POSSIBLE ASST. PROF. POSITION AT RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

[Matt Tittle]

A question for the list that I have wondered about for some time.

Is it legal for a job description to designate that a candidate must be
a "native" speaker of the language to be taught (as with the Rutgers
position posted today)?  My intent isn't to spark a discussion of the
definition of "native," but I think it implies that the employer is
looking only for a candidate whose first and dominant language is
Russian (in this case).  This severly limits the applicant pool and
seems to be a form of ethnic or nationality discrimination.  I thought
that was why most positions say "native" or "near-native" proficiency,
so that there was no discrimination based on nationality.

Are the rules on this clear or vauge?

Matt Tittle, Ph.D. Student
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Educational Psychology
Program in Second Language Acquisition & Teacher Education
tittle at uiuc.edu