Panel Finds Emerson College Ignored Role Racial Bias Plays in Tenure & Promotion, Only Four Black Professors With Tenure on Faculty

An external review panel has found that Emerson College, based in Boston, has ignored the role racial bias plays in tenure and promotion, which led to an overwhelmingly white faculty and left African American professors literally out in the cold, according to The Boston Globe. The college commissioned the review following the controversy sparked after two black professors were denied tenure.

According to The Boston Globe, the three-member panel, headed by Ted Landsmark, a civil rights activist and president of Boston Architectural College, found no overt racism barring the recruitment and retention of black professors, but it said enduring stigma and negative bias leave African American academics caught in a “caste-like position,” where their intellectual worthiness and contributions are often implicitly undervalued and their career advancement slowed. Ouch. It is surprising that only four of the college's 117 tenured and tenure-track faculty are black. Equally damning is the fact that just three are tenured and two of them had to sue for the promotion.

According to The Boston Globe, the panel has recommended that the college focus on hiring African-American faculty who are already tenured elsewhere, provide better mentoring and professional development for tenure-track faculty, clarify departmental tenure requirements, and increase the multicultural competency of faculty and administrators to better recognize their biases.

The other two members of the panel were Evelynn Hammonds, dean of Harvard College, and JoAnn Moody, a national consultant on faculty diversity and development.