The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees decision not to grant tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winner and member of the school’s journalism faculty has shined a spotlight on Black female scholars and professors with tenure.
“While recent reports have shown modest gains in faculty diversity through the years, most, however, have been in untenured positions,” said Julian Vasquez Heilig, dean of the University of Kentucky College of Education. A 2019 study lead by Heilig found that the composition of faculty across the country is not keeping pace with the diversity of the U.S. population.
Admittedly, Heilig’s focused on faculty diversity across the board, and included all women of color Black, brown, tan and lite tan. But when you zoom in a look particularly at Black women, as in the case of Nikole Hannah-Jones, the number of tenure Black women holding tenured faculty positions across the US leaves much room for improvement.
At FAMU whose student body (in fall 2020) is 66 percent female, women hold 303 of the total 636 total faculty positions (according to the 2019 factbook), and Black women accounted for 83, or 28.7 percent, of the 289 tenured faculty positions.
Black women tenured faculty in Florida
At Florida’s flagship universities, the number of Black women tenured faculty members were much worse. Of the 871 tenured faculty members at Florida State University, only 17 were Black women or a paltry 2.1 percent. At the University of Florida, Black females represented only 1.4 percent of the university’s 1,522 tenured faculty.
The University of Central Florida had 1.9 percent (13 of 698) and at Florida International University Black women comprised 1.3 percent of the 511 tenured faculty positions. At the University of South Florida 2.1 percent (15) of their 700 tenured faculty were Black women, University of West Florida came in at 0.7 percent, while at Florida Gulf Coast University there were 0.0 percent.
Black women tend to fare better at HBCUs
Not surprisingly, Black women stood a better chance of gaining tenure at Spelman College where they held 53.4 percent of the 88 tenured professors positions.
At Howard University 26.9 percent of that schools tenured faculty (126 of 496) were Black women. While NC A&T clocked in at 23.9 percent (53 of 245), Alabama A&M registered 17.3 percent (81 of 14), while Alabama State 31.4% (32 of 104).