0n 13 July 1999, members of a Canadian scholarly society called Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Sciences received an e‑mail message advertising an opening for a faculty position in developmental psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) in Waterloo, Ontario. The ad included the following words: "The department is attempting to address a gender imbalance in its depart­ment, and therefore will hire a woman for this position, as allowed by the Spe­cial Program of the Ontario Human Rights Commission."  Less than a month later, and after the woman‑only ad had generated some controversy in the media,' Professor Angelo Santi, chair of the psychology department, appeared on a radio talk show (station CHML) in nearby Hamilton, Ontario to explain his department's and university's hiring procedure. Professor Sand was asked directly by tile show's host, Roy Green, "If a man were the best qualified for the position, you wouldn't hire him, is that right" Professor Santi replied, "Yes, not for this position."

Wilfrid Laurier University's open admission of blatant discrimination against hiring men illustrates many of the themes that are present in the diversity de­bates in Canada. I will discuss this story in detail, and, as much as possible, quote the words used by faculty and administrators at Wilfrid Laurier Univer­sity to demonstrate my points.

Clearly, there is a potential conflict between providing rights to individuals that protect them from discrimination and compelling universities (and em­ployers generally) to increase the representation of some groups. One can read, in the various relevant statutes and regulations, words and sentences that imply that measures to increase representation do not mean establishing quo­tas, trashing the merit principle, or harming the rights of others, but instead are aimed at removing discriminatory practices and barriers, and increasing the opportunity of all people and groups to compete on an equal footing. That's theory. In practice, special programs to increase representativeness have actually increased discrimination against some groups while unfairly advantaging others. In some cases, increasing the representativeness of some groups has become an end in itself, independent of the criteria specified in section 14(1) of the Code, which are concerned with increasing equal opportu­nity. I believe this has happened at WLU, and I now return to a discussion of the case.

With regard to Santi's comment that the Ontario Human Rights Commis­sion (OHRC) approved the department's special program to advertise a woman­ only position, Stewart Page, a colleague at the University of Windsor, wrote to the OHRC specifically about this. Ms. Pearl Eliadis of the OHRC was adamant in her response:  "the Commission does not pre‑approve special programs. We do provide technical information and assistance (as I am doing in this Email) but not approvals (August 4, 1999)."

Note that nowhere in Professor Santi's answer did he comment that WLU’s special program is designed to relieve hardship or economic disadvantage or achieve equal opportunity for the female applicants for a faculty position in psychology ─ the essential criteria outlined in section 14(1). Additionally, Santi did not claim that the department had been discriminating against women in the past. I wrote to Professor Santi again, saying, "My understanding is that your department has not discriminated against women in the past; indeed, has interviewed women for faculty positions and has offered positions to women." He did not deny my assertions.

Margaret Wente, a columnist for the Globe and Mail ─ one of Canada's na­tional newspapers ‑ after talking to Professor Santi, came to conclusions simi­lar to mine. She wrote, "But it became obvious that the gender imbalance in the department has absolutely nothing to do with discrimination. In fact, the university has turned flipflops to recruit female professors . . . . Laurier's real problem is that good female candidates are scarce, and they have their pick of jobs. For several legitimate reasons, Laurier isn't at the top of their list."

A second person I contacted (this time by phone) to learn about the ratio­nale behind WLU's job ad was Ms. Fr an Manson, the Employment Equity Of­ficer at WLU. I asked her if I could have a copy of the special program document to see the rationale and the evidence for myself. Initially, she said, "Sure, I don't see why not, but I'll check with the Vice‑President." I asked if the Vice ­President she was referring to was Rowland Smith. She said it was. Several days later I received an e‑mail response from Ms. Manson which stated, "Concern­ing your request to receive a copy of our Special Program, I have made some inquires and have been informed that this is not a public document."

Data provided to me by the university confirm the conclusion that there was no discrimination against women at WLU. For the academic year s 1992‑93 to 1997‑1998 and 1999‑2000, WLU hired 197 faculty members and 44.7 percent of them were women. In that same period, women represented only 25.6 per­cent of the applicant pool and 34.4 percent of those interviewed. Thus, women were hired in greater percentages throughout the 1990s than they were  represented  in either   the applicant or interview pool. A similar picture emerges if we examine only the new faculty positions in social sciences, the category to which the psychology department is assigned. Here, for the same academic years as before, sixty people were hired as faculty, 46.7 percent of them women. During the same period, women comprised 29.2 percent of the applicant pool and 41.2 percent of those interviewed. Thus, whether we examine the recent hiring record of the psychology department, faculty of social science, or the university as a whole, we find that relative to the pool of actual applicants, there is no evidence that women have been treated in a discriminatory man­ner. To the contrary, women were more likely to have been hired than men. Therefore women cannot be considered a group requiring relief from hard­ship or economic disadvantage, or assistance in achieving equal opportunity, which are the criteria of section 14 of the Code.

This analysis of WLU's hiring pattern is not unique. For example, Grant Browns has demonstrated empirically that women are much more likely than men to be hired relative to their numbers in the applicant pool for faculty positions. Brown found this to be the case in universities throughout Canada, including: Victoria, Simon Fraser, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Windsor, Western, Ryerson, Queen's, and Concordia. Likewise, Andrew Irvine," in his review of Statistics Canada data, found that, despite common misconceptions, claims of significant, sustained, widespread discrimination in hiring against women in Canadian universities remain unsupported by the available statisti­cal data.
 
I agree with Professor Parker's analysis that "special programs for women, that have been in place for a number of years . . . that guarantee tenure­ stream appointments for women, are skimming off the cream of the female PhD pool. These women, with strong research interests, may not be interested in working at a smaller university without a PhD program and the attendant lab facilities, although Laurier has been successful in hiring some excellent women in Psychology lately."

Despite her denial of discrimination and, in my view, correct understanding of the reason for Laurier's lack of success in hiring as many women as they would like, Parker makes a startling admission in the Reis article: "It's a hard decision to come to but we just got to the point where we decided hiring solely on the basis of excellence wasn't working anymore." In fact, this observation was put into action. Santi further commented, "Members directed the Chair to look into doing something, such as an ad specifically directed to women." According to Reis, the department voted to search only for women for three years or until the department consisted of 35 percent female faculty members.

Enablers of WLU's Sex‑Based Preferential Hiring

The CAUT Bulletin's stated advertising .policy says, "The publisher will not accept advertisements of academic positions restricting applications on grounds of race, national origin, religion, colour, sex (emphasis added), age, marital status, family status, ethnicity, disability, sexual preference, social origin, or political beliefs or affiliation. CAUT expects that all positions advertised in the Bulletin are open to both men and women. Advertisements using restrictive language will not be accepted except when the language has been Mandated (emphasis added) by Human Rights legislation." The executive director of CAUT, Jim Turk, answered me that the CAUT would follow its published job advertising policy.

What could be clearer; the ad would certainly be rejected for publication, or so I thought. But one month before WLU's woman ‑ only ad appeared in the CAUT Bulletin, CAUT changed its advertising policy by substituting the words "1S consistent with" for the earlier phrase "has been mandated" by Human Rights legislation, in the statement shown above. Thus apparently to accommodate WLU, in the fall o£ 1999 CAUT weakened its own criteria for judging discrimi­nation. Discrimination on the grounds of sex is permissible to Canada's larg­est professorial organization, so long as the discrimination is against men.

First, hiring preferences reflect a view of the university as a parliament rather than an intellectual meritocracy. From this perspective, the merit principle of choosing the best person for the job is weakened, while at the same time the epistemological purpose of the university gives way to social engineering goals.

Second, diversity is seen as necessary and, perhaps, sufficient for excellence. Thus an individual's ideas or merit are tied to and confused with biological background. This used to be called sexism and racism.

Third, there is an inability on the part of hiring‑preference proponents to perceive, accept, or deal with the injustice caused to a man who was excluded as a candidate for a job simply on the basis of his sex. Regrettably, the irony is completely lost on such proponents. What matters, apparently, is which group won a benefit rather than which individual lost an opportunity.

In sum, the WLU case illustrates that employment equity at the university level has little to do with human rights in the sense of repairing the damage of past or current discriminatory practices. Employment equity is all about in­creasing the representativeness of some groups at the expense of others, sim­ply as a goal in itself. Sadly, the WLU events are not atypical of these trends in Canadian higher education (see Fekete and the website of the Society for Aca­demic Freedom and Scholarship).¹²

Postscript

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