Public acknowledgement of affirmative action within the university is rare. Cornell, however, has defied the rule, and gone one step further: it recently posted its guidelines for the preferential hiring of women and minorities online. In so doing, Cornell has confirmed our worst fears about preferential treatment programs and, more generally, the modern university's unending quest for "diversity."
Some background: ADVANCE is a 5-year, $3.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation aimed at increasing the representation of female faculty in each of the 44 science and engineering (S&E) departments to at least 20%." (In 2006, about half of S&E departments fell below 20%). The grant, intended to combat the troubling lack of "gender diversity...that affects the quality of our enterprise", funds four programs: Faculty Development, which creates mentorship programs for all S&E faculty as well as workshops, professional development grants, and research-initiation grants for women faculty; a Climate Initiative, which establishes a department chair, search committee, and faculty workshops on "diversity issues"; an Evaluation Initiative, which tracks the careers of women S&E faculty; and a Recruitment Initiative, which will develop strategies for recruiting women, provide interview support for female candidates, and give placement support and funding for the spouses of female faculty.
Cornell has taken meaningful steps to monitor ADVANCE's progress. It directed staff from its Office of Institutional Research and Planning to devote half of their time evaluating the program. Additionally, it solicited from each of its colleges an ADVANCE liaison, who would "share best practices, report on progress within the college, and suggest new programming and events."
An official 2009 report, however, noted limited success. Though the authors praised the successful networking and mentoring programs, they lamented the abiding gender discrepancies within the faculty. Comparing 2008-2009 figures against a baseline figure from the academic years 2004-05, 2005-06 & 2006-07, researchers found that women professors remained "under-represented" at all ranks; however, women were "better represented at the Full and Associate ranks" than in previous years, though at only slightly higher levels. ADVANCE's objectives, the authors indicated, were far from being realized.
It is hard to fault any program that more effectively mentors and supports junior faculty---be they male or female, minority or otherwise. Certainly, it is in any university's interest to retain high-quality instructors. Cornell's strategies for recruiting female and minority faculty, however, are highly questionable.
These strategies were listed in internal university documents recently posted on the ADVANCE web site. One document from Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine urges the creation of a "Faculty Affirmative Action Committee" that would monitor and review the school's efforts to "recruit, admit, and support" women and minority faculty. Another, from the College of Engineering, establishes a "Faculty Recruitment and Diversity Committee" that would supervise and guide all faculty search committees so that the college can reach its objective of increasing female faculty from 12% to 20% and minority faculty from 4% to 7%. Furthermore, if the initial findings of a search committee do not produce any female or minority candidates, the search committee must provide "compelling" reasons to justify moving ahead with the process.
These guidelines are standard fare for today's universities. However, as another Cornell directive demonstrates, this thinking can in practice lead to denial of individual merit outside the framework of these groups.
The directive, "Recommended Guidelines for Serving on Academic Search Committees," outlines the protocol for members of Affirmative Action Committees during the recruitment and interviewing phases of the search process. Most of the recommendations---such as ensuring "inclusiveness in the search project" as well as "a broad advertising... consistent with the description of position"---are harmless.
But the directive also requires interviewers to "keep statistics of the applicants stratified by group." In other words, women are not to be compared with men, and minorities are not to be compared with non-minorities. Their merit exists solely as a function of their membership within the group. Therefore, successful female and minority candidates are not the "best candidates," but rather, in the language of Stephen L. Carter, the "best woman" or the "best minority." The ugly presumption is that they can never truly compete with white males.
This negative outcome of the diversity ideology was noted by Justice Clarence Thomas, himself an unhappy "beneficiary" of preferential treatment. In a lecture to the Federalist Society, he argued that "the idea that whole groups or classes are victims robs individuals of an independent spirit--they are just moving along with the 'herd' of other victims."
His comments resonate. Indeed, within Cornell's system of preferential hiring, achievement can only occur within the narrow framework of group identity. The irony is unavoidable: Spurred by the desire to lift individuals up from historical oppression, "diversity" proponents have confined them to very same categories at the root of that oppression.
Nevertheless, Cornell will claim success if "a third of our S&E faculty be women by 2015." But it won't represent true success for the women hired. Their accomplishments will be of secondary importance to their group affiliation, as they will be prized as component parts of a percentage--not as distinguished scientists. Sadly, the "diversity" ideology demands little more from them.
