How do I know how good it is, if I don't know who wrote it?

When a paper is submitted for publication, the editors send it out for expert opinions. The first time I was asked for my opinion about a computer science paper, I blurted out "How am I supposed to know how good it is, if I don't know who wrote it?" 

From that, I realized how crucially my judgment of the work depended on my opinion of who did it.

I was accustomed to refereeing mathematics papers, where the authors' names are revealed to the referees. But computer science often has double-blind reviewing, where the reviewers don't know the identities of the authors. It took me awhile to get used to this. I found that I was trying to guess the authors' identities. But that lessened as I've learned how often my guesses are wrong!

I wonder how much our opinions of the work are shaped by what we learn from seeing the authors' names.

"HIRE ME!"

I think I could write a book about job interviews. I think many women in academia could. Here's a story about a job interview I went on in 2004. 

It was at a university where I knew the Dean. He encouraged me to apply for the position.

The schedule included a 50 minute interview with the Hiring Committee. Contrary to the picture above, I was seated at one of the short ends, with the committee lined up on both sides of the long skinny table. I'm guessing the Chair was at the far end, facing me. I felt as if I were looking down a long tunnel; the phrase "running the gauntlet" came to mind.

I'm sure there were other questions, but I remember only one. They said they wanted to hire a woman, and asked me how to go about doing that.

It's possible I've been asked similar questions informally at interviews, by friends in one-on-one conversations. But this was a formal part of the interview, at which I'd be graded on my answer. What was the right answer?

At the time, it seemed to me that the obvious response was to jump up and down and shout "HIRE ME! HIRE ME!"

"HIRE ME!" Dare I say it?

But why hadn't they thought of that?

I decided I needed to think a bit more, so I stalled for time. 

I asked them what they'd been doing so far. They had made offers to women and (mostly) men, but the women had turned down their offers to go to better places.

Since I've often been asked the question (though not usually for a grade), I had a ready answer, which I gave them: "Put together a diverse hiring committee. Advertise widely, with an ad that gives the criteria you're really looking for. Interview the people whose files best satisfy those criteria. To the extent that you can, make offers that are attractive enough that they're accepted. Go down your list until the positions are filled or you run out of acceptable candidates."

(In other words, do what you should be doing anyway.)

They weren't at all happy with my response. 

After further discussion, I got the sense that they wanted me to tell them "You've been doing great! There's nothing else you should be doing!" I hadn't. They chose to view my reply as criticism, and they weren't pleased.

The rejection email from the department Chair began: 

Dr. Silverberg:

The Hiring Committee has met and made its decision. It is not good for you. We will not be making an offer to you.

I gave it a 5 or 6 week cooling off period, then emailed the Dean:

Dear T,

Although I haven't been asked for feedback on my job interview, I thought it might be useful to give feedback on one aspect.

Much of my interview with the hiring committee consisted of discussing the question of how to hire more women. In retrospect, my feelings about having been asked that question, and then been rejected for the position, are negative. By the way, I gave standard, well-known answers to that question, but was left with the impression that some of the committee reacted to my response defensively and negatively.

I hope that this feedback is helpful for your future job searches.

Best regards,

Alice

The Dean never replied.

If I had it to do over again, knowing that I would be rejected (for whatever reason), it would have been more fun to have jumped up and down and shouted "HIRE ME! HIRE ME!"

Personal Questions

A group of faculty took me out to the interview dinner after the talk I gave during a job interview in 2004. The Dean's wife, R, sat next to me. I was meeting her for the first time. R told me some interesting stories about her family, and her complicated relationship with her sister. But things got complicated for me when R persisted in asking me increasingly personal questions.

I've been asked overly personal questions many times at job interviews. How to deal with it is always a challenge.

When I was a grad student, Princeton convened a meeting so that female faculty could give advice to female grad students, to prepare us for being treated differently from our male counterparts during our job searches. They told us that women are asked a lot of "illegal questions" at job interviews ("Are you married?" "Do you have children?"), and there's always the dilemma of what to do. They pointed out that we could refuse to answer, but then we probably wouldn't get the job. They recommended answering truthfully (and hoping one could change the culture someday).

