Reflections From a Murky Pond

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On Tuesday, January 22, 2008, Former Senator Fred Thomson signaled the end his run for the US presidency. Mr. Thompson resigned from the race after his disappointing third-place finish in South Carolina’s GOP primary. He finished with 16 percent of the vote, whereas McCain and Huckabee finished with 33% and 30% of the vote respectively.

Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for president of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people.

– Fred Thompson

Thompson was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1994 and represented Tennessee for eight years. Thompson had hoped that South Carolina, the first Southern state contested in this election cycle would provide him with a strong showing that could have revitalized his stagnating campaign.

Fred Thompson is reported to be a long time friend of Sen. John McCain. It is completely conceivable to me that we’ll see Mr. Thompson becoming McCain’s running mate in the near future.

Most diversity training efforts at US companies are at best ineffective and often even counterproductive in increasing the number of women and minorities in managerial positions. Decades of conventional wisdom have been shown to be horribly flawed and erroneous by a recent study of the long-term effects of diversity training in the American workplace.

An in-depth recent American Sociological Review study performed by by Alexandra Kalev of UC Berkeley, Frank Dobbin of Harvard, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota reviewed 31 years of data from 830 mid-size to large U.S. and found that the kind of diversity training exercises offered at most firms were followed by:

• A 7.5% drop in the overall number of women in management.
• A 10% drop in the number of Black, female managers
• A 12% drop in the number of Black men in top positions.
• Similar drops in management were seen for Latinos and Asians.

The sociologists’ study shows that organizational responsibility and accountability make a difference; diversity training and evaluation don’t. It begs the question - why didn’t the EEOC examine these issues years ago?

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