While Washington University’s attempts to attract minority students are evident to most of the school’s patrons, the school’s concerted efforts to bring minorities into the ranks of its white male-dominated faculty attract less attention.
The problem of faculty diversity at WU, however, is a common concern of students and staff alike. Like most American institutions of higher learning, WU’s faculty and administration lack the levels of gender and racial diversity that the administration desires.
“My teachers have mostly been white men in their early sixties,” said senior Laurel Aschoft.
Despite the fact that those most WU administrators responsible for hiring new professors uniformly state that they see disadvantages in a homogeneous faculty, the problem remains,
“At a university, it is not ideal to have all the faculty representing one dominant group,” said Derek Hirst, chair of the department of history, which currently has 26 faculty members, of whom 16 are men and 19 are white. “When you get a more diverse bunch of faculty you get more critical perspectives, and you get more intellectual dynamism.”
Many professors say that intellectual discourse is one of the main reasons they desire a diverse faculty. Varied perspectives, they point out, aid them in their research, while also improving the overall quality of instruction that students receive.
Intellectual diversity isn’t dependent on physical diversity, but many say the two are closely related: a professor with a different cultural background may have important differences in perspective from the rest of his or her colleagues. Hiring committees acknowledge that these differences are valuable.
At WU, the faculty members themselves do most of the hiring of new faculty. In Arts and Sciences and Engineering, job searches are coordinated by department chairs, and in the business school by a committee. In the smaller schools, such as the School of Architecture, the dean plays a more active role in recruitment.
“We have been beating the bushes”
Hiring committees across the university say they have had difficulties hiring minority faculty, though the motivation is there to actively recruit such applicants.
“We have been beating the bushes but can’t find candidates for most of our positions,” said Henry Roediger, chair of the department of psychology. Roediger said in the past few years he has not found a qualified black candidate to offer a position.
Because there are fewer minority candidates, half the recruiting battle is getting a suitable number of applicants for a job.
“It entails doing a lot of advertising,” said Steven Krantz, chair of the department of mathematics. “It entails exploiting personal contacts. And it means that if we do find a suitable female or minority candidate, we really bend over backwards to bring them in. We just go out of our way to attract them.”
Offering special employment packages to a potential minority faculty member is not unusual, although the practice is common for non-minority faculty as well. These special packages can include everything from more money to a job offer for a spouse.
Stuart Greenbaum, dean of the school of business, rejected the idea that focusing on minorities was unfair to white male candidates.
“It’s a question of `What are you optimizing?'” he said. “Am I optimizing the utility of some particular white male candidate in Iowa or Nebraska? Is it more important for me to be indulgent of that individual, or is it more important for me to enrich my community, which is the Olin community?”
For Greenbaum, it’s not a tough choice.
“I have chosen to try to enrich the Olin community. That’s my first priority.”
But Krantz thinks the university has a different motive for minority recruitment.
“It’s obvious that one of the reasons the university administration wants diversity is [that] they’re under pressure from the government,” Krantz said. “We have a lot of government contracts here, and if we don’t play the game, they’re going to take them all away. So we have to do it, but it’s a good thing to do.”
Roediger, however, applauded the administration for their pro-diversity efforts.
“[WU] treats the faculty as well as anywhere I’ve been, and the support that I’ve had in trying to recruit people to this university has been outstanding,” Roediger said.
“We can’t recruit you if you don’t exist”
There are many theories as to why the faculty candidate base lacks qualified minority applicants. The most commonly voiced theory is that of the pipeline.
The number of minority students entering and exiting graduate school is proportional to the number of minority faculty applicants. There are relatively few minorities in graduate programs; therefore, the faculty applicant base lacks diversity.
Under this theory, there is no way schools can get minority faculty, no matter what they do.
“We can’t recruit you if you don’t exist,” said Rafia Zafar, chair of the department of African and Afro-American studies.
There are other reasons most minority undergraduates are staying away from a graduate student track. According to William Bechtel, chair of the philosophy department, philosophy majors often head to other professions, such as law, instead of graduate school because of the certainty of finding a job in those fields, relative to the job market in philosophy.
Krantz added that he thinks minorities are more likely to go to fields such as medicine that can have an affect on their particular group. Women also have to worry about having children.
“To be perfectly candid,” said Krantz, “I think women are more caring than men. Men are more career oriented, and [men] are willing to make allowances for kids and wives.”
This same pipeline problem existed 30 years ago for women, but that applicant pool has since grown, and the pipeline problem has been alleviated.
Though the pipeline is a popular explanation for the lack of minority faculty, some offer alternative theories.
“The problems women and faculty of color have with going to a school is the perception, if not the reality, of being a huckleberry in a bowl of milk,” said Zafar, quoting African-American educational reformer Booker T. Washington.
“Faculty of color tend to cluster in universities that have higher numbers of their ethnic groups, [because] they feel more comfortable, and they know the burden is going to be less,” said Zafar.
