Cu’s Affirmative Action Policy to Include Statement Banning Employment Quota System

The City Board of Higher Education has accepted a proposal by the Metropolitan Council of the American Jewish Congress that the City University “affirmative action” policy include a statement banning any “employment quota system based on race, religion, gender or ethnic origin,” it was disclosed today.

In a letter to Theodore J. Kolish, chairman of the AJCongress Metropolitan Council, board chairman Luis Quero-Chiesa said the BHE had voted to “clarify” its affirmative action program for increasing CUNY employment of minorities, including women, by endorsing a memorandum from CUNY Chancellor Robert J. Kibbee that opposed “hiring or promotion on the basis of criteria other than merit.” Kolish had requested acceptance of the Chancellor’s position in a letter to the board on Jan. 24. At its meeting of Feb. 28, the board endorsed the memorandum “as part of CUNY policy on affirmative action,” Mr. Quero-Chiesa reported.

PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE FOR HIRING

In the memorandum Kibbee wrote that the board, the Affirmative Action Committee and the CUNY administration had tried “to develop a policy statement that would meet the criteria of the federal executive orders but would not be erroneously interpreted to mean that the university was attempting to establish an employment quota system based upon race, religion, gender or ethnic origin.”

He added: “Employment selection is to be based primarily upon vocational or professional competence within the framework of those constraints set by civil service law, the board’s bylaws and those professional standards duly established by constituent faculty.” Kibbee’s memorandum came after the Congress’ Metropolitan Council testified in opposition to an earlier draft of the CUNY affirmative action plan. In opposing the original plan, the AJCongress had warned that the draft proposal would “set a pattern of reverse discrimination.”