From: schieber@jetson.uh.edu (Schieber, Jay D.)
Subject: Re: Hiring quotas and faculty positions (Repost #2)
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: University of Houston
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 19:39:00 GMT

In article <1992Sep12.170127.11139@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>, me@csri.toronto.edu (Daniel R. Simon) writes...

[some debate deleted]

Here we have a new level of discussion on the question of affirmative
action.  Although I disagree with the argument, at least there is
now a recognition of (some, though not all) past political activities 
of academia:


> 
>The notion that there are myriad "factors" that "enter into the very
>complicated equation" of merit in university hiring and admission has
>moved in and out of vogue, following the shifting political winds,
>throughout the history of North American academia.  

Well, yes and no.  I would say more accurately that which factors
are important has changed with time.  Academia has *always* thought
that nontechnical factors were important factors.  For example,
contributions to war efforts have nearly always played a very large
role.



>For example, it
>enjoyed something of a heyday earlier this century, when an influx of
>Americans of Southern and Eastern European descent (particularly Jews)
>began to threaten WASP dominance of the Ivy League and other
>prestigious American universities.  Suddenly what had previously been
>seen as a fairly straightforward "equation" became a much more
>"complicated" one, as measure after measure was taken to allow
>admissions officers and search committees to choose less qualified
>applicants of sturdy Northern European stock.  One example was the
>"geographic diversity" criterion, which permitted American
>universities to prefer students from the more ethnically homogeneous
>South and West over more qualified candidates from immigrant
>communities, who were overwhelmingly concentrated in the large cities
>of the Northeast.  Another, less subtle approach was the "character"
>criterion; on the grounds that graduates and professors should be
>"examples" to students and society in general, it was decided that
>scions of good families (children of a more purebred era's alumni, for
>instance) would routinely be given preference over higher-achieving
>candidates of more dubious extraction.
> 
>These and other "factors" eventually fell into disfavour, of course,
>as the principle of equal opportunity gained popularity, and for a
>brief time "merit", rather than race, ethnicity, or sex, was taken by
>the academic community to be the single best criterion for admission,
>hiring, and promotion.  But, sadly, those days ended quickly, as a new
>generation of administrators and faculties succumbed to the apparently
>perennial urge to tailor the racial, ethnic and gender compositions of
>their universities to suit their own tastes.

I know of no single instance where there is a current-day indication
that "merit" is any less important than it was in the past.   Can you
cite a single example?  I refrain from making such a blanket statement
about "the academic community", since there are so many faculty 
votes out there.  However, departments have often turned down candidates
of merit because certain faculty believed that no woman could possibly
be qualified.  These are the same faculty who claim that "merit" is
the only valid criterion.



> 
>The standard justifications given for "affirmative action" today are
>essentially indistinguishable from those used by the active
>proponents of the racist and sexist policies that are such a shameful
>blot on the history of this continent's institutions of higher
>education.  

I can distinguish quite easily between them.  The first is used as
a smokescreen to deny groups access to academia (according to your
own description), and the second is an attempt to give access to
groups that did not have them before.



>Virtually every argument in favour of preferential
>treatment for women and minorities ("diversity", "mentoring")
>implicitly justifies, both directly (by supporting them outright) and
>indirectly (by endorsing their once-popular rationales, in barely
>modified form) the very racism and sexism that such treatment was
>supposedly intended to abolish.  

This is true only if one chooses to ignore the realities surrounding
universities: that many groups in society have been denied and are
still denied access to academia.  It is simply not possible to 
write a computer program that can objectively select the "most
qualified candidate" for the job.  We make those decisions as 
individuals.  Because some individuals have chosen, say ethnicity
of candidates to be an important factor in order to *exclude* ethnic
groups, does not mean that the factor is unimportant. It just means
that they are using the factor in a way that most of us find appalling.

For example, I think that being a good instructor is an important factor
in choosing a candidate.  Further, I think that the ability to communicate
easily with your students is essential to being a good instructor.
Here in Houston we have a candidate who is very well qualified from
MIT (B.S.) and Cambridge (doctorate). However, the majority of our
undergraduates are Texans, and they have difficulty at first talking
with her.  So, I vote against that candidate saying that she will
not communicate well with the students.  If you disagree with my
decision does this imply that "ability to communicate" as a factor 
is just justifying a bias against yankees, and thus should never
by used as a factor?  If so, I would strongly disagree, for the
same reasons that I disagree with your conclusion above.


>The continuity of rationalizations
>demonstrates that the choice facing the academic community (and
>society at large) has never really changed: we can embrace the lofty
>principles that guided the great opening of the universities (and
>other public and private institutions) to women and minorities in the
>past few decades; or we can revert to the "business as usual" approach
>that held sway before then, when universities venally placated
>whatever constituencies held the purse strings and the levers of
>power, constructing sophistries to justify whatever policies of bias
>and favoritism seemed the most politically or economically expedient
>at any given moment.
> 
>Frankly, I have no faith in the independent integrity of academics
>regarding these matters, and I only hope that society as a whole comes
>to its senses and stops the swing of the ugly pendulum of preferential
>treatment--before it swings back the other way again.

I repeat an argument from an earlier posting.  I wish that we could
hire people on such ideals, but we need to compare the proposal of
AA with the *existing* system, not the ideal.  We should always
try to reach the ideal, and I believe that AA takes us a step in
the right direction.  It may not be perfect, and I am willing to 
entertain other ideas, since I think that we have very similar
final goals.  However, as an experimentalist I know says "we have
to let the material speak for itself".  In the same way, we need
to see what previous system produced and "let it speak for itself".
The evidence is clear to me: just hoping that racism/sexism/homo-
phobia/etc just goes away if we proclaim it gone does not work.
We must take active steps to dismantle it.

Bye the way, I share many of your biases regarding purse strings.
But I will avoid entering that much broader stickier question.

Jay Schieber


> 
> 
>"There *is* confusion worse than death"		Daniel R. Simon
>			     -Tennyson		(me@theory.toronto.edu)
>