Re: Diversity of IETF Leadership

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On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:01:41PM -0700, Dan Harkins wrote:
> > For candidates wherein the above things are roughly equal - or have
> > exceeded
> > the requirements - diversity is a possible tie-breaker.  If the intent is
> > to
> > emphasize diversity (for some metric) over one of the core skills, that's
> > certainly possible.
> 
>   By "that", I take it you mean it's certainly possible to discriminate in
> favor
> some metric of diversity and against a core skill. So? Is that the intent?
> 
>   There is quite a bit of dancing around this subject and it would be nice
> to say what we all mean here. If you're proposing that IETF start the
> practice of discriminating against certain people then say so.

Have care, you're close to putting words in my mouth. :-)

If what you mean is that emphasizing diversity over a core skill with
respect to selection of people for positions of responsibility is a form of
discrimination, that's how some people have presented it.  I.e. "affirmative
action".

If you're asking for my personal opinion, I think we should stick to meeting
core criteria minimums and that among candidates that meet those
requirements consider diversity as one of the criteria.

>   You snipped my other question. So let me ask again. What do we do
> if, after ensuring that there's a diverse candidate pool that satisfies the
> minimum core skills needed for positions, 

Good start for a presumption.

> the end result is more white men?

I believe you, and many others, are inferring over much with regard to
diversity from the black box that is NomCom.

Unfortunately that is a big ugly part of this whole discussion.  Part
of the perception here is the the NomCom is fed a candidate pool and the
output mostly matches beliefs that diversity is not an input.  It's like any
other job interview - you only know you don't get the job.  You may know who
did.  Without getting someone on the hiring committe to talk about why the
person in question is selected, you can only speculate as to why you weren't
selected.  

If instead you (or someone else) is going to argue that given an input of a
set of candidates that match some crtieria of diversity that it is a
requirement that the output include something that meets that diversity
criteria, then pick your word for that result.

>   Do we stop with the pretense of ensuring diversity of opportunity
> and just proceed to diversity of result? Do we enshrine the "soft bigotry
> of low expectations"?

Or we define our requirements for the outputs of the process and stop
speculating about the black box.  C.f. the tsvarea discussion on what they
want out of an AD.

-- Jeff


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