The Faculty had just resumed discussion of a controversial study on minority and women faculty early this March when Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53 rose to speak. Talking in hushed but forceful tones, the veteran professor of Government sharply criticized the proposals put forth in the study as "a departure from our principle of equal opportunity to each individual with equal merit." Furthermore, by giving departments special opportunities to hire qualified women and minorities, as the study urged, the University would effectively "set up a category in which no white male could qualify," he said. Measures like the study suggested that give minorities or women special advantage. Mansfield argued, undermine the merit system and high standards on which the University is based--and Harvard would be wise to scrap such "bright ideas" before they damage the University's reputation and academic quality.

Mansfield was outgunned that day: though several professors joined him in assailing the study, a majority supported its calls for increased recruiting of minorities and women for junior faculty slots and for allowing departments to seek special permission to hire women and minorities for whom they do not have positions available. Shortly after the session. Dean Rosovsky set in motion the policies put forth in the study.

In fact, at the same meeting. Rosovsky had strongly defended the affirmative action policies against the salvos of Mansfield and his colleague James Q. Wilson, Shattuck Professor of Government. "It's hard to believe it's a statistical accident" that certain departments have few women scholars. Rosovsky said, Besides, he contended, the study's proposals would not hurt Harvard's standards, but merely assist qualified minorities and women in coming here. Affirmative action, as "the policy of the land and the policy of the University," was at Harvard to stay.

But the disagreement between Rosovsky and Mansfield marks a pervasive disagreement among faculty about affirmative action here, particularly in tenured posts. Explanations of why Harvard currently has only 12 tenured women and 21 tenured minorities, and what--if anything--it should be doing about it differ dramatically.

Some charge that gender discrimination--like that alleged in a grievance suit filed this year by Theda R. Skocpol, associate professor of Sociology, whose department denied her promotion to a tenured position--has blocked women from advancing into tenured posts. Women, they note, constituted 3.4 per cent of the 1979-80 Faculty (when comparative statistics were last compiled)--a figure below Michigan University's 6.8 per cent. Stanford University's 6.3 per cent, MIT's 5.2 per cent and Yale University's 4.5 per cent. Several say instances of racial discrimination have impeded minorities from gaining promotion toward tenure. In this area, statistics reveal less: in 1979-80. Harvard's 5.9-per-cent minority portion of its faculty was dwarfed only by Stanford's 8.0 per cent among selected universities, and Michigan, MIT, Princeton, and Yale all fell within 0.7 per cent of Harvard, Harvard.

Administrators like Rosovsky rely more on explanations of limited pools or women and minorities qualified for tenure. Only recently have significant numbers of women been available for academic jobs. As they have become older and more qualified, Harvard has increasingly hired them for junior faculty posts--where the number of women has steadily risen from ten in 1969-70 to 44 this year.

As these larger numbers of women gain the experience and publishing records the University expects of its tenured faculty, administrators say, more and more women will recieve tenure. Still, administrators like Nancy Randolph, special assistant to the president for affirmative action, caution that the process of assimilating women into tenured spots will be protracted and gradual. "You're not going to get a significant percentage change for many, many, many years," especially with the slow pace at which tenure spots are vacated, Randolph says. John D. Montgomery, chairman of the Government Department, also notes that many women with Ph.D's in his field now choose government posts, rendering them unavailable for academia.

This year, however, seems to offer powerful evidence of a trend towards increased tenuring of women. In the biggest rash of hiring tenured women in the University's 345-year history. Harvard appointed four female professors, who will boost the number of tenured women to an unprecedented 16 when they assume their posts July 1. That burst prompts Thomas E. Crooks, special assistant to Rosovsky for affirmative action, to cite 1980-81 as a "breakthrough year."

For minorities, though, administrators and faculty predict a less bright future in tenured slots. No comparable boom to that of women exists in academic for minorities--only two minority students in the entire Harvard class of 1980 opted for graduate work in the arts and sciences. Administrators say the declining rate at which minorities seek academic employment could eventually force the University to step up its recruiting even more just to maintain its proportion of minority faculty, especially since competing universities are also expected to respond to smaller pools by intensifying their recruitment.

On thing that almost all faculty agree on is that the University's unique method of awarding tenure influences its ability to grant it--and the likelihood of doing so. Unlike most universities. Harvard tenures faculty after an claborate process--which one professor calls "checks and balances"--that begins with departmental nominations, continues with approval by an ad hoc committee and concludes with a final go-ahead from President Bok. Deeply embedded in each stage is the notion that Harvard must maintain its high academic standards with every appointment. Research and professional esteem thus come to play a decisive factor in the selection process--particularly, faculty say, at the stage where outside experts are requested to send to a department blind letters about candidates.

This procedure, many faculty agree, helps preserve the University's reputation for appointing candidates with the most prominent reputations in their fields--and all agree that professors take seriously the task of choosing future colleagues in whom the University may invest as much as $1.5 million over time. But, say some, the process allows such broad discretion at so many stages of the tenure process that the system may lend itself to gender or race discriminations. Others argue that Harvard's reputation-heavy criteria effectively mandate the selection of older professors--and thus implicitly discriminate against qualified younger pools, where greater proportions of women are found. "There are an awful lot of women who are tenurable but are too young," one female junior faculty professor notes.

Another woman professor argues that, because of its criteria. "I don't think Harvard engages in affirmative action. They have a very high sense of themselves setting a standard of excellence--and anything that breaks that standard they won't discuss." She adds of many department members, who initiate the tenure process with their deliberations. "They argue that academic excellence is the only criterion for tenure. Things like role models and general contributions to the intellectual community are not what they see as valid." Randolph notes that though "we like to think service to the community is important... it's not going to have any importance when it comes to tenure. There is something unfair about this system."

"Myths" of an "immutable standard of excellence" are mere veneers for standards that implicitly favor the tenuring of men, one woman professor says, and others concur. Citing as "downright misogynists" the History. Anthropology, and English Departments--all of which, along with ten other departments, were "underutilizing" women, according to the University's most recent affirmative action report to the Department of Labor--one female professor argues that primarily male departments perceive values that would be desirable in a male, like assertiveness, as unappealing traits in female candidates. Randolph, too, believes that male professors are not always likely to share the interests of women candidates-making women candidates not seem "particularly valuable."

Another female professor concurs, saying that many professors "like their colleagues to be as much like themselves as possible, including gender." Others say male professors put a premium on intra department compatibility as a criterion and often view female professors as harder to get along with, as "difficult colleagues." Women are also more likely to be perceived as "risks"--and, as one female professor says. "Harvard would rather not take in people who may be stupendous than run the risk of making errors." She adds that for departments that have no women, there are probably "about two or three very special women they could chose from." Another adds, "Everything the University does is motivated by the concern to protect itself. It's a conservative, cautious institution." Accordingly, one female professor notes, junior faculty, especially female ones, must "compromise [their] behavior so much that [they] lose their identity" if they are eager to get tenure.

Some professors cite Skocpol as a female junior professor who suffered from departmental male biases. "Theda is a very good case to talk about standards," one female professor says. "Objectively she's attained all the outward trappings of it--all the external credentials, all the awards, her book's got fabulous reviews. Since she's clearly made the standards, people are pretty upset."