Resource Database for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

A diverse and inclusive scientific community is more productive, innovative and impactful, yet ecology and evolutionary biology continues to be dominated by white male faculty. We quantify faculty engagement in activities related to diversity and inclusion and identify factors that either facilitate or hinder participation. Through a nationwide survey, we show that faculty with underrepresented identities disproportionally engage in diversity and inclusion activities, yet such engagement was not considered important for tenure. Faculty perceived time and funding as major limitations, which suggests that institutions should reallocate resources and reconsider how faculty are evaluated to promote shared responsibility in advancing diversity and inclusion.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relative importance of three explanations for gender stratification by modeling their separate and cumulative effects upon the increase in status, responsibility, and salary achieved as a result of administrative promotion. Findings indicate that gender has a substantial negative impact on the attainment of women–an impact that increases over time.

Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex. To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom—not merely reform—teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.

Using interviews, a laboratory experiment, and a résumé audit study, we examine racial minorities’ attempts to avoid anticipated discrimination in labor markets by concealing or downplaying racial cues in job applications, a practice known as “résumé whitening.” Interviews with racial minority university students reveal that while some minority job seekers reject this practice, others view it as essential and use a variety of whitening techniques. Building on the qualitative findings, we conduct a lab study to examine how racial minority job seekers change their résumés in response to different job postings. Results show that when targeting an employer that presents itself as valuing diversity, minority job applicants engage in relatively little résumé whitening and thus submit more racially transparent résumés. Yet our audit study of how employers respond to whitened and unwhitened résumés shows that organizational diversity statements are not actually associated with reduced discrimination against unwhitened résumés. Taken together, these findings suggest a paradox: minorities may be particularly likely to experience disadvantage when they apply to ostensibly pro-diversity employers. These findings illuminate the role of racial concealment and transparency in modern labor markets and point to an important interplay between the self-presentation of employers and the self-presentation of job seekers in shaping economic inequality.

Despite sincere commitment to egalitarian, meritocratic principles, subtle gender bias persists, constraining women’s opportunities for academic advancement. The authors implemented a pair-matched, single-blind, cluster randomized, controlled study of a gender-bias-habit-changing intervention at a large public university. Participants were faculty in 92 departments or divisions at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Between September 2010 and March 2012, experimental departments were offered a gender-bias-habit-changing intervention as a 2.5-hour workshop. Surveys measured gender bias awareness; motivation, self-efficacy, and outcome expectations to reduce bias; and gender equity action. A timed word categorization task measured implicit gender/leadership bias. Faculty completed a work–life survey before and after all experimental departments received the intervention. Control departments were offered workshops after data were collected. Linear mixed-effects models showed significantly greater changes post intervention for faculty in experimental versus control departments on several outcome measures, including self-efficacy to engage in gender-equity-promoting behaviors (P = .013). When ≥ 25% of a department’s faculty attended the workshop (26 of 46 departments), significant increases in self-reported action to promote gender equity occurred at three months (P = .007). Post intervention, faculty in experimental departments expressed greater perceptions of fit (P = .024), valuing of their research (P = .019), and comfort in raising personal and professional conflicts (P = .025). An intervention that facilitates intentional behavioral change can help faculty break the gender bias habit and change department climate in ways that should support the career advancement of women in academic medicine, science, and engineering.

The Excellence through Diversity Fund provides resources for innovative interdisciplinary projects on topics related to diversity and inclusion. The Fund may support various types of projects, including implementation of Schools’ strategic plans to diversify and enhance the climate for student and faculty populations, research on topics related to diversity and inclusion, projects that foster and support diversity on campus, and projects that involve collaborations across disciplines or traditional boundaries of academic work. This can include cross-School research, conferences and events, large-scale faculty development work, and projects that assess the climate for diversity and inclusion at Penn. Priority is given to projects that address current issues, promote notable collaborations, and foster new understandings of diversity and inclusion.

This essay, drawn from theory, research, and the author’s practitioner research as a teacher educator, proposes a framework to inform teacher educators’ conceptualization and implementation of socially just teaching. The framework suggests that building on dispositions of fairness and the belief that all children can learn, a socially just teacher will engage in professional reflection and judgment using both an individual and a structural orientation to analyze the students’ academic difficulties and determine the cause and the solution to those difficulties, realizing that both individual and structural realities affect students’ learning. The essay then suggests how this individual and structural framework can inform the content and teaching strategies teacher educators use to instruct preservice teachers in socially just education. Finally, recommendations for research and dialogue in the teacher education community are suggested.

This review encourages instructors to consider how the intellectual substance and design
of their courses may or may not contribute to racial equity. The questions in this document are
intended to invite you to reflect on your teaching and stimulate our ongoing thinking about
equity, not to offer prescriptions. The six questions below encourage you to reflect on your
course – its content and materials, the questions it raises, and how you want students to engage
with those questions.

“To eradicate systemic racism, it is important for managers to empower employees and provide them with resources for having productive conversations about race,” writes Wharton management professor Stephanie Creary in this opinion piece. Here, she offers her own framework for middle managers in corporate environments who would like to initiate conversations about race in the workplace.

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.

Due to continuing immigration and increasing racial and ethnic inclusiveness, higher education institutions in the United States are likely to grow ever more diverse in the 21st century. This shift holds both promise and peril: Increased inter-ethnic contact could lead to a more fruitful learning environment that encourages collaboration. On the other hand, social identity and on-campus diversity remain hotly contested issues that often raise intergroup tensions and inhibit discussion. How can we help diverse students learn from each other and gain the competencies they will need in an increasingly multicultural America? Dialogue Across Difference synthesizes three years’ worth of research from an innovative field experiment focused on improving intergroup understanding, relationships and collaboration. The result is a fascinating study of the potential of intergroup dialogue to improve relations across race and gender.

As a library we humbly present this list of ebook titles, acknowledging that this title list is only scratching the surface of literature about race that has been published. Please know that the Penn Libraries stands with the black community and people of color and is dedicated to the growth of this collection.

