Since any of my friends have been political science grad students at @UWMadison, there's only been one Black faculty member in the entire department. We wanted to find out whether this was part of a pattern.

So, we collected the data & wrote it up. Here's what we found. 1/

In the past 50 years, there has never been more than one Black faculty member employed by @uwpolisci at any one time. From the late '80s to the late '90s, there were none. 2/

Professing a commitment to diversity is one thing. Investing the resources & doing the work is another. My department is wonderful in many ways, but when it comes to investing the resources & doing the work to hire Black faculty, it has failed. Unequivocally. 3/

But hiring doesn't matter if faculty of color don’t feel supported once they get here. This is a graph of employment duration broken down by race and gender. I'll let it speak for itself. (full report linked in the thread below) 4/

This year, 3% of @uwpolisci faculty are Black—because the department is smaller than it’s ever been. That 3%? It’s one person. One person who was part of a multi-dept cluster hire, who has been the only Black faculty member in the dept for 10 years. 5/

In short, @uwpolisci faculty have been overwhelmingly white for at least 50 years. Fifty years!

& instead of trending upward, as you might expect in a dept committed to diversity, the # of Black faculty has been relatively constant. For 50 years.

It’s time for a change. 6/

Overwhelmingly white depts can't incorporate the diverse views & experiences that produce truly great research. They can't attract the best students. & they can't serve the communities they belong to. They're perpetuating white supremacy & stunting themselves at the same time. 7/

In our full report on the data, we make 4 recommendations:
-hiring Black faculty
-regular mandatory anti-racism trainings
-recognize & publicize professional accomplishments
-a regular grad seminar on REP
This is just a start, but it has never been more urgent to get started. 8/

Here’s our report, made possible by the extraordinary efforts of @MicahCRDillard, @AnnaOltman, @ShaanWrites, & @mikedec. Questions about how we did it, or how you can organize a similar effort in your department? Let us know! http://bit.ly/UWPSFacDiv  /fin

SHIT I linked the wrong @mikedecr. Sorry!! Our data would be so so ugly without him.