Hiring? don't forget $90,000 minority faculty hiring scam

2/3/2012 Update: With the faculty hiring season well under way, I thought I'd repost some helpful info about UO's "Under-Represented Minority Recruitment Plan". You might also be interested in Russ Tomlin's plan to put specially trained diversity search advocates on faculty hiring committees. I'm guessing a year or two of someone's start-up money was wasted on those consultants. On the flip side, read this UO professor's op-ed on discrimination against Asian students, more here.


11/10/2011: Is your department searching for a new faculty member this year? Good luck getting start-up money from our new VP for Research Kim Espy. Jim Bean and her predecessor Rich Linton blew it all on pet projects and the Huron consulting contracts.

But you can get some easy cash from VP for academic affairs Russ Tomlin and his "Under-represented Minority Recruitment Program". Russ and interim VP for Diversity Robin Holmes - who seem to have a blank check from Pres Lariviere - will give your department $90,000 if you hire a racial or ethnic minority. (Women in science? Sorry, Tomlin's decided women do not count.) The UMRP rules are here, the basics are simple:

• During negotiations or up to one year after initial appointment of a qualified candidate
• For a candidate self-identified as a member of one of the federally defined underrepresented protected classes
• On determination of under-representation within the academic unit

Step one is that phrase "self-identified". That's right, a candidate can claim any race or ethnic identity they want, on this form from Penny Daugherty's AAEO office. UO will do nothing to verify their claim. (Hint: don't check that last box, unless you also check the first one):

For step two, the key phrase is "under-representation". Go to Table 2 in UO's Affirmative Action Plan to see if your academic unit has under-representation of tenure track minority faculty:

No luck? I didn't think so. The truth is that UO's tenure track faculty is representative of the available national hiring pool of minority PhDs, except for Music, which is one hire short. (Johnson Hall is three short on minority administrative execs, but that's another story. Do as we say, not as we do.)

So, how do you get under-represented minority recruitment money when there's no minority under-representation? Easy: VP Tomlin has made up his own special, illegal process for implementing his own personal vision of what he thinks federal affirmative action law should say.

Suppose your department of 10 people has a person from every minority, except, say, an American Indian. Payday! (But if you're in math or physics, no money for Asians. Russ Tomlin has decided there are just too many of those mathy Asians on campus already. And no money for Republicans or religious minorities. Tomlin and Holmes want faculty who look different, not faculty who think different.)

But wait. Surely you can't just claim to be American Indian. Don't you have to be an enrolled member of a federally recognized tribe? Everywhere else misrepresenting yourself as American Indian would be a serious matter. But not at UO. Just check the box.

Obviously this is dishonest. The UMRP, I mean. Lying to exploit it is too. If it's any comfort, you won't be the first second third.