When 13 professors at Yale University said on Friday they would cut ties with the institution’s ethnicity, race, and migration program, they said their decision was rooted in a history of inequity.

The professors, all senior-level scholars, said the program had been stuck in a vulnerable position for years, without the hiring authority, resources, or stability that departments and other programs have. And despite promises from senior administrators, the faculty members, many of whom are scholars of color, said nothing had changed.

So they resigned from the program en masse, in hopes of sending a message that the model — a “formula of borrowed labor,” one professor called it — was unsustainable.

Peter Salovey, Yale’s president, said in a written statement that university officials “remain hopeful that an agreement can be reached” with the program’s professors. Salovey pointed to two new senior-faculty hires as a sign of the university’s investment in the program, and said there are plans to hire two more this year. He also said a $50-million faculty-diversity effort, announced with fanfare in 2015, had allowed Yale to bring in more than 60 new faculty members in three years across the university.

But the professors involved in the protest said there had been little transparency surrounding how that money has been spent.