Fareed Zakaria asked to hear from a woman in the audience -- after several of the questions came from men. Not only is this a stupid policy -- more women go to college now than men and its increasing -- but it's really against the spirit of the Athenaeum, notwithstanding the "diversity questioning" that Gann did a few years ago at Clinton where every question was asked by someone of a different race.
That this response from Zakaria encouraged audience applause strikes me as disappointing, to say the least.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
No Question Quotas, Please
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2 comments:
Giving any excuse for favoring some questioners over another is probably what Zakaria was looking for - he could just have well as said "We havent had enough questions from people wearing green shirts." He didn't have enough time to answer everyone's questions and probably didn't want the other people's feelings to be too hurt. There's no way for him to tell which questions are going to be the best so any decision rule is probably better than choosing at random.
See here for more.
Right, but the Ath fellows know who to call on and who not to call on -- which stops us from having some of the dumber folks ask questions.
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