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On Professor Lorgia García-Peña’s Tenure Denial and the Future of Ethnic Studies at Harvard



Dear President Larry Bacow and Provost Alan Garber,



We are a coalition of graduate students and concerned scholars writing in response to the news that Harvard University has denied tenure to Professor Lorgia García-Peña. Given Professor García-Peña’s academic profile, teaching record, and professional service, we are dismayed and do not understand why she was denied tenure. This denial strikes us as a disavowal of Harvard’s recent commitment to invest in Ethnic Studies. Denying tenure to a faculty member of color who is actively serving on the committee for new hires in Ethnic Studies undermines Harvard’s commitment and betrays efforts to advance diversity and inclusion at this institution. Although Harvard has responded to the call of the student-and-alumni group Harvard Ethnic Studies Coalition (HESC) by pledging to hire a cluster of four Ethnic Studies faculty members, the outcome of Professor García-Peña’s tenure case damages this important cause.



Thus, to address the ramifications of this particular tenure decision, we submit a series of demands. These demands call upon the administration to respond directly to Professor García-Peña’s tenure denial and to take action to create stability and resources for Ethnic Studies at Harvard. We demand:



1. The immediate public release of President Bacow’s letter to Dean Gay with the final decision as well as Dean Gay’s letter to RLL Department Chair, Professor Mariano Siskind

2. The creation of an investigative committee to review Professor García-Peña’s case for procedural errors, prejudice, and discrimination

3. Increased transparency in the tenure review process

4. Formal establishment of Ethnic Studies Department at Harvard University with a plan for sustaining the Department



1) The immediate public release of President Bacow’s letter to Dean Gay with the final decision as well as Dean Gay’s letter to RLL Department Chair, Professor Mariano Siskind



All tenure review processes should be transparent. The history and frequency of hostility faced by junior faculty of color at Harvard makes it particularly imperative in this case. Moreover, the enthusiastic support of Professor García-Peña’s case by colleagues and students compels us to question the scholarly justifications for this decision.



According to the FAS Appointment and Promotion Handbook, the President makes all final decisions regarding tenure appointments. This individual must then document that decision in a letter to the Edgerley Family Dean of the FAS. We know that, if any participant in this review process determines that the case should not progress, it is mandated that a letter must be sent to the candidate from the Chair of the Department.



We demand a public release of both these documents—the President’s final decision as well as the draft letter from Dean Gay—in order to understand the intellectual and scholarly reasoning behind the rejection of Professor García-Peña’s promotion.



2) The creation of an investigative committee to review Professor García-Peña’s case for procedural errors, prejudice, and discrimination



Harvard’s Inclusion and Belonging Taskforce limited its investigation of junior faculty experiences to the question of mentorship. We believe that Harvard’s procedure for tenure promotion requires further review because it allows for bias to remain institutionalized with little chance of redress. In fact, the university has reversed tenure decisions in the past on the grounds of discrimination. According to a 1985 report by The New York Times, Harvard reversed the tenure decision of Professor Theda Skocpol after, “[a] special Harvard investigating committee concluded later that the [sociology] department had failed ‘to consider seriously any woman for tenure appointments over the past decade.’” We believe the tenure decision with which we are particularly concerned exemplifies bias in the review process against professors of Ethnic Studies, whose scholarship and mentorship often put them in tension with Harvard’s administration.



We call for this investigative committee to review Professor García-Peña’s case specifically. We also call for this investigative committee to review tenure decisions of the past 10 years to determine how combinations of gender, race, and field of scholarship affect outcomes. The results of these investigations must be made public.



3) Increased transparency in the tenure review process



The university's refusal to make tenure decisions with transparency is premised upon anonymity. Professor García-Peña’s tenure case confirms that the current model of anonymity allows individuals in positions of power, who are non-experts in the field, to play a decisive role without accountability. The current "confidentiality" of the tenure review process does not protect those who stand to be most affected by the abuse of power; on the contrary, in the name of “confidentiality,” anonymity insulates power from accountability. We call for tenure decisions to be made with transparency because in Professor García-Peña’s case we see no adequate reason why Harvard has denied her tenure.



Professor García-Peña’s intellectual leadership in her academic fields, contribution to the faculty, university, and the wider scholarly community, and her excellence in teaching and advising a diverse group of students undeniably exceeds those of her peers. Her first monograph, The Borders of Dominicanidad, garnered national and international recognition and numerous awards from top national and international scholarly organizations across multiple fields. In addition, she has published eight articles and four book chapters with a forthcoming book, Translating Blackness: Gender, Migration, and Detours of Latinx Colonialities (Duke University Press). She has received numerous teaching awards at Harvard including Professor of the Year in 2015, Roslyn Abramson Award for excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and Graduate Mentoring Award in 2016, and Harvard Professor of the Year Selection by Graduating Class of 2017, to name a few.



In addition to her ground-breaking scholarship and awards, Professor García-Peña has contributed a wealth of professional service. During her six years at Harvard, Professor García-Peña has served as part of multiple search committees for divisional tenure-track positions in Gender and History, in the annual hiring process for lecturers in History and Literature, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and, currently, for Ethnicity and Migration under FAS. She, along with Professor Ju Yon Kim, were on the faculty search committee for the 2019–2020 Warren Center Faculty Fellowships.



