I frequently hear many of the stories of faculty hiring throughout the land. I get told the horror stories of how people have been treated at different schools. I also get to hear the good things, but today we’re going to talk about the bad. And the bad news is: Some schools are faking it regarding diversity.
Last week, I explored how academic and professional conferences sometimes only give lip service to the important issue of diversity. This week, I turn the lens inward to how law schools do the same thing when hiring faculty. While hiring committees often times say that diversity is important, it is sometimes the case they don’t mean it. Worse, even if the hiring committee manages to get diverse candidates into the door, that doesn’t mean the diverse candidate will get a fair chance at being hired. For some schools, this repeats every year.
Let’s start with asking some basic institutional questions. Go look at your faculty webpage. Do you see nothing but mostly white males? If so, then your school is already signaling that it probably isn’t very serious about diversity. You’re looking for a candidate you magically think will fit in. If that’s the case, your school isn’t taking diversity seriously. It’s looking for a token.
Do your diverse faculty members leave? That might say something about the nature of the support/hostility ratio they receive at your school. By the way, how your school treats diverse faculty members will be known throughout the land of AALS conferences.
Does your school save diversity for clinical professor and legal writing professor slots, but not for lateral or entry-level tenured or tenure-track professor slots? That suggests your school wants the appearance of diversity, but really isn’t all that interested.
Do you have that one colleague who constantly torpedoes only diverse candidates while your other colleagues sit and watch silently? Then your school is complicit in your colleague’s conduct and your school’s reputation will be the same as that one colleague’s.
Do you have colleagues that think diversity is important, except in their area of research and hiring? That suggests that you’ll never have diversity at your school.
Does your hiring committee bring back multiple diverse candidates, but your school manages to hire none of them? Does your school claim it is because it tried really hard, but those diverse candidates all just go to better schools for some reason? Every year? Does it mean that you are only serious about diversity as you go only after the crème de la crème or to does it suggest your committee knows they’ll go to better schools and you’ll end up with no diversity? If so, your school’s Sisyphean goal of diversity will be frustrating to those who want and need it.
Do your faculty members delve more deeply into the scholarship of diverse faculty members? Do they seem less inclined to give deference to references of the kind usually given to references of candidates who aren’t diverse? Do they seem less forgiving during the job talks of diverse candidates? Are they inclined to be more vicious during the job talks of diverse candidates? If that’s the case, your school is tolerating a bully or, perhaps worse.
Does your school have different standards for diverse faculty candidates? Do they simply gush if a white male candidate has a top 10 placement, yet criticize the similarly placed article of a diverse candidate? Do faculty members become more concerned about “curricular fit” when a diverse candidate appears but are willing to bend over backwards otherwise?
Despite data showing limited diversity, are your colleagues in denial about what happens to diverse candidates who come to your school?
Does diversity even get mentioned?
How you answer those questions will inform you of your school’s true desire to have diversity. It’s easy to dismiss “that one colleague” or “that one hiring year” as outliers, unless they become the status quo for your school. It’s also very easy to claim your school is trying. But if your school tries and fails repeatedly, then perhaps it isn’t trying very hard or something (or, someone) is systematically causing it to fail.
A school’s failure to take diversity seriously has ripple effects. As I repeated last week, “Diversity means something more than just stretching your tolerance of people who aren’t like you just once. A commitment to diversity doesn’t mean hiring a token, a person who eventually suffers in isolation. It means a commitment to the notion that the school is a better place because we all have different experiences, backgrounds, and ways of thinking.” That commitment signals to prospective students and future faculty candidates. It also signals to diverse faculty members and students that they aren’t just at your school for purposes of your prospective student brochures.
LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here. He is way funnier on social media, he claims. Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.
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