"Undocumented immigrants" is just a cozy euphemism for "illegal migrants".
@Bob: do you refer to those who receive speeding tickets as "illegal drivers", or those who steal as "illegal shoppers". If not, your insistence on the term "illegal migrants" is exposed as the mean-spirited bias I suspect it really is.
4
@bob, & “ illegal immigrants” is just a cozy euphemism for people we want to pick our strawberries, cut our grass and nanny our kids then disappear when we don’t need them anymore. Every time in our history that bigots and nativists have a conniption fit over too many of some offending group coming into the country immigration is made into something illegal. If you had your way there wouldn’t have been the great immigration from Europe when nonsense about legal / illegal didn’t exist. But maybe bob, you wouldn’t be here either. I know that the same people who once didn’t want Jews, Italians, Poles, Irish, Chinese etc would be right there with the anti immigration zealots of today.
4
I always wonder who produces and nurtures such men to become such monsters and abusers of women ?
Do they have mothers and possible sisters ? Do these professors have daughters ?
What is really wrong in this whole set up of upbringing .
51
Very disturbing article, as are many of the accounts in the comments section. That these ugly episodes have happened among so-called enlightened people, and so much talent has been wasted, is hard to fathom.
34
Exchange of sex for advancement in academia was the norm until about two decades ago.
When I was a student, at Harvard, no less, the most senior professor there asked me out to dinner a number of times to "discuss "our project. He immediately hit on me. I joked " for a lay?" and he thought I was negotiating. I then got serious and said he was "harassing" me so he backed off. I remember opening my grades - NO A in that subject.
This is why I think the #metoo movement has gone too far. Young women have to learn to stand up for themselves, without putting these men in jail.
#metoo should not be about imprisoning or ruining the careers of men living at a time of different norms, but making sure that a young woman, or man, will stand up for themselves and not be punished for refusing. And it should also be about whistleblowing any relationships that are similarly cheating the system.
I could start by whistleblowing a few in Silicon Valley.
22
I am also 75 and grew into adult hood at the same time. But silly me, when a man came after me with an unwanted kiss I mostly took it as a compliment, shoved him away and moved on. I certainly wouldn't have let it derail me from getting my doctorate after putting in so much time and effort. At least with not taking it to the authorities on the outside chance that they might be helpful.
I suppose perhaps in cases of rape and serious assaults it could be different. But sometimes I think we just need to let go and move on from some offenses. Not allowing them to fester and continue to wound us. We alone are responsible for our own healing, and letting go of things is a big step forward in that regard.
Just sayin'
12
When someone disparages the “PC crowd”, the improper behaviour described in this article is often exactly the sort of disgrace they are implicitly advocating.
35
Graduate school is a time of indentured servitude with the professor as master and the student as servant. It doesn't surprise me that the professor enlarged the scope of duties.
18
It is not just the standard groups that have trouble in academia. I was a PhD student in history at CUNY's Grad Center. I failed my written exam twice and thus was ousted. I was shocked, I had never failed anything, but perhaps I botched it Then I was told I was targeted for failure because of my age, I was in my 50s and because I was a returning graduate student. I approached the U.S. Dept of Edu but it was too late for them to get involved. Though I have hundred credits, passed french and latin exams I have been unable to finish my degree.
13
Congratulations to Dr. Marilyn Webb and Dr. Cheryl Sundari Dembe for not only their long, overdue doctorate degrees, but for their grit and determination and most especially, for never giving up. Throughout the generations, including today, women have needed to develop healthy doses of grit and determination or risk, at some point, the loss of a dream or a moment. One of my earliest realizations of this was when I was the only female assigned to an undergraduate student group to work on a political science project in 1977. The male students told me that my job was to type the project paper. I was all of 19 at the time and the male students were older, so I typed their paper. As I did so, I privately grew angry because I thought the paper was not well done. When I was finished, I typed my own critique of the paper and how it should have been written. Thankfully, I had a fair-minded professor who gave me an A for my work. I think that event helped prepare me for the less than fair-minded individuals I would later encounter in my professional life, some of whom judged me by my gender, solely.
