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: 12 Sep 92 21:01:27 GMT

In article <11SEP199209542037@vtcc1.cc.vt.edu> merolajs@vtcc1.cc.vt.edu (JOSEPH S. MEROLA DEPT OF CHEMISTRY VPI&SU) writes:
>     There have been a lot of interesting posts on this topic, but a number of
>them seem to have a distorted view of affirmative action.  While I can't
>speak for every institution or even any other individual, the interpretation
>that has been applied in job searches in which I have been involved is NOt
>the one stated above (i.e.  we will settle for someone of lower quality if
>they are from an underrepresented group).  Rather, affirmative action means 
>that extra efforts will be made to ensure that qualified women and minority
>applicants apply for the position so that we have a large pool of all
>representations to evaluate.  So, we may make a special effort to contact
>minority institutions to make them aware of our position.  Or, we may 
>use personal contacts to identify female or minority candidates and 
>encourage them to apply.  

Of course, nobody really believes that this is how "affirmative
action" works in practice.  And, as the following paragraph shows,
neither does the author of the above description.

>    I hope you see from the above how complicated the evaluation can be 
>and I have only touched on a few areas that are considered.  Ultimately,
>you get the idea that there is no such thing as a "best" candidate.
>Back to the idea of affirmative action, the "qualities" of gender or
>ethnic background can indeed be a valid consideration.  Let's take the
>case of gender.  Last year, my department had more female senior
>chemistry majors than male ( 34 vs 18)  and our graduate program has
>a large percentage of female students (38 out of 130 total).  The concept
>that female faculty members will play an important role in mentoring
>these students to their full potential is a valid one in my opinion.

Apparently, what was previously an attempt to "ensure that qualified
women and minority applicants apply for the position" has
metamorphosed, in the course of a single posting, into a willingness
to make "gender or ethnic background" a "valid consideration" in
hiring.  Fifty years ago, of course, that willingness would have been
nearly universal in North American universities, and for reasons
strikingly similar to those used today.

>    Will we accept a "poor" candidate just because they are female?
>I guess I have the same problem concerning "poor" as I do with "best",
>but the answer is no.  But, I am trying to say that this is just one
>more of the factors that enter into the very complicated equation
>and it is no less valid than any of the others.

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.  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.

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.  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.  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.


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