This burden Zafar described as “the black tax.” African-American faculty often bear the load of their race in that they are asked to serve on more committees, do more tenure reviews, and engage in other burdensome administrative tasks.
“If [people] have a question about race-whether or not it has anything to do with you or your field of interest-[they] want to talk to you. In many ways it’s incumbent on you to step up to the plate. On the other hand, it’s a lot of stress on faculty members.”
She compared the situation to that of a solitary male student in a women’s studies class. In the classroom, the male would be targeted more frequently as a source of opinion. Minority professors often encounter similar situations.
To alleviate the pressure, minority faculty often congregate at certain universities where their comfort level is higher.
“It’s kind of a catch 22,” said Roediger of hiring minority faculty. “They come and look around, and they don’t see a community of scholars that they would identify with, so they choose to go elsewhere.”
According to William Bechtel, the philosophy department has also had trouble recruiting minorities. He suggests that even the makeup of the student body affects how welcoming a school may feel to a faculty applicant.
Perhaps one of the biggest causes of recruiting problems is that minority applicants are in such high demand that they often choose the prestige of another school. Krantz mentioned schools such as Harvard and Princeton as competitors.
According to Zafar, African-American faculty are also hesitant about living in Missouri. Besides Missouri’s status as a former slave state, St. Louis is one of the top ten cities for residential segregation.
When minorities do go into research or teaching, they often find themselves at a disadvantage for promotions, added Zafar.
“It’s a long road to Tipparary”
The faculty diversity problem has a chicken-and-egg quality to it that makes new ideas and suggestions hard to find, since the blame can easily be shifted. Are there no minority faculty members because there aren’t any minority graduate students? Or no minority graduate students because there aren’t any minority faculty members as role models?
Despite the circuitous arguments, many have suggestions.
According to Zafar, administrators and faculty have already held many meetings brainstorming new ways to attract minorities. She said faculty chairs should be reminded at regular intervals that there is support and funding available for new hires, particularly new minority hires. She suggested the university consider “cluster hires,” in which a number of minority faculty are hired simultaneously.
Krantz supported more direct administrative efforts for increasing diversity.
“I would like to be more confident that if I had a really terrific female candidate, or a really terrific minority candidate, I could go to the dean, and he would be willing to put together a special package for that person. He does it, but there could be more.”
Additionally, Bechtel said there is a generational switch coming up soon, and many older faculty members will retire. This has the potential to open up numerous professor positions.
Zafar supported the idea of an administrative diversity position, but said that it should be raised to the upper levels of WU’s administration, where it would have control over all schools, graduate and undergraduate.
How would diversity change the atmosphere?
Many faculty members struggled with being asked what changes would happen to this campus if there were more minorities. Some said it was hard to visualize the changes that diversity would bring, but there was wide agreement that a more diverse faculty would help minority students succeed.
“One of the most important things a faculty member does is that he or she is a role model for what an educated person should be,” said Krantz. “And you don’t want to project the image that an educated person has to be male.” He added that many females appreciate female mentors, and minorities appreciate minority mentors.
Lacking a minority mentor is what drives away many minority students from a career in psychology, according to Roediger, who added that the psychology department does not have any black professors.
“[If] students [had] role models, then the students.could elect psychology as a career. Whereas now, we are not offering the African-American students someone that they can identify with,” Roediger said.
Having a diverse faculty would benefit students in other ways also, said Greenbaum. Prospective minority students would be more drawn to a campus with minority faculty, and having a diverse faculty-and a diverse atmosphere in general-would help prepare students for the world outside the WU bubble.
Olin School of Business boasts a number of international professors, which Greenbaum said is the result of a conscious project geared towards giving students experiences in dealing the people from around the world. He noted, however, that having an internationally diverse faculty was not enough; domestic minorities are necessary as well.
The need to have practice working in the real world with various minorities is one of Cynthia Weese’s primary motivations for seeking greater faculty diversity. When Weese, the current dean of the school of architecture, graduated from WU’s architecture school in 1962, she was the only female in her class.
Because she faced discrimination at various firms in the past, Weise said she tries her hardest to get a diverse faculty, though with a small school, the turnover rate makes the task difficult. Even with no African-American faculty members, she said she has had success. There are new female professors, and the freshmen class this year is 58 percent female.
The problem Weese faces is not isolated to architecture. Women rarely achieve tenured faculty positions across the university. According to Linda Nicholson, the director of the women’s studies department, though the department has made drastic improvements, they are not enough.
“I think there’s been grumbling among women faculty,” she said, but added that complaints will continue until the gender balance in the faculty is 50-50.
Some say the journey to a more diverse faculty has been somewhat successful so far. According to Roediger, there have been leaps and bounds in opportunities for women over the 40 years he has been in academia.
Despite the progress, Greenbaum said there is still much progress to be made.
“I would tell you it’s a long road to Tipparary,” he said, referring to a famous World War I song. “It’s a long way home, it’s a long journey.”
Anthony Jacuzzi