In response to our charge, the Ad-Hoc Committee on LGBT Issues (C-LGBT) reviewed the status of LGBT physicists to assess the barriers to full inclusion within the physics community. Input was obtained through focus groups held at American Physical Society (APS) meetings, a detailed climate survey, and a set of in-depth interviews with individuals who self-identify as LGBT. Committee members also reviewed aspects of law and policy that were deemed relevant, and drew on their own experiences and observations in building a community of support of LGBT physicists. Here we briefly summarize the findings and recommendations. These recommendations naturally fit with the broader goals of promoting participation within the physics enterprise by a diverse membership and ensuring equal opportunity. These are goals clearly expressed in the mission statement of APS, as well as its policy on equal professional opportunity.

Have you ever made a successful change in your life? Perhaps you wanted to exercise more, eat less, or change jobs? Think about the time and attention you dedicated to the process. A lot, right? Change is hard. Creating effective social justice habits, particularly those dealing with issues of power, privilege, supremacy and leadership is like any lifestyle change. Setting our intentions and adjusting what we spend our time doing is essential. It’s all about building new habits. Sometimes the hardest part is just getting started. The good news is, there’s an abundance of resources just waiting to empower you to be a more effective player in the quest for equity and justice. Please use this plan just as it is, or adapt it to a sector, an ethnic/racial group, or interest area.

Building on their important findings in The Source of the River, the authors now probe even more deeply into minority underachievement at the college level. Taming the River examines the academic and social dynamics of different ethnic groups during the first two years of college. Focusing on racial differences in academic performance, the book identifies the causes of students’ divergent grades and levels of personal satisfaction with their institutions. Using survey data collected from twenty-eight selective colleges and universities, Taming the River considers all facets of student life, including who students date, what fields they major in, which sports they play, and how they perceive their own social and economic backgrounds. The book explores how black and Latino students experience pressures stemming from campus racial climate and “stereotype threat” — when students underperform because of anxieties tied to existing negative stereotypes. Describing the relationship between grade performance and stereotype threat, the book shows how this link is reinforced by institutional practices of affirmative action. The authors also indicate that when certain variables are controlled, minority students earn the same grades, express the same college satisfaction, and remain in school at the same rates as white students. A powerful look at how educational policies unfold in America’s universities, Taming the River sheds light on the social and racial factors influencing student success.

Subtle forms of prejudice called microaggressions occur in college classrooms, but the effective methods of managing such prejudice are not clear. This study explored teachers’ (N = 222) and students’ (N = 166) perceptions of vignettes describing classroom microaggressions and the effectiveness of various teacher responses to the microaggressions. Teachers of courses focused on diversity perceived microaggressions more negatively and were more likely to respond to the microaggressions than teachers of nondiversity courses. Students believed that teacher responses to microaggressions were effective and ignoring microaggressions was ineffective. The results suggest that teachers should in some way respond to classroom microaggressions. They also suggest that diversity awareness may be a factor in the ability of teachers to recognize subtle prejudice in the classroom.

This article presents the first large-scale audit study of discrimination against openly gay men in the United States. Pairs of fictitious résumés were sent in response to 1,769 job postings in seven states. One résumé in each pair was randomly assigned experience in a gay campus organization, and the other résumé was assigned a control organization. Two main findings have emerged. First, in some but not all states, there was significant discrimination against the fictitious applicants who appeared to be gay. This geographic variation in the level of discrimination appears to reflect regional differences in attitudes and antidiscrimination laws. Second, employers who emphasized the importance of stereotypically male heterosexual traits were particularly likely to discriminate against openly gay men. Beyond these particular findings, this study advances the audit literature more generally by covering multiple regions and by highlighting how audit techniques may be used to identify stereotypes that affect employment decisions in real labor markets.

This document is intended to recognize the issues many faculty in our community are facing on both of these fronts and identify strategies to address them. Recommendations are drawn from scholarly research on academic life, including emerging research on the pandemic, and articles in higher education news outlets such as the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. We recognize that many members of our community also have relevant expertise, and we welcome feedback, additions, and other recommendations with the goal of identifying ways to best support all members of our community.

This study examined the influence of instructor sexual orientation on perceptions of teacher credibility. The purpose was to determine if college students perceive gay teachers as less credible than straight teachers. In addition, we sought to explore the role of teacher credibility in terms of perceived student learning. In order to examine these variables, a male confederate presented a lecture on cultural influences to 154 undergraduate students enrolled in eight separate introductory communication classes. In each class, the confederate was careful to keep his delivery and immediacy cues (e.g., vocal expressiveness, movement, and eye contact) natural and consistent. The confederate’s sexual orientation, however, was systematically manipulated. Findings indicate that students perceive a gay teacher as significantly less credible than a straight teacher. This study also found that students of a gay teacher perceive that they learn considerably less than students of a straight teacher. To help explain the complex reasons behind students’ biased evaluations, the authors have included an in-depth qualitative analysis of participants’ responses.

Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of race in America.

Social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) contends that institutional-level mechanisms exist that reinforce and perpetuate existing group-based inequalities, but very few such mechanisms have been empirically demonstrated. We propose that gendered wording (i.e., masculine- and feminine-themed words, such as those associated with gender stereotypes) may be a heretofore unacknowledged, institutional-level mechanism of inequality maintenance. Employing both archival and experimental analyses, the present research demonstrates that gendered wording commonly employed in job recruitment materials can maintain gender inequality in traditionally male-dominated occupations. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated the existence of subtle but systematic wording differences within a randomly sampled set of job advertisements. Results indicated that job advertisements for male-dominated areas employed greater masculine wording (i.e., words associated with male stereotypes, such as leader, competitive, dominant) than advertisements within female-dominated areas. No difference in the presence of feminine wording (i.e., words associated with female stereotypes, such as support, understand, interpersonal) emerged across male- and female-dominated areas. Next, the consequences of highly masculine wording were tested across 3 experimental studies. When job advertisements were constructed to include more masculine than feminine wording, participants perceived more men within these occupations (Study 3), and importantly, women found these jobs less appealing (Studies 4 and 5). Results confirmed that perceptions of belongingness (but not perceived skills) mediated the effect of gendered wording on job appeal (Study 5). The function of gendered wording in maintaining traditional gender divisions, implications for gender parity, and theoretical models of inequality are discussed.

