Moving beyond the rhetoric on faculty diversity in higher education: an interview with diversity expert Dr Bailey Jackson

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this article is to provide Dr Bailey Jackson's perspective on institutional and systemic barriers to full inclusion of diverse faculty in higher education through the lens of the multicultural organizational development (MCOD) model. Dr Jackson is renowned for his work on social justice, diversity and multiculturalism.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a personal interview with Dr Bailey Jackson. This interview provides insight on institutional level change efforts through the MCOD framework, a perspective on why institutions get stuck on the way to becoming healthy multicultural institutions, and the effect on moving the needle on faculty diversity in institutions of higher education.

Findings

The institutional obstacles and barriers tend to be centered around misalignment with the mission, vision and core values, and how those are formulated to include diversity and inclusion. Faculty diversity is only one component in dealing with the health of any organization or the academy as a whole. If institutions focus on diversity faculty in an unhealthy system, they will encounter limitations on how much the institution will develop on the MCOD continuum. The health of the overall system is going to affect the approach to faculty diversity.

Practical implications

Dr Jackson provides insight on his work with the MCOD framework and specifically the overall health of the institution as critical to faculty diversity initiatives. Questions to help institutions begin to assess themselves and identify changes required to move toward Multicultural within the context of faculty diversity are provided.

Originality/value

Through a series of questions, insight from Dr Jackson on why institutions get stuck in moving the needle on faculty diversity through the lens of the MCOD framework is gained.

Citation

Gavino, M.C. (2021), "Moving beyond the rhetoric on faculty diversity in higher education: an interview with diversity expert Dr Bailey Jackson", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Vol. 40 No. 8, pp. 960-972. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-11-2020-0342

Institutions of higher education continue to struggle with attracting and retaining diverse faculty. While the pipeline problem has often been cited as the reason for lack of diverse faculty (Conklin and Robbins-McNesh, 2006; Gasman et al., 2015), women and persons of color are earning doctorates in increasing numbers. Yet moving the needle on recruiting, hiring and retaining diverse faculty continues to be a prevalent issue across institutions of higher education in the US (Davis and Fry, 2019; Trower and Chait, 2002). Research on the lack of diversity among faculty in academia has been attributed to a hostile campus climate (Stanley, 2006), lack of committed leadership (Thompson, 2008), composition of search committees (Chen and Yang, 2013; Cockrell, 2006), failure to incorporate diversity goals into the hiring process (Minor, 2014) and micropolitics (van den Brink et al., 2010).

The aim of this article is to provide Dr Bailey Jackson's perspective on institutional and systemic barriers to full inclusion of diverse faculty in higher education through the lens of the multicultural organizational development framework (MCOD; Jackson and Harriman, 1994). Dr Jackson is renowned for his work on social justice, diversity and multiculturalism. According to Jackson and colleagues (1988, 1994; 2005), the health of the institution is the most critical aspect of any systemic change. This interview provides insight on the MCOD framework and perspective on why institutions get stuck.

Literature review

Turner et al. (2008) conducted an extensive review of research on faculty of color spanning over 20 years. Their findings identified the following as barriers to recruitment and retention of faculty of color: lack of effort to recruit, hire and retain faculty of color; bias in the hiring process; unjust work expectations; language/accent discrimination; salary inequities; tokenism; and barriers to tenure and promotion. In “Challenging Racism in Higher Education”, Chesler et al. (2005) describe resistant cultures on college campuses and suggests that the mission, culture, power, membership patterns, social climate, technology, resources and boundaries play a part on sustaining institutional racism. Clauset et al. (2015) argue that faculty hiring follows a “common and steeply hierarchical structure that reflects profound social inequality” (p. 1). Interestingly, and germane to Dr Jackson's perspective, Moshiri and Cardon (2016) found that more formal structures are indeed associated with more racial diversity, yet diversity strategies are rarely implemented or used.

In their study, Turner and Myers (2000) identified one of the major causes attributed to unsuccessful efforts for faculty diversity is the lack of committed leadership from all levels. In a more recent study, Moshiri and Cardon (2016) report that less than 10% of business deans consider campus climate, search committee composition or reward systems as obstacles to gaining representation of underrepresented minority faculty. They subscribe more to the pipeline problem and not enough qualified candidates as the issue.

