Interviews with the scholars and researchers who have examined this issue in recent years suggest that, although some institutions have ramped up their recruitment and retention efforts, more proactive measures need to be taken. In addition, numerous racial incidents on university campuses have focused attention on the composition of faculty at many top universities.
A lawsuit filed this year by a surgeon at UCLA, the only tenured African-American faculty member in his department, raised the specter of racism to a new level. Dr. Christian Head sued the board of regents in April for a series of discriminatory actions including a slideshow in 2006 depicting him as a gorilla being sodomized by his White supervisor; it was shown at a UCLA School of Medicine graduation roast.
