Correction appended.
Ohio University’s employment diversity is not representative of the state’s Black and Hispanic populations, according to employment data collected by the OU chapter of the Association of American University Professors.
The data, collected by OU-AAUP in collaboration with the OU Black Faculty Association, show the university employs a smaller percentage of Black and Hispanic faculty and administrators than what is representative of Ohio’s total population.
The association’s findings were made public over five months after the Black Faculty Association released a letter addressed to OU President Duane Nellis and Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Gigi Secuban, calling out the university’s hiring practices.
“Ohio University has not yet acknowledged its own institutional racism,” according to the letter. “This is most evident in the hiring of Black faculty and staff, student recruitment and retention, disparate compensation, promotion into leadership positions, marginalization of Black faculty in the Ohio University colleges, schools and departments, and the absence of Black voices in decision making in general and with issues that concern our community in particular.”
The data project, titled “Race and Ethnicity at Ohio University,” compares the actual number of Black and Hispanic full-time and part-time faculty and staff to the Black and Hispanic percentages of the state’s population to show just how diverse the university’s hiring practices are, Loren Lybarger, president of OU-AAUP and professor of classics and world religions, said.
“What I would hope is that the OU administration would look at this data and begin to develop a strategic plan for what we might think of as ‘cluster hires’ in these different schools that would strategically aim at increasing recruitments of African American faculty,” Lybarger said.
The study found just under 4% of OU faculty members are Black, while Black people make up over 13% of the state’s population. The Patton College of Education has the highest percentage of Black faculty at OU, in which over 8% of faculty are Black. The Russ College of Engineering and Technology has the smallest percentage of Black faculty members, where under 2% of faculty members are Black.
The Office of the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion is the most diverse administrative unit at Ohio University, in which Black people make up over 18% of employees. The Office of the Vice President for Research and Creative Activity is the administrative unit with the least Black representation, with zero Black employees.
In total, 2% of OU personnel are Hispanic. In comparison, Hispanic people make up about 4% of Ohio’s population. The College of Arts and Sciences employs the most Hispanic employees, in which over 5% of the faculty is Hispanic. The Patton College of Education has the least Hispanic personnel, in which only 0.5% of the faculty is Hispanic.
Over 6% of employees in the office of the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion are Hispanic. Alden Library, the Office of the President and University College have no Hispanic employees.
“It's really important for a university to achieve a certain level of representation,” Lybarger said. “African Americans (should) constitute a visible and coherent presence on campus. Otherwise, you get isolated individuals who are … just one or two persons within a dominantly white department. And that makes it hard for those individuals to begin to change the culture of these departments and to be able to advocate for the concerns of faculty of color.”
The Black Faculty Association created a list of 28 items in its letter that the university must address in order to eradicate racial injustice and discrimination at OU.
Included in the list was the need to recruit Black students and faculty to a percentage representative of the state’s population. OU has never exceeded more than 7% of its student population having been made up of Black students, according to the letter. The letter also asks that the university raise the salaries of Black faculty to those of their white counterparts with similar experiences in their departments, schools and colleges.
The Black Faculty Association also included the university’s need to hire Black faculty and administrative members in leadership positions and establish systems for Black students and employees to report incidents of racial discrimination.
The letter can be read in full below.
“Once we begin to recover from our budget situation and begin to hire faculty, this is something our chapter is going to focus on and be advocating for ... hiring minorities that focus on recruiting and maintaining faculty of color,” Lybarger said.
Correction appended: A previous version of this article stated Ohio University did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publishing, but OU representatives were not contacted. The article is updated to reflect the most accurate information.
