After two recent phone conversations with perhaps two of my closest friends in the academy, I found myself in the somewhat odd place of trying to cheer up these two good old souls after they learned of the outcomes of their respective applications in two different dean searches. I then decided, against what some might say is better judgment, but certainly not mine, I should blog about some of the advice I gave each.
As I was thinking about what I would say here, I visited the Lounge and read Tim Zinnecker's somewhat tough essay on Michael Higdon's recent article concerning faculty hiring and socioeconomic bias. I knew then I had to continue to push a few more buttons. While I am not familiar with either Tim's or Michael's work, I do agree with Michael's basic idea that too much emphasis is often placed by our committee at hiring graduates from those certain schools. And if your experience is like mine, the rate of success for the typical hiring committee is, more often than not, less than promising. I suspect then Michael is suggesting less emphasis be placed on academic pedigree.
In any event, I want to switch gears a bit, and perhaps provoke some further thinking on a related subject, or at least provoke a bit scorn. I want to touch upon that subject that makes us all feel a bit uneasy–the lack of ethnic and racial diversity on our faculties. Ah, at this point, I suspect most readers have now turned to the next blog post. The story of many a Cassandra!
In any event, when I entered the academy well over a decade ago, I probably was hired to, among other things, write about securities regulation and other areas related to my practice experience. I nonetheless decided to take another path in part because of the iconic works of people like Derek Bell, Michael Olivas, and Richard Delgado. These brilliant souls, and many others like them, among other things, pushed our profession, and America as a whole, to live up to their respective oaths concerning diversity and inclusion. Yet, as a tenured academic with more than my fair share of ambition, I decided not continue to write on the Central Bank case, or some other securities matter, when by my last study, half the law schools in America did not have a representative from the largest ethnic group in the country on their tenured or tenure-track faculties. While our collective sensibilities suggest, much like a northern dinner party of the 1960s, our faculties should have one or two African-Americans (many having few tenured representatives), we have scores of schools with few if any Latinas or Latinos on their faculties. Our student bodies often resemble percentages close to the overall population rate of roughly 13 percent, and so do many of our recent graduating classes, but our faculties do not. And don't get me started on the dearth of current Latina and Latino deans.
Well getting back to my friends J and A, I told them to keep their heads up. I reminded them I for one had interviewed several times for deanships, and committee chairs have given me a range of reasons–from "you were just too urban," to " you were too eager," and my favorite "you weren't excited enough." At the end of these two calls, I suggested to each of my friends that we need outstanding candidates to continue to apply, that it takes those that agree with these values to push our faculties on these issues, that we need to continue to write on such subjects, and if it is not in the cards for us, it may one day be for our kids.
A bright colleague once told me that we are all looking to hire ourselves. I think we all have to enter the conversation with that awareness. I am a white male with an untraditional pedigree – non-elite law school and more substantial work experience than typical. So I enter with those biases.
But over the past few years, in a well meaning effort to combat the very real biases that I recognize and that you mention, we have gone too far. Now that I am a professor, I have seen first hand how much weight we give to ethnic and gender diversity. In some cases, the candidate would not even be considered, much less hired, but for their racial or gender diversity. I have not problem with race/gender being a plus-factor, to combat the biases of the many white males on current faculties, but when the plus-factor becomes dispositive, we have a problem. We in the academy are starting to, in some cases very blatently, discriminate against white males (even if they are view-point or socio-economically diverse).
When I was on the market, my success was drastically different than some minority candiates I knew with objectively similar (or in some cases worse) CVs. In fact, a minority female candidate with almost my exact same resume (same practice area, same exact top law firm, exactly the same number of years in practice, same clerkship, very similar good (but not elite) law school) received multiple offers from top-100 schools, while I did not attract a single interview in the top-100. And I had a much better class rank and publication record(looking at placement and number of articles at least). Do any of the employment law experts know if I should have sued? I considered it. Forgive me if I think the pendulum has swung. In today's academy the white male has the most difficult climb.
The post and the comment above are both interesting. It isn't really about us, though, right? It isn't about whether it's "unfair" that someone gets hired over me or J or A who was less or more qualified, or had more or fewer opportunities because of minority or socioeconimc status. It's about which hire is better for students– hypothetically it's about whether and in which hiring decisions affirmative action benefits students (the role model theory) better than does hiring the traditional candidate.
It's different from the "leveling the playing field" argument, e.g. in hiring policemen or bankers or lawyers. At least I think in choosing teachers among qualified applicants (and choosing deans, even more so), the impact on the students is more important than that on the individual job applicants. Hiring faculty may be more akin to the admissions process for students than to the hiring process in other professions.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, for U.S. Latin@s not to consider immigration and nationality as a substantive career choice, whether in practice or in academia. It has been and continues to be the area where we can have the greatest impact in our community. Securities and finance add substantive diversity, but, for now, not much more. U.S. Latin@s won’t break corporate glass ceilings for good until we achieve collective economic relevance. While we are making inroads, we have to overcome other barriers first, and the right to remain in the U.S. is one of them. Access to higher education is another, and having good role models in academia is key.
