Kirwan's Way

Ohio State University's new president has taken a strong stand on diversity. Some say his is an example of the type of commitment White male senior executives need to make if higher education's dreams of diversity are to be realized.

Frank Hale Jr. first encountered Dr. William E. Kirwan's commitment to racial diversity two decades ago -- and it made an impression that reverberates to this day.

Hale, now vice provost emeritus and professor at Ohio State University, had just been appointed Ohio State's vice provost for minority programs when he got a phone call from Kirwan, then provost at the University of Maryland College Park. Hale had launched some innovative initiatives to attract and keep African American and other minority students at Ohio's largest university, and Kirwan wanted to fred out more.

"We must have talked an hour, an hour and a half," Hale says. "He was very interested."

Kirwan told Hale he wanted to visit OSU to see some of the programs up close. "Yeah, sure," Hale said to himself. "I've heard that before."

But Kirwan did, indeed, show up.

"He didn't deputize someone else to come, he came himself, and he spent quite a bit of time here," Hale recalls. "That showed me he had a commitment that went beyond the ordinary."

That was 1978. Now, twenty years later, Kirwan has returned to Ohio State, this time as the university's president. He brings with him a strong track record on racial diversity issues that he established as provost and president at the University of Maryland-College Park, where he helped boost minority student enrollment and lured several renowned Black scholars to the university's faculty. His challenge now is to replicate that success at Ohio State, the nation's second-largest university campus with more than 48,000 students.

Events of lass spring suggest there is work to be done. In May, African American OSU students held a week-long sit-in at the OSU Office of Minority Affairs to protest a proposed restructuring in that office's administration. Some protest leaders urged incoming Black freshmen to reconsider their choice of Ohio State. The protest ended after the university agreed to delay the restructuring so that students might play a role in developing it.

When Kirwan came to campus two months later, he wasted no time. Shortly after he took office, he declared that campus diversity would be one of four themes for his administration -- an act that sent a strong message through the faculty, staff, and administrative ranks that he was not simply paying lip service to the issue. Last school year, approximately 13 percent of Ohio State's students, nearly 12 percent of faculty, and 18.5 percent of staff were minorities.

In recent weeks, Kirwan has announced plans to bring in national consultants to analyze and identify weaknesses in the school's recruiting of minority students and to assess OSU's hiring practices. The announcement came during the first of what Kirwan promises will be quarterly town meetings on race. He also assigned an interim provost to look inward at the university's diversity efforts and map out objectives and strategies for improvement.

OSU also will join two national initiatives on race. One will be in conjunction with the Ford Foundation and the Association of American Colleges and Universities to trigger campus community dialogue on race. The second one will be through the American Council on Education and twelve other schools, in part, to lobby for campus diversity and affirmative action.

So far, according to a campus spokeswoman, no specific dollar figure has been attached to the president's various diversity initiatives.

Kirwan's diversity commitment extends beyond race. Last month, he made a point of speaking at a Coming-Out Day rally of gay and bisexual students on Ohio State's campus. It was the first time organizers could recall an occasion when an OSU president agreed to address gay and bisexual groups at OSU in such a public fashion.

"I'm deeply troubled by the division, the prejudice, and bias that exists in society and I want Ohio State to be a leader in creating a more inclusive community," Kirwan told the rally.

Kirwan told Black Issues his motivation for championing diversity issues rests on both moral and practical grounds. First, we should all recognize that higher education, like society in general, has not served certain minorities and women well, Kirwan says. That shows up in the racial composition of faculty and student enrollment on today's college campuses.

"There is a sense of equity and fairness, or making up for the mistakes and wrongs of the past ... I feel there is an obligation to do so," says Kirwan, pointing to forecasts about future demographic changes as evidence.

"If we as a nation don't serve better those groups that have been underrepresented in higher education, there will be a profound economic impact on the United States. The economic vitality of the nation depends on higher education doing a much better job of recruiting, retaining and graduating [minorities and underrepresented groups]," Kirwan says.

Kirwan contrasts the atmosphere at the University of Maryland with that of Ohio State. In Maryland, there was a sense of urgency on diversity issues because the state operated legally segregated schools until the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. Then, the state had great difficulty in attracting minority students to predominantly White colleges in the years after such segregation was struck down. Ohio did not have that openly segregated history, "but on the other hand, there's no sense of urgency" on diversity issues, Kirwan says.

The OSU president says he sees a common thread in diversity programs that work -- visible support and strong pronouncements from top administrators that diversity programs are a top priority.

Kirwan also is a strong proponent of actively recruiting minority and women candidates for faculty.

"You have to be willing to go after strong candidates in certain disciplines, even if you're not recruiting at the moment," Kirwan says.

And although he adds, "I'm not talking about positions you don't need" Kirwan acknowledges that in certain academic areas, his administration will make arrangements if the right candidate becomes available.

