An honest confrontation of systemic racism in faculty hiring--and what
to do about it
While colleges and universities have been lauded for increasing student
diversity, these same institutions have failed to achieve any comparable
diversity among their faculty. In 2017, of the nation's full-time,
tenure-track and tenured faculty, only 3 percent each were Black men,
Black women, Hispanic men, and Hispanic women. Only 6 percent were
Asian/Pacific Islander men, 5 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander women,
and 1 percent were American Indian/Alaska Native. Why are the numbers so
abysmal? In Doing the Right Thing, Marybeth Gasman takes a hard,
insightful look at the issues surrounding the recruitment and hiring of
faculty of color. Relying on national data and interviews with provosts,
deans, and department chairs from sixty major universities, Gasman
documents the institutional forces stymieing faculty diversification,
and she makes the case for how such deficiencies can and should be
rectified.
Even as institutions publicly champion inclusive excellence and the
number of doctoral students of color increases, Gasman reveals the
entrenched constraints contributing to the faculty status quo.
Impediments to progress include the alleged trade-off between quality
and diversity, the power of pedigree, the rigidity of academic
pipelines, failures of administrative leadership, lack of accountability
among administration and faculty, and the opacity and arbitrariness of
the recruitment and hiring process. Gasman contends that leaders must
acknowledge institutional failures of inclusion, pervasive systemic
racism, and biases that restrict people of color from pursuing faculty
careers.
Recognizing that individuals from all backgrounds are essential to the
creation and teaching of knowledge, Doing the Right Thing puts forth a
concrete call for colleges and universities to take action and do
better.