The focus of this article is the MCOD framework. However, other models have been developed to advance diversity and inclusion research and practice. Hurtado et al.'s (1998) Multicultural Educational Diversity Model (DLE) posits that the institutional context influences campus climate through four dimensions: an institution's historical legacy of inclusion of racial and ethnic groups; structural diversity (numbers of racial and ethnic groups); psychological climate (perceptions and attitudes between and among groups) and behavioral climate (intergroup relations on campus). Another conceptual framework developed by Williams et al. (2005) is the Inclusive Excellence Change Model. They propose five dimensions that affect Inclusive Excellence (IE): the political (key senior leaders); bureaucratic (creating and articulating formal goals and objectives in support of IE); symbolic (core values that serve as the foundation for leaders to build policies, practices, curriculum and all other aspects of the institution); collegial (engagement of stakeholders in the process of transformational change) and systemic (broad social context within which the institution exists).

In the MCOD framework, Jackson (2005) describes a multicultural organization as a “system that seeks to improve itself and enhance its ability to reach its mission by advocating and practicing social justice and social diversity” (p. 9). Jackson and Hardiman (1994) suggest that an organization's commitment to being a multicultural organization is determined by where it exists on the MCOD continuum with Monocultural on the left side and Multicultural on the right. (See Figure 1).

The characteristics that describe Monocultural represented in first two stages are: Exclusionary which depicts an organization that maintains dominance of the majority and is openly hostile to social justice or social diversity; The Club stage is one where the organization tolerates or allows engagement in social justice issues but continues to maintain privileges for those in power. When any of these characteristics are present, the organization will be prevented from being a diverse and inclusive place to work and learn. Therefore, an organization committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment must be low on the Monocultural side of the MCOD continuum. In the center are the two Non-Discriminating stages: Compliance occurs when those historically underrepresented are allowed in, but without the support required to succeed. In Affirming, an organization actively recruits and supports members in minority groups and begins to shift from representation toward inclusion.

On the right side of the MCOD continuum are the two Multicultural stages. Redefining depicts an organization that is open minded with nonoppressive attitudes and behaviors, and provides an environment where members are treated fairly and can contribute to their full potential. An organization at this stage is striving to become a multicultural organization. The Multicultural stage is the ideal, here an organization is fully inclusive, has eliminated social oppression and ensures that members of diverse groups are well served. Organizations committed to diversity and inclusion strive to be high on the Multicultural side. Figure 2 provides practices indicative of what can and does occur in the Monocultural and Non-Discriminating stages and what should occur in Multicultural stages related to faculty diversity, equity and inclusion in institutions of higher education.

Interview with Dr Bailey Jackson

The impetus for this interview was initiated by a conversation with my dear friend Dr Bailey Jackson. In a recent visit, we reflected on the work with the MCOD model that brought us together many years ago (Gavino et al., 2010) and the ongoing lack of traction on faculty diversity initiatives. Dr Jackson pointed out that implementing interventions at various levels of the institution may appear as plausible solutions to dilemmas such as faculty diversity, but are ineffective and do not sustain the changes necessary – as it is at the institutional or system level that change needs to occur. The following is my interview of Dr Jackson who I admire and respect profoundly.

Dr Jackson, can you share your story of how you embarked on your work on social justice and diversity and the development of the multicultural organization development model (MCOD)?

I grew up in a working-class family in New York and for the most part was protected from many of the horrors of racism in my early years. There were, however, incidents I experienced when traveling in Virginia with family. I saw White only signs for restrooms, and no cats, dogs, sailors or N-word allowed. While I knew the word, I had never seen it in print on a sign. That was one of my early awakenings. Through a number of these kinds of episodes I began to realize that my experience base did not help me understand what racism was all about. I grew up in a mostly middle-class neighborhood, where people were trying to get along and I was caught between different points of view about how to get along as a colored person/negro. There were people who were interested in Black middle class and what was considered upper class, all the way to the other extreme, the Black Panthers had headquarters a few blocks away from my home. During the Civil Rights Movement, I began to associate with people who were more vocal around Civil Rights issues. I became curious about the different points of view. The assassination of Dr King had a profound effect on me and listening to how people made sense of things. My doctoral dissertation and research focused on Black identity development which became one of the cornerstones of my thinking. I was also interested in organizational development (OD). One of my key mentors, Dr Dale Lake, introduced me to organizational development, and I became enamored with trying to understand what organizations were about, how decisions were made, and the notion that organizations are corporations to be treated as individuals. Through these experiences I began to think of the possibility that organizations have a consciousness that needs to be considered when looking at issues of social justice and manifestations of social oppression, and to look at what it would mean to classify or draw a continuum of development of an organization that moves from most oppressive to the most liberating or inclusive stage of consciousness. The model emerged from that line of thinking.

