made enough of an effort to incorporate cultural awareness into its curriculum nor funneled its resources in that direction.

“About a dozen of us, upon graduation, we made a pledge to not donate as alumni to Harvard, at least the College, until we felt that issues, especially in the curriculum, had been addressed in substantial ways,” Kiang says. “I have every year have had to say that to the people calling me asking for donations, because I still don’t feel that, especially in terms of the Asian American studies, there’s anything after all those years.”

And Kiang, as Director of Asian American Studies at University of Massachusetts at Boston, says he regularly fields requests from Harvard students soliciting resources for Asian-American studies.

“Harvard students call me asking for resources for Asian American studies, and it’s just so ironic,” he adds.
 

The lore at Harvard is that Larry's strategy to deal with race relations issues was to empower Uncle Tom's and Aunt Jemima's and to kick the butts of black intellectuals who displayed any interest on the subject.

This is what Rev. Gomes knows well...
 

anon 8.33 above reminds us of the lessons many drew from Watergate. Is there an analogy between the impact of the Nixon blunders on the nation and the impact of Summers' blunders on Harvard? Was there a Summersgate?
 

The difference between Watergate and the Summers fiasco is that Watergate resulted in a legal and public process of examination and admission of responsibility. While the abuses of power perpetrated by Nixon were a severe blow to the nation, Watergate in the end strengthened the credibility of the system of checks and balances, reinforced the credibility in the judicial process and led many, like Derek Bok, to learn many lessons from it and from the critical role played by A. Cox. It is clear that the country and its institutions were able to turn this tragic abuse of the powers of the Presidency into an opportunity to strengthen the institutions of democracy.

The Summers Presidency, in contrast, and its many misuses of power, have not yet led to any open admission of mistakes or responsibility. There has not been open examination of what happened and why. As a result the serious damage to the credibility of Harvard's values and culture lingers, there has been no healing and no learning from the experience. It is not yet evident that Harvard as an institution will come out of the blow inflicted by this failed presidency any stronger. This is why so much is at stake about the next Presidential appointment. What the institution needs is someone who can turn the ongoing malaise and corruption of Harvard values around, learn from the mistakes of the recent past, find a way to reach closure on the issues, and move on. This is the kind of work that someone like Bok could understand and do. But it is work that will take time. Gomes is, in subtle ways, indicating that it is this kind of moral healing that is crucial and that so depends on the courage of the Fellows and the Overseers. May God help them understand the immense consequences of their actions.
 

Do you realize that in most faculties where LHS appointed a Dean race relations deteriorated?
 

Barack Obama, Blacks and Harvard Law

By Keith Boykin, in politics
Friday, January 26 2007,


The big political story of the past few days is Barack Obama's relations with black America. On Thursday, the Washington Post published a new poll that showed Hillary Clinton does significantly better with black voters than Obama does. Black Democrats in the poll chose Clinton by a 3-1 margin, 60 percent to 20 percent. That apparently has sped up a flurry of media interest about Obama's relationships with blacks.

In the past few days, both the New York Times and the Boston Globe have contacted me to find out what Barack Obama was like when we were in law school together. Here's the official story.

I attended Harvard Law School for 2 years with Barack. He graduated in 1991. I graduated in 1992. We were not close friends, but we were both well known on campus for entirely different reasons. Barack was something of a celebrity on campus even in law school. That's because he was the first black student elected as president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. I, on the other hand, was a campus activist, deeply involved in the movement for faculty diversity.

Harvard Divided by Diversity
The scene at Harvard in the early 1990s was tense and confrontational. Faculty members were divided about appointments and openly warring with one another in the pages of the New York Times and other major newspapers. One of Harvard's first black professors, Derrick Bell, had just taken a leave of absence to protest the school's failure to hire a woman of color on the faculty. At the time, there were very few women or minorities on the faculty, despite the fact that the student population was much more diverse.

Along with a few of my classmates, we launched an organization called the Coalition for Civil Rights, which was designed to get Harvard to hire more women and minority professors. Harvard claimed that they could not find qualified women and minority candidates to teach there. That's because they defined the "qualifications" in a way that excluded the work of so many talented lawyers and teachers. In order to be qualified to teach at Harvard, you had to have served on a major law review at a prestigious law school. That was a big hurdle to jump, but when Barack was selected as president of the Harvard Law Review, his election alone made our case for faculty diversity.

Although the Washington Post story raises questions about Barack's connection to the black community, I never got the sense that Barack was disconnected from the black community at Harvard Law School. In fact, almost every time I've seen him since law school, it's been because of the black law school connection. A few years back, Barack and I did a joint book event at Harvard put on by a black professor. And the last time I saw Barack was at the Harvard Law School Black Alumni event last fall.

