I believe that to attack our colleges and universities today is really to attack the wrong stage of the development. As I have suggested, we need to mass our remedial efforts in the form of state and national search programs at the high school level where talented young people-blacks, Chicanos, poor whites, which is to say all of the disadvantaged who otherwise get locked into a lifetime of inequality can be found and helped. It seems to me that much of the current emphasis being put into enforcement could wisely and profitably be put into discovery and assistance.

[From Change, October 1972]

THE POLITICS OF QUOTAS

(By John H. Bunzel)1

For the past several years the Civil Rights Office of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare has been investigating colleges and universities. That office has taken on the responsibility of reviewing programs of Affirmative Action that are required to establish specific recruitment goals and timetables to assure an immediate increase in the percentage of minority and women faculty members and staff employees. Apparently convinced that enforcement action against our colleges and universities is necessary because they do not "think right" about the problem of alleged discrimination and what should be done to correct it, HEW has made Affirmative Action one of the most divisive issues in American higher education, and possibly one of the most anti-intellectual.

Along with most of my academic colleagues, I strongly believe we should recruit more women and minorities as faculty members on an equal opportunity and non-discriminatory basis. Women in particular have not been accorded fair and equal treatment by the academic world, and it is time we admitted it. But I am opposed to the use of any form of quota system that would distinguish race or sex as an exclusive or predominant criterion for hiring.

The distinction is important because the debate over Affirmative Action increasingly echoes Stokeley Carmichael's: if you are not actively with us, you are actively against us. When applied to the academic world, this simplistic moral absolute denies legitimacy to complicated and inevitably vexing questions.

J. Stanley Pottinger, the director of HEW's Office for Civil Rights, said recently that he "never understood academic freedom to deny a qualified person an opportunity for appointment or advancement because of race or sex, or the right to pay one person less than a person of another race or sex performing the same job." He is absolutely right, just as he is right in pointing out that the "real objective of the law against discrimination is to ensure equal opportunity to all persons regardless of their race, sex, religion, color or national origin." There can be no quarrel with Mr. Pottinger on these points, or with his belief that university administrators and faculties must examine "their own practices and profiles to determine whether discrimination exists and how it may best be remedied." It is also reassuring to learn from him that an individual's professional qualifications are still "the primary standard for hiring and are at the heart of the Executive Order that HEW enforces."

But are they? Or are universities being encouraged to introduce into the appointment process nonacademic criteria such as sex and race? Are traditional academic or intellectual qualifications to be temporarily suspended (how long is temporary?) until the proportion of women and certain minority groups becomes "acceptable"? I state the problem this bluntly to sharpen the issue, and because the intent and meaning of Affirmative Action are considerably obscure. HEW must become more sensitive to the problem of conflicting principles: that in the name of undoing past discrimination, methods may be encouraged that risk perpetuating the very racial barriers the government is charged with eliminating. As a society we need urgently to remove the many injustices the disadvantaged and minorities have suffered. But colleges and universities must not adopt unjust or undemocratic means to achieve laudable goals. If we set aside a white candidate who is more qualified than a black or brown competitor because he is white, we will be discriminating according to race. And once that process gets legitimated, there is no stopping it.

1 John A. Bunzel, a political scientist, is president of California State University at San Jose. California. He is the author of The American Small Businessman (Knopf 1962) and Anti-Politics in America (Knopf 1967).

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If we are to examine the real or potential effects of Affirmative Action, we need to move from generalities and rhetoric to specific concerns about implementation. For example, blacks, Mexican-Americans, and other groups are not heavily represented on college faculties. Some say that our colleges and universities should therefore move at once to bring about a statistically acceptable representation of women and minorities on their faculties. Others go so far as to say there should be a formula for proportional representation of races and sexes. But a university does not and should not make faculty appointments the way the Democratic Party chooses convention delegates. The proper goal is to hire the best qualified person, and the paramount criteria should be accomplishment and capacity in teaching and research. We often hear the argument that academic hiring frequently violates merit criteria-hence why get upset about Affirmative Action hiring? The most honest response is to acknowledge that the charge is sometimes true, but to insist that failure to act always according to principle does not discredit the principle. Rather than abandoning it, we should concentrate our efforts on making it more consistently honored.

