We would like to echo Oregon Students of Color Coalition’s message concerning Professor Martin Summers. We too are gravely disappointed in the lack of effort to retain Summers. He has a job offer from the University of Texas at Austin that includes a higher salary, a permanent part-time position for his partner Karl Mundt and other forms of support. We are angered and dissatisfied with the counter-offer from the College of Arts and Sciences dean’s office and Senior Vice President and Provost John Moseley.
The University has continually expressed investment in diversity and building a critical mass of faculty of color. Yet the lack of effort to retain Summers blatantly disregards its supposed support of the Diversity Plan. Professor Summers’ impressive achievements and assets are without question deserving of strong consideration by the University. Through a Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship, he was recently named a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, which grants 40 fellowships each year to a pool of more than 800 applicants.
The University would be losing a prominent scholar whose ability influences all students but especially helps retain students of color. His involvement also expands beyond research and the classroom. Summers has mentored students through the McNair Scholars Program from which several of his students have gone on to pursue doctoral degrees in high-ranking Ph.D. programs.
In addition to mentoring students, Summers has been a mentor and advocate for faculty across campus. His institutional insight, experience and investment provide much-needed support for other faculty and programs. His academic excellence also helps attract other leading scholars from across the nation, which acts as both a recruitment and retention asset that isvital to this University.
His leadership as the director of the Ethnic Studies Program has helped it expand in positive ways through the hire of two professors of color who will contribute to the stability of the program and the diversity needs of this campus. One of Summers’ negotiation requests is to expand the Ethnic Studies Program in the future. The University needs to support the departmentalization of Ethnic Studies as the needs and demands are overwhelmingly present.
The University also has a prime opportunity to retain an important instructor, Summers’ partner, Karl Mundt, who has helped the University’s dance team win its first national title. The team’s success has been widely publicized, yet there has not been a good-faith effort to retain him as well.
Failure to retain Summers and his partner will leave a large gap in not just the History Department but in the Ethnic Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies Programs and the dance team. In order for students, faculty and staff to take the University seriously in its commitment to diversity, it must demonstrate its investment in retaining faculty and staff of color.

ASUO Multicultural Center