-
15. Quotas by Any Name: Some Problems of Affirmative Action in Faculty Appointments
- Temple University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
15 Quotas by Any Name: Some Problems of Affirmative Action in Faculty Appointments TOlll L. Beauchalllp We have struggled with problems of justice and social utility in combating discrimination at least since President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 executive order announcing toughened federal requirements . My views on what have become the mainstream problems of affirmative action conform closely to the approach and the substantive moral views presented in this volume by Leslie Francis, who notes that I defended a version of one part of her strategy in the early 1970s. My convictions have not substantially changed since, and I cannot now improve on her arguments for these views. My intractability is typical of writers on the subject in the past two decades. As the essays by Robert Simon and Lawrence Becker rightly point out, the struggle over preferential treatment has led to competing camps, whose points of view are not likely to be altered by an increase of sophistication in the available arguments. Nonetheless, writers about preferential treatment in academia have generally overlooked what seems to me today's most interesting moral problem about preferential appointments. This problem can be introduced through a story from a nonacademic setting told by Bob Woodward in his recent book, The Commanders. Woodward reports an encounter between White House Chief of Staff John Sununu and Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney. Sununu, an outspoken critic of all policies involving minority and gender quotas, is said to have told Cheney that he "wanted 30 percent of the remaining 42 top jobs in the Defense Department to be filled by women and minorities." 1 This certainly looks like a quota, and the White House chief of staff seems to be defending rival objectives that cannot be reconciled, although Quotas by Any Name 213 each is suited for a different political context. One can tone down the language of "quotas" by speaking of hopes, objectives, guidelines, and the like; but cosmetic changes of wording only thinly obscure any policy established to recruit minorities and women in which the goals are made explicit by numbers. The moral vision that first gave prominellce to the language of quotas has greater staying power in practice tllan in political rhetoric. So far as I can see, something like the 5ununu approach is now widely used in the federal government, in private industry, and in more subtle ways in higher education. Many of my colleagues and acquaintances in academia seem much like Woodward's Sununu. They eschew talk of quotas and condemn reverse discrimination, many with the same rigid conviction and defense of principle expressed by President Bush in saying "I will not sign a quota bill." However, the behavior and stated goals of these same parties is considerably softer than their apparent outrage over the injustice of quot.as. This softening of otherwise severe principle occurs as soon as they glimpse an injustice close at home, that is, in their own departments. Here they readily support the vigorous recruitment of minorities and women; and if they believe there is some sort of statistical imbalance (e.g., "we only have one woman in a department of twenty-three), they often have no reservations about settirlg aside the next one, two, or three positions for targeted groups, perhaps even including a policy of one-year contracts for white males until the appropriate persons can be recruited. In these attempts to redress a perceived imbalance, the word "quota" will likely not be heard. I do not believe I have ever heard the word or any surrogate ("goal," "percentage," etc.) used in departmental meetings or in other discussions I have had with colleagues, university administrators, and affirmative action committees in the last twenty years. The whole train of thought moves on a different plane. A few of the many reasons typically offered in defense of targeted affirmative action are the following: "'lYe have many women and minority students who need and do not have an ample number of role models and mentors." "In the formalities of recruitment, typical male traits of aggressive argument are often overvalued and many female traits undervalued, so that women are dO'wngraded unfairly." "The provost is very keen on bringing more minorities and women to the university." "More diversity is very much needed in this department." [44.200.27.175] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:50 GMT) 214 Tom L. Beauchamp "The goals and mission of this university strongly suggest a greater need for increased representation of women and minorities." Such...