Faculty Diversity: Problems and Solutions (review)

As an immigrant Latina professor, I wish I had had access to JoAnn Moody's work at the onset of my career. More informed, I would have shared it with colleagues and two female deans, one White and the other Latina, whose combined elitism and racism subjected me to painful learning and growth. Moody's work, as the notable reviewers on the back cover recommend, should be required reading for those concerned about diversity in higher education.

Moody, a former university professor and presently a diversity consultant, has coached administrators, faculty, and graduate students at public and private institutions nationwide for over a decade. Her range of literacy, experience, and travel—not to mention deep passion—makes her research on diversity in higher education authentic, meaningful, and useful. She cites numerous studies and passages from personal interviews and correspondence to illustrate several main points. The well-organized text comes alive with information, true-to-life examples, and the unflinching political commitment behind its cause—the importance of the diversity movement.

The concise, readable text includes an extensive bibliography and a useful appendix, Checklist of Chapter Contents. Part I describes in three chapters the multifaceted social and academic Problems minorities experience moving into higher education. Part II follows with four chapters on Solutions. Part III caps the book with two chapters on Items for Discussion, Analysis and Practice.

In the familiar language of economics, Moody discusses the advantages majority groups accrue in academia versus the disadvantages minorities experience. She uses Native American professor Frances Rains's "concealed profits" concept to name the rewards men and Whites collect in higher education. She lists the "extra taxes" and "burdens" that outsiders of the American dominant gender and race norm withstand: (1) the presumption of incompetence and inferiority and a sense of vulnerability for never measuring up; (2) the psychological stress of being an isolated "outsider," often lacking the support of a community; (3) the unlikelihood of belonging to valuable networks offering mentoring, connections, and inside information; (4) the experience of frequently finding themselves token representatives of their group, along with (5) a feeling of dissonance from being simultaneously visible and invisible on campus; (6) the constant need to keep proving their qualifications and worthiness; (7) the stress and waste of energy spent figuring out the surrounding psychological dynamics of relationships within majority settings; (8) the impact of unfair job evaluations on their careers and advancement due to unexamined stereotypes on the part of faculty and student evaluators; (9) the need for support of formal affirmative action programs and the inability to benefit from the invisible affirmative action that insiders receive as a matter of course; (10) the constraints on their areas of scholarship, often expected to be limited to questions related to their group; (11) the barriers in hiring when departments think in quota terms like "already having one minority"; and (12) search committees setting the bar higher when considering minority candidates.

Before entering academia, minorities meet many other stressors. Moody discusses these at length within social and historical contexts: devaluation of credentials, exclusion from powerful networks, less personal or inherited wealth, biases related to extensive high-stakes testing throughout their educational careers, and poor schooling. Furthermore, minorities from diverse groups are regarded differently from the dominant perspective. Drawing on social science research, Moody differentiates between immigrant or voluntary minorities who chose to relocate to the United States and colonized or involuntary minorities internally subjugated or brought here against their will. She addresses the question, "Why are certain minority groups more likely to be accepted and respected by the majority group at our colleges and universities?" (67). Moody points out the historical caste-like status of Native Americans, Hawaiians, and Alaskan Indians; Puerto Rican and Mexican Americans; and African Americans. They have been perceived as innately flawed and inferior, subjected to exploitation, and kept at the bottom of the labor force and the social order. Faculty and administrators must understand this picture:

As power-holders possessing influence, financial resources...