> I spoke with a famous dean who told me, to the effect that, we have been instructed to focus heavily on candidates with the right gender and certain attribute

> I spoke with a famous dean who told me, to the effect that, we have been instructed to focus heavily on candidates with the right gender and certain attributes (that you may imagine). Basically if you are not born in this pool, forget it. Posting this type of hearsay is kind of irresponsible. It’s so vague and suggestive. We don’t know who the dean is or where this happened but he’s allegedly famous (juicy!), and apparently he didn’t literally say this but said it “to the effect” (surely we can trust you interpretation), and we’re left to imagine the type of attributes that might give a candidate an edge. What are we supposed to do with this? You then go on to cite this as a reason why academia is no longer an efficient allocation of public resources. As if academia has not long been a place with arbitrary gatekeeping. Have you noticed that until not that long ago female faculty in STEM fields weren’t that common? I’m not saying diversity efforts are implemented well in all institutions. But criticism of these measures so often feel hollow. Any hint of the system favoring a different type of candidate and a certain pool of applicants (with demographics that you may imagine) suddenly start caring about truly equal treatment. Before, being a woman would automatically reduce your chances, but somehow that didn’t affect the credibility of these institutions. Suddenly now we care about whether they are a good use of public resources.