23
I was lucky not to encounter any of the issues that this woman encountered in my academic career. I fight to foster pure scholarship in my students and excellence in my medical/surgical trainees; something my college administration does not share. In today's world of profit at all costs in education, sadly scholarship and excellence are not always present. It becomes easy for college administrators to look the other way with issues of discrimination and harassment. It becomes incumbent upon me, a tenured professor to speak out and support those who are struggling with sexual harassment and discrimination. This story should be posted on the wall of every university as a reminder that scholarship and excellence will and should triumph as this is our mission as educators. There are far too many stories like this.
11
This is still going on. When women go for job interviews, they are asked about their marital status, whether they have children. Questions about their living arrangements are asked to determine if they are in a serious relationship.
When I applied for jobs in the Oil & Gas sector in the 90s, I was told that since I was a single mother I was not a good candidate because my child would undermine my loyalty to the company. I am sure that sentiment exist in all corporations and I am sure that sentiment is very prevalent today. I know that women are not hired because they have children or are married or in a serious relationship.
It’s tough because women have the primary care of children and we are thwarted at every turn. As well, a lot of us have had to deal with fathers who don’t want to pay for their children but enjoyed harassing and threatening us and the children.
To all the women who are going through these experiences, keep going and don’t blink. And in those darkest moments, remember that there are other women who admire you and believe in the work you do. We are everywhere.
36
I am have been on the faculty of a major university since 1995, and during that time, there have been at least three multi-million dollar settlements for sexual harassment that happened in a department closely affiliated with mine. These are always very hush-hush and the perpetrator "retires." What's particularly disgusting is that the perpetrators are notorious, often for decades, until something finally gives way and they are pushed out. One thing I always wondered about is just who pays for the settlements, in that my school is essentially self-insured. I suspect it's the taxpayers that in the end get stuck with the bill for entitled faculty who see students as prey, at least in the case of large public universities. Given that morality doesn't seem to be at play here, perhaps the economics of the situation might persuade administrations to stop protecting faculty predators.
29
Heartbreaking. Disgusting. I'm going to go outside now and sigh a sigh that should be heard across America.
15
And then Islamic world is criticized and uniformly painted as totally uncivilized when discussing respect for women. This shameful treatment happens in the most prestigious places of education .
14
These horrors make ashamed to be a man. Man up America, no abuse mental or physical, no rape and support the rights of all females.
18
One step forward, two steps back.
5
This story is a confirmation that abusive male behavior, either sexual or simply menacing, is no respecter of professions, industries, or institutions. I have experienced it as a college student, a journalist, a mother of elementary school children, a church member, and finally, as a chef. As a chef, the abuse was from my own male employees! It has taken the MeToo movement to help me see these situations as they actually are. In the past, I had chocked them up to my own failings and vulnerabilities. Every time I read a story like this, I absolve myself just a little more of these painful memories, and hope all women see them for what they are: abuse, pure and simple.
31
Late 1980s, I was in grad school in Sociology at a University of California campus. Seminar on Women and Work, led by a visiting prominent feminist professor - naturally attended by only women grad students. One afternoon, one of the women said, “Why are we ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room? Male grad students get the plum well (at least better) paid TA and research jobs. And three professors were accused of sexual harassment and no one in authority was doing anything.”
The professor looked around the room to encourage further discussion. Another woman commented, “Oh, they’re doing something: Protecting themselves. Not becoming mentors to female protégés and for those who did, never having closed-door meetings, to brainstorm. discuss ideas and plans. So even the “good guys” are part of it. Instead of censuring errant colleagues, they cover themselves so they are above suspicion.
Another woman piped in, “Professor at UCLA, then a bastion of feminist activity, was accused of harassing a female grad student. Department responded by electing him department chair. The woman transferred.”
BTW: I was one of the lucky ones, was not harassed and got good jobs, under sponsorship of a powerful and kind woman professor in another department. After her untimely death, I too fell through the cracks and left with a masters. No regrets.
During my subsequent career in large and small corporate and academe, saw plenty of it and experienced it myself in all environments.