Lastly, Professor García-Peña has been a key player in establishing the secondary field in Ethnic Studies for History and Literature concentrators, as well as the graduate secondary field in Latinx Studies. She is also affiliated with the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights; the Graduate Program in American Studies; the Committee on Women, Gender, and Sexuality; the Afro-Latin American Research Studies Institute, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Observatorio de la Lengua Española-Cervantes at Harvard.



We cannot understand the grounds upon which such a prominent scholar like Professor García-Peña would have been denied tenure at Harvard. And thus, we ask that the tenure review process be made transparent by making the reasons for the tenure decision public.



4) Formal establishment of Ethnic Studies Department at Harvard University with a plan for sustaining the Department



While we recognize that the university has been responsive to the call for Ethnic Studies, as demonstrated by ongoing meetings between administrators and undergraduate students, the failure to recognize and retain scholars of color, like Professor García-Peña, is a turn away from promises and assurances that Harvard has made in its hiring search and vision for Diversity and Inclusion. We believe that the establishment of an Ethnic Studies Department and a plan for resource allocation is the only way to support the number of students and faculty committed to this field.



It is worth repeating that Harvard students have pushed for Ethnic Studies since 1972. Over twelve proposals have been carefully drafted and submitted by students, highlighting the need for the recruitment and retainment of Ethnic Studies faculty and faculty of color. However, despite various public commitments made by Dean Kelsey and other administrators from 2017 to the present, students have witnessed the consistent removal of faculty of color dedicated to Ethnic Studies. Harvard has seen recent departures of many scholars who predominantly served students of color, including Professors Sergio Delgado Moya, Genevieve Clutario, Ahmed Ragab, and Natasha Warikoo.



In mid-June of 2019, The Harvard Gazette published a formal announcement by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences regarding their plans to hire a cluster of faculty in the areas of ethnicity, indigeneity, and migration during the upcoming academic year. In the article, Dean Claudine Gay defined the search as “an opportunity to accelerate our efforts with a set of hires that we hope will be bold, field-defining and intellectually synergistic.”



With this current search for scholars of Latinx, Asian American, and Muslim studies to join Harvard faculty, it is critical to note that Professor García-Peña is the only Latina professor on the tenure track, and her academic work in Latinx Studies, along with her efforts to institutionalize Latinx Studies, make her an excellent candidate to lead the Ethnic Studies initiative. Moreover, she has foregrounded the needs of her students and their well being which has meant urging for more resources for faculty to support students seeking to engage with the field of Ethnic Studies and more.



If the goal of the search is to seek out faculty who are leaders in their field of specialization, who demonstrate a deep understanding of Ethnic Studies, and who have a distinct ability to teach and advise students, then the rejection of Professor García-Peña’s tenure promotion is a signal to interested applicants that the administration is not committed to supporting or retaining those faculty members. This denial sends the message that the administration is not interested in excellent teaching in Ethnic Studies, the future of Latinx Studies, or supporting students’ scholarly pursuits in these fields. We see this outcome as contradictory to the stated commitments of administrators such as Dean Gay and Dean Kelsey.



We demand the administration listen to students and stand by its spoken commitments by establishing an Ethnic Studies Department. We urge you to address the consequences of this denial through structural and institutional redress.



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The extreme demand for Professor García-Peña’s advising and scholarship across campus exemplifies the need to dedicate more resources to faculty engaged in the pedagogical and intellectual questions that she and many students are enthusiastically posing.



Professor García-Peña’s absence will undoubtedly result in a void of mentorship, advising, and teaching in Latinx Studies, Ethnic Studies, and American Studies. What will the university do to ensure that undergraduate students continue to have course offerings, advising on their junior and senior essays, and guidance in linking their lived histories with critical scholarly frameworks, such as those of diaspora, migration, race, ethnicity, and empire? The vast majority of History and Literature concentrators at Harvard are pursuing the Ethnic Studies secondary field with 40–50 students declared as of May 2019. Professor García-Peña’s Fall 2019 course, “Performing Latinidad” currently has 61 students enrolled.



How will the need for specialists to supervise graduate student exams be met? How will the university guarantee that Professor García-Peña’s current advisees, who are at varying stages of their PhD programs, will continue to advance to completion? Professor García-Peña is currently sitting on twelve graduate dissertation committees and advises eight pre-dissertation graduate students. Her tenure denial will have serious repercussions on the progress of their academic work and career trajectories. We demand the administration listen to the continuous voices of faculty and students and commit to the creation and sustaining of an Ethnic Studies Department to ensure the retention and support of faculty and resources dedicated to the field of Ethnic Studies.



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While each of our demands are distinct, we consider them together as indissociable. Our demands are not only indissociable in principle but also for the case at hand. How can the search for new Ethnic Studies hires be successful, when an eminently qualified committee member has been denied tenure? The recent withdrawal of applications by qualified applicants anticipates the negative effect that this tenure denial will have on the future of Ethnic Studies at Harvard University.



For these reasons, we call on the Harvard administration to establish an Ethnic Studies Department and publicly distribute a resource allocation plan for the support of Ethnic Studies at Harvard.



