Marquette's "Diversity" Initiative

by Cliopatria

Inside Higher Ed this morning has a troubling article on a new"diversity" initiative launched at Marquette. Provost Madeline Wake has announced that no new hires will be approved unless one"diverse" candidate is in the final pool.

“I’m not looking for less qualified candidates, but I want a good faith effort to get people in the pool,” said Wake. But for all practical purposes, the policy will set up a two-track search process, one in which quality is subordinated to the applicant's race or ethnicity.

The article profiles how Marquette's History Department has responded to the new initiative. This year, the department had decided to hire a historian of US foreign relations. Concerned, however, that it was unlikely such a field would produce a sufficient number of minority candidates, the department chairman said he decided to tweak the description to include a desired sub-specialty in immigration and ethnicity, which is perceived as a field more likely to attract minority applicants. In an academy in which more"traditional" approaches to history are already under assault for reasons that seem more ideological than pedagogical, Wake's"diversity" initiative is particularly distasteful.

Provost Wake justified her policy by stating,"The world is diverse, and we as a university are not preparing leaders for the world as it is if we remain as white a campus as we are.” My congratulations to her. An early effect of her policy to prepare"leaders for the world" will likely be that her History Department will hire not a professor who can teach these future"leaders for the world" about the interaction between the US and the world, but someone who focuses on cultural studies.

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David Nicholas Harley - 10/22/2005

Such changes are beyond the scope of any historians to prevent. The shapes of disciplines often change in ways that are consciously intended by hardly anybody.

If there are fewer would-be historical demographers being recruited to graduate study, there will be fewer available to be hired, even if other historians wanted to keep the subdiscipline alive. This may come about because the field is viewed as stale, or because funding for such research is no longer available. Either way, it is easy for a fatal decline to occur, because fewer undergraduates will encounter the subject and there will be yet fewer graduate students.

Broadly speaking, the only subdiscipline that historians wish to see thrive is their own, and they have no desire to see new generations overturn existing approaches. How many traditional intellectual historians, for example, would do more than pay hollow lip service to the desirability of gender history or even social history? What small fraction of that group would actively back a gender historian for appointment or tenure? Would they know what were the appropriate standards for judging the work, or even recognize that they did not understand the field?

For the most part, social history has established itself as reputable. Now, the social historians of 1970 are the old guard in many departments, and they have swept away diplomatic and intellectual history. How many traditional social historians would want to see the arrival of cultural historians in their departments?

In consequence, there are departments dominated by particular historiographical approaches. After a period of prominence, they will decline until all the historians who made them famous have died, and a new generation can seek out a new orthodoxy to impose on hiring and teaching.

Amid such intra-disciplinary obsessions, the interests of ethnic diversity tend to be given very shallow consideration. Even recognizing the merits of research strategies adopted by historians of a different ethnicity or nationality often seems beyond most historians, satisfied with the absolute value of their own historiographical tradition.

Ralph E. Luker - 10/19/2005

Mr. Harley, However we deal with diversity issues in history departments (and I want to sign up as being in favor of diversity), it strikes me as a very serious mistake for historians to allow economic history to be absorbed by economics departments or intellectual history to be absorbed by philosophy departments (where they will be treated as a step-child) or allow constitutional, diplomatic, and political history to be taken over by political scientists. Ours is a very substantial mandate and I don't think that we should cede any of it to any other discipline.

David Nicholas Harley - 10/19/2005

The question of diversity in history is here being approached through a contrast between "US diplomatic history" and "cultural history", which is perhaps unhelpful. These are not natural kinds but artefacts, and this is is not necessarily the way that young practitioners divide the world.

It may even not be the way that all the tenured historians of Marquette see the matter. They are not necessarily seeking a historian of what a handful of policymakers thought about foreign governments. They may be just as interested in hiring a historian who looks at popular attitudes towards foreign policy and immigration, or the foreign activities of American corporations and churches. In a democracy, diplomacy cannot be detached from many other aspects of society.

