Fire All The Diversity Officers!

InsideHigherEd has a terrific article, “Affirmative Inaction,” by Alan Contreras, an administrator of the Oregon Office of Degree Authorization, a unit of the Oregon Student Assistance Commission (though for reasons that are abundantly clear, he notes that the views expressed in the article are his and not his employer’s). Conteras’s views are delightfully contrarian, which I suppose is not so surprising from someone who describes himself as “a gay atheist libertarian gun-owner of mainly Hispanic and Irish ancestry.” (He then adds: “Even if it were possible to classify me as one thing, to what end?”)

You really need to read the whole thing, but here’s a taste. Affirmative action plans, Contreras writes, “don’t make much difference.”

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.

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….

How many minority people earn Ph.D.s? Not many, and they are heavily concentrated in certain fields. In 2004, 36 percent of doctorates issued to African Americans were in education. Nationally, 15 percent of U.S. doctorates were in education. Another 20 percent of doctorates issued to African Americans were in fields in which the University of Oregon has no programs, such as agriculture, theology and engineering. Thus 56 percent of all African Americans who earn doctorates are not in Oregon’s applicant pool no matter what the university does, except for the rare vacancy in education. The same is true at other institutions without these fields — that is, most institutions.

What about fields that most universities do have? How many blacks earned Ph.D.s in mathematics in the U.S. in 2004? Ten, in the entire country. In physics? Thirteen. Although some fields have a higher number of doctoral graduates, with such minuscule numbers coming out of the academic pipeline, no mid-level institution can compete with wealthier, more prestigious institutions whose diversity goals are similar. That doesn’t even take into account those graduates who might enter private industry from fields such as physics, chemistry or engineering.

….

When there are only a dozen new [minority Ph.Ds] in some fields available each year to start with, let us cease pretending that all colleges should have one and that a college that doesn’t is doing something wrong.

In a similar vein, a mathematician friend of mine involved in a search last year complained not only that there were few minority mathematicians available but also that most of those who applied for his opening were in statistics, which at his university was not taught in the math department. (None of this, of course, says anything about why the national interest demands such extraordinary efforts to find and hire black mathematicians.)

Contreras’s recommendation?

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. Forget all the false storefronts and unseemly fawnings that are the usual pewter trade beads of minority recruiting.

…. Start the laborious process of dragging recruitment out of the clinging vines of the H.R. people and back into the hands of departments….

…. Get rid of your highly paid and symbolic chief diversity officers. We all know that they accomplish little. This is not their fault; their jobs are inherently impossible….

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.

It appears that Contreras does not have much respect for the contributions of “human resources bureaucrats,” “Assistant Vice-hand-holders in the bower of ethnic unhappiness,” “highly paid and symbolic chief diversity officers,” etc. Their salaries (and, by implication, the salaries of their staffs, etc.) could be used much more effectively by providing scholarships to a number of needy students.

Contreras assumes, much more than I do, that there may be something to the “role model” justification for beating the bushes to find black professors, but his article is worth reading anyway. It struck a nerve, as once can see by the comments, and one can certainly see why.

One of those comments was from “William B. Harvey,” not identified but familiar to discriminating DISCRIMINATIONS readers (at least those with good memories) as the new “chief diversity officer” at the University of Virginia. (See here, here, here, and here.) Mr. Harvey’s point? That Contreras “either ignores or is unaware of” research by an Arizona State professor who argues that

even when potential faculty members of color are available, and even when their records are superior to their white counterparts, they tend to receive fewer offers and those offers come from less prestigious universities.

Since, according to Harvey, “[t]his situation has occured precisely because hiring has been under the control of the departments,” departments can’t be trusted to implement diversity; chief diversity officers and their minions are necessary for the heavy lifting of racial recruitment.

One can understand why Harvey feels threatened. But one should understand “where he’s coming from.” As I pointed out here, he came to UVa from the Center for Advancement of Racial and Ethnic Equity at the American Council on Education, which took a look at the graduation rates of blacks and Hispanics (much lower than for whites or Asians) and concluded that it was the institutions’ fault, that “a higher education institution has a responsibility to modify its environment so that students of color have as much opportunity for success as their white counterparts.” He, of course, didn’t mean “opportunity for success”; he meant actual success.

And, as noted here, Harvey has been quite explicit about what “diversity” means to him: “What we want this institution to do is to mirror society.” As I pointed out in that post,

We should, however, do Mr. Harvey the courtesy (or whatever) of recognizing that he of course didn’t mean what he said. He doesn’t want The University to “mirror society” in all, or even most, of its political, economic, religious, intellectual “diversity.” His concern with “diversity,” like that of virtually all “diversity” apparatchiks, is literally only skin deep, and less (some hues count far less than others).

He was agitated, for example,

that Latinos and Hispanics currently comprise approximately three percent of the University undergraduate population, while Latinos and Hispanics make up approximately seven percent of the Commonwealth’s population.

Any university that ranks that problem (assuming for the sake of argument that it is a problem) high on its list of concerns, and hires vice presidents and deans and assistant deans to correct it, makes criticism like that offered here by Mr. Contreras seem understated.

Say What?