The study "Underrepresented minority faculty in the USA face a double standard in promotion and tenure decisions", by Theodore Masters-Waage, Christiane Spitzmueller, Ebenezer Edema-Sillo, Ally St. Aubin, Michelle Penn-Marshall, Erika Henderson, Peggy Lindner, Cynthia Werner, Tracey Rizzuto, and Juan Madera, published in Nature Human Behaviour, finds that underrepresented minority (URM) faculty at U.S. research universities experience systematic disadvantages in promotion and tenure (P&T) evaluations. Using data on 1,571 P&T cases across five institutions, the authors show that URM faculty received approximately 7% more negative votes and were 44% less likely to receive unanimous positive recommendations from P&T committees than their non-URM peers, even after accounting for standard scholarly productivity metrics. The analysis further reveals a double standard in which URM faculty with lower research impact (e.g., lower h-index scores) are judged more harshly than similarly productive non-URM faculty, with particularly pronounced effects for URM women. Importantly, the study finds that external review letters that emphasize a candidate’s scholarship can mitigate some of these disparities, highlighting potential avenues for policy and procedural reforms to advance equity in academic career advancement.