The current study examines how intersecting stereotypes about gender and race influence faculty perceptions of post-doctoral candidates in STEM fields in the United States. Using a fully-crossed, between-subjects experimental design, biology and physics professors (n = 251) from eight large, public, U.S. research universities were asked to read one of eight identical curriculum vitae (CVs) depicting a hypothetical doctoral graduate applying for a post-doctoral position in their field, and rate them for competence, hireability, and likeability. The candidate’s name on the CV was used to manipulate race (Asian, Black, Latinx, and White) and gender (female or male), with all other aspects of the CV held constant across conditions. Faculty in physics exhibited a gender bias favoring the male candidates as more competent and more hirable than the otherwise identical female candidates. Further, physics faculty rated Asian and White candidates as more competent and hirable than Black and Latinx candidates, while those in biology rated Asian candidates as more competent and hirable than Black candidates, and as more hireable than Latinx candidates. An interaction between candidate gender and race emerged for those in physics, whereby Black women and Latinx women and men candidates were rated the lowest in hireability compared to all others. Women were rated more likeable than men candidates across departments. Our results highlight how understanding the underrepresentation of women and racial minorities in STEM requires examining both racial and gender biases as well as how they intersect.

The diversity of students at Penn is a tremendous asset for teaching and learning, whether in the classroom, lab or mentorship. Teaching inclusively, though, comes with challenges and the responsibility to create an environment in which all of our students can achieve to the best of their abilities and none of our students feel marginalized. Penn faculty, along with CTL, are engaged in finding and deploying best practices in inclusive teaching. In workshops and one-on-one consultations, CTL supports faculty and graduate students in reflecting on and adopting teaching practices inclusive of a diverse student body.

In Free Speech on Campus, political philosopher Sigal Ben-Porath examines the current state of the arguments, using real-world examples to explore the contexts in which conflicts erupt, as well as to assess the place of identity politics and concern with safety and dignity within them. She offers a useful framework for thinking about free-speech controversies both inside and outside the college classroom, shifting the focus away from disputes about legality and harm and toward democracy and inclusion. Ben-Porath provides readers with strategies to de-escalate tensions and negotiate highly charged debates surrounding trigger warnings, safe spaces, and speech that verges on hate. Everyone with a stake in campus controversies—professors, students, administrators, and informed members of the wider public—will find something valuable in Ben-Porath’s illuminating discussion of these crucially important issues.

This narrative and integrative literature review synthesizes the literature on when, where, and how the faculty hiring process used in most American higher education settings operates with implicit and cognitive bias. The literature review analyzes the “four phases” of the faculty hiring process, drawing on theories from behavioral economics and social psychology. The results show that although much research establishes the presence of bias in hiring, relatively few studies examine interventions or “nudges” that might be used to mitigate bias and encourage the recruitment and hiring of faculty identified as women and/or faculty identified as being from an underrepresented minority group. This article subsequently makes recommendations for historical, quasi-experimental, and randomized studies to test hiring interventions with larger databases and more controlled conditions than have previously been used, with the goal of establishing evidence-based practices that contribute to a more inclusive hiring process and a more diverse faculty.

About 70% of more than half a million Implicit Association Tests completed by citizens of 34 countries revealed expected implicit stereotypes associating science with males more than with females. We discovered that nation-level implicit stereotypes predicted nation-level sex differences in 8th-grade science and mathematics achievement. Self-reported stereotypes did not provide additional predictive validity of the achievement gap. We suggest that implicit stereotypes and sex differences in science participation and performance are mutually reinforcing, contributing to the persistent gender gap in science engagement.

Many college students abandon their goal of completing a degree in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) when confronted with challenging introductory-level science courses. In the U.S., this trend is more pronounced for underrepresented minority (URM) and first-generation (FG) students, and contributes to persisting racial and social-class achievement gaps in higher education. Previous intervention studies have focused exclusively on race or social class, but have not examined how the 2 may be confounded and interact. This research therefore investigates the independent and interactive effects of race and social class as moderators of an intervention designed to promote performance, measured by grade in the course. In a double-blind randomized experiment conducted over 4 semesters of an introductory biology course (N = 1,040), we tested the effectiveness of a utility-value intervention in which students wrote about the personal relevance of course material. The utility-value intervention was successful in reducing the achievement gap for FG-URM students by 61%: the performance gap for FG-URM students, relative to continuing generation (CG)-Majority students, was large in the control condition, .84 grade points (d = .98), and the treatment effect for FG-URM students was .51 grade points (d = 0.55). The UV intervention helped students from all groups find utility value in the course content, and mediation analyses showed that the process of writing about utility value was particularly powerful for FG-URM students. Results highlight the importance of intersectionality in examining the independent and interactive effects of race and social class when evaluating interventions to close achievement gaps and the mechanisms through which they may operate.

We are writing with an urgent request to university leadership, the United Academics, and the UO Senate, deans, and department heads. COVID-19 has uncovered many aspects of our institutional practice that have historically rendered certain labor invisible and left others more vulnerable. Historically, the ivory tower was designed for monastic, solitary contemplation wherein great thoughts were debated and passed down to a few selected students who were fortunate to be admitted. As such, higher education’s research expectations have favored men who have wives or domestic partners to perform childcare. Of course, there have been changes, but the structure and expectations of research productivity overwhelmingly privilege those who can defer child and elder care.

Stereotype research emphasizes systematic processes over seemingly arbitrary contents, but content also may prove systematic. On the basis of stereotypes’ intergroup functions, the stereotype content model hypothesizes that (1) 2 primary dimensions are competence and warmth, (2) frequent mixed clusters combine high warmth with low competence (paternalistic) or high competence with low warmth (envious), and (3) distinct emotions (pity, envy, admiration, contempt) differentiate the 4 competence-warmth combinations. Stereotypically, (4) status predicts high competence, and competition predicts low warmth. Nine varied samples rated gender, ethnicity, race, class, age, and disability out-groups. Contrary to antipathy models, 2 dimensions mattered, and many stereotypes were mixed, either pitying (low competence, high warmth subordinates) or envying (high competence, low warmth competitors). Stereotypically, status predicted competence, and competition predicted low warmth.

The pressure on researchers from ethnic minority groups to participate in campus diversity issues comes at a cost.

