“We Are All for Diversity, but . . .”: How Faculty Hiring Committees Reproduce Whiteness and Practical Suggestions for How They Can Change

Abstract

Despite stated commitments to diversity, predominantly White academic institutions still have not increased racial diversity among their faculty. In this article Robin DiAngelo and Özlem Sensoy focus on one entry point for doing so—the faculty hiring process. They analyze a typical faculty hiring scenario and identify the most common practices that block the hiring of diverse faculty and protect Whiteness and offer constructive alternative practices to guide hiring committees in their work to realize the institution's commitment to diversity.

Designing for institutional transformation: Six principles for department-level interventions

“…Learning about and valuing the experiences of others who do not share one's background can foster cultural competency and empathy toward others [121,122]. Finally, learning about documented best practices relevant to one's role in the department (e.g., inclusive hiring practices [123]) can also help to combat oppressive systems. All of these ideas are aligned with principle 3 in that they involve broadening one's personal sources of data and tools for meaning making, with the goal of becoming more anti-oppressive.…”

Gender, Race, and Precarity: Theorizing the Parallels Between Early Childhood Educators and Sessional Faculty in Ontario

“…Ontario PSE and ECEC are no exception to this rule. While universities across the province have drafted equity policies to address discrepancies between predominantly white, male, tenure-track professors and marginalized faculty, the general unwillingness of departments to collect faculty demographic data has rendered the majority of these policies redundant (Abawi 2018;Sensoy & DiAngelo 2017). Moreover, universities continue to operate as neutral spaces whereby racism ceases to exist; this denial increasingly oppresses racialized and Indigenous faculty by glossing over lived experiences (Ahmed 2012;Henry et al 2017).…”

“…The rise in sessional faculty has been particularly devastating for women, racialized, and Indigenous scholars (Sensoy & DiAngelo 2017;Wane & Abawi 2018). The majority of sessional faculty are women, one half to one third of which holds a doctoral degree.…”

“…According to the most recent census data available, fewer than 4 percent of university professors identify as racialized or "visible minority" women (Statistics Canada 2019) and only 1.4 percent of professors self-identify as Indigenous (Foster & Birdsell-Bauer 2018;Henry et al 2017); the number of female Indigenous academics is unknown. Racialized and Indigenous women are concentrated in sessional academic work across Ontario and Canada, while tenure-track positions are largely held by white males (Abawi 2018;Sensoy & DiAngelo 2017). These figures are in stark contrast to the increasing demographics of racialized and Indigenous students on Canadian campuses (Henry et al 2017) and decades of employment equity initiatives to combat institutionalized white privilege in academia (James 2009;.…”

The Elephant (-Sized Belly) in the Room

“…David Perlmutter in [10] tries to demystify fit, but it seems that often it is used as a catchphrase or even a rhetorical slight-of-hand that hiring committees employ to protect the cultural and demographic homogeneity of their institutions. Sensoy and DiAngelo offer a critical look at various such moves employed to protect Whiteness in [11]; most of the points made therein apply to all aspects of diversity, including gender and parental status.…”