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Nebraska: ?Opportunity Hires? And Non-Denial Denials

Given an unexpectedly honest faculty report at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, it appears that ?affirmative action? hiring violates not only the principle of colorblind, non-discriminatory equality but also well-established administrative hiring rules and procedures.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Harvey Perlman was hoping for a diversity plan, a faculty- and student-generated statement on how UNL could best recruit and retain women and minorities.

What he got was a report largely written by a pair of faculty accusing UNL of violating Board of Regents bylaws by making more than 20 percent of its faculty hires from 1998 to 2004 without competitive searches with the goal of boosting its racial and gender mix.

During that time, according to the report, UNL made 61 of its 301 faculty hires without announcing and advertising its open positions.

Of those 61 hires, all but 16 were women or racial minorities, says the report, dated Feb. 29.

The university, of course, sees nothing wrong with this practice.

The university says its hires are perfectly compatible with regents policies, which prohibit discrimination but also encourage affirmative action in some cases to increase the number of women and minorities in fields in which they are underrepresented.

The Legislature, in fact, provided state money to NU to increase diversity after it mandated in 1997 that the university reach the midpoint of its peer institutions in employment of women and minority faculty or risk losing funding, said Linda Crump, assistant to the chancellor for equity, access and diversity programs at UNL....

Many opportunity hires aren?t even related to race or gender, she said. The university sometimes has to act quickly to hire a research faculty member before grant money runs out and can?t waste time on a search, for example.

Further, she said, non-competitive hires only happen with the support of the faculty in a given department....

?Race or gender is never the sole factor (in a hire). We follow the law.?

Oh. Well, it?s good to know that the University of Nebraska-Lincoln never bypasses its own rules and hires on the basis of race or sex except when it has the ?support of the faculty in a given department,? and that even then ?race or gender is never the sole factor? in hiring.

Indeed, as I understand Ms. Crump, she?s defending the position that it?s fine to hire on the basis of race or sex so long as there is at least one additional, non-race or -sex based qualification, such as, I assume, basic literacy. But I wonder: exactly what law is UNL following when it says it?s O.K. to hire on the basis of race or sex so long as those factors are less than 100% of the reason for the hire?

UPDATE

Turns out I was late to this party. The Volokhers already nailed this one.

Full post as published by Discriminations on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).