Monthly Archives: May 2015

It’s the time of year when I’m grading finals and wondering if I’ll be teaching my summer course (this year on British Romanticism and the abolitionist movement).

And I’m wrestling with this essay I’ve been writing since January about little kids and Citizen and Kara Walker’s “Subtlety.”

And I have book revisions due in a few months to one of those dream editors who is so supportive and smart that he makes you want to work ten times harder and twenty times faster.

Plus, this month I’m at Bryn Mawr because Michelle Moravec has lured me into another digital humanities moment.

And I need to see my New York family before they totally disown me (my goddaughter is about to finish her first year of college; attention must be paid).

All of this is to say that all I can do right here is share the storify of some thoughts I had yesterday on twitter in reaction to two stories about diversity at Brown and Columbia:  “Does Faculty Diversity Need Targets?” and Leaks in the Pipeline

Here is how the story about Brown begins:

“Brown University made a bold promise at its inaugural National Diversity Summit last month: to double its proportion of underrepresented minority faculty by 2025. The announcement, to which the faculty was already privy, drew praise on campus and off, but also questions about how Brown would achieve such a goal. It sparked a larger discussion about the best way for institutions to aggressively diversify faculties, too, especially at elite institutions, when candidate pools remain relatively small.”

And I’m intrigued by these compelling figures from Columbia:

 Fall 2014 numbers, which are the most recent figures available, show that out of the University’s 3,806 total faculty members, only 921 are minorities, and 1,572 are women. These numbers continue to tick downward on the tenure track. Columbia has 1,096 tenured faculty members, but only 199 are minorities, and only 282 are women.

I’ll be critical (and maybe even scathing) later, but it’s worth noting the complete candor in this Columbia piece. It depicts a university having the right kind of struggle about developing and maintaining meaningful diversity. And it’s bracing and inspiring to see a scholar like Alondra Nelson shaping this conversation.

So here’s the storify:

People rarely post comments on either of my blogs, but if you have questions, ask them, and I’ll explore them at some point when I can see the sky again.