On September 18, 2015, the Yale Daily News published an article that touched upon the issue of faculty diversity at Yale. In the spirit of transparency and to advance the conversation of this most important topic, we offer our unedited responses in full to the queries posed by the YDN.
Richard G. Bribiescas
Deputy Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity
Professor of Anthropology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
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Tamar Gendler
Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy; Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science
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For the responses of Deputy Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity Richard Bribiescas, click here.
Over the past year, how do you view Yale's success in regards to the hiring and retention of a diverse faculty body? Are there any hard numbers you can provide in terms of progress?
Yale’s incoming faculty this year include professors at the Assistant, Associate and Full Professor level who bring excellence to our faculty across the FAS, and an excellent faculty is a diverse faculty. In terms of the demographic information that you seek: of the 28 FAS faculty who are either arriving in 2015-16 or who were hired during the 2014-15 hiring cycle, 15 are men and 13 are women, including 2 women in MCDB, one in Computer Science, one in Statistics, one in Economics, and one in Philosophy – all of which are departments where women faculty have been underrepresented. (In addition, there are 3 women faculty joining History, two joining English, and two joining Psychology.) Of those 28 faculty, three are of African descent (one in History, one in Psychology, one in Biomedical Engineering) and six are of East Asian or South Asian descent (CS, G&G, History, Economics, MB&B, and English.) All of the faculty who have been hired are world-class scholars, teachers and mentors whose presence on campus will contribute to the university’s commitment to leadership in the creation, preservation and dissemination of knowledge.
How have you seen the creation of the deputy provost for faculty development and diversity position impacting the way in which the University addresses concerns in regards to faculty diversity? Has the University released any formal benchmarks in regards to hiring and retention?
The creation of the position of the deputy provost for faculty development and diversity will help the FAS in pursuing its goals to attract an excellent faculty, and an excellent faculty is a diverse faculty. The deputy provost has met with each of the FAS Tenure Appointment and Promotions Committees (Humanities, Social Sciences, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences and Engineering) to train them on issues surrounding diversity, including best practices for overcoming implicit bias, and the office has prepared an outstanding set of materials which are being used by all FAS search committees to ensure that they follow best practices and strategies for identifying an excellent and diverse pool of candidates. (These can be found at
http://provost.yale.edu/faculty-search-committee-resources.) Much of the key research on implicit bias in hiring was conducted here at Yale – by Jack Dovidio in Psychology working with Yale colleagues including Jo Handelsman, Corinne Moss-Racusin and Tori Brescoll; by Jennifer Richeson – who will be joining our Psychology faculty in July 2016; and by Mahzarin Banaji, who began her seminal work on implicit bias while on the faculty here at Yale.
In the past two months, three faculty members of the African American studies department have been recruited away from the University, in part, due to concerns about the tenure process. How does Yale's tenure and appointment process compare to peer institutions? Are there any efforts to create more structural support for faculty of color (or existing support you believe should be highlighted)?
Faculty turnover is an inevitable part of the academic lifecycle. We are saddened by the departures of faculty from the African American Studies department who have chosen to continue their careers elsewhere. We are committed to recruiting and retaining faculty in this important field, which has long been a historic strength of Yale’s.
I have met or will be meeting with each of the departing faculty, to solicit their advice about how Yale can become even more effective in mentoring and supporting its junior faculty, its faculty of color, its women faculty, and any other faculty for whom Yale has not been as effective in its support as we seek to be for all our faculty. We have received a number of excellent suggestions which we are implementing already.