April 15, 1998

To the faculty and administration:

In its newsletter of March 20, 1998, the Delaware chapter of the AAUP stated its position on faculty "diversity." The Delaware Association of Scholars (DAS), the local affiliate of the National Association of Scholars, finds the AAUP’s position very problematic.

The AAUP’s statement noted that African-Americans make up a smaller percentage of the faculty at the University of Delaware than of the population of the state. Consequently, the AAUP statement argued, "political necessity" and "democratic equality" require the University to hire more black professors. As a specific step in this direction, the AAUP recommended that "if, after a job search has been completed, a department’s first choice is not a minority, but one of the applicants on the short list is a minority, then the department should be encouraged to make a case to the dean for hiring both the first choice and the minority candidate."

The DAS, which believes in the principle of nondiscrimination in faculty appointments, reminds the AAUP, the administration, and the University community at large that treating members of different races differently in employment decisions is illegal under civil rights laws passed by Congress and interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, and may subject the University to very large punitive fines.

Ironically, the AAUP’s statement only increases the University’s vulnerability to such a "disparate treatment" lawsuit by frankly proposing such treatment.

We also wonder whether the AAUP has thought through the professional consequences of its proposal. Does it really want to hire African-Americans (or members of any other minority group) on the publicly declared grounds that the candidates in question were not good enough to compete with all the candidates, but only with those of their own racial group? The AAUP should realize that it would be establishing an explicit two-class system, with a new class of faculty who would not be hired except for the fact of their race. We think that such patronizing treatment, however well intentioned, is a travesty of equality and a harmful insult to those its proponents claim to want to help.

Intellectual diversity and vibrancy in a faculty is a worthy goal. There are surely more direct and less troubling ways of achieving it, however, than hiring on the basis of applicants’ race and gender.