Discriminations

As it relates to “diversity,” one usually thinks of demographic data as providing evidence (or not) of discrimination. But Tom Bell, a law professor in southern California, has given us good reason to suspect that a database of aspiring law teachers maintained by the American Association of Law Schools is itself discriminatory.

The American Association of Law Schools (AALS), helps law schools connect with people who want to become law professors. Toward that end, the AALS runs the Faculty Appointments Register (FAR), a database to which each job candidate can submit a one-page, standardized form describing where he or she went to school, worked, and so forth. The FAR form asks candidates to identify their sex and ethnicity.

The AALS allows law schools to search the FAR forms online through an interface that allows you to, for instance, pull up only candidates who have gone to particular schools, passed certain bar exams, held judicial clerkships, and so forth. The AALS interface also allows schools to sort candidates by sex or ethnicity. Interestingly, though, that interface allows only certain sorts of searches. Under the heading of sex (“Gender” in AALS-speak), the only options are “No Preference,” or “Female.” Under the “Race/Ethnicity” heading, the only options are “No Preference,” or “Minority.” You thus cannot search for male or non-minority candidates.

I can’t tell, and Bell does not say, whether the FAR database includes information about religion. Given the AALS’s obvious concern with “diversity,” however, it would seem a serious oversight if it does not, at least to the extent of offering a choice of “Jewish” or “No Preference.” Otherwise, how would all those law schools where Jews are “overrepresented” on the faculty avoid hiring even more?

I was pointed to this older post by Prof. Bell, and other interesting old ones (such as here and here), by this recent post of his. I suggest you read them all.

ADDENDUM

Tom Bell emails that

the database does not allow searches for religion, military status, disability, sexual orientation, etc. So far as protected categorizations go, it allows only the searches I described.

This, of course, makes sense ... so long as law schools are interested only in “diversity,” not diversity.