Listen to Women

This post is the sixth post in a series of stories that, taken together, might help explain why I decided to take early retirement from UCI. My point in posting these stories is to say "This happened. It shouldn't have. Can you learn something from it, so you can prevent such things from happening where you are (or at least not be complicit)?"

Listen to Women

The Executive Vice Chancellor/Provost and the Vice Provost for Academic Personnel took a committee I served on out to lunch. As we milled around before the meal, I overheard wisps of conversation from a group of male committee members gathered round the Provost.

I drew closer. The Provost was complaining about how difficult it is to increase the number of female faculty in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields. He asked my male colleagues for advice. They weren't prepared for this, and didn't seem very knowledgable about the subject.

I leaned in and said "I have expertise on this that I would be happy to share with you." The Provost did not seem particularly interested, but said that I could meet with him to talk. I was surprised that he didn't ask me for advice right then and there, and I wondered whether he was just blowing me off.

A few days later I emailed a reminder to the Provost, and he got his assistant to arrange a meeting.

The Provost brought the Vice Provost along to the meeting, and the two of them sat across from me.

I had written down a short list of suggestions, and started to present them. At various points the Provost and Vice Provost spoke up, sometimes to complain about my department, and also to tell me I clearly wasn't aware of all the great things they're doing. They elaborated on what those things were, and seemed to want praise for all they had done.

I tried to pull the conversation back to my suggestions.

After a half hour the Provost's assistant came in to remind the Provost about his next appointment, and he told her he would be right there. This looked like a signal for me to leave. I came prepared with ten minutes of advice, but I only had time to present half of it due to their lengthy digressions.

As we wound down the meeting, the Provost asked me a question that I no longer recall. I asked, "I believe you need to get going?" and he agreed. Channeling Scheherazade, I suggested we meet again so I could answer his question; he said his assistant would arrange it.

A week later, having heard nothing, I emailed the assistant to see if the Provost was interested in continuing where we left off. She set up an appointment for over a month later.

To make it feel less adversarial than the first meeting, I asked if I could sit at the end of the long table, rather than across from the two of them. The Provost said yes, and joked that it meant I have to pay the bill. I suggested they sit on either side of me so I could show them the documentation I brought.

I pointed out that what improves things for everyone, improves things for women in STEM. To make sure to get my points across this time, I handed each of them this list of suggestions:

• Train the chairs, hiring committees, and departments on “best practices” for hiring, and hold them accountable for following them.
• Involve women in STEM in all steps of the process.
• Treat fairly the women who are here. (Women in STEM talk to other women in STEM. If the women in STEM who are already here feel that they're not treated fairly, it will be hard to recruit women in STEM.)
• When things go wrong, people need to know how to get them fixed. We need to know that if we report problems, things will get better instead of worse. Suggestion: Pay attention to feedback, and do something constructive about it.
• Facilitate the choosing of good department chairs, deans, chairs of hiring committees, and Directors of Graduate Studies. Train them to act professionally and do the right thing.

I tried to stay laser-focused on presenting and explaining these five points. That was hard, since they once again spent much of the time talking. They had decided how to do things, and didn't seem to want to make changes based on my feedback. So much for my suggestion to pay attention to feedback and do something constructive about it. The assistant's knock at the door and my dismissal came sooner this time.

While they were eager to listen to themselves, they didn't seem interested in listening to me. I wish I had put "Involve women in STEM in all steps of the process" at the top of my list, rather than in second place.

A few weeks later I sent them the email reproduced here, which gives a more direct and brutal version of some of what I didn't have time to convey at our meetings.

Don't punish people for doing their jobs

This post is the fifth post in a series of stories that, taken together, might help explain why I decided to take early retirement from UCI. My point in posting these stories is to say "This happened. It shouldn't have. Can you learn something from it, so you can prevent such things from happening where you are (or at least not be complicit)?"

Don't punish people for doing their jobs

Quietly in the hallway, when no one else could hear, my colleague Y told me that he doesn't like it that I disagree with him at faculty meetings.

Y was a senior colleague who served on a committee that could block my promotions and "merit reviews". It didn't sound as if he were just making a statement of fact about his feelings. It sounded to my ears like an implicit threat to retaliate if I express at a faculty meeting a view opposed to a position he has taken.

Later, other female faculty told me that Y said similar things to them, and they also felt threatened.

People who I believe have my best interests at heart have told me, "Just don't go to faculty meetings. It'll be better for your health." I had told them about my stress-related health problems that were caused by the way I was being treated at UCI.

I thought that giving thoughtful input at meetings and committees, and helping my department and university do the right thing, were part of my job. I didn't think I had a choice.

Doing our jobs sometimes means respectfully disagreeing with colleagues. I don't think people should be retaliated against for doing their jobs.

Retaliation

This post is the fourth post in a series of stories that, taken together, might help explain why I decided to take early retirement from UCI. My point in posting these stories is to say "This happened. It shouldn't have. Can you learn something from it, so you can prevent such things from happening where you are (or at least not be complicit)?"

Retaliation

 

Part I: The Problem

1. The Prelude

One day, out of the blue, I got an email from someone in the Dean's Office whom I had never heard of. I'll call her Q. I had co-organized a conference on campus. My university had billed the conference for renting a lecture hall, but itemized a sizable chunk as "restroom and lecture hall cleaning." Q refused to allow the conference grant to pay for that, since "restroom cleaning" wasn't allowed on federal funds. 

The conference had merely rented a room; we never requested restroom cleaning. After much work on my part, my university's event office produced a new invoice that didn't include the offending words about restrooms.

I didn't understand why I was dealing with Q at all. She wasn't the "financial analyst" in the Dean's Office responsible for my grants. Or rather she was, but no one had told me. Several months later a cryptic email implied that Q was taking over that role.

When it came time to reimburse speakers for a later conference, it was noticed that while a speaker had, as instructed, purchased his plane ticket from Amsterdam to Los Angeles from Delta Airlines at delta.com with Delta flight numbers, the 3-digit airline code turned out to be KLM's. This led to a ludicrous and lengthy bureaucratic snafu, made worse by staff sending emails with misleading information to more and more people without my knowledge before I could correct it. In the end, the speaker wasn't reimbursed from the conference funds because KLM isn't an American airline, even though the funding agency would have permitted it.

2. The Threat

One day around 4:30 pm, the Math Department's financial person called out to me as I walked past her office. She told me to go down to Q's office right away to sign an important form.

I felt rushed since I was traveling very early the next morning to the Joint Mathematics Meetings, but I dutifully ran down to see Q in the Dean's Office. Q wanted me to sign a certification of expenses for a grant. I asked to take the form home, where I had the information I needed to check the figures. She said no, she needs it now. It's already overdue.

Why such late notice? She blamed the holidays "and we got behind". When I refused to sign without checking if it were correct, she was annoyed, but eventually got out a form that had information I could use to try to check it.

I (politely, I thought) said I hoped that in the future she could give me more notice.

I don't remember exactly what words she used, but I remember that she made clear to me that she could retaliate against me and make my life difficult.

I stopped in my tracks, taken aback since I didn't think I had done anything wrong. Curious as to how she might retaliate, I asked her.

She said that she could send my grant reimbursement requests to the Compliance Officer, who would deny them.

3. The Retaliation

I wasn't worried about having my requests sent to the Compliance Officer, since I'm one of the most "by the book" people. If anyone was in compliance, it was me. I didn't see how Q could hurt me.

I soon found out.

A few days later, Q denied my request to use a grant to buy a toner cartridge for my printer. From talking with Q about it, I was left with the clear impression that this was payback because I expressed my displeasure about the last-minute signing.

