Page 128 - How We Lead Matters

Tipping Point

There is a saying I have used often to give credit where credit is due: “It’s not
the final blow that breaks the rock, but all the blows that came before.”
So often when success occurs, it’s the one who happens to be there at
the moment of triumph who gets the credit. But change is rarely that easy.
It’s usually due to the efforts of many, especially when it involves an institu-
tion as steeped in tradition as Harvard University.
One day at our vacation home in Wyoming, a huge bouquet of roses
arrived for my daughter, Diana, a Harvard graduate. They were sent in grat-
itude for her giving up most of her vacation to present the findings of the first
task force on women’s engagement at Harvard, which she had chaired. The
sender was Jeremy Knowles, dean of the school’s faculty of arts and sciences.
Jeremy’s contribution to creating a more inclusive academic environ-
ment was significant. In his last year as dean, 50 percent of tenure offers were
made to women. It seemed progress was under way until a few years later,
when Harvard’s president, Larry Summers, suggested that women lack an
innate ability to excel in science and engineering—a comment that sparked
a firestorm of controversy that eventually contributed to his ousting.
No doubt, the sensibility that railed against this implication of a gen-
der-based scholastic disability would not have been so keen within the
Harvard community if the ground hadn’t been laid years earlier by Jeremy,
the task force, and countless others who over the years have championed
these issues at Harvard.
Diana and I watched with great interest as the events unfolded in the
aftermath of Summers’s comments. Initially, it appeared that a serious detour
from earlier progress was imminent until the historic moment when Drew
Gilpin Faust was selected as Harvard University’s first woman president.
Finally the rock had cracked open.

Marilyn Carlson Nelson 111