Lack of diversity in pool of provosts disappointing

TO THE EDITOR:

As reported in The Daily Tar Heel, all the finalists for the position of provost are white men.

The Association for Women Faculty and Professionals and the Black Faculty and Staff Caucus at UNC wrote the chancellor to express their concerns about the lack of gender, racial and ethnic diversity among the candidates.

As the executive officers of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, we share their concerns.

Disciplinary diversity is also absent. UNC is known for its liberals arts education yet is not one of the finalists represents the humanities or the social sciences. We’d like to know the search committee’s criteria, the content of the ad that solicited applicants, and how long the ad ran.

Did the committee encourage any internal candidates — who may have met the criteria for diversity — to apply? The process should be investigated in order to ensure that this problem doesn’t arise in the future.

Some might respond that Bernadette Gray-Little’s successful administrative climb in recent years at UNC demonstrates our campus’s cultivation of female and African-American leadership.

On the contrary, we believe one success story is not enough and distracts us from confronting the structural barriers that reinforce homogeneity in upper administration.

Let’s not forget that the provost is the chief academic officer.

All the more reason to expect candidates well-versed in the core curriculum of a liberal arts university to appear among the finalists.

Mark Driscoll
President
American Association of University Professors
UNC-CH Campus Chapter

Altha Cravey
Vice President
American Association of University Professors
UNC-CH Campus Chapter