what to do about planned discriminatory hire

In my opinion, your friend's verbalizing something your other colleagues do but keep quiet about. Where I work there is an undercurrent of university/state sanctioned discrimination- subtle but very real discrimination during the hiring process-results in a primarily white male faculty for an overwhelmingly female student body. This is done with informal processes that favor white males but that are largely undetectable using the usual EOP screening methods. Example, using certain criteria (theoretical fit, productivity, specific area) for almost all candidates eliminating most applicants of color or female. Then, towards the end of the applicant review, a faculty member produces a buddy's vita-and some of the criteria are not important any more because the bud is so terrific. Since the faculty is white and male, the bud is most likely so as well. In another instance funding emerged to bring in a candidate informally-a bud-who gave a talk, met with most faculty and many administrators except the AA Officer who was not informed. Then, the faculty started to conjure up funds to put forth to convince the Dean to hire the bud. Bud also met with a real estate agent. Faculty buddies claimed this was not a job interview just a "get to know you" visit. For graduate student selection, this some of the same members routinely suggested that faculty go back and look harder at the applicants to identify males who may have been overlooked to keep the field from becoming too female and therefore too low paid/status. These may not be planned in quite the same way but the underlying motivation and outcome are the same.

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