I'm leaning against the idea of diversity/discrimination in decision making bodies unless there is a reason to do so. One can not assume that discrimination exists by default. I don't know if you are talking about this email group or not but I have no idea what color/gender/or sexual orientation anyone on this list is. Nor do I care. I see it as a distinction without a difference. I myself am a cybernetic artificial life form from the future. I come from the planet Kolob. We are an androgynous species. We reproduce by mitosis, which is splitting in half creating 2 individuals. We are either invisible or appear to be whatever shape we choose to make you puny humans feel comfortable. We are a telepathic race and share a singular consciousness. I communicate with you using a subspace inter-dimentional modem. On 1/31/2013 5:51 PM, Andrew A. Adams wrote: > Dan and Avri's points are both well-made and strong further arguments for > supporting decent diversity requirements in decision-making bodies. > > A further point is that such bodies interact and again we see that same > dynamic. For small bodies with tens of members it is hard to get > representation of all groups (and of course individual differences between > members of groups are as large as the differences between groups on many > occasions). So, for groups which are relatively small percentages of the > overall population (LGBT, to the best of my knowledge are only a few > percentage of the entire population) it is difficult to require a group of > only ten to always have one LGBT member. Within the broader set of groups, > however, there should be efforts made to ensure that out of the perhaps few > hundreds of representatives (and over time, multiples of that) that at least > some of these representatives are from these small groups. Again, the local > maximum of one committee and one term should be leavened with understanding > of the longer term benefits of diversity. > > Avri's point about how one measures these things applies across all of these > broad considerations also provides us with ethical guidance pointing towards > requiring best efforts in diversity within groups, across groups and over > time, while maintaining open and transparent definitions of "Minimum > Competence" required (and providing avenues to gain the necessary competences > for those in under-represented groups). ICANN's Fellowship Program is, I > think, a good example of an effort to provide better geographic diversity, > though there may be room to expand upon it to cover other under- or > un-represented minority groups rather than simply developed/developing nation > citizenship/residency. > > > > >