Rosovsky to Promote Affirmative Action

Dean Rosovsky will more actively pressure departments to increase the number of women and minority tenured faculty, the Faculty Council agreed after reviewing the results yesterday of the University's affirmative action program.

Rosovsky will use his influence to accelerate recruitment by focusing on departments where minority and women tenured faculty are least represented and by meeting routinely with the tenure search committees in these departments to make sure they consider all women and minorities qualified for available tenured posts.

Faculty Council members strongly favored Rosovsky's stepped-up affirmative action measures, expected to have a primarily symbolic effect, a spokesman for the Council said yesterday.

Rosovsky said yesterday departments in the humanities are most negligent in recruiting minorities and women.

William J. Skocpol, associate professor of Physics and a Faculty Council member, said yesterday Rosovsky's steps are "useful, but may not be adequate" to increase significantly the rate of affirmative action recruitment.

Persuasion

"What we really need is a good dose of good will," Skocpol said, but added he regarded Rosovsky's proposal as potentially influential because Rosovsky will "intervene at the one level where there is a chance of influencing" affirmative action.

Oleg Grabar, professor of Fine Arts and Faculty Council member, said yesterday Rosovsky's new approach may "force departments to think more about the availability of women" when they select the fields in which they plan to grant tenure posts.

Grabar said the Fine Arts Department has not recruited women and minorities vigorously in the past.

Grabar said that the humanities were "curiously derelict" in recruiting women, and attributed it in part to the "locker room old boy network," which encourages humanities faculty to "choose people of their own ilk."

The Council also discussed setting aside special resources as incentives for departments to hire more women and minorities, the Council spokesman said.

The council considered earmarking money from the $250 million capital fund drive for additional chairs in departments where minorities and women are underrepresented.

Rosovsky told the Council that the fund drive money was already committed to help endow established positions.

The Council also discussed "reallocating existing tenure resources" by funneling money into departments which intend to hire women and minorities, the spokesman said.

Several Council members objected to that plan, saying it will make faculty hired under these conditions feel as though the were not hired on the merits of their academic qualifications.

The financial incentives for minority hiring have "dangerous implications. Skocpol said, adding it may look as though women and minorities hired under such a program "were marked."

The Council began considering ways to increase the number of tenured women and minorities after Thomas E. Crooks, special assistant to the Dean, submitted his annual report on affirmative action. The report noted the Faculty had made little progress in recruiting tenured minorities and women.

The University's affirmative action record at the non-tenured level, however is satisfactory, Crooks' report indicated