Those who set out to align Harvard's hierarchy along the lines of the national racial power structure are atoning for their sins...
 

This appointment should not obscure the fact that in recent years the racial composition of Harvard faculty has changed significantly in ways opposite to the demographic changes of the nation. Furthermore, Evelyn H. has data on the perceptions of minority faculty members at Harvard on how receptive Harvard is to them.

There is an important and growing challenge here that is not resolved bringing the Bobo's back to Cambridge.
 

Why would Harvard want to bring someone back who left a mere two years ago? Doesn't this say something about the content of his character ?
 

You have the facts very wrong, Richard: Marcy Morgan has a significant and well-respected new book, making the case very different from last time. Tenure cases can be and have been revisited.

The idea that Derek Bok would do this for other than principled reasons, other than believing her qualified for tenure, is nonsensical. He could easily have called it either way and always follows what he sees as the evidence.
 

Tell me about the book....I don't see anything about it.
 

If he gave her tenure, then Derek Bok believes she's qualified. It's as simple as that. His criteria for determining qualifcation may or may not be the same as those of others. But he wouldn't solve a problem by tenuring someone who wasn't qualified from his perspective-- that's not his way.
 

The Chronicle of Higher Education had an article in mid January reporting that harvard was interested in hiring Morgan and Bobo back. It mentions that her book, The Real Hiphop: Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the Underground, is about to be published.

So presumably the tenure committee has seen the full manuscript and there is a book contract, if it's not already in press. Is it out? (I assume that in calling it "well respected," either it is already out, or the previous commenter must be alluding to the book's readers reports, presumably seen by the committee, or to portions already published?)

(So the timing with the incident at the Quad is a coincidence.)

From the Chronicle (1/19/2007)
Harvard's Department of African and African-American Studies Reaches Out to Former Professors
By ROBIN WILSON and PIPER FOGG

REBOUND? With Lawrence H. Summers out of the picture, Harvard University's department of African and African-American studies is trying to lure back some professors who left during the former president's stormy tenure.

The department was rebuffed in November, when it asked Cornel West if he wanted to return. Mr. West moved to Princeton University in 2002 after a highly publicized dispute with Mr. Summers over the legitimacy of the professor's scholarship. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, chair of Harvard's department, says Mr. West told her that it "wasn't the time" to leave Princeton, since the university had just announced an expansion of its Center for African American Studies.

Harvard hopes to have better luck with Lawrence D. Bobo and Marcyliena Morgan, a couple who moved to Stanford University a year ago after Mr. Summers rejected a unanimous recommendation from the department to grant Ms. Morgan tenure.

Mr. Bobo, who is a professor of sociology at Stanford and directs its Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, had tenure when he left Harvard. Ms. Morgan, an expert on hip-hop music who was granted tenure by Stanford when it hired her, is an associate professor of communications there. Neither responded to requests for comment.

Ms. Higginbotham says Harvard's department always expected to ask the university to reconsider rehiring the couple. "They've always been in touch with us," she said. "They didn't want to leave in the first place." The time is right to consider rehiring Ms. Morgan, says Ms. Higginbotham, because she is about to publish her second book, The Real Hiphop: Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the Underground.

Former Bulldog
 

Okay, a second book is forthcoming. "Significant and well-respected" seems a bit of premature puffery for an unpublished manuscript.
 

"They see me rollin'
They hatin'
Patrollin'
And tryin. to catch me ridin. dirty."

Only a hip-hop artist can sing about smoking weed in his car on one track and then complain about getting pulled over in the next one.

Hopefully this new book will explain the whole east coast-west coast feud to me. Or maybe why someone like R. Kelly manages to avoid any fan backlash.
 

Richard, of course one cannot fully tell the impact of a book until after publication and reviews, but academic departments and review committees typically see manuscripts before publication along with blind reader reports and extra reviews they may commission. Nothing special in this case -- it is a common practice at Harvard and all other universities. At Harvard there is an extra layer of expert review of the manuscript in the ad hoc committee drawn from outside the university and the nominating department. Many experts will be independently involved in toto, enough to get a rigorous evaluation. I have no inside knowledge, but Bok must have been convinced the book is respected and important.
 

