Behind those doors of academia
by KrauzeIn the discussion about intelligent design and tenure, it has been pointed out that when an academic comitee acts behind closed doors, it's really asking the public to have faith in the impartiality of its members. I was reminded of this when reading this news story in Nature (HT: evolgen). Theresa Markow, president of the Society for the Study of Evolution, has resigned in protest to the discrimination of women applicants for editorship:
A rare resignation has focused attention on scientific societies' treatment of women. Theresa Markow, president of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), has stepped down in protest that women were not adequately considered for the editorship of its journal, Evolution.
Many think the incident is symptomatic of a wider issue. "I see this as truly problematic," says Patricia Gowaty, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Georgia in Athens. "And it is not unique to the SSE."
The society's rules state that it should create a nominating committee to choose a chief editor. But instead, the society appointed a man after informal queries. It then rejected Markow's request to redo the process. Markow, a geneticist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, resigned the SSE presidency on 18 March, about ten weeks into her term.
Apparently, it's a problem that's far from unique to the SSE:
In the SSE's nearly 60 years, Evolution has had only one female editor "” Markow, from 1995 to 1999. Other journals are similar. Daphne Fairbairn, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Riverside, says she had a "discouraging" experience when she proposed female candidates for an editing position at the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, published by the European Society for Evolutionary Biology. "No one else came up with a single woman candidate," says Fairbairn. "When I raised the issue, they looked at me dumbly."
She says society leaders criticized her suggestions unfairly. "They would say 'she is nasty', or 'she didn't do a good job'. No one was going through the men's list and saying those things." When Fairbairn's term as North American editor ends, the journal will have no female editors.
Juha Merilä, a biologist at the University of Helsinki in Finland and the journal's editor-in-chief, acknowledges there are difficulties appointing women. There are few women at high levels of science in Europe, he says, so the pool of candidates is small. "I am, of course, a little disappointed," he says. "I went through quite a few names; all declined because of other responsibilities."
The journal of the American Ornithologists' Union, The Auk, has not had a woman editor in its 123-year history. But Kimberley Sullivan, an ornithologist at Utah State University in Logan, has a grant from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to address such issues, and seems to be making progress. The society's existing fellows pick new fellows at the union's annual meeting, from a slate of nominees. At her first fellows' meeting, Sullivan says women nominees were "trashed". "They started blackballing nominees, with someone saying: 'I was with her on a field trip and she misidentified a bird'," she says. "It was terrible." The younger men on the slate came in for the same treatment, she says.
April 27th, 2006 at 11:30 am
Krauze,
Vet few tenure candidates would wish to have their files discussed publicly. But, as I have stated here, a tenure committee must produce a letter which states in concrete terms why an applicant is recommended or not for tenure. This letter is the sole output from the committee and is part of the evidence the administration uses to make a final decision. In the event that the tenure decision is contested that letter may have to be disclosed.
As for women in science there is discrimination against women in almost all professions and in business. There is also discrimination against women in religion, especially fundamentalist religions.
I suspect that the only thing that makes your post worthy of notice here is that it is the journal Evolution which is involved.
Now, Krauze, please tell me exactly how many women editors the Journal of Church and State has had since its inception in 1959. (This is Beckwith's preferred journal).
For that matter, how many women are on the faculty of Baylor's J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State studies? How many women are on the faculty in the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from which Dembski holds forth?
And how many female fellows of the Discovery Institute are there? In this case, however, I take this as being a clear sign of the obviously superior intellect and judgment of the female of the species.
Ethel
Comment by ethel_merganser — April 27, 2006 @ 11:30 am
April 27th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
I want to know why there are no women working at the car wash on First Street. Could I get a research grant to find out where the discrimination is coming from?
Comment by chunkdz — April 27, 2006 @ 4:47 pm
April 28th, 2006 at 7:14 am
Ethel:
Oh, but I got much more out of it. The post helps us see how people discriminate. This is relevant because, as you say, "a tenure committee must produce a letter which states in concrete terms why an applicant is recommended or not for tenure." Yes, and that letter is a carefully crafted, carefully reviewed, and highly edited representation of what transpired during the tenure committee's deliberation. Is it possible to hide the type of discrimination outlined in Krauze's post in such a letter?
