The make-up of your bookbag

It’s bookbagging season and I’m a second semester senior. To round off the final countdown of my time at Duke, I think back on my experiences and I feel so grateful. I have met people from all around the world who supplemented my college education with each of their perspectives and their unique brands of intelligence that led them to Duke. That’s the kind of enriching environment Duke promised me.

So if Duke advertises student diversity so rigorously, is my experience at Duke negatively impacted with a lack of instructor diversity? Is my formal education held to a different standard?

I recognize that there is nothing inherent about a race or ethnicity that predisposes a person to better or worse instructing. But high-quality professors derive their credibility both from their own personal expertise and from their ability to relay knowledge to students. 

Perhaps this is more of a humanities issue. In talking to friends, it seems like there were more female professors of color in the hard sciences, but a large proportion of these professors are of Asian descent and not of other races. In 2014, an internal Duke report published to the university’s academic council found that Duke’s faculty diversity is low compared to our peer institutions, especially for women and Latinx faculty. From my own personal experience among the faculty in the Public Policy and Political Science departments, diversity is lacking. The same can be said after looking through the faculty lists for Economics, History, and Philosophy. 

Upon reflection, I have had entire semesters where all of my courses have been taught by white males. While my Duke education has undoubtedly provided an opportunity to promote my intellectual growth, I wonder how much our intellectual community could be furthered with more heterogenous instructors who derive their expertise, perspectives, and values in ways only other races, ethnicities, and cultures can. If I’m going to be a global leader, shouldn’t I be learning from people with varying roots? 

Maybe it’s because diversity is only something recently advocated for by Duke—after all, the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences only let black professors into its ranks as faculty 50 years ago. And remember, Duke is about to turn 100. I must also recognize that faculty selection is a highly complicated and competitive process, and faculty turnover is a lot slower than the constant churning of us students in and out of undergrad. While faculty diversity processes may indeed be belabored with more bureaucracy and questions about tenure attainability, we must do more and continue to press forward on this issue. Research shows that a taking courses with a diverse body of faculty members has a wide variety of positive effects on the educational outcomes, experiences of college students, and students’ preparation for the real world.   

I can’t help but feel that as a student of color here on campus, I am missing out on equally intelligent, experienced, and capable professors of color who would have been even more advantageous to my academic growth by connecting with me on a personal level of identity. I wish I had a Duke professor to muse over how our shared ethnicity warps my opinion of historical events. Or share a lens to analyze how to process the impact of current events on our particular race. Or how my family’s immigration story inhabiting the space between two vastly different cultures might impact my means to succeed. Or even just someone who looks like me excelling at being a professor—a visible position of reverence on campus. Even if I don’t want to pursue a career in academia, I feel that I would have benefitted from being able to see more professors of color as leaders in the Duke community, and have that subconscious affirmation that I, too, could make it. 

We as students must recognize that Duke can always improve this academically-rich community. If we strive to the best of the best, I think that we can expect Duke to do the same—and that includes providing a more diverse faculty body. Along with its strengths, we ought to be conscious of our Duke education’s shortcomings—and this is a significant one.