The faculty approved a series of motions to remove language from the faculty handbook about the use of race in College’s decision-making on hiring and admissions at the Oct. 7 faculty meeting.
At last month’s meeting, the faculty declined to pass the amendments and deferred them to this month for more substantive deliberation. The revisions are part of a broader effort to ensure the College’s compliance with current federal laws and policies in order to recertify as a recipient of new federal research funding, President Maud S. Mandel told the Record in September. The recertification process was halted in May because of new federal guidelines targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.
Seven motions pertaining to the handbook, which outlines College governance and faculty employment, were approved at the meeting. Two of them removed references to affirmative action and rewrote the relevant section to focus on “non-discrimination.” Another motion struck language that oriented the Bolin Fellowship toward underrepresented groups, and another removed racial provisions from the description of the faculty hiring process. The other three motions contained minor updates or were unrelated to DEI.
Discussion at the meeting was muted and the changes were widely approved. The motion about the Bolin Fellowship, which passed by the narrowest margin, passed in an 81-15 vote with seven abstentions.
The vote comes amid the Trump administration’s unprecedented involvement in higher education, including funding cuts, grant freezes, and Justice Department investigations aimed at schools’ DEI practices. The Trump administration also asked nine colleges, not including Williams, to commit to various terms — such as banning the use of race or sex in hiring and eliminating departments that “belittle … conservative ideas” — in exchange for favorable access to federal funds.
The changes to the handbook were first introduced under the handbook’s simple review process and were deferred to a vote this month. The decision to postpone delayed the College’s federal grant recertification process, which was initially expected to be complete by the end of September. Following the Oct. 7 vote, Mandel told the Record that she now expects the recertification process to be complete by the end of the month.
“Between the two meetings, an extensive review process was undertaken,” said Associate Professor of English and Chair of the Faculty Steering Committee (FSC) Bernie Rhie. “We created many opportunities for faculty to weigh in on the proposed changes,” he said
“We held two faculty forums/listening sessions, solicited written feedback using an anonymous Google Form, and invited faculty to meet in small groups with [General Counsel] Jamie Art to discuss the legal dimension of the revisions,” Rhie wrote in an email to the Record. “And of course, the members of Steering had numerous one-on-one conversations and email exchanges with colleagues on the faculty.”
This review process also sought to correct shortcomings in the changes proposed at the September faculty meeting. “Not every committee or office that ought to have been consulted was, and a key part of our work this month was to correct that oversight,” Rhie said.
Rhie said that the FSC also reviewed the proposed changes with College bodies, including the Committee on Appointments & Promotions, the President’s Office, and the Office of Institutional, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (OIDEI). “Steering also made sure that all relevant committees and offices were consulted about any revisions to handbook sections over which they had oversight,” he added.
The new policies reflected the thorough review process. “What we learned is that not every revision or deletion that was proposed in September was necessary,” Rhie said. “Some of what was originally removed from the handbook has found its way back in, and in other cases where changes to language did indeed have to be made in response to federal law, robust consultation has revealed ways in which expressions of our core values could be preserved.”
Rhie explained how core values were “re-articulated” in the handbook. “A good example of this is the rewriting of section II-S of the handbook on ‘Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action’ in Motion #2, which has now become section ‘II-S: Equal Opportunity and Non-Discrimination,’” Rhie wrote. “In the original September revisions, all the language in the original ‘Affirmative Action’ section was simply deleted… In the end, instead of just deleting all the language in the Affirmative Action section, Maud and OIDEI found ways to merge the two sections into an entirely new text.”
The rewritten section begins with a statement of values which reads, “The College recognizes that the strength of its liberal arts education depends on the inclusion of people of all identities and a multicultural and pluralistic range of perspectives.” There is no mention of outreach to or preference for minority candidates in the hiring process.
Rhie said that the prolonged process shows the strengths of faculty governance. “This experience has shown us that one of the most important reasons to insist on faculty governance and robust faculty consultation is that it can produce a better product, a better outcome,” he said.
“This will not be the last time the College and its values and policies come under pressure,” Rhie continued. “As a colleague at one of the recent faculty forums put it, how we respond in this moment isn’t important just for its own sake, but as a model for how we respond as a faculty and an institution to other moments like this one, ones that may be even more challenging.”