18
All power corrupts. What about those people who just give in to the sexual overtures? Clearly, there must be a percentage that simply accepts it as the cost of doing business. Professors, teachers, have a lot of power, and most, not a lot of empathy. My experiance is like most others, I remember one or two great and insperational teachers, and more than a few terrible ones. I think, for that reason, they should not be held in very high esteem. The average plumber would get higher marks.
In 1990 I was a graduate student and had submitted my graduate thesis...and for months I heard nothing. Finally, I tracked my thesis down to where it was hidden, in the bottom drawer of a graduate dean's desk when I was told to see the professor in charge of the graduate English department, he refused to see me. I then, at my place of work, called the office of the President of URI and got his secretary, at which point I blasted the grad school out and told her they were trying to disenfranchise me, and that I planned to go to the Providence Journal, the paper of record in RI, and spill the beans. Well, how things changed after that...talk about speeding things up. My thesis was approved for presentation and my thesis professor oversaw the meeting of the readers and myself...and shortly after that I was approved to receive my Master of Arts degree in English. In my experience, I would say, go immediately to the top and threaten the whole system with exposure.
29
Prejudice takes all forms. Some are subtle, some not so much. The story of Dr. Webb is blatant. The story of Dr. Dembe reminders me of my father who went to CCNY for a PhD about 1950 when his professor died no one would take him on and he left with an MSW. Was it a matter of pride because the other professors were his “second choice”? Was it a matter of disinterest because they did care for the work he had done? Or was it a matter of prejudice because he was Jewish? Hard to tell.
6
“If women wanted to study [male-dominated field] they would.” Now you know, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear.
Paying attention, computer sciences? Physics? Philosophy?
UC shows the way to go. Thank you, UC.
7
If the @me too movement was rigorously pursued in academic circles the revolution would be just as profound as it has been in entertainment.
Women and minorities are even more frightened of having their careers ruined here. and. . . the moral development professors are as morally bankrupt as anyone else?
Why is that not a surprise?
12
This is life. It is real and it isn’t pretty.
2
The worst part of it to me is that it has taken so long for the wrong to be righted. Where would these women be today if they had been awarded what they earned and justly deserve.
Congratulations to you both and to the university for righting the wrong.
12
In the late sixties, I had a male college professor hold me after class. I was running an A in his course. When everyone left, he went into a rage. I remember his words to this day, “You’re the kind of girl who goes to cocktail parties and everyone thinks your pretty but you are going to flunk my class.” He was in my face, raging and angry. It’s taken me decades and trauma recovery therapy (that of course included all kinds of other assaults on my womanhood) to understand that it’s not necessary to explain the behavior of another person to feel good about yourself, defend your life, do what’s good for you because you too have a right to live on the planet. I got an A in the course, just as I had planned and worked for all along. Then, In graduate school; more hard work and all the graduating men got jobs and mentors. The women nothing.
10
Another victim narrative. Seems like she did fine. But there were plenty of women who succeeded in academia in the '60s and '70s and were not sexually harassed or let an unwanted pass, kiss, or grope cause them to give up. (I studied under quite a few of these amazing women.) In fact, psychological abuse (against men and women) in Phd programs is more of a problem than is sexual harassment. These vicim narratives are really tiring.
8
I’m a man, nearing 70.
What’s wrong with men, that so many of us are so . . . well, profoundly . . . what shall we call it—pathologically selfish, confused, unaware, presumptive, greedy, immature?
I hope that records will be updated. I hope that whatever records are kept of teaching careers will be updated to say something like “Accusations of unwanted and unprovoked sexual assault by a former female student were found to be credible after Professor _______ died. We’re sorry it took this university so long to find out, and to address this wholly unacceptable breach of ethics. We’re also sorry Professor ________ ever worked here.”
21
Congratulations to these women on being awarded their long over due PhDs. I am glad UofC has come forward to correct this atrocity. But I wonder what income and opportunities have been lost to these women due to their lack of a PhD while pursuing their careers. A financial award also seems in order.
13
I wonder why not name these prominent psychologists? Sure, they are both dead, and therefore cannot defend themselves against accusations, but on the other hand, why are we protecting perpetrators? Still?
