FEATURE
A MASS EXODUS TUFTS’ FACULTY AND STAFF OF COLOR LEAVE TUFTS By Anthony Davis-Pait
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t least 17 staff and faculty of color have left Tufts between 2021-2022, according to current faculty, staff, and students. Staff and faculty of color have touched the lives of countless students, and their departures have left a gap within the Tufts community. Concern regarding turnover of staff and faculty of color is not a new phenomenon. From 1995 to 2000, 24 tenure or tenure-track faculty members of color left Tufts, and in 2000, eight Black faculty members left in one semester. These turnover rates continued into 2018 when an additional 11 staff and faculty members of color left the university within a month. Patterns in retention rates of faculty and staff of color invite concern over what has influenced these departures.
A “CLIMATE OF HOSTILITY”
Faculty and staff of color endure harmful working environments, making working at Tufts difficult. Erin Seaton, Faculty Senate’s Diversity Equity Inclusion and Justice Committee member and a senior lecturer in the Department of Education said, “Faculty of color who have left Tufts have described a climate of hostility that impacted their decision to leave the university.” How4 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 11, 2022
ever, Tufts Executive Director of Media Relations Patrick Collins said in a written statement to the Tufts Observer, “[T]he university works to be a welcoming and supportive environment for faculty.” Roxana Woudstra, former director of graduate school admissions, resigned in April 2022. She wrote in her resignation email that her departure was, “to gain some respite from experien[ing] unrelenting discrimination.” Woudstra’s resignation came after 15 years on staff and attending Tufts as both an undergraduate and graduate student.
“I DESERVE TO EXIST WITHIN A WORK ENVIRONMENT THAT IS NOT TOXIC AND/OR HARMFUL PHYSICALLY, EMOTIONALLY, OR MENTALLY.” Woudstra spoke of issues with an associate dean, but no action occured to her knowledge. She said, “I was told that unfortunately, there really are no accountability procedures in place for managers to follow. This means no one will ever have to be held accountable.”
The Observer inquired as to whether the university had heard complaints from faculty and staff of color and if they had made any changes to try to retain faculty and staff of color; Collins did respond for comment on this issue. As an institution, Tufts, “expects its staff to keep our heads down underpaid, understaffed, and overworked to produce revenue, while a DEI mission is used for marketing, and leadership purposely turns a blind eye to ongoing, repeatedly reported discrimination amongst staff and faculty,” Woudstra wrote in her resignation email. S. Rae Peoples, an associate director of diversity & inclusion education who is currently on leave, echoed this sentiment in a written statement to the Observer, “[T]he truth is that Tufts is not structurally prepared or capable to support staff members.” The neglect of staff and faculty of color as well as “the institution’s ineptness reinforces an internal environment that perpetuates many forms of oppression—most notably racism, sexism, and classism— all of which disproportionately impact the trajectory of women at Tufts who identify as Black or a person of color,” Peoples said.