Professor KC Johnson has comments on Evelyn Du-DeHart.

A good hint of the initiative’s direction comes in the identity of the sole consultant brought aboard to discuss “faculty issues.” Evelyn Hu-DeHart was chair of the ethnic studies department at Colorado when Ward Churchill was hired, has described Churchill as “her hire,” and has resolutely defended the propriety of Churchill’s hiring, tenure, and promotion. That alone would seem to disqualify her from giving guidance to another institution on personnel matters, and it’s little surprise that the specific policies that Hu-DeHart recommends are exactly those followed by Colorado in the early 1990s — the policies that led to Churchill’s hiring, tenure, and promotion. To those who raise the possibility of a lack of ideological balance in ethnic studies departments, Hu-DeHart plays the race card: critics should look into the objectivity of “all these dominant white professors [who] are studying European history or the [history of] white Europe.” How reassuring.

Indeed. Still, my complaint is different from Johnson’s. There is nothing wrong with having a consultant with Hu-DeHart’s extreme (from my point of view) perspective. The problem is not having a consultant — indeed, without having any input whatsoever — from a different perspective.

Who is to blame for this lack of diversity in the Diversity Report Initiatives? Easy. The tenured, non-administration faculty on the Coordinating Commitee: Professors Burger, Cassiday, Dudley, Eppel, Garrity, Newman and Sandstrom.

Now, to be fair, some of these professors were not on the committee last year when the consultants were selected; others have no real interest in the topic. But, as scholars, all have an affirmative obligation to present the college community with a range of views on the topic of diversity at Williams.

This is not special pleading for more discussion of political diversity among the faculty. I am looking for commentary from someone like Johnson, someone who is skeptical that setting up a bunch of ethnic enclaves is the best method for ensuring that everyone feels “at home” at Williams.

Again, the problem is not that Evelyn Du-DeHart was hired as a consultant. The problem is that nowhere in the report is an opposing view presented. Williams deserves better.

UPDATE: A reader notes that it is unfair to blame new members of the committee for a report that was published in April 2005. I agree! (Alas, there is no easy well to tell which faculty were on the committee last year and which joined more recently.) The Report (and the consultant’s comments) are fine just the way they are. But the Initiatives as a whole are not. We need comments from at least one more consultant, or perhaps an Appendix to the Report, raising the issues that Johnson (and others like him) think important. Without such additions, the documents as a group are way too one-sided for any scholar to be proud of them.