Upper Boston University administrators disbanded two School of Theology search committees and refused to consider their likely recommendations that the school consider two African-American nominees for faculty openings, a STH doctoral student on the committees claimed last week, though BU provost Dennis Berkey rejected the racial charges.
The doctoral student, Martha Simmons, said the committees’ closures and the school’s lack of African-American faculty made her question administrators’ motives. But Berkey denied the accusations ‘in the strongest possible terms’ in an e-mail to The Daily Free Press.
The committees were formed at the beginning of the 2002-2003 school year to fill positions for preaching and worship and music worship respectively, according to Bryan Stone, who chaired both committees.
After a several-month ‘complicated process’ of narrowing down a long list of candidates, Stone said Berkey communicated to the dean of STH, Robert C. Neville, that the ‘candidates were unacceptable’ before the committees could even offer formal recommendations.
Neville could not be reached for comment.
Though Simmons said the search was narrowed down to two candidates one for each position Stone said the committees were considering four total people for the positions and the committee had yet to narrow the search further.
‘The committee never got to the point of making recommendations,’ Stone said. ‘The process never made its way any further … we are back to square one.’
While Stone could not speculate why the decision was made, Simmons said she thinks it is ‘not a coincidence’ that that the candidates were African-American and the process was so sloppy.
‘Do they understand the way that this looks?’ she said. ‘It isn’t even about [the candidates]. It is that the process is somehow curved to where it keeps happening that the School of Theology ends up with no African-American professors.’
Berkey said Simmons’ allegations are completely incorrect and wanted to ‘deny in the strongest possible terms that there is any racist element to these considerations.’
‘Candidates are evaluated on the merits of their qualifications, not on race,’ he said.
He also said STH has had several African-American faculty members, and had ‘recently seen the deaths of two black members of the STH faculty’ professors Prathia Hall and Anthony Campbell.
But Simmons said she found it absurd that the committees were formed only to be ignored by upper administrators.
‘Why fly people out and make them go through a process [with the search committee] if apparently the process doesn’t mean anything?’ Simmons said. ‘If upper administration did not even look [at a recommendation from the search committee] before they made their decision [to not consider the candidates] then what was their decision based on?’
Berkey said he could not offer reasons upper administrators found the candidates unqualified for the positions because ‘selection of new members of the faculty is a matter involving confidential evaluations’ and ‘we owe it to our candidates not to discuss these matters publicly.’
However, Stone said even he was not offered the reason, publicly or privately, why the search committee’s candidates would not be considered. Stone said he was told of Berkey’s decision ‘second-hand’ through Neville.
‘The provost has not communicated the reason to me,’ he said.
But Berkey said though the candidates may have been overwhelmingly favored by School of Theology officials for the positions, their positions would not just involve the School of Theology.
‘The candidates … were interviewed for positions that involved multiple potential roles, one of which involves the School of Music, another of which involves Marsh Chapel,’ Berkey said. ‘Accordingly, there are multiple inputs into the evaluation of candidates, not just from the School of Theology.’
Despite the fact that the search committees are back where they started, the search for the positions will continue, Berkey said.
‘The administration remains committed to the recruitment of outstanding faculty for the School of Theology,’ he said.
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