Video footage appears to show UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky telling a class that he discriminates against potential faculty hires to boost racial diversity using what he called “unstated affirmative action.” The Dean tells his audience, “If ever I’m deposed, I’m going to deny I said this to you.”
“What I mean by ‘unstated affirmative action’ is, what if the college or university doesn’t tell anybody, doesn’t make any public statements?” Chemerinsky says at the beginning of the video.
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“I’ll give you an example from our law school, but if ever I’m deposed, I’m going to deny I said this to you. When we do faculty hiring, we’re quite conscious that diversity is important to us,” the Berkeley Law dean continued.
“We say diversity is important — it’s fine to say that,” Chemerinsky explained. “But I’m very careful when we have a faculty appointments committee meeting.”
The dean went on to say that whenever someone says they want to hire a certain candidate due to diversity, he instructs them not to say that aloud.
“Any time somebody says to you, ‘We should really prefer this candidate or this candidate, because this person would add diversity’ — don’t say that,” Chemerinsky said. “You can think it, you can vote it, but our discussions are not privileged.”
“So don’t ever articulate that that’s what you’re doing,” the dean asserted.
“Well, that works more easily with regard to faculty hiring. With regard to student admissions, it becomes more difficult, because of the statistical measure,” he added.
The video was posted to social media on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action in college admissions.
Additionally, affirmative action has been illegal in California since 1996. And the tablet that can be seen in the video, near Chemerinsky’s desk, suggests the clip was taken recently.
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