They didn't say she was a woman. They took advantage of the fact that human beings are not perfect and cherry picked faults. In other words, with women, they suddenly became anal retentive and overly sensitive. We see more of the same:
So say we are talking about a group of six sexist men deciding tenure for a woman candidate. While they are talking, they are smart enough to not be overtly or overly sexist. "They say 'she is nasty', or 'she didn't do a good job'. One says "I was with her on a field trip and she misidentified a bird." They essentially trash the candidate in a way they would not do with a fellow sexist man. They vote against her. The letter?
It reports that the candidate does not work well with colleagues and it reports the candidate has significant gaps of knowledge.
Comment by MikeGene — April 28, 2006 @ 7:14 am
April 28th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
Mike,
Do you have any actual experience of this or is it simply speculation based on preconceived notions? When you have an assistant professor with a list of, say, 10-20 publications in good journals; a track record of external funding; consistently good teaching evaluations and excellent outside letters (including from people suggested by the candidate); all of which have to be submitted to the administration, then how easy is it to write a letter that suggests that the person should be denied tenure?
I do understand that for ID supporters, condemning the academic system which brought us electronics, superconductors, substantial medical advances, etc., is helpful as a way of explaining why ID is rejected as nonscience (rhymes with nonsense). But is it honest?
I note that the silence is deafening on the enlightened hiring policies of the Discovery Institute when it comes to female fellows.
Ethel
Comment by ethel_merganser — April 28, 2006 @ 12:21 pm
April 28th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
ps: Mike, I don' think Sullivan's story related to tenure at all. Please read the Nature artticle.
Comment by ethel_merganser — April 28, 2006 @ 12:39 pm
April 28th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
There's a pretty good treatment of this issue in PLoS Biology this month by Peter Lawrence too - Men, Women and Ghosts in Science
Comment by Joy — April 28, 2006 @ 1:09 pm
April 28th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Ethel:
I'm merely pointing out that Krauze's blog helps us see how discrimination occurs and asked, "Is it possible to hide the type of discrimination outlined in Krauze's post in such a letter?"
I would agree that if one is going to publicly advocate that ID is science, they should go to great lengths to secure this type of track record.
You are over-reacting. I am not condemning the academic system.
Is there a point here? For example, there are 26 contributors to Pandas Thumb and last time I checked, 25 of them were men. So?
I didn't say the story was related to tenure. The story illustrates how smart people can discriminate. Like I said, "They took advantage of the fact that human beings are not perfect and cherry picked faults. In other words, with women, they suddenly became anal retentive and overly sensitive."
Comment by MikeGene — April 28, 2006 @ 6:13 pm
April 28th, 2006 at 6:40 pm
Mike,
You wrote immediately after the quote from Sullivan:
So I now understand that you were transposing what happened at a meeting to elect fellows into the context of a tenure meeting, rather than mistaking what Sullivan wrote for a tenure discussion. Ok. That's fine but there are several points to make;
(i) These days it costs somewhere on the order of $500,000 and up to start an assitant professor in science. This figure depends on the field but it's a lot of money part of which the Department has to cough up. So there is a huge incentive to hire people who will succeed.
(ii) The same group of 6 on your hypothetical tenure committee were also there (almost certainly, being the "old elite") when the hire was made. Why would they hire a woman, smother her in start-up cash, and that discriminate against her at the tenure meeting? The same would be true of any candidate. It's must easier to discriminate during the hiring process if you don't like women, minorities or whatever. And, what's more, most departments want a unanimous decision to hire and so each individual carries more clout than usual.
(iii) It looks somewhat bad when Departments don't grant tenure because, clearly, their judgment in hiring the person initially was wrong. Of course denying tenure is sometimes necessary but it is not done lightly.
