Law schools should be sure that female and minority professors have mentors and other support to improve their chances of winning tenure, according to panelists who spoke this month at the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools.
The panelists discussed data, released by the law-school group in September, that showed that female and minority professors were less likely to win tenure than their white, male colleagues. In 1997-98, 90 percent of tenured law professors were white, 4.9 percent were black, 2.5 percent were Latino, and 1.2 percent were Asian, according to the association’s analysis.
Of faculty members hired in 1990 and 1991, 80.6 percent of white, male law professors won tenure, but only 57.1 percent of minority law professors met the same success, according to the report. And 61.3 percent of women received tenure, compared with 72.4 percent of men.
Using jellybeans of different colors to represent the racial and ethnic breakdown of tenured law professors, Sharon Hom, the moderator and a professor of law at Queens College of the City University of New York, said, “We like the jellybean jar to look a little different than this.”
At the University of Oregon, half of the law school’s faculty is composed of female and minority scholars, said Rennard Strickland, its dean. He told of having encouraged a committee to reassess its decision to deny tenure to a black woman whom he considered more qualified than previous successful applicants.
Isabelle R. Gunning, a professor at the Southwestern University School of Law, in Los Angeles, advised those seeking tenure to have patience and confidence.
“It took me nine years and two institutions to get tenure,” she said.
While the study indicated that minority and female faculty members were leaving academe at a higher rate than their white and male counterparts were, Michael A. Olivas, of the University of Houston, noted that “the problems are endemic in the profession,” and that “Anglos are not happy in the academy either,” although they may have more success getting tenure.
http://chronicle.com Section: The Faculty Page: A18
