Damned if you do and damned if you don't

[Boojatta]

How can people who decide whether or not to hire a particular professor from another country avoid both of the following?

(a) in case the professor is hired, being guilty of contributing to a brain drain in that foreign country.

(b) in case the professor isn't hired, being guilty of discriminating based on the professor's nationality.

[bananas]

1. You can't avoid it

Even if people don't say, they'll think it.

[Boojatta]

6. That some random person thinks something doesn't imply that what they think is true.

My question was how people who decide whether or not to hire a particular professor can avoid being guilty.

[ZombieHorde]

2. Only hire stupid professors. No brain drain, no racial discrimination.

[Boojatta]

3. Would it be possible to hire highly intelligent professors,

but simply persuade people that the hired professors are stupid?

[pinqy]

4. The best approach I've found

in cases like this is to go to make the question as generic as possible, find the answer that fits the generic situation while examiing different scenarios that would fit the generic problem, and then see if any particular exceptions apply.

So, the professor is attempting to do something that, while legal and not uncommon, you feel has a negative effect on society (the professor's), and you wonder whether it is right or wrong to hire the professor and support what you feel (but the professor obviously does not) to be a wrong.

Some people hold that women working outside the house is similarly a negative on society. Substitute particulars so we have
(a) in case the woman is hired, being guilty of contributing to the deterioration of the family unit.
(b) in case the woman isn't hired, being guilty of discriminating based on sex.

How would you answer that scenario? I would answer that regardless of personal views it's not the hirer's decision to force his viewpoints on the woman as to what is good or bad for society.

So, are there any substanitive differences between the two, other than personal opinion on what is negative to society? If there are, then are they important enough to justify a different decision?

Personally I don't see any.

[Boojatta]

5. "make the question as generic as possible"

What makes you think that your scenario is "more generic" than my scenario? I suppose that the majority of people who are hired in America are American citizens. However, what reason is there to insist upon hiring as a key element in my question that must remain fixed? This is the Race/Equality topic forum. If you search through the active threads and the archives then you will probably discover that, in the opinion of many past and present participants in this forum, inequality manifests itself in a variety of ways rather than just in hiring.

Various words in the English language don't even distinguish between nationality and ethnicity. For example, what does it mean to say that somebody is "Japanese"? The word in isolation gives no clue whatsoever as to whether we're talking about nationality, ethnicity, or perhaps something else that is neither a matter of nationality nor a matter of ethnicity.