I am a woman. My issues are national security and a free market. And I'm pro-life. I suppose that I would not be able to hire myself.

Those are stupid questions. To use anecdotal evidence, I've never heard of them being asked of any of my 30-odd former grad student friends in an interview, and I've never been asked such questions in an academic job interview. But UMass leaders should be pressured to step in and ensure that interview committees know not to follow this directive, and they should inquire into recent hires to see if these criteria were used in the process.

However, at one private school interview, I was asked how I could make students of color comfortable with me as a white teacher. My response was: "I'd be a fair and challenging teacher to *all* students." I didn't get the job. At another private high school interview, I was asked how I would promote traditional Western values in the classroom. I replied, "I would ask students to subject all ideas to analysis, and to support their own ideas with evidence and sturdy logic. I wouldn't be comfortable promoting Smith or Marx, Locke or Hobbes, although all are part of the Western tradition." I didn't get that job either. I'm happy with both rejections. Who would want to teach where teaching meant stamping out little copies of some True Believer?

It strikes me that these questions mean very little. I teach in the Department of a Traditional Liberal Art, and we get dictates from the Office of Affirmative Action all the time that we need to be terribly mindful of all these things.

And then we ignore those dictates and talk with the candidates (whom we've chosen for their demonstrated teaching and research skills in our Traditional Liberal Art). We never ask the questions that Affirmative Action comes up with, and speak exclusively about our Traditional Liberal Art.

It's like imperial Russia: oppressive laws moderated by non-existent execution.

I have to respectfully disagree with this post.

You may be correct that the academy enforces its political standards when hiring professors. But what is the alternative? If you had your way, hiring committees would hire candidates based only on their "education or intellectual and scholarly accomplishments." What does that really mean? What is an accomplishment? What factors should one consider? And most importantly who decides what factors count and what factors do not count? In reality, women and minorities have, until recently, been excluded from formulating these standards. The decision to exclude them was, at its heart, a political one. Therefore your argument that hiring committees should only consider the standard definition of "scholarly accomplishment" is equally as political. In this way, your concern about the “politicization or the hiring process” seems unfounded. How one chooses to resolve this issue depends on the baseline one chooses to adopt. Your baseline assumes that everyone agrees on what counts as an accomplishment. How society chooses to define “accomplishment” for the purposes of hiring academics (or anyone for that matter) is far from settled.

Your argument also assumes that just because an applicant has a commitment to supporting minorities and women, that applicant is unqualified. In reality, there are more applicants for positions in academia then positions. This means, universities have to make tough choices amongst lots of applicants. How do you differentiate between people, all of whom are would add some value to an institution?

Moreover, you also assume that if the academy adopted your standards for tenure track hiring that some tenure decisions would come out differently. But for this emphasis on minorities, disabled people and women, you argue, more “qualified” people would be in the academy. This is a little bit like arguing that if there were no handicapped spots, I could have that spot. In reality, if there were no handicapped spots, I would not get a closer spot because someone else would take that spot.

Universities are not only charged with creating scholarship but also educating students for careers in the real world. Some careers, like Law for example are extremely non-diverse. It would be nice for a law student like myself, who is a minority and a woman, to have professors that I relate to on a personal level. It is foolish for you to ignore the fact that people relate to people who are like them and connections with professors matter with respect to post-graduate opportunities (i.e. clerkships). It would be nice if universities took commitment to diversity issues into account when making hiring decisions. I don’t think that means that individuals who aren’t diverse or don’t favor affirmative action should be excluded from the academy. Rather they can find other parts of their resume to highlight or different ways to distinguish their record.

From everything I read on this blog, it seems that your discontent with academia’s endorsement of minorities, women and the disabled stems from the fact that the academy rejects your belief that these diversity issues should not matter. You are entitled to have your opinion and even share that opinion with your colleagues. After all these are issues that people disagree about. The substantive debate about who creates standards of accomplishment is one we should have. However to dismiss the academia’s support for programs like Affirmative Action as some pretextual litmus test means that you fail to address why some of your colleagues feel strongly about making sure that underrepresented minorities enter the academy.

In a final note, hiring decisions often come down to fit and how well you get along with your colleagues. While people may disagree intellectually, they should always be respectful and understanding of the other side. Dismissing legitimate concerns of those who disagree with you, and refusing to consider what minorities have been through in this country, might not be the best way to get that teaching position (or any position).