Over the years, I've told colleagues and friends about things I have seen or experienced. Many times, people have said that I should write them down so that they won't be lost and forgotten, since some of them might be useful parts of our history. I've been writing them down, without being sure what I would do with them. I decided to gradually post them on this website, and see what reactions I get. I suggest reading from the bottom up (starting with the August 2017 post "The Meritocracy"). Thoughtful and kind feedback would be useful for me, and would help me to revise the exposition to make it as useful as possible. I hope that while you read my stories you will ask yourself "What can I learn from this?" I'm particularly interested in knowing what you see as the point of the story, or what you take away from it. Please send feedback to asilverb@gmail.com. Thanks for taking the time to read and hopefully reflect on them!

I often run the stories past the people I mention, even when they are anonymized, to get their feedback and give them a chance to correct the record or ask for changes. When they tell me they're happy to be named, I sometimes do so. When I give letters as pseudonyms, there is no correlation between those letters and the names of the real people.

Sunday, June 29, 2025

"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.