Less than a year earlier, a colleague had purchased a toner cartridge using a similar grant from the same funding agency, so it seemed as if Q were specifically targeting me.

It got so complicated that I ended up buying a new printer instead of a toner cartridge. In subsequent grant proposals I explicitly listed toner cartridges, hoping that would make it harder for Q to reject such requests.

Over time, I began to notice a pattern. Q seemed to be putting unnecessary barriers in my path, and denying routine requests. Incomplete or misleading versions of my requests were sent to the Compliance Officer and others without my knowledge, omitting crucial information that would have shown that my requests were reasonable.

Some of the funding agencies' program officers asked me what was wrong with UCI; why was UCI being so unreasonable, by requiring them to give written permission for things that didn't need it, and by not letting me spend the funds the way UCI had budgeted?

Q even denied expenses I had gotten pre-cleared. R from UCI's grants office contacted me to help with the wording of a grant proposal's budget justification. She assured me that I wouldn't have a problem if I used the grant for a certain type of expense. I asked her to send me an email to that effect. She said there was no need, since UCI approves such expenses all the time. I told her that my requests for such spending had been denied. At my insistence, R emailed me to confirm the allowability of the expense. 

When Q later denied the expense, I emailed R, with a cc to Q. I immediately got a call on my cell phone from P, who was Q's supervisor. P told me not to contact the grants office or anyone else about this. It came across as a threat.

A knowledgeable staff person told me that what I needed to know about the staff in the Dean's Office was that they acted like the mean girls in high school.

The staff member who ran the Math Department, S, told me that switching my grant from Q to someone else wouldn't help as long as their supervisor P was against me. Switching might make things worse.

S's willingness and ability to help me were limited since she was hired by and reported to the Dean's Office, not the Math Department (and would need recommendations from the Dean's Office staff for her next job).

Dealing with Q drained more and more of my time and energy, for several years. It felt as if things were spiraling out of control and taking over my life. Each time an email from her arrived in my Inbox, I felt fear in the pit of my stomach.

Part II: My Search for a Solution

4. The Ombudsman 

I amassed a lot of documentation of actions by Q that impeded the mission of the university rather than facilitating it.

I had been admonished (by someone who soon became department Chair) to never go outside the department, but this was a problem with the Dean's Office, and my fiduciary responsibility for the grants required me to do something.

The Dean had repeatedly made his hostility to me clear; going to him would make things worse (as I was soon to find out).

I met with the campus Ombudsman. I summarized the situation, and said I'd like to explore options for solving the problem and learn what to do in such situations. I hoped he could help solve the problem, but he didn't seem to have much to offer me. I left unsatisfied.

5. "Smile More"  

I learned from K, who was the Chair of the Math Department, that the School of Physical Sciences' Equity Advisor had arranged for the head of UCI's grants office to meet with a small group of people from Physics and Chemistry who had complained about their experiences with that office. At K's suggestion, I went to the meeting.

When the head of the grants office gave us his email address and phone number, I asked whether it was OK for us to contact his office directly. He said, "Of course." I pointed out that the financial people in the Dean's office had told me not to. I also said that, unlike others at that contentious meeting, I was happy with the grants office; my bad experiences were with the Dean's Office.

At the end of the meeting the Associate Dean for Research came up to me and said that the Dean had told him to find ways to make himself useful. He offered to help me.

This sounded promising. I asked S and K for advice, and they agreed that it made sense to talk to the Associate Dean before involving the Dean.

Unfortunately, my three meetings with the Associate Dean felt like encounters from Hell. If I had known I'd have to go through such an experience, I either wouldn't have become an academic, or at least wouldn't have come to UCI.

We met in the student affairs office. He began our meeting by saying that we needed to have some chitchat to make me more comfortable (yes, he really said that). He then told me a very long story that he had told me before, about his daughter, wife, and grandmother. I hate to have my time wasted; I find it disrespectful. As it turned out, his chitchat took time that could otherwise have been used to explain the problem that needed to be solved.

When I started to mention the problem, he told me that I needed to find out what makes Q tick; each financial analyst is different and has her problems and quirks, and it's important for me to spend time getting to know what Q's were and figuring out how to deal with her. He told me a story about being unreasonably and repeatedly denied something, but he had no choice because that's the way they do things here. He went on for awhile about all the hoops I would have to jump through to get people who were doing unreasonable things to do things more reasonably. His main solution was that I should smile more. He seemed to want me to show my gratitude for this valuable piece of advice.

I had just read a series of articles on why men should stop telling women to smile more, so I didn't especially appreciate the tip. I had behaved professionally with the staff. Some of my male colleagues not only didn't smile, but behaved reprehensibly towards staff, and were treated better by them than I was. No one was telling my male colleagues to smile more.

Eventually, I said that the staff's job is to further the mission of the university and help the faculty do their jobs. It seemed as if Q and P were impeding the work of the university. Wasn't the Dean's Office responsible for making sure that Q and P knew what their jobs were and that they did them properly? His response amounted to: we can't fire them and we can't change them and we're stuck with them. New people would be worse since they wouldn't know what they were doing and would get things wrong.

He took a phone call in the middle of our meeting, and then explained to me what it was about. More wasted time that could have been better spent. Since he was clearly very uncomfortable with me, I wondered whether he needed some chitchat, so I took that opportunity to initiate some. This led him to tell me a story about his mother that he had told me before. It seemed like a standard "my mother, wife, or whatever is a woman who has been treated badly, and since I know that, I'm not sexist" story that people use to immunize themselves against accusations of sexism, and then think they can get away with anything. From the way he spoke about his mother having worked while he was young, it sounded as if he resented her for it.

He seemed to think I needed him to ask Q and P why they were treating me the way they were. I said I didn't need to know that; I knew it, and they were treating me in ways they wouldn't treat my male colleagues. I told him I hadn't wanted to bring that (sexism) up, but it seemed I had to (to get him to take me seriously, and also to help him realize that it would not be helpful to ask them why). When he didn't seem to be taking me seriously, I eventually said that I felt that what Q and P were doing had reached the level of harassment.

He wanted to go to the supervisor P on his own, to "get her side of the story". I pointed out that he didn't yet have my side of the story. I wanted the opportunity to tell my side of the story first, before he talked to P.

He said he knew what my goals were. I asked him what he thought they were. I no longer remember his reply, but I do remember that I was aghast by it; it was clear he had understood nothing.

I said that my goals were for Q to try to resolve things with me before taking it elsewhere, and if it couldn't be resolved, then she should cc me on the communications about it. The Associate Dean said he wanted to go further; when they deny something they should come up with a different way to get the job done. I said I thought that was great. This was the only positive part of the conversation. Outside of that, I felt he was talking down to me, insulting my intelligence, and not taking me seriously.

We had started at 10 am. Eventually he told me he had another appointment at 11. I had arrived with voluminous documentation, and close to 11 o'clock he finally agreed that I could show some of it to him so he could begin to see my side of the story. But he refused to clear even a small space on a table for me to put down the paperwork until I insisted that he do so (and he complained to me about that).

By 11, due to all the time wasted on chitchat, I had only shown him the documentation for one of the many incidents, and it wasn't clear he understood it. We hadn't agreed on what he would talk to the supervisor about, but he opened the door for his next appointment and was already starting to deal with them. He didn't want to make another appointment with me, but I said that before he talked to the supervisor we would need to talk more to get on the same team, so we wouldn't be at cross purposes. This conversation was with zero time left, with the door open and lots of people around. I felt rattled. We agreed to meet again.

