Although American college and university faculties have become more diverse over recent decades, tenured faculty remain more likely to be white and male. According to a Pew Research analysis of data from 2017, while 27% of junior faculty were nonwhite, only 19% of tenured professors were. Until now, however, no data existed about what schools were doing—or not doing—to mitigate these issues.
In a report issued Wednesday, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released the results of the first national survey to include questions on DEI practices in the context of tenure. It provides the first snapshot of institutional efforts to address the comparative lack of diversity at the highest levels of their faculty.
The reasons for this lack of diversity are various and complex. Students may evaluate faculty from different backgrounds in different ways, and tenure committees may be implicitly biased, less likely to know and respect the journals in which minority faculty have published. And decision-makers may not recognize the mentorship and service obligations that disproportionately fall on faculty of color, a form of DEI work that has often been likened to a “cultural tax.”
AAUP asked whether schools had taken several specific steps to mitigate these issues.
The survey found that around 22% of institutions included DEI criteria as part of tenure reviews, and that around 39% had reviewed their tenure standards for implicit bias. Roughly the same number had given implicit bias training to their promotion and tenure committees in the past five years. Although the numbers were not overwhelming, to Dr. Kimberly A. Griffin, associate dean of graduate studies and faculty affairs at the University of Maryland’s College of Education, they represented progress.
“For a long time, the idea has been that we increase faculty diversity by focusing on the candidates themselves and helping them better navigate structures and systems,” said Griffin. “And we’re moving more and more at the institutional level [to] acknowledging the barriers that are in place and the ways that institutions actually limit access to success in the academy long-term.”
