When John Gutiérrez stands before his undergraduate students at the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, he sees many Latino faces looking back at him, belonging to students who have the capacity to pursue doctoral studies, and an interest in doing so. Their pursuits, however, are often hampered by a slew of obstacles. These Latino students represent the “real New York, the striver’s New York,” says Gutiérrez. They may have arrived as immigrants speaking no English, but they graduate and enter the workforce with jobs their parents could have never imagined, he continues.
Gutiérrez, PhD, Director of CUNY’s Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies (CLACLS) and Laird W. Bergad, PhD, the center’s Executive Director, are on a mission to make doctoral programs at CUNY’s graduate center more accessible to Latino students.
Good News, Bad News
In the past three decades, the absolute number of Latino PhDs has increased across the US; however, the percentage of overall faculty members who are Latino has yet to keep pace. “There is certainly progress and things are moving forward, but not at the figures that would be commensurate with Latinos in the overall population,” says Dr. Bergad.Latinos comprise 18-20 percent of the US population, but the percentage of Latinos who earn PhDs is nowhere near this figure. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in the fall of 2020 degree-granting postsecondary institutions employed 1.5 million faculty members. Of those, nearly three-quarters were White. Specifically, 39 percent were White males and 35 percent were White females. However, only 3 percent each were Black males, Hispanic males, and Hispanic females.
Gathering and Disseminating Better Data
Founded in 2001, CUNY’s Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies (CLACLS) is a research center that encourages Latino students to enroll in CUNY’s graduate center. “We work to recruit Latino students to come to the graduate center and work on their PhDs, with the long-term objective of having future members of the professoriate across all disciplines in the job market in the United States,” says Dr. Bergad.
CLACLS grew out of a challenge CUNY was facing in the early 2000s: a lack of quality quantitative data on Latino populations in New York City and nationwide. Post 9/11, New York’s Latino population diversified as emerging Latino groups from places like Ecuador and Colombia settled alongside long-established groups from Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic in New York City. “(But) we didn’t have the digital resources we have today (to keep track of the numbers),” says Dr. Gutiérrez.
The center began gathering data on these groups and making that data available to its students and the population at large through its Latino Data Project. Using the most recent US Census data and databases maintained by CLACLS, the project began publishing a variety of reports on Latinos in the New York City metropolitan area. In November, the project released its 100th report.
“We are publicly engaged and (our reports) get an enormous amount of attention,” says Dr. Bergad. In his most recent report, Dr. Bergad presented data on college graduation rates among Latinos in New York City and within an hour of the report being released on the project’s Instagram account, there were over 1,000 hits. “We promote scholarship, we promote research, and we promote publication,” says Dr. Bergad.
In addition to publishing data, the CLACLS offers support to Latinos at the graduate center. “We have a disconnect between the young people who enter CUNY community colleges and senior colleges as first year students and those students who end up entering the graduate center as doctoral candidates,” says Dr. Gutiérrez. CUNY’s students are “remarkable raw material to work with,” but there’s a disparity between the number of Latino students at the undergraduate level and the number at the graduate level. The center offers Latinos a place to gather and call home.
Breaking the Never-Ending Cycle
All American universities, according to Dr. Bergad, actively recruit individuals from underrepresented groups, but that recruitment process is hindered by the shortage of Latino PhDs. Although recruiting from underrepresented groups is worthwhile, institutions should focus their efforts on PhD candidates. “That’s your future professoriate,” says Dr. Bergad. “It’s not that there haven’t been efforts undertaken in the US and at CUNY, but they just haven’t worked in the sense of increasing the percentage of overall faculty who are Latino in the country,” says Dr. Bergad.
Higher education will never have a diversified professoriate if it does not build one, and that requires money, says Dr. Gutiérrez. If it fails to financially support Latino doctoral candidates, higher education will get caught in a never-ending cycle in which only sons and daughters of PhDs will pursue PhDs, stacking the odds even higher against first-generation, immigrant students.
Aspiring historians and history professors living in New York City can’t make financial ends meet without significant fellowship aid. Dr. Bergad suggests offering more targeted fellowships that provide grant monies to Latino PhD candidates. There are a number currently offered across the US, but “the needle should be moved forward a little further and a little more quickly if we’re going to find some kind of parity among Latinos,” he says.
Currently, CLACLS awards some fellowships and research grants for summer travel, allowing scholars to research Latin Americans in the Caribbean or Latinos in the US. In the past 21 years, CLACLS has awarded over 3.5 million dollars in grants, and is the only institution at CUNY that awards financial aid specifically targeted at Latino students.
Working within Limited Means
Twenty years ago, Dr. Bergad recognized that CUNY’s graduate center should and could better recruit Latino doctoral candidates. With limited means, he’s put resources in the hands of students for pre-dissertation field work. Dr. Bergad calls CLACLS a dynamic research center dedicated to serving the Latino population and Latino students of the New York Metropolitan area. “This is very important to us, scholarship, research writing, dissemination of information. These are at the top of our list of priorities,” says Dr. Bergad.
To promote its work and raise its visibility, CLACLS has several connections in the New York Metropolitan media and beyond. CLACLS works with the Hispanic Federation in New York City, the mayor’s office, and the Office of Immigration Affairs. Representatives of the center appear regularly on CUNY TV and other broadcasts, like the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC and Spectrum News NY1. During the 2016 election, Dr. Bergad served as a consultant for CNN Español, analyzing Latino voting trends and voter registration rates. “We have a public presence,” says Dr. Bergad. •
