NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/sci/math/18713

Text File | 1993-01-24 | 3.3 KB | 72 lines

Newsgroups: sci.math
Path: sparky!uunet!think.com!yale.edu!yale!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!zurich.ai.mit.edu!ara
From: [e-mail] (Allan Adler)
Subject: Job Discrimination
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab.
Distribution: sci
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 21:53:21 GMT
Lines: 60


Many math departments place advertisements in which they specify that
they want to hire someone having a particular nominal specialty
and that others need not apply. I would like to examine this practice
from the standpoint of job discrimination and to get other opinions
on this as well.

What one is actually paid to do is to teach. The way one knows this is
that if one does not show up for one's classes, one is immediately
terminated. If, on the other hand, one does not do one's research
or one does not do research that empowered individuals in the department
want done, one is not immediately terminated. Of course, these individuals
might make sure your contract is not renewed. This leads me to the conclusion
that concerns about one's research fall under the category of "office
politics", not under the category of job description.

In the former Soviet Union, the Party infiltrated all aspects of the
government and the economy and caused them to function in a different
way than they might otherwise have done. It is the same with the dominant
research specialties in a department.

I am not saying that the only legitimate function of a department is
teaching. I am saying that on paper, that is the way it is constituted
and it only behaves differently from that through this process of
office politics, which invites abuse. I feel that whatever affects
one's ability to retain one's job ought to be made explicit in one's
contract, this being part of the job description that every worker
is entitled to. If no one is willing to pay for the job description
that is currently achieved through office politics, then that is the
issue that should be confronted and taken up with the authorities that
keep things the way they are.

Now consider the following hypothetical situation, intended to test the
limits of what people consider fair in the matter of job discrimination
on the basis of specialty: imagine a university  U, which has openings
for regular math faculty but advertises that it will only hire people whose
specialities are on a certain list L of specialties, L being referred to
as the "interests of the department". Imagine that U also hires part timers,
usually assumed to be in every way inferior to the regular faculty.
Now let M be  a mathematician whose nominal specialty, to the
extent that it can be defined at all, is not on the list L.
According to its policy, U cannot hire M as regular faculty.
However, it is willing to hire M as part time faculty, which
pays an order of magnitude less than so-called full-time work
for the same work. Now suppose that M, by virtue of skills in
areas not on the list L, is able to do better some things that
the mathematicians at U are trying but unable to do by virtue
of having prided themselves on not knowing these areas.

Does the inferior status of M constitute job discrimination
and is such discrimination consistent with the standards of
the profession. (I am aware that it is probably legal).

Allan Adler
[e-mail]