 Next: 2. Education Up: Thoughts on Affirmative Action Previous: Thoughts on Affirmative Action 1. IntroductionAbout 20 years ago, as a young assistant professor at the University of Oregon, I served on a new university-wide committee on the status of women. The group had a few men, including one young male who decided to enlighten us about the potential for backlash from the affirmative action programs then being introduced. When he was hired his official letter of appointment was delayed two weeks, supposedly because of affirmative action paperwork. He said that, while he fully supported the principle of equal rights, he saw no need to subject men to such aggravation and predicted that the university would lose many capable candidates as a result. We all agreed that the bureaucratic affirmative action rules seemed to add to the administrative burden without achieving the desired result. But if an additional two weeks of paper-shuffling before faculty appointments were finalized could guarantee equitable treatment for all, it would seem a very small price to pay. I remain skeptical of the extent to which official rules and policies of affirmative action are effective in achieving the desired goals. In those places where the number of women and/or minorities has increased significantly, I suspect that related factors, such as change in attitude among those in power, are more important. Therefore, instead of discussing affirmative action per se, I would like to comment on the related issues of standards, evaluation, and priorities. Before doing so, let me address the suggestion that affirmative action be eliminated in favor of true gender-blind equitable treatment for all. I wish that we lived in a world where that was possible. But studies continue to show that hidden biases leave that an ideal to strive toward. In classical music blind auditions have worked well and been effective in increasing the number of women in major orchestras. However, successful implementation required such extreme measures as candidates performing shoeless (to avoid gender identification from high heels). Few situations lend themselves to blind evaluation. For grant proposal evaluation and speaker selection, track record is sufficiently important to make anonymity impossible. Blind refereeing of papers has been successfully used in some fields. However, when it was advocated by AWM 20 years ago, it was vehemently rejected by the mathematics establishment. It might now be even harder to implement as electronic distribution of (author-identified) preprints increases. However, I cannot help wondering where those (such as Larry Shepp) who now vocally advocate gender-neutral evaluation were 20 years ago, and whether they ever tried to implement blind refereeing when they have served on editorial boards.
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