Barack Supported Goal, Not Involved in Tactics
As I recall, Barack was always supportive and sympathetic to our campaign for faculty diversity. He spoke about it at one of our rallies. But he was not actively involved in the protest movement. Nor did he need to be. As I said, his presence alone made the case. And even if he agreed with the cause of the movement, he didn't need to be involved in the more radical protests we launched because our tactics were controversial on campus.

In my first year at the law school, I became instantly well known when I literally chased the dean of the law school across the campus. Dean Robert Clark was leaving a faculty meeting and completely ignored a student vigil being held outside. When I asked him to talk to us, he ignored me and kept moving. I picked up my backpack and my protest sign and started following him. When he saw me, he literally started sprinting across the campus to get away from me. So I started running after him to catch up. A photographer from the Boston Globe snapped a picture of us that appeared in the paper the next day. That's how I became known on campus.

After the vigil, we escalated our protest tactics. We took over the dean's office twice and held sit-ins until the dean would talk to us. We tried to take over the president's office once, but were stopped at the door after the office had been tipped off that we were coming. And when all else failed, we did the one thing we thought Harvard Law School would understand -- we took them to court. Eleven students filed an unprecedented lawsuit against Harvard for discrimination in the selection of the faculty. We argued the case ourselves, all the way up to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

As I said, those were controversial tactics, and most students on campus were not involved in them. Even the students who supported us didn't always support the methods we chose.

Politics and Harvard Law School
Like many of my classmates, I entered Harvard Law School thinking I might be interested in a political career one day. But not every one interested in politics chose the same path to politics. Barack, of course, chose the path of academic distinction on the law review. My classmates, Anthony Brown, elected in November as the second black Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, and Juan Garcia, elected in November to the State House of Representatives in Texas, took a different path. They were both former military men who seemed ready to continue their careers in the service after law school.

Meanwhile, my colleagues in the protest movement, were juggling classes, extracurriculars and protesting. Linda Singer, appointed in November as the attorney general of Washington, DC, was one of the three key leaders in the movement, along with myself and John Bonifaz, a MacArthur genius grant recipient who ran for Secretary of State of Massachusetts last year. No one would have guessed that we would all take such different paths and all end up in politics.

After graduating in June 1992, I turned down a job working for a big law firm in California so I could work on the Clinton campaign in Arkansas. When Clinton won (my first successful campaign after 10 years of trying), I found myself unexpectedly with a job in the White House. I left that job after a few years to write my first book, and there I ran into Barack Obama again at a joint book signing event put on by Professor Charles Ogletree at Harvard Law School. Barack was there to promote his new book, Dreams From My Father, and I was there to promote my book, One More River to Cross.

I never imagined at the time that he would soon become a sitting U.S. senator running a serious campaign for president. I never imagined that he might be America's first black president. But now when I look back, perhaps I should have seen it. I didn't know Barack as well as others, but he always seemed focused and capable. Of all the people I met in law school, it's not surprising that he would be the one to do it first
 

After Latino Layoffs, Forum Eyes Racism

Students, University employees, and union representatives met last night for a community forum that aimed “to address racism in the Harvard workplace.” The Harvard Coalition for Respect and Equality for Workers, the Student Labor Action Movement, Fuerza Latina, and the Latino Men’s Collective gathered in Emerson Hall for the event.

The Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology rescinded its layoffs of four Latino workers late last month after the workers charged that they were fired from their animal cage-cleaning jobs on account of their ethnicity.

Although Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesman Robert Mitchell, in a brief phone interview yesterday, said he had no new information on the inquiry into the animal cage-cleaning workers’ allegations, forum organizers say their concerns aren’t allayed.

Those four workers, accompanied by six other Latino employees, took the stage to describe what they say are specific instances of racism experienced on the job. They said that Spanish had been banned in the workplace and that a coworker had sprayed their food with Fantastik cleaner.

As the workers left the stage, the crowd broke out into chants of “Si se puede,” Spanish for “we can do it.”

Speakers at the forum—including Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics John Womack Jr., two union representatives, and the workers—sought to turn the audience’s attention toward “institutional racism,” rather than just focusing on individual layoffs.

“Harvard is a great big company,” Womack said. “The only thing [workers] can trust is their own power of all kinds.”

The student moderator, Jose G. Olivarez ’10, said the forum was not just a show of support for the “workers at the Bio labs who were facing layoffs,” but also a show of support “for all the workers and all the students who have ever faced discrimination.”

