Excerpted from the Chronicle of Higher Ed article written
by Alan L. Contreras
Affirmative Inaction
By Alan L. Contreras
"Universities all over the country have been struggling in recent years to develop
diversity plans and hiring doctrines to improve the position of minorities on campuses. I
am most familiar with the plan recently issued in draft form by the University of Oregon,
which has been working on the latest version of its diversity plan for a couple of years
now.
"These plans don't make much difference. The problem is less a lack of good will than
a lack of connection to facts on the ground. Universities cannot remake the
fundamental culture in which they exist, and that is a culture in which the availability
of minority faculty and, to some extent, minority students, is decided years before a
particular college or university can affect the situation by internal policies.
"Diversity has become a word that must be spoken; those who don't speak it in the
right slightly breathless tone while looking both sorrowful and committed are
unemployable. Because everyone speaks the word and almost no one does (or can)
produce results, we are at risk, if I may use another phrase that used up its
oxygen long ago, of seeing diversity mean as little as do Affirmative Action and Equal
Opportunity. [Emphasis added. Editor]
"What does affirmative action mean today in faculty recruitment? A leaden
process controlled not by departments but by human resources bureaucrats, with little
discernible result. Universities need to stop treating diversity as an internal,
mechanical process and start looking at the larger communities they serve for ways to
improve academic opportunities for young people.
"How many minority people earn Ph.D.s? Not many, and they are heavily
concentrated in certain fields. [For example] In 2004, 36 percent of doctorates
issued to African Americans were in education. Nationally, 15 percent of U.S.
doctorates were in education. ...
"In order to maintain their reputation, good universities hire Ph.D.s who earned
their doctorates at the best programs in the U.S. (and the world, when possible). In
most fields, this means a chunk of the Ivy League plus other top-rank universities such as
Michigan, Chicago, Stanford, Wisconsin or Minnesota; maybe 20 to 30 schools all
told. For the most part, these freshly-printed Ph.D.s don't want to work at
mid-level schools, they want to work at one of the top 30 schools where they came from,
but they need a job. ...
"Faculty at the great majority of schools are not really interested in color-coding
their potential co-workers on a sepia-index wall chart anyway; they are interested in
whether those co-workers are any good. ...
"... We must stop whacking our colleges for failing to hire people who do not exist.
"Anyone interested in actual improvement of the presence of good nonwhite faculty in
our universities needs to take certain steps at their schools. Do not allow the
hiring of more bureaucrats to gasp in predictable horror at the way things are. No
more Assistant Vice-hand-holders in the bower of ethnic unhappiness.
"Start the laborious process of dragging recruitment out of the clinging vines of the
H.R. people and back into the hands of departments. ... College leaders need the ability
to go outside the standard hiring process to support and attract the best faculty,
including minority faculty. They should also have the flexibility to flag potential
scholars early in life and use university resources to assist them in their long-term goal
of joining the professoriate.
"Plan ahead a generation. Work ahead a generation. Figure out who of
color in your local schools has the potential to be a good professor. Get rid of
your highly paid and symbolic chief diversity officers. We all know that they accomplish
little. ...
"Let the word diversity lie fallow until something meaningful can grow from its good
soil. Let the words affirmative action not be spoken until they mean action that is
affirmative again."
-- Excerpted from the Chronicle of Higher Ed
article written by Alan L. Contreras
Last Known Link:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/07/21/contreras
[Alan L. Contreras has been administrator
of the Oregon Office of Degree Authorization, a unit of the Oregon Student Assistance
Commission, since 1999. His views do not necessarily represent those of the commission. A
shorter version of this essay appeared earlier in the Eugene, Ore., Register-Guard.] |