I wonder if the "expert on moral development" isn't Lawrence Kohlberg, who was at U of Chicago in 1967.
24
One of the heroes in this restoration of a cruel injustice is Bob Zimmer who could have politely and privately told Dr. Webb that it was too long ago, the peer review was too far removed from her coursework, there was no U of C precedent, or the politics of it would not work, etc. But he didn't. Thank you Dr. Zimmer. Congrats Dr. Webb.
25
The University of Chicago surely was not alone in tolerating stories that we, today, find so terrible. We cannot change the past and are admonished by “presentism” not to judge past behavior by present standards.
Yet without judging past injustices as shameful how shall we create a present society that shames anachronistic behavior in the present.
The paying of a reparation by granting ,in the present , PhDs earned but denied in the past is the first step to cultural redemption. Now, let us see if the entire academic establishment will respond in kind.
7
We were not blind. We were not blind. There was no effective defense.
A female friend told me the University of Michigan professors told her she had no place in the PhD program in English because she threatened men's jobs. A female engineering undergraduate friend of mine stayed in the major just to spite the faculty telling her to leave engineering.
I was a male undergraduate who got two very clear reports of crude academic sexism in the late sixties. No blindness whatsoever. Overt powerful bias was dominant.
10
In the 1980s, I was a Ph.D. student at NYU in sociology. I got straight A's in the required 18 Ph.D.-level seminars and passed the oral exams. This took four years. I wrote 100 pages of a doctoral dissertation but was told that it had too much "French theory" and "media theory" and not enough statistics from questionnaires. While I was doing the re-write, I ran out of money to pay my rent and health insurance and had to take a 40-hour a week job as a computer programmer. I continued to write a manuscript on media sociology on the weekends, but it took me more than 10 years to finish it. I eventually published it as a 350-page book and two leading prestigious academic journals called my book the new leading work in its field. The chairman of NYU sociology (a famous "Marxist" professor) then refused to read either my book or the 8 prestigious book reviews, because "the 10-year deadline is up." He forbade any other professors from reading it. The famous Richard Sennett never responded to my e-mails requesting his help. Since then, I have published 3 more books, gone on with a semi-functioning academic career with visiting professorships, been the keynote speaker at 20 academic conferences and art festivals, all based on pure merit as a teacher and scholar alone - and without their ridiculous "visa stamp in my passport" known as the Ph.D. Of course, without any form of tenure, and dealing with bureaucratic rules and laws, I still struggle to pay my rent.
23
So proud that the University of Chicago had the courage to expose, examine, and correct this wrong done so long ago. Certainly it never should have happened but those were indeed very different times. I was a grad student there in the mid-70s and faced obstacles as a woman, though none this egregious. I hope other academic institutions will follow this example.
12
The story is, of course, depressing. And the comments even more so. But please let me add my own.
I come from a background and culture where women have not been treated as this article depicts, so I was more than shocked by an incident is college.
I was working in the computer center. I had just written a registration system, and we were looking for a computer operator. There were too candidates. One, a woman who had managed a large DP operation in the Army and seemingly didn't know how to make a mistake and a man who ran the punch card machines, Often the woman would wire the boards (program them) when he couldn't get it right.
So who got the promotion to computer operator? Obviously the man. The woman said nothing because she "knew her place." But I protested and the manager was subsequently fired for this and other reasons.
So speak out against injustice. My father used to say that it's never wrong to do the right thing.
23
@Eugene
* two candidates
2
At UCLA in 1980 I knew at least one and quite possibly three women doctoral students whose advisor made aggressive sexual moves against them, harassed them and ultimately caused them to leave the program. I knew them because they came to me to see if my doctoral advisor could intervene. I know that he tried to - I know he was unsuccessful. Congratulations, Dr. Webb on your achievements. You've earned every single one.
