Panel Organized on Tenure

Rising concern about the low numbers of women and minority tenured faculty at Harvard has prompted some students to organize a panel discussion.

The panel will bring together administration and faculty to air question and concerns about the tenure process.

Recent tenure concerns have involved two associate professors in government, Jean C. Oi and Jennifer A. Widner, which were both denied tenure despite having been endorsed by their departments. Final endorsement power rests with the presidents, currently Albert Carnesale, who makes tenure decisions with input from an ad-hoc committee.

The panel will be held Tuesday, December 6 at 8:00 p.m. in Science Center B. Five students groups are co-sponsoring the event: the Committee for Women and Minority Faculty Tenure, Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS), the Institute of Politics Advisory Committee, the Minority Student Alliance (MSA) and the Harvard Foundation Academic Affairs Committee.

At Harvard, 10.8 percent of tenured professors are women. That figure is less than the 22.8 percent average nationwide, according to the Boston Globe.

Among Ivy League schools, only Yale has a lower rate of tenuring women.

Although efforts were made to seek minority panelists, scheduling conflicts prevented otherwise interested faculty members from participating, organizers said.

The five panelists are all women senior faculty: Seyla Benhabib, chair of the Committee on the Status of Women; Marjorie Garber, associate dean for affirmative action; Susan R. Suleiman, chair of women's studies; sociology professor Mary C. Waters; and Irene Winter, chair of the fine arts department.

Organizers said the panel would not focus on the question of whether or not women and minorities should hold more senior positions at Harvard. Instead, the discussion will focus on the tenure process itself.

"We felt that students and other members of Harvard's community should become educated on the tenure process because we're in a position to ask certain questions that current junior and perhaps senior faculty members cannot ask," said Sarah S. Song '96, a principal organizer of the event.

Song said junior faculty members have been reluctant to speak up about the tenure process.

"From my discussions with various faculty members--35 in the last three weeks--it seems that the consensus of the junior faculty is that they could not speak. It was a conflict of interest." Song said.

"I don't blame junior faculty for not discussing it in a public way because it is a way of sticking their necks out," Waters said. "Junior faculty are in a tough position because they can't question the process since they want to go though it."

The panel was originally scheduled for the Institute of Politics (IOP) at the Kennedy School of Government.

But "there were certain reservations by panel members in having a discussion in such a political forum as the IOP," Song said. "The sentiment was that the atmosphere was too politically charged and a true discussions might not be had."

But some felt a panel discussion held at the IOP would have drawn more attention.

"I'm very sorry that it was moved," Waters said. "If it were held at the IOP, it would have had more of a profile."

Unlike many universities, Harvard hires most of its senior faculty from outside, where many have already established themselves in their fields, instead of promoting from within its own junior faculty.

"Though Harvard keeps asserting that there are not enough qualified women and minority scholars, we believe that they do exist," Song said. "But the question is how are the criteria set, who is setting them, and how hard is Harvard really trying?"

"The tenure process is so difficult with so many steps that outsiders have not way of gauging it," said Virginia S. Loo '96, a student advocates of tenuring more women and minority faculty. "There is no light onto the situation at all."

Waters said the panel wants to scrutinize Harvard's "blind letter" policy in its tenure process. Few of the experts who send in such letters are women or minorities, she said.

"There is interest in examining 'blind letters' as a potential for discrimination against women and minority faculty, not intentional discrimination," Waters said. "We want to understand how it actually works and not how it is designed on paper."

Organizers and participants see the panel as a possible springboard for action.

Waters said: "I very much hope that it is the beginning of political pressure to bear change on Harvard's policies."