In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks–writer, teacher, and insurgent black intellectual–writes about a new kind of education, education as the practice of freedom. Teaching students to “transgress” against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for hooks, the teacher’s most important goal. bell hooks speaks to the heart of education today: how can we rethink teaching practices in the age of multiculturalism? What do we do about teachers who do not want to teach, and students who do not want to learn? How should we deal with racism and sexism in the classroom? Full of passion and politics, Teaching to Transgress combines a practical knowledge of the classroom with a deeply felt connection to the world of emotions and feelings. This is the rare book about teachers and students that dares to raise questions about eros and rage, grief and reconciliation, and the future of teaching itself. “To educate is the practice of freedom,” writes bell hooks, “is a way of teaching anyone can learn.” Teaching to Transgress is the record of one gifted teacher’s struggle to make classrooms work.

This study utilized scholarly personal narratives to explore the experiences and perceptions of four Black women who served as full-time contingent faculty members in higher education and student affairs graduate preparation programs. Authors drew upon Black feminist thought and intersectionality to frame this study. Specifically, authors extended Collin’s outsider-within status to outsider-outsider-within status to describe the unique experiences of Black women in contingent faculty appointments. Specific findings included: (1) marginalization of contingent faculty, (2) intersections of identities inextricably linked to teaching, and (3) devaluation of scholarly pursuits. Implications for institutional policy and practice are discussed.

College students who do not have parents with 4-year degrees (first-generation students) earn lower grades and encounter more obstacles to success than do students who have at least one parent with a 4-year degree (continuing-generation students). In the study reported here, we tested a novel intervention designed to reduce this social-class achievement gap with a randomized controlled trial (N = 168). Using senior college students’ real-life stories, we conducted a difference-education intervention with incoming students about how their diverse backgrounds can shape what they experience in college. Compared with a standard intervention that provided similar stories of college adjustment without highlighting students’ different backgrounds, the difference-education intervention eliminated the social-class achievement gap by increasing first-generation students’ tendency to seek out college resources (e.g., meeting with professors) and, in turn, improving their end-of-year grade point averages. The difference-education intervention also improved the college transition for all students on numerous psychosocial outcomes (e.g., mental health and engagement).

The National Science Foundation and others conclude that institutional transformation is required to ensure equal opportunities for the participation and advancement of men and women in academic science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM). Such transformation requires changing the habitual attitudes and behaviors of faculty. Approaching implicit bias as a remediable habit, we present the theoretical basis and conceptual model underpinning an educational intervention to promote bias literacy among university faculty as a step toward institutional transformation regarding gender equity. We describe the development and implementation of a Bias Literacy Workshop in detail so others can replicate or adapt it to their setting. Of the 220 (167 faculty and 53 nonfaculty) attendees from the initial 17 departments/divisions offered this workshop, all 180 who completed a written evaluation found the workshop at least “somewhat useful” and 74% found it “very useful.” Over 68% indicated increased knowledge of the workshop material. Of the 186 participants who wrote a commitment to engage in new activities to promote gender equity, 87% incorporated specific workshop content. Twenty-four participants were interviewed 4–6 months after attending the workshop; 75% of these not only demonstrated increased bias awareness, but described plans to change—or had actually changed—behaviors because of the workshop. Based on our sample of faculty from a Midwestern university, we conclude that at least one third of STEMM faculty who are invited will attend a 2.5-hr Bias Literacy Workshop, that nearly all will find it useful, and that most will complete a written commitment to promoting gender equity. These findings suggest that this educational intervention may effectively promote institutional change regarding gender equity.

This article presents an account of job discrimination according to which people redefine merit in a manner congenial to the idiosyncratic credentials of individual applicants from desired groups. In three studies, participants assigned male and female applicants to gender-stereotypical jobs. However, they did not view male and female applicants as having different strengths and weaknesses. Instead, they redefined the criteria for success at the job as requiring the specific credentials that a candidate of the desired gender happened to have. Commitment to hiring criteria prior to disclosure of the applicant’s gender eliminated discrimination, suggesting that bias in the construction of hiring criteria plays a causal role in discrimination.

This study uses data from the 1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty to examine the extent to which the concentration of women among part-time and nontenure-track faculty is related to family responsibilities. Descriptive and multinomial logistic regression analyses are used to examine the research questions.

The Medical University of South Carolina launched a systematic plan to infuse diversity among its students, resident physicians, and faculty in 2002. The dean and stakeholders of the College of Medicine (COM) embraced the concept that a more population-representative physician workforce could contribute to the goals of providing quality medical education and addressing health care disparities in South Carolina. Diversity became a central component of the COM’s strategic plan, and all departments developed diversity plans consistent with the overarching plan of the COM. Liaisons from the COM diversity committee facilitated the development of the department’s diversity plans. By 2011, the efforts resulted in a doubling of the number of underrepresented-in-medicine (URM, defined as African American, Latino, Native American) students (21% of student body); matriculation of 10 African American males as first-year medical students annually for four consecutive years; more than a threefold increase in URM residents/fellows; expansion of pipeline programs; expansion of mentoring programs; almost twice as many URM faculty; integration of cultural competency throughout the medical school curriculum; advancement of women and URM individuals into leadership positions; and enhanced learning for individuals from all backgrounds. This article reports the implementation of an institutional plan to create a more racially representative workforce across the academic continuum. The authors emphasize the role of the stakeholders in promoting diversity, the value of annual assessment to evaluate outcomes, and the positive benefits for individuals of all backgrounds.

In 2011, the University embarked on the Action Plan for Faculty Diversity and Excellence, a bold five-year strategy for further strengthening its eminent faculty. In this Faculty Inclusion Report, we report on the progress under the Action Plan and lay out a path forward for the next five years. As we take account of accomplishments, we also look forward to a more inclusive and innovative Penn of tomorrow. Our commitment to diversity and inclusion—in a vibrant educational community that protects open expression and fosters mutual respect among wide-ranging perspectives—has never been stronger or more central to the mission of our University, higher education, our society, and the world.