HEW's strategy of Affirmative Action seeks to apply remedies that are not suitable to the specialized conditions in the academic world. Each institution in a pluralistic society has unique characteristics, and those of a university should be recognized and defended-by the government. It may well be that many qualified or easily qualifiable minority people exist for business firms and labor unions and that, either through intentional or unintentional discrimination, they are not being hired. But this does not describe the special features and problems of faculty recruitment.

Consider another troublesome issue. Does Affirmative Action mean that a university is expected to freeze or set aside faculty positions until women and members of certain minority groups are added to departments where they are now underrepresented even if this results in rejecting a better qualified applicant? The question is not hypothetical. Last spring a man received the following letter from a state university :

"I am sorry to report that although our Department saw you as our top candidate we will not be able to make you an offer for our new position.

"Our university is an Affirmative Action Employer and the Department must attempt to fill the new position with an individual from a recognized oppressed minority group. Although the Department initially viewed your ancestry as satisfying the requirements of Affirmative Action, consultation with our institutional advisors on the Affirmative Action Program indicated to us that your ancestry does not qualify you as an oppressed minority.

"I wish you the best of luck in your future, and I am deeply sorry we were not able to extend an offer to you."

There is a certain schizophrenia running through the whole posture of Affirmative Action. Presidential Executive Orders 11246 (1965) and 11375 (1967) are responsible for its birth and reflect the unobjectionable policy of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that all contractors with the government "will take affirmative action to ensure that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin." But the Department of Labor's Order No. 4 charted a different course which, in the hands of HEW's advocates of an ag gressive Affirmative Action program, has introduced the concept of race into academic deliberations, reopened the door to the idea of quotas as a way for colleges to meet their "goals" and "timetables," and affirmed the principle that preference in hiring should be given to women and certain minority groups when faculty appointments are to be made. Thus Affirmative Action is governed by two sets of criteria with quite different genealogies. One draws on the tradition rooted in Justice Harlan's observation that the Constitution is "color-blind" and thus does not allow discriminatory preference for any group, minority or majority, while the other asserts that the Constitution's equal protection clause allows race to become a factor in employment when identification by race is intended to help those for whose protection the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted. The former accords equal rights to all persons regardless of race and does not command that members of any groups be given preference in hiring because they were formerly the subject of discrimination or because they are members of a minority group. The latter claims that racial identification in hiring is necessary, given the compelling interest of the state in overcoming past discrimination. Further. it is a strategy that seems to assume that preferential treatment based on race is a rational means of implementing that interest.

There are many in the academic community who believe that what is indicated now by Affirmative Action is a set of strategies and goals that would encourage preference for women and certain minority groups in the filling of faculty positions even when it is necessary to discriminate against those whose qualifications are found to be superior. HEW officials maintain that "goals" are not quotas, but simply a way of evaluating whether a university is meeting its Affirmative Action obligations within a specified time period. When is a quota not a quota? When it is a "numerical goal?" As one college official admitted privately, "Academics don't like the smell of quotas, and 'goals' is an inoffensive and much milder term. It doesn't suggest anything unpleasant to the faculty." Is there really a significant difference between a university setting a quota of 10 percent bearded Republicans for the faculty within five years, and announcing as its goal the hiring of 10 percent bearded Republicans for the faculty within five years? Are not the two virtually synonymous? Perhaps the difference is a matter of perception: For HEW, which seeks to impose them they are called "goals;" for an academic department, which must apply them in the hiring process, they become "quotas."

Further, by what standards will HEW evaluate the Affirmative Action goals it requires colleges and universities to establish? HEW says it will decide whether or not the goals are reasonable. But what is reasonable? We are entitled to know the criteria, particulary what numerical goals really represent and how they will be calculated and determined.

The language of Revised Order No. 4 indicates that numerical goals were intended primarily for industrial employment and not for university faculty appointments. It states: "An Affirmative Action program is a set of specific and result-oriented procedures to which a contractor commits himself to apply every good faith effort. . . . An acceptable Affirmative Action program must include . . . goals and timetables to which the contractor's good faith efforts must be directed to correct deficiencies and thus to increase materially the utilization of minorities and women, at all levels and in all segments of his work force where deficiencies exist." But why must a university compute numerical goals and timetables by academic department if specified and result oriented procedures (e.g. broadening the base for faculty recruitment) are strictly enforced with respect to appointments?