22
Was also a student in the 1960s. Ran out of money and had to drop out. Got married. Had a daughter. When I wanted to return to school in the early 70s, Northwestern University, which had previously accepted me, since I was 7th in my 700+ person high school class, said that Northwestern didn't accept married women with children because they weren't serious students. I finally got my undergraduate degree at Mundelein College and a Masters from The University of Chicago. I had really been slowed down by poverty and misogyny, so was 10 years late starting my career. Of course, the slowdown in getting educated, also slowed my life earnings and career path -- something I'm aware of every month I receive my Social Security.
27
This sounds almost identical to my experience being held, kissed against my will, and intimidated with quid pro quo offers as well as frequently, awkwardly harassed privately to provide sexual favors by three male faculty members through my undergraduate career at the University of Chicago from 1971-1974. I am touched and cheered that you told Dr. Dembe's story and the U of C leadership found a way to make whole her educational journey. She never gave up; I did. I was told to abandon all thought of exposing these men by the female Dean at the time. She said I could either turn them in OR have a career, and I must choose. For all of us who experienced this and did give up, this happy ending helps.
21
I am truly saddened by Dr. Dembe’s story. Yee-Ha! The school GAVE her the degree she earned, almost 50 yes ago.
Her contemporaneous colleagues (of whom she was not aware) received THE NOBEL PRIZE.
Excuse me... this is not a great moment for Dr.Dembe. It’s an OMG! moment where the university is afraid of being sued.
Both of these women’s stories are are very sad. Very good for them for never giving up. But what could they have achieved, even more, if they were treated as human beings?
11
A good reminder never to take for granted the importance of persistence and what we have achieved.
Unfortunately, this description of cavalier discrimination, injustice and what life was like for too many women (as well as other discriminated-against categories of humans) is the life and "the good old days" that Trump promises we can all go back to if we just follow his lead.
Human progress has never been easy, and those with power only rarely are inclined to share. Persist!
6
All I can say is bravo to Mr. Kristof for writing the article and the Times for publishing it. It is less of an opinion piece than fact. It is great to see academia is making an effort to writ the wrongs done to these women and I hope more come out of the shadows as this has to be much wider spread than these two cases.
11
The NYT has a history of being the voice of the Establishment, promulgating it's narratives. The pressure - highly organized - throughout society these days to simply 'get with the program', or 'shut up' is immense. The writer of this article seems to buy his privilege to engage in his admirable international human rights reporting with articles like this one, which describe incidents which in themselves may well be largely true - or conceivably less so - but create part of an overall narrative which is calculatedly hypocritical, in service to malicious schemes that have existed for generations. When I was in a public school in northern Massachusetts in the late 70's, in second and third grades, we had occasional square dancing days. There was one group of one to two dozen boys who were not allowed to dance with girls. These were nice guys - I knew some of them. In protest, I went over to dance with them. They were alarmed, and urged me to go back and dance with the other kids, the both-boy-and-girl groups. These boys said they were doomed - explicitly that they were going to be shipped off into sex slavery. I'm sure that there will be older women reacting to reading this by getting off gleefully and sadistically, the way my mother did once, when I described they way my high school headmistress and renaissance history teacher would enable the cascading interruption strategy the girls in class used to shut down boys from speaking. Matriarchal sadism has always been organized.
1
Congratulations and blessings to Dr Webb for her PhD (I am her age and got mine at 56 from Jesuits who were wonderful). But I am so sorry for her abuse and the long years in the desert.
8
@Diana Wright
Maybe the Jesuits refrained from physically mistreating you in part because you were older and female.
2
Discrepancy between percentage of different groups and their academic advancement is shaped by many factors other than the usual suspects of today as cited in this opinion and the associated comments. As a student of the 1970s in a working class NY neighborhood, I was the only one of my group of 15 close friends who either received college or advanced degrees as I did, or even expressed an interest in college. Many were bright, humorous and some even charismatic. 40 years later, many own businesses and when I see them, they talk of capital investment and warehousing. You should not have been subjected to what you describe. But today, the foxes are guarding the henhouse and false charges are destroying lives.
The tone of this piece is misguided at best. "Half a century ago, we were largely blind to sexual harassment and gender discrimination, so talented women were pushed out." I started my PhD less than 10 years ago and I know women who were push out by these factors. Sexual harassment and gender discrimination in academia are not remotely solved--an attempt to address these issues is issues is barely beginning.
