Crimson:

"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."
 

It is probably not coincidental that the summer issue of Radcliffe Quarterly, featuring President Faust on the cover and focusing much on her career, begins with an article titled 'Strategies for Workplace Diversity: What Works and What Doesn't"
 

The Crimson reporters are again either disingenous or lazy. The 'peer institutions' were selected by each school, not using any objective standards. If you read the report it is apparent that some obvious 'peers' were deliberately not included in the report. Most notably Bollinger's Columbia.
 

The Bloomberg story is in the Woman/Style section. How nice.
 

Richard, are you asking an honest question:

"So what's the real story here—is Harvard serious about diversity, and if it is, what's taking so long?"

or do you think you know the answer. If so, do tell.
 

In the Crimson article Steve Hyman comes forth in uncommonly blunt ways:

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.”
 

D.D.D. a painful institutional affliction...

Diversity
Deficit
Disorder
 

The sophomoric treatment of the counterfactual in Hammonds' report is more than disingenous.

At the very least the authors could have selected peer institutions among the top ten in the US News rankings, rather than ask the Deans to pick the schools with which they wanted to be compared.

That, and the release of the report during the slumber summer months, conveys clearly how interested Harvard's administration is in facing the issues the report addresses so inadequately in any serious way.
 

This is an example of the kind of thing Presidents who are genuinely interested in diversity, and who are also smart, do:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/07/06/diversity.html
 

Perhaps Harvard could demonstrate a little excellence in how it thinks about diversity. It may be time to replace Hammonds with someone who can be more effective in examining and acting upon those issues than she has been.
 

I have to argue that I think Evelyn Hammonds was the perfect choice for the Committee on Diversity and Faculty Development(in the Provost's office.)
I heard her speak in 1987 as a guest speaker in Anne Fausto-Sterling's Brown University course on Women and Minorities in Science. If I am not mistaken Ms Hammonds department at Harvard was History of science before her appointment to Assistant Provost. I can't think of a better person to be in that role but she needs institutional support to carry out her mission.
 

A significant contributing factor is probably Harvard's unique record with respect to internal promotion. Recent cohorts of PhDs in many fields are quite diverse, but Harvard doesn't seem to respond well to scholars much under 50, regardless of their race or gender. Hoxby's departure was at least indirectly related to her spouse's tenure case, and Prudence Carter, in Sociology, left b/c of poor tenure prospects (and, too, was snapped up by Stanford). Among 'peer' institutions, only Yale has a tenure system comparable to Harvard's. Since the pool of mid-career female and minority scholars is limited, Harvard should look to junior hires and internal promotion as a key part of its diversity strategy. Tenure-from-within would surely help with its lackluster reputation with respect to teaching and advising as well.
 

Harvard has been looking to junior hires, and has had a (true but demanding) tenure-track policy for two to three years no, so is much like Princeton. Yale is playing catch-up and going in the direction of Harvard.

But what if junior hires, i.e. at the departmental level, have not been showing great diversity, and for reasons that are not in any way sinister? That would make any significant long-term statistical shift impossible.
 

Trivial point perhaps, but what do you mean "And this is coming from a white guy?" Aren't white people paying just about as much attention to this issues these days as "colored" people? Are you suggesting that your assessment ("this is pretty bad") would have been even more rigorous "coming from a black guy"? I don't get it.

And by the way, if blacks are properly called African-Americans, shouldn't you be calling yourself an Anglo-American? Just curious.
 

In re: 10:38#1
"Harvard has had a tenure policy"? What does that even mean? Having a procedure on the books and cultivating a climate in which junior faculty are respected and expected to succeed are two very different things.

Do you have data on jr. faculty diversity, or are you just refuting my argument by stating the possibility?
 

To the poster who asked if I was posing a serious question: The answer is yes. This is very much an issue where I defer to the expertise of the people who work at Harvard.
 

10:51, the data for women and minorites are in the report to which Richard links:

p. 17, fig. 2 Women tenure-track faculty as a percentage of total tenure-track faculty. For FAS Humanities, e.g. :

05 -- 35% -- 22/63
06 -- 34% -- 23/68
07 -- 31% -- 20/65

p. 20, fig. 5, minority tenure -track, etc.:

05 -- 16% -- 10/63
06 -- 15% -- 10/68
07 -- 14% -- 9/65

The figures are better elsewhere in FAS, significantly for minorities (which includes Asian) in the Natural Sciences, and for women in the Social Sciences.

None of this need suggest a pattern, given that each appointment represents an individual choice by departmental search committee based on many factors.

The point is it is hard to get real movement without actual quotas, and the movement is not going to be apparent across a two-year stretch.
 

11:57
'None of this need suggest a pattern,' indeed, though it should be noted that the 3 years of data you show could reflect the effect of departing junior faculty, as well as, or instead of, a lack diversity among new hires. My focus of interest is retention rather than recruitment; lacking data on both, we don't know for sure the source of the problem. But anecdotal evidence tells me that women and minority face MORE obstacles serving as faculty at Harvard than in being hired in the first place. Thus I hypothesize that many 'diverse' junior faculty leave before coming up for tenure, frustrated and demoralized. As I see it, Harvard works very hard at junior faculty recruitment but seriously falls down when it comes to mentoring and retention. It would be truly interesting to examine full data on in- and out-flows across different demographics. For example, my memory of an earlier report was that female faculty only stand a statistically significant chance of tenure if they do not have children, a result that is not true for male faculty. Under this rubric, Harvard can hire all the young female faculty it wants; the numbers will barely budge over the long run.
 

