I have written a bunch of times recently about the American Bar Association’s attempt to pressure law schools into increasing “diversity,” arguably even in defiance of states laws if necessary. (See here, citing five other posts). Yesterday an alert reader referred me to a related, important post that I had missed by Prof. Michael A. Livingston of the Rutgers-Camden School of law and to an amazing reply by his colleague, Prof. — no, Dr. — Imani Perry. Although I’ll be quoting heavily, you should read them both in their entirety, including the comments to each.
Prof. Livingston’s primary concern, at least in this post, is with the effect of the pressures fueling “diversity” hiring on faculty comity, although he points out that the same issues are involved in admissions.
The ABA issue has attracted attention because it involves such a clear-cut, bald-faced interference in the operation of American law schools. But it is only the latest example of the damage done to law faculties by diversity programs: damage which, I think, has less to do with the candidates themselves than with the process that produces and nurtures them. Broadly speaking, these problems divide into three categories….
The first problem relates to the organization of the hiring (admissions) process. Since race and gender are more or less objective, and quality is not, the former tend to move quickly from being a partial factor in hiring decisions to being the only factor that really counts. At my own law school this has taken on a depressingly familiar form. After two or three years of more or less open hiring there is pressure from the university or outside forces for more rapid process on the diversity front. At this point everything changes: the members and chair of the committee, the methods for selecting candidates, even the voting rules change in order to ensure the desired result…. One can well ask whether this procedure produces the best candidates: but the point is that no one will believe they are the best candidates, even if they are, so that the process tends to degenerate into a “perpetual first wave” rather than any genuine progress to a more balanced faculty….
The second problem concerns the internal operation of the law school that hires on the basis of diversity criteria. Because it is so costly to dip below the required minimum of diversity faculty, in practice almost anything has to and is done to ensure that they are happy. At my school, I have watched sadly as one after another of the unwritten faculty rules–the level of publication expected, the expectation that one’s work would be presented to the faculty before tenure, even the assumptions regarding physical presence at the law school–were compromised or abandoned to accomodate female or minority candidates who the law school simply could not “afford to lose” under the new dynamic. Once these principles are given away, of course, the same concessions are demanded by other professors, so that the entire system of expectations that cements a faculty begins to come crashing quickly down….
This leads to the third and in my view most significant problem with diversity programs: their effect on civility and free speech at the relevant institution. Because everyone knows that the people other than the best candidates are being selected, but in the nature of things cannot really say so, they tend to develop a habit of dishonesty and “wink-nod” compromises that is extremely difficult to limit to this one area. The entire trust and honesty that characterize academic exchange accordingly tends to atrophy in very short order. Nor do the proponents of diversity shrink from retaliation against its opponents….
Prof. Livingston’s conclusion:
Will the incipient rebellion against the ABA and AALS quell the ardor for diversity programs? I suspect not. The advocates of diversity find themselves today in more or less the same position as the advocates of segregation in the 1960s: they represent an ideology that one suspects even they realize is discredited, but pedal all the more furiously to keep it moving forward. Like the White Citizens Councils of the Civil Rights era, the ABA and AALS are attempting to intimidate the law schools into behavior that, if not actively illegal, is plainly defiant of the will of the courts and the emerging national majority. Sooner of later, they will fail. But old ideas and old professors die hard, and it won’t be over anytime soon.
This, I think you will agree (whether you agree with Prof. Livingston or not) is a powerful indictment. It elicited a powerful reply from one of his minority colleagues, Prof. Imani Perry. The blog that originally posted Prof. Imani’s letter identified her as follows:
Soon after the post, another Rutgers-Camden law professor, Dr. Imani Perry, sent an email to Professor Livingston. Professor Perry, an African-American woman, has a B.A. from Yale College with a double major in Literature and American Studies, a Ph.D. from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in American Civilization, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Since joining the faculty at Rutgers-Camden in 2002, Professor Perry has written numerous articles and has authored a book published by Duke University Press.