Title IX coordinators are not a cure all. Most women don't go to them because if they do they will likely be labeled troublemakers and get pushed out of the profession anyway, and those who do reach out to Title IX coordinator sometimes find that the coordinators aim to do as little as possible and slowly as possible.
10
I once had a conversation with a professor at the University of California in Irvine about a PhD in Computer Science. The professor told me I was TOO OLD (at age 37) and that I was FROM INDUSTRY (Hughes Aircraft Company where I developed a research computer center) and that the University was primarily interested in foreign students because they paid more. There were looking for young graduate slaves that would not challenge them.
As it turned out, I never did go for a PhD but started a non-profit company that grew to over 1,000 participants around the world with a 1985 budget of over $10M and international conferences of over 10,000 attendees plus created millionaires and facilitated billions of dollars to HP - this was INTEREX. After many years of success and publications/presentations and retirement of travel and sailing I consider myself successful. Perhaps one day I will do a PhD just for the heck of it, but I have been turned down often due to my age. So goes the world - I have lived a good life many would be envious of and traveled 3 times around the World. My legacy lives. DJM
6
Congratulations to Dr. Webb on attaining her doctorate degree! And congratulations to her on a fierce determination that has not wavered or been diluted by time. They say the “wheels of justice turn slowly”. It took far too long to right the wrongs that she was a victim of, and the original perpetrators are gone and may never have been called to account. But this story does have a happy ending, and for that justice has been served.
3
I've never been prouder to be a graduate of the University of Chicago! And thank you for the bigger point: celebrate progress, but recognize where we are still failing.
8
IT is so reassuring that some places still exist that are willing to correct a wrong. BRAVO to the University of Chicago and Congratulations to Dr. Webb for her tenacity, and for contributing to the betterment of life in this country! Thank you for this feel-good story! Never give up!
8
As a male mid-70s mostly retired academic, I find these comments devastating. Not completely unexpected, but devastating. So many stories, so many untold. May my 2 year old granddaughter benefit from their struggles in a different world. One can hope.
24
My discrimination and sexual harassment occurred in the workplace – all the way from unwanted physical contact to extreme pay inequality, as well as men who presumed they could bed me just because I had agreed to go out with them. By the time I later arrived at university, I was inured to it; it was a fact of life then, of society. Women were not much in evidence in my husband’s graduate program, but I do recall more than a whiff of sexism.
I have two sons and strived to rear them to see everyone as equal and deserving of respect. It gives me a lot of satisfaction when they, on more than one occasion, have reported that their girlfriends tell them to thank us for bringing them up so well.
14
It was 1976 and I was 4 weeks into law school. My class was to have its first internship: we were assigned to attorneys and firms for a week. My attorney was on the school’s Board of Trustees. I met my attorney at 8:30 a.m. in the hall of a courthouse. By 8:35, I was in my car headed home. After I introduced myself, the gentleman looked at me and said: “ There are mother lions and baby lions and mother lions were put on earth to take care of the baby lions. You are taking some man’s job.”
I did not cry in the elevator or on the way home in my car. I was stunned and angry; this was not the first time that I faced male discrimination but it was the most in your face. I called the Dean and was told to take the week as a vacation.
By 1984, I marveled at the young women in my law firm that seemed to take their position for granted, oblivious of those that came before.
31
In the 1990's, I worked as a peer counselor in a State agency that employed law judges and my office was on the same floor. When the first young female lawyer came into my office in tears complaining of harassment by the judges, I frankly thought she was a weak sister who "couldn't take it." But when more and more new young female lawyers came to see me, being sure no one was looking as I opened my door, my naive self had to see what was occurring. Many of these hard-working, idealistic young women chose to leave. Who knows if they continued to work as lawyers anywhere. I had no idea whom to complain to, and frankly my job was a very demanding one. When we relocated, I no longer was on the same floor and forgot their plight. I hasten to add that not all the law judges were like that - just too many of them.
