Like many youngsters of color in low-income, crime-challenged communities, Dr. Andre M. Perry found his way up and out through education. The Pittsburgh native earned a series of degrees that helped him achieve his goal of serving on a college faculty, but he eventually left the academy to better make the kind of impact on public policy that he feels is part of his calling.
“Many people go into academe wanting to make a tremendous impact in society,” says Perry. “But when you’re in it, you see the limitations on making substantive change. You can influence researchers and thinkers and students, but it takes a long time, if at all, to have an impact on policy.”
He has found that fit as a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
To Perry’s delight, his research on race and structural inequality, education and economic inclusion keeps him in touch with policymakers, academic environments, communities and “people who are actively working on issues that are near and dear to my heart.”
Perry is one of many academics of color who have determined that the campus environment was no longer where they wanted to be. Although no agency appears to track the number of college faculty, particularly those of color, who exit the ivory tower, the transitions over time are significant because the disproportionately low numbers of faculty of color are stagnant or declining while students of color are increasing as a proportion of the nation’s colleges and universities.
What is known, however, are some of the reasons they say they leave: dissatisfaction with tokenism and isolation, denial of tenure, inability to effect institutional change, lack of personal and professional fulfillment, and failure of their institutions to create campus climates that tangibly embrace diversity, equity and inclusion among faculty and administrators.
The problem is more acute at predominantly White institutions. And much of it boils down to racism, observes Dr. Ebony O. McGee, a tenured associate professor of education, diversity and STEM education at Vanderbilt University. The former electrical engineer has watched the phenomenon at work, mitigating against faculty of color after they arrive and even before they get their foot in the door.
