The University is spending about $4.1 million this year on diversity-related efforts, according to e-mails recently released by administrators in response to swelling concerns from the campus community about the current budget for diversity.
The e-mails show allocations of $430,000 for the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity and $856,000 combined for the Office of Multicultural Academic Supports, the Many Nations Longhouse and the Center on Diversity and Community.
The central administration also funds the Under-represented Minority Recruitment and Retention Fund for about $630,000 this year, according to the e-mails sent by Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity Charles Martinez and Senior Vice President and Provost John Moseley. The fund provides $90,000 grants to departments to “assist in the recruitment of faculty members from under-represented minorities, and to use to help that faculty members succeed at UO.”
The grant money is distributed in $30,000 increments over three years. The fund has been used to help the University attract 57 faculty since it was established in 1995, according to the e-mails, and this year’s disbursement represents assistance to 21 new faculty members.
These centrally funded efforts total less than one percent of the University’s Education and General budget, according to Moseley’s e-mail.Scholarships earmarked for increasing student diversity total about $2.15 million. The University awards $31 million in scholarships annually, according to the e-mail.
Martinez, who chairs the recently appointed Diversity Advisory Committee, whose mission is to funnel feedback to the President’s Office about the revised diversity plan, said it’s no secret what the University is spending on diversity; however, determining an exact bottom line for diversity spending is difficult – if not impossible – to determine, because, as he asks, “Well what counts?”
“I wouldn’t dream of giving a price tag,” Martinez said. “What I strongly believe is that we need to have transparency as to how we’re utilizing resources; that we’re really clear about what we’re doing and why.”
He asked if the University should include faculty salaries or how much lecture time in certain classes is devoted to something that could be considered developing diversity.
Moseley prefaced the budget outline included in his e-mail by weighing the diversity priorities of the University.
“One responsibility I believe we have in support of that education mission is to serve a diverse student body with a diverse faculty and staff,” he wrote. ” … our graduates will go out into a world that is much more diverse than Oregon, and we have a responsibility to educate them in an environment that will enhance their ability to compete in the ‘global marketplace.’”
“It’s a complex issue to try to articulate all the different avenues of support,” Martinez said. “There might be a lot of different ways that you might count diversity once you get past the central administrative side.”
Martinez said an illusion developed that his office was keeping the budget a secret.
“That would never happen on my watch,” he said. “There’s no secrets in the budget.”
Economics professor William Harbaugh thinks otherwise, and has set up two Web sites in an attempt to compile as much information as he can on the diversity plan. Harbaugh has worked collaboratively with roughly 20 other faculty to draft an abridged version of what they think the aim of the diversity plan should be.
“I’m mostly focused on intellectual diversity. But I definitely buy the argument that diversity in terms of socio-economic status, race and ethnicity and gender are very important also. So I’m all in favor of efforts to increase diversity along those lines,” he said. “It’s just I think the University is going about it in a really brainless way,” Harbaugh said.
Harbaugh said working solely on bringing diverse faculty to campus only takes them away from other universities and doesn’t solve the larger problem: There aren’t enough diverse professors in the country.
“If we succeed (with the current plan) then that’s good for the University of Oregon in the sense that it means our students have more exposure to minority professors. But that professor left a different university, or didn’t get hired at another university. And that’s bad for that other university,” he said. “So the net gain to the country is zero.”
Harbaugh said the real way to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of professors is to get more minorities to want to become professors. He said the University needs to prepare minority students, starting in the eighth grade, for future careers in college and graduate school.
“In order to really increase the number of minority professors in the United States – the only way to do it – is to start with eighth graders. Our alternative diversity plan is aimed at doing exactly that,” he said.
Harbaugh said the money being currently spent on diversity should be diverted to grooming future minority professors by, in part, creating week-long summer camps for minority students to learn about college.
Harbaugh’s two Web sites he created have received 13 comments total.
Associate mathematics professor Alexander Kleshchev supported Harbaugh’s plan on the site, but noted there is little risk that current diversity efforts will be scrapped to free up funds for youth-targeted programs.
“The only thing we can hope for is that more people will not be hired, that existing people are used more effectively, more resources will not be thrown into this hole, and that some of the existing substantial resources will be redirected to a plan like the pipeline (nanonomics) plan,” he wrote on the site.

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