Mom and Dad, Take Note

ATTENTION parents. Open up your itineraries for Junior Parents' Weekend and pencil in one extra event. Today at 10:45 a.m., the Minority Student Alliance (MSA) will sponsor a lecture and panel discussion on recruitment of minority and women faculty at Harvard.

Don't be afraid to miss one of the officially scheduled events in order to learn about one of Harvard's most shameful shortcomings.

Harvard, for all of its strengths, lags behind most other top universities in the diversity of its faculty. Among Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Cornell and Stanford, Harvard ranks eighth out of eight in tenured women, fifth in tenured minorities, sixth in non-tenured women and sixth in non-tenured minorities.

THE precise causes of such pitiful numbers are unclear. The dearth of minorities and women entering Ph.D. programs produces a small applicant pool, but the lack of minority and women role models in academia contributes to the dearth of Ph.D. candidates. Even when one considers the small applicant pool, Harvard still lags way behind. According to Harvard's most recent affirmative action report, Harvard would have to add 17 tenured women and 11 non-tenured women to its faculty to make female representation consistent with the available pool.

But if the causes are less than clear, the effects are more than obvious. The paucity of minority and women professors limits the classroom perspectives that can be presented on key issues. In addition, a homogeneous faculty deprives minority and female students of role models. Report after report have documented that Harvard needs to step up its recruitment of top minority and women scholars in order to promote faculty diversity.

Don't just pay for your child's Harvard education--do something to improve it. Attend the MSA forum and voice your support for a diverse Harvard.