Rudenstine Urges Concerted Efforts To Enhance Diversity

President's Statement

April 1998

Dear Colleagues,

With the release of this year's report on the composition of our faculty and staff across the university, I want to say something in particular about the diversity of Harvard's administrative staff.

We live in a time when our nation and our universities have become increasingly diverse - in terms of ethnicity and race, and along other dimensions as well. That diversity represents an essential source of our strength, especially in an academic community committed to openness and opportunity. All of us stand to gain from working closely with, and coming to know, people whose backgrounds and perspectives differ from our own.

Harvard's distinction as a university derives not only from our remarkable community of faculty and students, but also from the constant and dedicated efforts of staff members whose work supports and advances the pursuit of academic excellence. In seeking to engage staff members of the highest caliber, we need to draw upon the broadest possible pool of talent. We need to ensure that our workplace - indeed, each of the many workplaces that exist within our large institution - welcomes people from many different backgrounds, and encourages each individual to make the most of his or her talents. And we are well served by the presence of staff members whose collective breadth of perspectives helps all of us better to understand and address the needs and interests of our highly diverse community of students.

In the last few years, while we have made some selective gains in achieving greater racial and ethnic diversity within our staff ranks, the overall statistical trends have not been encouraging. In some areas, for a variety of reasons, we have barely held steady. In some others, we have lost ground - even as members of historically underrepresented minority groups have come to constitute a growing share of the nation's labor market. I believe that we can, and must, do better.

Since the spring of 1997, we have been working on a number of possible initiatives, and more recently we have taken a number of steps forward. The Academic Council (including the Deans of the Faculties, the President of Radcliffe, the Vice Presidents, and others) has had helpful discussions of this situation, and the central administration plan released earlier this academic year highlights among its priorities the need to "promote the recruitment, development and retention of a highly qualified and diverse workforce." An Office of Strategic Staffing has recently been created, under the supervision of the Provost, with a mandate that includes focused efforts to enhance staff diversity. Last week, Provost Harvey Fineberg, Dean Joseph Martin of the Harvard Medical School, and a number of other faculty and administrative leaders from across the university came together for a major half-day conference to share strategies for diversifying our administrative work force.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Assistant to the President and the new Office of Strategic Staffing have intensified the effort to identify "best practices" both inside and outside Harvard, and to bring them more systematically to the attention of managers throughout the university. The Office of Human Resources has joined in this effort by preparing a new and detailed guide to resources considered especially helpful in reaching out to diverse communities of prospective employees. And, as many of you know, there are a good number of other initiatives in motion at local levels, tailored to the needs of particular job families and of different parts of Harvard.

These are important steps on which we need to build, if our intentions are to yield concrete results. Our program in student admissions remains remarkably effective in bringing together women and men from a wide range of backgrounds. Our efforts to build a more diverse faculty of outstanding scholars and teachers continue with considerable momentum. It is time to address the issue of staff diversity in an equally determined and effective way, and I ask everyone's help in accelerating our progress toward this important goal, for the benefit of Harvard as a whole.

Sincerely,

Neil L. Rudenstine