Marking 30 Years of Affirmative Action at Medical Campus

By Alvin Powell

Contributing Writer

It was standing room only in the Medical School's Carl Walter Amphitheater last Friday afternoon as more than 250 people gathered to mark three decades of affirmative action at the Medical School and the School of Dental Medicine.

Friday's rush hour had already begun on nearby Longwood Avenue. But in the Medical Education Center, people filled the seats, stood along the walls, and sat in the aisles to hear President Neil L. Rudenstine, Medical School Dean Joseph Martin, and several other speakers talk about the importance of diversity and tolerance at the Medical School and other institutions of higher education.

The ceremony, "A Recommitment to Diversity at HMS and HSDM," marked the anniversary of the decision to actively recruit minority students in order to promote diversity in a student body that, at the time, was overwhelmingly white. With the help of affirmative action, the Medical School and the School of Dental Medicine have graduated 700 minority students in the last 30 years. This year's entering class is similar to those of the last seven years, Martin said, with 18.7 percent minority and 45.5 percent female.

The anniversary comes at a time when affirmative action programs are under attack across the country.

While much progress has been made, speakers said there is still a long way to go. Improvement is needed in the recruitment of minority faculty and staff. In addition, insensitivity and subtle forms of racism still exist.

Rudenstine highlighted how much progress has been made at Harvard. Ivy League campuses in the '50s and '60s were virtually all-white and all-male, he said.

Today more than a third of Harvard undergraduates come from various minority groups, as do more than a quarter of all degree students across the university.

"This is a continuing process and there has been measurable progress, but we are far from done," Rudenstine said.

Martin recited examples of intolerance from the past and the present, highlighting how minority students are still snubbed, ignored, and discriminated against, even by Medical School faculty.

Martin outlined several initiatives to increase diversity at the school and to increase contact with the community. Among them are initiatives at Boston's public schools, including a joint committee composed of representatives of the public schools and Harvard's Medical and Dental Schools. The committee will find ways to increase interaction and a speaker's bureau to bring speakers into the high schools. In addition, in the last year the Medical School has helped develop three offices at affiliated hospitals to promote careers for women.

"I believe we need to be more representative here at HMS," Martin said. "We have a lot more work to do."

Donnella Green, a Medical School student who will graduate this spring with an M.D. and a Ph.D. in neurobiology, described the isolation that some minority students experience. Green, an African-American, said that even today minority students are often "firsts" and that she has seen and experienced discrimination at Harvard Medical School.

"I am the first black woman and second black person to graduate with a major in neurosciences from Amherst [College]," Green said. "In five years as a graduate student, I've never heard from a minority lecturer and I was often the only black in the lecture hall."

Though affirmative action has helped open doors to minority students, Green said it can also be considered a "badge of inferiority" by fellow students. Others often use race -- not qualifications -- to explain the presence of minority students in a program.

"For many, race is the ultimate feature on my resume," she said.

Teran Colen, a first-year medical student who is African-American, said he was encouraged that both Harvard's President and the Medical School Dean attended the anniversary observance. Their presence, as well as their words, indicated their support for diversity in the student body. Some colleges, he said, would only have had the head of minority affairs or more junior officers present.

"I thought it was a very good discussion," Colen said.

Though work on diversity and tolerance remains to be done, Green said she understands how lucky she has been to attend the Medical School. She also said she understands how critical affirmative action will be in future strides toward diversity.

"Barriers still exist. Without affirmative action, we will lose the gains we made," Green said. "If we want a student body and faculty that reflects our society, we must continue to have affirmative action."