I attended a workshop recently entitled Diversity in Hiring, which was (obviously) focused on the issue of diversifying the professoriate through hiring practices. While I am a proponent of diversity, stagnant, recycled viewpoints do not benefit anyone in an academic institution, I am a bit concerned about actively recruiting candidates who fill some sort of pre-set diversity requirement. For example, at Fake Community College, the English Department is composed of three white women and one white man, so the college has determined that the new English faculty member should ideally be a black man. How far do you do to ensure that the new candidate is a black man?
Another issue: Race and Gender are easily (most of the time) discernible. And generally speaking, intellectual diversity is also discernible. But how do we ensure that we have homosexuals? Should we ask?
The word diversity is loaded with connotation and has no easily identifiable denotation for that matter. So how do you ensure diversity if you don't even know what it means?
And a final question: If Fake Community College's English Department is composed of one black man, one Hispanic woman, a Native Alaskan man, and an American Indian woman, do you try to actively recruit white people? If Fake Community College's English Department has two radical feminists, a Greenpeace representative, and an ACLU member, do you try to find some conservative republicans to meet your diversity requirements?
I know this may sound as if I am against the idea of hiring diverse candidates, but I'm not. This was just an opportunity for me to vent some - possibly extreme and unlikely- ideas.
Frankly, I think that all of these concerns about diversity in the workplace have weakened many companies, schools and public institutions. I believe that the best person for the job should be hired no matter who they are or what group or groups they fall into. I don't believe that having racial quotas or other type quotas do any good for anyone at all, including those who get hired that way. Their peers tend to look at them as if they only got the job because or their race or religion or political type and they consider them as second class employees whether or not that's the case.
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly it's a fine line to walk but I think it's also a very dangerous one.
I think there is a difference between trying to hire diverse candidates and filling quotas, but as you say it's a fine line.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree that the best candidate should be hired regardless of race, religion, gender, etc. I just hope that we finally live in a world where people will not skew or manipulate the data to ensure the "best" (so subjective) candidate is not the status quo.
Like I said, my thoughts on this subject are so confused....