Hey Anon 9.40, if Evelynn Hammonds has the data of that survey, why not:

1. Ask Dr. S. Allen Counter to convene a conference on race and race relations at Harvard, and

2. Make these data available, and other pertinent data, to interested researchers so they can prepare papers for discussion at the conference based on the evidence.

Isn't this what a research university should be modelling for students? respect for evidence and evidenced based discussions as a way to get reasonable people to share the facts, and perhaps an understanding about the implication of the facts.
 

Certainly teaching students to look at the evidence before they run to slander a Professor who voices unpopular views would be useful.

The libel published by the Crimson a few days ago is a worrisome sign Harvard too has suffered from the Assault on Reason so well discussed by Al Gore in his latest book.

See this article:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=518965
 

If there was any bases to the allegations made by Dr. Counter about Harvard being a racist institution, why have his colleagues not come out to support this statement? Why did they in effect leave him out to fry?
 

What Dr. Counter did is very courageous. Those who left him alone know all to well what happens to minorities who speak up, they get quickly labelled as 'angry' or 'too emotional' or as 'they have issues'. These are the modern forms of disqualification of those who threaten to denounce the structures of oppression of the establishment. Those who speak up are pushed out, pushed around, thrown out or just ostracized.

Ask Cornell West if you want to know more about what it's like at Harvard and why he didn't come back.

So the fact that Dr. Counter is alone in his speaking truth to power proves him right, not wrong... and you can bet he will pay a price for what he's done, just wait.
 

Change takes time. It is a lot easier today for scholars such as Dr. Counter to speak up about racism than it was for his professors when he was a student. This proves that much has changed. In time it will be even easier to talk about these issues without fear of retribution.
 

Of course racism used to be much worse at Harvard, and until not too long ago. This is why change is difficult. Alumni who went to school in the 1950s and 1960s --and who are a powerful constituency with Deans and with the President-- just can't understand all these minorities on the faculty.

Ask Charles Ogletree what kind of reception his theses of reparations have with HLS alumni, and ask Elena Kagan about the many alumni who have written to her indicating that they will no longer fund the school because they cannot comprehend why Professors like 'Tree' are on the faculty at Harvard.

That the environment is so very conservative and hostile explains that faculty of color need to be very cautious in picking up fights. This is not a sign of fear or of wanting to leave Counter alone. It is a strategic decision to ensure that, if things go very wrong for some of them, at least some people of color will remain on the faculty at Harvard.

It has been hell the last few years...
 

The politically correct thing to do today at Harvard is to denounce the political correctedness of those who denounce racism.
 

Anon 9.02, what a great idea to have a University-wide conference to examine evidence about race relations at Harvard.

What's the racial composition of Deans and administrators in the school? what's the make up of professors at various stages of the ladder? what's the racial make up of students? How has it changed over the last 5 years, over the last 10, 20?

Sounds like it should not be too hard to examine the facts on this issue... who knows maybe the Crimson is right and Counter is just imagining things when he talks about racism...
 

You need more than these figures to understand the racism that Counter talks about.

Departments with a preponderance of racist faculty can escape detection by hiring minority junior and visiting faculty, and getting them through a rotating door that will lead them out in a few years.

Such an environment where racist attitudes prevail is harmful to minorities in ways that escape simple detection.

These racist environments are toxic for minorities as daily micro-aggressions pose a threat to self-image of junior minority faculty who quickly learn they are expected to fail.

Group stereotypes (racism) pose an extra self-evaluative and belongingness threat particularly to African Americans and Latinos and have been shown to influence intellectual performance and academic identities.

If Harvard is truly interested in establishing the veracity of Dr. Counter's allegations, it should study whether there is a rotating door for minority faculty and ask those who have been pushed out, as well as the minority scholars who remain at all levels of the ladder in each department and school, about their daily experiences with regards to race relations and whether they were affirming or debilitating.

As Harvard has chosen NOT to conduct this kind of internal research and talk about it, Dr. Counter stands as a single courageous member of the faculty who is denouncing racism on the basis of personal knowledge which cannot be challenged.
 

