A female professor at the University of Southern California has filed a federal discrimination complaint against the institution, saying that the decision this year to deny her tenure fits a longstanding pattern in the university’s humanities and social-sciences departments of promoting white men at much higher rates than women and members of minority groups.
Mai’a K. Davis Cross, an assistant professor of international relations, is of native Hawaiian and Asian ancestry. Her complaint, filed this month with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, cites data she collected with a colleague in the political-science department. The data show that 92 percent of white men who were considered for tenure from 1998 to 2012 in the social-sciences and humanities departments were awarded it. That compares with 55 percent of women and professors from minority groups who worked in the same departments during that period, according to documents filed with the EEOC.
Ms. Cross’s tenure application was supported by her department and the faculty but was ultimately denied when “senior administrators sought unauthorized and improper input from scholars outside Cross’s discipline,” her lawyer says in a news release that details Ms. Cross’s complaint. He also says that the complaint states that Ms. Cross met the institution’s criteria for earning tenure and that her evaluations in the years leading up to her tenure denial gave her the highest of ratings.
Ms. Cross is quoted in the news release as saying that she filed her complaint “to correct the unfair damage to my career and to help assure that women and minority candidates will have the same chance to earn tenure as do their white, male colleagues.”
The vice provost for faculty affairs at Southern Cal, Beth Meyerowitz, said in a written statement that the institution does not discuss individual tenure cases and that officials had not seen Ms. Cross’s complaint. Decisions about tenure, she said, are “made individually and on the merits of each case after careful study by faculty on a series of university committees, whose membership is diverse by gender, ethnicity, field, and intellectual approach.”
The university cited federal data showing that nearly one-quarter of its full-time faculty are members of minority groups. The data, from 2009, count full-time faculty with and without tenure.
Ms. Meyerowitz also said the institution’s independent Office of Equity and Diversity had assessed tenure and promotion decisions and had “not found evidence of discrimination against any group.” She added, however, that the university would investigate any new allegations to “determine if there is either a discriminatory bar to promotion, or some other impediment over time causing an adverse impact on women or minorities.”
Analysis of Course Catalogs
The data being used to bolster Ms. Cross’s discrimination claims were collected by Ms. Cross and Jane Junn, a professor of political science at the university who analyzed the data. The two professors collected promotion and tenure information about 106 assistant professors in the social sciences and humanities who went through the tenure process from 1998 to 2012. Ms. Cross and Ms. Junn used annual course catalogs to track assistant professors over time, since the university does not make records of its tenure decisions public.
Ms. Junn, an expert in statistical analysis, watched for assistant professors to eventually be listed as associate professors in the catalog, meaning they had achieved tenure, or to simply disappear from it, suggesting that they had left the university because they had not been awarded tenure. Excluded from the analysis were professors who had left the institution before going through the tenure-and-promotion process. Ms. Junn also confirmed the status of those who had not received tenure through correspondence with the professors in question or with members of their departments.
Ms. Junn’s analysis reveals high tenure rates not only for white males but also for white junior faculty in general. Eighty-one percent of white junior faculty members—including men and women—were awarded tenure from 1998 to 2012, while just under 48 percent of minority professors were promoted to associate professor with tenure.
White women, Ms. Junn found, had been awarded tenure at a rate of 66.7 percent, while only 40 percent of Asian-American female faculty members had received tenure.
“It’s really dramatic data,” Ms. Junn said. “It’s rare to find patterns that stark.”
Her report, she said, is “a description of what’s been happening with tenure and promotion here over a 14-year period, but it doesn’t explain why it’s been happening. It’s up to people who have more information about each of these faculty members to tell us that. The bottom line is we need more information.”
In mid-October, Ms. Junn sent a memorandum with her analysis of the data to Philip J. Ethington, a professor of history and political science who serves as president of the Faculty Council for the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. Mr. Ethington said in an e-mail that the council was still investigating the document, which Ms. Junn said she originally prepared for Ms. Cross to submit during a grievance-committee hearing scheduled for December.
The social-science departments included in the analysis were anthropology, economics, international relations, linguistics, political science, psychology, and sociology. The humanities departments were American studies and ethnicity, art history, classics, East Asian languages and culture, English, history, philosophy, religion, and Slavic languages.
Ms. Cross, whose research areas include European integration, security, and foreign policy, won a teaching and mentoring award last year that is given to one junior faculty member universitywide each year. The 2012-13 academic year is set to be her final one at Southern Cal, which is typical after a professor’s bid for tenure is denied.
Correction (11/14/2012, 9:38 p.m.): This article originally misstated Beth Meyerowitz’s title. She is Southern Cal’s vice provost for faculty affairs, not its vice provost for academic affairs. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.