“Solidarity is the key and that’s the only way we’re going to win,” said Phebe C. Eckfeldt, a representative from Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers. “We need to continue to fight for the victory of the [animal care] workers because it will be victory for all of us.”

Audience members were encouraged to sign a petition before leaving, which had amassed 272 signatures at the end of the night.
 

Black Admissions Are Lagging at the Nation's Leading Business Schools. Why does HBS conceal the number of blacks?

The nation's leading business schools are faltering in increasing the number of black students and black faculty.
Among professional schools in the United States, the law and medical schools were the first to open their doors to African Americans. In recent years these graduate legal and medical programs continue to be active in recruiting and enrolling black students.

But business schools in America have been major laggards. There are many explanations. One has to do with the history of racism in the United States. Due to Jim Crow, there was always a pressing need to educate black lawyers and black physicians because white practitioners did not want to deal with black clients or black patients. But for much of the history of our country there was no similar need for black business executives. Subtle racism prevailed. The business and banking establishments tended to view black people as unreliable, unintelligent, or incompetent either to manage money or function as managers of a business enterprise.

Accordingly, separate law schools and medical schools were established for blacks in the nineteenth century, but there were no similar institutions at that time to train blacks in the field of business. A 1960 study of business school students conducted by Sterling Schoen, a white professor at the business school at Washington University in St. Louis, found at the time there was a total of about 12,000 students enrolled in MBA programs nationwide. Of these 12,000 MBA students, fewer than 50 were black. In other words, in the early 1960s blacks were 0.4 percent of the nation's students seeking MBAs.



Also, over the years business school deans and faculty tended to have little interest in racial and social issues. They were much less inclined than the law and medical school deans to introduce racial diversity into their schools.

An example would be Dean Kim B. Clark who served as head of Harvard Business School in the 10 years from 1995 to 2005. Clark, a Mormon, often publicly stated his objectives for rebuilding the reputation of Harvard Business School. But he never spoke to the issue of racial diversity. Societal concerns did not appear to rank highly in his goals.

Today greater diversity has occurred in the nation's MBA programs. Yet the black percentage of students enrolling at the nation's leading business schools still comes in far below the black percentage of enrollments at the nation's leading law and medical schools. This appears in part to be a reflection of the continuing perception of limited opportunities for blacks in high-level corporate management. Despite some remarkable breakthroughs in recent years such as Richard Parsons at Time Warner, Stanley O'Neal at Merrill Lynch, and Kenneth Chenault at American Express, African Americans still hold only a minuscule percentage of high-ranking corporate executive positions.

Many high-achieving black college students see careers in law and medicine as paths they can take to achieve success and to “make a difference” in our society. But these same students see a far more difficult road ahead in trying to crack the “old-boy” network that still rules much of the banking, venture capital, and business culture of corporate America.

The Status of Blacks at Leading Business Schools
JBHE recently completed a survey of black first-year enrollments at the nation's 28 leading business schools. We received replies from 24 of the 28 schools. One school notable for its decision to decline to participate in our survey is Harvard Business School.

The top-ranked Harvard Business School is a power center of American capitalism. An MBA from Harvard is perceived as a first-class ticket to the highest echelons of corporate America. Because of the high prestige of Harvard Business School, the progress of African Americans into and within the institution tends also to be an important measure of the progress of blacks in the world of business and finance. If other business educators at peer business institutions see that Harvard is striving to create a more racially diverse faculty and increase educational opportunities for black students, they are likely to adopt similar objectives. If, on the other hand, Harvard Business School pays scant attention to the task of integrating its faculty and student body, other business schools with poor records in hiring black faculty or recruiting black students will simply shrug off the issue and point to Harvard. Their defense will be, “Don't criticize our record. Look at the record of Harvard.” The fact that Harvard, unlike the vast majority of its peers, is unwilling to disclose the number of blacks students who are enrolled is, we suggest, a strong indicator that the business school has little commitment to racial diversity.

For the 24 business schools that did respond to our survey, we found a total of 291 African-American first-year students enrolled in the MBA programs at these 24 high-ranking schools. The 291 black students entering business school last fall made up 4.4 percent of all entering students at these schools.

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania had the most black first-year students with 41. Columbia, the University of Michigan, and Stanford were the only other leading business schools that enrolled more than 20 first-year black students.

Measured by the black percentage of the student body, Wharton again leads the pack. More than 10 percent of entering students at Wharton in 2005 were black. Blacks were at least 6 percent of their entering class at six other top business schools. These six business schools were at the University of Michigan, Ohio State University, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Emory University, and Yale University.