6. "Don't put anything in writing. It antagonizes people."

To keep our next meeting as short and businesslike as possible, I arrived with a simple written summary of the problem and a reminder of the goals. I handed it to the Associate Dean at the end of the meeting. He said he would destroy the paper. Astonished, I said I didn't consider it a secret, and I would also email it to him to make sure we were on the same page.

He insisted that the next step was for him to speak to P, the supervisor. Now it was in the Associate Dean's hands.

To try to find out what happened with P, I had to come back for a third meeting.

At that meeting, the Associate Dean made clear that standard practice at UCI is to treat well the people you like and treat poorly the people you don't like. He gave me examples of that, and he thought they were all OK.

I protested that there are laws about unequal treatment. People can't just treat women or Blacks worse in the workplace because they want to. People are supposed to do their jobs, whether or not they like someone.

I had assumed that Q would deny that she had threatened to make my life difficult. From my talks with the Associate Dean, it dawned on me that Q might not deny it, since she might not realize it was wrong; according to the Associate Dean, that's just the way things are done at UCI.

The Associate Dean kept advising me to smile more. Q and P would treat me better if I smiled more. After repeatedly restraining myself from telling him what I thought about that, I finally told him that I wasn't looking for advice on changing my personality, I needed the Dean's Office to step in and solve a problem. When he continued to give me the same advice, I said that I would prefer that he not keep telling me to smile more. Trying to be helpful, I said that I hoped that he would eventually think about why a female professor might not be happy with him repeatedly telling her to smile more.

At that, he became furious. He said that I was accusing him of sexism and that was intolerable and he wouldn't stand for it. He was clearly very angry with me, and glared at me for the rest of our meeting, even after I repeatedly apologized for the misunderstanding.

This had become quite adversarial. I worried that he might file charges against me with the Office of Equal Opportunity & Diversity. I could no longer hold back the tears, and was visibly crying. He got angrier.

Changing tack to try to lighten the mood and stop him from glaring at me so ferociously, I joked that he should smile more. He was not amused.

He told me not to put anything in writing, because it antagonizes people. He meant P and Q.

I looked at him, stunned. What I had on my side was the truth, which I could prove because I had convincing documentation; documentation I only had because things were in writing. Without that, it's all hearsay. Putting things in writing seemed like the height of professionalism.

While I can understand why some things might go more smoothly if they don't start out in writing, my advice is to be wary of people who advise you to never put anything in writing.

What does it mean when people who only know your name, before they've met you, treat you worse than your colleagues? Getting desperate and wanting him to take me seriously, I reiterated that I was concerned that the treatment of me might constitute discrimination.

I left with the impression that the Associate Dean's primary concern was for him to maintain a good relationship with P.

7. "Going across campus"

I arranged to meet with Q and S (the math department manager) so we could agree on how I could use my grant. Afterwards, I asked S if I should send an email to all of us confirming what we agreed on. She said no, that would make it too adversarial, but she was there and we all agreed. That meeting seemed OK on the surface, but when S asked me how I felt about it, I realized it had been strange enough that we needed to change my financial analyst.

But worse, the meeting triggered Q to create a problem out of nothing. Before we could initiate the switch, Q called a meeting with S and me for the following morning, a Friday. She didn't tell me what it was about, but from what I learned from S, it was clear that P and Q were creating trouble for me. K agreed to join the meeting (and we let P and Q know that in advance).

The meeting had a surprise guest, namely the Dean who hates me. It was clear he had been told something by P or Q, but I have no idea what.

When we had put the finishing touches a year earlier on the budget of a grant proposal, the math department's financial person had informed me that according to Q, we couldn't ask for overhead costs on a certain part of the budget. I pointed out that the funding agency allowed such charges, but if UCI doesn't want to charge it that's fine with both me and the funder, as long as UCI will not charge my grant more in overhead than what it budgets in the proposal.

At the meeting with the Dean, Q and P claimed that not including that overhead in the budget was a mistake, so they were going to charge my grant for it, even though UCI had signed contracts with the funder agreeing not to. This seemed unreasonable, especially since it was Q herself who had insisted that I remove that line from the budget.

At the meeting, no one else corrected Q when she told us things that weren't true. I find it very difficult to keep quiet when someone says something that's documentably false and potentially harmful, so I automatically corrected her. K told me afterwards that that made me look too aggressive. The Dean seemed unhappy and left without talking to me.

A member of the Dean's staff with whom he was friendly had kindly given me advice in the past. Later that day, she tried to talk with the Dean about the toxic climate in the Dean's Office, but he was angry with me and told her to butt out. She told me I definitely shouldn't talk with him soon. Given his strange reaction, she didn't think she'd ever be able to talk with the Dean about the poisoned climate, which she called a "climate of `no'".

On Monday K, who was my department Chair, met with the Dean to try to briefly inform him of my side of the story. Afterwards, K reported that the Dean's tone was heated. The Dean said that he heard about me not just from Q but from others around campus, more than he hears about other people, so he assumes it must be at least partly my fault. When K told him that Q had basically threatened to make my life difficult, the Dean said he didn't believe that.

K asked about these "other people" he hears about me from, and the Dean said I was going around talking to anyone who would listen. The only names he mentioned were his friend on his staff and his Associate Dean, neither of whom were "across campus". K told him that the Associate Dean had asked me to let him help. The Dean disputed this, and added that the Associate Dean is on Q's side.

The Dean told K that I had caused trouble by speaking directly to UCI's grant office, since I'm not supposed to do that. K told him that at the meeting that the Associate Dean and I went to, faculty were explicitly invited to talk directly to that office.

The Dean insisted that I was the one who wanted to have the contentious meeting that he had shown up at. K told him that I hadn't wanted that meeting at all. The Dean claimed (contrary to all the evidence in the email chain) that Q and P didn't want to meet then.

The Dean said there was probably some blame on all sides. K told him that he had seen the details of some of my issues and he thought my frustration was completely reasonable.

8. The Ombudsman redux

By now, I was spending a large portion of my weekends stress-vomiting, and worrying about what obstacles Q would next put in my path.

I went back to the Ombudsman, told him about the new developments, and asked what should happen next. I said I felt I was being harassed. I also said, "I feel as if I'm entirely alone in this and don't have anyone looking out for me. It's making me ill and absorbing all my time, and I've reached the point where I can't take it any more."

I broached the possibilities of getting a meditator, or reporting the Associate Dean and Q to UCI's Office of Equal Opportunity & Diversity (OEOD).

The Ombudsman said that OEOD manages liability. OEOD would interview all parties and make a determination. It would lead to awkwardness in future relationships, which OEOD can't resolve. He made clear to me that it would be a big headache and time sink, wouldn't help, would take over my life, and could easily make things worse. This agreed with what I had heard from others, including an Equity Advisor.

He told me that one problem he had noticed at UCI was that staff think of the people they work with as part of their personal lives; rather than treating them professionally, they treat them the way they treat their friends and family. I pointed out that it's not healthy to treat their friends and family the way they treated me, and he agreed.

He advised me to trust my own judgment on whether to put things in writing, and on whom to talk to and what to say. He didn't want to help directly, since he didn't want to damage his own relationship with my Dean. But he said I could say that I "consulted someone within the administration who stated that putting things in writing is a recommended practice to minimize any misunderstandings".

Part III: The Denouement

9. The Scene at the Breakfast Lecture

The situation with my grants had gotten quite dire. Because of his personality and because he would defend his staff, several people had advised me not to go to the Assistant Dean (a staff member, not to be confused with the Associate Dean who was faculty) who was in charge of the staff.

