In Defense of Evelyn Hammonds

Author's Note: During the summer of 2008, Professor Evelynn Hammonds assumed her new role as Dean of Harvard College. While I do not know Dean Hammonds personally, I was affected by her appointment in an unexpected way. After the appointment was announced in Spring 2008, I found myself engaged in an online discussion concerning why President Drew Gilpin Faust (incidentally, Harvard's first female president) chose to appoint Hammonds. In the course of this discussion, someone suggested that the reason might be that Hammonds is a black woman. Below are my responses, edited only for form and to protect the privacy of others involved in the debate.

Evelynn Hammonds teaches both graduate and undergraduate classes in the African and African-American Studies Department and History of Science department. She has a master's degree in physics from MIT, not to mention a Ph.D. in history of science from Harvard. Before coming to Harvard she taught at MIT, she's been a visiting professor at UCLA and Hampshire College, and she has also served as a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin).

And that's only part of her biography.

Most importantly, she's currently the Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Recruitment and Diversity. The decisions she makes directly affect the experience of students at the college - i.e. what kind of professors we interact with every day, and thus the quality of our academic and intellectual experience here...

There are two issues here:
1) The assumption that Professor Hammonds was chosen (either in part or entirely) because she is a black woman
2) The question of whether or not she is qualified to be the Dean of the College

To even joke, before a discussion of the issues, that her appointment was decided by placing her identity as a black women over her credentials is not only "horribly essentializing and very hurtful" but also simply wrong.

Does anyone honestly think for one moment that Harvard's administration would choose someone who was unqualified for the position of Dean of the College? I think not. They did not just look around, say "There's a black female professor," and appoint a newbie with no administrative credentials to speak of.

Her identity could not possibly have been the primary reason for her appointment or even a major reason for her appointment. The primary reason for her appointment was her position as a senior faculty member who has also served in an administrative capacity in the administration. And to argue that her race and gender "make up" for something she lacks is to imply her inferiority and her inability to get such positions without being a black woman.

I can't answer for her being more or less qualified than other candidates, but I do believe that qualifications and identity aside, administrators are chosen based on their perceived ability to carry out the job at hand. Sometimes that perception is based on a resume of experience. Sometimes that perception is based on a candidate's effectiveness in one position her or she has held. Sometimes that perception is based on working closely with the candidate in question. And sometimes that perception is based on examples of the candidate's good judgment.

We can't know why she was chosen. We can only speculate. To speculate that race and gender were among the main reasons cheapens Professor Hammonds' other personal qualities and experiences which make her suited to be Dean of the College.

An Unpleasant Experience

Author's Note: This is by no means representative of my usual encounters with security at airports or at other public transportation terminals. On the whole, I have found security personnel to be attentive and thorough while remaining courteous and humane. Needless to say, this incident shocked me as much as it hurt me.

On Saturday night, my family headed to the Denver airport to catch our almost-midnight flight back home. Now my sister just turned 18, but she doesn't have a license or permit, just a state ID. On the way to Colorado, this ID (in combination with her birth certificate) worked just fine when we went through security. I guess Denver had a different standard.

They pulled her aside to a different security station, ran her and her bags through, frisked her, and then proceeded to search her bags by hand. The whole time she sat there, detained, with a scared look on her face, and I stood next to my parents across from her with my arms crossed, glaring at any TSA agent that passed me.

None of them bothered to explain what was going on when one of the machines went off unexpectedly, and they started sterilizing all their tools. No one helped her repack her bags or gave her more than brisk orders as the process went on. And one agent, who wasn't searching her, expressed his surprise that they didn't let her through with what should have been sufficient ID, accompanied by her legal parents who had proof of their parental relationship. (A.N.: And to be absolutely clear, my sister was carrying nothing illegal or malicious - the alarm was set off during the search by some lotion, mistakenly packed in her main bag rather than the approved Ziploc.)

I'm sorry - that doesn't make me feel safe. I was furious the whole time it was happening, and I cried in the terminal after we got through. Because only days after a wonderful week that made me feel like I actually had a stake in my country, I was terrified and helpless, unable to assure that (should she be mistaken for a terrorist or detained because of skin color or any other characteristic) justice would be done for my sister, a U.S. citizen, and a scared young girl.