TRUE FACT: Dartmouth College plans to hire 15 faculty members of color over the next 5 years in order to diversify its professorial ranks (The Dartmouth, January 26th online).
According to Dartmouth President Philip Hanlon, “we had intended to add 16 faculty members of color, but then somebody in the room said, ‘Whoa, let’s not get caught up in the frenzy of the moment!’ That person was right.
“Let me just affirm that 15 is a perfectly fine number. It’s halfway between 10 and 20, and 20 is way too many. Also, we don’t want to be insensitive to our faculty of no color, who often feel that they are invisible on a snow-covered campus that averages 68 inches of fluff stuff per year. On more than one occasion a white professor has approached me as I cross the Dartmouth Green during a February blizzard and complained — through his or her frozen tears — that ‘you never see me, President Hanlon, you never actually SEE ME!’.
“I usually respond, ‘Where is that voice coming from?’, and that should tell you something. In the Arctic tundra that is Hanover, New Hampshire, we all suffer, regardless of race, creed, or color.”