Hiring decisions should always be conducted on the basis of which candidate will be the strongest asset to the Syracuse University community.

About 150 members of the university community gathered Monday night for a listening session organized by the Chancellor’s Working Group on Diversity and Inclusion about the state of diversity and inclusion on the SU campus.

When asked to share their perspectives on how diversity and inclusion can be improved within the university community, some attendees raised the importance of diverse hiring, and one faculty member suggested that search committees be required to have a diverse group of candidates in their final pool.

But in conversations regarding the push for diversity, it should be understood that the word itself does not solely encompass race, but extends further to the unique perspective a candidate can bring to the classroom. It is for this reason that search committees should not limit themselves to the race of a candidate, but should seek out and hire those who are most qualified in objectively and holistically assessing each candidate.

Hiring candidates based on qualifications in this way rather than implementing a forced push toward diversity through meeting quotas will ensure the strongest applicants are brought on board and into the SU community. This is a hiring mentality that should extend to all of SU, whether it is athletics or academic departments: the strongest candidates should always be hired, regardless of the groups they may or may not identify with.

However, it should be understood that subconscious biases do have the potential to influence the hiring process, the reality of which can lead to the exclusion of candidates that may identify with specific minority groups.

The university can put measures in place to counteract these biases as much as possible and ultimately generate a wide range of candidates in hiring cases by actively avoiding homogenous search committees.

Ensuring a foundation of diversity among members of these groups, which includes race, gender, socioeconomic status, ability and more, the university can move past the generally limited connotation that is associated with diversity and maintain hiring sessions that produce candidates that are well suited for SU.

In the way that the university should view diversity as more than a requirement to fill through the limited means of race and gender, students should also keep an open mind when judging the diversity of an entire university faculty on their own experiences.

In avoiding a narrow perspective, students should take into consideration that although they may have a white majority among professors in the classes they take, their interactions and experiences within those classes are varied, regardless of the race of the professor.

Maintaining a diverse hiring committee is important in broadening the search for the most qualified candidates. But a move toward understanding the greater definition of diversity as something that transcends qualifiers like race and gender is a step forward in ensuring candidates are hired for their skill, not for the role their race or gender may place in an unnecessary need to meet quota requirements.

Published on December 9, 2015 at 12:47 am

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