Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s self-diagnosis that it does not hire or hold onto enough minority professors is disconcerting for a university that solicits students of all races and ethnicities.
The Cambridge university released a study last week that highlighted a substantial deficiency in retention of black, Hispanic and Native American professors. As it stands, only six percent of MIT’s 1,000-plus faculty are minorities, while 30 percent of the United States population is nonwhite. Asian professors make up only 13 percent of the school’s faculty but are not included in the study.
MIT’s move toward an administrative restructuring follows that of schools like Harvard University, which is looking to reform its efforts to tenure nonwhite professors. Meanwhile, Emerson College is another school struggling with faculty diversity. Only one black professor has received tenure there in nearly 130 years; more have held the title, but not without the help of courts and lawyers.
Because most of MIT’s recruitment for tenured professors is in-house or from a select few other schools, critics say a widening of its applicant pool to more and different types of schools is necessary to keep numbers in check. The fact that there isn’t already minority representation from its current batch of eligible prospects is the problem, though. Without question, there are more qualified nonwhite professors worth tenure at MIT and other elite universities than those who are ever offered the distinction. The means through which the school finds good professors of different cultures should not be so trying or difficult a process.
While the statistics are startling, MIT’s acknowledgement of its shortcoming is admirable and indicative of the fact that it is not too far gone. The university’s president said it perfectly when she wrote in a letter that ‘Creating a culture of inclusion is not an optional exercise; it is the indispensable precondition that enables us to capitalize on our diverse skills, perspectives and experiences[.]’ Tenure is a privilege that should not only be offered to white professors, and the fact that MIT has not offered it to any black or Hispanic professors in the past 20 years in a variety of subjects is unacceptable and not at all a match to the university’s student population or the populace of math and science as professions.
With the study’s publishing, MIT is on the right track. There is much work yet to be done, though. The school cannot possibly extend its legacy as a top university if it only caters to a specific fraction of the country’s people ‘- whether it is the majority or a minority. ‘