As you think about your experience with educational institutions, why have universities not been successful at hiring and retaining diverse faculty?

I want to first clarify what is meant by diversity, it refers to social identity and social oppression regarding race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, physical/developmental ability, social class and representation of the various social identity groups. Social justice is about eliminating all manifestations of social oppression according to their social identity. It is simplistic to discuss faculty diversity as an indicator of the multicultural development of the institution. I have found that one of the issues that affects the academy's approach to faculty diversity is that the academy is an incestuous system in its hiring practices. The procedures for bringing in new faculty results in the hiring of its own. That is one of the major problems in the academy as a whole. This perpetuates all of its practices and continues to relive everything it does and brings in the same types of people that fit with the attitudes of the existing institutional culture most of the time. This affects the health of the system on all parts of the organization. To break the cycle, a change strategy in any organization particularly the academy needs to occur. There is a need to break the pattern and cycle of hiring its own. Faculty diversity is only one component of dealing with the health of an organization or the academy as a whole. Focusing on faculty diversity in an unhealthy system is going limit how much the institution will develop on the MCOD continuum. The health of the overall system is going to affect the approach to faculty diversity and how the institution approaches its goals. While acquiring diverse faculty is a good goal, it is not a goal that speaks to having the institution be healthy in other ways. One needs to pay attention to other parts of the organization. For example, there are issues around how the institution does personnel profiling – the academy has the propensity to hire its own – look-alikes and thinkers and styles of interacting with each other. There is a notion that we've got to make sure that the person fits. Is fit what we want? In an ideal situation the people hired should fit the mission of the institution not biases that already exist or implicitly fit with what feels comfortable. If you are not hiring to help an institution accomplish its mission, then you are falling back into doing what has always been done and perpetuate the same biases that exist. A clear and solid mission statement with supportive goals and statement of value for social diversity and social inclusivity are imperative. Without these statements, what are you hiring for? You are hiring to perpetuate your sameness. To get away from simply hiring to fit the current culture with existing biases, the institution would need to focus on renewing its mission, goals, vision and values.

Can you elaborate on the role of mission, vision and values?

Much of my work with the MCOD model was influenced by my organizational development experience where I used a five-part diagnostic. Five areas are assessed to determine the health of the organization and better understand what to pay attention to:

1. Mission, vision and values – why does the organization exist, its beliefs, who establishes the mission and how it is translated. These are often part of the strategic plan.

2. Structure – how is it organized, the organizational chart, are any parts of the structure in competition. How decisions are made.

3. Management practices – how resources are allocated and distributed within the organization and who controls priorities. The management of all resources that the institution relies on to deliver on its mission.

4. Technology – hardware, software, people-ware that the institution uses to accomplish its mission/strategic plan; what pedagogy does the institution rely on; how does the institution deliver on its mission.

5. Psycho-social dynamics – the morale of the system; the culture and climate of the institution.

If brought in to an institution to help with faculty diversity – I would first look at the mission statement and values that speak to a desire/need for faculty diversity. For example, one university stated that they tolerate differences in the academy. This statement had been drawn by its trustees and reflected being in the Club or Compliance stage. This does not speak to the climate and is what drives people away once they join. In these stages, money and resources are spent on recruiting diverse faculty and they do not stay.

