Which Faculty Diversity Programs Work? Evidence from 600 U.S. Colleges and Universities

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• Professor Frank Dobbin - Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard
• Wednesday 19 March 2025, 14:05-14:55
• Lecture Theatre 1, Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Ben Karniely.

Abstract:

Historically white, and male, colleges and universities in the U.S. began to diversify their undergraduate bodies in the 1960s and have made considerable progress since then. But progress on faculty diversity has stalled. That has wide-ranging implications for everything from university completion rates for students of color to the presence of new voices in medical research. Universities deserve much of the blame, for they implemented programs to diversify the faculty that their own social scientists had long ago proven to be ineffective. An analysis of the efficacy of diversity programs at 600 schools over 20 years sheds light on how universities can build faculties that look more like their students, and the wider society, in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity.

Bio:

Frank Dobbin is Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard. He holds a B.A. from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in sociology. His Inventing Equal Opportunity (Princeton U. Press 2009) shows how HR managers and activists defined what it meant to discriminate in the eyes of the law, broadening the definition over time. His Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn’t with Alexandra Kalev (Harvard U. Press [Belknap] 2022) looks at the effectiveness of dozens of different diversity programs, in over 800 companies across more than 30 years, to answer the questions: Which programs help, which hurt, and how can harmful programs be improved? Dobbin and Kalev are now investigating university programs designed to promote faculty diversity, using similar methods to sort out which are most effective. Dobbin has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Radcliffe Institute, the Safra Center for Ethics, and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study.

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