Despite the 32 offers of tenure Harvard made this year—13 of which have been accepted to date—no female professors accepted senior faculty positions this year.

“It is going to be a smaller group of women within the people who have been offered tenure,” Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby said in an interview last week. “[But] we have had stronger and weaker years in recruitment of women at all levels of the Faculty.”

This year’s results come despite Kirby’s stated emphasis on hiring more female faculty. The list does reflect progress towards his goal of interdisciplinary hires and internal promotions.

The University made 32 offers of tenure during the 2003-2004 academic year. Thirteen of these offers have been accepted, six were refused and 13 are outstanding.

So far, the yield is 68.4 percent, while at this time last year, when 32 offers had also been made, the yield was 75 percent.

But Kirby said that he expects this yield to rise as a new batch of offers are about to be made.

“There are some people who are just about to receive their offers,” he said.

HIRING WOMEN

Hiring more women, particularly for junior faculty positions, has been one of Kirby’s goals as dean.

Kirby wrote in this year’s annual letter to the Faculty that he hopes that FAS will consider how it can reform environments within departments to make them more favorable to women.

He expressed concern over the fact that women “represent just 35 percent of the non-tenured ranks” and wrote that he “intend[ed] to work intensively on this issue in the year ahead.”

Kirby also encouraged job search committees to pay particular attention to women candidates.

Last year, nine of the 21 new tenured appointments were women. Kirby offered no explanation for the failure to attract any women senior professors thus far.

This year several females were appointed to junior faculty positions. Thirty-seven percent of junior offers made were to women, according to Associate Dean for Faculty Development Laura G. Fisher.

But despite this year’s junior appointments, in February, Dean for the Humanities Maria M. Tatar expressed concern over a downward trend in hiring female junior faculty in the humanities.