In 2015, Yale University committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty through the Faculty Excellence and Diversity Initiative (FEDI), a partnership between the central university leadership and the university’s schools. On December 10, 2019, FEDI was renewed and reinvigorated with new elements intended to help recruit senior faculty across the arts and sciences disciplines. FEDI encourages faculty appointments that enrich the excellence and diversity of Yale’s ladder faculty by providing central resources to match those provided by Yale schools. In the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, these resources are used to support faculty recruitment and retention in various ways, including support for accompanying spouses, support for research endeavors, and salary support.
Recently, Tamar SzaboÌ Gendler, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy, and Larry Gladney the Phyllis A. Wallace Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development and professor of physics at Yale, updated the university community of the progress in obtaining greater faculty diversity.
According to their report, from 2008 to 2014, women constituted an average of 37 percent of ladder faculty departures (retirements and resignations) and 42 percent of ladder faculty hires across all university schools. From 2015 to 2020, the corresponding rates were 39 percent and 47 percent, respectively. The population of women ladder faculty in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Yale’s professional schools has almost doubled, from 612 in 2008 to 1,174 in 2020.
In STEM fields, the number of women ladder faculty increased from 38 in 2008 to 57 in 2020. Where women made up 16 percent of the ladder faculty in STEM departments in 2008, they now constitute 21 percent of the STEM faculty.