The departure in recent years of three Graduate School of Education (GSE) professors who specialized in race relations and civil rights is causing concern and discussion among the school’s affiliates about the need for more faculty of color in GSE’s ranks and a greater focus on race in the school’s curriculum.

Last Wednesday, hundreds of students and professors congregated in the Gutman Conference Center for an open forum to address how the school should move forward after the departure of Professor of Education and Social Policy Gary Orfield.

Orfield, one of the founder’s of the former Harvard Civil Rights Project, moved the project this spring to the University of California at Los Angeles. When he announced his departure, Orfield called UCLA “a more conducive atmosphere to studying civil rights.”

His departure caused 108 GSE doctoral students to submit an open letter to GSE Dean Kathleen McCartney, which led to last week’s meeting. The letter called Orfield’s departure and the recent departure of other professors studying civil rights and race “particularly devastating.”

Students’ “academic preparation and future scholarship are at risk...if such issues of critical importance in our increasingly diverse nation are not sufficiently addressed by GSE faculty and curriculum,” the letter said.

“One senior professor leaves and it leaves a big hole. So it’s now at this point where we really feel a sense of urgency,” said Liliana M. Garces, a second-year doctoral student at GSE and one of nine co-authors of the open letter.

In a phone interview, McCartney acknowledged the students’ concerns.

“We have a problem. We know it; you know it. And I think it’s important to say, this is a problem in higher education generally,” she said yesterday.

According to Academic Dean Robert B. Schwartz, there is not “an adequate pipeline” of African-American and Latino scholars graduating from high quality doctoral programs.

“You got this high demand and limited supply which is what makes this such a challenge in the long run,” he said.

Schwartz added that Harvard has struggled to hold on to some academics because it generally does not offer “star” salaries that are significantly above average tenure salaries.

He pointed to the examples of former Professors Pedro Noguera and Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, two prominent GSE civil rights scholars who left for New York University in 2004 after receiving what Schwartz calls “extremely generous offers that Harvard can’t compete with.”

Given these challenges, students and faculty alike agree that alternate methods of attracting and retaining faculty of color and faculty who study civil rights need to be unearthed.

Lilly B. Piper, a GSE master’s student and Resident Tutor in Adams House, said that GSE should focus on creating a cultural atmosphere that is more welcoming to potential faculty members. Faculty diversity “is a problem in higher education collectively, but it shouldn’t be a problem at Harvard University,” she said in an interview.

But Schwartz said that among Harvard’s schools, the GSE had done better than many at recruiting a diverse body of scholars, although “that doesn’t make us complacent.”

Six of GSE’s 33 tenured or tenure-track faculty members are minorities, placing it third among Harvard’s nine schools, according to the 2006 End of Year Report from Harvard’s Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity.

According to McCartney, the entire GSE faculty is now formulating a comprehensive plan to set faculty hiring priorities for the next ten to fifteen years. McCartney added that the senior faculty is also in the process of putting together a student advisory group to assist in faculty recruiting.

Garces said that the current student initiative is the first of its kind in at least her two years at GSE, a result of what she sees as a more receptive administration.

—Staff writer Kelly Y. Gu can be reached at kellygu@fas.harvard.edu.