Has Yale University’s Diversity Initiative Been Successful in Adding Women to Its Faculty?

In 2015, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, announced a five-year, $50 million program aimed at increasing the diversity of its faculty. Last December, Yale University announced a five-year renewal of the Faculty Excellence and Diversity Initiative (FEDI). The university is increasing the initiative’s budget by 70 percent, from $50 million to $85 million.

FEDI provides matching funds from the central university to Yale’s schools for making academic appointments that enrich the excellence and diversity of ladder faculty. The program includes new elements intended to help recruit senior faculty in all disciplines.

But how effective has the initiative been in increasing women faculty at Yale? Yale credits FEDI with the hiring of 84 faculty members over the initial five-year period. Figures from the Office of Institutional Research at Yale show that university-wide, the percentage of women faculty increased from 39 to 41 percent from 2014 to 2019.

“We only replace four or five percent of the faculty each year, so this is necessarily going to be slow going,” says physics professor Larry Gladney, the Phyllis A. Wallace Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.  “Also, we haven’t done an optimum job of retaining women.”