Newsgroups: sci.research.careers
From: me@csri.toronto.edu (Daniel R. Simon)
Subject: Re: Hiring quotas and faculty positions (Repost #2)
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Date: 14 Sep 92 19:34:31 GMT

In article <13SEP199214394880@jetson.uh.edu> schieber@jetson.uh.edu (Schieber, Jay D.) writes:
>In article <1992Sep12.170127.11139@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>, me@csri.toronto.edu (Daniel R. Simon) writes...
>>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.

I apologize.  Where I come from, the idea that certain races or
genders may have more "merit" where certain jobs are concered is
liable to earn one a stern talking-to, if not worse.  I keep
forgetting that some people still believe it.  Still, it should have
been obvious from my apposition of "merit" and "race, ethnicity, or
sex" that I was adhering to an old-fashioned notion of "merit", one
dating back to the days when racism was not so in vogue as it has
apparently once more become.

>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.

I personally find such attitudes appalling, but I'm a bit surprised
that Mr.  Schieber is complaining about them.  After all, he is one of
several posters who has already indicated (indeed, he suggests as much
later in the same posting) that it might in some circumstances be
appropriate to turn down "candidates of merit" because no white male
could possibly be sufficiently "qualified" (by his definition of the
term).  And scarcely a paragraph ago, he was steadfastly denying that
he advocated any criterion other than merit.  I see precious little
difference between his stance and the one he appears to decry above.

>>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.

It is easy to underestimate the cleverness and, indeed, the sincerity 
of the master rationalizers of discrimination of the not-too-distant
past, imagining them simply as pointy-toothed villains cackling evilly
as they consigned all but their blue-blooded pals to unhired,
uneducated oblivion.  In fact, the "geographic diversity" criterion
which so successfully stanched the flow of grimy immigrant stock into
American universities was once quite seriously justified as "giv[ing]
access to groups that did not have [it] before", namely the lily-white
inhabitants of the many regions of the country outside the Northeast,
who were being squeezed out of their fair share of university
positions by the depredations of those dastardly foreigners.  It was
not at all difficult for these same administrators to conclude that
Jews, for instance, were "overrepresented" in their university's
faculty and student body, and that limiting their number would make
room for all manner of previously "underrepresented" categories,
including the many fine young Christian men who would otherwise have
fallen victim to the Jewish academic onslaught.

Today, of course, the advocates of "affirmative action" draw the
borders on the ethnic map in very different places.  Unsurprisingly,
those new borders are equally arbitrary, and produce equally
outrageous forms of blatant racism and sexism.  Yet the appeal of the
"oh, but we're *including*, not *excluding*" argument endures.

>>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.

There are *no* differences in the way that factor is being used.  The
most striking lack of difference, in fact, is the way in which both
uses have been accompanied by vigorously self-righteous justifications
for this abominable practice, justifications which belie their equal
sophistry by their astonishing similarity.

>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.

Good heavens!  How might one have reacted to a Black female candidate?
"However, the majority of our undergraduates are Texans, and they have
difficulty at first talking with her...."

Advocating catering to the prejudice of Texans against Yankees (or
anyone else) strikes me as a simply awful way to demonstrate the 
virtues of "affirmative action".  And I find it immensely frightening 
to see an argument to the effect that "one of *them* could not 
possibly be qualified for this job because she could never fit in with 
our kind" coming out of the American South in this day and age.

>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.

Well, one helpful step towards dismantling it might be actually to
stop practicing it.  There are innumerable highly intractable 
problems facing North American society, including horrifically high
rates of murder, rape, assault, robbery, drug abuse, and other acts
which make workplace discrimination seem minor by comparison.  But
we do not throw away all our scruples in combatting *those* ills; 
rather, we employ only those means that are likely to be effective 
while still falling within the bounds of society's ethical standards.
One of our most treasured standards in free societies is the 
protection of innocents from arbitrary harms; that standard is what 
motivates our distaste for racial, ethnic and sex discrimination in 
the first place.  To flout that standard for the sake of better
adhering to it is utterly and completely self-defeating.

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