Opinion ID: 749306
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The University's Affirmative Action Plan

Text: 8 Throughout the relevant period, it was the University's policy that faculty was to be hired without regard to invidious factors such as race, color, religion, age, or national origin. The University had an affirmative action plan (the Plan), applicable to all of its schools and departments (collectively departments), which required that all academic appointments to full-time positions be made after a wide search for candidates, with special efforts made to locate women and minority group candidates[,] and ... a fair, impartial review and judgment of all applications. (1992 Affirmative Action Plan at 7.) Once promising female and minority candidates were identified, however, all applicants were to be evaluated by the same standards. (See Affidavit of Martin Meisel, former University Vice President, dated August 21, 1995, p 24 (The Plan does not ... permit ... the use of different or lower standards in judging minority and female candidates. Instead, it urges that special efforts be taken to identify promising minority and female candidates. Once they are identified, however, they are judged by the same rigorous standards applied to white males.).) 9 The Plan also recognized that the process of faculty recruitment and development inherently involves the application of judgmental criteria, and that the responsibility for applying these criteria must rest primarily with the faculties themselves. (1992 Affirmative Action Plan at 6.) The Plan required each department to establish its own search and evaluation procedures consistent with the University's policies and goals. The Department of Spanish and Portuguese had established such procedures, which required its Executive Committee, comprising all tenured faculty members in the Department, initially to define the position available and vote on whether to initiate a search for a full-time nontenured faculty member. Once an affirmative vote was taken, the Department's Chair would draft an advertisement to be submitted to the University's Vice President for Arts and Sciences for approval. All applications submitted in response to the advertisement would then be read by the Department's search committee, with the most promising applications being reviewed by the Executive Committee and non-Department persons such as adjunct faculty members and members of the Spanish Department at Barnard College (Barnard). The strongest candidates would then be invited to interview with the faculty and, on occasion, to present a talk at the University to Department faculty, graduate students, or others. The final decision as to each candidate was to be made by the Department's Executive Committee, with input from a representative from Barnard. 10