If Marquette really is seeking to appoint a traditional historian of foreign policy, they may find that the array of talented applicants is very limited. Conceiving the field of foreign relations more broadly is likely to attract both more adventurous young historians and a greater number of applicants from minority communities. There is no obvious reason why broader approaches should not be of benefit to undergraduates.

If we conceive of the task of US historians as documenting the life and thought of rich white male politicians and bureaucrats, we have no business complaining about a shortage of able women and members of ethnic communities enrolling as undergraduate and graduate students, or choosing to spend their lives teaching and researching the field.

The number of subjects which might interest bright young historians is infinite and cannot be limited to what was thought central fifty years ago. Areas of study that are perceived as hidebound will not attract ambitious students. If there are not enough able recruits to an area of study, appointments will not be made.

US diplomatic history or any other field, as traditionally conceived, cannot have any automatic claim to a place at the table, regardless of how important it may once have been in the curriculum or how central it is to the thinking of groups outside the discipline of history. Traditional diplomatic history may well find a more congenial home in government departments, just as economic history has migrated to economics departments.

Robert KC Johnson - 10/14/2005

I agree--it does seem odd. What's legally permissible in terms of affirmative action, of course, is somewhat vague after the two Michigan decisions, but this policy (somewhat like Columbia's $15M "diversity" initiative) would seem to come very close to the line.

On the other hand, who would sue? An unsuccessful applicant who filed suit could kiss away his or her career in academia, and might very well have to show not only that an essentially two-track hiring system is discriminatory, but also that he/she would have gotten an interview without the system--which would be extremely difficult to prove.

Sergio Ramirez - 10/14/2005

You'll get no argument from me here. I wonder if someone. somewhere, is compiling a catalogue of these depressing stories and anecdotes? Someday, when we have grown out of the foolishness of affirmitive action, it might serve to remind us of its folly.

Jonathan Rees - 10/14/2005

Aren't most universities interested in avoiding lawsuits? Isn't making these policies public essentially inviting applicants to sue them once the process is complete?

What am I missing?

John H. Lederer - 10/14/2005

If racism consists of the belief that one's skin color determines one's character, ability, or professional competence, is there any large institution in the US that is as determinedly racist as higher education?

Robert KC Johnson - 10/14/2005

Both the Geneseo and UW news is depressing-although, I suppose, not surprising.

To take the UW approach as described by Oscar, I can see where that would work fine for some topics in History. But what about, say, German history, or Medieval Europe, where it's quite possible to imagine an applicant pool that's nearly all-white. A minority candidate could be the best--but if there are only 3 or 4 minority applicants in a pool of 80, the top minority candidate could also be the 40th best. And so wouldn't a subtle pressure exist in a UW-like situation not to craft lines that are not sure to yield a sufficient number of minority applicants?

And the Geneseo provost's action is almost as bad--it seems to imply that diversity should be a more important goal than curricular or pedagogical integrity of a discipline.

Jim Williams - 10/14/2005

SUNY Geneseo's provost required the History Department in our current search for a U.S. historian to eliminate any specializations so as to attract as diverse a pool of applicants as possible. This of course sacrifices the department's need for breadth of coverage to the institution's need for diverse faculty.

If we have an acceptable "diverse" applicant, we will probably have to interview that person/those people - but at the provost's expense. The provost also has the right to choose the person to be hired from our ranked list of the top 5 applicants - or even from outside the list; if the provost doesn't select our #1 or #2 candidate, she will be looking for a new History Department chair.

John H. Lederer - 10/14/2005

The only real problem with the UW system is that it is unlawful....

Oscar Chamberlain - 10/14/2005

University of Wisconsin system used--and perhaps still uses--a variation on that system that strikes me as better.

There was no separate search; they simply went down the list for the first minority (however defined) who was qualified and put them in the final three.

In practice it actually went pretty well. Given the oversubscribed job market going to down the list a ways for one member of the pool generally did not reduce quality. And any such favored minority still had to compete with the other two people in the final pool, and there was no question about different fields that the Marquette method raises.