When Yale, Princeton and M.I.T. received warnings from HEW that Fall, Harvard issued a statement assuring its "continuing and expanding positive programs" to hire minority workers, and appointed overseer Clifford Alexander '55 to create such programs.
But Harvard was nonetheless in the first wave of universities told they were under investigation in February. When three HEW compliance investigators arrived in March, they made no mention of the issue of women. "Our concern is with affirmative action to employ Negroes where they have formerly worked," team leader J?? W?ley said at that time.
Later in the Spring, however, the Women's Equity Action League sent HEW a letter charging 200 American universities, including Harvard, with discrimination against women in hi?ng. Thereafter the hiring of women was a major issue in the Harvard investigation.
When the HEW investigators first appeared in March, administrative vice-president L. Gard Wiggins said he was confident Harvard's hiring program would win HEW approval. Why then has that approval taken a year in coming?
Wright described the year-long give-and-take between Harvard HEW as not so much a process of negotiation as one of revelation. "When you take a systematic look at a place, certain issues are obvious at first. Others necessitate digging deeper."
Though University statements in the past year have attempted to imply that Harvard's "affirmative action plan" is only a matter of compiling existing programs from different Harvard departments. Daniel L. Steiner '54, General Counsel to the University, conceded yesterday that many of the changes that are now in the offing would probably not have come up were it not for the government's pressure.
The University will now be required to file quarterly reports with HEW on the number of minority group members and women on all levels of employment, to insure that it is living up to its agreement. If at any time HEW representatives feel Harvard is not following the plan, they can freeze government funds to the University.