Stanford University Running in Place in Efforts to Boost Black Faculty

Stanford University has announced that it is on pace to hire 10 scholars whose research is concentrated on ethnicity or race. The goal was to hire the 10 new professors over a five-year period. Since 2007, 12 scholars have been offered positions and six new hires have joined the Stanford faculty. The university hopes to add three additional scholars this year and two offers have been made.

However, due to turnover and the loss of black faculty to other universities, Stanford has made little progress over the past decade in increasing the number of blacks and other minority faculty on campus. In the recent academic year there were 49 blacks on the Stanford faculty. Ten years earlier there were 47 blacks teaching at Stanford. Due an increase in total faculty during the decade, the black percentage of the faculty at Stanford decreased from 2.8 percent to 2.6 percent. Without Stanford’s laudatory Faculty Development Initiative to create 10 new positions for scholars dealing with race or ethnicity, the black faculty statistics would be lower.

These figures were announced prior to the announcement that Claude Steele would be returning to Stanford as dean of the School of Education. Professor Steele was serving as provost at Columbia University.