Executive-search firms that typically help fill high-ranking administrative jobs at Ivy League institutions aim for a diverse slate of candidates. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into more diversity in the top ranks.
Conversations with several company executives who work with colleges yield revealing insights about the challenges of placing minority candidates in top administrative jobs. Ilene H. Nagel, a former law professor who taught at Columbia and Yale, heads the higher-education practice at Russell Reynolds Associates, in Los Angeles. She has conducted searches for several Ivies and other top-tier universities, and says her firm will not present a slate of candidates that is not diverse in terms of gender and race. And she insists that college presidents are seriously committed to diversifying their faculties and leadership.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever done a search where the university president or some other official has not mandated that diversity be a priority,” Ms. Nagel says.
Her company conducted the recent search for a University of Pennsylvania deanship that proved divisive. At Penn’s annual diversity dinner last year, minority professors pressed the president, Amy Gutmann, on whether she would appoint a minority candidate as dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Ms. Gutmann responded that she would not bring in someone who was not “qualified,” according to several people at the dinner. Her comments upset many minority scholars, and after a white candidate, Steven J. Fluharty, was appointed in January, some minority scholars promised to boycott this year’s diversity dinner. (Mr. Fluharty declined to be interviewed.)
“Amy Gutmann was adamant that she wanted a slate of candidates that was diverse,” Ms. Nagel says. “Absent of that she said she would make us go back and do another search.”
A search for a top administrator typically begins with outreach to over 100 prospective candidates; faculty and search-committee members are also invited to nominate candidates. The company’s staff submits about 50 CVs to the search committee, which then narrows the list to some 10 to 15 people to be interviewed.
“This is the first place where you see some winnowing that presents challenges to diverse candidates,” Ms. Nagel says. “It happens typically on the basis of people’s pedigree, background, and track record. If you’re talking about the Ivies, they are looking at their peers at top-ranked institutions who are full professors and have had administrative experience. That’s a small pool to begin with.”
In the next phase, the list shrinks to about seven candidates for interviews. “What they’re really searching for is somebody whose track record of success matches as closely as possible the challenges and opportunities that the institution will face in the next five years,” Ms. Nagel says.
After those interviews, the search committee sends a shortlist of candidates to the president, who makes the final selection. “No matter how committed to diversity a president might be, there might not be a minority on the shortlist. But in the end the president gets blamed,” Ms. Nagel says.
For the Penn search, she notes that two senior black faculty members sat on the search committee. “They worked tirelessly, as did the entire committee, to make sure there was a diverse pool of candidates,” Ms. Nagel says. “At the end of the day, a white man was chosen. Ultimately, you have to pick the person who has the best track record of success.”
But Penn faculty critics say dissecting how many people of color were on the search committee is beside the point. “We’re talking about a 10-year epoch without an appointment of a single person of color,” says Kenneth L. Shropshire, a professor of legal studies and business ethics at Penn’s Wharton School.
“The search committee is consultative; they don’t tell the president who to hire,” adds Tukufu Zuberi, a professor of race relations and chair of the sociology department at Penn.
Oliver B. Tomlin III, vice president of the Philadelphia-based search firm Witt/Kieffer’s education, not-for-profit, and health-care practices, says it has conducted more than 350 searches for administrative positions at colleges in the past three years. The company begins by turning to organizations like the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. The company then sends out hundreds of e-mails informing potential candidates of the opening, advertises in publications for diverse academic professionals, and makes direct phone calls.
One challenge is convincing candidates that the hiring institution is seriously committed to diversity. “I get phone calls all the time from minority candidates who ask, ‘Is this real?’ Candidates will sometimes come back from interviews and tell us that it felt like window dressing,” Mr. Tomlin says.
More than 80 percent of the candidate pools that Witt/Kieffer has provided to colleges have included women or minorities. The company says it has successfully placed more than 30 percent of female candidates, but only around 14 percent of minority candidates, in administrative positions.
“I don’t know any institution that doesn’t say that diversity is important,” Mr. Tomlin says. “But you have to look at the results to see if they are really committed. What do the numbers say?”
Diversity, however, isn’t achieved through numbers alone, says Lisa M. Coleman, Harvard’s first chief diversity officer, a position created in 2010. “It’s about who can do the best job of advancing a diversity agenda,” she says. During a phone interview that also included a media official, she listed a handful of minority and white faculty and administrators on campus who help people change their thinking about diversity.
Ms. Coleman noted that Harvard has established a number of diversity initiatives, from mentoring young faculty members to creating pipeline programs that encourage minority scholars to pursue academic careers. In 2005, Harvard set up an office of faculty development and diversity, and the following year a women’s center. A number of Ivies have made similar efforts, which some critics say amount to “cosmetic diversity.”
People often respond negatively to the low numbers of minority administrators on campus, Ms. Coleman says, but a better way to measure diversity is to ask, “What are they actually doing, and how are they transforming the campus dynamic?”
“You need white people to help you,” Ms. Coleman said. “It can’t just be individuals of color. I alone can’t change Harvard.”