A University associate professor is accusing administrators of using illegal means to recruit minority faculty.
The Underrepresented Minority Recruitment Program has become the center of attention because economics associate professor Bill Harbaugh challenged its legality through e-mails to University President Dave Frohnmayer.
Frohnmayer said Harbaugh’s claim is unsubstantiated.
“He has no legal basis,” Frohnmayer said. “This has had a complete legal review and people can issue wild allegations all they want, but they have no authority for them. The program has been carefully considered and it is lawful and of issue.”
The UMRP is a $500,000-a-year program University administrators implemented in hopes of recruiting top-tier minority faculty to campus. It encourages departments to hire underrepresented minority faculty in tenure-related faculty positions by reimbursing the department for recruitment expenses. These perks, meant to draw potential faculty members, can amount to as much as $90,000 during a minimum of three years.
“The program is not used to make hiring decisions, but rather is designed to increase recruiting flexibility for departments that have already decided to make job offers to top candidates of color,” according to the program’s information sheet. But Harbaugh saw a blatant contradiction to that statement later in the document.
It is “appropriate and common,” according to the UMRP, to use funds to directly support the faculty member in question with a start-up package. That can include research and travel funds, summer pay and course buy outs – when a faculty member is supposed to teach a certain number of courses, but instead elects to pay the University a certain amount of money in place of a course.
This direct faculty support is where Harbaugh sees a conflict.
“The program is illegal because it compensates faculty differently according to their race,” he said.
And he’s not the only one making such assertions. The Center for Equal Opportunity, which calls itself “the only think tank devoted exclusively to the promotion of colorblind equal opportunity and racial harmony,” also considers programs that give funds directly to individuals based on race to be illegal.
Although the funds are technically awarded to the department, which may circumvent the illegality, Harbaugh said the department practically always hands the money over to faculty members upon request. He believes it puts certain faculty at an advantage based on their minority classification.
Harbaugh has a history of complaints against Frohnmayer. In September 2006 he filed an ethics complaint against the president, who was cleared of the charges. Harbaugh appealed in January 2007 and the Oregon State Bar dismissed the complaints a second time.
Frohnmayer said Harbaugh has no authority behind this allegation.
“It’s a claim,” said Frohnmayer. “It’s an allegation. It’s a smear and it’s not true.”
In an e-mail to Frohnmayer, Harbaugh called the UMRP “an obvious violation of the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment.” He cited the part of the program that states in order to be eligible, a faculty member must self-identify as a member of one of the listed federally defined underrepresented classes. He concluded that only minority faculty are eligible for the additional $90,000.
Frohnmayer responded by reminding Harbaugh the funds are awarded to the faculty’s department, not the individual person.
“If you study the program and read the material,” Frohnmayer wrote, “it does not provide a benefit that is available only to faculty of color; instead, it reimburses departments for start-up packages in keeping with the packages common in the department requesting the funds.”
Harbaugh was pleased to hear the UMRP payments are consistent with non-minority faculty start-up packages. Still, he posed several questions to Frohnmayer regarding the URMP.
Steve Morozumi, ASUO Multicultural Center Program Advisor, said Harbaugh has ulterior motives and holds a grudge about last year’s passage of the Diversity Plan – a document that caused much controversy on campus at the time but has since been celebrated by many who see a need for more diverse faculty at the University.
“I don’t think he has any understanding of history and the actual conditions that exist for people in the real world,” said Morozumi. “There’s more of a good faith effort developing as a result of persistent efforts to get the University to recognize that we are behind the times in keeping pace with the rest of the world. Now we’re just beginning to move and so there’s some reason for hope, and that’s what’s alarming him.”
Harbaugh has many concerns about the Diversity Plan and questions the way in which that money is being spent. He remains critical about the way the program is operated.
“I got concerned about this when I saw how much money the University was spending on its diversity efforts and how little we were getting for that money,” said Harbaugh. “I certainly hoped that the University would come up with a Diversity Plan that would be legal and effective, and for me the best way to do that would be to direct money at low-income kids… I have to say I’m surprised at how little substantive debate there’s been about how to spend this money from (Vice President of Institutional Equity and Diversity) Charles Martinez.”
Harbaugh has a number of complaints separate from the UMRP, in fact. First, the 2006 Affirmative Action Plan, which he discouraged Frohnmayer from signing but the president signed anyway, was not posted online until Harbaugh pressured the administration to do so. He believes the document was backdated by Frohnmayer, meaning the president signed it in May 2006 despite it becoming effective January 2006.
“I must have sent a hundred e-mails asking what was going on,” he said. “I’m mystified, honestly. I just don’t understand it. If you were really trying to solve these problems at the University, you would want people to know what you’re doing about it.”
Finally, Harbaugh wants to know why the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity said it would report to the University Senate in May about its diversity efforts, but never did.
Morozumi said Harbaugh’s is a lost argument because the University’s diversity efforts so far haven’t been effective anyway; the University is only just beginning to see progress.
“It’s not the problem of Affirmative Action being hidden and taking away the rights of people like Harbaugh. The problem is it hasn’t been effective at all,” Morozumi said.
Although General Counsel Melinda Grier was unavailable for comment on this story, she has repeatedly defended the UMRP’s legality to the press. She said it is acceptable because the funds do not encourage departments to hire a person of a certain ethnicity – the money is only considered after the selection committee has chosen to offer the person in question a job – and the money goes to the department, not the faculty member.
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