Correspondent Pete Williams last night on NBC Nightly News (5/10/10) gave viewers the scoop on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s record as dean of Harvard law school: “She diversified the faculty, hiring prominent conservatives.”
Kagan also hired almost no people of color and very few women, in a historically white and male faculty. It’s an interesting definition of “diversify.”
You grossly oversimplify the issue of minority hiring. For a fuller analysis of how Kagan’s hiring compares to peer schools, see: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/05/on-kagans-minority-hiring-record.html.
Additionally, are you actually suggesting that hiring people who have a certain skin color or set of genitalia is more important than ideological diversity? Do you think all racial or gender groups think the same way, and lead to real diversity of opinion?
In that post from FiveThirtyEight, Nathan Silver says there is a 1-in-10 chance, based on how few minorities there are at top law schools, that Elena Kagan could have filled 31 out of 32 tenure-track positions with white candidates purely by chance, that is, without conscious or unconscious discrimination. Then, because “nobody has in fact” accused Kagan of “an active attempt to discriminate,” he concludes that this record “arguably speaks to certain kind of fair-mindedness.” I did not find this a particularly convincing argument.
Matt, what is ideological diversity?
Should she hire because of color or qualification? I’m with Matt. Skin color does not reflect diversity of thought, ethics or ideology or track record of decisions. As we all learned from Clarence Thomas, bigotry, sexism and crassness comes in all colors of the rainbow. I’d rather have a diverse MIND and BRAIN than a Crayola Coloring Box of candidates sitting on the bench. Maybe if she had a Black/Brown Mother and a White/Native American Father and was a gay hermaphrodite people could get off the bandwagon.
We’ve finally (maybe?) arrived at the place where we all wanted to be – where color DIDN’T matter because we are all equal…and now we’re going back to skin color and sexual preference. Geesh…Are we going back to hiring someone who can’t do the job just because they’re the right color or sex? Is that right?
I love the assumption, by a woman no less, that anyone non-white wasn’t qualified to don those jobs. Brilliant. Perhapsnmore classes in gender studies & racism are warranted after all.
One reason to hire people of different skin color/gender is to provide a model to young people. If you have a Supreme Court made up of all white men, then people get to thinking justice has to do with a single race and gender. They do not buy into decisions made by the Justices because they represent “them” not “us.” Also, there is the value of shared experience. A bunch of white men might not understand issues of discrimination because they have never encountered it. A Hispanic woman might have something to say about the issue.
Then I have to echo JustJack’s opinion that (I’ll give the inverse) that plenty of minorities are qualified to be a Justice of the Supreme Court. Maybe Kahn doesn’t know any. If that is the case, it implies her thinking is sheltered, provincial, and without the broad understanding of people we expect in a Supreme Court Justice.
Let’s all twist a statement to express our own bias again! Clearly, NBC’s Williams was speaking of diversity of political thought – as clarified by his second statement pointing out “prominent conservatives.” Yet, everyone goes on to use the pretty specific statement to pronounce on racial bias and all kinds of other stuff.
We don’t need name calling or twisting statements to mean what they weren’t intended to. That behavior just clouds the discourse and disallows true reasoning among thoughtful folks. If you feel she didn’t diversify the political thought of the faculty, then discuss that – which is what the original statement was about.
Are we making a United Colors of Bennetton Ad, or assembling a court of wise and competent judges? Hopefully the justices are appointed for their ability to make legal decisions based on precedence, an interpretation of the law, the constitution etc. and their awareness of the social and historical climate in this country. But let’s face it. It’s not about the law at all. It really is about race and power. The law be damned.
operationally,we know that “diversity” in hiring means bringing aboard members of racial,religious,and ethnic groups,not to mention genders which have been systematically and historically excluded from employment or other meaningful participation.this sort of “diversity” is not a panacea for all social ills-but we all know that it meets a significant social need,and if professor kagan were a committed progressive it would seem to a reasonable person that she could have hired more minorities-we should not hide behind the rationalization that harvard must compete for the few eligible minorities with the other elite academic institutions-that’s too cute by half.ditto,massaging the definition of “diversity” to include political ideology.”liberal law professor” is almost a contradiction in terms unless you include cats who simply wrote a few “radical” law review articles.,or attended a few political rallies.the demands of building a career which leads one to the faculty of harvard law school doesn’t leave much time for activism of any kind.
professor kagan’s real mission at harvard law was synthesizing the institution’s corporate and academic missions.except for the public relations of her present moment,i don’t think she cares a Whit about diversity of any kind.never mind that until the passage of the civil rights legislation of the 1960’s females were scarce as hens’ teeth in the nation’s law schools-but that’s another subject-eh,professor kagan?
“She diversified the faculty, hiring prominent conservatives.”
She â┚¬Ã…“â┚¬Ã‹Å“Loves’ the Federalist Society.â┚¬Ã‚Â
She “hired Bush’s outgoing director of the Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, as a law professor.”
“Joe Lieberman went on Fox News . . . to celebrate the prospect [of her nomination].”
Did millions upon millions of people rise up in electing Obama because they wanted a continuation of the last administration’s extremism? Or, were they rising up because they believed a man and his campaign’s actual words/platforms?