Questions Concerning the White House Talking Points on Dean Kagan’s Hiring

As most people probably know, Duke’s Guy-Uriel Charles wrote a devastating blog post criticizing the lack of diversity in Harvard Law School hiring while Elena Kagan was Dean.  (Short version: 28 of 29 were white, one was asian; 23 of the 29 were men.)  The White House has now pushed back against the post by releasing what strikes me as a rather pathetic set of talking points — look, non-white student enrollment has gone up 2%! — concerning Dean Kagan’s tenure.  I’m sure Guy-Uriel and others will analyze the talking points better than I; I simply want to raise a few questions here.  One of the points the White House makes is that Guy-Uriel’s statistics are “misleading,” because “[t]hey do not account for a very critical part of the picture – the numbers of offers Kagan made to minority and women scholars. The numbers Charles cites reflect the yield – i.e., how many professors accepted Harvard’s offer to join the faculty.”  The document then provides a chart indicating that each year Harvard’s Lateral Appointments Committee made no less than 13% of its offers to non-whites and no less than 27% of its offers to women. Impressive, huh?

Well, perhaps not.  The chart is entitled “Total Visiting Professor Offers Approved by the Lateral Appointments Committee to Minorities and Women.”  At most schools — if not all — there is a fundamental difference between an offer to visit the school and an offer to “join the faculty.”  Indeed, although some visiting offers are “look-see visits” that can turn into permanent positions, others are simply “podium visits” that do not result in a vote on whether to hire the visitor.

So here are my questions for the Harvard folks out there.  First, does the chart reflect actual offers to join the faculty or simply offers to spend a semester at Harvard? (It has to be the latter.  I seriously doubt Harvard made 189 permanent offers between 2005 and 2008!)  Second, if it is the latter, how many of those visiting offers were “look-see” visits, how many were “podium” visits, and what was the racial/gender breakdown between the two?  Third, how many of the “look-see” visits resulted in a non-white and/or female visitor being offered a permanent position?

P.S. In the unlikely event that the numbers are accurate, shouldn’t we then be asking why so few non-white and women professors are willing to accept a permanent offer from one of the world’s most prestigious law schools?