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Dr. M. Cookie Newsom is the Director for Diversity Education and Assessment at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also a trouble maker and an angry black woman, which is likely to cause her serious problems with her colleagues. We talked yesterday about how being angry can get a black person into serious trouble.
Dr. Newsom, however, has good reason to be angry. In a recent interview with Diverse issues in Higher Education, she stated in plain language that most major universities are not serious about diversifying their faculty and that this hurts all students, especially students of color.
"The dismal truth is academe doesn't really want a racially-diverse faculty," Newsom said during a faculty diversity presentation at the American Association of University Professors' (AAUP) annual national conference in Washington, D.C. "It's totally a myth."
Dr. Newson based her conclusions on statistics and data she has collected which shows that most major universities are good at documenting plans to increase faculty diversity, but that most of it's nothing but lip service.
"If you are an African American, American Indian or Latina/o with a Ph.D., your odds of ever receiving tenure at a Research I (school) are between slim and none," she said. "Of course, there are always exceptions."
In an unscientific sample of nine Research I institutions, Dr. Newsom found that in most cases, the representation of minority faculty was substantially lower than the representation of minorities in the state.
"There are an insufficient number of people of color at the heads of classrooms where students of color are increasingly the majority," she said.
Between 2001 and 2007, black scholars represented just three percent of tenured or tenure-track faculty at Harvard University, Ohio State University, University of Florida, University of California at Los Angeles and Berkeley, University of Illinois, University of Texas, Stanford University and the University of North Carolina. All of this data came from the National Center of Educational Statistics.
Newsom goes on to cite the standard excuses given by decision-makers as to why they can't find minority faculty members. 1) There are not enough qualified minorities out there. 2) There is no need to interview or make an offer because they are in high demand. 3) They cost too much.
She makes the accurate point that many of the excuses are indicative of a perception of inferiority of under-represented minorities. She told the story about a black female applicant who was turned down because she didn't "fit well" and "spoke too loudly." In many cases, faculty at predominantly white universities are allowed to use arbitrary and unmeasurable reasons for rejecting black faculty and then simultaneously reiterate that they can't find qualified black professors.
"It's racial discrimination," she said. "We know what's wrong, there is inherent bias in committees and negative perceptions based on race."
I know all too well what Dr. Newsom is referring to. Most predominantly white universities are fundamentally committed to maintaining Jim Crow practices in America when it comes to the hiring of black scholars and integrating them into their institutions. I have experienced this problem first hand, not only during my experience at Syracuse University (I wish I could tell you some of the stories), but also during my experience as a graduate student, where I attended four years of college and another seven years of graduate school without having one single black professor the entire time.
Most black faculty hired at many institutions are given temporary or adjunct positions, primarily so the university can appear to have diversity when it does not. But when it comes to serious positions of importance within the institution, black scholars are consistently marginalized or excluded from consideration.
The opposition to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan came, in large part, from black scholars who were mortified that during a six year period as the dean of the Harvard Law School, Kagan hired 29 people for tenure track positions, 28 of which were white. The 29th faculty member was Asian. As Dean, Kagan didn't hire a single African American, Native American or Hispanic person the entire time. David Duke could not have had a worse hiring record. What was even more disturbing was the fact that there were actually black Harvard professors attempting to defend such an abysmal record. We should be ashamed of ourselves for excusing this kind of behavior.
We should also be offended that in spite of the fact that many highly educated black faculty apply for these posts, universities reject these individuals and then claim that there are no qualified black candidates available. In fact, some institutions have departments that have existed for well over 100 years without hiring or tenuring one single African American professor.
Even more shocking is that these seemingly educated individuals attempt to provide logical rationalizations for damn near statistically impossible outcomes. To argue that there is not a black person on the planet qualified to do a job that has been done by thousands of white men screams of white supremacist thinking, reminding us that racism can make us both blind and delusional.
Universities must realize that rather than presuming that black people are inferior to whites, they may want to consider the fact that they may be using a flawed definition of what it means to be qualified, or that perhaps hundreds of years of white supremacist thinking has polluted the social and intellectual infrastructure of their campus. As I always say, the disease of racism has its greatest impact on those who think they've been cured.
