Word: merit
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...appropriate good faith effort. The effect of numerical goals up to now is that the employer simply tries to reach the goal, period. Despite the provision in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that nothing in it is meant to set aside an employer's determination of merit, these have been set aside again and again under reasoning I find difficult to accept. It is safer for an institution to set some goal, and try to reach...
...Does the opposition to numerical goals and targets mean that merit is the only basis on which admission and hiring should proceed? This is the most radical and consistent position of those of us who oppose quotas; it is not my position. I do not think we can insist only on merit in every situation and for all purposes There are two general arguments I accept in the limitation of merit as the sole basis for employment or admissions...
There is a second situation in which the jobs involved or the places to which admittance is sought should have a representative or political character. Consider school principals of a large city. Certainly merit should be a factor in their employment. Should it be the only factor? They must deal with communities and students and teachers and politicians. A representative character should prevail to some extent in their selection. Should their selection then be on the basis of group quotas? No, the best guide to attaining representative character is found in certain features of the political process itself: the balanced...
There are those areas of employment or admission where merit alone should prevail. The medical school, I would think, is one such area. The training of physicists and, I would argue, scholars of all sorts are other examples. There is simply no way of introducing "representative" character in areas where talent is essential, such as writing novels or playing chess. It may come to pass that most of the novelists are black and most of the chess-players Jews. So be it. One cannot legislate talent, nor should we try to--one simply doesn't set obstacles in talent...
Many Faculty members favor merit-based grants. Department chairman, in fact, objected to the Kraus plan because it afforded them little leeway in granting this type of award. They say such grants are necessary to insure that the most capable students decide to come here for graduate work, and explain that if Harvard drops the grants the GSAS will be at a bidding disadvantage with other universities...