Neil L. Rudenstine

After Conant's tenure, Pusey extended the Lowell principles through attention to the individual and the importance of academic freedom as the essential component of a first-rate university. Pusey hoped the College would produce students who:

"...ready to learn from others, will make an effort at honest appraisal of their culture; will recognize both its strength and weakness, will try to see these aspects separately and fairly, and who them, not complaining, or criticizing unreasonably, or turning away in supercilious indifference, will steadfastly set about working where they can--first of all perhaps with themselves--to improve that culture and to make not its shabbiness but its goodness available to others."

President Derek Bok, who succeeded Pusey, was the first president to address the complex issue of modern race relations as they existed at Harvard. He dealt forthrightly with the nettle-some issues of diversity we face today. He led Harvard when race relations was the dominant issue on campus, largely because the number of students of color had grown significantly. Moreover, he, like Lowell before him, had to decide how to orchestrate a response to a potentially divisive social issue. In addition, he presided over efforts to make the curriculum more inclusive, through the strengthening of an Afro-American Studies Department. He set forth his views on these matters in an Open Letter on Issues of Race at Harvard and Radcliffe, where he discussed three goals of race relations work in colleges and universities: equal opportunities for students regardless of race, a welcoming atmosphere, and full interchange among all students.

Bok acknowledged that the University had gone a long way toward achieving the first goal: "providing equal opportunities regardless of race." On the other hand, he admitted Harvard and Radcliffe had some distance to travel to achieve an atmosphere in which all felt "welcomed, accepted, and sufficiently confident of their status." He went on to describe concrete actions that could be taken to achieve the second and third goals.

Indeed, the institutions created by Bok and his deans--the Harvard Foundation for Race Relations and the Office of Race Relations--were designed to provide the capacity for intervention in the college environment to achieve Bok's goals, and the deans soon undertook concrete action to accomplish the task. Faculty, administrators and students soon saw those efforts as fundamental to a well-functioning academic community.

The Harvard Foundation reduced the sense among students of color that they were "guests in a strange house." It did so by sponsoring guest lectures and performances by those active in civil rights and ethnic groups, including people from film, the performing arts and popular culture. And the Office of Race Relations responded readily to complaints about racial harassment and insensitivity, raising the level of student awareness of such matters. The office pioneered in the development of peer and house-based programs that will provide guidance for the future.

In his last years, assisted by Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky, Bok achieved a break-through in Afro-American Studies with the appointment of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., who came to Harvard from Duke to chair Afro-American Studies and to direct the W.E.B. DuBois Institute. Professor Gates' vision of these studies has brought a new dynamism to the College and faculty, engaging students of all races in the courses, lecture programs and conferences of both institutions.

Bok could articulate his race relations goals because of the high level of profitable interaction he saw among students of different races, and their common commitment to racial accord. The study of race relations, which the College published in 1981, found substantial interchange occurring among undergraduates of all races.

Citing the study, Bok observed in his open letter that "less than 10 percent of minorities report that they do not mix with the whites at meals or in social activities and student organizations, and a majority claim that they often interact in these settings." Nevertheless, and undermining his optimistic perceptions, he concluded that there "is a widespread belief among all students that interchange between members of different racial groups is often characterized by some degree of defensiveness, stereotyping, and occasionally even discriminatory attitudes."

Today's College is well-suited to assist in the integration of the races and the promotion of racial harmony because it has a diverse student body living in close quarters. Its capacity for racial integration rests largely on the achievement of Lowell's vision of what the social life of the Houses could bring about. "One object of the University is to counteract rather than copy the defects of the day," he said. "It is in the College that the character ought to be shaped, aspirations formed, citizens trained, and scholarship implanted." He added: "In relations of undergraduates to one another, might there not be more points of intellectual contact and might not considerable numbers of students have much in common?"

Thanks to the dedication of many people, the issue of access to Harvard has been largely resolved. We will now be tested and judged on the actual nature of the College experience. What is the quality of interaction among students of different ethnic backgrounds? And how do the educational and extracurricular dimensions give substance to those relationships?

It is discouraging that students of color sometimes have to experience a great college through the prejudice and arrogance of a still racially divided America. All of us who contribute in so many ways to the life of the College must accept full responsibility for creating an intellectual and moral environment that is free of ethnic and class hostility. All too frequently, however, the weight of that responsibility falls upon individual students.

Because one of Harvard and Radcliffe's goals is to foster and sustain healthy and congenial associations among students of diverse backgrounds (race is only one difference), it is important to hole the colleges to high standards in such matters, when thinking about successful race relations.

I take it as given that the College builds, or undermines, its place in the larger community by the way it sustains the moral and intellectual life of each member of the College community. Although it is important to promote a greater awareness and understanding by all students of the range of cultures and ethnic traditions represented by its members, the College's primary task is to encourage participation by all students in the full life of the College. It is responsible for creating a community based on mutual respect and generosity. And being generous towards other members of the college community means being a liberal in the traditional and best sense of that much-abused word: open to the free exchange of ideas in the spirit of civility and common decency.