K (my department Chair) went to the Assistant Dean to ask that control of my grants be taken away from Q and given to a different analyst. The Assistant Dean claimed to know the situation, and wanted to blame me. K pointed out that the Assistant Dean had heard only one side of the story, while K had heard mine and thought that my frustrations were justified.

Control over my grants was at last switched to someone else.

Based on K's heated meeting with the Dean, I emailed the Dean:

I have heard that you think that I am somehow at fault about something. If so, then that's a serious concern to me and I would like to clear the air so we can move forward.

I tried very hard to figure out the best ways to resolve a problem that had been building until it reached the level where it was interfering with my ability to do my job. My decisions on whom to talk to and when were made with the best information and advice I had at the time. I believe that the facts and the documentation support that I did nothing wrong.

There is no need to take any action based on this message. However, if you are going to use in your decision-making or professional dealings any allegations or rumors you've heard about me, I believe it would be only fair to first let me know what the allegations are and give me the opportunity to supply facts and information to rebut them. 

Hopefully, going forward with a new analyst and a clean slate, everyone will be able to work well together. As I have told you in the past, I would very much like to make UCI a better place, and to further the mission and goals of the university, and I remain at your disposal should you want my advice or ideas.

The Dean never replied.

Three months later, I ended up sitting at a round table next to the Assistant Dean as we ate breakfast before a talk in a School of Physical Sciences Lecture series. The conversation began amicably. At some point I asked him how things at UCI had changed over time. He said a big change was that you now have to be very careful about everything you do. I asked what he meant and he said it used to be you could fire someone if they did something wrong, and now you can't, since they hire counsel and fight it. You can't do anything about things that go wrong.

I said, "What if you can document it?" He said that documentation can take six months, so it's not worth it. He said something like "I know what you're referring to." Later he implied that for the issue that he knew about, I had overstepped in some way.

During our conversation, I noticed that a new video about the School was playing on a large screen. I watched in horror as they showed an interview of me that I had been promised wouldn't be used without my permission, which I had never given.

Rattled by both the video and the Assistant Dean, I pointed out that he hadn't heard the full story, and in particular hadn't heard from me about it.

He said that he did in fact know the full story. But I knew he didn't (both from what he said about it and since I had never spoken to him about it). He said that if I want to speak to him about it, I have to make an appointment to talk to him in his office. He said something like: this is a positive occasion and you're making it negative, and that's not OK.

I was taken aback by his hostility. I tried to change the subject, but he cut me off and repeated that he wouldn't talk to me here, since this is supposed to be a happy occasion. I asked for clarification on whether he was saying that I couldn't talk to him there about anything, and he said I couldn't talk to him about anything negative. I said that I had merely stated factual information (namely that he didn't have all sides), and I didn't understand why he thought I was making it negative. I was very shaken.

The Assistant Dean rudely turned away and made it clear he wasn't going to talk to me.

I don't know what the Assistant Dean was told, but if he had relied on documentable facts, rather than unverifiable rumors, there would have been no reason for his visceral anger towards me. In any case, there was no justification for the level of anger the Dean and the Assistant and Associate Deans dumped on me.

Almost all the problems were either documented by emails or witnessed. I was disappointed that no one wanted to see the documentation or learn the facts.

I had thought that the mission of the university was research, teaching, and service, and that the staff's role was to help fulfill that mission, not obstruct it. People should do their jobs and behave professionally, whether or not they're your friend. A former UCI administrator agreed with me that UCI is a place where it's all about whom you know and whether you're friends with them.

Thankfully, the person who took over supervision of my grants was a complete angel. Helpful, professional, and everything one would want in that job.

The Cheating University

This post is the third post in a series of stories that, taken together, might help explain why I decided to take early retirement from UCI. My point in posting these stories is to say "This happened. It shouldn't have. Can you learn something from it, so you can prevent such things from happening where you are (or at least not be complicit)?"

The Cheating University

When I arrived at UCI, I was told to attend an orientation meeting for instructors who hadn't taught here before.

At the meeting, I was surprised when the person in charge of teaching told us, "As you know, UCI has a reputation of being `the cheating university'."

No, I didn't know that! I wish I'd been told before I accepted the job offer.

Over time, I learned more and more about how misleading UCI could be to faculty it's trying to hire. 

When I was hired, I was experienced enough to make sure that everything that was important to me was put in writing in my offer letter. Nevertheless, I've had to fight to try to get UCI to keep its promises. In some cases the battle lasted many years and didn't have a satisfactory ending.

My highest priorities were quality of life issues, such as having an office with a nice view, so I bargained harder for the nice view than for salary (and I later had to fight to get the promised office).

At that time, almost all regular faculty were hired with an "off-scale" salary, i.e., a salary higher than the salary listed for their "rank" and "step" on the published salary scale. I secured a promise in writing from the Dean (approved by the Chancellor) that the amount by which my salary was "off-scale" would never go down.

The university broke that promise just a few years after I was hired, but I didn't realize it until later. For a "merit review", I was asked to sign a form that stated my new salary; I looked up the salary scale and learned that I was shortchanged by thousands of dollars a year, and it had been going on for several years.

This took me into a years-long stressful Kafkaesque nightmare through UCI bureaucracy that ended up setting some powerful administrators against me. Had I known that would happen, I never would have accepted UCI's job offer. I would have gone elsewhere.

I argued my case, mostly in emails that were sent up the line as in the telephone game, to I-didn't-know-whom, who never seemed to completely understand what was admittedly a complicated situation due to mysterious and confusing changes in the salary scale that included my campus instituting a "shadow scale" above the official one.

For each merit review, I was pressured to sign off on a salary that violated the promise, and I refused.

I pay for insurance, offered by the university, for legal advice, but it turns out they won't advise you on any issue involving the university.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, I had more important things to worry about than trying to find a lawyer to fight my university.

Years later someone told me that the longtime manager of the Dean's Office, who was the bottleneck, was "rigid"; once she got it in her head that I was wrong, she would never change her mind. No progress was made until I went around her.

None of the administrators cared enough to sit down with me to go over the numbers and discuss a reasonable solution.

I was eventually offered a salary bump to partially make up for the shortfall in back pay. The "Mad Hatter" Dean advised me to take the offer since (according to him) there was a real chance the Vice Provost would simply withdraw that offer if I didn't accept it. While I was unhappy with the offer, which wouldn't come close to making up for the years of lost salary, I felt I had no choice. A few years later that (now former) Vice Provost told me he was all for giving me what I wanted to make the problem go away, and it was the Dean who was very much against both it and me.

Honoring written offers is an important principle. A university's reputation gets around. If faculty feel they're treated unfairly, that can make it hard to hire good new faculty.

"Tattletales"

This post is the second post in a series of stories that, taken together, might help explain why I decided to take early retirement from UCI. My point in posting these stories is to say "This happened. It shouldn't have. Can you learn something from it, so you can prevent such things from happening where you are (or at least not be complicit)?"

"Tattletales"

I went to my department Chair with a request that I thought was routine, since department Chairs had approved similar requests when they were made by others. So I was surprised when he told me I had to go and talk to the Dean about it. (A later Dean than the one in my previous story.)

When I stopped by the Dean's office to make an appointment, the receptionist sent me straight in to see him. I introduced myself and made my case.

The Dean was annoyed that I brought my request to him. He wanted the Chair to make decisions, and didn't want to be bothered with it. I was taken aback by his hostility towards me, since my trip to the Dean's office hadn't been my idea.

