Yesterday, President Drew Faust sent out another one of her overly lengthy and strangely timed emails to the Harvard community, this one ironically entitled, “Diversity and Excellence at Harvard”. She sums up the sad history of faculty diversity at Harvard in 900 words, presenting the following dismal statistics:
Approximately 17 percent of Harvard’s ladder faculty are minorities, an all-time high, up 23 percent from six years earlier. But progress on this front has been uneven: Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans represent just 6 percent of the entire faculty, a percentage that has essentially not changed since 2005. The only academic unit with more than 20 underrepresented minority faculty is the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and that is due in large part to our outstanding department of African and African-American Studies.
One student on the Kirkland House email list humorously summarized in an 140 character tweet:
@harvard news flash faculty mostly white men (cept af-am, eh, skip). basically unchanged from 17thc working on it (read: another committee.)
Perhaps Faust’s promise of more committees and planning seems irrelevant because Harvard college students are less inclined than ever to notice faculty diversity. This semester, the only professor I have who is white and male happens to be the decidedly Russian economist Andrei Shleifer.
What do you guys think? Have you felt a lack of minority professors?
Full email after the jump.
Dear Students and Colleagues:
Five years ago, a pair of Harvard task forces examined how the University recruited faculty and offered concrete proposals to increase institutional support for women and minorities throughout their academic careers. I was proud to play a leading role in the work of these task forces, and I wanted to take this opportunity to assess the progress that we have made as a community in the intervening years.
Underlying the work of these task forces was a conviction that diversity makes for a stronger academic experience and a richer university community. “A diverse faculty is a strong faculty because it emerges from the broadest possible consideration of available talent,” the task forces declared at the end of their review. “The development, recruitment and support of outstanding faculty . . . provide the essential foundation of a great university.”
We have taken significant steps to address the challenges women face along the tenure track and to increase the number of men and women of color who teach and conduct research at Harvard. But reshaping a talented and well-established faculty is a long-term commitment, and much work remains to be done. While Harvard has made great strides in cultivating an undergraduate student body that is much more reflective of the world around us — this year’s freshman class is the most diverse ever — we must strive to ensure that progress toward a more diverse faculty and staff keeps pace.
Central to the recommendations of the 2005 task forces was the creation of the Office of Faculty Development & Diversity, which has been systematically collecting and reporting data on faculty hiring and retention and ensuring that diversity is a factor weighed by every faculty hiring committee. We have also created the Ladder ACCESS program, which provides income-eligible ladder faculty with significant financial support for child care costs, and increased by 50 percent our investment in campus child care centers, to help faculty maintain a balance between the responsibilities of family and the demands of research and the classroom. Additionally, we started two programs that have helped increase the pipeline of young women and minority scholars who will be the faculty members of the future.
We have made some progress, particularly with regard to the number of women among ladder faculty. The most recent Faculty Development & Diversity annual report highlighted the fact that today a little more than a quarter of the faculty are female, up 16 percent from six years ago, and nearly all of that increase reflects changes in the senior ranks. It is worth noting that when I joined the deans’ group in 2001, I was the only woman; now we have five female deans.
Approximately 17 percent of Harvard’s ladder faculty are minorities, an all-time high, up 23 percent from six years earlier. But progress on this front has been uneven: Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans represent just 6 percent of the entire faculty, a percentage that has essentially not changed since 2005. The only academic unit with more than 20 underrepresented minority faculty is the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and that is due in large part to our outstanding department of African and African-American Studies. Clearly, we must and can do better.
We can report some progress in building a more diverse non-faculty work force at Harvard. Sixty percent of our staff are female, 22 percent are people of color, and over the past five years the percentage of managerial and leadership roles held by minorities has increased. Still, minorities hold only 12 percent of these leadership roles, underscoring the fact that embracing the benefits of diversity does not automatically translate into a more inclusive place to teach, work, and study.
For this and other reasons, I am very pleased to welcome Lisa M. Coleman to our campus. Lisa steps into the position of Chief Diversity Officer and Special Assistant to the President, in which she will be responsible for developing a strategic approach to promoting diversity across the Harvard work force. Lisa, who has worked with such organizations as the Association of American Medical Colleges and Merrill Lynch, joins us from Tufts University, where she served as that institution’s senior diversity officer and as director of its Africana Center.
Five years after we took a deep look at how we could make Harvard a more inclusive place, it is crucial that we ask ourselves if we are doing enough today to foster an environment in which diversity is not simply valued, but cultivated in a systematic way. I have asked Lisa and Senior Vice Provost Judith Singer, who heads the Office of Faculty Development & Diversity, to develop a plan that will further our efforts to address pressing issues of cultural, racial, ethnic, and gender differences, and position Harvard to be a beacon of diversity in the future.
Judy and Lisa will be meeting with a broad cross-section of faculty members and members of the Harvard staff to seek advice about the most effective ways we can stimulate change at every level of the institution. If you have any suggestions, please contact them at diversity@harvard.edu. I know that they are eager to solicit ideas from as many members of the community as possible.
I expect that by Commencement, Judy and Lisa will return with recommendations about how we can further the commitment laid out five years ago to create a stronger, richer, more diverse Harvard.
Sincerely,
Drew Faust