Bill Harbaugh is a professor of economics at the University of Oregon. Several months ago I discussed (here) his criticisms of Oregon’s new “diversity” plan, which included large “incentives” given to departments to hire minority scholars.
In his department, Harbaugh noted,
the startup package for a new, nonminority faculty member in the economics department typically would total about $7,000 over the first three years. A faculty member in the minority recruitment program could get up to $97,000, he said.
I was particularly impressed with the university’s explanation of why this race-based reward system — which struck me, and still does, as one of the most humorously lame I’ve heard — does not amount to racial discrimination:
Provost Linda Brady and general counsel Melinda Grier said the program, which helps new minority faculty set up an office or lab, is legal and needed to help attract minority faculty in a competitive market….
The funds come into play after a selection committee has chosen a candidate and made an initial job offer. The funds then can be used to negotiate a final contract, [Grier] said….
The funds come into play after a selection committee has chosen a candidate and made an initial job offer. The funds then can be used to negotiate a final contract, she said.
The money goes to the professor’s department, not to the professor, she said.
“Dollars aren’t allocated based on race,” she said. “Departments get reimbursed for costs.”
Harbaugh has kept up his criticism, and in response University of Oregon officials have decided that the best way to reply to him is … not to reply at all. As reported today in the Oregon Daily Emerald:
For more than two years, economics professor Bill Harbaugh has sent a long series of questions toward University administrators, saying he’s tried to maintain an open dialogue with them about diversity. But on June 11, the conversation changed.
After posing dozens of questions via e-mail and filing about 20 public records requests, Harbaugh received a letter from General Counsel Melinda Grier saying that his questions would no longer be answered by the University.
….
“It does not appear productive to continue the dialogue regarding your disagreement with the University’s approach to increasing diversity,” Grier wrote. “Thus, I believe we must agree to disagree. Rather than engage in an unproductive exchange of messages, I and other administrators including the President, Provost, Associate Vice President for Institutional Diversity, Affirmative Action Officer will no longer reply to your questions.”
Harbaugh had continued to insist that aspects of the diversity program were illegal, and the university continued (until it imposed a vow of silence on itself) with its ludicrously lame justification:
[Harbaugh] said the program illegally compensates faculty differently based on race. University President Dave Frohnmayer then responded by pointing out that the program awards funds to different departments, not individual faculty.
This argument is so breathtaking in its sweep that it’s a wonder it hasn’t been adopted by other discriminators. I was about to parody it by saying something like, “Why, using this argument an employer or a government contractor could …,” but I can’t think of anything more extreme than what Oregon is actually doing and defending.
Increasingly, “diversity” is so absurd it is immune to parody.
Oh man. This is nuts. Taken logically, this rationale could be used to support the allocation of more resources to white-majority schools. “It’s not racism,” they would cry, “the money is going to the white schools, not to their white students!”
As I’ve said on this blog many times, I don’t understand why someone doesn’t just sue one of these Universities. While FIRE et al. are busy sending nasty letters to University administrators in order to protect a poor student’s flyer, we see these blatant violations of individual rights at all Universities.
Now, why not get CEO, FIRE, NAS, Pacific Legal, etc. to simply get together and sue one of these Universities for a few hundred million dollars in a class action suit? I bet it would only take a handful of judgements, say totaling a billion dollars or so, in order to seriously turn this situation around.
It is NOT going to happen through nasty letters….
Further, why is the California AG not prosecuting this matter as civil rights violation? Ditto for DOJ?
The plans are typically carefully structured to avoid lawsuits. Federal law gives you 180 days to file a suit. The money goes to new faculty, who are on their best behavior trying to get tenure. By the time the get it, the deadline for filing a suit is long past. Otherwise I would certainly do so!
Presumably, a civil rights organization (CEO, PLF) could file suit on behalf of a plaintiff with standing.
This would be someone who applied for one of these professorships but was not chosen because he would not yield the big cash benefit to the academic department.
There is no way these cash bounty rewards on minorities can be legal.
Imagine that I was CEO of Exxon and I announced that I would give $100,000 to each department in Exxon for each white male it could hire. Could THAT really be legal?