College Tenure for Minorities
Deciding who gets tenure is among the most important, far-reaching and difficult tasks of a college president. These choices invoke personal, professional and institutional considerations. I am sorry that John Maguire, president of the Claremont University Center and Graduate School, is being personally singled out as the one to blame for Claremont’s denial of tenure to Reginald Clark, an African-American faculty member (Commentary, June 12).
John was a “freedom rider” in the 1960s, marched to Selma with Martin Luther King Jr., and fought against ignorance and bigotry while serving as president of SUNY College at Old Westbury. He has been a longtime member of the NAACP and serves on the local and national boards of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He is not the villain. It is too easy to point the finger of discrimination at him, declare him guilty and ignore the larger, systematic issues at work.
African-Americans and other minorities continue to struggle to gain entry to academic life. Staying there (even when they become faculty members) and rising to positions of prominence is even harder. Unbiased evaluation of their credentials and abilities remains an elusive goal. The frightfully low number of minority faculty members is shameful. This is even more true when only tenure-track positions are considered. Our failure to deal with this issue in a more forthright and urgent manner indicts us all.
Considerable progress has been made at the Claremont Colleges in terms of the number and rank of minorities in faculty and administrative positions. These institutions, like nearly all of the 3,000 other colleges and universities in our nation--including my own--have begun the efforts to create an academic environment of both competence and compassion that invites and embraces ideas and persons reflective of the grand diversity that is America. Only when that has been accomplished by trustees, administrators, faculty and students can we honestly and accurately use the word “excellence” to describe the performance or the aspirations of our higher educational institutions.
JOHN BROOKS SLAUGHTER
President, Occidental College
Los Angeles
