MIT-Challenges of the Past, Present and Future
MIT President Charles Vest provides a critical perspective on the unsteady progress of racial diversity at the university. “As the summit of the mountain we’re climbing has begun to come into distant view, the slope gets steeper and others are strewing rocks in our path,” says Vest. The raw statistics since his arrival in 1990 are reason for some encouragement, with steadily improving enrollment of women undergraduates and graduate students. Yet while underrepresented minorities add up to 20% of all undergraduates, they number just 4.5% of graduate students and 4% of the faculty. Vest points to “a mean-spiritedness abroad in the land, given voice and power by people who don’t agree with the goal (of diversity) let alone how to reach it.” Vest worries about new legal challenges to programs that draw minorities to careers in science and engineering, and about national security policies that discourage foreign scholars from applying to MIT. “The modest gains made in the last decade are fragile,” he warns, and “we must work together to open opportunities and careers in science and engineering to anybody who has a desire to pursue the path.”
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