Nature this week has a news article and an editorial about the James Sherley case at MIT and more broadly about faculty diversity. Sherley is the bioengineering professor who went on a hunger strike in February protesting the decision to deny him tenure, saying that it was due to racism (he’s African-American). MIT wants Sherley to leave on June 30, saying that it has exhausted all appeals and reviews of his case. Sherley says he won’t leave. One MIT professor, Frank Douglas, resigned in protest last week.
The editorial makes a good point that while there have been efforts to bring more diversity into the ranks of PhD students, more work is needed to make sure that minorities are recruited and retained at the faculty level. Without commenting specifically on the Sherley case, it says that racial discrimination can be very subtle and faculty must learn to recognize it. The first step is for universities do a campus-wide review of racial disparities, something MIT says it’s now doing.
Below is a correspondence submission which was declined by Nature “for reason of space”. The correspondence sets straight certain important factual matters and issues which I provided to Ms. Heidi Ledford during our hour-long interview but were either omitted or inaccurately presented in her news story. Ms. Ledford also misquoted and misinterpreted Professor Frank Douglas’ resignation letter, which was meant to be in protest of MIT’s reneging on their gentlemen’s agreement with James Sherley rather than the tenure consideration per se.
Sine qua non of faculty diversity
SIR – Heidi Ledford’s News story “Researcher refuses to back down over race case” (Nature 447, 762-763; 2007) called on what appeared to be sensational hearsays about James Sherley’s tenure case in an attempt to speculate on what should have been duly MIT’s confidential departmental faculty evaluation. In such a frenzy, it entirely overlooked the unfolding of a far more serious matter evidencing the modern face of racial discrimination in US academe which, ironically, is the subject of the accompanying editorial “Academic diversity” (Nature 447, 753-754; 2007). This is, indeed, the proverbial ‘revolving door’ in action when American research universities – MIT for one – fail to pay more than lip service in ensuring an environment in which all members of a diverse academic community could feel welcome and respected, which is the ultimate sine qua non for the retention of minority faculty. Ms. Ledford rightly reported that MIT professor Frank Douglas’ resignation in protest was because he felt unable to “advise young Blacks about their prospects of flourishing in the current [MIT] environment.” But she neglected to quote his other important reason was about the lack of avenues available to effect change “when agreements or promises are transgressed” – in direct reference to the widely publicized reciprocal statements by MIT and Sherley on February 16, 2007 that ended Sherley’s 12-day hunger strike. While your editorial aptly points out that it shouldn’t take a hunger strike to prod MIT into action, Douglas’ concern was whether any promised action could be trusted when the very agreements following even such a hunger strike are transgressed.
Chi-Sang Poon
Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139