According to The Princeton Review, the Fairfield University student body is the tenth most homogenous in the nation.
That’s nothing compared to the faculty, however, which is even less diverse than the student body.
Despite promises of equal opportunity employment, the faculty is still overwhelmingly white.
“We haven’t been very successful in attracting a diverse faculty,” said Academic Vice President Orin Grossman.
The university office of management information reports the full time faculty at 43 percent female and 47 percent male.
There are five African-American professors at Fairfield now: Susan Tomlinson and Ben Halm in the English department, Walter Petry and Harold Forsythe in the History department and Olivia Harriott in Biology.
Forsythe will not be returning to Fairfield next year.
Forsythe said Fairfield is, “not enough of a challenge in some ways and too much of a challenge in other ways.” He did not receive tenure after six years and is now looking for schools with doctoral programs.
Although Forsythe said, “the faculty is welcoming,” and “black studies is very well supported by the administration,” he was trained to work with graduate students and would like to pursue this.
“Even though this is better than some of the places I’ve been, Fairfield doesn’t fit me. I’m urban,” Forsythe said.
The administration is already searching for a replacement for Forsythe, but attracting a minority candidate to Fairfield for this faculty job could be difficult.
“It [Fairfield] is a campus that is overwhelmingly white, very parochial and doesn’t have broad interests,” said Walter Petry, assistant professor in the history department and temporary director of the Black Studies Program.
“The person coming would have to know the situation that he or she is coming into and the person would have to be an energetic, imaginative individual who has a messianic desire to introduce black studies to an audience who is not interested in it,” Petry said.
Fairfield does have the advantage of proximity to both Yale University and New York City and the administration and faculty are hoping this will attract good candidates. Some are worried that will not be enough.
“I don’t think the university has thought deeply enough about the difficulty of implementing this commitment to diversity,” said Petry.
“Are we just saying the right thing or is there a serious desire to really implement these ideals, which everyone agrees with? There’s been no evidence that there’s been any special energy applied to implementing these ideals,” he said.
Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Timothy Snyder said without diversity, “You are at risk to lesser dimensional thinking and are ignorant to major facets of the world.”
Some students said that diversity of many different kinds was important to the university.
“We do need an increase in diversity, but I’m more interested in the diversity of ideas and backgrounds- not faces,” said Grace Bermudez, ’05.
Michael Corsetti, ’05, said “I’ve never given much thought to it, but there would be benefits to more diversity in the faculty.”
Because the administration recognizes the importance of the situation, the search for a new African-American professor has become “an immediate priority,” according to Snyder.
More money has been put into the search process than is usual and a wider variety of circulation and networking is occurring to find possible candidates.
The position in the history department, vacated by Forsythe, will include director of the Black Studies program and has been upgraded to associate professor instead of assistant in an effort to attract a more senior professor.
Gender equality at Fairfield fairs better than racial equality.
Johanna X. J. Garvey, associate professor in the English department said, “in terms of diversity, Fairfield has remained almost completely stagnant, but in terms of gender equality it has gotten better.”
Even though there are many women professors at Fairfield now compared to 20 years ago it is still the male professors that are usually found in the higher positions such as full professor. Many woman professors at Fairfield are either assistant or associate professors.
Mark Guglielmani, director of human resources, said that this could be due to the fact that many professors here have tenure and are not going anywhere. “There is not a high turnover at Fairfield. We’re not going to terminate people to achieve diversity.”
Grossman said, “Could we do more [to achieve diversity]? Yes.” He did not elaborate on what must be done, stating “that’s open to discussion.”
Forsythe said there was an evident effort to improve the diversity on campus.
“My sense is that the institution wants a thriving black studies department…and the potential of Fairfield is great,” said Forsythe.
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