Failure to promote based on gender discrimination is one of the hardest cases to prove. Janet Shucard, PhD, was denied promotion and tenure last year despite an outstanding record including substantial outside funding which completely paid her salary. (She received no salary from the university, which is another UB shameful secret.) Every committee from her department through the president’s review board agreed that she is the quality of faculty who deserved promotion and tenure.
Forget reason. Forget fairness. Forget rewarding extraordinary achievement. Her dossier reached the provost’s desk and earned a big red DENIED stamp. Her bid was derailed from what seemed to everyone (but the administration) to be a fait accompli. She’s going to sue.
But that’s not the story. Not today.
After her defeat, further investigation revealed that many women had travelled this well worn in the last several years. A new administration with a view to transform this state university by 2020. New provost, new programs, new promises. But these were not to include new female professors.
Renegade tenured professors organized an ad hoc committee to ask questions. Analysis of patterns of promotion clearly revealed disparate treatment when promoting male and female faculty from the assistant to associate professor levels with tenure. What was the president’s response? Appoint a committee: The Committee for Academic Excellence.
We all know that the best way to bury a hot topic is to put it into committee.
So what is this committee doing? We don’t know. It is a secret. Yes, a secret. The deliberations are taking place under a gag order that no one on the committee discuss what is going on in the various sub-committees. It makes me want to gag.
The mother committee does not seem to meet often although it meets regularly. How, then, is the mother committee to integrate the work the many subcommittees? You have to ask, “How many sub-committees does it take to answer the question as to whether promotion of women and men faculty was similarly fair?”
Shame on the administration! Shame on the committee members who work in secrecy! Who do they think they are to keep secret their deliberations? Deliberations that rightfully belong to a public who pays their salaries through our taxes.
I think it is time for action. Get out the FOIL. No, I don’t mean a saber or sword. I mean the law that allows citizens to request information from public institutions so that we can oversee what our public servants are doing. Or not.
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