Perhaps it's time for campus leadership to stop making excuses for this kind of ignorant and un-American behavior. Universities like UNC Chapel Hill and Ohio State have no problem finding the next great black male athlete but when it comes to finding black professors, many of these so-called scholars become brain dead. T
here should be independent oversight of all faculty hiring decisions, as well as annual reports provided by each department on the number of under-represented minorities who are interviewed and why they were not offered the position. Radical action will be necessary for us to overcome this problem. It surely won't be solved by business as usual.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here. 
Comments: (19)
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By: darkfaculties on 6/10/2010 4:29PM
As a black Ph.D. candidate who will be braving the academic job market this fall, I found this article quite interesting. As a social scientist, I was disappointed by the lack of attention paid to alternative explanations for low minority representation among tenured faculty. Here are several factors that should have been considered:
1. How many POCs (people of color) actually receive Ph.D.s on an annual basis in comparison to whites? I believe there is some underrepresentation at the degree-granting level, but it is important to know how closely it corresponds to the amount of underrepresentation at the faculty level.
2. Do the average qualification levels of POCs different systematically from those of whites? For example, does the average POC emerge from grad school with a comparable number of publications as the average white person? This is important to consider given that publishing is one of the key determinants of tenure-track hiring.
3. What are the differences between departments? Are the disparities particularly bad in the humanities, the social sciences, or the natural sciences? This should also be combined with the first point to reveal the numbers of POCs that obtain Ph.D.s in different disciplines. It doesn't surprise me at all to learn that certain departments have never had a black professor, at least not in the absence of data on how many blacks have ever obtained Ph.D.s in the field in question.
4. Does the problem manifest at the level of tenure-track hiring or of tenure-granting? In other words is the problem that Ph.D. POCs never get assistant prof job offers in the first place, that they do so but are disproportionately denied tenure, or both? This question would seem to have implications regarding whether the problem is best addressed at the hiring or tenure-review level.
Overall, I take exception to the cavalier way that accusations of racism are bandied about in this article. Faculty underrepresentation does not automatically imply racism, and it's important to remember this because calling people racists is usually not the best way to secure their cooperation (which means we should only do so when it is truly justified). More broadly, if racism in the academy is a serious problem, and if we want non-POCs to take it seriously, it deserves serious and meticulous substantiation (e.g. our samples should be as "scientific" as possible to sidestep criticisms of methodological weakness). I have no interest in excusing bad behavior if and where it is occurring—quite the contrary in fact—but we do ourselves no favors by jumping too quickly to pessimistic conclusions that are only weakly supported by the available data.
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By: michinyuja on 6/13/2010 2:22AM
the problem with people who are students for too long is that they start thinking that they know everything, when the truth is that they know very little outside of books and research that have been handed to them with strict instructions.
as a Ph.D candidate who will be braving the job market, as interesting as you found the article, you probably should have kept your criticisms to yourself until you'd actually BEEN hired and gained some experience.
you do yourself no favors by trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs before you've even left the womb.
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By: Larry C. Menyweather-Woods on 6/13/2010 2:41PM
Often I read comments like "darkfacaulties" and just by-pass them for their "so-called" words of wisdom often prove to be from individuals who have either not read the available data (and "darkfaculties is obviously one who has not read the empirical data which has been gathered across the decades)or just desire to enter the dialogue to allow others know their IQ. Your points have been properly addressed across the last 40 years as has been obvious in Peer-reviewed Journals, White & Black. This is not a matter of crying "wolf" as you would like others to think it is. Every point you would like to be adhered to, why don't you, as a graduating PhD and Social Scientist make legitimate attempts to disprove what you assume to be "cavalier?" It is quite obvious your educational pursuit has been somewhat mired by the taste of arrogance, so I respectfully suggests you take a look at your own suggestions and disprove the basic tenets which have been proven. I respectfully suggests expand your reading material, be as suspicious with what you think you believe, and most of make certain the reality is not marred by your wish or dream. Check out the words of the late US Senator and Public Intellect according to liberal, conservative, and moderate (?) think-tanks, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, attributed to him while Undersectary of Labor entitled, "National Call to Action: The Negro Family" specifically pay attention to the Introduction and Chapter 1 so you may gain knowledge of perceptions. Congrats on achieving the highest degree the Doctor of Philosophy. It is a worthy accomplishment attained by a few. Besides Moynihan, read back issues of The Black Scholar, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Black Psychology to name a few.
