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October 17, 2003 [feather]
Increasing faculty diversity

As academic departments seek to increase faculty "diversity" (by which they mean, "increase the variety of skin colors, ethnicities, and sexual preferences on the faculty," not "increase the variety of philosophical, political, ethical, and methodological commitments expressed in the scholarly work of the faculty"), they are hard-pressed to find ways to advertise their needs while still adhering to their schools' policies on equal opportunity.

Desperate times beget clever measures, however, and an entire shorthand has evolved to enable enterprising search committees to do discriminatory job searches without appearing to discriminate.

Here's one from the University of Washington's biology department, as posted in the current issue of Science magazine. The department seeks a population biologist for a tenure-track job.


Appointment is anticipated at the ASSISTANT Professor rank. In exceptional circumstances appointment at the ASSOCIATE or FULL Professor level may be considered for candidates who offer extraordinary opportunities to further the University's commitments to mentoring underrepresented students in the sciences.

Translation: non-white, non-male applicants for this job are not only desired, but very materially preferred when it comes to rank, job security, and salary. I suppose it's possible that an outstanding white male candidate could out-compete others (or should I say, Others) for the job, but it doesn't sound likely. This advertisement comes as close as it can legally come to saying, "White men need not apply." Code language for that in the description itself: "The University of Washington is building a culturally diverse faculty and strongly encourages applications from women and minority candidates. The University of Washington is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer."

Here's another non-discriminatory discriminatory ad, this one from the English department at Georgetown (as listed in the Job Information List at www.ade.org):


Tenure-track assistant professor, with or about to receive the Ph.D., to teach courses at all levels (first-year through M.A.) in critical gender and sexuality studies. We welcome applications from candidates working in any historical period. Georgetown University is an AA/EO employer and strongly encourages applications from women and minority candidates as part of its commitment to professional excellence and diversity.

Translation: non-female candidates need not apply, minority women candidates are preferred to white women ones. Of course, academic identity politics being what it is, very few white, straight men are going to be specializing in "critical gender and sexuality studies" to begin with. Job descriptions like these, where the type of job advertised almost guarantees an applicant from a particular demographic, are common as dirt in the academic humanities and social sciences. It's a way of "diversifying" faculty demographics while at the same time ensuring that demographic differences do not translate into ideological ones. The content of the candidate's scholarship is as important as the arrangement of chromosomes or the color of skin. That scholarship--centered on questions of identity, oppression, and power relations--is in turn a sign of a particular political commitment. Faculty "diversity" must only be pursued insofar as it ensures and perpetuates ideological uniformity.

Schools also define traditional areas of study in ways that indicate their desire to make a minority hire. Here is how Marquette University advertises its tenure-track assistant professorship in the seemingly unexceptionable area of American literature:


The Department seeks one tenure-track Assistant Professor in AMERICAN LITERATURE written after World War I. Candidates specializing in any area of drama, prose, and/or poetry in the period are invited to apply. Desirable emphases include Latino/Latina Studies, Asian American Literature, African American Literature, and Native American Literature.

This is an ethnic studies job for an ethnic candidate dressed up to look like an American lit job. Worth noting: it's not just the white applicants who drop out of this equation, but the twentieth-century American literary canon.

UC Irvine at least has the grace not to pretend that hiring a minority specialist in minority literature is the same thing as hiring a specialist in American literature proper. It "invites applications for a tenure track assistant professor in American Minority Literature--with a preference for a specialist in Latino, African-American, Asian, or Native American literatures." If you are wondering just how rarified it can get, consider the University of Iowa's announcement of a "a tenure-track position in U.S. Minority Women's Literature and Culture at the Assistant Professor Level, to be jointly appointed in Women's Studies and English OR American Studies." Candidates should have "substantial training and experience in Women's/Gender Studies" and "must be able to teach core courses in Women's Studies such as Introduction to Women's Studies; Race, Class and Gender; and Feminist Theory." No mystery there about what the race and sex of the lucky applicant will be. Iowa should be proud. In the logic of diversity calculus, Iowa's going to get two for the price of one--a woman and a person of color--with this hire.

The above examples should give some indication not just of how academic departments can advertise jobs earmarked for minorities, but have also rearranged their entire disciplinary landscape--not just for the moment but for the indefinite future--to suit their political ends. How far will schools go in their pursuit of faculty "diversity"? How far can they go?

Kenyon College seems to be trying to find out the answer to that question. Kenyon actually has dissertation fellowships specifically for minorities:


The Kenyon College Dissertation/Teaching Fellowship for Minority Scholars is for scholars in the final stages of their doctoral work who need only to finish the dissertation to complete requirements for the Ph.D. We hope the experience of living and working for a year at Kenyon will encourage these fellows to consider a liberal arts college as a place to begin their careers as teachers and scholars....Eligibility to apply for the Kenyon College Dissertation/Teaching Fellowship for Minority Scholars is limited to:*Citizens or nationals of the United States at the time of application.*Members of the following minority groups: Alaskan Natives (Eskimo or Aleut) Native American Indians Black/African Americans Mexican Americans/Chicano Native Pacific Islanders (Polynesian or Micronesian) Puerto Ricans.

The good people at Kenyon must not have heard about how there is a little problem with racially restrictive application criteria, at least as far as the Office of Civil Rights is concerned. Or perhaps--good-hearted souls that they are--their commitment to diversity outweighs their commitment to continuing to receive federal funding.

UPDATE: Great minds: John Rosenberg is also thinking about how the pursuit of diversity in hiring shades into discriminatory hiring.

UPDATE UPDATE: A reader who is an academic working in the sciences writes,


Part of what troubles me is that I *assumed* your examples were going on in the humanities & social sciences. I have thought that the hard sciences were better than this (my dept actually turned down, a couple of years ago, a "hire of opportunity" because the applicant just wasn't a good scientist). This is the first ad like this I've seen in the journal SCIENCE.

For me, this is still part of the larger science vs. humanities discussion in which I have participated since I was in college, getting a great books education (and usually I'm arguing that my colleagues are poorer for not having read Thucydides). Scientists have, maybe less than I thought, stayed more focused on excellence, merit & quality because they are more insulated from politics in their day to day scholarly activities. Its a slippery slope for humanities, and social science in particular. When you bring the politics into the department, and into the hiring, you get personal & academic mixed up, you make stupid hiring decisions, all of which perpetuate themselves in a large downstream ripple (and you end up pandering to an administration which in turn panders to public opinion and a highly politicized Board of Trustees).


Thanks for writing.
posted on October 17, 2003 9:19 AM