The Yale Daily News reports on a contentious faculty meeting at which women and minorities (in particular, though not exclusively) lamented a lack of diversity on the Yale faculty. The story shows just how complicated this issue is, and how the specific issues can break down differently for women, as opposed to people of color. For example: It may be relatively easy to recruit women in the humanities, but not in the sciences. The challenges for minority faculty seem even greater: they appear to be more scarce across the board.

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology chair Stephen Stearns explained that “his department recently hired four new faculty members, two of whom were women, and although the department’s senior faculty helped search for minority candidates, they were unable to find any candidates of color whom they believed would have reasonable chances of attaining tenure. Also, Stearns said it is difficult to identify minority candidates because candidates often do not indicate their ethnicity in their applications.”

It is an irony that, while Larry Summers’ clumsy remarks back in January have been extremely damaging to him, and at least in the short term damaging to Harvard, there’s no doubt that Summers has brought enormous attention to a serious problem at campuses across the country. As he might put it, this wasn’t his intent, but it certainly was his effect.

Summers’ story, like that of the challenge of recruiting female and minority professors, defies simple conclusions….