Jesse Jackson Tells Google It Should Publish Hiring Data and Google Agrees

Technology

by Rosemary Eng
Staff Writer
The NorthStar News & Analysis

Mountain View, Calif.—–The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. continued his Silicon Valley trek to appeal for more minority faces on the boards of high-tech giants at Google Inc.’s annual shareholders meeting in Mountain View.

Invited to be the first speaker from the audience on Wednesday, Jackson said Google’s EEO1 (Equal Employment Opportunity) report, a federally-mandated company survey of employment by race/ethnicity, gender and job category, should be made public.

David Drummond, an African American who is senior vice president of corporate development, and chief legal officer of Google, the world’s most-popular search engine, agreed, saying, “we are wrong for not disclosing the data. We will do it next month.”

David Drummond

Drummond said that 35% of black computer science graduates come from historically black colleges and universities and their computer science curriculum compared side by side with those at leading computer science universities don’t match up. He said Google has begun a pilot program with Howard University that he hopes will expand to five more schools.

Representing the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which is based in Chicago, Jackson is telling a number of major high-tech employers in Silicon Valley to recruit Hispanics, African Americans and Native Americans on their boards.

Jackson has spoken or intends to speak at other high-tech companies, including Apple and Hewlett Packard.