"The University of Virginia and the Curry School publicly espouse the values of diversity, equity and inclusion. The Curry School recently made the long-awaited move to rename Ruffner Hall after Walter Ridley, the first African American to graduate from UVA with a Doctorate in Education. At the top of the “Diversity at Curry” page on the Curry website, it states:

“The Curry School of Education and Human Development values diversity, equity and inclusion in all of its complexity and richness. We engage our students with multiple perspectives to prepare them to be active agents of change in a complex global society. We intentionally seek opportunities to expand diversity at our school through recruitment, retention, teaching, research and service. Our goal is the development of a community that promotes and values diversity and equity.”

However, this decision demonstrates the failure of the Curry School and ultimately the University to align the public facing values with the impact of actual practices. The University’s Diversity Dashboard shows that in 2019 only 108 of the 2,946 faculty were African American and of those 108 only 52 of them are African American men. Of the 141 faculty members in the Curry School, only 12 are African American with eight of them being men. While this is unacceptable at the University-wide level, it is especially egregious in a school where diversity, equity, and inclusion are centered in the values that are learned and ultimately taught by the educators produced by the school."