Blacks’ fight for tenure roils Emerson
College, antibias agency reviewing policies
In its 129-year history, Emerson College has granted tenure to just three black professors. Two of them had to sue for the distinction. Last year, when two more black scholars were up for tenure, school administrators denied them both, despite approval from colleagues in their departments.
The result has been a flurry of accusations and investigations that have swept across the downtown campus and into the academic world around it. The local chapter of the NAACP has cried foul. The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination has launched an inquiry.
And the controversy has heightened worries about Emerson’s ability to attract minority candidates and raised questions about its commitment to retain the few who are already there.
William Smith, director of Emerson’s five-year-old Center for Diversity, acknowledges that, in light of the school’s history, he is often nervous when he talks to people about recruitment. “They say, ‘What happened?’ I say, ‘It’s growing pains.’ It’s an embarrassment.’’
College officials, including president Jacqueline Liebergott, say the rigorous standards for tenure are applied fairly to all candidates at Emerson, which has 76 tenured professors among a full-time faculty of 177. Those who are deemed qualified are granted lifelong jobs at the communications arts school at the end of the six-year tenure process.
But amid pressure from faculty, Liebergott announced that the private school, which has 3,200 students, would convene an outside panel to review how promotion and tenure policies are applied to minority candidates.
The panel, which began its work two weeks ago, is expected to issue its findings and recommendations by January, a report, panel members hope, that will have effects beyond Emerson and will influence other New England colleges struggling to diversify their faculty.
“Students and parents are selecting schools where there are role models of the professionals whom the students aspire to be,’’ said Theodore Landsmark, president ofthe Boston Architectural College and a civil rights leader who is serving on the panel along with Harvard College dean Evelynn Hammonds. “Schools that lack diversity are finding that they are less competitive in a global marketplace,’’ Landsmark said.
While Liebergott said she could not discuss the two disputed cases because tenure deliberations are confidential, she acknowledged in an interview last week that “there are issues for underrepresented minorities here as elsewhere, and we’re trying to work through those.’’
“I’m hoping that what will come out of this committee is recommendations for more aggressive recruiting and ways to build a climate here that will support the community we’re trying hard to build,’’ she said.
Robbie McCauley, a performing arts professor who in 2007 became the first black person to receive tenure at Emerson without a lawsuit, said the plight of her two colleagues who were denied tenure shows that Emerson has a long way to go.
“We need to examine past practice and interrogate the institution around the issue of diversity,’’ McCauley said.
The controversy at Emerson illustrates the difficulties colleges have in assembling a diverse faculty, a problem college officials are trying to address as their student populations grow more diverse.
While African-Americans are 13 percent of American college students, they make up only 5 percent of tenured faculty, according to federal data. At Emerson, blacks make up 3 percent of the student body and 4 percent of tenured faculty.
Minority experiences in academia differ drastically from their white counterparts, according to new research by the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Minority faculty leave academia at higher rates than whites, not because they are more confused about what it takes to succeed but because of factors such as the climate, culture, and collegiality they encounter.
Black junior faculty were less likely than whites to agree that they were being treated fairly and equitably and expressed less agreement with the statement that tenure decisions are based primarily on performance-based criteria, the research suggested. They also reported lower satisfaction regarding personal interaction with tenured colleagues.
Emerson has recently joined the Harvard collaborative of more than 130 colleges to try to make the academic workplace more equitable for early career faculty, Liebergott said.
The college has reached an agreement with one of the two professors who were denied tenure, following a protracted public battle documented last spring in the student newspaper, The Berkeley Beacon. The school will give journalism professor Roger House another shot at tenure in 2011 in exchange for dropping his complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.
House declined recent requests for comment, but previously questioned the fairness of the college’s tenure process. “It seems they have different tenure standards for different people based on race,’’ he told the student newspaper in February.
Pierre Desir, the other professor denied tenure, said in an interview with the Globe last week that the college offered him a similar deal if he dropped his discrimination complaint but that he refused. He is now collecting unemployment and looking for academic jobs elsewhere.
“I deserve tenure now,’’ he said. “I’m very bitter.’’
Desir, a filmmaker and cinematographer, said he felt that Emerson raised the standards on which he would be judged for tenure during his sixth year teaching in the visual and media arts department, echoing a complaint by Claire Andrade-Watkins, a film professor who successfully sued for tenure in 1990.
Andrade-Watkins said that she felt she had not received any guidance, mentoring, or clear expectations when she was up for tenure, but believes the culture of Emerson has improved for minority faculty. “My case has made the departments a lot more transparent, and there is a better process,’’ she said.
Doug Holloway, an Emerson trustee, and Smith, the diversity center director, said the college will begin to actively pursue minority faculty who are already tenured at other institutions and bring them to Emerson in clusters so they can help create a support system to nurture and mentor junior faculty of color.
“Will we walk the walk, or will we continue to talk the talk?’’ Smith asked. “That’s the challenge for the institution.’’
Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com. 