Diversity Hiring Program at OU Comes Under Attack

A professor at the University of Oregon is disputing the legality of a program designed to attract more minority faculty members to his university, an article in the Oregon Daily Emerald reports.

The program — known as the Underrepresented Minority Recruitment Program — reimburses departments for recruitment and start-up expenses (up to $30,000 a year for three years) used in making competitive offers to minority faculty members.

In an e-mail message to U of Oregon President David Frohnmayer, associate professor of economics William Harbaugh (who, incidentally, has a history of complaints against Frohnmayer) said the program violated the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment because “it compensates faculty differently according to their race,” reporter Allie Grasgreen writes. Harbaugh’s e-mail has sparked a hot debate on OU’s campus about whether financial incentives are the best way to attract more minority professors.

Frohnmayer called the assertion “unsubstantiated” and noted that the money goes to the department, rather than the individual hire, Grasgreen writes:

“If you study the program and read the material,” Frohnmayer wrote, “it does not provide a benefit that is available only to faculty of color; instead, it reimburses departments for start-up packages in keeping with the packages common in the department requesting the funds.”

Meanwhile, an article by Greg Bolt in the Register-Guard observes that other universities, besides OU, use incentive money to increase faculty diversity, and that, “according to information compiled by the American Association of University Professors, the only court decision addressing the use of such incentive funds, at the University of Vermont, found the practice legal as long as the availability of the money was not used in hiring decisions.”

Both Grasgreen, of the Daily Emerald, and Bolt, of the Register-Guard, note that U of Oregon General Counsel Melinda Grier has repeatedly defended the program’s legality on just such grounds, saying it is acceptable because the funds do not push departments to hire a person of a certain race because the money only comes into play after the hiring committee has selected a candidate and offered him or her the job.