Word: mansfield
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Mansfield: Equal opportunity, is our liberal principle, and I don't think it is true to say that Blacks have not had a lot of opportunity within the, say, last 15 years. Before that, you wouldn't find very many Blacks in development offices and high positions in universities. But I think there has been a great change in the situation in this country, and I'm almost 50 years old, I grew up in Washington, D.C. a Southern, segregated city. When I look back at the difference between how Blacks were treated then and now, I see an enormous...
...Mansfield: There are two things that can be said First, that there are so many other new opportunities for Blacks paying opportunities, that I think, a lot of them don't go into university administration. It's certainly the case that the best Black undergraduate students don't go to graduate school anymore to become professors. The percentage of Blacks going into academia is lower now than was a generation ago. And second, as with regard to employment, I was, of course, referring to racial discrimination, and not to employment. What's happened in employment is in great part connected...
...Mansfield: Yes, indeed, I would make a distinction between admissions and hiring. I would make a distinction between those situations where merit is expected and required, and a situation where a community must be filled and sustained. An undergraduate body is a kind of community. If it doesn't have a substantial proportion of Blacks and women, then it is defective as a community. One could easily fill up places at Harvard with 100 people with the highest SAT scores. We've never done that. We didn't do that before affirmative action, and we're not going...
Bane: I'm pleased to hear Professor Mansfield say what he did about admissions policies, because I think the diversity of the student body is the right thing to keep in mind. I think to some extent, some of those same arguments were applied with regard to faculty, that there is an advantage to a university to having Blacks and women among its faculty. In paying attention to affirmative action, we've broadened our recruiting pool, we've made some special efforts to go out and bring people in to be interviewed who might not have been found...
...Mansfield: I think that when you speak of diversity, you must remember that diversity means diversity of contribution that each person is not just bringing characteristics, but bringing contributions to a community. I don't think it is necessarily the case that each racial or social or economic group in the United States is going to be like each other group. That I think is wrong, and that I think, is another mistake of affirmative action. Affirmative action freezes the status quo: it makes it seem that the professors which are the most highly prized and the ones which Black...