I’m going to quote her entire letter:
Dear Michael,
I read your post. You didn’t seem to have much to say about the ABA diversity issue, but to concentrate much more attention on critiquing the process and
consequences of hiring me, Kim, Damon and the Judge. And I see what you’re saying, my ten publications, coming back to work five weeks after giving birth (by c-section) and three advanced degrees are all certainly signs to our community and the world at large of Rutgers’ lowered standards. And the illustrious backgrounds, high level of scholarship, and exemplary faculty citizenship of our aforementioned colleagues raise serious questions about the legitimacy of their candidacies as well. I know, you said, the issue is not whether we are actually “good enough” but rather that the school would/could have done so much better if it had sought “the best” instead of “the black.” Shame on the institution for including racial diversity in its vision of excellence! (Is my facetiousness clear enough?) Incidentally, are you confident that you were objectively the “best” that Rutgers could have hired during your year on the market, or that unconscious racial and gender preferences didn’t play a role in your candidacy? I doubt that you or anyone else in your position can be.
Oh, and I’ll be sure to tell my grandmother that you’ve likened the decision to hire me to the actions of those exploitative hateful and violent men who terrorized her as a poor black woman in Alabama.
I know nothing about the internal atmosphere of the Rutgers-Camden law school, other than that it obviously is not a very happy place these days, nor am I familar with either Prof. Perry or Prof. Livingston or their work, and I have no interest in entering the debate between them. Readers can judge that, and the legitimacy of Prof. Perry’s anger, for themselves. Did Prof. Livingston, for example, really compare the decision to hire her to the Klan terrorizing her grandmother, or was she who (whom?) he had in mind in saying that the excellence of even the best hires would be called into question by the processes of “diversity” hiring?
Indeed, my first reaction to this exchange was the thought that if Prof. Perry’s qualifications even begin to approach the strength of her resume, she could be hired anywhere with no “diversity” preference at all. In fact, it was hard not to wonder (and so I did wonder) why she was not at a much more elite law school than Rutgers-Camden.
And my second reaction was to wonder just how much — or what kind of — “diversity” Prof. Perry would actually bring to any law school, since she was raised, her bio linked above states, in Cambridge, Mass., “by parents and an extended family that valued excellence, social justice and humanitarianism,” attended Yale College, and has both a Ph.D. and a law degree from Harvard. It seems to me that law school faculties are already populated — some might say overpopulated — with very bright overachieving products of an Ivy League (or similar) education.
Addendum
“And I see what you’re saying, my ten publications, coming back to work five weeks after giving birth (by c-section) and three advanced degrees are all certainly signs to our community and the world at large of Rutgers’ lowered standards.”
How about that.
How does this woman fancy she got admitted to and promoted through those advanced degree programs (not to mention hired as faculty)? Or got her massive “ten publications” into print? Is she really not understanding how AA has worked for decades now?
Minor question: do profs. at Rutgers Law have to be a member of the bar somewhere? Anyone know? Just curious, the bios cited of both profs. don’t say if they are attorneys at law, though Livingston did work for a (apparent) state agency once, possibly requiring bar membership.
Perry’s book was on rap music. An expertise of hers is critical race theory, current trendy academic claptrap for a form of victimology. Yes, Rutgers, standards are clearly lowered by such nonsense, as are those of law schools nationwide.
Finally, Perry raises the theme of the experience of one’s forebearers. If,in the interview process, another candidate can show that their grandparents were treated worse than Perry’s in Ala., does she feel that they they should get the job? How about me? My white grandfather was murdered by a black man 47 years ago, do my credentials trump hers? My point being why would the experience of grandparents and beyond be relevant to hiring preferences decades later. Or are they relevant only for certain preferred groups? We know the answer to that.
To look at it from another perspective, Prof. Livingston is discussing the real of ideas and processes, and Prof. Perry only examines it through the lens of her personal circumstances. That is fairly typical of behavior of both groups, and is a major reason for the seemingly permanent disconnects between the sides.
For those familiar with Myers-Briggs typology, Livingston and a large portion of the ‘right’ in this debate tend to be type NT’s and ST’s, more concerned with ideas and the big picture, and with being objective. Perry and the ‘left’ tend to be type NF’s and SF’s, more concerned with relationships and emotions but still an abstract-but-personalized kind of way.
These differences in inherent traits and behaviors make it unlikely that either side will come around to the other’s view. Unfortunately, there are real individuals who are getting caught in the middle and suffering because of it, both by being discriminated against and being discriminated for. Either is equally bad when examined through the eyes of the individual life affected.