Diversity Activists react to Levin's faculty plan

PATRICK MCGARVEY/YH SHEELA V. PAI/YH DIFFERENT STROKES: As President Richard Levin, GRD '74, announced broad new hiring initiatives, activists took to the Berkeley walls to show how far Yale has to go.

After a year of student rallies and chalk signs urging greater faculty diversity, University President Richard Levin, GRD '74, has finally taken steps to diversify Yale's hiring. On Tues., Feb. 23, Levin and Provost Alison Richard issued a memo to the faculty of Yale College, and Levin held a press conference on Wed., Feb. 24, to discuss Yale's new plan of attack.

According to Levin, the University's new approach to hiring and promotion--drafted during the Yale Corporation meeting last weekend--involves a joint effort between departments and the Administration. While the University will provide the financial resources and administrative support needed to increase diversity among Yale College faculty, departments have been asked to start thinking "specifically and creatively about how to increase diversity and about how to bring new faculty" to Yale in the coming years. They will also help the University set tenure diversity objectives for each department and program at Yale. These objectives will not be quotas, however. "We have no target numbers," Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, explained. "We will always be looking very carefully at the numbers and thinking of realistic but ambitious goals."

The new plan commits additional resources to departments and fields with few women and minority faculty members to make "junior or senior faculty appointments that will remain in place for the duration of an appointee's time at Yale." In addition, Levin pledged to create a new position in the Provost's Office over the next few months to aid the diversity-oriented recruitment efforts of the departments. Levin added that departments and administrators will develop "objectives for increased representation of women and
minorities" sometime
this spring.

While the University heralds the plan as a major step forward, student activists do not think it will be enough. Though Student Coalition for Diversity (SCD) moderator Lee Wang, BK '99, applauded the University's effort, she was skeptical of the plan's effectiveness. Wang said the plan's lack of a specific time frame, as well as the fact that it doesn't address curriculum diversity, disappointed her. "It's impossible to address tenure reform without addressing curriculum diversity," she said. "Yale endorses a very narrow view of what deserves to be taught."

Women's Center Student Director Eunice Cho, CC '99, also criticized the plan. "It lacks introspection and doesn't address what's going on in the culture here. There's no systematic examination of why things are the way they are," she said. "It also doesn't address the issue of longevity."

Highlights of Yale's new faculty diversity plan On Wed., Feb. 24, President Richard Levin, GRD '74, and Provost Alison Richard publicly issued a plan of action to diversify the faculty of Yale College: * RESOURCES: Departments and fields with very few women will receive new resources for the duration of a female faculty appointee's time at Yale. * LEADERSHIP: In the coming months, the provost will create a new position to support departmental efforts to recruit women and minority candidates. * FACULTY COMMITMENT: At the outset of every search, the deans will ask departments to identify women and minority candidates for the position. * OBJECTIVES: For the rest of this spring, leadership of departments and programs will establish objectives, not specific goals or targets, for increased representation of women and minorities in each unit.

Tenure activists believe every department needs to reconsider the environment it creates for female and minority scholars. Melissa Felder, SY '02, Women's Center political action coordinator, said Levin's plan should urge departments to change drastically their current methods of searching for and recruiting promising academics to come to Yale. For a plan to be effective, she said, "We can't have white men recruiting white men," as she claims Yale does now.

According to Cho, an effective plan will not only make departments change the way they recruit scholars, but also revamp the internal academic structure of Yale in order to retain them. Wang added that the proposal can only work if it holds departments accountable for their numbers of tenured female and minority faculty.

At the press conference, Levin said the reforms were the product of a long-term examination of Yale's hiring policies. "Each year, the Provost and I make a report to the Corporation on the status of women and minority representation among all employees of the University, and each year the Provost and I have looked at the numbers and felt we have to do better," he said. "We've been working quietly behind the scenes, and this has actually been very effective--but over the summer we thought the time was right for a more public approach."

But student leaders are convinced that Levin's current plan is a result of their continued efforts. "The proposal is in large part a response to student pressure," Wang said. "Students have highlighted the fact that Yale is in trouble and is really behind the Ivy League schools in terms of numbers and curriculum diversity."

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