The Dean didn't seem concerned with treating me fairly compared to colleagues with similar requests, or with doing the right thing. He was fine with the faculty breaking rules, as long as there were no complaints about it that he had to deal with. When I made rational arguments, he responded with illogical reasoning and got angry when I didn't accept his faulty logic. I tried to bring him back to what was fair and right, but that wasn't a place he wanted to go. I felt as if I were at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

The Dean told me that the Math Department is full of "tattletales". About a quarter of his time was spent dealing with the Math Department. He never heard from people in the other three departments, but about a third of the Math Department had come to see him, "not all by invitation".

I pointed out that if the department's problems were solved in good and fair ways, the Math Department would take less of his time.

He said they have brainstorming sessions about it in his office all the time.

I said I'd be happy to help in any way. But the Dean didn't seem open to getting information or advice from me.

His hostility was so strong that I left on the verge of tears.

In his later encounters with me, that Dean often came across as angry or sarcastic. I didn't know why. When he made snide remarks about the department I would reply, "If you would like help or advice, I'm always happy to give it," but he didn't take me up on it.

In the years that followed, some of us noticed that the Dean seemed hostile toward senior female faculty, but responded well to pretty young women who flattered him. The Dean told the Starbucks group that his yoga teacher is a young girl, and when a young girl tells you to do something, you feel all good about it and you do it. The others (all older men), teased the Dean about pulling in his stomach to impress her. The more they and the Dean laughed about it, the more it came across as locker room banter that wasn't meant to include me.

As for tattletales, the Dean praised applied math colleagues for going over a department Chair's head to talk to the Dean directly, but got angry at pure math faculty (like me) who wanted to talk with him.

After the Dean's relationship with me got significantly worse (stories to come!), I asked a colleague who knew the Dean for his perspective on the Dean's hostility. He agreed that the Dean might have problems with senior professional women. Then he speculated that perhaps my reputation preceeds me. A bit shaken by the idea that I might have somehow caused the problem, I asked what my reputation was. He said I'm very intelligent, I tell it like it is, and I call people on their bullshit. He added that mathematicians often have this problem, and it's not well received by people who don't think logically and don't like their fuzzy thinking and sloppy logic pointed out to them. 

"Never take anything outside the department"

This post is the first of a series of stories that, taken together, might help explain why I decided to take early retirement from UCI. These narratives are based on emails and other contemporaneous documentation. My point in posting these stories is to say "This happened. It shouldn't have. Can you learn something from it, so you can prevent such things from happening where you are (or at least not be complicit)?"

"Never take anything outside the department"

I was put on the Graduate Admissions Committee during my first year on the faculty at UCI. At the meeting to decide who gets into the PhD program, a committee member (who was himself originally from China) suggested that we not admit one of the applicants since the female Chinese applicants just want to come to the U.S. to find a husband and get married. I protested, but no one on the committee backed me up.

Later in the meeting, the committee chair referred to a grad school applicant as a "girl". When I quietly said "woman", he rolled his eyes and gave another committee member a look as if to say "isn't she nuts?"

At that time, UCI's School of Physical Sciences had a wonderful Equity Advisor, under the auspices of UCI's ADVANCE grant. ADVANCE was a National Science Foundation program for gender equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. One of the Equity Advisor's roles was to inform hiring committees about best practices, so I thought she might have some helpful ideas.

Without naming names, I emailed her my concerns about what was said at the meeting, and asked if there was anything UCI's ADVANCE program could do to inform the Physical Sciences faculty about good practices for graduate admissions and hiring.

Cc'ing her reply to the two "ADVANCE Chairs", she suggested that the four of us brainstorm about what could be sent out that might be helpful.

The ADVANCE Chair in math, whom I'll call G, turned out to be a good friend of the chair of the Graduate Admissions Committee. G was incensed that I had criticized her friend (albeit without giving his name).

Some of the faculty routinely got together for lunch at outdoor tables. One day after lunch, G asked me and the Dean to stay behind. G told the Dean that I was out of line for involving the Equity Advisor. She said that she talked to her friend, the committee chair, and he "is not sexist". And our colleague's remark about marriage (which she hadn't witnessed) "was a joke". She said such issues shouldn't be taken outside the department. She told us that she had asked the Equity Advisor not to send any advice to the admissions committees or department chairs.

I was mortified at being angrily berated in front of my Dean.

The Dean was confused because the Equity Advisor had only discussed the issue with him in general terms, and hadn't named names or even told him it had anything to do with the math department. It wasn't from me or the Equity Advisor, but from G at that moment, that the Dean learned what department it was, and the names of the Admissions Committee chair and member.

The Dean told us that people can say whatever they want. You can't fire tenured faculty, so there's no leverage. There aren't enough resources to have lawyers tell us what we can and can't do; lawyers are expensive and charge by the hour. What was said wasn't illegal, and he couldn't do anything about it. 

He gave as an example that he could tell G he was going to kill her; that's not illegal, but killing her would be illegal. I told him I thought that death threats are illegal, but he disagreed.

Postscript:

I continued to join the outdoor lunches, until G told me I wasn't welcome since people didn't like it when I disagreed with them. One colleague explained to me later that I violate the hierarchy by not agreeing with older colleagues. Interestingly, those older colleagues praised and admired certain much more junior colleagues (their eventual successors in the department's power dynamic) when they disagreed in harsher ways than I ever did.

I'll add that I like both G and that Dean. I think they were doing what they thought was right. This story reminds me how important it is to develop a culture with good leadership, in which faculty and administrators are trained about best practices and professional behavior.

Gate Crasher

A flyer in the Science Center announced an upcoming "Celebration of Women at Harvard College", to take place on Saturday, October 4, 1997. It looked like a typical Harvard event that is free and open to the public, and it said you could register online.

The "Celebration" was to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Harvard allowing female students to live in the freshman dorms in Harvard Yard.

I found the phrase "Women at Harvard College" odd. Harvard College did not admit women back in 1972. My Class of 1979 still had separate admissions offices for Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges. While we received degrees from Harvard, primitive computer printouts of class rolls listed all the female students as "Radcliffe", while the men were "Harvard".

My freshman dorm didn't house women until my class entered in 1975, and we were only in the I, J, and K staircases of Wigglesworth Hall. Those entryways were right across from the Harvard Police Station, which at that time was in the basement of Grays Hall. (Wigglesworth was viewed as less safe than other dorms in Harvard Yard since it was on Mass Ave near Harvard Square, a busy place with sketchy people.)

Tickets for the discussion panels that would follow the October 4 ceremony needed to be ordered at least a week in advance. I requested a ticket online for the Science discussion. A reply email, from womenreq@fas.harvard.edu and signed by "The Committee for the Celebration of Women at Harvard College", told me I must pick up my ticket at University Hall by October 2.

I was spending the year at Harvard as a Science Scholar at the Bunting Institute (which was part of Radcliffe College, which was part of Harvard University), but the math department had kindly given me a desk in an office in the Science Center.

I wrote back and asked them to send my ticket via University mail to my math department address. The reply from "The Celebration Committee" said that they would set aside two tickets for me and reiterated that I needed to pick them up at University Hall by October 2.

As I told a friend at the time, "This seems to me to be part of a pattern I've seen where everything `for women' has lots of barriers in the way, while analogous things for men don't. It's as if they don't want people to show up. As a Harvard woman alum, and a Bunting Fellow, I think they should make it easier for me to go to this event".

Ever curious, I wrote back:

Dear The Celebration Committee,

Thank you for your message. Could you please explain why one

needs tickets for this event, why they cannot be sent to me,

and why I have to pick them up in advance of the date? I

do not have time to run down there to pick them up, and

would prefer that they be sent to me or that I pick them

up at the door. Thank you.