There was only one first-year black student at the business schools at the University of Minnesota and the University of Washington. Overall, there were seven leading business schools where blacks made up less than 2 percent of all first-year students.

At the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley there were only two blacks among the 491 entering students in 2005. They made up only 0.4 percent of the first-year class. At the University of California at Los Angeles there were only six black students among the 330-member entering class. Clearly, the low level of black enrollments at these two business schools is due in large part to the ban on race-sensitive admissions in California imposed by the enactment of Proposition 209.

Do the Nation's Top Business Schools Practice Race-Sensitive Admissions?

JBHE asked the nation's leading business schools to supply information on the acceptance rate for all students and for black students only. A higher acceptance rate for black students compared to the overall student acceptance rate can be an indication, although not conclusive evidence, that a business school is practicing affirmative action in its admissions policies.

In JBHE's annual surveys of black freshmen at leading undergraduate colleges and universities we often find that the black student acceptance rate is considerably higher than the acceptance rate for all students. But at most of the nation's business schools there appears to be no preference for black applicants. Twelve of the nation's leading business schools provided JBHE with acceptance rates for black students and for the entire applicant pool. Only at Cornell University and Purdue University was the black student acceptance rate significantly higher than the rate for all students. Cornell accepted 53.7 percent of black applicants but only 34.4 percent of all applicants. At Purdue, the black student acceptance rate was 63.2 percent. Purdue accepted 49 percent of all applicants.

At the other 10 business schools that supplied data, there was either little difference in acceptance rates or the black acceptance rate was significantly below the rate for all students. At the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley only three of the 25 black applicants were accepted for admission, a rate of 12 percent. Overall, 28 percent of all applicants to Haas were accepted. The publicly operated business school is prohibited by state law from considering race in its admissions decisions.

At the University of Southern California, a private institution, the black acceptance rate was also 12 percent. The overall acceptance rate was 38 percent. Similar acceptance rates were found at Emory University, a private and well-regarded business school in Atlanta. At Ohio State University, the black acceptance rate was nearly 20 percentage points lower than the rate for all students.

Black Faculty at the Nation's Leading Business Schools

Our 2006 survey of the nation's leading business schools has identified 62 black professors at the 22 business schools that supplied data to the JBHE research department. These 62 black faculty members make up 2.5 percent of the total of 2,506 faculty members at these schools. In two previous JBHE surveys in 1999 and 2003, we found that blacks made up 2.7 percent of all faculty at the top business schools. Therefore, in the past several years there has been no progress in increasing the percentage of black faculty at the nation's leading business schools. In fact there has been a slight reduction in the percentage of black faculty at these schools.

There are seven black faculty members at the business school at the University of Texas, the most of any of the business schools responding to our survey. There are six black faculty members at the business schools at both the University of Michigan and the University of Southern California. There are three black faculty members at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In our previous survey there were no blacks on the business school faculty at MIT.

In 2006 there are no black faculty members at the business schools at the University of Rochester or the University of California at Berkeley. There is only one black faculty member each at the business schools at Purdue, Chapel Hill, Cornell, and the University of Minnesota.

Georgetown University has the highest percentage of black faculty among the leading business schools. There the figure was 6.6 percent. At Dartmouth, the University of Texas, and the University of Michigan blacks make up at least 4 percent of the total faculty. At all of the other leading business schools, the black percentage of the faculty is below 4 percent.

Fourteen of the 22 highest-ranked business schools in our survey have a black percentage of their total faculty that stands at 3 percent or less. At nine leading business schools blacks make up less than 2 percent of the total faculty. At New York University only two of the 220 faculty members are black. NYU is one of four leading business schools where blacks are less than one percent of the faculty.
JBHE recently completed a survey of black first-year enrollments at the nation's 28 leading business schools. We received replies from 24 of the 28 schools. One school notable for its decision to decline to participate in our survey is Harvard Business School.

The top-ranked Harvard Business School is a power center of American capitalism. An MBA from Harvard is perceived as a first-class ticket to the highest echelons of corporate America. Because of the high prestige of Harvard Business School, the progress of African Americans into and within the institution tends also to be an important measure of the progress of blacks in the world of business and finance. If other business educators at peer business institutions see that Harvard is striving to create a more racially diverse faculty and increase educational opportunities for black students, they are likely to adopt similar objectives. If, on the other hand, Harvard Business School pays scant attention to the task of integrating its faculty and student body, other business schools with poor records in hiring black faculty or recruiting black students will simply shrug off the issue and point to Harvard. Their defense will be, “Don't criticize our record. Look at the record of Harvard.” The fact that Harvard, unlike the vast majority of its peers, is unwilling to disclose the number of blacks students who are enrolled is, we suggest, a strong indicator that the business school has little commitment to racial diversity.

