Lack of Tenured Black Women Concerns Many

When women moved into Harvard Yard 25 years ago, the black Radcliffe students only saw one black female face among the ranks of the tenured Faculty: Eileen Southern in the Department of Music.

Today, black women returning to the Yard after the winter break only see one black female face among the ranks of the tenured Faculty: Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, professor of Afro-American studies.

In the 360-odd year history of Harvard College the history of black female full professors boils down to these two: Southern and Higginbotham.

"I know we can do better," Higginbotham says.

"We are all acutely aware of the urgent need to have more women generally, and more African-American women specifically, on the Harvard faculty," says W.E.B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr.

Even if the non-tenured Faculty are included, 1997 figures on the number of black professors, male and female, show Harvard rounding at the bottom of the Ivy League with Princeton, meaning that it has lower figures than all but four of the U.S. News and World Reports' top 25 universities, including every Ivy institution except Princeton.

The paucity of black professors, and black female professors in particular, has become a rallying cry of student organizations, including the large and influential Black Students Association (BSA).

"It is indefensible that there is only one tenured black female professor," says Dionne A. Fraser '99, the vice president of the BSA. "Considering that Harvard prides itself on diversity within the student body, it should also set as a goal diversity within the Faculty."

Fraser, who is an economics concentrator living in Currier House, says she feels the lack of black women faculty in her department.

"I don't feel like I'm a part of this curriculum at all. I don't think that there's a place for me in economics," Fraser says, noting that she doesn't think the University is doing all it could to attract more minorities to the ranks of the senior Faculty.

"If Harvard really wanted black professors, they would be here," she adds.

Where Are They?

There could be three black, female, tenured professors in the Faculty currently, if all of those Harvard offered tenure to accepted: namely, Gina C. Dent, now teaching in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, and Nellie Y. McKay, who teaches African-American Literature at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Both Dent and McKay made it through the labyrinthine tenure process, from the departmental to the Faculty level, finally receiving the nod of the University's president himself--before turning down the offer.

McKay, who is also the former chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at Wisconsin, says she was offered the position of Chair of the Afro-American Studies Department in the 1988-89 school year.

She ultimately declined Harvard's offer because she felt that her leadership of the department would have continued in the same vein as her potential predecessors, and what Afro-American studies really needed was a new direction.

"The department needed a complete new vision to turn it around; it had few people and it was not flourishing," McKay says. "I felt that I didn't have the temperament that could recreate the department the way Gates has."

As far as Harvard's difficulty in attracting black women to campus, Professor of Public Health Practice Deborah Prothrow-Stith, a black woman, says the school's location is an important consideration.

"Boston and the Boston area have not been attractive and often has required extra efforts to recruit people to this area from Atlanta, D.C. and Chicago where more blacks are active in the social, political and cultural life of the city," says Prothrow-Stith, who is also assistant dean of faculty development at the School of Public Health (SPH).

However, McKay does not believe her offer of tenure represents a true effort by Harvard to attract a more racially diverse Faculty.

"That is a very bad example for the country, and it's not for an absence of qualified candidates." McKay says. "The effort, it seems to me, to seek out and court well known black faculty, but especially women, has been lagging behind [at Harvard] for 25 years."

"The University should certainly have done a better job over the last two decades," she adds.

Like McKay, Professor of Law Chales J. Ogletree Jr. criticizes Harvard's lack of women of color, calling it "repugnant," noting that FAS' particular situation is "striking and in many respects inexcusable."

However, Ogletree also notes that many of Harvard's top adminstrators have spoken publicly about the need to promote diversity.

"Harvard has recognized that diversity is important, among many educational components, in a strong curricular program," he says. "This is an issue we have discussed with [President Neil L. Rudenstine]. He has expressed a commitment to improving the situation."

Adminstrative Response

In fact, administrators like Rudenstine and Dean of FAS Jeremy R. Knowles blame Harvard's history for the lack of minority faculty, stating in many speeches and articles that their own commitment to the issue is strong.

Both have pointed repeatedly to the infrequency of attrition, meaning that spots open up only as people retire or new chairs are created.

Moreover, Knowles points to structural changes in the tenure system meant to benefit women and minority candidates.

"Departments are required to show that they have--in search letters and in their own investigations of the field of candidates--looked carefully for women candidates and for under-represented minority candidates," Knowles writes in a fax.

Rudenstine also says that Harvard fares badly in national comparisons of tenured faculties because Harvard does not tenure on the assistant or associate levels, where younger scholars are to be found.

As the younger generations of scholars also tend to be more diverse in terms of race and gender, the argument follows, Harvard's statistics look worse than they actually are.

However, the "pipeline argument" has been attacked by many, notably the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, which published an article last autumn titled, "A Note on Racial Diversity of the Faculty of Harvard University."

"There are tens of thousands of black scholars currently teaching in colleges and universities in the United States and thousands more at universities is Canada, Europe and Africa," the Journal writes. "Surely a few handfuls of these scholars could meet Harvard's standards of academic quality and distinction."

Peggy Schmertzler '53, who heads the Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard, says Harvard's system of tenuring professors--finding that handful--deserves a critical examination.

