How to Recruit and Promote Minority Faculty: Start By Playing Fair - Brief Article

Black Issues in Higher Education, Nov 23, 2000 by Jonathan R. Alger

Sometimes, you have to review the roles of the game to make sure that you are applying them fairly to everyone. Recent legal attacks on affirmative action have made colleges and universities nervous about their efforts to recruit faculty (as well as students) from underrepresented minority groups. Special initiatives designed to attract minority faculty are of particular concern. The statistics on minority representation among tenure-track faculty in many disciplines remain alarmingly low, however. At several recent conferences on these issues, I have been disappointed to hear deans and affirmative action officers express the belief that their own faculties often create the highest hurdles to minority faculty recruitment and retention. What can be done to ensure that the rules are fair and fairly applied? Faculty members should first examine how they currently evaluate candidates for appointment and promotion.

The search process for new faculty members is a good place to begin. Are your search committees given any training to broaden their perspectives, or any resources to ensure that they are reaching out to the complete pool of potentially qualified applicants? Do they advertise in journals and periodicals that make special efforts to reach minority graduate students and faculty? Do they rely on some sort of ranking of graduate schools in evaluating candidates? If so, what is the basis of those rankings, and how do historically Black universities and other minority-serving institutions fare in them? Such questions can yield surprising answers.

What about mentoring new faculty members? Do your senior faculty members reach out to junior colleagues with different racial and ethnic backgrounds? Studies show that informal mentoring relationships usually develop between senior and junior colleagues who have much in common, because people tend to seek out younger versions of themselves when imparting their wisdom and experience.

The traditional criteria applied in evaluations for promotion and tenure often appear to be neutral, but in practice they can have a disparate effect on minority scholars: In analyzing research, for example, reliance on narrow definitions of "merit" that emphasize publication in traditional journals may slight new or emerging areas of scholarship or practical applications of theory to real-life problems. In weighing merit in teaching, courses on ethnic studies or courses that include minority perspectives are often taken less seriously than more "mainstream" courses. If an institution offers such courses, why should they be given less weight than other academic subject matter?

"Collegiality" is another criterion that is creeping into more and more faculty evaluation processes. Collegiality can be a code word for favoring candidates with backgrounds, interests, and political and social perspectives similar to one's own. This vague and subjective criterion can be used against faculty members whose work and ideas challenge traditional orthodoxy in their departments or institutions.

If we care about recruiting and retaining minority faculty members, we don't need to lessen standards or discard the concept of merit. Instead, we need to ensure that existing criteria are applied with a broad enough perspective so that each individual's true contribution to the learning environment at the university, both in and outside the classroom, are fully and fairly taken into account.

This article was reprinted with permission from the Web site of the American Association of University Professors. Jonathan R. Alger was formerly counsel at the AAUP.

JONATHAN R. ALGER, ASSISTANT GENERAL COUNSEL, OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR