Affirmative Action (In)Consistency (Obligatory Post on L’Affaire Scholastica)

As some of you may have noticed, (at least some of) legal academia is abuzz about the fact that Scholastica, the ExpressO competitor, asks authors to provide optional information about their gender identity, race, sexual orientation, and any additional “hardship diversity,” such as socio-economic status or geographic region. In response to objections by some, Scholastica has given individual journals the option of requesting the information or not, and to date, only California Law Review and NYU Law Review have done so. As a result, when you submit through Scholastica, you will be asked to provide optional demographic information only if you submit to one of those two journals. Josh Blackman has the background, including screen shots of the prior and current “diversity widget” and responses from various law review editors (here, here, and here). You can find additional musings about all of this at CoOps (here, here, and here), Prawfs, ProfessorBainbridge, and the VC. (Update 2/16/13, 5:30 pm: Kaimipono Wenger has a thoughtful Defense of Law Review Affirmative Action over at CoOps.)

Although these musing reflect a range of views, the majority, it seems to me, objects — in some cases vehemently, with calls for a boycott — to the notion of journals deliberately selecting articles on any basis other than merit. My immediate interest in this is not about the appropriateness, per se, of what I’ll call, for simplicity’s sake, affirmative action (AA) in article selection. (For thoughts on that, see the links above.) Rather, I’ve been struck by the strength of objections to this apparent practice in light of equally strong beliefs in the appropriateness of AA when it comes to selecting conference participants, and the like. Here’s the question I posed on one of Dave Hoffman’s Scholastica threads over at CoOps:

I’m curious if you have a position on using gender, race, and the like to select invitees for symposia, conferences, and similar speaking engagements. Is doing so an equally bad idea, in your view, or are there differences between the two situations that suggest different answers? I ask because my first instinct, on hearing of (what it seems to me fair to call) affirmative action at the level of scholarship selection, was that this, like many other aspects of legal scholarship, is a clear anomaly within academia at large (quite apart from its merits or lack thereof as a practice). But then I considered the fairly common — and fairly strong — norm (if not necessarily consistent practice) elsewhere in academia of trying to ensure that one invites a suitably diverse panel of speakers. Indeed, in philosophy, entire boycotts are currently afoot in response to perceptions that conferences failed to include sufficient numbers of women. So I’m wondering whether you think these situations are on all fours, or whether there are significant relevant differences. (To be clear, I don’t mean to be asking a leading question; I’m truly just curious about what you and others commenting on this think about this possibly analogous practice.)

Although “Anon” responded that s/he viewed these as “analytically equal” (and equally inappropriate), one "AnonProf" argued at some length that the two practices could in fact be distinguished, with AA appropriate — indeed, “very important” — for symposia invites, but not for article selections. Dave, who has said that AA in article selection is a “terrible, terrible practice,” agreed. [Update 2/17/13, 11:05 pm: Dave has clarified his reasons for distinguishing article selection from symposia invites here.]

As I said there, “I’m actually not convinced that the two situations are much different — and I’m definitely not convinced that any difference between them is as large as “very important [to do]” in the context of selecting diverse speakers (in AnonProf’s words) and “a terrible, terrible practice” in the context of selecting diverse writers to publish (in Dave’s turn of phrase).” Since the Faculty Lounge seems to be the only law blog without a Scholastica diversity post, and since my fuller response to AnonProf’s argument would have further hijacked Dave’s thread, I thought I’d move this aspect of the conversation here.

Before getting into my entirely nerdy parsing of AnonProf's blog comment, let me make clear the question I'm not addressing. I'm not especially interested in exploring any inconsistentcy between law prof views of L'Affaire Scholastica, on one hand, and the presumably friendly attitude of most law profs towards AA in undergraduate or law school admissions, or even in legal academic hiring. It seems to me that one can support AA in some contexts but also believe, without any inconcisitency, that, at some point — say, once one has obtained a tenure-track faculty position — the playing field has been as leveled through AA as it ever will be for the relevant cohort. Since symposia/conference invitees and law review article authors are generally speaking the same cohort, this explanation for distinguishing the two practices is inapposite.

Right then. AnonProf said, in part:

I think diversity is very important in symposia, and I agree that editors should seek a wide group of people taking of demographic facts there. The reality is that there are more men in some fields and more women in others, more minorities in some fields and less in others, more gays and lesbians in some and less and others, etc. So, there is an element of build-in inequity by virtue of the fact that some intellectual fields attract more of one group than another. But everyone deserves a change, irrespective of the fact that they are an outsider. In order to create opportunity and seek to achieve parity, symposia should be diverse.

I think a fair recreation of the logic of this argument is as follows:

(1) "there are more men in some fields and more women in others...etc.";

(2) "everyone deserves a chan[c]e, irrespective of the fact that they are an outsider";

(3) AA in this context would "create opportunity and... achieve parity"

Ergo, "diversity is very important in symposia" and "symposia should be diverse."

(*I should note, although I don't think it matters, that I hadn't intended to limit my original question to symposia. As I understand the norm in philosophy and elsewhere, the imperative to invite or otherwise include diverse speakers holds regardless of whether there is a guaranteed or even possible publication opportunity. That is, it applies not only to symposia but also to conferences where one presents work that one will publish, if at all, entirely separately from the speaking opportunity.)

It seems to me that each step in this argument applies just as strongly to article publication:

#1 is an empirical claim that seems true -- but equally applicable to talks and papers. That is, I entirely agree that certain fields attract or (so as not to assume self-selection and discount the possibility of exclusionary mechanisms causing this situation) include more of, say, one gender than the other (IP is male-dominated, for instance [update: no, apparently, it's not; please substitute your own example], while family law is female-dominated). But won't these disparities (if you will) manifest both at the stage of giving talks and at the stage of submitting papers for publication? In other words, I'm having trouble seeing how a male-heavy field that exists for purposes of symposia (or conferences) will suddenly be any less male-heavy for purposes of article selection.

#2 is a moral principle concerning equal opportunity for outsiders that presumably applies to both stages of the scholarly process as well. The only argument I can think of for differentiating between its applicability at the two stages would be if one thought that, having evened the playing field at the stage of oral presentation of work in progress at conferences and workshops through really useful feedback, all academics should then be able to compete fairly for article placement. This argument (which I don't think AnonProf had in mind, especially since his/her focus was on symposia, where one is simultaneously invited to speak and publish) assumes, among other things, a lot about the usefulness of conference/workshop feedback. 

#3 is a descriptive claim about the effects of AA in symposia: namely, that reaching out to various underrepresented groups would "create opportunity" and "achieve parity." But isn't this equally true of reaching out to (or adding a thumb on the scale for) various underrepresented groups at the article selection stage? Indeed, if anything, inasmuch as normal law review publication is (far) more professionally important than presentations and invited symposia publications (in part because, as AnonProf notes, everyone knows that some people blow off their invited presentations/papers), the effects of AA on opportunity creation and parity in the article placement context would seem to be much larger and, hence, AA in the article selection context would seem to be *more* justified, according to AnonProf's logic.

So I'm finding it difficult to reach different conclusions about the appropriateness of AA in the two contexts based on the reasons (I perceive that) AnonProf gave. I can imagine a few additional reasons to distinguish the two contexts. First, some symposia, conferences or workshops might seek to generate a consensus statement, and for that statement to have perceived legitimacy, it might need to involve diverse signatories. That seems like a fair reason to accept AA in the symposia context without necessarily accepting it in the article selection context, but it seems that this would apply very rarely.

Second, most speaking opportunities (outside of student edited law review symposia) are granted by fellow faculty members. This introduces the possibility that people will select their friends, and inasmuch as people tend to be friends with similar people...AA might be a useful check on that bias. Assuming that's true (I'd think law prof types are mostly likely to hang out with other law prof types rather than law prof types of a particular gender, race, or sexual orientation, but I don't know), the question is whether things are much different in the article selection context. There, students rather than fellow faculty select articles (generally), and other than possibly being biased to accept (or reject!) articles from their own professors, the old boys' club concern probably isn't directly at issue. Is it indirectly at issue, inasmuch as student editors clearly exhibit very strong letterhead bias and perhaps higher-ranked law schools tend to be more dominated by straight white men (again, I actually have no idea whether that's true or not)?

The second half of AnonProf's post may suggest a different argument for differentiating between symposia and article selection. AnonProf wrote:

The submission of articles is different. It’s all about quality. We all know that not all symposia pieces are great. There are renowned scholars who sometimes put in too little effort into their symposia pieces, but others put in just as much as they do into their submitted articles. Symposia provide opportunity for capable people who are struggling to get into a field to get their foot in the door and write an excellent article for people to see what they can achieve when given the change. But journal submissions should be exclusively about quality. Undoubtedly, as I mentioned earlier, elitism comes into play, letterhead bias is disgusting, name recognition can get you in, and all those characteristics should be irrelevant. But using historical categories of discrimination to close spots to meritorious articles is just plain wrong.

I'm not sure I understand the relevance of the fact that some people blow off their symposia pieces. Again, in both contexts (symposia/conferences and article selection), selecting members of underrepresented groups can "provide opportunity for capable people who are struggling to get into a field to get their foot in the door and write an excellent article for people to see what they can achieve when given the chan[c]e." The only relevance of the fact that some blow off their symposia that I can see is that this makes symposia invites less of a benefit for everyone, but especially for "privileged" people who don't need to break into a field or make a name for themselves, whereas article placement remains (except for the true rock stars) extremely competitive for everyone.

In other words, AnonProf might be saying that AA in the symposia context is good because (1) it achieves equal opportunity/parity for non-privileged folks (however defined; this is shorthand) and (2) without taking away a very meaningful benefit from privileged folks (however defined). Whereas, although AA in the article placement context (1) also achieves equal opportunity/parity for non-privileged folks (and indeed, for reasons noted above, perhaps is even more effective in that context), it (2) does take away a meaningful benefit (an article placement spot) from privileged folk, and (3) especially meaningful benefits should be distributed according to merit, not demographics. The addition of (3) to the argument with which we began would seem to explain the extremely different reactions by many people to AA in these two contexts, but I think (3) requires defense (I’m not saying that it cannot be defended, just that its truth isn’t self-evident).

Absent such a defense, or an alternative explanation for why we should treat these two contexts differently, I return to my sense that these are essentially the same thing. How we resolve that inconsistency — by expanding AA from symposia/conferences to article selection, or by eliminating it from both contexts — is, of course, a separate question.

Comments

[TJ]

I don't have much to say about the main topic, but one correction: IP is not "male dominated" by any reasonable definition of the term. If one looks to the top 10 schools in this years US News (for a limited data set), we have, inter alia, Jane Ginsburg, Clarisa Long, Rochelle Dreyfuss, Kathy Strandburg, Jeanne Fromer, Rebecca Eisenburg, Pam Samuelson, Molly Van Houweling, Jessica Litman, Margo Bagley, and others that I'm sure I'm missing in a off-the-top-of-my-head list (no offense intended). There are men as well, but my impression is that the ratio is quite well balanced.

[Michelle Meyer]

Fair enough; correction made.

[Jeffrey Harrison]

I realize this post is on a side issue but the premise is the outcry against selection based on anything but merit. All I can say is "Oh Come on." If that is your beef than I assume you have been equally vocal about selection based on schools attended, taught at, and even one's name. Otherwise, hush up.

[Michelle Meyer]

Professor Harrison,

You seem to have read something into my post that is not there.

The post expresses no "beef" whatever. It expresses:

(1) intellectual curiosity about a seeming contradiction in equally strong, but opposite, views -- of others, in both cases -- on the appropriateness of AA in selecting faculty for (a) speaking and (b) publication slots, and

(2) skepticism about a compelling basis on which to distinguish these two contexts.

That’s it. I expressly say –- thrice – that:

-- “To be clear, I don’t mean to be asking a leading question; I’m truly just curious about what you and others commenting on this think about this possibly analogous practice,” and

-- "My immediate interest in this is not about the appropriateness, per se, of...AA in article selection. (For thoughts on that, see the links above)," and

-- "How we resolve that inconsistency [that the post suggests exists] — by expanding AA from symposia/conferences to article selection, or by eliminating it from both contexts — is, of course, a separate question."

I realize that it may seem odd for me to have spilled so much Internet ink on analyzing the question of whether two fact patterns are fully analogous or can instead be distinguished. As I noted, it was an exercise in “entirely nerdy parsing.” Chalk that up to my philosophical training and close reading of philosophical and theological texts. I would have thought I could also have chalked it up to my legal training, but perhaps not.

Your comment is a bit cryptic, so I’m not 100% sure, but I read you as saying: Meyer is clearly pro-merit in articles selection (and in symposia selection?), and therefore unless she has also publicly spoken out against the kind of extra-merit criteria that are involved in letterhead bias and which I critique on my class bias in higher education blog, she is a hypocrite and should “hush up.”

Given that the post is explicitly about exploring the presence or lack thereof of an analogy between two fact patterns, I'm perplexed about why you assume I so obviously favor one of those fact patterns over the other. That is, why do you assume that the "premise" of my post is the "outcry against selection based on anything but merit" in articles selection as opposed to the equally current, equally strong outcry against *refusing* to consider diversity in speaker selection? If one is going to misread my post, it should lend itself equally to both misinterpretations (and maybe it has, only to different interpretations by different people with different views on these questions). If anything, I would have thought that, since my contribution to L’Affaire Scholastica consists not of railing against the diversity widget or calling for a boycott, as do virtually all of the posts I link to, but instead of pointing out that we already do something similar in (what the post concludes is) the analogous context of speaker selection, that readers would be more likely to interpret my post as a thinly veiled defense of AA in both contexts. (Once again, to be crystal clear: it is not. I simply express no opinion on this.)

...Continued in next comment, owing to TypePad's restrictions on comment length (apparently)

[Michelle Meyer]

...Continued from previous comment

So I deny taking any position whatever here on AA in either the articles or speaker selection context (much less on AA in education admissions or hiring). But if you must know -- and since you asked *so nicely* -- I have in fact spoken out on the issue of letterhead bias, albeit in the narrow context of simply correcting the impression left in another CoOp thread by a law review editor who suggested that letterhead bias was a kind of peer review. Here's what I said, in relevant part:

"...with all due respect to Steve [the law review editor], looking at 'what sort of university presses have published [a professor's] work' does not constitute 'an element of peer review.' Nor does looking at 'how often professors’ work is being cited,' any more so than does reviewing their educational pedigree on the cv that law review editors generally make faculty enclose.

"It’s true that in some contexts we make an ex ante decision to support the researcher rather than the research, based on the quality of her training, past research, and an interesting idea for new work. Federal research funding sometimes works that way. But academic peer review is supposed to be an ex post evaluation of the merits of this particular piece of research, not the researcher and not her prior research. Ergo, blind peer review. The facts that Prof. X has been published by OUP and the Harvard Law Review and has a YLS JD? These are all decent and understandable (if deeply unfair) proxies for law review editors to rely on when they have little other choice b/c their time and knowledge are significantly constrained (especially given simultaneous submission). But they don’t constitute peer review or anything like it. One might even say that t[h]ey’re offensive to the values that underlie peer review."

My full comment and the context for it can be found here: http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2012/07/what-could-law-students-do-with-2-million-more-hours-a-year.html#comments

The only other time I can recall speaking up about AA was during my time on the Harvard Law Review. At that time (I don’t know if this has changed), I recall that there was a thumb on the scale for racial minorities, but not for gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic disadvantage, or any other category that plausibly might be justified by either a backwards-looking or forwards-looking rationale for AA. (My memory could be faulty, but that’s my recollection.) This policy seemed to me to be neither fish nor fowl and not well philosophically grounded (again, that pesky philosophical consistency thing), and I’d hoped that we could have a reasonable, intelligent discussion about it. But the policy seemed to be the result of an awkward compromise between those on the HLR who would have eliminated all AA and those who would have expanded it to other categories, and neither side seemed much interested in risking the territory it had gained.

Finally, I’ll note that in the original CoOp thread on Scholastica where I first raised this question, Dave Hoffman suggested that the anonymous law professors posting there should have the courage to write under their own names. I sincerely thank you for writing under yours. That said, when a tenured law professor feels free to tell someone who will probably never share that particular privilege, and who is actually sympathetic to the thrust of your blog, to “hush up” at the mere mention affirmative action, I think we have a pretty good idea of why anonymity in the blawgosphere, and on this and similar topics in particular, is so widespread.

[Tamara Piety]

Amen Michelle. Amen.

[TJ]

First, compliments to Michelle's last paragraph.

Second, as someone whose antipathy to letterhead bias has been made clear before, let me say to Jeff Harrison that there is in fact quite a principled distinction here. Letterhead bias--while a terrible thing--is still rationally related to the goal of selecting high quality articles in an environment where editors are time-crunched. It is an imperfect proxy for quality, but people use imperfect proxies all the time. The point is that letterhead bias is not inconsistent with a theory that law review editors seek to maximize quality within time constraints.

I have not yet seen a theory of how the race, gender, and sexual orientation of an article author serve as proxies for quality. The furor over L’Affaire Scholastica is that it seems inconsistent with our understanding that law review editors seek to maximize quality within time constraints.

To Michelle, there is one distinction between law review selection and conference selection, though I admit it is not a particularly strong one. The diversity theory of affirmative action says that affirmative action is not to help the beneficiary herself, but to expose other (straight white male) participants to unfamiliar views and aid their education. That works for conference invites, where the selector doesn't know what any speaker is going to say, and so the race/gender/sexual orientation of the speaker serves as an ex ante proxy for unfamiliar views that will be educational to the audience. But it doesn't work for article selection, because the selector already know what the article says.

[Jeffrey Harrison]

Michelle, as I wrote, I was not responding to your post directly. I think it poses a very interesting question and I did not read you as having a beef at all. I was responding to this which I think is true: "Although these musing reflect a range of views, the majority, it seems to me, objects — in some cases vehemently, with calls for a boycott — to the notion of journals deliberately selecting articles on any basis other than merit." My comment was that all those holding forth on the need for merit based selection should be equally concerned about resume, letterhead, and name bias. I enjoyed your response nonetheless and am bit surprised my own comment was evidently not clear.

Tamara, in my opinion, any view that letter head bias is useful in selection of meritorious articles simply helps a corrupt and incestuous system persist. I sympathize with the editors faced with thousands of articles but there is no known correlation between where a person went to school or where they teach and the quality of their work. Reliance on institutional authority is devastating to intellectual as well as most other forms of diversity. Talk about buying into a corrupt system!

[Jeffrey Harrison]

Oh, now I see the source of the misunderstanding. The "your" in my comment was not "you" but a collective notion of "if your beef." Plus, I have expressed no view on AA other than that which currently exists for the privileged and that, btw, is pervasive and the only AA I oppose. Sorry to have caused you to write so much.

[Michelle Meyer]

Hi Jeffrey (if I may),

Thanks very much for that clarification. Yes, in addition to interpreting "your" and "you" as referring to me, as you suggest, I now see that I was also led astray by your opening reference to "this post" (which I took to mean my blog post, rather than your comment on said post), and to "the premise," which lacks any referent (but which I took to refer to the premise of my blog post rather than to the premise of others' discussions of Scholastica that I was, in part, discussing in said post).

Anyhoo, I'll let those to whom you were actually referring respond to your substantive point. As for our star-crossed blog exchange (and I thought Twitter's 140 characters lent itself to misunderstandings!), all's well that ends well. Many thanks again for clarifying.

[Jeffrey Harrison]

M, thanks for the reply. Of course it is Jeff!

[Prof 56]

I think it's a question of social norms. When a selected group is going to meet in person, the prevailing social norm in legal academia is to have a head count. An passionate objection will be made if the numbers aren't somewhat representative based on race/gender lines, so steps are taken ex ante to avoid the objection. That's the case with symposia, conference panels, faculty hiring, and admissions, all of which involve some personal meeting or head count. On the other hand, when the selected group is not going to meet in person for a head count, the social norm is to make the choice as much merit-based as possible. That's the case with article selection, grading student exams, citation rankings, and other competitions that don't meet in person or become readily subject to a head count.

[darknight]

I think it's a great development. Liberal prof's have subjected students to AA for decades, what's good for the goose ...

[Michelle Meyer]

To Prof 56,

I certainly agree that we have two opposing, but equally strong, sets of social norms – reflecting, I assume, two opposing, but equally strong sets of intuitions – about AA in the distribution of speaking versus publication opportunities (hence, the OP). The question, though, is whether these norms, and the underlying intuitions they reflect, are justified or even rational.

If you’re suggesting that the difference has to do with how observable a lack of diversity is in the two contexts, then I guess I’m skeptical of that explanation. One can easily count white males versus others published in various law review volumes (see comment #13 at http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2013/02/in-defense-of-law-review-affirmative-action.html), although maybe you’d say that this is a recent development, in which case we nonetheless would expect the social norm to shift to acceptance of AA in articles selection.

To TJ,

Interesting. So one forward-looking, “positive externality” rationale for AA is, as you say, exposing non-minority/privileged people to diverse views. And, as you say, if what we’re really after is intellectual diversity, then demographics are only a proxy (perhaps a very rough one). Call this Rationale 1. In articles selection, we can simply select diverse intellectual contributions directly, but, you say, the proxy make (more) sense in selecting speakers because we don’t know in advance what they’re going to say. I agree that the conclusion follows from the premises, but I’m skeptical of this last premise. In my experience, at least, conference speakers are usually selected on the basis of abstracts, so we have a pretty good idea what they would say, if selected. As for invited symposia, does anyone really ever invite someone who has not already written or spoken on an issue or at least on a related issue that gives the selector some pretty good sense of what the speaker would contribute to the symposium?

