Deafening Silence

or: The Young Lady and the Professors 

I received a letter informing me of a vacancy as math department chair at a small science-oriented college that I'll call Wonderland Tech. I decided to apply.

At the job interview, I met the acting chair and another faculty member of about the same age. They were very enthusiastic about my application. They explained that they weren't yet old enough to be chair, but I, as someone older and wiser, would have the requisite maturity for the position. From our conversations, I managed to deduce their ages. I wondered whether I should point out that both of them were older than me, so their reason for wanting to hire me didn't withstand scrutiny, but I thought better of it. (Later, I learned that the real reason was that neither of them wanted the other to be chair; the department decided to keep everyone happy by hiring a chair from elsewhere.)

My main memory of the college President is that he met me with a firm handshake, then coughed loud and long and told me he had a very bad case of the flu. 

I was very impressed by the math faculty. They were devoted to the students, volunteered for many tasks above and beyond their required duties, and had a tremendous amount of energy and commitment.

A third of the faculty on the campus were women, but only 3 full professors were female, in the entire college in all fields combined. The female faculty felt that the treatment of female faculty and students was a problem. The male faculty adamantly insisted that there was no such problem.

At a department party on the first night of my interview, I learned that the faculty highly valued the fact that the former chair's wife would occasionally babysit the children of the math faculty. Their wistful memories of the chair's wife led me to think they would be overjoyed for me to take over the babysitting, if I became the next chair.

The next day I met with the acting chair at a campus eatery. Each time he said something like "We think you'd be a great fit for this position and we hope you'll come," I jumped up, ran to the restroom, and threw up. Had I gotten the flu, either from the contagious college President, or the sneezing baby I'd been asked to hold at the department party the previous night? Whatever it was, I took it as a sign that no matter what my conscious and rational mind was saying, my gut was telling me I would not be happy there.

I'll let the below (lightly redacted) correspondence speak for itself.

Date: Tuesday

Subject: Wonderland Tech

Dear Prof. T,

I was at Wonderland Tech last Thursday and Friday, being interviewed for the position (professor and chair) in the math department. [The Chair of the Physics Department] brought up your name in my first interview, and your name came up again in later interviews. My understanding is that you're the only woman ever to have been chair of a department at Wonderland Tech.

I think that I have concluded that I would not be happy with the job at Wonderland. However, a number of faculty in the math department have encouraged me to think about it longer, and to contact you and others. My main concern is the high workload (especially the large number of contact hours in the math department). However, I also have concerns about being a senior woman in a college with a history of very few women at the professor level. If you could tell me more about that history, and about your experiences as a professor and chair, I would be very interested. Thank you very much for any information or advice you could give me.

Yours sincerely,

Alice Silverberg

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Date: Wednesday

From: Professor T

Dear Dr. Silverberg,

I would be very happy to speak with you.  It's true that I'm the only woman at Wonderland who's ever chaired a department. It's also true that I have reservations about how effectively a woman can chair a department at Wonderland.  I don't know whether anyone told you, but I have resigned from Wonderland effective the end of this year, in part because of my frustration at not being able to be an effective advocate for my department -- a circumstance that I believe is at least partly due to my being female.

Many of the problems I face, however, are unique to [the department she had chaired] and don't apply to the math department.

[Professor T then gave her phone numbers and arrangements for talking with me.]

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Professor T and I spoke by phone. She told me that before she decided to resign from the college, she had informed the Wonderland administration about her frustration and her concerns about not being taken seriously as chair, hoping that would lead to a discussion and improvement of the treatment of women on campus. The response was "deafening silence". I had never before heard the marvelous phrase "deafening silence", and it has stuck in my memory.

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Date: Thursday

To: Professor T

Thanks very much for your reply, and for offering to talk with me. Since I had expressed reservations about the job during my interviews, I was asked yesterday morning if I still want to be considered, and I said no. I feel comfortable about that decision. I'm wondering now about possible ways to communicate to the College some of my concerns, so that they can use the feedback to try to change things for the future. Sometimes an outsider gets listened to more than an insider. 

My concerns about how I'd be treated/viewed came mainly from subtle cues in my first 3 interviews (with the Chair of Physics, Prof. M, and Wonderland's President]), but most of the problems are so subtle that they're difficult to describe. The easiest episode to describe is that when I arrived for my scheduled interview with [the President], his secretary announced me as "Professor M is here to here to see you ... (long pause) ... and he has a young lady with him". I could imagine my time there as chair being labeled "The Young Lady and the Professors". 

I'm thinking about sending an email to [the Dean] and [the President], explaining why I withdrew from the search. If you have any advice on how I could give feedback in a way that might accomplish something positive, I would be very interested. I don't want to do anything that would have negative consequences for the women. 

Best regards,

Alice Silverberg

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Date: 2 weeks later

Subject: feedback

Dear [Dean X and President Y],

I enjoyed meeting both of you at my interview for the position of Chair of the Mathematics Department.  I learned a lot during my visit, and I'm glad that I interviewed.  The students and the Mathematics Department are real gems, and I was very positively impressed by them.

I wanted to briefly let you know why I withdrew from the search, in case the feedback is useful to the College.

There were two primary reasons.

One is that the workload was too high. I was told that the normal teaching load is 3-2, with many additional duties, including supervising senior theses, serving on many committees, etc., and that the Chair teaches 2-2 and has many further duties, committees, and other scheduled meetings.  I did not see how I could maintain my teaching quality under such a schedule.  Personally, I cannot do high quality work (teaching, service, or research) without the time to think about how to do it well.

Another reason is that I was left with the impression that I would sometimes not be taken seriously in the College because I was female, and that that might hurt the department.

I would be happy to talk with you and/or others further, if it would be constructive.

Yours sincerely,

Alice Silverberg

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I sent a copy of the last message to the women in the math department for their information, and they thanked me for having sent it to the President and Dean. 

The President and Dean reacted to my message with deafening silence.