"There's all kinds of research which shows that peer review and secret meetings and very unique procedures tend to maintain the status quo," she says.

"Peer review is very biased against minorities and Harvard is very committed to it's present tenure process, but most people on the outside think that the process should be much less secretive," she adds.

Prothrow-Stith, however, is hesitant to critique the process, except by saying that "the proof is in the pudding."

"The current process suggests that there are some other things that we need to do in order to increase the numbers," she says. "I hope you are able to hear my desire to not critique what has happened, except by looking at the outcomes, because I don't know what has happened."

Those other things include the nurturing of doctoral, post-doctoral and assistant professors, what Prothrow-Stith calls "young talent," which she says is occuring at SPH.

Prothrow-Stith says the burden of being one of very few black female professors at Harvard is that she frequently is called upon to present a "diverse perspective" on various committees and panels. She said that the low numbers of black females make it "hard to gain critical mass."

Beyond Af-Am

McKay, a graduate student at Harvard in the late '70s, said it was "very difficult" not having female professors, much less black female professors, as role models and teachers.

"If students have professors that they can identify with they have an exemplar, not just a role model," says Schmertzler. "It shows them what's possible, and where they can go at Harvard."

Gates, who took a sabbatical from his duties as chair of the Afro-American studies department this semester, underscores this view.

"The principal value first is to be a role model for our students and second to bring their unique perspectives to a faculty that is, by definition, primarily white and male," he says.

According to Gates, the goal of having more black female professors would be best reached most quickly by endowing new professorships in academic areas with high concentrations of minority women.

"We would like to raise funds for an incremental chair in Gender and Afro-American Studies," Gates says. He calls the seeking of funds for such a chair "our highest priority."

"I was aware of the fact that I was a pioneer," says Higginbotham, one of the most prominent scholars in Afro-American women's history, one of her passions since her days as a graduate student, before the field was as well-established as it is today.

However, others say Harvard has done well in building its Afro-American studies department and needs to expand its efforts to place minority professors in other fields so that all students, even those who might not take classes in Afro-American studies, see a minority in front of the class.

McKay charges that "just having the illustrious Professor Gates is not enough. [The University needs] faculty who work in other departments, not just Afro-American Studies."

McKay's point is underscored by the fact that many of the black male professors in FAS, as well as Higginbotham, teach in the Afro-American Studies department.

"Except for possession of the strongest black studies effort in the country, the faculty of Harvard University remains very much a white man's club," wrote the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education in its Autumn 1997 issue.

Fraser says that she would like to see more minorities in the economics department, in part because they bring a new perspective to the field.

"It's hard finding economics classes that deal with Africa and Latin America and the economics of their respective countries," she says. "I feel that having more minorities within the department would lead to diversity in the issues taught, and that in turn would give us more complete educations."

The Journal credited Princeton, the Ivy institution sharing the last place position in the quest for more black, female faculty members, with having "achieved far more success than Harvard in integrating its mainstream departments," pointing out that there are two black professors of math in tenure-track positions, while there are none at Harvard.

Calm Before the Storm?

However, some people see the trajectory of the Afro-American studies department during Gates' tenure as a herald of things to come.

"Traditionally, Harvard has moved slowly and carefully, but when it picks up, zoom!" says Cornell R. West '74, professor of Afro-American studies and the philosophy of religion. "I think that's what's going to happen.

Where Are They?

There could be three black, female, tenured professors in the Faculty currently, if all of those Harvard offered tenure to accepted: namely, Gina C. Dent, now teaching in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, and Nellie Y. McKay, who teaches African-American Literature at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Both Dent and McKay made it through the labyrinthine tenure process, from the departmental to the Faculty level, finally receiving the nod of the University's president himself--before turning down the offer.

McKay, who is also the former chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at Wisconsin, says she was offered the position of Chair of the Afro-American Studies Department in the 1988-89 school year.

She ultimately declined Harvard's offer because she felt that her leadership of the department would have continued in the same vein as her potential predecessors, and what Afro-American studies really needed was a new direction.

"The department needed a complete new vision to turn it around; it had few people and it was not flourishing," McKay says. "I felt that I didn't have the temperament that could recreate the department the way Gates has."

As far as Harvard's difficulty in attracting black women to campus, Professor of Public Health Practice Deborah Prothrow-Stith, a black woman, says the school's location is an important consideration.

"Boston and the Boston area have not been attractive and often has required extra efforts to recruit people to this area from Atlanta, D.C. and Chicago where more blacks are active in the social, political and cultural life of the city," says Prothrow-Stith, who is also assistant dean of faculty development at the School of Public Health (SPH).

However, McKay does not believe her offer of tenure represents a true effort by Harvard to attract a more racially diverse Faculty.

"That is a very bad example for the country, and it's not for an absence of qualified candidates." McKay says. "The effort, it seems to me, to seek out and court well known black faculty, but especially women, has been lagging behind [at Harvard] for 25 years."

"The University should certainly have done a better job over the last two decades," she adds.

Like McKay, Professor of Law Chales J. Ogletree Jr. criticizes Harvard's lack of women of color, calling it "repugnant," noting that FAS' particular situation is "striking and in many respects inexcusable."

