A minority hiring program that was criticized last year for providing special treatment to racially diverse faculty is now under federal investigation.
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Since August, the United States Department of Justice has been investigating whether the Underrepresented Minority Recruitment Program is in violation of Title Seven of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employers from discriminating against an individual on the basis of race.
“The Department of Justice has information that the University of Oregon may be engaged in a pattern or practice of unlawful discrimination against newly hired non-minority faculty members with respect to the disbursement of salary and other employment benefits via its ‘Underrepresented Minority Recruitment Program,’” according to a letter sent to University General Counsel Melinda Grier that is signed by David Palmer, chief of the employment litigation section of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Although the investigation has not yet reached a conclusion, its outcome could have ripple effects on similar programs across the nation that set aside funds for minority hires.
Yet Russell Tomlin, vice provost for academic affairs, said the University is doing its best to “thread its way through the complexities of federal and state requirements” while maintaining a program it sees as important to drawing more diversity to campus.
The purpose of the UMRP is to encourage departments to put in extra effort to seek out more diverse candidates, Tomlin said. Once they have more candidates and make an ethnically diverse hire, the department is eligible to receive up to $90,000 over three years.
The funds can be used for anyone in the department to start a new program, but a portion of the funds do go directly toward the minority hire, which is what’s drawing controversy.
It is “appropriate and common” to use the funds for “direct support to the new faculty member as part of a negotiated start-up package (e.g., research and travel funds, summer pay, course buy outs, equipment),” according to the program’s description.
The University’s Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity runs analyses of various fields of study to determine what ethnic minorities are the most underrepresented in a given field. When a department makes a hire in that underrepresented group, it becomes eligible for UMRP funds. Tomlin said a department this year applied for UMRP funds after hiring an ethnic minority, but the department did not receive the funds because the ethnic minority was not underrepresented in that field.
Thirteen departments received UMRP funds in 2006-07, and two have received the funds this school year.
“If the people who are making the hire know that if they hire somebody of one skin color they’ll get more money for the department than if they hire somebody of a different skin color, then of course it’s going to influence them,” said Roger Clegg, CEO and president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a Virginia think tank devoted to issues of race and ethnicity. “No matter how you slice it that’s what it boils down to. I think it’s illegal.”
In June 2007, University professor Bill Harbaugh came forward with claims that the UMRP violated the Civil Rights Act.
At the time, University President Dave Frohnmayer vehemently defended the program, and said Harbaugh’s claim had “no legal basis.”
“This has had a complete legal review and people can issue wild allegations all they want, but they have no authority for them,” Frohnmayer told the Emerald in June 2007. “The program has been carefully considered and it is lawful and of issue.”
On Saturday, Frohnmayer stood by his view.
“We get inquiries all the time about programs like this,” he said. “It’s been carefully examined by our legal council over a number of years. We’ve made reasonable judgment that it is defensible.”
University General Counsel Grier also defended UMRP’s legality in a four-page letter she sent to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The program “is designed to help the University of Oregon diversify its workforce and to help UO meet its obligations under state and federal law,” Grier wrote. “The UMRP does not provide benefits to individuals based on their race or ethnicity. Rather, under the UMRP, departments are reimbursed for the expenses they incur in recruiting and hiring individuals or for general department activities where the hiring of the individual would help to eliminate an underutilization.”
When provost Linda Brady arrived at the University in 2006, administrators reviewed the UMRP.
The review concluded that the program was “accomplishing its objective in a way that was consistent with the university’s goals and consistent with federal and state requirements,” Grier wrote in her letter to the Department of Justice. “(W)e also concluded that the program would benefit from clearer guidance and more detailed record-keeping. The changes to accomplish that were instituted for the current academic year.”
Those changes include taking monetary focus away from the individual.
“We’re trying to do something that makes the world better,” Tomlin said. “No one sits around here saying, ‘Gee, we’ve got to do something and how do we sell it to the world so that they think it’s legal?’ We don’t do stuff like that.
“If we do nothing, we’ll know that nothing will mean that it will be harder to diversify our faculty. So doing nothing is not good enough, and doing something illegal is not acceptable. Somehow (we must) find a way to convey that thoughtful people are trying to figure out a way to do it.”
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