Snail-Like Progress in Increasing Black Faculty at Harvard University

According to the annual report of the Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity at Harvard University, there are 46 black ladder faculty at Harvard University during the current academic year. Ladder faculty are those who are tenured or who are on the tenure track. The number of blacks is up one from a year ago. Blacks make up 3.1 percent of all ladder faculty at Harvard University.

There are 23 black faculty members on the faculty of arts and sciences, which includes Harvard College and the nonprofessional graduate schools. This number is down one from a year ago. Black faculty are heavily concentrated in the social sciences. Seventeen of the 21 blacks on the faculty of the arts and sciences teach in the social sciences. There is only one black faculty member in the humanities. There are three blacks teaching in the life sciences and none in the physical sciences.

Another 23 blacks teach at professional schools at Harvard University. Seven of these are professors at Harvard Law School. There are four blacks on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and four on the faculty at the Harvard School of Public Health. There are no black faculty members at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

There are two black full-time faculty members at Harvard Medical School. In addition, there are 164 black faculty members who work at one of seven hospitals affiliated with the university. Blacks make up 2 percent of the more than 7,800 medical school-affiliated faculty.

Copyright © 2011. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.