Harvard faculty are classified as Tenured Professors, Non-Tenured Professors, Asóciate Profesor, Assistant Profesor, Lecturers, Instructors and Other Faculty. If the institution is interested in full disclosure of how diverse the faculty is, it could disclose the percentage of faculty members for each of these categories, by department and school. Examining the same distribution for various years would show whether the faculty at Harvard is truly becoming more diverse and in which categories of appointment.

This is the kind of subject Derek Bok might address in his commencement speech, as he talks about his second departure from the Presidency and about the evolving shape of the river at Harvard.
 

If Harvard is too conservative, God help us.
 

that's probably a post from a graduate, likely over 60.
 

conservative and racist are two different things. Many people in business are conservative, and yet understand the advantages of diverse workforces and management teams. Many so-called liberals are racist.

Many in the republican party, for example, have understood the need to include minorities and address concerns of minorities. Think Alberto Gonzalez, for example. In contrast, many in the Democratic party, espouse liberal views, but in practice surround themselves with people of similar ethnic heritage and do little to advance minorities in the party. Think Edward Kennedy, for example.
 

In many communities racism is most acute among low income and middle class white communities, and not so prevalent among the upper class. In all likelihood the public schools attended by upwardly mobile Larry Summers provided more opportunity to pick up racial stereotypes and bigotry, than the private schools attended by Derek Bok, Neil Rudenstine or Drew Faust.
 

"Many in the republican party, for example, have understood the need to include minorities and address concerns of minorities. Think Alberto Gonzalez, for example."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
 

What SE, still standing up for your former boss?
 

It's not true that people from the lower class are more bigotted than upper classes, it all depends on the norms and values of institutions. The military, for example, which involves to a great extent people from low income backgrounds, is one of the most racially integrated institutions and where people from diverse backgrounds truly learn to appreciate and work with one anothers.

Universities, in contrast, are not so inclusive and Harvard appears to have serious problems with racial inclusion...
 

Speaking of Senator Kennedy, isn't it confusing to see how he uses different standards when discussing irish immigrants vs. haitian or guatemalan immigrants? The former deserve a quick path to citizenship, the latter consideration from being brought to internment camps if they have children and perhaps work permits.
 

8.07

perhaps you are too young to remember that pres kennedy restricted irish immigration to the US and that the Donnelly and Morrison visa attempted to correct the restriction.

if you find fault with the line of reasoning then look at the number of haitians versus irish that have come to the US over the past 40 years.
 

12:44, congratulations, you've contributed the most ignorant comment thus far in the thread.

To pretend that upper-class citizens are above the reach of racism is absurd. In fact, it's the lower and middle classes that have the most real contact with minorities--and by "real" I mean not just encounters with service employees. It's a similar situation with many from the northeast who never attended school with children of color--aside from a privileged few. They're often far more ignorant of race relations than people from the American south or west who grow up side by side in public school with minorities. This early contact can have its bumps and rough patches but in the end it usually adds up to tolerance if not respect.

And the earlier poster is correct. Say what you will about the GOP in other areas, they've committed to diversity. Democrats seem to think talking about it is enough. As with most issues, action is all that matters.
 

Pamela Burkley, Executive Director of the Cape Cod Organization for the Disabled, could share a thing or two about the Kennedy standards and ethics...
 

Racism is not just for the poor. As Ambassador to the Court of St James's (1938-1940), Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. was a huge fan of Der Fuhrer. When told of the persecution of Jews in the early days of the Third Reich, the patriarch of the Kennedy clan reportedly snapped, "Well, they brought it on themselves."
 

So it seems that the current crop of MA politicians are much more empathetic with or in tune with the issues of racisms than the era of the Kennedy's (as liberal as the Kennedy's portend).

So, all of you Harvard types, especially the faculuty, please get over your love affair with the Kennedy's. Their time has past.
 

typo-should read faculty, sorry about that....
 

Remember it was Lyndon B. Johnson who ordered the FBI to destroy the Ku Klux Klan. Prior to his presidency the Klan had been growing in number, activity and in the brutality of their assaults.

There are reports that the Klan is again growing and active, this time targeting immigrants.

Perhaps the challenges with race relations at Harvard are symptomatic of larger societal trends...
 