Recruiting for faculty diversity suggests an approach that is focused on management practices at best, and not the other four areas. In institutions like this, the best you are going to get to is the Affirming stage. Institutions get “stuck” because there is such a limited view of the institution. It is like being caught in a place where you are always fixing something because the foundation has never been completed, and what gets done is cosmetic at best. You are going to have a revolving door because those hired to change the representation of the faculty diversity will eventually find that it is not the ideal they seek and they will leave. To be more ideal and diverse you have to pay attention to all five areas.

What about faculty diversity through the lens of MCOD framework?

The approach to faculty diversity is going to be different in each stage. Many institutions come at faculty diversity at the Compliance stage. It can happen at the Club stage, but usually systems become concerned when mandated or there is legal pressure. There is concern for the institution to look better to the public by being seen as fair and open or living up to the rhetoric around equality. While many systems have that sort of equal opportunity employer rhetoric, they can have it at the Club stage. But what they are looking for is becoming a token sacrificial organization, where people recruited to fill a gap in the diversity profile are put in positions that require that they sacrifice their careers to be seen as valuable to the institution. The Club is tokenism for public relation purposes. There are certain key words to associate with these stages: Exclusionary stage is obviously exclusion and the Club is token representation.

Compliance is not wanting to abuse but wanting to look good with the right numbers. At the Compliance stage, the focus is primarily on how to get the right numbers of the social group that is the focus. There is more concern for real representation. One consequence of being in the Compliance stage is a revolving door, as diverse faculty are brought into an institution that does not support them. The institution realizes that it lacks the right representation and it is very expensive to bring in diverse faculty, and then they leave because the institution is not a healthy system.

The Affirming stage begins to go beyond the numbers and shifts from representation toward inclusion. The institution shows concern for success of the people brought into the system. It starts with understanding and awareness of the climate in the system that supports diverse faculty. This occurs when initiatives and programs are instituted. Institutions are beginning to do this and not just settling for compliance. In the Affirming stage, the institution wants to be more inclusive and appreciates diversity, but does not look for the connection to its core values. It is hard to get past Affirming because you are still open to the same set of values and norms. People get frustrated with failures at the Affirming stage and begin to say well we need something more than this. That drives them back to paying attention to the organization's reasons for being. However, if its reason for being is defined by the majority, it is going to get stuck in Affirming.

Redefining continues to move much more toward inclusion. For an institution to be in the Redefining stage, it would look at hiring and keeping diverse faculty by doing more to support a fully diverse faculty from all social identity groups. It would identify and implement initiatives to move the institution toward the ideal.

Finally, the Multicultural stage is where the institution is just and fully inclusive, and all levels of oppression have been eliminated. The institution has an active role in the maintenance of social justice in the larger community in which it is a member. The institution has a commitment to ongoing assessment of its multicultural health and a process for maintaining its health. The Multicultural institution is fully committed to the full inclusion of members of all social identity groups in all areas of the institution.

Can you speak to how leadership changes that result in new strategic plans and priorities impact diversity and inclusion?

Different leaders can bring a very different vision and mission of themselves or the world. I have seen organizations move in different directions. One example is where the president was taking the institution from Compliance to Affirming – that president left and the new president, with a very different personality and mindset, shifted back toward Compliance. This president's personal style was more exemplary of the Club. This gave the impression of what is valued, and the stand was a kind of a colonialist personality. In this case, it is part the person as well as goals of the institution. At this institution, the Trustees were stuck in the Club stage. In many institutions, the Trustees are very Club oriented and they say things that can make one cringe.

Is it possible to affect change at different or lower levels of the institution?

Every institution is different, in terms of hierarchy. In some institutions, it is the Provost, or the academic head who determines priorities and the deans go along. Deans determine priorities by the way they manage the budget. I gave department chairs autonomy to a point, though the college budget was my responsibility. I wanted the department chairs to manage their departments and make certain decisions, they could only do that with resources. The needle will move when the institution's priorities in the strategic plan are reflected in its resource allocation aka budget.

When I came into the Dean's office, search committees and personnel committees ruled. I wanted more influence over the hiring process and changed the rules so search committees made recommendations rather than expect a rubber stamp on their decision. At another college, the campus personnel committee tended to rule over the department search committees. What is important is to get a sense of how decisions are made, and who establishes priorities that influence issues of inclusion. It is going to depend on the institution's structure – it could be the president, deans or faculty committees. When conducting a diagnosis of the organization, one needs to understand where decisions are made, who is making them and what the process is. This says a lot about where they are in the MCOD and what is possible.

