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.

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

"It's the only thing they'll listen to"

This post is the twelfth 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)?"

"It's the only thing they'll listen to"

After feeling bullied at the Chair's Advisory Committee meeting, I wondered what to do about it. Recalling my senior colleague's admonition to never take anything outside the department and her complaining about me to the then-Dean, I didn't want to be a snitch. But I was mindful of the Provost's angry accusation, "why didn't you report it?"


When I arrived at UCI, the first Equity Advisor was great (except for forwarding my report of an incident to an unsympathetic colleague without asking me).

The rumor was that the next Equity Advisor got the position since the Dean wanted someone who wasn't going to delay searches to ensure that they're done fairly. The one time I was on the Hiring Committee, that Equity Advisor stood us up when he was supposed to train us about good hiring practices and never rescheduled, so we never got trained. (That meant that I couldn't say "we were told we're not allowed to do that" the many times it should have been said.) He also told me there aren't any good female chemists.


Equity Advisors have told me they have no leverage to get anyone to do anything, especially not the Dean. The Equity Advisors report to the Dean, who makes decisions on their salaries and promotions, so they're unwilling to risk antagonizing him.

Nevertheless, I arranged to meet with the Equity Advisor. I told her about the Chair's Advisory Committee meeting and my chest pains afterwards. I said I was reporting it to her since I'm required to do so, and I wanted to go on record as having reported it so they can't say they didn't know or that I never told them.

I told her that I advise others that when things get so bad that it makes them ill, it's time to get out. I said that I shouldn't have to put up with the hostile environment I was subjected to at UCI, and I would probably need to take early retirement for my health. I felt I was being pushed out.

I added that I knew she couldn't do anything to help. While I think she would have liked to have helped if she could, she agreed that there was nothing she could do (especially since the Dean she reported to didn't like me).

She said that the only thing that might work would be something external, outside the university. That's the only thing they'll listen to.

I asked what she meant. She said the media.

She mentioned a case that I then pointed out involved not just the media but also lawyers. She agreed, and said maybe it was the lawyers who went to the media. She said that the higher administration only cares about the money.

We discussed how at UCI, the people who behave badly and break the rules get rewarded for it, while those of us who do the right thing get punished.

I told her that I drafted an email to the Dean that tried to explain to him how his public mistreatment of me sets a bad example for how to treat women, but I didn't send it since someone who knows the Dean better said that he would react badly and it would do more harm than good. The Equity Advisor said that I was correct not to send it; the Dean would not have reacted well.

She advised me to protect myself.

When I asked her later what other solutions she could suggest, she said to wait until "the leadership changes".

What I found saddest was that she eventually requested confidentiality for everything she said. While I like her and I feel very conflicted about revealing what she told me, my rationalizations for doing so are:
  • I didn't promise to keep it confidential.
  • The leadership has changed. That Dean and Chair have left the university, and the Provost stepped down (under a cloud whose cause, true to UCI's lack of transparency, has never been explained to the faculty), so it's unlikely she'll be retaliated against.
  • I met with the Equity Advisor in her official capacity, not for personal advice. When I do my job and officially report something that I'm required to report, and the people whose job it is to help me can't or won't do so, I shouldn't have to keep that secret.
  • The advice she gave me and her fear that the leadership might find out that she gave it are important parts of my story about why I retired early and why I'm disappointed with UCI. A crucial point I want to make is that there is something wrong with a university in which the people I'm supposed to go to to get things fixed are themselves afraid of being retaliated against for the advice they give me.