There are other difficulties with the statements about goals in Revised Order No. 4. As Richard A. Lester, dean of the faculty of Princeton University, points out, goals are to be specific numbers, to be measurable, and to have timetables attached to them, but are not to "be rigid and inflexible." One cannot help but wonder, he says, what a measurable and specific yet flexible goal with a timetable in an affirmative action program will look like. Goals are supposed to be "targets that are reasonably attainable, but reasonable means "applying every good faith effort to make all aspects of the entire Affirmative Action program work." Dean Lester remarks that that is like saying it is a reasonable human expectation to assume that everyone will work at his peak capacity.

HEW has said that a university's attainment of specific numerical goals according to the timetables in its affirmative action program will not be the single test of compliance or non-compliance. But are goals and timetables intended as a commitment? They will certainly be perceived as such by various groups on campus, which will then hold the university accountable. If goals and timetables are to be an important test of compliance, "goals" must involve some conception of quotas. HEW assures us that it is not advocating rigid and inflexible quotas that must be met. But are there some sort of non-rigid, flexible quotas that could be applied in a flexible manner to determine if the university is or is not in compliance? The problem with applying of numerical goals in a flexible manner is that there is no way of predicting how it will work in practice.

But many will doubtless wonder why HEW shouldn't insist on "good faith efforts" to achieve numerical goals within a given time? There are at least two more reasons. First, by stating the university's primary obligation in numerical terms, by failing to specify what "good faith efforts" will be acceptable, and by placing upon the university that has not achieved its "goal" the burden of proving that it did all that was legally permissible to meet it-by doing these things, HEW so weights the procedural scales against the nonachieving university as to oblige it in fact, if not in law, to discriminate in favor of certain groups. Second, colleges and universities will be encouraged to make faculty appointments and promotions not on the basis of a person's individual worth, but as a member of a minority group. If a college or university gives preference in its faculty hiring to certain groups on racial grounds, it undermines one of the

fundamental ideals and precepts, that of individual performance and merit. We construct public policies that provide social justice to a class, race or ethnic group, but we do not hire a class, race or ethnic group. We hire a person.

A black scholar, for example, was being considered last year for a faculty position at a large northern university. He was highly recommended and was clearly among the best candidates the department had interviewed. "I hope I am not being considered because I am black," he said later. "I like to think I have enough self-respect to be judged solely on my qualifications. I have no need or desire to be a token."

If HEW were to confront the reality of the academic marketplace, it would have to envision drastic, but as yet unspecified, changes in hiring-and firingin our colleges and universities. The institution's Affirmative Action goals cannot be divorced from the reality of the academic job market. In addition to the availability of new faculty, there is also the question of what happens to present faculty.

For the sake of simple arithmetic, assume that a college faculty in 1972 numbers 1000, ten percent of whom are minority-group members. Assume also that the announced goal at the end of five years is to raise the 10 percent to 30 percent. If the faculty in 1977 remains the same size, it would be necessary to hire 200 minority-group members to meet the goals set for 1977. In other words, minority-group hiring would virtually monopolize all faculty hiring until the goal was met. Aside from the problem of finding and recruiting that number of qualified minority people, will there be 200 openings over a five-year period in a 1000-member faculty? One school in a large university plotted the number of full-time faculty members (78) against their years of birth and discovered that only eight people will retire through 1981. Short of firing full-time faculty to make room for minorities, or expanding programs and increasing faculty allocations, these figures suggest an upper limit on expectations for change in the near future.

An atmosphere of condescension, contradiction, and reverse discrimination must inevitably surround any attempt to "legalize" preferential hiring in favor of certain individuals or groups solely on racial grounds. The clear implication is that minorities will be granted an enormous favor if they enter the competitive arena under some preferential auspices. Is there any compelling evidence that they would wholeheartedly appreciate or welcome such a decision? It is one thing to enable those who have been unfairly disadvantaged to competeand this we must do; it is something else again to do away with competition altogether or to provide the real or alleged victims of discrimination with redress by discriminating against others. Earl Raab has made the important observation that one of the characteristics of a free society is the ascendance of performance over ancestry, or what he calls "the ascendance of achieved status over ascribed status."

Nor can all minority groups be preferred equally some will inevitably be considered more "preferred" than others. Once the principle of preferential hiring has been adopted, say, for blacks, it will only be a matter of time before other minority groups will demand similar preferential advantages. (As of December 23, 1971, the Department of Labor proposes to include in its guidelines intended to remedy unfair treatment "Jews and Catholics, and members of certain ethnic groups, primarily of Eastern, Middle, and Southern European ancestry, such as Italians, Greeks, and Slavic groups." Apparently they were overlooked in earlier interpretations.) Once institutionalized, the principle of preferential hiring is not likely to decrease the potential for discontent and divisiveness. Indeed, it is likely to set minority against minority, since it encourages basically irrational schemes of compensatory redress.

