The exquisite irony in our polarized scenarios is that universities have had DEI-like entities and official statements about university commitments to civil rights laws in place for decades. The stationery in the UNC President’s office has declared institutional support for equal opportunity and affirmative action since the early 1970s. Perhaps the words have changed to accommodate contemporary phraseology but commitment to inclusion and diversity has been there. The tragic George Floyd incident and the newfangled Critical Race Theory (CRT) proposals have exacerbated the debate and emboldened some groups to become more vocal and visible.
When NC State University began recruiting and enrolling African American students in the 1960s, they hired two African American professors, Larry Clark and Gus Witherspoon, who served as mentors and advisors to the handful of black students, mostly males, who enrolled at the university in Raleigh. Most of these students had never been around white folks because they came from segregated communities in North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina. To call it culture shock is not an exaggeration.
Professors Clark and Witherspoon did a remarkable job helping those pioneering young people navigate rigorous academic programs within an unfamiliar and not particularly supportive community. They connected them with the African American communities and churches in Raleigh and with students at Shaw and St. Augustine’s, both private, historically black institutions a few minutes from the NC State campus. They helped them form fraternities and social groups. Each academic college and school eventually would have African American “coordinators” to assist black kids assimilate into the university and their disciplines. These coordinators and their staffs have been important adjuncts in the recruitment of minority staff and faculty.
An embryonic African American Cultural Center at NC State began quietly in 1970. In 1991 the present multi-story building was unveiled and later renamed the Augustus McIver Witherspoon Student Center. Today it serves as a valuable university and regional resource, as do, for example, the Sonja Haynes Stone Center at Carolina or the Multicultural Center at Appalachian State or the Ledonia Wright Cultural Center at East Carolina.
Some topics in the wider DEI realm, like the “pronoun” debates or the “Latinx” designations, seem facially absurd to many people and open universities to ridicule. They remind one precisely about the things that they are meant to make one forget.
But there are more fundamentally important issues, such as the undeniable strain between academic freedom and DEI priorities. When a part-time online professor chooses to show a 14th century Islamic painting of the Prophet Mohammad in an Islamic art class, and a Muslim student in that online class protests, asserting she doesn’t feel valued or respected, the tension between academic freedom and the DEI campus apparatus is highlighted. This happened recently at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Maybe this tension is minimal in some disciplines at some campuses with some professors, but there are 3,000 institutions in America and many permutations of conflict and possible affronts are easily imaginable. In a climate thick with identity politics, could white students effectively maintain that classes on white supremacy make them feel disrespected and not valued?
Sigmund Freud observed that the greatest enemy of personal freedom is civilization. Living in groups and communities inevitably requires compromise and tolerance. People want independence and personal freedom and they want to get ahead, but they also need to get along. The stress between civilization and freedom has engendered further conflict and division.
Recruiting and hiring faculty
Professors participate in countless job candidate searches and promotion meetings each year, particularly at large universities with hundreds of faculty members. I have taken part in literally dozens of “job talk” visits, where prospective colleagues are invited to a campus to present seminars on their research and teaching philosophies and to meet with faculty and students. It would be intolerably inappropriate and widely embarrassing to hear someone ask a visitor, for example, about personal politics or finances during such visits, though I’m sure it has happened somewhere. Experienced interviewers can learn about a candidate’s fit with departmental culture without resorting to intrusive or unacceptable questions. Normally we’d only invite candidates whom we would like to welcome as colleagues, whom we are recruiting, and not whom we are trying to alienate. And, perhaps more cynically, job candidates are not clueless: they can learn a few catchphrases and DEI mantras and strategically sprinkle those out at dinners and meetings during their campus visits.
Recent reports that job candidates at Texas Tech have been supposedly rated poorly not because they lack subject matter competence but because they may not be familiar with equity and inclusion concepts are concerning. I would like to think no amount of DEI bureaucracy would turn professors into rabid “thought policepersons.” To the extent the Texas Tech episode is true, it may be just as unfortunate as what happened at Hamline University.In the end, when anonymous and confidential votes to appoint a new professor or to promote a colleague are taken, senior faculty will vote according to their own private beliefs and opinions regarding a candidate’s suitability. No one is forced to reveal the reasons for their vote. Personality issues will invariably arise, as they do in all groups, but they will tend to fade behind subject matter talent and potential contributions to the discipline and university. I have seen colleagues vote “yes” in promotion or hiring decisions regarding people they didn’t like very much and “no” for some with whom they shared common interests or even personal friendships. No loyalty oath or board policy will change these aspects of human nature.
Art Padilla: Universities and DEI, Part 1 >>
Universities and DEI, Part 3: Draconian options and board duties >>
Banner images were generated by AI (DALL-E 2) with the instruction to “provide a Picasso-style painting of DEI.”
Dr. Art Padilla splits his time between his homes in Wrightsville Beach and Raleigh. He served as a senior administrator at the University of North Carolina headquarters and later at NC State, where he was chairman of the Department of Management. He has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill, NC State, and University of Arizona, winning several teaching awards and recognitions, including the Holladay Medal, the highest faculty honor at NC State. He recently completed the 2nd edition of his book Leadership: Leaders, Followers, Environments and is at work on his first novel for Penguin.
Jay Currin says
When I entered Charlotte College in 1962 the black student population was small, but those students were active participants in all areas of student campus life. Most students worked jobs in the community.
When I graduated four years later from UNC-Charlotte it was much the same. We were still a commuter college and our local competition for black students was Johnson C. Smith in central Charlotte. When UNC-C opened on-campus dormitories we saw a steady increase in black enrollment. It was a a time when our “agenda” was to graduate debt-free, to make our parents proud, and to be good citizens. We had a simple life compared to students today.