WASHINGTON – To Dr. M. Cookie Newsom, director for diversity education and assessment at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, there’s no delicate way of describing the lack of commitment she believes many top research universities demonstrate as they allegedly seek to diversify their faculties.
“The dismal truth is academe doesn’t really want a racially-diverse faculty,” Newsom said during a faculty diversity presentation at the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) annual national conference in Washington, D.C. “It’s totally a myth.”
Newsom said she based her conclusion on research and statistics she collected showing that, while peer research institutions have documented plans to retain and advance minority faculty, the outcomes detail nothing more than lip service.
“If you are an African-American, American Indian or Latina/o with a Ph.D., your odds of ever receiving tenure at a Research I (school) are between slim and none,” she said. “Of course, there are always exceptions.”
Using an unscientific sample of nine Research I institutions, Newsom aggregated data about the sample schools’ minority faculty hiring, finding consistent and, in her opinion, mortifying patterns. In those surveyed schools, the proportion of faculty of color is woefully smaller than the proportion of minority populations in the states where the schools are located.
“There are an insufficient number of people of color at the heads of classrooms where students of color are increasingly the majority,” she said.
Between 2001 and 2007, Black professors consistently represented just 3 percent or less of tenured or tenure-track faculty year after year at Harvard University, Ohio State University, University of Florida, University of California at Los Angeles and Berkeley, University of Illinois, University of Texas, Stanford University and the University of North Carolina, according to National Center for Education Statistics data cited by Newsom.
