This story has been updated.
Jessica Meharry has resigned from Columbia, where she was the director of Academic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and an associate professor in the Business & Entrepreneurship Department.
She is the fourth Academic DEI director to leave the college. Everyone appointed to head the office since its establishment in 2016 has departed.
Meharry became director following the resignation of Raquel Monroe in June 2022. Meharry was interim co-director with Monroe for one year before that.
Meharry was also the chair of the DEI Task Force at the college in 2017 for one year.
She most recently served on the college’s Antiracism Transformation Team, a group tasked with leading the college to make long-term structural and institutional changes. In March, the team announced a plan to conduct a survey of Columbia’s racial climate.
Meharry will be a visiting research professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she earned her PhD in design last year.
She is the second faculty member from the Business & Entrepreneurship Department to resign this summer. The Chronicle previously reported that Jennifer Sadler, an assistant professor and critical race scholar, resigned in June.
Madhurima Chakraborty, president of the Faculty Senate and associate professor in the English and Creative Writing Department, described Meharry as a “clear-eyed and strong advocate for antiracism and equity at the college, especially in terms of curriculum and other faculty concerns.”
Chakraborty said Meharry seemed open and serious about listening to faculty and worked well with the senate on DEI matters regarding courses and hiring.
“Personally, I believe the ADEI director position to be an incredibly heavy lift in terms of workload,” Chakraborty said in an email to the Chronicle. “It’s a position that used to be a deanship, and then was taken over by two full-time co-directors, before it fell to a single director. Even from the outside, I can tell that the work is incredibly nuanced, high-stakes, and I suspect the obstacles must be humbling.”
Before Meharry: The previous three directors of Academic DEI also resigned from the college, leaving for other institutions.
Matthew Shenoda, Folayemi Wilson and Monroe, all faculty of color, now hold leadership positions at other colleges and universities.
Onye Ozuzu, former dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts who spearheaded the college’s original DEI committee, left in 2018 to become dean of University of Florida’s College of the Arts in Gainesville.
What comes next: It is not clear when the college will appoint Meharry’s replacement.
The Chronicle went to the office of Academic DEI, located on the second floor of the 600 S. Michigan building, on July 28 and Aug. 1, as well as the office of the B&E Department on Aug. 1. Both offices were dark and no one answered; a sign on the B&E office door, located on the seventh floor of the 618 S. Michigan building, stated that everyone was working remotely.
Meharry did not respond to emails requesting comment.
Senior Associate Provost Nate Bakkum said in an email to the Chronicle that Meharry “helped refine and strengthen our faculty hiring practices, integrating a DEI perspective into all aspects of our search process,” as well as further refined the DEI designation process for new and existing courses.
AAUP President Joan Giroux said she hopes that the next appointment by the college administration will include faculty input in the selection decision.
“I had worked with Jessica previously on Faculty Senate, and I know her energy and leadership will be missed,” Giroux said.
Bakkum said the offices of the provost and president expect to make an announcement about the next director appointment process “very soon.”