However, Ogletree also notes that many of Harvard's top adminstrators have spoken publicly about the need to promote diversity.

"Harvard has recognized that diversity is important, among many educational components, in a strong curricular program," he says. "This is an issue we have discussed with [President Neil L. Rudenstine]. He has expressed a commitment to improving the situation."

Adminstrative Response

In fact, administrators like Rudenstine and Dean of FAS Jeremy R. Knowles blame Harvard's history for the lack of minority faculty, stating in many speeches and articles that their own commitment to the issue is strong.

Both have pointed repeatedly to the infrequency of attrition, meaning that spots open up only as people retire or new chairs are created.

Moreover, Knowles points to structural changes in the tenure system meant to benefit women and minority candidates.

"Departments are required to show that they have--in search letters and in their own investigations of the field of candidates--looked carefully for women candidates and for under-represented minority candidates," Knowles writes in a fax.

Rudenstine also says that Harvard fares badly in national comparisons of tenured faculties because Harvard does not tenure on the assistant or associate levels, where younger scholars are to be found.

As the younger generations of scholars also tend to be more diverse in terms of race and gender, the argument follows, Harvard's statistics look worse than they actually are.

However, the "pipeline argument" has been attacked by many, notably the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, which published an article last autumn titled, "A Note on Racial Diversity of the Faculty of Harvard University."

"There are tens of thousands of black scholars currently teaching in colleges and universities in the United States and thousands more at universities is Canada, Europe and Africa," the Journal writes. "Surely a few handfuls of these scholars could meet Harvard's standards of academic quality and distinction."

Peggy Schmertzler '53, who heads the Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard, says Harvard's system of tenuring professors--finding that handful--deserves a critical examination.

"There's all kinds of research which shows that peer review and secret meetings and very unique procedures tend to maintain the status quo," she says.

"Peer review is very biased against minorities and Harvard is very committed to it's present tenure process, but most people on the outside think that the process should be much less secretive," she adds.

Prothrow-Stith, however, is hesitant to critique the process, except by saying that "the proof is in the pudding."

"The current process suggests that there are some other things that we need to do in order to increase the numbers," she says. "I hope you are able to hear my desire to not critique what has happened, except by looking at the outcomes, because I don't know what has happened."

Those other things include the nurturing of doctoral, post-doctoral and assistant professors, what Prothrow-Stith calls "young talent," which she says is occuring at SPH.

Prothrow-Stith says the burden of being one of very few black female professors at Harvard is that she frequently is called upon to present a "diverse perspective" on various committees and panels. She said that the low numbers of black females make it "hard to gain critical mass."

Beyond Af-Am

McKay, a graduate student at Harvard in the late '70s, said it was "very difficult" not having female professors, much less black female professors, as role models and teachers.

"If students have professors that they can identify with they have an exemplar, not just a role model," says Schmertzler. "It shows them what's possible, and where they can go at Harvard."

Gates, who took a sabbatical from his duties as chair of the Afro-American studies department this semester, underscores this view.

"The principal value first is to be a role model for our students and second to bring their unique perspectives to a faculty that is, by definition, primarily white and male," he says.

According to Gates, the goal of having more black female professors would be best reached most quickly by endowing new professorships in academic areas with high concentrations of minority women.

"We would like to raise funds for an incremental chair in Gender and Afro-American Studies," Gates says. He calls the seeking of funds for such a chair "our highest priority."

"I was aware of the fact that I was a pioneer," says Higginbotham, one of the most prominent scholars in Afro-American women's history, one of her passions since her days as a graduate student, before the field was as well-established as it is today.

However, others say Harvard has done well in building its Afro-American studies department and needs to expand its efforts to place minority professors in other fields so that all students, even those who might not take classes in Afro-American studies, see a minority in front of the class.

McKay charges that "just having the illustrious Professor Gates is not enough. [The University needs] faculty who work in other departments, not just Afro-American Studies."

McKay's point is underscored by the fact that many of the black male professors in FAS, as well as Higginbotham, teach in the Afro-American Studies department.

"Except for possession of the strongest black studies effort in the country, the faculty of Harvard University remains very much a white man's club," wrote the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education in its Autumn 1997 issue.

Fraser says that she would like to see more minorities in the economics department, in part because they bring a new perspective to the field.

"It's hard finding economics classes that deal with Africa and Latin America and the economics of their respective countries," she says. "I feel that having more minorities within the department would lead to diversity in the issues taught, and that in turn would give us more complete educations."

The Journal credited Princeton, the Ivy institution sharing the last place position in the quest for more black, female faculty members, with having "achieved far more success than Harvard in integrating its mainstream departments," pointing out that there are two black professors of math in tenure-track positions, while there are none at Harvard.

Calm Before the Storm?

However, some people see the trajectory of the Afro-American studies department during Gates' tenure as a herald of things to come.

"Traditionally, Harvard has moved slowly and carefully, but when it picks up, zoom!" says Cornell R. West '74, professor of Afro-American studies and the philosophy of religion. "I think that's what's going to happen.