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.

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

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.