Friends, I want to talk about diversity in Political Science. My colleagues and I have put together a document showing patterns in hiring and retention of faculty of color in my dept, @uwpolisci . Two graphs in particular show the scope of the problem:

There has never been more than a single Black faculty member in over 50 years (our data go back to 1970; there were no Black faculty before then).

But the department has gotten more diverse over time, and I worry that that has confused some people about the extent of the problem. Because that "diversity" has been driven overwhelmingly by hiring white women.

In a field that is culturally centered around white men (YES, STILL), gender balance is important. But white women, we need to stop cheering improvements for ourselves while reproducing the same white supremacy that has poisoned academia for centuries.

And we especially need to be careful not to let gender diversity driven by white women obscure the appalling lack of racial diversity in our departments. This goes for @uwpolisci and for @UWMadison more broadly.

You can read the full report here, by @MicahCRDillard @AnnaMeierPS @ShaanWrites @mikedecr and myself: http://bit.ly/UWPSFacDiv 

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