Prof. Silverberg

[followed by my Harvard centrex phone number and @math.harvard.edu email address]

I got a very nice reply, this time actually signed with a human's name (with the titles Administrative Assistant to the Dean, and Manager of the Office of the Dean of Harvard College), explaining that students need to pick up their tickets, they replied before they noticed that I'm a faculty member, and he had already instructed one of the assistants to send me my ticket. Tickets were needed because Sever Hall has limited space and they "anticipate that this will be a popular event; tickets would therefore provide means with which to minimize disappointment."

I found it hard to believe that the Science panel would really be such a popular event.

At the "Celebration", the registration people were prepared with pre-made name tags for everyone except me. They were very confused about how I could have a ticket but not a name tag. I learned that they only expected invited people to be there, and while they were OK with students registering online, it never occurred to them that anyone but a student would [be so gauche as to try to] attend without being invited.

I felt as if I were crashing the party.

The band played in the rain, and dignitaries who were kept dry under a tent gave speeches to a small wet audience, just outside the wrought iron fence that surrounds Harvard Yard. They talked about how now Harvard --- students, faculty, etc. --- is fully co-educational.

Radcliffe President Linda Wilson was put in the second row of dignitaries, and wasn't given a speaking role. The word "marginalized" came to mind.

The event included the dedication of a "small gate" with "no official name" that had been erected two years earlier. The dignitaries told us that this gate symbolized that women were at last being let in.

That gate is currently known as the Bradstreet Gate, after Anne Bradstreet, a 17th century poet who migrated to Massachusetts. Later Harvard publications tried to rewrite history to give the impression that the gate was officially named after Bradstreet at the October 1997 celebration.

The gate isn't on a main path, and every time I've gone out of my way to try to go through it, it's been locked.

Almost no one went to the Science panel in Sever Hall. I found it rather sad. Nevertheless, they didn't let anyone in who didn't have a ticket. The audience was mostly retired male (presumably invited) Harvard professors. A tenure-track panelist's viewpoint was that Harvard is wonderful and never discriminates, and she finds it hard to believe people older than her when they tell her the history of women at Harvard.

I was surprised by some panelists' statements that their departments are wonderful, women are full members, and everything is completely coeducational. So when they asked for questions and no one else raised their hand, I asked how many tenured women there were in those departments. No one but me seemed to notice the disconnect between their answers and what they had said earlier. I asked some follow-up questions to try to get the panelists to address the connection between the low numbers of women in their fields and the long history of discrimination, but they kept talking about women not wanting to go into science.

According to the printed program, after the panels was the reception. I walked over with someone from the Science panel audience. She had helped design the gate, and was annoyed that the people who designed the gate were never thanked.

I was stopped at the door and asked for a ticket. I asked if it was invitation-only, and they said yes.

Nowhere had anything said that any of this was invitation-only. It had all been well-advertised (the PR was good). The program did not say the reception was private, and I felt humiliated to be turned away at the door. (A Harvard Crimson article published two days later states that "The event participants were then invited to a reception in Robinson Hall".)

I resorted to groveling --- I pointed out that I was in the first group of women to live in Wigglesworth Hall, and if they were celebrating 25 years of coresidential living in

Harvard Yard (which they were), then I was one of the pioneers they were honoring. My new friend who walked over with me helped me talk my way in. Again, I felt like a gate crasher.

A young Harvard math professor had arrived at the reception before me and was already eating --- he told me he had walked in a side door, without a ticket.

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy Knowles gave a short speech that I liked, except for when he

talked about Harvard being completely coed, including the faculty. At first I didn't understand why no one at that speech or the gate dedication speeches protested. Then I realized it was because the whole event was a carefully orchestrated invitation-only PR stunt. They presumably didn't invite anyone who might cause trouble (such as the alumnae-initiated Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard).

I decided that, as long as I'm a gate crasher, I might as well play the role to the fullest. Unfortunately, I realized my duty too late. I expected Harvard President Neil Rudenstine to give the next speech, which I thought would be the most appropriate time to shout "more women on the faculty!", but there were no more speeches.

I overheard Paul Martin (Dean of the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences) telling someone "but Harvard has as endowment of $12 billion dollars; what else are they going to do with it except throw a party?" as he pointed to all the expensive food and wine. I recognized Martin's name as the person whom I had been told was responsible for a new FAS (Faculty of Arts and Sciences) policy restricting who can access the FAS computer system.

I cut in and said that they could use the money to allow visitors at the Bunting Institute to access the campus computer network. I told him that at Bunting we were assured we were full members of the Harvard community, and so far the only point at which I found that to be false was for Internet access.

While I could hook up my laptop to the Internet via an Ethernet cable if I were in my Bunting office, I coudn't connect to the Internet in the (formerly Radcliffe, at-that-time Harvard) dorm room where I was living or in the Science Center, since I had only a Radcliffe appointment, not an FAS one.

I pointed out that the last time that I was an unpaid visitor to the Harvard math department, it would have counted as an FAS appointment, and I would have had these privileges. Now I'm an even higher class of visitor, but I can't easily use the Internet. I added snarkily that female mathematicians had to go to Bunting to be at Harvard, since the Harvard math department didn't have a good record of having women.

He jumped on that and said it was totally false --- the math department has lots of women and I don't know what I'm talking about.

I laughed and asked him about that. He said he knew the names of lots of women. I asked him for some of them. It turned out he was bluffing --- he said he couldn't remember any names and would have to look them up --- he has a list of who has had computer accounts through the Harvard math department, and remembered that women were on it.

He said that the Nieman Fellows are in the same position as Bunting Fellows. Luckily I knew enough to call his bluff, and pointed out that Nieman Fellows did get access.

It was a conversation between two New Yorkers. It started out contentiously but ended amicably. I think he warmed up to me after it became clear that we had many friends in common, and I wasn't just some outsider (or party crasher). Both of us loved Harvard and cared about it. In the end he told me whom in the math department I should tell to sign the form to give me access.

A strange slick brochure was put out for the occasion. Its first page talks about "women students and faculty [having] become full participants in every aspect of the life of the College." Curiously, Harvard didn't officially claim to go coed until two years later, in 1999, when Harvard finally killed off Radcliffe College.

A couple of days later, Harvard Yard was plastered with flyers pointing out problems with the status of women at Harvard (scarcity of women on the faculty, only one tenured African-American woman, etc.), and saying that the Celebration of Women was just a ploy to bring in money. I was glad that I wasn't the only one to notice.

Cat Scratch Fever

My father never phoned me, so when I got a phone call from him during my last year in graduate school, I knew it must be important.

"Your mother is having a biopsy, and you need to come to the hospital."

I reminded him that my mother had told me that it's only a biopsy, it wasn't serious, and I shouldn't worry.

"It's surgery, and surgery is always serious!" he replied sharply.

When my father was a teenager, his father had died on the operating table from the anesthesic, before the operation. One of his great-aunts broke the news to him by saying, "You're an orphan. Your life will be hard from now on." He never forgot that. One result was that he avoided doctors. (My mother, on the other hand, followed doctors' orders and did everything she was supposed to do. My father lived 10 years longer than she did. Make of that what you will.)

Soon after my father's phone call, K came down with a fever. The fever was accompanied by an enlarged lymph node in his groin (I would call it enormous, but the technical term seems to be "remarkable"). He went to a doctor who told him to get the lymph node biopsied.

Due to the conversation with my father, I freaked out. Surgery is always serious. I would do what I could to help K avoid surgery.