How do you hold presidents and CEOs accountable for the diversity, equity and inclusion and what they say in the mission and strategy?

You need to have a clear and concise mission, vision and values statement that is going to support full social inclusion. This is the organization we really want to be, and this organization is going to be a multicultural organization. A multicultural organization has these four attributes: it is committed to the elimination of all manifestations of social oppression; it is committed to the full and just representation of all social identity groups; it is committed to the full support and inclusion of the members of all social identity groups; and it is committed to the support of social justice and inclusion in its relevant communities. The sense of a multicultural organization needs to be represented in the mission, vision and values statement. The next question is what is in the strategic plan to support the institution's mission. Consider how decisions are made, how are resources acquired and allocated, what kind of technology is relied on and how morale of the institution is expressed.

It is important to identify and state the objectives in measurable terms and have a system that is appropriate to measure whether the objectives are being met. Having rewards and consequences that coincide with the objectives based on what the system values are important. People feel they are being rewarded when they get something that is meaningful to them, or they get something from someone who means something to them. Getting the chancellor's award for advancing something, might be meaningful to one department but not much to another. Others value getting travel money to go to the next conference, perhaps getting another faculty position. Reward systems will vary, you must assess what is valued by the people that are being held accountable.

Why do you think institutions and organizations struggle to get beyond affirming and redefining?

I do not have an example of an institution that has gone beyond Affirming, I know some that were beginning to think about Redefining. Though never fully institutionalized, because getting to Redefining is not just redefining representation, it is rethinking the whole system and the organization's relationship with the community and larger social issues. When organizations get close to the mission, people get nervous, as they realize it is about the core of what the organization stands for and that is uncomfortable. I worked with a company that had not fully embraced Affirming but was getting close. The leaders talked about moving into Redefining and then encountered their relationship to its community. Their corporate headquarters was located in an impoverished area of the community. What surfaced is that their relationship with the community was nonexistent. They were ignoring homelessness right outside of their building, that relationship with the community and how it dealt with class issues in a way that they could be proud of. They began to look at their mission and realized how far they were from Redefining. It is not just the individuals that you bring into the system, it is who the system is in relation to the larger social environment. That says a lot about what is going to be available in the system, I would call this getting close to walking toward your talk.

Lastly, what advice would you give to administrators who want to move their institutions into redefining and where would they start?

The model has six stages grouped into three clusters: Monocultural, Non-Discriminating and Multicultural. Many organizations get through the Non-Discriminating; however, they do not get to the last third cluster – Multicultural. In order to do so, they must be ready to question, examine and/or renew the mission and vision. Through the Non-Discriminating phase, the institution is operating on its core established norms associated with built-in bias(es) developed consciously or unconsciously. Unless the institution is at a place where it sees the advantage of re-examining itself and moving toward a more inclusive position, it is going to get stuck. Many institutions have inclusive rhetoric but do not understand what it means. They are not ready, willing or able to walk its talk. The problem in the Non-Discriminating stages of Compliance and Affirming is people in oppressed groups looking for a Multicultural setting, get frustrated and leave. Some stay and fight with hopes of getting it close to the ideal. Often the victims do not understand fully what an inclusive organization requires, and it becomes frustrating for everybody. That is why even the best organizations get stuck.

Summary and recommendations

What holds institutions of higher education back from making notable progress on faculty diversity is their inability to shift toward inclusion on the right side of the MCOD framework and becoming Multicultural. Dr Jackson refers to the health of the overall system and notes that when working on diversity initiatives such as faculty diversity in an unhealthy system it is impossible to sustain progress. The institutional obstacles are centered around misalignment with mission, vision, and core values and how they are formulated to include diversity and inclusion; the focus on representation and getting the right numbers not inclusion; failure to assess structure, management practices and decision-making; and a climate unable to eliminate all levels of oppression. As a result, institutions get stuck between Compliance (real representation) and Affirming (toward inclusion) and rarely get into Redefining (more inclusion).

