What would Hakeem do?
Jana and Indria are colleagues who applied for two open positions at Centa University. Both women hold doctorate degrees and have over 8 years of research experience. On Monday, February 13, 2023, Jana received notification that she had been scheduled for a Zoom interview. The position is within a medical school's diversity and inclusion department as a senior research analyst. The interview details noted that in order to reduce potential unconscious bias all candidates were assigned "placeholder names" and were advised to leave their cameras off. The e-mail informed Jana her pseudonym was “Dusty Chief Buffalo.” She called Indria to share the news and informed Indria of the assigned pseudonym and stated that she found the pseudonym to be offensive. Indria advised that she was assigned the pseudonym of "Charcoal.” Both women were to replace their names with the assigned pseudonyms and would be addressed by their pseudonyms during each individual interview. Jana is a American Indian and Indria is a dark-skinned multi-racial (American Indian and Black) woman. The University is a predominately white institution with very few people of color employed. Both women are upset over their assigned pseudonyms and cancelled their interviews.
Hakeem Lati is the director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Centa University. On Monday, February 20, 2023, he noticed two certified letters in his mail inbox addressed to the Diversity Department. Hakeem opened the first letter, and it shared the above details of Jana’s experience and the assigned pseudonym. The second letter shared details of Indria’s experience and the assigned pseudonym.
Upon investigation, Hakeem discovered that the “new policy for conducting interviews and assigning pseudonyms was implemented by the new vice president of human resources. After checking the electronic database of applications, Hakeem noted the pseudonyms were assigned by the new candidate pre-screening system which requires applicants to complete a virtual screening process requiring canidates to introduce themselves via a short video recording. Hakeem was perplexed as to how to proceed and determine if the assigned pseudonyms were intentional human error (pseudonyms assigned by a person) or biases written into the artificial intelligence program used to pre-screen applicants and record the short videos. He leaned toward biases written into the artificial intelligence program. Hakeem was alarmed because he found evidence of the vice president of human resources and her executive assistant’s knowledge of the pseudonyms.
What would Hakeem do?
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