The signatories to
the Nondiscrimination Motion (see below) are frequently asked, in various ways, to explain
the context, intent, and effects of the Motion. What follows are responses prepared by a few of the signatories.
Q: In simple language, what does the motion say?
A: That Harvard
should not discriminate against students on the basis of organizations they
join.
Q: Why are you bringing this motion?
A: The motion
reaffirms a principle that has guided Harvard throughout its modern history.
However, Dean Khurana and President Faust announced a new policy last spring: In
the future, students will be ineligible for certain College distinctions (being
a team captain or being nominated for a Rhodes Scholarship, for example) if
they belong to any unrecognized single-gender social organization (USGSO)
consisting entirely of Harvard students (including any of the final clubs and
certain of the sororities and fraternities to which Harvard students belong). Our
motion would prevent the new USGSO policy from taking effect while firmly establishing
the broad principle that students’ private affiliations are their own business,
not Harvard’s. Because the motion codifies common understandings and current
practice, we are aware of no other effect it would have on College operations.
Q: Why are you sticking up for the final clubs?
A: We are not defending the final clubs any more than the
Supreme Court defends flag-burning. It doesn’t matter whether we like the final
clubs or not; students have a right to belong to organizations of which we
disapprove, just as they have a right to read books we find objectionable.
Q: But as a private
institution, isn’t Harvard free to restrict students’ rights?
A: We are not lawyers and we offer no opinion about whether
the USGSO policy is lawful. But as a general principle, those who are students
at Harvard should be as free in their rights of speech and association as they
are as private citizens. Harvard’s responsibility is not to restrict those
freedoms on their behalf but to help them learn to exercise those freedoms
wisely. While Harvard may certainly seek to educate and even to warn students
about club memberships, learning to make moral choices entails the right to
make, in their private lives, what Harvard may consider moral mistakes.
Q: Aren’t some organizations so extremely odious that
everyone would agree students shouldn’t join them?
A: The motion speaks not to what students should do but what they may do. Current Harvard
policy specifically prohibits asking job candidates about club memberships
of any kind. Students who are candidates for Harvard distinctions are owed
similar respect for their private choices.
Q: Are you sure
Harvard hasn’t in the past judged people by their organizational affiliations?
A: Certainly in Harvard’s Puritan days, but we are not aware
of examples within living memory. Quite the opposite, in fact. In 1954, against
withering attacks from Washington, Harvard’s president defended FAS professor
Wendell Furry’s right to join the Communist party without being sanctioned by
the University. In 1992, when Harvard deliberated on how to reconcile ROTC’s
discriminatory policies with the participation of Harvard students as cadets,
the Verba
Committee specifically rejected as “unacceptably paternalistic” the option
of sanctioning students for joining ROTC.
Q: Isn’t it hyperbole to
bring up McCarthyism in this context? This is not a civil liberties issue. It’s
about how Harvard as a private institution relates to a few obnoxious clubs
comprised entirely of Harvard students.
A: The test cases for erosion of fundamental civil liberties
often involve offensive activities. Erosion of anyone’s basic civil rights sets
a precedent for wider encroachments at a later date—a broad principle that
Harvard should be teaching, rather than undermining, through its decisions
about student life. Harvard students should not have to sacrifice their free
association rights even if Harvard can lawfully restrict those rights.
Q: The USGSO policy
stops no one from doing anything. It just says that you can’t represent Harvard
if you belong to one of these clubs. What’s wrong with that?
A: A worthy Rhodes candidate, for example, does not become
less worthy when she is discovered to belong to a sorority. So the USGSO policy
discriminates against students on the basis of something unrelated to the roles
from which it would bar them. In the interests of inclusiveness, it has the
effect of dividing the student body into USGSO members on the one hand, and
students eligible for leadership and scholarship opportunities on the other. Forcing
students to make this choice would harm rather than enhance community. And if
the USGSO policy is morally sound, then Harvard’s strict policy prohibiting inquiries
about club memberships of job candidates must be too lenient. Faculty might
consider how they would react if Harvard imposed something similar to the USGSO
policy on their private activities and those of their colleagues—making them ineligible
to chair their departments or to receive Harvard nominations for prizes if they
belonged to certain organizations unrelated to their professional activities.