In short, we may, paradoxically, be deepening and exacerbating precisely the situation we have set ourselves to avoid by increasing the already pronounced tendency to politicize and racialize more and more aspects of modern life. In the Atlantic (August 1968), Daniel P. Moynihan warned us we have so far been unable to assemble the political majority that would enable the nation to provide a free and equal place for the Negro in the larger society. We have used what are essentially market strategies, like full employment, income supplementation, and housing construction; but the failure of such methods will drive us to institutional strategies involving government-dictated outcomes against those institutions-colleges and universities, for example-most sympathetic to social change and most vulnerable to government pressure. Events are on the way to proving him right and endangering precisely those institutions that

"must provide the moral and technical leadership for rational, peaceful and democratic change."

One of the most critical issues is the extent to which the commitment to increase the percentage of minorities in college faculties can co-exist with the maintenance of professional standards in hiring and retention. It is entirely possible that present professional standards will inadvertently keep the number of minority faculty appointments disproportionately low. The outcome of that unhappy situation may then be to discredit the professional standards. Perhaps we should maintain standards and then deliberately and openly depart from them in the name of social justice by adopting a system of quota hiring of underqualified applicants. But after that process has been operating for a time we will still have to ask if it has been successful, and the horns of that dilemma are sharp indeed. Who would feel able to state publicly that the underqualified faculty have performed poorly? Who would be willing to count the high social costs that might ultimately far outweigh the immediate benefits gained by making an exception to professional criteria? I am not saying that underqualified appointees can never become qualified, and there may be times when mere formal qualification is meaningless. But when apprehension about social injustice toward a group prevents our making a clear-headed judgment about an individual, when one feels compelled to assert in all cases that the underqualified did as well as the qualified, then what happens to our long. cherished professional criteria?

Other thorny problems follow. For example, how far, and for how long, must we live with what may prove to be a double standard of evaluation? In colleges and universities where scholarly research and publication are a basic norm, are Affirmative Action appointments to be exempted from meeting such standards? (The same question applies to teaching ability and competence in the discipline.) If the percentage of articles submitted to and accepted by the professional journals from minority-group faculty is well under the percentage of minority faculty in the particular discipline, would a doctrine of "preferential compensation" lead publishers to accept otherwise unqualified articles? If so, how can we justify a hiring policy that neglects the imperative to encourage high standards?

Other questions have to do with the consequences of establishing dual sets of criteria for faculty appointment and retention. What happens if a minority person who has been given a faculty appointment that can lead to tenure proves inadequate but his ethnic group on campus demands that he be retained? One of the serious implications of having undefined, irrelevant, or nonacademic criteria initially is that it sets the stage for the special claims of ethnic groups that only they are able to understand and pass judgment on the merits of members of their groups. If academic criteria are ruled out from the beginning. it is virtually impossible to legitimate their use later on.

Giving faculty appointments immediately to large numbers of relatively unqualified persons will do a serious disservice to all graduate students presently pursuing their degrees, and, indeed, to all students. These students began their careers not so many years ago on the assumption that their training would be needed in higher education. Are they now to be told that the available faculty positions already considerably diminished because of the financial crisis in higher education—are to be given on some basis other than academic preparation and qualifications? Will committing ourselves to the goals of Affirmative Action reduce or even abandon our responsibility to these students? And what of our superior undergraduates of all races and ethnic groups who want to get the PhD degree and become college professors? Against the tangled and discouraging backdrop of goals, quotas, and preferential hiring, will they perceive any future in academic life?

We are, therefore, caught in a complicated dilemma-the need to choose between two positions, both of which are morally defensible:

Position Number One: Preferential treatment must be given to disadvantaged minorities in this country if they are to be freed from the grip of poverty and despair that locks them into a lifetime of inequality. We must break the vicious circle of unequal employment opportunity that leads to unequal housing opportunity, unequal education opportunity and back to continued unequal employment opportunity. Equal treatment will not break the circle fast enough and by itself will not assure real equality of opportunity. Thus the drive for preferential treatment.