[tayssir]

I'm reminded of Smolin's _The Trouble with Physics_:

> Note that whereas there have always been talented women musicians, the number of women hired by orchestras rose significantly when candidates began auditioning behind a screen. This is why there is affirmative action. In all my experience, I have never seen a woman or an African American hired through an affirmative-action program who didn't strongly deserve it -- that is, who wasn't already arguably the best applicant. When hiring committees are no longer composed only of white men and we stop hearing expressions of open prejudice, then we can relax affirmative action. As it stands, people who are different -- who, for one reason or another, make powerful older male physicists uncomfortable -- are not hired.

(This was in the context of an argument about how physics institutions often filter out challengers to orthodoxy: including those who think differently, not just look differently.)