"A Diversity of Ideas"

Minorities constitute only 11 percent of the faculty. At least one professor wants to change that.

BIOLOGIST GEORGE LANGFORD, the Colleges E.E. Just Professor of Natural Sciences, is well known for his research at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, where he studies how chemical signals travel along nerve cells. Last year he organized a conference in Hanover about race issues in academia. The conference, "Race Matters," produced a report scheduled for release in June that includes recommendations for adding more minorities to college faculties. Langford, 58, is now organizing a second conference on race in academia to be held this fall.

What's your key concernabout diversity at Dartmouth?

That faculty diversity lags behind student diversity. The College has done an excellent job with student diversity. I'd like to see the same level of diversity among the faculty.

Why should the hiring of more minority faculty be a priority?

Minority students need the kind of mentoring and role models white students have. Right now the minority faculty do a disproportionate amount of mentoring. Minority faculty also expose white students to a diversity of ideas and cultures. There's no better way to do that than through the faculty. It says the College is serious about diversity.

Why has faculty diversity lagged behind student diversity?

I think diversity isn't valued by the faculty as much as it should be. Faculty have to realize that diversity is an important dimension of the College and we have to work to achieve it. The administrative answer is that the faculty doesn't turn over quickly, so it's harder to achieve diversity. I don't think it's lack of turnover. We hire a significant number of new faculty each year—I'd guess about to percent per year. [Editor's Note:Theactual figure is closer to 5 percent.] Since 1991, when I came to Dartmouth, no black professors have been hired in the sciences here. There's also an assumption that there is only a small number of minority candidates, and we hide behind that.

Why is the need for minority facultyin the sciences particularly acute?

Because science and technology drive the economy. With the growing percentage of Hispanics and blacks in the population, we have to draw more students from those groups to keep up the numbers of trained scientists. Minority students tend to go into the social sciences and humanities. As freshmen, blacks and Hispanics tend to express the same level of interest in science as whites. But only 15 percent of black students end up majoring in the sciences, compared to 30 percent of whites. One minority professor isn't enough to change the experience minority students have in the sciences. We need to have more minority faculty who can say to minority students, "You can do this."

How does diversity foster scientific inquiry?

Science, like any other discipline, is a product of culture. What you want in science is a diversity of ideas, and people from different backgrounds tend to have different ideas. Many of the new discoveries occur at the interface between disciplines. So it's important to have faculty who are bringing different perspectives to a given discipline, and we need to value what they are bringing.

Why is Dartmouth failing to recruit minorities for faculty positions?

We are not getting as many minority candidates applying here. It's partly our reputation as a conservative institution. It's a lingering image, not the reality. The reality is that we have a president who is more vocal on diversity than any other president in the Ivy League, we have a good record of recruiting minority students, we have a new diversity dean and we have full-time advisors to minority students. I have no doubt the College has a commitment to diversity.

Is the College's location a drawback?

It's no more a problem for black faculty than white. If we continue to use location as an excuse, we'll never get anywhere. Minorities have always been minorities in white communities.

So what can be done?

We still have searches without minority candidates making it to the list of finalists. We need to decide that diversity is valuable enough to be sure we have minority finalists. If screening according to whatever criteria we use fails to produce minority candidates, we have to realize that we are using criteria that ignore the strengths of minority candidates. We've seen the strengths women bring to campus. They perform as well as men, their scholarship is as good as men's, but they often ask different questions. Minority candidates may ask different questions than whites, but the questions are equally valuable to the academy and scholarship.

Why does this problem persist despitethe administration's emphasis on diversity?

The faculty, not the administration, is responsible for faculty hiring, and we have a process that isn't working. We need to do a better job of identifying minority candidates, encouraging individuals to apply, phoning institutions that are likely to have minority graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. We have to appoint search committees willing to ensure that we have a diverse group of finalists. I'd like to see President Wright meet with departments and use his bully pulpit to emphasize that faculty have a responsibility to recruit a more diverse faculty. There's no way we'll begin to hire minority faculty until the faculty says diversity is important to us.

Langford