Why would Harvard want more racial and ethnic diversity in the first place? Have you read Putnam's research on how damaging diversity is to trust?
 

Harvard could instantaneously improve its diversity record giving instructional appointments to janitors, gardeners and cooks. How about creating a 'college for Harvard workers'?
 

How about counting also the cleaning ladies of Harvard faculty and administrators?
 

very clever... the numbers for diversity would also improve if all tenured faculty were fired. There is little diversity there.
 

8.56 above. Ms. Hammonds may have been a good guest speaker at Brown and even a good Professor in the HIstory Department but she had not been an effective Assistant Provost. How does the lousy reports from her office demonstrate effectiveness? and has anyone heard of any public or even private discussion of these reports? when was the last time anyone heard of these reports discussed at the science center, with attendance from the deans and faculty?

She may be a nice person, a fine scholar and a good guest speaker but an effective leader to address diversity concerns at Harvard she has not been.

But who knows, perhaps this is what is expected of her in that role.
 

hey 3.28, you are making quite a leap of inference there. If it's known that the odds of tenure are better without children, why can't Harvard junior faculty do something about this? haven't they heard of contraceptives in that place?
 

hey kids! wake up and smell the roses. An office that produces reports about diversity and then releases them in mid August... do you think is meant to do anything other than that?

oh, and a nice web-site of course.
 

Harvard's Commitment to Diversity: Hammonds Midsummer Night's Reports!
 

Shoddy reports they are. Lack of appropriate comparison groups, lack of historical trends. Couldn't they at least provide figures at Harvard for the last 10 years? or would these trends show regression rather than progress?
 

4:24 -- excellent point there. All female faculty should be expected to put their lives on hold until after tenure. No child-bearing allowed. Of course, most faculty don't get tenure until after age 40, but what the hell... You can always adopt, or go without. Being tenured faculty at Harvard is so much more wonderful that being tenured at any other American institution of higher education, it's well worth the sacrifice.
 

not sure which makes Harvard look more stupid: a) they appointed to the position of Provost for Diversity someone unqualified to do the job well, or b) they appointed someone who is actually capable to improve the dismal situation but provided her with no support to be able to do anything, thus rendering her inept.
 

It's the LHS factor stupid!
 

stop blaming Summers! he stepped down two years ago, almost.
 

the ambition of Harvard faculty knows no limits. They want to procreate AND be given tenure. What else? a cleaning lady perhaps?
 

Why not a cleaning lady? They can be very insightful regarding Presidential politics as was discussed here exactly six months ago today:

https://richardbradley.net/2007/02/ruth-wisse-and-her-cleaning-lady.html
 

He stepped down 13 and a half months ago, 5:26, so those stats are at his door, and given women in science and Cornel West, etc., and the fall-out from both, some of the blame must also be. It didn't seem an inviting place to women and minorities. Three years out from now will make interesting reading -- or maybe not.
 

Yes let's hope that three years from now it will be a different story. If it is this will be to Drew Faust's credit.

How much will she be able to accomplish with the leadership team set in place by LHS is to be seen.
 

Why was the report on faculty satisfaction conducted by Hammonds never released? why were the findings not included in the report just released? How is hidding the facts emerging from that study effective?
 

Drew Faust has a golden opportunity to send a clear signal to faculty and administration about where she stands with regards to diversity at Harvard.

All she needs to do is send a letter to faculty --which she can do at the push of a button-- expressing concern with the results of the diversity report and faculty satisfaction survey, and expressing an interest in making rapid progress in overcoming the challenges identified in those reports. She could even attach the reports and convey to the Deans that she expects them to have honest discussions in their Departments/Schools about their content in preparation for a meeting of Deans specifically focused on developing an action plan, with measurable benchmarks, for progress in each department/school.
 

The divisional deans of FAS have been pushing very hard for diversity. In every search for a new faculty member, whether senior or junior, they require detailed reports at several points along the way about the number of women and members of minorities represented in (1) the pool of applicants as a whole, (2) the list of candidates still being considered after the first cut, and (3) the short list. It's not clear whether this strategy is paying dividends, however.
 

The Divisional Deans and the President should seek the counsel of those Deans who can show demonstrable progress and learn from the successful efforts of those schools.

At the Graduate School of Education, for instance, half of the faculty are women and one fifth are faculty of color. Among new hires 40% are faculty of color and 40% are women.
 

They let Hoxby walk.
 

Who's Hoxby?
 

Blair Hoxby was an Associate Professor of History and Literature at Harvard who accepted a tenured appointment at Stanford.

Not clear what is unusual about this move or how it pertains to this discussion.

Happens all the time in academia, people move around.
 

Caroline Hoxby is an African American Professor of Economics who has left for Stanford. Rich blogged about her before. Quite a catch for Stanford. For some reason the diversity interests which have been so vocal about the departures of Cornel West, Anthony Appiah, Marcelline Morgan, Larry Bobo, etc., have had little to say about Hoxby's departure.
 

Cornell West, Apiah, Morgan and the Bobos were all pretty vocal about diversity and its value. Perhaps Hoxby was not as vocal as they were so it would be fitting that people would not see her departure as affecting diversity at Harvard in any meaningful way.

Maybe she herself did not communicate to others in what way her departure was relevant to Harvard´s diversity.
 

Why would it have been Caroline Hoxby's duty to comment publicly on this? It was well-known that she was African-American, so why blame her if people didn't understand how her departure would affect diversity at Harvard? That's not good logic.