Sir

Your News story 'Researcher refuses to back down over race case' (Nature 447, 762–763; doi:10.1038/447762a 2007) calls attention to the courageous stand taken by James Sherley, an assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who believes that he was denied tenure because of racial discrimination.

Remarkably, although there has long been a high percentage of African-American students at leading US universities — 10% of incoming undergraduates at MIT, for example — very few have so far made it through to tenure. Only about 1% of biology professors at US universities are African-Americans. Although one-third of assistant professors overall may make it to tenure at MIT, hardly any African-American assistant professors have ever done so in MIT's core disciplines of science and engineering. The same seems to be true at most leading US universities, leading to what has been termed a 'revolving door' for even very talented young African-American scientists such as Sherley, who last year won a National Institutes of Health Pioneer award for innovative work.

How can it be that white and black scientists who initially seem equally talented have such different chances of making it to tenure? I would argue that it is because present tenure policies are unintentionally designed to prevent the success of even the most talented minority scientists.

At places like MIT, only a fraction of faculty make it, even if they're white. In the face of pervasive racial barriers, how can talented minorities have a fair chance in such a steeply competitive timed-tenure system? These barriers can include lack of equal space and resources, lack of mentoring by senior faculty, lack of inclusion in faculty activities such as invitations to speak in seminar series, a general lack of recognition and support, and a hesitancy among white students to join the labs of minority faculty or to be referred to minority labs by senior faculty.

In the face of so many obstacles, how is it fair to argue that Sherley does not deserve tenure because he didn't publish quite as many papers as white assistant professors who did not face any of these barriers? Although the MIT faculty and administrators who have considered his tenure application are for the most part well-meaning, they seem to be unaware of the reality of persisting racial barriers. They unfairly prefer to attribute lack of success to inability.

In a survey of MIT students in 1985, it was found that African-Americans have surprisingly few meaningful faculty contacts, most of those being with the tiny percentage of the faculty who are ethnic minorities. If minority students and faculty are to be successful, there is an urgent need for universities to re-evaluate and redesign their policies that control retention of ethnic minorities on their faculty.