Keep striving for diversity

In his report to the Academic Council last week Provost Peter Lange noted the progress Duke is making in terms of the faculty’s diversity, but acknowledged that Duke needs to continue to improve, particularly in recruiting women and minority faculty members in the natural sciences and engineering departments.

Increasing the diversity of the faculty continues to be an issue of concern across higher education, and rightfully so, though larger societal issues are at play. No single university can solve these issues on its own, but it is problematic that the average Duke student might not be taught by a minority professor throughout his or her entire career unless he or she actively seeks out specific professors or cultural studies courses. More importantly, Duke needs to be known as a place where minority professors are both highly sought after and welcomed.

Public comments made in the past by Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.—a former Duke professor who said he experienced “pure, unadulterated racism” in his time here in 1990—have cast the racial climate at Duke in a negative light. But before rushing to dismiss Gates’s comments as remnants of the past, Duke needs to continue growing in this area. Recruitment can certainly go a long way in changing these perspectives. Would-be faculty members need to know that Duke is just as accommodating to a diverse faculty as we are to a diverse student body.

As Lange’s report indicated, the numbers of female professors and minority professors lag most noticeably in the sciences and in engineering, but Duke needs to continue to increase faculty diversity across all of its departments. The University should strive to advance the diversity of its faculty even beyond the diversity of the larger academic communities to which they belong for the benefit of students inside and outside the classroom.

It may be difficult to grasp the differences female professors and professors with culturally diverse backgrounds can bring to natural sciences or engineering course because we do not yet know what we are missing. We do not have the desired variety of female professors and minority professors for students to be able to do anything but speculate on what this diversity might yield inside the classroom.

Outside the classroom, however, a diverse faculty across departments has numerous benefits for the University. Among them are increased mentorship opportunities for females and minorities, the ability for minority students to racially identify with professors and the overall value diverse points of view and perspectives have in shaping the University.

Duke benefits wholly from a more diverse faculty. Well-represented students will benefit as much from the mentorship opportunities and the classroom experiences more diverse professors can provide. Minority students and female students will have mentors with whom they can more easily identify.

As disciplines and research eventually grow more diverse, so too will approaches to learning become more varied and innovative. Duke should continue to push itself toward the forefront of this progress and lead its peer institutions by example.