Two concepts of affirmative action

Academe

Volumn 83, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 14-19

  Cahn, Steven M ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0030640618     PISSN: 01902946     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/40251557     Document Type: Article

References (11)

1. A comprehensive history of one well-documented case of such discrimination is Dan A. Oren, Joining the Club: A History of Jews and Yale (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985). Prior to the end of World War II, no Jew had ever been appointed to the rank of full professor in Yale College.
2. 41 C.F.R. 60-2.12. The Order provides no suggestion as to whether a "good faith effort" implies only showing preference among equally qualified candidates (the "tie-breaking" model), preferring a strong candidate to an even stronger one (the "plus factor" model), preferring a merely qualified candidate to a strongly qualified candidate (the "trumping" model), or cancelling a search unless a qualified candidate of the preferred sort is available (the "quota" model). A significant source of misunderstanding about affirmative action results from both the government's failure to clarify which type of preference is called for by a "good faith effort" and the failure on the part of those conducting searches to inform applicants which type of preference is in use. Regarding the latter issue, see my "Colleges Should Be Explicit About Who Will Be Considered for Jobs," The Chronicle of Higher Education, XXXV (30), 1989, reprinted in Affirmative Action and the University: A Philosophical Inquiry, Steven M. Cahn (ed.), (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), pp. 3-4.
3. 41 C.F.R. 60-2.12. The Order provides no suggestion as to whether a "good faith effort" implies only showing preference among equally qualified candidates (the "tie-breaking" model), preferring a strong candidate to an even stronger one (the "plus factor" model), preferring a merely qualified candidate to a strongly qualified candidate (the "trumping" model), or cancelling a search unless a qualified candidate of the preferred sort is available (the "quota" model). A significant source of misunderstanding about affirmative action results from both the government's failure to clarify which type of preference is called for by a "good faith effort" and the failure on the part of those conducting searches to inform applicants which type of preference is in use. Regarding the latter issue, see my "Colleges Should Be Explicit About Who Will Be Considered for Jobs," The Chronicle of Higher Education, XXXV (30), 1989, reprinted in Affirmative Action and the University: A Philosophical Inquiry, Steven M. Cahn (ed.), (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), pp. 3-4.
4. Whether their use is appropriate in a school's admission and scholarship decisions is a different issue, involving other considerations, and I shall not explore that subject in this article.
5. See, for example, Leslie Pickering Francis, "In Defense of Affirmative Action," in Cahn (ed.), op. cit., especially pp. 24-26. She raises concerns about unfairness to those individuals forced by circumstance not of their own making to bear all the costs of compensation, as well as injustices to those who have been equally victimized but are not members of specified groups.
6. The term gained currency when Justice Lewis Powell, in his pivotal opinion in the Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision, found "the attainment of a diverse student body" to be a goal that might justify the use of race in student admissions. An incisive analysis of that decision is Carl Cohen, Naked Racial Preference (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1995) pp. 55-80.
7. Consider Michael Rosenfeld, Affirmative Action and Justice: A Philosophical and Constitutional Inquiry (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 336: "Ironically, the sooner affirmative action is allowed to complete its mission, the sooner the need for it will altogether disappear."
8. See, for example, Francis, op. cit., p. 31.
9. See, for example, Richard Wasserstrom, "The University and the Case for Preferential Treatment," American Philosophical Quarterly, 13(4), 1976, pp. 165-170.
10. See, for example, Joel J. Kupperman, "Affirmative Action: Relevant Knowledge and Relevant Ignorance," in Cahn, op. cit., pp. 181-188.
11. Consider Judith Jarvis Thomson, "Preferential Hiring," Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2(4), 1973, p. 368: "I do not think that as a student I learned any better, or any more, from the women who taught me than from the men, and I do not think that my own women students now learn any better or any more from me than they do from my male colleagues."