Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
Adminstration Responds The MIT administration "agrees with Jim Williams that there are too few black professors at MIT," said News Office Director Kenneth D. Campbell at an impromptu news conference last Wednesday as news reporters crowded the hall outside the President's Office. "Since President Vest and Provost Wrighton took office five and a half months ago, two black faculty members, a physicist and an historian, have been hired and one of them is now here. The recently hired historian, a woman, will join us in the next academic year," he said. "Increasing the number of minorities on the MIT faculty is one of the highest priorities of Dr. Vest's administration," Mr. Campbell said. New this year, Mr. Campbell said, were a series of events held in January, when Professor Henry C. McBay of Morehouse College spent a week at MIT. Dr. McBay, as an undergraduate teacher of chemistry, has inspired and encouraged 42 black Americans to get PhDs in chemistry. Many of his students came back to pay tribute to him. Provost Wrighton, at a dinner honoring Dr. McBay, said what he learned from listening to the tributes was that Dr. McBay's teaching was not only about chemistry; it was also about life. The provost commented that MIT could do more of that. Regarding the "educational pipeline," Mr. Campbell said Dr. Vest had developed figures showing there were 4,000,000 sophomores in high schools in the US in 1977, including 856,000 minorities. Those are the students who, 15 years later in 1992, would be potential candidates for PhDs. Of the four million, some 10,000 will earn PhDs in science or engineering in 1992; of the 856,000 minority students, only 350 will get PhDs in science or engineering. Dr. Vest has calculated that at the present rate of graduation of black PhDs, assuming every engineering school in the country hired at the same rate, each engineering school could hire one black engineering professor every 19 years. "Increasing the number of minority faculty is a subject Dr. Vest has been speaking about regularly, and one which he successfully devoted considerable time to while he was provost at the University of Michigan," Mr. Campbell said. He noted, however, that Michigan has 17 schools, while MIT has five. Thus, the success in recruiting minority faculty at Michigan does not guarantee success at MIT, which emphasizes science and engineering areas where there are fewer black doctorates than in some other fields. MIT this year has 14 African-Americans among its 941-person faculty (1.5 percent) this year. The total number of minority faculty is 81 (8.6 percent), which includes 56 Asian-Americans and 11 Hispanic-Americans. The undergraduate population totals 4,389 students; 1,582 (36 percent) are minorities--281 (6.4 percent) black, 921 (21 percent) Asian- American, 357 (8.1 percent) Hispanic-American, and 23 (0.5 percent) Native American. The graduate student population totals 5,239 students; 396 (7.6 percent) are minorities--81 (1.5 percent) African-American; 241 (4.6 percent) Asian American, 70 (1.3 percent) Hispanic-American, and 4 (0.1 percent) Native American. "The lack of black faculty is a national dilemma for universities which are seeking to increase minority faculty. The minority population of the US is growing but the number of minority PhDs is declining," he said. "There is a relatively small pool of black Americans with PhDs and economic competition from the private sector is increasing." Asked if the lack of black PhDs was due to racism, Campbell said, "Weaknesses in our whole educational system are aggravated by the aspect of racism. It is a problem that has resisted orthodox solutions. We keep trying to find new ways of bringing people to MIT. So, the whole question of getting this kind of an issue out, and debating it, is one that is beneficial." In 1986, Mr. Campbell said, MIT did a survey of black alumni, found that the racial climate was not very good, and at the urging of President Paul E. Gray publicly issued a frank report "which was not pleasant reading." Mr. Campbell said the report reflected the fact that "there is racism in American society, MIT is part of American society, and there is racism at MIT." Despite the bad national publicity, he said, the encouraging thing was that the number of black students seeking admission to MIT went up the next year. "Apparently, they reasoned that at least MIT was admitting there is a problem and is trying to deal with it."