Princeton University doesn't have a medical school or medical library, so I went to the Princeton Public Library and found the Harvard Medical School Health Letter Book. I looked up "lymph node" in the index, and the first thing it led me to was a section on important things to tell your doctor if you have a cat or a dog. It said that young people with an enlarged lymph node and a young cat should know about cat scratch fever.

Toby, a grad student friend who was a year ahead of me, had been having severe backaches. He had decided that perhaps the cure was to get a cat.

Every Christmas, Landau, the Icelandic woolens store on Nassau Street, put adoptable cats in the front display windows. K and I had gone with Toby one evening while he chose a tiny cute black and white kitten who licked his hand (she noticed that Toby had eaten chicken for dinner). During the drive back, the kitten crawled under my coat against my chest to keep warm.

Toby soon decided that the kitten, whom he named Topos, was making his back problems worse --- she snuggled against him under the covers at night to keep warm, and he was afraid to move for fear of rolling over and crushing her.

I couldn't stand the thought of sending her back to Landau's window, so Topos, whom I renamed Ceilidh, became my cat.

When K ate ice cream, Ceilidh would climb up his legs, giving him lots of scratches. As I soon learned, the lymph system drains upwards. The scratches on his legs led up to the lymph node in his groin. Cat scratch fever made a lot of sense.

When I mentioned cat scratch fever to Toby and other friends, they said, "Oh yes. That was a popular song. You must have heard it." I hadn't, but everyone else seemed to have.

We got an appointment with a family friend who was a doctor at a major cancer center in New York. He pressured K to have the lymph node biopsied. I vowed to do what I could to save K's lymph node.

Something Toby had learned in his adventures to cure his bad back was that it's important to be seen by the right specialist. "If you want to be diagnosed with cancer, go to an oncologist. If you want to be diagnosed with an infectious disease, go to an infectious disease specialist," he told me.

So we found an infectious disease specialist in Princeton. 

At that time, not much was known about cat scratch fever. They didn't even know if it was bacterial, viral, or something else, and the specialist didn't know how to test for it. When we told him our theory, he ordered a bunch of tests, including one for toxoplasmosis. We looked up toxoplasmosis in a 70-year-old copy of the Merck Manual (a well-known medical reference book). It gave the memorable warning that you should never eat a rabbit that you can knock over with a stick.

Even though one could get toxoplasmosis from a cat, K didn't have the symptoms for it, so that blood test, like a lot of things K's doctors did, didn't make a lot of sense to us.

I no longer remember how K got the name and phone number of the expert on cat scratch fever (this was long before the Internet or Google). K still remembers the names of the expert and the infectious disease specialist, and he remembers being nervous about phoning the expert.

The expert told K that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) had an experimental test for Cat Scratch Disease. We found out how to order the test, and K's infectious disease specialist ordered it. It was a simple pin-prick skin test, like the old tuberculosis tests.

I think the reason the infectious disease specialist took us seriously was that both he and K had been undergrads at Princeton, and the Princeton alumni bond is strong. (I was a Princeton grad student, but that doesn't count.)

Sure enough, a lump popped up on K's skin. We measured the diameter as one centimeter, which was the lower end for a positive cat scratch test. The infectious disease specialist  gave a description and the measurement by phone to the expert, who said it should be considered a positive result.

The family-friend oncologist's reaction was, "Even if you have cat scratch disease, you might have cancer too! You should still get a biopsy."

The lymph node eventually returned to normal, with no biopsy or treatment.

The Princeton alum infectious disease specialist was impressed with the way we solved problems, and how thinking like a mathematician led to a faster solution than the problem-solving algorithms in which medical doctors were trained. 

He warned us that, even though our way was better, we would have a lot of trouble with doctors in the future, because we thought like mathematicians. He was right.

Thinking about sex

X and I hadn't seen each other since we were in grad school together. We were standing around with a couple of graduate students during a conference break. Y came bounding up to us, stuck out his hand to X, and gave him an unusually vigorous and ostentatious handshake. Y had been a grad student with us at Princeton, a few years ahead of X and me, and Y knew the two of us equally well.

Reflexively, I stuck out my hand to shake Y's. He looked at my hand, and then put his hands behind his back. It felt, metaphorically, like a slap in the face. The grad students watched the scene unfold, and I felt embarrassed. Eventually it dawned on me that Y's refusal to shake my hand was based on religious grounds.

The affiliation that he had written on his name tag was a U.S. government intelligence agency. So in some sense he was there as a representative of the U.S. government, and his trip was funded by me and other taxpayers.

When I saw Y at a conference break the next day, I pointed out that while I understood, respected, and supported our country's strong commitment to freedom of religion, as a taxpayer I had a reasonable expectation that he behave professionally and fairly in professional settings in which he represented my country. As such, I felt that if he would not shake the hand of a female colleague for religious reasons, he shouldn't shake the hand of a male colleague in a similar professional setting, as a matter of basic fairness and common decency.

I asked what message was being sent to the two (female) grad students who had witnessed his handshake the previous day, about the differences in the way female and male mathematicians are treated by their colleagues and by people representing their government.

He agreed with everything I said, and even agreed that not shaking hands with men in professional settings was a fair and reasonable solution.

We discussed other ways in which he treated his female and male colleagues differently on religious grounds. One example he gave was, if someone were noisily vacuuming the hallway outside his office, he might close his office door when talking with a male colleague, but not with a female one. I pointed out that such actions could give an unfair advantage to one group over another, and suggested that he follow the same protocol as for handshakes: in professional settings, if he wouldn't do it with a female colleague, don't do it with a male colleague.

He explained that the prohibitions he followed were designed to get the practitioner not to think about sex. (And by putting his hands behind his back in response to my outstretched hand, he was reminding himself not to think about sex.)

After we discussed this point for several minutes, I remarked that this conversation was one of the few times I had talked about sex in a professional setting, and wasn't it interesting that his religious practice seemed to lead him to talk with female colleagues about sex, rather than preventing it. He agreed that it was interesting. (I could have pointed out that there are things I would rather discuss with my colleagues than sex or gender. And that I was surprised by how much he seemed to enjoy talking with me about thinking about sex.)

I don't know whether he now treats people equally and fairly in professional settings, irrespective of (his perception of) their gender. But I'm glad we went through the intellectual exercise of discussing it. I hope it gave him more to think about than sex! 

The Interrupter

During a conversation with C in a hallway after lunch, he yelled at me, "Stop interrupting me! You're always interrupting!" 

I didn't think I had interrupted him, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I shut up and he continued speaking .... 

... and he kept on talking. His monologue was mostly one long sentence. 

Was I "always interrupting"? Or had he merely thrown a tantrum to get his way, so he could talk and not have to listen to me? I decided to treat it as a scientific experiment, and glanced at my watch to check the time.

When he finally finished his long sentence, which went on for more than 20 minutes, I tried to rejoin the "conversation". He immediately interrupted me, so I shut up again and waited.

C wasn't a close colleague. He worked at the IBM lab where I had a "postdoctoral and junior faculty" fellowship in 1988-89, and we occasionally sat at the same lunch table. I no longer remember what topic he was expounding on, but I remember that it wasn't something about which he knew more than I did.

At an infinitesimal lull, I spoke up to calmly say, "I'm very sorry to interrupt, but I've been politely listening to you for the past half hour. Whenever I think you're done and I try to say something, you start talking again, so I stop. When do I get to speak?"

He berated me angrily for having timed his monologue, before I politely excused myself and walked away.

I mentioned our interaction to a colleague, who reassured me that it was him and not me. He was known for being hard to get along with.

From similar experiments, I've observed that the people who angrily tell me that I'm monopolizing the conversation usually speak for more time than I do.