As for the letter - you simply cannot direct unsubstantiated charges against someone. If the assistant professor doesn't work well with people then you need adequate documentation from students, especially graduate students and other faculty. You also have to demonstrate that this makes their performance bad enough that it prevents them working effectively. And, more critically, the Department Head has to demonstrate through a paper trail that attempts were made to get the person to alter their behavior.
If you say the person has gaps in their knowledge and they have grants and publications then you have to also explain why they are considered to be experts in their field. idespite supposed gaps.
It is much harder to discriminate on tenure decisions than on elections of fellows or appointments of editors. Further, most science departments desperately try to attract women and minorities.
The reason I brought up the DI - which is not a blog and so the analogy with Panda's Thumb is not exactly equivalent - is to show that women are not just underrepresented in science or biology. And, that this underrepresentation is not a consequence of how tenure is awarded. If anything it relates more to hiring practices and this is a problem everywhere. Also, bringing up discrimnation at a pro-evolution journal on a pro-ID blog has the whiff of trying to poison the well especially through the inaccurate connection to tenure and thence to Beckwith.
Becwith's case is unusual in that he was hired under one administrative philosophy and fired under another. But that is not typical and has little to do with how tenure is conducted in general. If anything, based on Bechwith's scholarship , he didn't get tenure because he should not have been hired initially.
Ethel
Comment by ethel_merganser — April 28, 2006 @ 6:40 pm
April 28th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
Ethel,
What we see from the posting is how smart people can discriminate. They are not overt about it; they cover it with other concerns. That's the point.
Remember, we know of at least two people who vote for tenure (PZ and Ed) that have declared they will vote against anyone who thinks ID is science. No one said this would be their stated reasoning during the behind closed-doors deliberations.
Comment by MikeGene — April 28, 2006 @ 6:57 pm
April 28th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
Mike,
I find it interesting that this board is so willing to take PZ's and Ed's claims on tenure at face value but on almost eveything else they are viewed as being wrong. I don't know about Ed, I thought he was a lawyer of some sort; but Myers spent 7 years at Temple as assistant professor where he produced a grand total of two papers and then departed for the much diminsihed pastures of UMM where he finally got tenure a couple of years ago at age 48 or so. So let's ponder how many tenure committees he's actually sat on.
Currently there is one female assistant professor at UMM in Biology and so maybe PZ can discriminate against her at some point down the line. But she has not yet come up for tenure. Myers himself has only been tenured for something like 2 -3 years. So out of a faculty of about 10 what are the odds that he's ever sat on a T&P committee within a Biology Department. I'd say close to zero. Certainly none at Temple and maybe - and it's a stretch - one at UMM. I say "stretch" because, usually, tenure commiittees are formed when a person first arrives and also serve as mentors. So it's unlikely Myers has yet voted on tenure for someone within his Department.
Does anyone seriously think that Myers as an outside member could torpedo the promotion during a T&P meeting of someone from another Department? The outside member is there mainly to ensure that procedure is followed.
Basically Myers' stated position is hubris. If he voted against tenure for a qualified candidate in a small department like his own for no documentable reason he'd be in deep trouble; if he voted against tenure for a qualified candidate from another Department for no documentable reason he'd be in even deeper waters.
Ethel
Comment by ethel_merganser — April 28, 2006 @ 7:24 pm
April 29th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Ethel:
Well, in this case, they are telling us what they would do. I assume that when someone says they'd vote against tenure for anyone who thinks ID is science, they are not lying. Where I doubt them is when they make misguided claims about reality outside their minds that are indebted to stereotypes and superficial thinking.
We're left with the fact that smart people can come up with subtle ways to discriminate and that professors like PZ Myers exist.
Comment by MikeGene — April 29, 2006 @ 10:26 am
April 29th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
Of course, there are no women to resign in protest in the ID movement. Interesting you'd complain about a top-level woman complaining of discrimination at a science publication, when there are no top-level women in ID.
Comment by edarrell — April 29, 2006 @ 9:05 pm
April 29th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
Since when did anyone at this blog take anything I ever say at face value?
Comment by edarrell — April 29, 2006 @ 9:09 pm