FAQ on the Nondiscrimination Motion
Bits and Pieces 2016-10-08
Summary:
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 ha
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