Alice in Wonderland spent much of her adventures trying to deal calmly and rationally with angry, irrational, unreasonable creatures, mostly older men. Sometimes I feel as if that accurately describes my career.

When I'm tempted to react in anger (in my personal life or at work), I try to remember to take some deep breaths, channel Alice in Wonderland, and say to myself:

"First, self-confidence; then kindness." 

When I succeed, it's the self-confidence that enables me to be kind.

And if I do take the floor for too long, I hope that you'll let me know kindly rather than angrily.

The Affirmative Action We Don't Talk About

I know of a cohort that was chosen (from paper applications without interviews) by a well-intentioned selection committee that tried to put together a racially and ethnically diverse group. The cohort turned out to be more homogeneous than the selection committee assumed. The women with Spanish surnames were non-Hispanic white women who got their last names from their ex-husbands. And the group included whites who were assumed to be black because of their work on African or African American topics.

In the United States, race-based affirmative action was originally supposed to help underprivileged African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans who faced a history of discrimination. The way I've seen it implemented in academia is sometimes at odds with those goals. But when some of the problematic aspects are discussed at all, it's often in whispers. Is this too dangerous a topic to talk about openly?

I've noticed that surprisingly often, the people who benefit from affirmative action are well-off white men from Spain or Latin America who didn't come to the United States until graduate school, or else people who aren't black or Hispanic but are assumed to be. They are usually valuable members of their workplace (who might or might not serve as role models, depending on the situation). But they are not the underprivileged Hispanic Americans or African Americans for whom affirmative action was intended.

If you question such choices, even to point out that more qualified African Americans and women were passed over, you risk being accused of racism for questioning an affirmative action decision.

Many years ago I heard from my father the journalist an anecdote about a radio station that got in trouble for discriminating against minorities. A consequence was that the station had to hire a minority applicant for the next job opening. Of the two finalists, the African American applicant was better. The other one was hired. 

The people who ran the radio station reasoned that one couldn't tell from the black applicant's name or voice that he was black, so they wouldn't "get credit" for hiring a minority member.

The applicant they hired grew up as a white kid in an upper middle class white suburb. He used an Hispanic name when he applied for this job to take advantage of affirmative action. Even though he didn't grow up in an Hispanic culture and didn't know Spanish, the radio audience would think from his name that he was Hispanic, and that's what mattered to the bosses at the radio station.

Implementing only the letter and not the spirit of affirmative action policies is sometimes just laziness. Whatever your views about affirmative action, I hope you agree that we can do better.

The Moving Allowance

While I was an assistant professor, I was asked if I wanted to be considered for a position at Bandersnatch University, and I said OK. I got a job offer from Bandersnatch in the mail two days before Christmas, with a December 31 deadline.

I hadn't interviewed for the position, but the department Chair and I had agreed that it would make sense to visit the campus before I made a decision. When I got the offer letter I tried to phone the Chair to arrange the visit, but the math department office said he had already left for Christmas. I asked about phoning him at home and was told not to since, after all, it's Christmas.

The Chair returned my call in January, and we arranged for me to visit Bandersnatch University later that month.

In January, K also received an unsolicited offer from Bandersnatch. K's offer included a moving allowance, while mine did not. I didn't care so much about the moving allowance, but I did care about fairness.

During my visit I asked the Chair whether they usually give moving allowances. He replied that moving allowances are standard for all offers. When I told him that my offer didn't include one, he said he'd look into it. He said "your husband" K's moving allowance would be higher since K's offer was at a higher rank, but we'd each get one and we could use the sum of the two.

I was disconcerted by the mention of "your husband". While I pondered what to do about it, I asked the Chair how the department would react if I accepted my offer and K rejected his. He replied, "the department would be delighted!" This seemed like an odd reaction to K's turning them down.

I said I was concerned about whether the offers were independent. He said they had to treat it that way, since they know how easily marriages break up.

I reminded him that I had not informed him about my personal life or marital status, and pointed out that he and the university didn't actually know anything about my marital status.

He insisted that he did, since some of his colleagues had told him. I pointed out that his colleagues didn't know either, and whatever he thought he knew was on the level of rumor or gossip.

Changing the subject, I asked about an updated deadline for my offer. The Chair said he knew there were other factors, like my spouse, and surely I would want Bandersnatch to give us the same deadline. He seemed to have learned that I didn't like the word "husband", but he didn't seem to have grasped why.

The Chair phoned me one evening in early February. Among the issues we discussed, he included the news that "the moving allowance has been approved". What that meant was that "since we are also recruiting your spouse," K's moving allowance was a "household" allowance, and I would still be offered nothing.

I protested, and questioned whether this was the usual way to do such things. I asked, "would an assistant professor whose spouse works in industry be offered a moving allowance, whether or not the spouse was getting a moving allowance from their company?" He admitted they would.

The Chair phoned again the next evening, and once again referred to "your husband". Feeling that greater directness was warranted, I said, "You never asked me if I have a husband, and I know what I would have told you had you asked. I would have said it's none of your business."

After discussing other matters, the Chair brought up the moving allowance and admitted that it was wrong not to offer me one. He tried to downplay it by saying it wasn't much money. And he added, "you're welcome here even if your husband goes somewhere else." (This time, he quickly corrected himself and said he meant K.)

I replied, "Yes, I could go there, but not with a moving allowance, since I wasn't offered one." I told him it's not the money, it's the principle. And it sets a precedent for how I'll be treated at Bandersnatch.

The moving allowance (or lack thereof) was not the reason I turned down the offer (and wasn't nearly the worst part of my interactions with that Chair). It was an unnecessarily unwelcoming part of the recruitment process that could so easily have been avoided.

When I showed this story to a friend, his sympathies were with the Chair. He felt that "it's hard for people to forget what they think they know," and I'm asking a lot to expect the Chair to "forget" that I was married.

I'm not asking people to change what they think. But I would like university employees to behave professionally. If someone is entitled to a moving allowance, give them a moving allowance. If you don't know someone's marital status, or don't have a right to know it, don't act as if you do.

She was punished for behavior for which her male colleagues were rewarded

My friend E grew up in Europe, but went to a large American university for grad school. She carefully observed the other grad students, to learn how students are supposed to behave in America. E taught herself to behave like the other grad students in her field, all of whom were male.

The consequence was that some of the faculty and staff told her that she was too aggressive and too difficult.

According to E, her thesis advisor told her that because she was "diminutive", he thought she would be feminine and compliant. He told her that he was disappointed that she was so assertive, and that her behavior was unbecoming.

E managed to get a PhD. But her relationship with her advisor was so strained that she never asked him to write a letter of recommendation for her, which hurt her on the job market.

Meanwhile, the male classmates whose behavior she copied were praised for their ambition, drive, and determination. E was punished for behavior for which her male classmates were rewarded.

We're told we're "difficult" or "adhere to views too strongly." Or we're "not a good colleague" or "not a team player." Or we "should smile more." I've been told each of these. It confused me, since when my male colleagues behaved the same way, they were rewarded for having "grit", or being ambitious (which is sometimes said sneeringly as an insult when applied to women).

Peter Pan was the boy who refused to grow up, and Wendy was the little girl who both mothered him and flirted with him. After watching the interactions at UC Irvine, it seemed to me as if too many of the male faculty and administrators want the women to behave like Wendy to their Peter Pan. Sometimes, I'm taken aback by the anger towards women who don't flirt. Through positive and negative feedback, female faculty and staff are being trained to be Wendy. When we're sufficiently obsequious and ingratiating, we're less likely to be punished, though we're not necessarily rewarded.