Several times I tried to change the subject, but R was insistent. I started out answering truthfully some of her questions about my relationship with my siblings, much as we were advised. But the questions got more and more personal, and I felt more and more uncomfortable. This wasn't the sort of conversation I would normally have with a stranger, or in the hearing of faculty who were interviewing me for a job. I didn't want to hurt my chances of getting a job offer by offending the Dean's wife, but finally I said in as polite a voice as I could muster that since it was a job interview, I didn't feel completely comfortable with personal questions such as these.

She was very upset, and loudly told me so. I don't know how many faculty had been paying attention to our conversation, but now they all were. So much for trying to make a good impression!

Over the years, universities have gotten better at training hiring committees on best practices for hiring, including not asking "illegal questions". But they don't train spouses of faculty members. (Some do suggest that non-faculty spouses not be involved in job interviews.) And they don't always train hiring committees, Deans, or Chairs to step in when someone else asks the "illegal questions".

Don't tell anyone. They'll be jealous.

When I was a child, my mother told me a story. When she accepted one of her first jobs, her boss told her "Don't tell your salary to your co-workers, since they'll be jealous." After she eventually quit, she and her co-workers went to lunch and ended up exchanging salary information. It turned out that my mother had been the lowest paid employee. That's when she realized that the boss didn't want her to discuss salary so she wouldn't find out how poorly she was being paid.

So when I got a job offer and the department Chair said "Don't tell your salary offer to anyone in the department, since they'll be jealous," I burst out laughing.

From an early age, I've had a fondness for the adage "knowledge is power".

They melted like butter

Z came to my office hours to ask for help with her homework. As usual, I used the Socratic Method. I asked her questions designed to help her figure out the answers herself, so that she'd have the skills she would need to solve problems on her own.

But rather than answering my questions, she was silent. I looked up from the textbook. Z was batting her eyelashes at me. I don't know if anyone ever batted their eyelashes at me before, but this was unmistakable.

I ignored the batting, and continued as before. Z got more and more flustered and confused. She expected me to give her the answers to the homework problems, and didn't understand why I wasn't doing so.

I looked more closely. I saw an ordinary-looking female Ohio State undergraduate student. Dyed blond hair, lots of makeup, low-cut blouse. Quite a lot of mascara on the batting eyelashes.

I continued to treat her the same way I would have treated any student (of any gender). But I realized what was going on. She was doing exactly what she had always done at office hours to get the instructor to tell her the answers. I must have had colleagues who melted like butter, and she expected me to do the same.

If Z had thought of it as flirting, she might have realized why it had worked on some of my (male) colleagues. My colleagues had trained her to act in a way that gave her the homework solutions, and she had learned that lesson well. Her confusion told me that she knew that it (usually) worked, but didn't understand why.

I don't think she came back to office hours. I worried about Z---that someone would take advantage of her naivety. But it would have been hard to give her helpful life advice, while staying within the boundaries of our professional relationship.

The Letter

I used to point out how few women were invited to participate in conferences at the Oberwolfach mathematics research center, until someone said to me "If you weren't invited to Oberwolfach, it must be because you're not good enough to be invited." 

From this and many similar experiences, I learned that my observations and suggestions are more likely to have a positive effect when I don't stand to benefit. I have more credibility when I'm the only female invited speaker, than when there are no female speakers.

It's more effective when someone else speaks up on your behalf.

But when the speaker list is all male and probably shouldn't be, who should speak up?

In 2006, at my suggestion the Association for Women in Mathematics enacted a policy that anyone can ask the AWM President to send a letter to organizers of a conference reminding them of the benefits of considering potential speakers from a wide pool so that good people are not overlooked (if not for their current conference, then for future ones). Suggestions included having a diverse organizing committee, making an effort to think of potential speakers whose demographics, mathematical interests, or geographical areas aren't represented on the organizing committee, using the Mathscinet searchable database to check that important areas or people aren't overlooked, and contacting colleagues and organizations that could help suggest names or ways to go about finding them. We referred to it as "The Letter" (as in "I wonder if those conference organizers might benefit from being sent The Letter").