Your comment brings to mind three additional forward-looking, “positive externality” rationales for AA that are worth exploring to see if they can be used to distinguish between speaking and publication opportunities. (Spoiler alert: I don’t think they can.) All three focus on exposing non-minority/privileged people to diverse *people,* rather than to diverse ideas, per se. Rationale 2 says that minority/non-privileged people have different experiences from which we can benefit. It may be that often these diverse experiences will translate into diverse ideas/arguments, so that Rationale 2 dovetails with Rationale 1, but I gather that some people would see these as separate rationales. Kaimi at CoOps seems to make something like this argument towards the end of his post. Here, demographics is no longer a proxy for what will be said (aloud or in print), so there should be no difference between the appropriateness of AA in selection of speakers versus writers.

Rationale 3 similarly seeks to expose non-minority/privileged people to diverse *people,* regardless of their substantive views -- but this time in the hope that doing so will debias the majority’s explicit or implicit bias against members of minority/non-privileged groups (see Jolls, Antidiscrimination Law's Effects on Implicit Bias, http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/Jolls_Antidiscrimination_Laws_Effects_on_Implicit_Bias.pdf). Again, assuming that the bias one seeks to eliminate or reduce is based not on viewpoint but on demographics (as the IAT suggests), then demographics are what we’re targeting, not a proxy for content, and we’re left again with the no-difference view of AA in writing and speaking.

A final forward-looking, “positive externality” rationale for AA, Rationale 4, seeks to provide role models for other members of minority/non-privileged groups. Same analysis: here, we’re after role models about whom younger folks can say, “S/he looks like me and is successful; maybe I can be, too.” We can stop with demographics (so long as the role model will in fact be successful in his or her selected role) without otherwise attending to the content of his or her talk or article.

[TJ]

Michelle, I largely agree with what you say. I was more throwing Rationale 1 out as one that can be defended than being passionately committed to it. I still do think it can be defended--a full article is of course more detailed and concrete than an abstract or a guess based on prior work, so the relative usefulness of the demographics proxy declines in article selection vis-a-vis speaker selection. Again, even I don't think it is a particularly strong rationale, but it is what I would throw out if I were a lawyer faced with your question from a judge.

[Prof 56]

Michelle,

I think you're missing the group dynamic of how AA plays out in the academy. Some people in the academy believe in a meritocracy: they think the best should be recognized as the best, and they have confidence that they can tell what is good. They think blind evaluation should prevail in an ideal world, so they don't want to consider race/gender/sexuality. Other people in the academy are very focused on race/gender/sexuality dynamics and they will insist on representativeness. They are less sure about "merit," but they know it is relatively easy to count who is of what gender, who is of what race, and who is out about their sexual preference. Still other people are somewhere in the middle: They like the idea of merit, but they also are committed to some amount of representativeness. How the group dynamic plays out depends on the salience of race/gender/sexuality of that particular selection. When a group is selected to be recognized and that group meets in person, the visibleness of the physical appearance makes the diversity dynamic easy to see, so the objections are very likely to be made from the second group and the first group is likely to (begrudgingly) go along with it. When that group is not likely to meet in person, the visibleness of the diversity is less salient, less likely to be objected to, and so less likely to be acted on ex ante. The issue is salience and group dynamics, not logic.

The interesting aspect of article selection is that until it was easy to google authors, it was hard to figure out their race and whether they were out LGBTers. Those questions were less salient, and so articles were judged on merit. Websites with pictures, CVs, and change that, introducing a way to make race/gender/sexuality salient. So we have a disagreement on social norms, with one side wanting to make it salient and the other side wanting it not to be salient. I don't know which side will win out: I suspect it depends on whether it is made a priority of the second group (the group committed to representativeness).

[Tamara Piety]

Jeff (If I also may) You write: "Tamara, in my opinion, any view that letter head bias is useful in selection of meritorious articles simply helps a corrupt and incestuous system persist. I sympathize with the editors faced with thousands of articles but there is no known correlation between where a person went to school or where they teach and the quality of their work. Reliance on institutional authority is devastating to intellectual as well as most other forms of diversity. Talk about buying into a corrupt system!"

I couldn't agree more. I think perhaps you misunderstood the direction of my "amen." I meant to agree that it is not a good system, even if it is terribly pervasive.

[Disabled Attorney]

I am a disabled attorney. Once I earned my JD, I spent years unemployed but not for want of trying. I applied for literally thousands of jobs and with the Army JAG. Without exception, I was rejected from each one. The scumbag proponents of "diversity" for gays and women should answer to the disabled. As a group, our poverty rate is over 25% (a rate comparable to American Indians) but no one, NO ONE is advocating for us.