Recent demographic data tells us the United States is changing. Are we going to continue to promote one model and one worldview that might no longer fit properly? How many working-class U.S. Latin@s make it to elite schools, much less graduate at the top 10%? In hiring decisions, the tough choice for the academy is on what side of history it will be.
There is a link between your post and the earlier one on socioeconomic factors in hiring faculty. If you look around at most faculties, the diversity or minority candidates who are acceptable will generally be those who graduated from elite schools and who have middle to upper middle class families. In short, the class bias is so pervasive that it harms all groups and prevents diversity even within group that are "diversity groups." Basically, class differences make elites uncomfortable regardless of ethnicity. It was true twenty years ago when I wrote this and true today as well.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=933679
Pointing out to law professors that they should be care about ethnic and racial diversity is like pointing out to 16 year old boys that they should care about girls. They think about it all the time already, and a lack of success isn't explained by a lack of interest.
Thanks Aaron for your comments. I loke the sixteen year old boy analogy, and the truth is we tend to be like sixteen year old boys, we think endlessly about the subject, but in the end we are typically left with what sixteen year old boys do–we are left alone to do what sixteen year olds do alone?
As a more serious means to respond to your question, we differe on the need to talk about the issue. If there are not some of us that continue to ring the alarms of concren, we just may simply talk about the issue. Shaming and guilting does work; consider for example the impact the dirty dosen list had on diversifying the academy. If diversity is a value, then it must have weight in the marketplace. I for one have not witnessed the weight of that value. Instead what we witness is targets shifting and lawyers making lawyerly arguments to justify their decisions.
In any event, I appreciate the opportunity to play with your analogy.
Aaron, thanks for your second comment concerning your experience at your home institution. While I suspect your experience is as you mention, I do wonder how many traditional colleagues also fit in your analogy. In the end, I believe essentially question what weight are we willing to give to diversity. Though I obviously cannot be sure, I am willing to bet your institution is not minority majority. If it is, you folks have broken the norm. Despite the belief many of the diverse candidates, including the women you mention, would be qualified to many others evaluating them. In the end, we may will likely differ on the number of likely and qualified candidates based on our own values. And in the end sadly, i suspect your institution may resemble many others in the academy.
Thanks again for the post, but I still prefer the sixteen year old boy analogy in your first post.
Thanks Sugar Huddle for your comments, I like your approach. I do wonder nonetheless whether it could be used to justify not hiring diverse candidates? After all, most law schools are majority schools. These are vexing issues, but I would agree more emphasis should be placed on the values we should try to instill in our students.
When we think about it, for every minority candidate there are roughly 20-30 formal and informal traditional candidates. Therefore, unless we are willing to put real value to diversity, there will likely be some candidates that went to a more elite school, that had higher grades, that had more advanced degrees. We can always find a reason to not do what we say is our goal. We typically then all target the candidate that everyone wants–the Supreme Court clerk or one with similar credentials. And when that person chooses another school, and in the end we say…"you see, we tried." I suggest we try harder.
Again, I value your comment and will give it more time to soak in.
Thanks Harold, I agree with your observations. I particularly enjoyed the question you pose at the end of your comment…what side of history will the academy be? Indeed! I suspect we will change, but it will take a very long time. It will likely be a time when we are so mixed as a people, race becomes less relevant. In any event, most movements need annoying folks like the ones that are my inspirations: Bell, Delgado, and Olivas.
Thanks Jeffery for for important comment. I look forward to reading your article. And I suspect I will agree with you. Your comment also highlight one of the reasons I support affirmative action with less than overwhelming excitement.
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Thanks Wenhu! I am glad you enjoyed the post.
This country isn't majority minority. The notion that that represents equality in a law school faculty is as false as equating Anon to Aaron. Some schools currently only hire women and minorities. When the privileged class retire in a few years, i.e, the profs who truly benefited from sexism and racism, white males are going to be grossly represented in the academy. No one is talking about that reality, and I'm talking about white males who grew up in an era of affirmative action and in an era in which women have begun to significantly outnumber men as college graduates.
Ediberto,
This thread may be dead, but please let me know how much weight we should put on minority status. Should it fully make up for lack of an elite law school? Should it count for two or three solid articles? In my experience, the minority candidates that have an acceptable pedigree get snatched up very quickly. To increase the number we have to pick up those with substantially worse records. How low should we go?
As to whether it is good for the students, it is not good if the minority professors cannot teach. Your rate my professor comments are pretty awful. Maybe the students are racist too? Yes, let us blame all inadequacies on other people's racism.
Also, the hypothetical "majority minority" that you mention should not be the goal. Shouldn't the goal be to have minorities in the same proportion that they exist in the general population?