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By: Deborah Stroman on 6/10/2010 4:33PM
To B.S. (How appropriate!): Your science is flawed. Please go back to your cave. Thank you.
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By: darkfaculties on 6/10/2010 4:41PM
I would also like to point out that another reason for methodological cogency is to help counter the racist ravings of fools like BillSchrier. For example, here's a thorough statistical debunking of the notion that a single number can capture anything meaningful about a person's "general intelligence": http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/523.html
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By: Underrepresented faculty on 6/10/2010 5:12PM
POC often do not get the informal mentoring that majority or well represented faculty and Ph.D. students get. This, in turn, affects their relative levels of publication productivity and learning curve. People tend to mentor those whom they perceive to be more like them, or as I have heard many white faculty state "that you can have a beer with", perpetuating the historical effects of racism, even if not intentional.
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By: HighTime Reality on 6/10/2010 6:38PM
What is it about black people's reality that after 400-years of sailing around in circles in boats of deprevation and despair we just cannot seem to come to grips with the fact that "Race Matters". RACISM in America is America. Let me repeat that statement for those of you blinded by too many years of being immersed in America's cesspools of hypocrisy and self-destructive propaganda.... RACISM in America is America.
As a tenured Professor in mathematics and economics, having finished my undergrad, masters and PhD programs as a stellar academic, at the end of the day the institutional power structure sees my dark skin first, Period.
I can rattle off hundreds of irrefutable disparity studies performed over the last decade, examining disparities in income between college educated blacks vs. college educated whites, in addition to the huge disparity in incarcenration rates between blacks and whites. The eye popping findings as characterized by the pronounced disparities between Blacks and Whites up and down America's structured, racialized society, underscores the emphasis on distinct lines of race and ethnicity in America's work place, social settings and institutions, affirming that "Race Matters".
Professor Thomas Shapiro's of Brandies University recently published his findings from analyzing 20 years of data: White Wealth vs. Black Wealth. Take the time to read his findings at least TWICE, then pickup the phone and call Dr. Newsome and THANK her for having the guts to standup and speak truth to power! Maybe, just maybe President Obama can learn to take a page out of Dr. Newsome when it comes to the plight of Black America!
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By: Arnetta on 6/11/2010 9:54AM
African-Americans must have forgotten that the Europeans did not want us to get an education at ALL. What makes you think they will change their strips? We continue to complain about what they are doing to us. We must take the same initial that we brought when we brought HUMANITY to the globe. We are the first Humans on the globe. They know that without the African people we would not have the humanity we have today. They will not teach the TRUTH therefore we must learn the TRUTH and teach it to ourselves and to our children, we will get much better results. Africans give civilization to the world. All of the first civilizations were ALL AFRICAN OR BLACK CIVILIZATIONS. Why do you think we will teach only "Western Civilization? It begans ~1500 A.D. Written civilizations begins ~ 3200 b.C.E. by a pharaoh name Narmer or Menes. This can be found on your computer an in the Libraries and in any Ancient Egyptians Museums. The ancient Egyptians were BLACK skin people. The Europeans just came on the pages of History with Alexander the Greek because nothing he did was GREAT. He was destructive as possible as they continue to be so. They have had several periods of the "Dark Ages' where all scientific knowledge was BANNED. The knowledge that they claim now was copied from Africans. Do you owm research. You can began with their "Age of Exploration or Discovery" before that time Europe was 99.% illiterate, that was only 500 years ago. They will never teach the truth in the schools therefore we must find a way to get the truth to our people and stop looking to them to do the right thing.
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By: M. Rick Turner on 6/11/2010 11:57AM
Until those inside the universities, i.e. Black ,White and other student leaders and staff becoming involved in the conversation, or starting a conversation on this critical matter, nothing will change.
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By: dvine on 6/11/2010 1:37PM
It's sad because we teach our children that education is key and then once you got it, there's still an issue w/the color of your skin.. When will ppl realize that GOD mad us. How can they claim to love him but hate us. Hypocrites!!
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