Grossly Inappropriate

A review of current events, culture, the arts, contemporary society, and anything else I can possibly get my hands on.

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Location: Cambridge, MA

I'm a 22-year old registered Democrat and meat lover who has lots of angst against social injustices and (for now) too much time on his hands. I was born in Hong Kong, raised in California, and educated at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. I currently reside in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Monday, February 12, 2007

It's a Girl

I'll take a brief breather from the political news to write on one of the biggest news breaks in higher education in a long time: Harvard has appointed Drew Gilpin Faust as its 28th president and the first woman in its long history to serve in that post.

As a follow-up, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article discussing the American Council on Education's study of the lack of diversification in the president's office at U.S. colleges and universities (you can read the article here, if you have a password). That article, I think, misses the point (again).

Mostly, I was disappointed with its narrow definition of diversity among American college and university presidents. If the administration of American higher education is truly to diversify in the future, it will have to look beyond traditional paradigms of male-and-female and black-and-white.

Nowhere in the article was there mention of the rare achievements of administrators like Chang-Lin Tien and Henry Yang, both presidents of campuses in the University of California system. Tien, who was president of UC Berkeley, was the first Asian American to head a major U.S. research university. Since that breakthrough, however, news of other top appointments for Asian Americans has been scarce.

This trend is indicative of an obsession of the black-or-white racial paradigm in this country. Asian Americans lead higher education in the number of non-White students admitted, and they lead the ranks of non-White faculty members (at a measly six percent). However, when it comes to achieving the top rank at their respective colleges and universities, Asian Americans make up just 0.7 percent of presidents and chancellors in the U.S., compared to six percent for African American leaders. I am by no means arguing that "my people" deserve a larger section of the pie merely based on statistics and numbers. I am arguing that higher education has often been the leader for positive social change in this country, and that, to continue to do so, the pie must be enlarged to take advantage of the wide diversity of talent and skill in the country's pool of capable faculty and administrators.

I'm afraid that race has become something of a smokescreen in higher education administration, and to project an image of diversity colleges and universities tend to consider as the main option to a White candidate a Black candidate, even though there is no lack of other non-White candidates available. It will perhaps take a little stretch of the imagination and of institutional willingness to ensconce a non-traditional president, but imagination and courage is exactly what is needed if we intend American higher education to empower and lead our country.

Over six months ago, I wrote to the Chronicle to support the presidential candidacies of people like Denise Denton, whose tragic death reminded us all of the shortage of talented GLBT presidents and how their lonely situations make their jobs even more challenging. That letter, which was eventually picked up by the Advocate, fell on deaf ears. Drew Gilpin Faust's appointment as the president of Harvard University again brings the debate of presidential diversity to the fore.

When will we actually take the debate seriously?

As an aside, it also seems that someone who was actually attending the Obama rally has commented on my post. Which is wonderful, because I know no one who was at that rally, which means people other than my friends are reading this blog. So welcome. At the same time, I wonder how many interns have been dispatched by the campaigns across the blogosphere to search by keyword and "set the record straight." Nevertheless, I am encouraged by the debate and discourse this type of engagement will bring. Thanks for visiting; keep it comin'.

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