All too often, race discourse in the United States devolves into shouting matches, silence, or violence, all of which are mirrored in today’s classrooms. This book will help individuals develop the skills needed to facilitate difficult dialogues across race in high school and college classrooms, in teacher professional learning communities, and beyond. The authors codify best practices in race dialogue facilitation by drawing on decades of research and examples from their own practices. They share their mistakes and hard-earned lessons to help readers avoid common pitfalls. Through their concrete lesson plans and hands-on material, both experienced and novice facilitators can immediately use this inclusive and wide-ranging curriculum in a variety of classrooms, work spaces, and organizations with diverse participants. Book Features: Specific instruction on how to facilitate dialogues in a way that promotes deep understanding, empathy, and collaboration across different racial identities, Comprehensive plans for sequenced and sustained dialogue sessions for a variety of audiences, and Methods for administrators, teachers, community leaders, and facilitators to approach resistant communities.

The “invisible labor” done by professors of color is not usually rewarded with tenure and promotion. But it is more important now than ever.

This Guidebook builds on a synthesis of relevant interdisciplinary evidence, programs and practices instituted in different universities and the recommendations of higher education leaders who attended the Changing the National Conversation Summit cosponsored by the University of Maryland, College Park, Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania in September 2018. The data show that modest progress has been made over the past 40 years in widening the underrepresented minority (URM) pathway to the professoriate. Today URM faculty (Black, Latino and Native American) represent approximately 12 percent of all faculty in the 4,000 plus colleges and universities in the U.S. (The percentages of U.S. URM are likely considerably lower as these data include U.S. citizens and permanent residents, temporary visa holders, and those whose citizenship is unknown). By concentrating on high-impact, responsive and effective policy and practice recommendations inspired by empirical studies, scholarly narratives, institutional reports, policy statements and opinion pieces, we offer senior leaders strategies that can be implemented to demonstrate their resolve to address barriers to increase the inclusion of URM doctoral students and early career faculty along the academic life course. Although all faculty face significant challenges in research intensive universities, we seek to address those historic racial/ethnic U.S. population groups who are disproportionately underrepresented in graduate school and tenure-track faculty positions. In this Guidebook, we highlight practices that can be incorporated and instituted across research universities, so that, nationally, higher education institutions may reflect more broadly equitable and inclusive environments. We include a list of 50 essential readings that document effective practices in higher education on which we build our recommendations. We offer recommendations in four areas to facilitate institutional strategies for inclusion, excellence, and equity: 1) hiring and retention practices (2) mentoring practices; 3) work-family-life balance; and 4) pathways to tenure and promotion. We conclude with institutional accountability to support change and transformation.

What does diversity do? What are we doing when we use the language of diversity? Sara Ahmed offers an account of the diversity world based on interviews with diversity practitioners in higher education, as well as her own experience of doing diversity work. Diversity is an ordinary, even unremarkable, feature of institutional life. Yet diversity practitioners often experience institutions as resistant to their work, as captured through their use of the metaphor of the “brick wall.” On Being Included offers an explanation of this apparent paradox. It explores the gap between symbolic commitments to diversity and the experience of those who embody diversity. Commitments to diversity are understood as “non-performatives” that do not bring about what they name. The book provides an account of institutional whiteness and shows how racism can be obscured by the institutionalization of diversity. Diversity is used as evidence that institutions do not have a problem with racism. On Being Included offers a critique of what happens when diversity is offered as a solution. It also shows how diversity workers generate knowledge of institutions in attempting to transform them.

There are many subtle ways in which women are disadvantaged in pursuing academic careers. Recognizing stereotypes is the first way to eliminate them.

For women academics, deciding to have a baby is a career decision. Traditional narratives of the academic career must adapt to new demands and new constituencies.

Presumed Incompetent is a pathbreaking account of the intersecting roles of race, gender, and class in the working lives of women faculty of color. Through personal narratives and qualitative empirical studies, more than 40 authors expose the daunting challenges faced by academic women of color as they navigate the often hostile terrain of higher education, including hiring, promotion, tenure, and relations with students, colleagues, and administrators. The narratives are filled with wit, wisdom, and concrete recommendations, and provide a window into the struggles of professional women in a racially stratified but increasingly multicultural America.

The IGR Insight handouts offer 11-pages of invaluable resources for those considering applying dialogic techniques on campus and beyond. Topics range from Strategies for Managing Hot Moments in the Classroom to Learning to Listen, Interrupting Bias, and How to Apologize as facilitation skills, and many more useful tools.

This piece details the struggles of raising children while pursuing a career in academia.

A classic survival guide, a destroyer of myths about women’s career chances in the university, and a revelation of the Catch-22 positions in which women find themselves. Caplan demonstrates that, while women tend to blame themselves for their failures, their fate is more likely sealed by the unwritten rules in academia. The book is entertaining, though the subject is infuriating. Includes many practical techniques and a checklist for a woman-positive university. Many professors give copies of this book to all their graduate students.

In an attempt to address the need for substantive comparisons in the minority university faculty population, this monograph examines the relative differences in minority groups in the faculty population when the data permit comparisons. The report also examines research on the status of women faculty members. The discussion assembles a large volume of empirical research organized under the main thesis that academia for women and minority faculty is often experienced as a chilling and alienating environment. Women and minority faculty are expected to perform institutional roles that allow higher education institutions to pursue diversity on campus, but these roles are ignored in the faculty reward system, especially in the awarding of tenure. The chapters are: (1) “The Status of Women and Minority Faculty: Changing or Unchanging?”; (2) “The Academic Workplace”; (3) “The Academic Workplace for Women and Minority Faculty”; (4) “Issues Facing Women and Minority Faculty”; and (5) “Summary Observations and Suggestions.”

Our paper focuses on the role that the gender composition of the leaders of American colleges and universities – trustees, presidents, and provosts – play in influencing the rate at which academic institutions diversify their faculty across gender lines. Our analyses make use of institutional level panel data that we have collected for a large sample of American academic institutions. We find that other factors held constant, including our estimate of the “expected” share of new hires that should be female, that institutions with female presidents and provosts, as well as those with a greater share of female trustees, increase their share of female faculty at a more rapid rate. The magnitudes of the effects of these leaders are larger at smaller institutions, where central administrators typically play a larger role in faculty hiring decisions. A critical share of female trustees must be reached before the gender composition of the board matters.

