NEW HAVEN — Wandering around the Yale University campus, visitors might notice a sign that reads “-41 ETHNIC STUDIES FACULTY” and “$50 MILLION FOR WHAT?” pasted alongside pie charts that break down the demographics of Yale’s teaching staff.

The sign reflects concern the university has failed to adequately support its Ethnicity, Race & Migration program, and questions the use of $50 million pledged to faculty diversification in 2015.

“The withdrawals leave ER&M with no tenured faculty or professional leadership,” the release said.

Alicia Schmidt Camacho, a professor who has chaired the program, said the decision comes after years of continued concern about the sustainability of the ER&M program and a lack of meaningful action on the part of the university administration. Though the university has acknowledged the problem and promised the program regular institutional status multiple times over the past 20 years, it never realized those assurances, Camacho said.

Another one of the program professors , Daniel Martinez HoSang, said the program lacks basic functions associated with most academic departments, including hiring power, participation in the promotion process and an ability to count on basic resources.

“The university administration has denied us the ability to be a sustainable program by failing to move us out of this temporary, irregular status,” Camacho said.

What’s resulted is a program that “has essentially been sustained by voluntary labor for the past 20 years,” HoSang said. In other words, professors must fulfill all regular commitments to their official departments in addition to working with ER&M, which the administration treats as an “extracurricular.”

Though administrators have repeatedly promised the ER&M program regular faculty members, it has failed to follow through, Camacho said. “It’s really a matter of broken promises.”

HoSang felt the effect of one such broken promise. Two years ago, Yale offered him an appointment to the ER&M program and to the American Studies department, he said, and he moved across the country to take the job. Later, he discovered his appointment was solely with American Studies, he said.

Over the past eight years, at least four hires have undergone such an experience, HoSang said.

But a statement from Yale President Peter Salovey tells a different story when it comes to hiring. “Last year, we hired two new senior faculty into the [ER&M] program, and we expect to hire two additional senior faculty this year,” it says. The statement does not expand on the exact affiliation of those faculty members with ER&M and whether they also serve other departments.

In the statement responding to the faculty members’ decision to withdraw ER&M services, however, Salovey pointed to the two new program hires and described “a very high rate of growth [in the ER&M program], in keeping with the five-year, $50 million effort the university has undertaken to improve the diversity and excellence of its faculty.”

“We greatly value the work of our faculty colleagues in ER&M, and we regret their decision to withdraw from it, and in this manner. Yale will make sure that affected students are given the resources and support they need, and we remain hopeful that an agreement can be reached that works well for everyone. … It is my great hope we can discuss the future of ER&M in a spirit of collegiality: the program and its wonderful students deserve no less,” the statement said.

“We dispute the contention that there have been senior appointments made to ER&M,” said HoSang, who added that though the Yale website may list professors as part of ER&M, he has seen university documents that show that no faculty are officially in the program.

Moreover, with an administration that is “indifferent at best and hostile at worst to their work,” the university has struggled to retain faculty that is valuable to the ER&M program, said HoSang, who has watched colleagues leave for other institutions with better opportunities in their fields.

The administration’s failure to officially recognize the work a professor does with ER&M as part of their official evaluation makes matters worse, HoSang said. “There’s no official mechanism for the ER&M as a program to then play a role in the promotion process.”

The 41 faculty mentioned on the campus sign refer to professors who have volunteered time to the program but not remained at Yale, Camacho said.

Emily Almendarez, a junior at Yale and double major in ER&M and environmental studies, is an organizer for the Coalition for Ethnic Studies and Faculty Diversity, formed earlier this semester to fight “for full departmental status of the Ethnicity, Race, and Migration major and full support of ethnic studies faculty,” according to their Facebook page.

The university’s lack of support for ER&M, a program that serves many students’ academic needs, is frustrating, Almendarez said. Not only has Yale lost many well-recognized faculty important to the ER&M program, but in some cases it has failed to make faculty members feel comfortable pursuing tenureship at the university, she said.

At the same time as the university has failed to support the program, student interest in ER&M classes has increased tremendously, Camacho said, resulting in an unsustainable dynamic.

“We could not responsibly meet our obligations to our students or to our colleagues,” Camacho said of the decision to withdraw. “We felt we had no choice in the matter.”

Challenges within the ER&M program represent just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to faculty diversity, which marks a universitywide, “systemic problem,” Camacho said.

Camacho and the other 12 faculty members withdrawing services make up a group that said it has repeatedly brought forth concerns about challenges for faculty of color to the administration. Camacho described those challenges as three-fold: they pertain to a difficult climate in the faculty members’ fields of study, “racial animus toward underrepresented faculty” and “questions about the fairness of the review and promotional procedure.”

Based on information about faculty demographics on Yale’s website, the number of black arts and sciences ladder faculty decreased from 25 in 2005 to 22 in 2017. During the same time frame, Asian-American Arts and Sciences ladder faculty increased from 43 to 60, and Hispanic or Latino from 16 to 27.

White personnel still made up over 70 percent of that same group, however, numbering 497 in 2005 and 485 in 2017.

Also in 2017, the university had just one Native American ladder faculty member in Arts and Sciences.

“We’re seeing continued loss of black, Latinx and Native faculty,” Camacho said. “It’s absolutely a matter of major concern.”

Even when the university hires personnel, Camacho described a “sheer lack of willingness to pluralize the leadership.” Not only are faculty of color underrepresented in leadership positions, but Yale is also bereft of intellectual representation for fields like African-American studies, she said.

In 2015, Yale pledged $50 million toward faculty diversification as part of the “Faculty Excellence and Diversity Initiative” (FEDI). But Camacho and HoSang have alleged a lack of transparency in how that money has been used.

What’s more, the administration did not consult professors associated with the ER&M program about how best to use the $50 million, HoSang said, even though it’s an issue in their wheelhouse.

In 2018, Yale issued an update on FEDI: “In year three, 15 new faculty appointments were made in collaboration with this initiative, bringing our three-year total to 65 recruitments campuswide.”

But according to HoSang, “We don’t see any impact on the actual demographics.” He pointed out to a 2014 Yale Diversity Summit report, which described problems for faculty of color as systemic and gave clear recommendations for how to address them.

“Almost no action was taken on that report,” HoSang said. Though the university announced FEDI funding the following year, the professor sees the move as inadequate. “We haven’t seen any evidence of the funds that address these issues,” said HoSang, who is frustrated with the administration’s seeming indifference.

Almendarez said she stands with the faculty in their decision. “Their commitment … to be there fully present for their students is embodied in their choice,” she said, adding it’s not the professors who let her down — it’s the structure.