Diversity of everything: race, age, sex, alma mater, native language...
I think the key message is: limiting your hiring to a specific race is equally as stupid as limiting it to MIT graduates or to people who grew up in Queens.
I think the key message is: limiting your hiring to a specific race is equally as stupid as limiting it to MIT graduates or to people who grew up in Queens.
The key message (the bailey) that diversity advocates tend to push these days is that, if you just go about hiring in what you normally think is the best way, and you end up with hires of only one specific race (or of a few races, but none of a certain few other races), then you are doing something wrong and bad, and you should change your hiring process so you end up with people of more races, even if that means sacrificing some of the goals for which you originally optimized your hiring process.
Intentionally perhaps not, but that doesn't mean that they aren't doing so unintentionally. As a silly example, if you restrict yourself to hiring Stanford CS grads, you'll have a hard time hiring more than a few Black people each year. If you aren't offering the best possible offers, and going out of your way to court those handful of students, you may not end up with any.
> then you are doing something wrong and bad
This isn't a bailey. To continue the above example, you have a few options. You can court those specific students, maybe that's a bad idea. Alternatively, you can look in more places. Hire from other schools, like state schools especially in the southeast. You'll find a ton more candidates, many of whom are just as qualified as those from Stanford. And you'll end up with a more diverse workforce along just about any axis you could pick.
You didn't sacrifice anything except the ability to say "we only hire Stanford grads", which isn't really a sacrifice.
Your education needs to fit reality at least somehow.