Diversifying the Faculty

The 2009 Faculty Development and Diversity Annual Report reveals that Harvard has made substantial progress over the past several years in finding more ladder faculty who are women or minorities.

Minorities currently make up 17 percent of the faculty, an increase of 23 percent since 2003, while women hold 26 percent of professor, associate professor, and assistant professor positions, representing a 16 - percent increase over the past six years.

It is heartening to see the diversity of an institution still associated with old, white males increase, and the trend will likely continue as more well qualified minority and female professors are hired. However, it is notable that women and persons of color still hold disproportionately few of Harvard’s prestigious tenure-track appointments.

The gender imbalance will likely continue to fade away as the faculty ages, as women are more prevalent at the assistant professor and associate professor levels than as full professors, reflecting changing hiring practices over time and the healthy crop of new female Ph.Ds emerging from graduate departments.

However, the low minority representation is more problematic. Judith D. Singer, senior vice provost for Faculty Development and Diversity, who oversaw the faculty diversity report, explained “We’re trying to get more minority faculty into every level of the University in all fields…The numbers of minority Ph.Ds who want to go into academia are simply too low, especially when it comes to blacks, Latinos, and Native American faculty.” This dearth of eligible minority candidates impedes Harvard’s efforts to diversify its faculty while still recruiting the nation’s brightest minds.

Harvard should continue to bring the most distinguished scholars possible to Cambridge, and not compromise this practice in order to find more minority faculty. Instead, the University should continue to encourage minority students to pursue careers as academics in order to help ensure diversity in the future.

Harvard has already made some progress on this front. The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, for example, attempts “To counter the serious shortage of faculty of color in higher education” by allowing minority students to work closely with a faculty member on their research while receiving financial support from the program. Through initiatives like this, more minority scholars will emerge in the next few years, enhancing Harvard’s ability to hire top-quality faculty from a variety of backgrounds.

In the mean time, the University should continue to make small steps on the path toward becoming an institution whose faculty reflects the diversity of its student body.