Because of their minority group status and underrepresentation, faculty of color (FOC) are tokens and as such, are highly visible within the academy. Paradoxically, token status may result in their being made to feel simultaneously invisible (e.g., accomplishments are unimportant, lack of belonging) and hypervisible (e.g., heightened scrutiny). Drawing from 118 interviews, we identified six themes related to how Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian, and American Indian faculty members at a single, predominantly White, research-intensive university, describe issues of (in)visibility at work. FOC experienced hypervisibility when they were treated as Tokens and used to represent diversity within the institution, and they felt invisible when they experienced Social and Professional Exclusion and Epistemic Exclusion (i.e., lack of recognition for their scholarship and achievements) from colleagues. FOC responded to tokenism and exclusion using three (in)visibility strategies: Strategic Invisibility (i.e., disengaging with colleagues while remaining engaged with their scholarly activities) to remove themselves from negative environments; Working Harder to prove themselves, counter exclusion, and create positive visibility; and Disengagement (i.e., removed effort from work). Our analysis suggests that a lack of control over one’s (in)visibility is problematic for FOC. In response, FOC may attempt to increase or decrease their own visibility to counter such experiences, often with some positive effects.

This memo reviews the literature on gender and racial biases in hiring and other workplace evaluations and proposes remedies to reduce these biases. It contains sections that provide: 1. background data on the underrepresentation of minorities and women among American faculty; 2. empirical evidence that cognitive biases in the evaluation of women and minority candidates contribute to their underrepresentation; 3. a theoretical framework for understanding the mechanisms that produce biased evaluations; and 4. a series of proposed remedies derived from empirically supported theoretical accounts of how and why biases emerge and how they lead to disadvantages for women and minorities.

Part of a special issue on the lessons learned from African-Americans in historically white institutions. Recommendations from a junior and a senior African-American scholar on changing the conditions and increasing the success of African-American scholars in predominantly white institutions are provided. The junior scholar recommends integrating an African-American presence into the fundamental image or view of the university, according African-American students greater academic freedom for the pursuit of intellectual interests and greater freedom of association, acknowledging the diversity of the abilities of African-American graduate students, and recognizing that African-American professors are not infallible. The senior scholar recommends hiring many African-Americans rather than a few tokens, respecting the limited time and resources of the African-American faculty, and encouraging and making room for African-Americans to assume roles of academic leadership. Both scholars reflect on their own experiences in predominantly white institutions.

We might expect the classroom — the place on campus reserved for the free and respectful exchange of ideas — to provide an oasis from harassment and intimidation — and, certainly, from violence. Unfortunately, numerous studies of campus climate demonstrate that this is not the case for lesbian, gay, and bisexual students. Thus, how we college teachers address — or fail to address — issues of sexual orientation in and out of our classrooms has a significant impact on the learning environment for all students, especially for those who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. By introducing sexual-orientation topics, supporting related academic inquiry, and creating a welcoming classroom for all students, faculty contribute not only to students’ academic success but also to the development of a positive self-identity. Conversely, by engaging in homophobic harassment and discriminatory behavior, we professors can perpetuate negative stereotypes, validate the hatred and violence perpetrated against lesbian and gay people, silence voices in out classrooms, and interfere with students’ learning. In this article, I describe certain characteristics of lesbian, gay, and bisexual students and the needs they have in common with all college students. More important, I recommend strategies and curricular ideas for faculty who want to improve the quaility of their teaching for all students with regard to issues of sexual orientation.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the impact of social capital on helping African Americans succeed in the academy. Social capital examines ways in which some individuals are privileged because of their membership in a social network. This chapter will largely be auto-ethnographic, drawing from my personal experiences, integrated with the appropriate bodies of literature. The goal of this chapter is to provide an effective strategy for promoting the success of African Americans in the academy.

Getting in is only half the battle. The Privileged Poor reveals how—and why—disadvantaged students struggle at elite colleges, and explains what schools can do differently if these students are to thrive. The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors—and their coffers—to support a more diverse student body. But is it enough just to admit these students? In The Privileged Poor, Anthony Jack reveals that the struggles of less privileged students continue long after they’ve arrived on campus. Admission, they quickly learn, is not the same as acceptance. This bracing and necessary book documents how university policies and cultures can exacerbate preexisting inequalities and reveals why these policies hit some students harder than others. Despite their lofty aspirations, top colleges hedge their bets by recruiting their new diversity largely from the same old sources, admitting scores of lower-income black, Latino, and white undergraduates from elite private high schools like Exeter and Andover. These students approach campus life very differently from students who attended local, and typically troubled, public high schools and are often left to flounder on their own. Drawing on interviews with dozens of undergraduates at one of America’s most famous colleges and on his own experiences as one of the privileged poor, Jack describes the lives poor students bring with them and shows how powerfully background affects their chances of success. If we truly want our top colleges to be engines of opportunity, university policies and campus cultures will have to change. Jack provides concrete advice to help schools reduce these hidden disadvantages—advice we cannot afford to ignore.

Research shows that an oppressive classroom environment impairs learning and academic performance for students with oppressed identities. Less research examines faculty perceptions of their classroom, but such research could reveal whether an oppressive environment impairs teaching effectiveness. Although the literature shows that women faculty of color spend a disproportionate amount of time teaching, researchers have not systematically examined their classroom experiences. My study relies on transcripts of 17 in-depth interviews with women faculty of color at a large, predominantly white research institution. Despite their legitimate authority as professors, these women describe gendered racism in their classroom interactions with students. Specifically, they depict white male students as challenging their authority, teaching competency, and scholarly expertise, as well as offering subtle and not so subtle threats to their persons and their careers.

