Face Off: Diverse faculty offers broader education

To ensure the best possible education for students, we must have
a racially diverse faculty. If two professors are competing for a
position, and one is well qualified and would help diversify the
faculty, while the other is a person who is not of color but
considered more qualified, I believe the professor who is a
minority should get the position because he may actually be the
better person for the job.

Before typewriters start clicking and letters are sent, let me
clarify that this is if the goal of a campus is to create diversity
at the faculty level.

The issue of the “best qualified” candidate is
subjective. Especially when taking into account that students are
not calling out for a professor with a deeper knowledge of the
material or two years more experience, but diversity and
representation. Somehow I’m not too concerned about an
under-qualified candidate seeping through the cracks. I doubt that
my would-be professor could be a 16-year-old boy in disguise, who
never really graduated high school. But if somehow my professors
could be more representative of the student body (which isn’t
diverse enough either) or perhaps more racially diversified, I
think more aggressive measures need to be taken.

The University of Washington is one such school that took more
aggressive measures when all else seemed to fail. Despite past
attempts and marginal “successes” only 10 percent of
the school’s professors were of color. In a 1998 memo
outlining new initiatives designed to, “focus resources on
the recruitment and retention of faculty of color,” the
university decided to “encourage departments to consider a
larger array of candidates than they otherwise would.” This
would help the university obtain what it felt was the best
candidates and faculty, “especially women and
minorities.”

By now this incessant talk about creating a more diverse
learning environment must of course seem incredibly redundant.
Fortunately, the American Council on Education has a handy-dandy
little guide that puts into words what may be sometimes difficult
to verbalize in a concise manner. It states, and I fervently agree
that, “Diversity enriches the educational experience. We
learn from those whose experiences, beliefs, and perspectives are
different from our own, and these lessons can be taught best in a
richly diverse intellectual and social environment.”

Apparently I am not the only one who believes we need to broaden
our horizons.

I am not suggesting that administrators should pick unqualified
candidates for the sake of diversity. Nor am I suggesting that a
professor who is a minority cannot compete at the same level as
other professors. I am saying that if we are committed to
diversifying our campus and we are given the opportunity to choose
among a group of candidates, all of whom are highly qualified, we
should pursue diversity to enrich the learning environment.

Varona is a third-year studying English. E-mail her at
[email protected].