Q: But the USGSO
policy is narrowly targeted. What harm could it do except to a few clubs?
A: Even if every one of the USGSOs were valueless to their
members—which has not been established—the choices of students to join them,
however unwisely, should be protected. We should not erode the civil liberties of
our students even when we think that we know better than they do what is good
for them.
Q: Something needs to be done about the problem of campus
sexual assault. A lot of assaults take place at Final Clubs—doesn’t that
justify going after them with the USGSO policy?
A: We support aggressive efforts to reduce campus sexual
assault, but the connection between the cited
data on sexual assault and the USGSO policy is weak. Pressuring the final
clubs to admit women and pressuring men not to join them are not well-grounded
policy responses to the sexual assault data, no matter how desirable these
steps may be for other reasons. Including the fraternities, sororities, and women’s
final clubs in the USGSO policy on general principles is an even less justified
incursion into individual rights.
Q: Are you saying that Harvard should have a system of
fraternities and sororities?
A: No, we aren’t. There has been no faculty discussion of
fraternities and sororities, their sociology, prevalence, or influence as far
as we are aware, nor of what felt need they satisfy. We do not advocate any
change in Harvard’s posture on sororities and fraternities.
Q: But what about the entrenched privilege, the access to
powerful alumni, through the final clubs, to which women have no access?
A: We offer no opinion about whether final clubs should
admit women, but the principle that single-gender alumni networks should be
opened up does not seem to be consistently applied. Even if all the final clubs
became coeducational, other important single-gender alumni networks—of athletes
and choral singers, for example—would be unaffected by the USGSO policy. It would
be more in the spirit of an educational institution to strengthen alumni
networks that are too weak than to weaken others on the basis that they are too
strong.
Q: Harvard has such
broad nondiscrimination policies already. Do we really need more?
A: It’s a long list
indeed, including “race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation,
religion, creed, national origin, age, ancestry, veteran status, disability,
military service, or any other legally protected basis.” Membership in
organizations is not protected, but should be, in our opinion.
Q: Does Title IX
require us to do this?
A: The FAS Title IX Policies
and Procedures memo states that off-campus activities are within Harvard’s
purview if they may create a hostile environment for Harvard students. The memo
does not call for specific across-the-board action against all USGSOs. Behavioral
problems presented by certain clubs do indeed call for a serious and emphatic response—but
the response should emerge from due fact-finding, study, and deliberation, and
should be restricted to those clubs that create a hostile environment.
Q: But the President
decided on this policy. Doesn’t that take it out of the hands of the FAS?
A: According to the Fifth Statute of the University, Harvard
College is in the “immediate charge of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.”
Policies about who may receive fellowship nominations and who may be captain of
a team or president of a student group are therefore matters under the purview
of the FAS, whose elected representatives on the Faculty Council were not
consulted before this policy was imposed.
Harry Lewis
Eric Nelson
Margo Seltzer
Richard Thomas
------
The Motion is: Harvard College shall not discriminate against
students on the basis of organizations they join, nor political parties with which they
affiliate, nor social, political or other affinity groups they join, as long as those
organizations, parties, or groups have not been judged to be illegal.
Shaye Cohen, Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy
Daniel Gilbert, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology
Harry Lewis, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science
Richard Losick, Maria Moors Cabot Professor of Biology
Jason Mitchell, Professor of Psychology
Eric Nelson, Robert M. Beren Professor of Government
Hanspeter Pfister, An Wang Professor of Computer Science
Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology
Margo Seltzer, Herchel Smith Professor of Computer Science
Richard Thomas, George Martin Lane Professor of the Classics
Helen Vendler, A Kingsley Porter University Professor
James Waldo, Gordon McKay Professor of Practice of Computer Science
