The University has hired a significant number of tenured and tenure-track faculty of color over the past five years, but many students and professors are still calling for a more diverse faculty. Eight African-American faculty members left this semester, and many students have cited the University's low faculty-retention rate as its biggest obstacle to diversity.
While the importance of maintaining a core of minority faculty members is shared by administrators, creating a staff that is representative of Tufts' undergraduate population is an extremely difficult process. Some students feel that Tufts has simply declared diversity a priority and set aside funds, but has accomplished little else.
Currently, just over 18 percent of tenured or tenure-track faculty are of color - with 26 Asian or Pacific-Islander professors, 20 black professors, and 12 Hispanic professors, compared to the 253 white, non-Hispanic educators.
While Ballou views these figures as promising, others assert that the number of minority professors on campus is unacceptable, denying students of color adequate mentors and a college life that reflects the nation's demographics.
"If the effort is not put forth to get a diverse faculty and staff, how do you expect students to be more accepting of increased diversity?" freshman Tufts Community Union Senator Tiffany Gee said.
A significant effort has been made to attract faculty of color to Tufts, and almost half of the tenure or tenure-track professors hired over the past five years - 33 of 72 - belong to a racial minority group.
According to these statistics, Tufts' efforts to attract new faculty members of color are particularly successful, said Margery Davies, the director of the Office of Diversity Education and Development.
"Most people who are told that 50 percent number are surprised," she said.
However, Tufts has had difficulty retaining the new hires, and during the five-year period, 24 tenure or tenure-track faculty members of color left. Among African-American faculty, there were three tenure-track professors who left, and two non-tenure track - one who had been hired as a replacement faculty member for a one-year term, Davies said. There were also three staff departures.
The reasons for the low retention rate are hard to pinpoint, as a faculty member's decisions to leave Tufts may or may not relate to the University's racial makeup. But critics of the University say that the reason why people leave is less important than the bottom line; there are less faculty of color at Tufts.
One of the 24 faculty members who left was Steven Nelson, now an assistant professor at UCLA specializing in African-American art history. Nelson said that, while he could have imagined a "very long and very fruitful career at Tufts," several race-related issues contribute to Tufts' retention difficulties.
"I was very well treated by the University and by my department, and that said, what was different were issues surrounding expectations. Expectation for minority faculty were different than for white faculty members," he said. "I was also told by various people that 'we love having you here,' but at the same time I was doing a lot of work compared to my white colleagues, and more work compared to most of them," he said.
At Tufts, faculty of color are involved with "extensive mentoring," Vice President of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering Mel Bernstein said, and that extra duty can add some stress to the job. Nelson felt the pressure placed on faculty of color is part of a larger problem related to the way that the administration deals with racial issues.
"The way Tufts defines diversity, which I don't think it good, is that, when there is any sort of a problem, they ask a minority faculty member to help out or sit on a committee," he said. "When you're a young faculty person, it's very difficult to say no. And in my case, it was impossible to say no."
When faculty of color leave, it is often difficult to replace them because of the competitive academic market. Minority professors are in demand.
Bernstein explained that there are a limited number of professors of color in America, and wooing them is a cutthroat business
"Other universities have been actively recruiting faculty," he said. "We've made progress. We've improved our ability to attract a more diverse faculty. We're not able to retain faculty as we would like, for several reasons," he said.
"When you think about the numbers game, when there aren't a lot of us around, people know who you are and they come after you," Nelson said.
A UCLA study examining the status of ethnic-minority college and university faculty found that low numbers of faculty of color make this recruiting process even more difficult.
"A major problem facing higher education is too few people of color are earning doctorate degrees, a job qualification required by the more elite universities. It's incumbent upon higher education to encourage young people of color to pursue academic careers and support them in that endeavor," said Professor Helen Astin, the lead author of the study.
Frustrated with the departure of various African-American professors, the Pan-African Alliance (PAA) is attempting to push the administration to better address the issue of minority hiring and retention. Members of the PAA feel there is more the University could do to solidify its minority faculty base.
"Professors leave in response to a sense of isolation in that they don't have colleagues to work with, that they don't have enough resources from the University, and that they're getting better offers from other universities," PAA political chair Carl Jackson said. "If you look at the issues on campus, what black faculty members would want to stay here and have to deal with all the other issues that take away from their teaching time."
The consequences of a low concentration of minority faculty members are widespread, and many feel that it affects student-faculty relations, student social life issues, and dynamics within the faculty.
"It makes you think that your culture group or your ethnicity isn't important. It even decreases the bond you feel with the faculty because you see a lack of other ethnicities," sophomore Ola Friday said.
A faculty with few members of color can lead to a self-sustaining cycle that hinders attempts to attract and retain professors, according to an Association of American Law Schools document.
"Perhaps the most important way to retain minority professors is to create a genuinely diverse faculty. Without a critical mass of minority colleagues, minority professors often feel isolated and alienated, and are more likely to leave," the articles reads. "If your recruiting stops with one minority professor or with just a few, you may continuously repeat a cycle of hiring a person, then losing that person, hiring a person, then losing that person."
In addressing the issue of faculty diversity, the administration and academic departments are forced to prioritize their goals because of limited funds and the bureaucratic professor selection process.
"Faculty hiring is a really complicated, messy process," Senate Cultural, Ethnicity, and Community Affairs Co-Chair Margie Yeager said. "In a search, they consider a variety of factors. It's hard - you can't just say you're going to higher five new faculty members. So that makes it difficult."
"It's not just an administrative effort. Half is the administration, and half is the departments.... The University can push for diversity initiatives, and the departments can push for diversity, but everyone really has to be working together for it to happen," she said.
"The University encourages the departments to pay attention to diversity, but they can't tell them what to do."