In a recent speech Senator Kennedy clearly stated his position in support of immigration reform and remembered his brother 'A nation of immigrants'...

http://kennedy.senate.gov/newsroom/press_release.cfm?id=7CCA2FE7-0E40-47A5-96A8-2A242B1084D0
 

so?
 

For everyone outside of MA, Ted Kennedy has been a joke for the last twenty years. It's been time for some new blood for far too long.
 

Harvard is forever in the debt of Senator Kennedy. Harvard's Vice-President for Institutional Planning Clayton Spencer, was first educated working in Senator Kennedy's office, where she learned much about higher education and government relations.
 

Why don't we all hear about why Ted Kennedy is Harvard '54-'56?
 

12:06 What did she do there? How do you know? And, why is Harvard in Sen Kennedy's debt-what did he do or provide, other than one of his former staffers is on H's payroll and not his? Are you saying that her education actually came from working and not from a classroom....how refreshing given the types that regularly contribute to this outlet.
 

The Crimson has published a very serious article from Dr. Counter. What he is saying about race relations at Harvard is indicative that there is much work to be done in the school.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=519006
 

Perhaps Drew Faust could ask all Deans at Harvard to take the Implicit Association Test. They might learn a thing or two about themselves:

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
 

Or not:

Our Overrated Inner Self

Orlando Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard, is a guest columnist.; Nicholas D. Kristof is off today.

[Patterson is a black Jamaican, for the information of those who think that should be disclosed.]

New York Times, 12/26/2006


In the 1970s, the cultural critic Lionel Trilling encouraged us to take seriously the distinction between sincerity and authenticity. Sincerity, he said, requires us to act and really be the way that we present ourselves to others. Authenticity involves finding and expressing the true inner self and judging all relationships in terms of it.

Authenticity now dominates our way of viewing ourselves and our relationships, with baleful consequences. Within sensitive individuals it breeds doubt; between people it promotes distrust; within groups it enhances group-think in the endless quest to be one with the group's true soul; and between groups it is the inner source of identity politics.

It also undermines good government. James Nolan, in his book ''The Therapeutic State,'' has shown how the emphasis on the primacy of the self has penetrated major areas of government: emotivist arguments trump reasoned discourse in Congressional hearings and criminal justice; and in public education, self-esteem vies with basic literacy in evaluating students. The cult of authenticity partly accounts for our poor choice of leaders. We prefer leaders who feel our pain, or born-again frat boys who claim that they can stare into the empty eyes of an ex-K.G.B. agent and see inside his soul. On the other hand we hear, ad nauseam, that Hillary Clinton, arguably one of the nation's most capable senators, is ''fake'' and therefore not electable as president.

But it is in our attempts to come to grips with prejudice that authenticity most confounds. Social scientists and pollsters routinely belittle results showing growing tolerance; they argue that Americans have simply learned how to conceal their deeply ingrained prejudices. A hot new subfield of psychology claims to validate such skepticism. The Harvard social psychologist Mahzarin Banaji and her collaborators claim to have evidence, based on more than three million self-administered Web-based tests, that nearly all of us are authentically bigoted to the core with hidden ''implicit prejudices'' -- about race, gender, age, homosexuality and appearance -- that we deny, sometimes with consciously tolerant views. The police shootings of Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell, they argue, are simply dramatic examples of how ''implicit prejudice'' influences the behavior of us all.

However well meaning these researchers, their gotcha psychology is morally invasive and, as the psychologist Philip Tetlock has cogently argued, of questionable validity and use. It cannot distinguish between legitimate apprehension and hateful bigotry as responses to identical social problems. A fearful young black woman living in a high-crime neighborhood could easily end up with a racist score. An army of diversity trainers now use Banaji's test to promote touchy-feely bias awareness in companies, which my colleague Frank Dobbin has shown to be a devious substitute for minority promotions.

I couldn't care less whether my neighbors and co-workers are authentically sexist, racist or ageist. What matters is that they behave with civility and tolerance, obey the rules of social interaction and are sincere about it. The criteria of sincerity are unambiguous: Will they keep their promises? Will they honor the meanings and understandings we tacitly negotiate? Are their gestures of cordiality offered in conscious good faith?