Intergroup dialogue has emerged as an effective educational and community building method to bring together members of diverse social and cultural groups to engage in learning together so that they may work collectively and individually to promote greater diversity, equality and justice. Intergroup dialogues bring together individuals from different identity groups (such as people of color and white people; women and men; lesbian, gay, and bisexual people and heterosexual people), and uses explicit pedagogy that involves three important features: content learning, structured interaction, and facilitative guidance. The least understood role in the pedagogy is that of facilitation. This volume, the first dedicated entirely to intergroup dialogue facilitation, draws on the experiences of contributors and on emerging research to address the multi-dimensional role of facilitators and co-facilitators, the training and support of facilitators, and ways of improving practice in both educational and community settings. It constitutes a comprehensive guide for practitioners, covering the theoretical, conceptual, and practical knowledge they need. Presenting the work and insights of scholars, practitioners and scholar-practitioners who train facilitators for intergroup dialogues, this book bridges the theoretical and conceptual foundations of intergroup relations and social justice education with training models for intergroup dialogue facilitation. It is intended for staff, faculty, and administrators in higher education, and community agencies, as well as for human resources departments in workplaces.

The transition from medical school to residency is a critical step in the careers of physicians. Because of the standardized application process–wherein schools submit summative Medical Student Performance Evaluations (MSPE’s)–it also represents a unique opportunity to assess the possible prevalence of racial and gender disparities, as shown elsewhere in medicine. The authors conducted textual analysis of MSPE’s from 6,000 US students applying to 16 residency programs at a single institution in 2014–15. They used custom software to extract demographic data and keyword frequency from each MSPE. The main outcome measure was the proportion of applicants described using 24 pre-determined words from four thematic categories (“standout traits”, “ability”, “grindstone habits”, and “compassion”). The data showed significant differences based on race and gender. White applicants were more likely to be described using “standout” or “ability” keywords (including “exceptional”, “best”, and “outstanding”) while Black applicants were more likely to be described as “competent”. These differences remained significant after controlling for United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1 scores. Female applicants were more frequently described as “caring”, “compassionate”, and “empathic” or “empathetic”. Women were also more frequently described as “bright” and “organized”. While the MSPE is intended to reflect an objective, summative assessment of students’ qualifications, these data demonstrate for the first time systematic differences in how candidates are described based on racial/ethnic and gender group membership. Recognizing possible implicit biases and their potential impact is important for faculty who strive to create a more egalitarian medical community.

Do protest events matter? The answer is that they do. The pioneering work of Daniel Gillion, Platt Presidential Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Penn, reimagines how protestors and voters interact in American democracy and illustrates how voters are informed and influenced by protest activism. Voters now see protests, and the issues that activists champion, as ideological, belonging to the Democratic or Republican Party. Consequently, as protests grow in America, they push more voters to turn out to the polls, donate to political campaigns, and run for office — benefiting the political party perceived to more supportive of protestors’ messages. Thus, protests are the canaries in the coal mines that warn of future political and electoral change. In the end, the pleas for racial equality that ring out in protests do not fall on deaf ears; rather they mobilize the nation to become a more perfect union.

This study takes college teaching/educational quality seriously by taking teachers’ working conditions seriously. Data consist of contractual provisions about adjunct faculty members’ access to instructional resources and professional development in 254 collective bargaining agreements. The research analyzes the negotiated balance in quality-related working conditions between professional rights and managerial discretion, stratified access to those working conditions in the collectively negotiated jurisdiction between part- and full-time faculty, as well as explicit references to educational quality and/or public benefits/beneficiaries. The findings indicate gains in adjunct faculty rights/voice, some parity with full-time faculty in quality-related working conditions, and some explicit references to quality/public benefits. But they also speak to considerable managerial discretion in not providing those conditions, and adjunct faculty’s lesser access to them. The research builds on and extends literature on academic employees’ working conditions, finding value in a labor-based conception of basic, quality-related working conditions, and in conceptualizing professorial stratification as fluid, contingent, and shaped by collectively negotiated jurisdiction. It also points to the feasibility of enhancing adjunct faculty working conditions by linking them to higher education attending more to educational quality and public purpose in better serving students and society.

We study race in the labor market by sending fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perceived race, resumes are randomly assigned African-American- or White-sounding names. White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. Callbacks are also more responsive to resume quality for White names than for African-American ones. The racial gap is uniform across occupation, industry, and employer size. We also find little evidence that employers are inferring social class from the names. Differential treatment by race still appears to still be prominent in the U.S. labor market.

For an African American scholar, who may be the lone minority in a department, navigating the tenure minefield can be a particularly harrowing process. Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey Laszloffy go beyond standard professional resources to serve up practical advice for black faculty intent on playing—and winning—the tenure game. Addressing head-on how power and the thorny politics of race converge in the academy, The Black Academic’s Guide is full of invaluable tips and hard-earned wisdom. It is an essential handbook that will help black faculty survive and thrive in academia without losing their voices, or their integrity.

In this article, a case is made for improving the school success of ethnically diverse students through culturally responsive teaching and for preparing teachers in preservice education programs with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to do this. The ideas presented here are brief sketches of more thorough explanations included in my recent book, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (2000). The specific components of this approach to teaching are based on research findings, theoretical claims, practical experiences, and personal stories of educators researching and working with underachieving African, Asian, Latino, and Native American students. These data were produced by individuals from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds including anthropology, sociology, psychology, sociolinguistics, communications, multicultural education, K-college classroom teaching, and teacher education. Five essential elements of culturally responsive teaching are examined: developing a knowledge base about cultural diversity, including ethnic and cultural diversity content in the curriculum, demonstrating caring and building learning communities, communicating with ethnically diverse students, and responding to ethnic diversity in the delivery of instruction. Culturally responsive teaching is defined as using the cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of ethnically diverse students as conduits for teaching them more effectively. It is based on the assumption that when academic knowledge and skills are situated within the lived experiences and frames of reference of students, they are more personally meaningful, have higher interest appeal, and are learned more easily and thoroughly (Gay, 2000). As a result, the academic achievement of ethnically diverse students will improve when they are taught through their own cultural and experiential filters (Au & Kawakami, 1994; Foster, 1995; Gay, 2000; Hollins, 1996; Kleinfeld, 1975; Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995).

