New data shows slow growth in underrepresented minority faculty in Arts and Sciences

Upper West Side NY

07 February, 2022

2:06 PM

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Columbia Daily Spectator BY ADAM FROMMER AND ISABELLA RAMIREZ FEBRUARY 6, 2022, 10:33 PM After a year of hiring freezes and low turnover rates, a recently-compiled report highlights persisting challenges in the Arts and Sciences' efforts to diversify faculty. New data reveals that the percentage of underrepresented minority tenure and non-tenure track faculty members in the Arts and Sciences has only risen from nine to 11 percent since the 2011-2012 school year. The report elevates the level of comprehensive demographic data since the 2018 Policy and Planning Committee's equity report and comes amid the University's commitment to anti-racism following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Dean of Academic Planning and Governance Rose Razaghian spearheaded the report, which serves to help better inform hiring decision making and initiative planning. Spectator was allowed to see some data from the report, but unlike the 2018 report, the full account of the data has not been made public since it was prepared exclusively for the provost. The available numbers do not account for international faculty or students. Low turnover rates and a slight decline in faculty size over the last few years has rendered targeted diversity hiring more difficult for individual departments within the Arts and Sciences. Of Arts and Sciences' faculty of approximately 800, about 25 members—or 3 percent—leave in a given year. Only 23 faculty members left the Arts and Sciences at the end of the 2019-2020 school year. Out of the 11 pre-retirement departures, nine were non-tenured, a group generally more diverse than the disproportionately white retiring faculty members. The other 13 faculty departures that year either retired or died. However, the demographics of faculty arrivals to the Arts and Sciences has been more diverse than that of the departures. So far for the 2021-2022 academic year, seven out of 17 faculty hires have been underrepresented minorities, while only two of the faculty departures were the previous year. Arts and Sciences abides by federal metrics of racial and ethnic categorizations in its self-reporting to define what it considers underrepresented minorities, which include Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaska Native, Hispanic/Latino, and Black/African American. Mana Kia, an associate professor in the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, noted that these categories classify people of Arab, Central Asian, and North African origin as white, which she believes does not give a clear picture of faculty diversity. "We need to go back and think about what these categories mean. The question is, if we're trying to diversify [our] environment, what categories are we using, and [we need] some interrogation of the fact that we're limited in a particular way," Kia said. "I don't really see why they couldn't survey their own faculty and ask for more granular information." To negate some of the limitations of federal mandates on diversity reporting, Arts and Sciences allows faculty to self-identify with multiple racial and ethnic categories as applicable. The Office of the Vice Provost groups together underrepresented minorities as faculty members who choose a racial category other than white or Asian. Even so, administrators of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences acknowledge that racial and ethnic diversity is likely underreported. Since 2005, Columbia has dedicated $185 million to diversifying its faculty in the largest public commitment made by an Ivy League institution to faculty recruitment and development. Over the past two years, the Office of the Provost has pushed Universitywide efforts further with the introduction of a series of new programs and initiatives for faculty diversity. One new initiative, Inclusive Faculty Pathways, aims to support historically underrepresented scholars in pursuing doctoral programs and professoriate positions. "Most college students don't come to college planning to follow an academic career; a small group do or discover that this is their path," Razaghian said. "In and of itself, that's not a problem. It becomes a challenge when the probability of following an academic career is unevenly distributed across groups. That's when we see the pathways to and through academia become less representative from each stage to the next." Arts and Sciences Director for Faculty Development and Diversity Alma Granado described that the representation of minority populations in the faculty pipeline "gets even smaller and smaller" from the undergraduate to masters to doctoral levels. The pattern continues in the ranks of academic life through non-tenured, tenured, and faculty with endowed or named chairs. "One of the things that we are really working on is trying to target interventions at different levels to increase population overall and hopefully increase faculty diversity not just at Columbia, but increase the numbers in general," Granado said. In addition to pathways for diverse faculty, the University has focused on increasing retention rates for underrepresented minority faculty. The Faculty Cluster Hiring Initiative recruits groups of underrepresented minority faculty in similar areas of scholarship—with a focus on those in race and racism studies and STEM—to promote a climate of inclusivity. In fall 2021, Vice Provost Dennis Mitchell authorized four pending cluster hires in anthropology, psychology, religion, and sociology. Because these hires are spread across four departments, the cluster communities will exist among departments or within institutes. Given the pace at which hiring occurs in academia, however, the effects of the initiative may take years to come to full fruition. "In the business world, you have a job to advertise, you hire and the person comes. But in academia, it takes between one and two or three years," Dean of Humanities Sarah Cole said. "Everything takes a long time." Amid these low turnover rates, faculty of color are in historically high demand, leading to a focus on programs like Target of Opportunity hiring, which helps expand candidate searches for diversified recruitment. "Some of the candidates we hope to hire are also in demand by other institutions," Cole said. "It's a competitive situation." As part of a commitment to creating a work climate conducive to diverse faculty retention, the position of associate director for faculty development and diversity was elevated to director. The first person to serve in the role is Granado, who started in January. "Once we get these diverse faculty candidates in, you have to support them," Granado said. "So there are mechanisms in place to provide grant support or try to link faculty with other centers where they can present. So you create a sense of community and a sense of research community so they are more likely to succeed." Undergraduate expansion—which a committee of faculty members and administrators has been exploring since the spring of 2021, although the progress has slowed—could potentially lead to a space in the Arts and Sciences' budget for more faculty recruitment. An expanded pool could speed up faculty diversity efforts to build up tenure and tenure-track faculty in high-need departments such as economics, political science, and psychology. Without expanding the number of faculty, filling department vacancies becomes a matter of trying to fill an exact vacant subfield, which may not have as many diverse scholars, or dropping it in favor of a different subfield with more underrepresented minority candidates. "[If] departments recognize that they're not likely to be able to grow a lot, if at all, then every position that opens up is very precious," Cole said. "And faculty are going to feel very strongly about making sure to hire in areas where they think it's really important to have continuity in the study of those fields." After losing several faculty members, the sociology department, for example, broadened their searches beyond vacant subfields and made, in the past two years, three new hires from underrepresented minority backgrounds. "This idea that there's a kind of rear guard defense of my field, even no matter what, I just haven't found that lately," Cole said. "I have found departments very willing to put the likelihood of having a more diverse applicant pool as one of their top priorities and thinking about hiring. Those particular issues feel a little bit less pronounced right now." Arts and Sciences administrators plan to update their comprehensive demographic diversity data annually and put resources behind every level of the recruitment process, from salary to research to retention to support systems such as housing and child care. "One of the pleasures of this work right now is that there is real momentum and there's more consensus than I've ever seen in academic life," Executive Vice President for Arts and Sciences Amy Hungerford said. "Maybe not on how it gets done, but on that it must be done." Staff writer Adam Frommer can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @adamfrommer. Staff writer Isabella Ramírez can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.