Since the 1970s, Yale has sought to increase the diversity of its students, its faculty, and its staff. We view this goal as an institutional imperative. The quest for excellence requires that we search every population to identify those individuals with the greatest potential to advance knowledge and lead society. We greatly enrich the intellectual exchange through which we all learn and develop when we bring together people who understand the world from the perspectives they derive from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and accomplishments.

By any measure, our students today are exceptionally diverse as well as exceptionally talented. We believe that a faculty with substantially increased numbers of outstanding women and members of underrepresented minority groups would further enhance Yale's contribution to the education of these remarkable students as well as to scholarship and society at large. We must find ways to accelerate our progress toward greater diversity in the University's faculty -- most especially and most urgently in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. We believe that greater diversity will enhance and strengthen a faculty expected to stand in competition with the foremost leaders in their fields throughout the world.

After several months of intensive discussion with other Officers of the University, the Deans of Yale College and the Graduate School, and the Directors of the Divisions, we announce today a plan of action for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, with four components: (1) increased use of new faculty positions, (2) enhanced central support and leadership, (3) strengthened efforts by departments to identify opportunities for recruitment, and (4) the development of realistic and ambitious objectives for increased representation of women and minorities.

Increased use of new faculty positions. Yale has long sought to increase the diversity of its faculty. Since 1972, we have required those conducting faculty searches to seek to identify women and minority candidates who meet Yale's high standards, and we have encouraged their recruitment. When departments have identified recruitment or promotion opportunities in the absence of immediately available faculty slots, the University has responded by providing resources in order to seize those opportunities. Still, we remain short of our aspirations, and we must accelerate our efforts.

In certain academic disciplines and fields, women are well represented nationally while, at Yale, their numbers remain very small. In such instances, we will continue to provide new resources when needed to enable departments to recruit or promote women -- with the understanding that, at a future time, the departments will absorb such new positions into their budgeted allocation of faculty slots. In disciplines and fields that very few women have entered, however, we will now give departments the flexibility to make junior or senior appointments with new resources that will remain in place for the duration of an appointee's time at Yale.

In most fields, members of minority groups are scarce in the academy, and Yale must compete effectively to attract and retain the very best. To permit departments to take advantage of recruitment or promotion opportunities as they arise, we will continue the policy that Yale established in 1991. That initiative provides, when needed, the additional resources for the duration of an appointee's time at Yale.

Enhanced central support and leadership. We must do more than make new faculty slots available. We also must bring greater initiative, urgency, and vigor to our efforts to increase diversity. To ensure the administration's leadership and energetic engagement, the Provost, in the coming months, will designate a member of her Office to support departmental efforts to recruit women and minority candidates and to help identify career opportunities for their spouses and domestic partners -- as we do increasingly for all our faculty.

Strengthened efforts by departments to identify opportunities for recruitment. To resources and leadership, we add a third and equally crucial ingredient -- the commitment of the faculty. At this time, we are asking each department and program to think specifically and creatively about how to increase diversity, and about how to bring new faculty here over the next few years. Next year, and regularly thereafter, we expect departments or appropriate departmental committees to engage in ongoing discussion of strategies and actions to increase diversity. The Deans will encourage such discussion, and, at the outset of every search, both tenured and nontenured, they will ask departments to propose specific measures to identify women and minority candidates for the position.

The development of realistic and ambitious objectives for increased representation of women and minorities. For the rest of this spring, we will be meeting with the leadership of FAS departments and programs to assess prospects for achieving greater diversity. Although we will not try to develop specific goals or targets for each unit, we will establish realistic and ambitious FAS-wide objectives toward which we can work as a community.

In this statement, we have focused on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Over the coming months, we plan to engage the Deans of the professional schools in developing parallel strategies. We will not relax our efforts until the entire University exhibits the excellence and vitality that depend upon the broad-based contributions of a talented and diverse faculty.

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