Report Shows Continued Struggle for Faculty Diversity

A recent report on Harvard’s faculty diversity details the continued shortcomings in percentages of female and minority professors, while also promising to remedy these disparities in the coming months.

Data published last month in the second annual report on faculty development and diversity showed little change in percentages of female and minority faculty members from 2005 and 2006 in many of the 13 faculties assessed. The proportion of female ladder faculty members did not rise by more than 3 percent in any faculty over the two-year period measured in the report, and overall minority representation for ladder faculty increased by less than 2 percent during the period.

The report reveals particularly stark disparities in diversity for faculty hiring and retention of tenured faculty. Women comprise less than a quarter of tenured faculty members in 10 of 13 faculty populations assessed and minorities claim fewer than 15 percent of tenured professors in 11 of 13 faculties.

Diversity data in nearly all of Harvard’s faculty populations were statistically comparable to groups of “peer institutions” whose data was made available for comparison.

“The data has shown us that a lack of diversity remains a problem throughout higher education,” said Evelynn M. Hammonds, the senior vice provost for faculty development and diversity, whose office produced the report. “Harvard is starting to move in the right direction in terms of a University-wide approach to diversity, but it’s still early to be able to draw conclusions about our overall progress since trends will not be visible for some time.”

University Provost Steven E. Hyman said he was “sobered” by the findings, but that the report laid down essential baseline data that can be used to eventually track hiring trends.

“I can tell you that none of us are satisfied with where we are in terms of faculty diversity, either with respect to women or under-represented minorities,” Hyman said. “We need to move some of those bars in the bar graphs.”

Both Hammonds and Hyman stressed that the report represented an early step in a much longer process.

“We shouldn’t kid ourselves and think that this is something that can be fixed in a year, but we also shouldn’t make excuses,” Hyman said. “We should have a set of plans with the different faculties of the University, and set out in a very determined way, looking at our progress against benchmarks.”

The report notes a lack of sufficient Harvard-affiliated child care facilities as a problem requiring immediate attention. Inadequate childcare is viewed by some as a roadblock for female faculty on the tenure track.

Lisa L. Martin, a government professor and chair of the Faculties of Arts and Sciences Standing Committee on Women, said that Harvard’s child care is in a “crisis situation.” She estimated that the current number of spots in Harvard child care programs is meeting around half of the demand.

“There just need to be more spots for pre-school aged kids close to campus,” Martin said.

Hammonds says that progress has been made, including plans for a large child care facility in one of the planned Allston science complexes. She also said that she will be briefing Hyman and University President Drew G. Faust on a strategic framework for child care in the fall.

Martin said that better mentoring of women and minority faculty members can also be addressed immediately. She said she has pushed departments to adopt formal mentoring programs to better serve tenure-track faculty members seeking advice form outside their department.

The report also promised guidelines to promote diversity in faculty searches across the University as well as on hiring and retention of dual-career couples. Hammonds said the guidelines would be a “flexible supplement to existing faculty search handbooks.”

The nearly two-year-old Senior Vice Provost’s Office for Faculty Development and Diversity arose from reports produced by two faculty task forces on diversity convened by former University President Lawrence H. Summers after his controversial remarks regarding women in science. The annual End of the Year Report with data on faculty diversity was also a recommendation of the task forces.

—Staff writer Laurence H. M. Holland can be reached at lholland@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Clifford M. Marks can be reached at cmarks@fas.harvard.edu.