Join the Task Force

THE BEST news about affirmative action last week was not so much that Harvard has met its modest hiring projections for minorities and women, but that 12 student groups have banded together to form a task force designed to improve the University's hiring record.

It is not as if Harvard has made no progress in increasing its representation of women and minorities--in general, both have risen steadily in the last five years. But the rises have been far from impressive. The tenured faculty here is still 92 per cent white and male; minorities and women are still represented in greatest proportion in the lowest-paying jobs. There is still a great deal to be done.

The problems of increasing the representation of women and minorities here are not simple ones. Harvard's minority representation, for instance, is now in excess of the available labor pools, and increases that would go beyond these pools will require strong recruiting at all levels. In order to have more black professors, Harvard also needs to recruit black graduate students and to make every effort to attract tenured black scholars from other institutions. It is the sort of thing that builds on itself: as the University hires more blacks in high position, it becomes perceived as a better place for blacks to be and recruiting at all levels, from undergraduates to professors, becomes easier.

With women, the increases have been more dramatic but fall shorter of reflecting the population. The pools of available women for all positions are substantial and should, again through a vigorous recruiting effort, be drawn on far more fully than they are now.

Affirmative action works in subtle ways; much of its success or failure depends on people's attitudes. Harvard has practically no out-and-out racists any more. Discrimination here manifests itself, instead, in how people define the qualifications for a job and in how important it is to them to increase the number of blacks and women at Harvard.

It is those attitudes, then, that have to change, and students can help change them by working with groups like the new task force, to show that they consider affirmative action of primary importance to the University and low representation of minorities and women in any area a major failure on Harvard's part. Administrators will continue to change things, too slowly; students, when they are organized and vocal, can bring about change in far more speedy and dramatic ways.