As both facilitators of classroom learning and models to students, professors play an important role in shaping undergraduates – a role better filled by a diverse faculty, some Northwestern professors said.
In creating “future leaders,” NU should be clear in the message it sends its students, said Martha Biondi, a white professor of African American Studies who said NU’s faculty is not diverse enough.
“How do we model for our undergraduates a workplace that is committed to fairness and equal opportunity?” she asked. “Do we want to send a message to our undergrads that having a primarily white faculty is OK and will give them the best possible education?”
At the blackface forum about two weeks ago, NU staff raised questions about faculty diversity, which has been on the administration’s radar for nearly a decade. And NU’s most recent diversity report, released in Fall 2008, shows continued underrepresentation of black, Hispanic and Native-American faculty .
African-American professors, as referred to in the report, made up 3.7 percent of the total faculty in the 2007-08 academic year, down 0.1 percent from the previous year. Hispanic faculty members dropped to 2.8 percent in 2008 from 3.1 percent in 2007.
Asian-Americans, NU’s largest minority group represented, made up more than 13 percent of the total faculty, but they are still underrepresented in certain subjects, making up only 1.9 percent of faculty in the humanities. As in previous years, numbers of Native-American faculty members were too small to be compared.
The report, from NU’s Faculty Diversity Committee, is based on personnel data forms asking new professors to list their gender and race or ethnicity.
Provost Daniel Linzer, who chairs the committee and whose office oversees faculty hiring, said it will take years for minority representation to reach the levels NU would like to see. Until 20 years ago, the vast majority of faculty hired were white males, and the tenure system allows those professors to keep their jobs indefinitely.
NU has seen a steady increase in the diversity of its most recently hired faculty. In 2008, 9.1 percent of the tenure-eligible faculty were members of underrepresented minority groups, which include African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans. The same groups comprised only 4.4 percent of tenure-eligible faculty in 2001.
University President Morton O. Schapiro stressed the importance of search committees reaching out to members of minority groups rather than looking to colleagues with similar backgrounds.
“Business as usual is a tough way to diversify a faculty,” he said. “If you hire people working in your fields who went to the schools you went to, it’s hard to have a really sizable change in the diversity (of the University).”
Linzer said the University doesn’t hire by affirmative action, but a policy enacted in 1998 ensures female and minority applicants are given sufficient attention in searches. “We hire the highest quality applicants,” Linzer said. “We seek to identify candidate pools in faculty searches that include diverse candidates, and, in those pools, hope that the top candidates who emerge provide additional diversity.”
That process often begins when minority students begin thinking about getting a graduate degree.
Crystal Sanders, who is getting her Ph.D. in history at NU and joined the Faculty Diversity Committee last year, is a graduate of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program, which assists minority students who wish to attend graduate school. She said it isn’t a matter of getting more minority students into Ph.D. programs but of hiring them as faculty members.
“There are plenty of students of color throughout the country who plan to get Ph.D.s,” she said. “The question is how to recruit them to your campus.”
The difficulty, Linzer said, is top universities compete for diverse faculty, often “stealing” qualified professors from other institutions.
NU hired eight black professors in 2008, but the same number of black professors left for other institutions that year.
While other professors immersed in faculty diversity declined to be interviewed, many students said they think diversity among faculty should be a priority of the University administration.
Medill sophomore Dallas Wright said he has been disappointed in the lack of action taken to diversify NU.
“When you have teachers from all the same background, you aren’t really getting the kind of education you expect for paying $50,000 a year,” the For Members Only historian said. “This is supposed to be a world-class institution, but we aren’t really drawing from people from different parts of the world.”[email protected]