That strategy served Kirwan well at the University of Maryland, where in 1996 he helped recruit scholars such as Dr. Ronald Walters, who had been the tenured chairman of Howard University's political science department and a fixture at the school for twenty-four years. Other noted faculty from other historically Black colleges and universities were also recruited (see Black Issues, Sept. 5, 1996).

Dr. Edgar F. Beckham, senior fellow at the Association of American Colleges and Universities who coordinated the Ford Foundation's Campus

Diversity Initiative for eight years, says Kirwan does appear to understand diversity's importance to the fabric of today's colleges and universities.

For a White administrator to embrace and promote campus diversity most effectively, Beckham says, he or she must have a thorough understanding "of how inclusion, fairness and diversity in an institution improves education for everybody," not just minority groups.

"They must understand that it makes a substantial educational difference -- the institution is smarter, thinks better, knows more and understands more" because of the commitment to diversity, Beckham says.

Until the 1990s, presidents of colleges and universities were more likely to step out ahead of their boards of trustees and regents on diversity matters, but the boards "are catching up," Beckham says. That's because the boards themselves are becoming more diverse, the business leaders who serve on the boards understand diversity is good for American business and voters surveyed by the Ford Foundation overwhelmingly approve of the way higher education is promoting and handling diversity, Beckham says.

Ted Celeste, chairman of Ohio State's board of trustees, says Kirwan has the board's full support for his diversity efforts, noting that the president's successes in Maryland were a key factor in the board's decision to hire him.

Celeste says he has not encountered any backlash or complaints from anyone connected to the university regarding Kirwan's initiatives. The only possible downside to Kirwan's very visible commitment to diversity is the potential for expectations to rise too high and too fast, he says. Nevertheless, Celeste is confident that Kirwan and his administration can overcome that possibility through open, honest, and frequent communications.

Student leaders say that while Kirwan's ideas are good ones and his commitment appears genuine, they want to see results.

"He seems sincere and really dedicated, and he has the history and credibility to back up his words," says Green Chandler, an OSU senior and president of the African American Media Association, a campus student group. "But as always, students are very skeptical. There's an attitude of, `Show me.' ... The African American students will give this administration a lot of scrutiny."

Hale agreed that it remains to be seen whether Kirwan's initiatives will work. But the new president has laid a solid foundation and sent a message through OSU's administrative ranks.

"He has shown a lot of courage to walk right into untested waters here and proclaim what he's all about," Hale says, "His leadership is going to have to be reckoned with.

"I'm hoping he'll be able to follow through on everything he has said."

RELATED ARTICLE: Profound Impressions

What drives Witham E. "Brit" Kirwan to devote such strong efforts to diversity issues while some others college administrators pay lip service? Kirwan ponders the question briefly before talking of his upbringing by parents who sensitized him an early age to the unfairness of racial prejudice.

Kirwan grew up in Lexington, Ky., in the 1940s, where he attended segregated schools. He didn't have an African American classmate until he was a senior in high school. He vividly remembers the separate drinking fountains in the public parks, the separate balcony in the theaters. And thanks to the values his parents instilled in him, he knew it was profoundly and awfully wrong.

When he was seventeen, Kirwan got a summer job in a rock quarry, performing manual labor alongside a young Black man the same age. The two became fast friends, and one week, the two talked about going out together on Friday night to grab a bite to eat.

"It suddenly dawned on me we had nowhere we could go," Kirwan says.

None of the places Kirwan frequented would let his friend in. The two ended up going to a restaurant in the Black part of town, where Kirwan was the only White person in the place.

"It was a strange, uncomfortable feeling, but I knew full wall that this is what my friend faced every day when he entered the world I knew," Kirwan recalls.

"The whole thing made a profound impression on me. I've never forgotten that."

RELATED ARTICLE: A Ten-Point Checklist for Assessing Presidential Commitment to Diversity:

1 Does the president commit funds from his/her discretionary budget to support diversity efforts?

2 Does the president use the clout of the his/her office as a catalyst for diversity? Are his/her diversity efforts and commitment regularly communicated in speeches, conversations, and writings?

3 Does the president have a demonstrated record of, and ongoing commitment to, supporting scholarly and administrative initiatives by people of color?

4 Does the president reward administrators and faculty who achieve notable results in this area? How does he/she hold administrators and faculty accountable for failure to achieve such results?

5 Do the president's appointments to senior level positions demonstrate a commitment (i.e., what is his/her track record)?

6 Is the president willing to take risks (for example, in the appointment and promotion process) in order to advance the diversity agenda?

7 Has the president implemented specific diversity policies and procedures beyond those externally imposed or mandated by the courts, federal regulations, etc.?

8 How has the president responded to Proposition 209, the Hopwood ruling, and Initiative 200? Has he/she taken a strong public position in favor of affirmative action?

9 Does the president solicit support from the board of trustees / governors for diversity initiatives?

10 Is the president a known and welcome presence within neighboring minority communities?

COPYRIGHT 1998 Cox, Matthews & Associates
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