As I reflected on our conversation around faculty diversity and the health of the institution, I thought about the search committees I served on, rationales I challenged for moving forward with nondiverse candidates or not moving forward with diverse candidates, vague guidelines for selection protocols, passive resistance to or lack of diversity training, dossiers submitted and reviewed, colleagues asked to represent diversity on committees, subtle exclusion to collaborate on research, pay inequities, unwritten insider knowledge on the rank and tenure process, etc. From these experiences and working with administrators at several institutions, the following questions are representative of what should be assessed relative to faculty diversity on the Multicultural side of the MCOD model. These questions should be posed at the institutional, college and departmental levels to determine how far beyond the Non-Discriminating and Compliance and into the Reaffirming stage the institution is, and what needs to occur to move the needle.

1. Mission and strategy

   • Does faculty view hiring diverse faculty as essential to the success of achieving the institution's mission?

   • Is there a specific measurable goal in university strategic plan for recruiting, retaining and engaging diverse faculty?

   • Are faculty diversity metrics established, measured, rewarded and celebrated?

   • Are university, college and departmental diversity goals established, tracked and shared across campus?

2. Resources

   • Do colleges and departments have a budget dedicated to diversity and inclusion training?

   • Are dedicated funding and resources to support recruiting, hiring and mentoring of diverse faculty through the tenure process in the budget?

   • Is funding available to sponsor external discipline specific diverse faculty organizations (i.e. PhD Project, MFCA, NCFDD)?

3. Support

   • Are faculty resource/inclusion groups formally recognized, supported with resources and given voice?

   • Have faculty diversity committee(s) been established (with training provided) and in a consultative role for all faculty hiring?

   • Is meaningful diversity training for administration, faculty, search committees, and promotion and tenure committees provided and required?

   • Has cultural taxation of faculty of color been acknowledged and eliminated?

4. Promotion and tenure

   • Are tenure and promotion requirements and expectations at the department, college and university level with specific clear interpretation of standards openly shared, discussed and available?

   • Is mentoring of tenure-track faculty rewarded and acknowledged as service at the institutional level for tenure and promotion?

   • Is diversity research valued, recognized and celebrated?

   • Are faculty achievements acknowledged, rewarded and celebrated?

   • Is the approach for promotion and tenure one that establishes support for success or is it a weeding out process?

5. Training

   • Do administration, faculty search committees, and tenure and promotion committees participate in mandatory and meaningful training?

   • Is the training provided substantive and does it address important diversity and inclusion issues?

   • Is meaningful diversity training for all faculty ongoing?

6. Recruiting and selection

   • Is justification for not moving forward with diverse candidates required for each search?

   • Is support for diverse candidates demonstrated and are biases pointed out and discussed during hiring process (or is there silence)?

   • Do faculty diversity committee members serve in an advisory/consultative role on all search committees?

   • Does the evaluation rubric for assessing candidates reflect the mission of institution?

   • Are evaluations reported with committee recommendations?

   • Is evidence of outreach and sources for recruiting diverse faculty required with job requisition approval?

   • Are recruitment, hiring and promotion metrics for measuring diversity success established and transparent by college and department?

   • Is the justification for candidates interviewed and hired vetted by faculty diversity committee and deans – including elimination of diverse candidates from pool?

   • Is training for search committees meaningful and taken seriously?

7. Pay equity

   • Is pay and compensation across all demographics assessed with adjustments made to ensure pay equity?

Conclusion

While these questions focus on assessing the faculty and diversity practices, Dr Jackson, states that faculty diversity is only one aspect of the system, and an assessment of the overall health of the system is required to maintain the integrity of the MCOD change process. A change initiative includes planning, assessing the health of the institution, analyzing and disseminating results, developing, funding and implementing programs and policies, and then reassessing. The MCOD process can begin when there is commitment and evidence of a significant investment on the part of the leadership for transforming into a multicultural institution.

I would like to close by thanking Dr Jackson for his time and candor in sharing his insight, knowledge and experience over his professional and academic career and his work on the MCOD framework and Change Process, and the barriers and implications to full inclusion of diverse faculty.

Figures

Figure 1

Continuum of multicultural organization development

Figure 2

What occurs and should occur at each stage (related to faculty diversity)