Scholars like Richard Sennett and the late Philip Rieff attribute the rise of authenticity to the influence of psychoanalysis, but America's protestant ethos and its growing intrusion in public life may be equally to blame. Whatever the cause, for centuries the norm of sincerity presented an alternate model of selfhood and judgment that was especially appropriate for non-intimate and secular relations. Its iconic expression is the celebrated passage from Shakespeare: ''All the world's a stage,/ And all the men and women merely players./They have their exits and their entrances,/ And one man in his time plays many parts.''

Shakespeare's ''self'' is inescapably public, fashioned in interaction with others and by the roles we play -- what sociologists, building on his insight, call the looking-glass self. This allows for change. Sincerity rests in reconciling our performance of tolerance with the people we become. And what it means for us today is that the best way of living in our diverse and contentiously free society is neither to obsess about the hidden depths of our prejudices nor to deny them, but to behave as if we had none.
 

GSE Losses Spark Petition
Published On Friday, March 23, 2024 1:44 AM
By KELLY Y. GU
Crimson Staff Writer
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The departure in recent years of three Graduate School of Education (GSE) professors who specialized in race relations and civil rights is causing concern and discussion among the school’s affiliates about the need for more faculty of color in GSE’s ranks and a greater focus on race in the school’s curriculum. Last Wednesday, hundreds of students and professors congregated in the Gutman Conference Center for an open forum to address how the school should move forward after the departure of Professor of Education and Social Policy Gary Orfield. Orfield, one of the founder’s of the former Harvard Civil Rights Project, moved the project this spring to the University of California at Los Angeles. When he announced his departure, Orfield called UCLA “a more conducive atmosphere to studying civil rights.” His departure caused 108 GSE doctoral students to submit an open letter to GSE Dean Kathleen McCartney, which led to last week’s meeting. The letter called Orfield’s departure and the recent departure of other professors studying civil rights and race “particularly devastating.” Students’ “academic preparation and future scholarship are at risk...if such issues of critical importance in our increasingly diverse nation are not sufficiently addressed by GSE faculty and curriculum,” the letter said. “One senior professor leaves and it leaves a big hole. So it’s now at this point where we really feel a sense of urgency,” said Liliana M. Garces, a second-year doctoral student at GSE and one of nine co-authors of the open letter. In a phone interview, McCartney acknowledged the students’ concerns. “We have a problem. We know it; you know it. And I think it’s important to say, this is a problem in higher education generally,” she said yesterday. According to Academic Dean Robert B. Schwartz, there is not “an adequate pipeline” of African-American and Latino scholars graduating from high quality doctoral programs. “You got this high demand and limited supply which is what makes this such a challenge in the long run,” he said. Schwartz added that Harvard has struggled to hold on to some academics because it generally does not offer “star” salaries that are significantly above average tenure salaries. He pointed to the examples of former Professors Pedro Noguera and Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, two prominent GSE civil rights scholars who left for New York University in 2004 after receiving what Schwartz calls “extremely generous offers that Harvard can’t compete with.” Given these challenges, students and faculty alike agree that alternate methods of attracting and retaining faculty of color and faculty who study civil rights need to be unearthed. Lilly B. Piper, a GSE master’s student and Resident Tutor in Adams House, said that GSE should focus on creating a cultural atmosphere that is more welcoming to potential faculty members. Faculty diversity “is a problem in higher education collectively, but it shouldn’t be a problem at Harvard University,” she said in an interview. But Schwartz said that among Harvard’s schools, the GSE had done better than many at recruiting a diverse body of scholars, although “that doesn’t make us complacent.” Six of GSE’s 33 tenured or tenure-track faculty members are minorities, placing it third among Harvard’s nine schools, according to the 2006 End of Year Report from Harvard’s Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity. According to McCartney, the entire GSE faculty is now formulating a comprehensive plan to set faculty hiring priorities for the next ten to fifteen years. McCartney added that the senior faculty is also in the process of putting together a student advisory group to assist in faculty recruiting. Garces said that the current student initiative is the first of its kind in at least her two years at GSE, a result of what she sees as a more receptive administration. —Staff writer Kelly Y. Gu can be reached at [email protected].