The Berkeley Beacon

Media Credit: yardmagazine.harvard.edu Evelynn Hammonds

Media Credit: the-bac.edu Ted Landsmark

Media Credit: diversityoncampus.com JoAnn Moody

In a report released Monday, a panel of outside evaluators found unintentional racial biases at Emerson College and offered several recommendations to rectify its tenure and promoting process.

The report recommended higher standards of professional development and support for pre-tenure faculty members, greater clarity within each academic department regarding requirements for tenure and promotion, more incorporation of multi-cultural competency among the faculty and administration and the hiring more full professors and tenure-track faculty as well as already tenured black professors.

"There are to be found at Emerson unexamined and powerful assumptions and biases about the superiority, preferability and normativeness of European-American culture, intellectual pursuits, academic discourse, leadership, and so on," the report said. "Something must change in an institution committed to teaching and learning about the positive value and contributions to the larger society made by diverse cultures."

One of the problems plaguing the tenure process outlined in the study was a sense of distrust among faculty members toward the administration and among administrators toward faculty members.

Faculty committees, administrators said, always and without reservation recommend their junior colleagues for tenure. Members of the faculty, on the other hand, told the panel that high-level administrators search for technicalities to reject tenure candidates.

"That observation made by the panel, unfortunately, is correct," said special assistant to the president David Rosen. "But the level of trust and cooperation between the faculty assembly and administration has actually been strengthened by the review of the tenure procedures...I think we've gone some distance in restoring that trust."

President Jacqueline Liebergott and Faculty Assembly Chair Brooke Knight released a joint statement Monday thanking the committee members and applauding the "thoughtful" report.

"If we respond appropriately, we can make Emerson an even better, more diverse and inclusive community. We are committed to addressing all of the issues raised in the report collectively as administration and faculty, and we welcome input from all members of the community," the statement said.

The report was compiled by a panel of three outside evaluators, including President of the Boston Architectural College and civil rights advocate Ted Landsmark, diversity expert and consultant JoAnn Moody and Dean of Harvard College and Professor of the History of Science and of African American Studies Evelynn Hammonds. Since August 2009, they made four visits to campus and conducted several dozen interviews with faculty, students and administrators.

The investigation was requested by the faculty following the rejected tenure bids of Professor Roger House and former Professor Pierre Desir, who were the only two black faculty members up for the promotion amid a group that also included three white professors.

Desir, who left the college to teach at Dillard University in New Orleans, said he thought the panel did an excellent job evaluating the college's issues concerning diversity and reflected many of the problems he experienced during his time at Emerson.

"I think the important point is where [the panelists] say the administration didn't see theselves as racist. Attitudes and preconceptions of the world in substance and effect are racist-the privileged, white, European ways of seeing the world," Desir said in a phone interview. "That's always been the problem even with the most liberal and well-meaning, they just don't realize it."

One of the report's particular findings directly related to an issue Desir encountered during his tenure run, who felt his work in cinematography was not appreciated by administrators who evaluated him. The report said creative work submitted for tenure evaluation was sometimes "regarded as less valuable than traditional academic scholarship, and thus receives short shrift."

Rosen said while the college would be taking each and every recommendation made by the panel seriously, and at some point implement them all, it will be a time-consuming process. At least one town hall meeting will be held within a month that will focus discussion on the report's findings.

"It will take time to craft very specific responses that will work here at Emerson. A lot of them require planning and training," Rosen said. "Our plan is to take up all of the recommendations in conjunction with the faculty assembly. We'll work together on them one by one."

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