The existing discourse highlighting Black faculty experiences in the classroom are largely hidden among studies that center the experiences of Faculty of Color who teach courses about race, gender, and/or diversity, regardless of their faculty status. And, even fewer of those studies unpack how their pedagogical approaches further complicate the experiences of Black faculty, especially Black faculty without tenure. The authors, who are Black hetero women and Black queer men, used embodied text as a framework to explore their teaching experiences as faculty and critical pedagogues. Where embodied text establishes the body as a site for learning and knowledge, critical pedagogy asserts that neither the classroom nor the knowledge constructed within that space are apolitical. The study findings illuminated how Black faculty bodies were scrutinized and ultimately showed that Black hetero women and Black queer men who were critical pedagogues embodied a resistance text that when read, oftentimes created intertextual pedagogical situations that invalidated their humanity. This research expands the scholarship on embodied text and critical pedagogy by examining the teaching experiences of Black faculty who not only centered critiques of power and privilege in non-diversity courses, but whose bodies were also disruptive in White, hetero, cis-patriarchal academic spaces.

The purpose of this study was to explore the current racial climate for Black and Hispanic faculty at three predominantly White flagship universities with regard to the climate for faculty diversity and diversity discourse.The research paradigm was qualitative using evaluative case study method (Yin, 2009) to study faculty at the University of Georgia, University of Maryland at College Park, and the University of Texas at Austin. The study was situated in Hurtado and colleagues’ campus climate framework (Hurtado, Milem, & Clayton-Pederson, 1998; Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Peterson, & Allen, 1999; Milem, Dey, & White, 2004; Milem, Chang, & Antonio, 2005) and Chang’s (2002) notion of transformative discourse.The primary data sources were face-to-face interviews and focus group discussions with faculty, provosts, chief diversity officers, and senior academic administrators to understand campus climate and each campuses effort and commitment to diversity.The data were analyzed using content analysis.The findings focus on the overall campus climate, recruitment, retention, and institutional support for research.

The acclaimed social psychologist offers an insider’s look at his research and groundbreaking findings on stereotypes and identity. Claude M. Steele, who has been called “one of the few great social psychologists,” offers a vivid first-person account of the research that supports his groundbreaking conclusions on stereotypes and identity. He sheds new light on American social phenomena from racial and gender gaps in test scores to the belief in the superior athletic prowess of black men, and lays out a plan for mitigating these “stereotype threats” and reshaping American identities.

The purpose of this research was to extend previous work on gender bias in performance evaluation. Specifically, we examined whether a structured free recall intervention could decrease the influence of traditional gender-stereotypes on the performance evaluations of women. Two hundred and forty-seven college students provided performance ratings for vignettes that described the performance of male or female college professors. Results indicated that without the intervention, raters who have traditional stereotypes evaluated women less accurately and more negatively. Conversely, the structured free recall intervention successfully eliminated these effects. The usefulness of the structured free recall intervention as a tool for decreasing the influence of gender stereotypes on performance ratings is discussed.

Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves. Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.

This book focuses on understanding the experiences of faculty members of various races/ethnicities and genders and their classroom encounters with students in the United States. It illustrates some of the dynamics for faculty members facing the challenges and opportunities the diversity presents.

Addressing the underrepresentation of women in science is a top priority for many institutions, but the majority of efforts to increase representation of women are neither evidence-based nor rigorously assessed. One exception is the gender bias habit-breaking intervention (Carnes et al., 2015), which, in a cluster-randomized trial involving all but two departmental clusters (N = 92) in the 6 STEMM focused schools/colleges at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, led to increases in gender bias awareness and self-efficacy to promote gender equity in academic science departments and perceptions of a more positive departmental climate. Following this initial success, the present study compares, in a preregistered analysis, hiring rates of new female faculty pre- and post-manipulation. Whereas the proportion of women hired by control departments remained stable over time, the proportion of women hired by intervention departments increased by an estimated 18 percentage points (OR = 2.23, dOR = 0.34). Though the preregistered analysis did not achieve conventional levels of statistical significance (p < 0.07), the study has a hard upper limit on statistical power, as the cluster-randomized trial has a maximum sample size of 92 departmental clusters. These findings, however, have undeniable practical significance for the advancement of women in science, and provide promising evidence that psychological interventions can facilitate gender equity and diversity.

This article analyzes 255 articles published in seven peer-reviewed journals over a 10-year period and presents examples of how higher education researchers undertake the study of campus racial climates; racial differences in access, outcomes, and attainment; and the experiences of students, faculty, and administrators of color on predominantly White campuses without explicitly considering racism or attributing quantified racial inequities to racist institutional practices. The analysis found three consistent trends: (a) racial disparities are overwhelmingly attributed to factors other than racism, (b) scholars use semantic substitutes for “racism” and “racist,” and (c) critical race theory is rarely used for conceptual sense-making.

Utilizing data from the multi-institutional Student Experience in the Research University survey, we examined self-identified working-class students’ experiences in higher education. The results suggest that working-class students experience a lower sense of belonging, perceive a less welcoming campus climate, and pursue fewer social engagements than their peers who self-identify as middle/upper-class. Specific suggestions direct academic advisors to promote working-class students’ success.

Penn regularly conducts surveys of the Penn faculty and other members of the Penn community and releases reports that describe the composition of its faculty and progress of faculty diversity initiatives.

In Black on Both Sides, C. Riley Snorton identifies multiple intersections between blackness and transness from the mid-nineteenth century to present-day anti-black and anti-trans legislation and violence. Drawing on a deep and varied archive of materials, Snorton attends to how slavery and the production of racialized gender provided the foundations for an understanding of gender as mutable.

Various concerns regarding the vitality and racial/ethnic composition of the academic profession have prompted new study of faculty search committees and hiring paradigms, most notably examining the term “fit” in candidate appraisals. Yet no study utilizes a candidate evaluation framework to investigate whether or not faculty members truly assess for fit, or if these assessments stifle diversification processes, especially in light of pervasive institutional efforts to reform faculty hiring. This study uses a critical person-environment fit framework and multiple case study methods to investigate how faculty search committee members individually evaluate and collectively select prospective early-career faculty. Results indicate that fit, as system of assumptions, practices, and tactics designed to evaluate and select candidates based on organizational needs, was minimal in faculty searches. Instead, faculty relied heavily on idiosyncratic preferences to evaluate research, teaching, and service credentials, which also contained criterion that directly and indirectly averted diversity. Findings reveal how the review and selection of candidates is as much, if not more, about individual committee preferences than organizational demands or congruence.