For the 24 business schools that did respond to our survey, we found a total of 291 African-American first-year students enrolled in the MBA programs at these 24 high-ranking schools. The 291 black students entering business school last fall made up 4.4 percent of all entering students at these schools.

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania had the most black first-year students with 41. Columbia, the University of Michigan, and Stanford were the only other leading business schools that enrolled more than 20 first-year black students.

Measured by the black percentage of the student body, Wharton again leads the pack. More than 10 percent of entering students at Wharton in 2005 were black. Blacks were at least 6 percent of their entering class at six other top business schools. These six business schools were at the University of Michigan, Ohio State University, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Emory University, and Yale University.

There was only one first-year black student at the business schools at the University of Minnesota and the University of Washington. Overall, there were seven leading business schools where blacks made up less than 2 percent of all first-year students.

At the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley there were only two blacks among the 491 entering students in 2005. They made up only 0.4 percent of the first-year class. At the University of California at Los Angeles there were only six black students among the 330-member entering class. Clearly, the low level of black enrollments at these two business schools is due in large part to the ban on race-sensitive admissions in California imposed by the enactment of Proposition 209.

Do the Nation's Top Business Schools Practice Race-Sensitive Admissions?

JBHE asked the nation's leading business schools to supply information on the acceptance rate for all students and for black students only. A higher acceptance rate for black students compared to the overall student acceptance rate can be an indication, although not conclusive evidence, that a business school is practicing affirmative action in its admissions policies.

In JBHE's annual surveys of black freshmen at leading undergraduate colleges and universities we often find that the black student acceptance rate is considerably higher than the acceptance rate for all students. But at most of the nation's business schools there appears to be no preference for black applicants. Twelve of the nation's leading business schools provided JBHE with acceptance rates for black students and for the entire applicant pool. Only at Cornell University and Purdue University was the black student acceptance rate significantly higher than the rate for all students. Cornell accepted 53.7 percent of black applicants but only 34.4 percent of all applicants. At Purdue, the black student acceptance rate was 63.2 percent. Purdue accepted 49 percent of all applicants.

At the other 10 business schools that supplied data, there was either little difference in acceptance rates or the black acceptance rate was significantly below the rate for all students. At the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley only three of the 25 black applicants were accepted for admission, a rate of 12 percent. Overall, 28 percent of all applicants to Haas were accepted. The publicly operated business school is prohibited by state law from considering race in its admissions decisions.

At the University of Southern California, a private institution, the black acceptance rate was also 12 percent. The overall acceptance rate was 38 percent. Similar acceptance rates were found at Emory University, a private and well-regarded business school in Atlanta. At Ohio State University, the black acceptance rate was nearly 20 percentage points lower than the rate for all students.

Black Faculty at the Nation's Leading Business Schools

Our 2006 survey of the nation's leading business schools has identified 62 black professors at the 22 business schools that supplied data to the JBHE research department. These 62 black faculty members make up 2.5 percent of the total of 2,506 faculty members at these schools. In two previous JBHE surveys in 1999 and 2003, we found that blacks made up 2.7 percent of all faculty at the top business schools. Therefore, in the past several years there has been no progress in increasing the percentage of black faculty at the nation's leading business schools. In fact there has been a slight reduction in the percentage of black faculty at these schools.

There are seven black faculty members at the business school at the University of Texas, the most of any of the business schools responding to our survey. There are six black faculty members at the business schools at both the University of Michigan and the University of Southern California. There are three black faculty members at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In our previous survey there were no blacks on the business school faculty at MIT.

In 2006 there are no black faculty members at the business schools at the University of Rochester or the University of California at Berkeley. There is only one black faculty member each at the business schools at Purdue, Chapel Hill, Cornell, and the University of Minnesota.

Georgetown University has the highest percentage of black faculty among the leading business schools. There the figure was 6.6 percent. At Dartmouth, the University of Texas, and the University of Michigan blacks make up at least 4 percent of the total faculty. At all of the other leading business schools, the black percentage of the faculty is below 4 percent.

Fourteen of the 22 highest-ranked business schools in our survey have a black percentage of their total faculty that stands at 3 percent or less. At nine leading business schools blacks make up less than 2 percent of the total faculty. At New York University only two of the 220 faculty members are black. NYU is one of four leading business schools where blacks are less than one percent of the faculty.