15
I was an incredibly smart, gifted child, but was relentlessly bullied by my fellow students for differences real and perceived. That, by itself, was a struggle, but one I could perhaps have handled.
When I was in high school, though, several of the teachers and two principals joined in the harassment. The worst of the teachers directed students to pile abuse on me in the most homophobic terms possible. Other teachers felt that I was too elite or smart for my own good. (How this could happen in an academic setting might seem mind boggling, but it was small town rust belt, where steel mills, coal mines and football were everything.)
I am a man, and this all happened in the 1980s, but I have at least a small sense of what it is to run into a brick wall, an unmoveable obstacle, because of the decisions of those academic "powers that be." That abuse almost destroyed my life, and I didn't earn my college degree until my 40s - until a long, long period of putting my life back together.
Dr. Webb deserves all the accolades, for her academic achievements and her life's work. I'm so happy for her recognition and so angry at the perpetrators of the abuse. May we find others and lift them into the light, too, where they belong.
27
I saw plenty of sexual harassment while in graduate school in what was once was a male-dominated field. Fortunately, my field has changed considerably, and I am hoping that the greater presence of women will change the dynamic. A positive sign of this recent shift was in the handling of a sexual harassment issue at a recent international conference, where the fallout of letting a known abuser attend the conference with the victims attending as well came to a head. It did not go down well, and caused a reckoning among the male leadership of a major organization that they can no longer hide their head in the sand and hope these issues will go away. I am very glad that Dr. Webb was finally recognized for her research and life's work, but how many other women are out there who did not fare so well?
12
I don't know what kind of magical chemistry occurred in the last few years to make all these "invisible" women suddenly appear in our view, but I'm grateful. The New York Times, to its credit, has admitted its willful blindness to all the women of achievement in recent American history, and is belatedly featuring obituaries for those overlooked women. Women who have suffered egregious mistreatment in academia, with no recourse, are now being acknowledged, like Ms. Webb. Women are being listened to and believed, and injustice is being recognized for what it is. Maybe we are really turning a corner in human rights for women.
Except. Except we are a half-step away from lurching 50 years backward to when women in America could not legally terminate a pregnancy. Maybe medical research will continue to bring us simpler, easier and more reliable ways to end early pregnancy without clinic intervention from a physician. I hope so. However, that will not help women who find themselves with serious medical problems later in pregnancy, or the discovery they are carrying a fetus with a serious disorder. If we leave these unfortunate women in jeopardy, we are creating cruel new injustice and pain.
26
As an Antioch College student, in 1943, i was told by my “co-op” employer (with only her MA in psychology) how her PHd. Dissertation had been blocked at a reputable university by the male faculty. While she made no allegation of sexual misbehavior, we both accepted that being a woman led to academic discrimination of the most serious sort. I only wish she were alive to enjoy and maybe profit from #metoo.
17
Nice. Maybe someday I can get the Master's degree from Kent State denied to me because I wouldn't sleep with a professor. That was only 40 years ago though, I guess I have to wait another 10 years.
16
Or today you can have the opposite problem where the faculty member refusse to meet with a female student fearing a charge of inappropriate behavior....this is also ongoing at work and holding back half the human race...which sadly is the conservative intent.
6
Issues related to gender bias, inappropriate sexual behavior and sexual abuse against woman exist. Any statement to the contrary run the risk of being reductive and disrespectful. Genuinely believing the aforementioned statement, I can also appreciate having a different view without being reductive. As a white male perceived by others to be in the privileged societal class who also had a less than optimal experience with a dissertation committee....there can be a bias for what is perceived as markers of privilege. Perhaps the answer is not reductive but rather simple....can't we learn as a society to be decent, respectful and see people for who they are and not attribute characteristics our psychic blind spots see in them.
3
This is a disgustingly common state of affairs within what a student would think is sacrosanct academia. Kudos to Dr. Webb for not compromising her morals and ethics and caving to these academic predators. She deserves significant reparations for her anguish and their depravity.
I have seen the opposite - a PsyD granted to a graduate student who was sleeping with the chair of her department, who had her sexually-abusive father assigned as her advisor (who was not even Faculty at that University) and whose Thesis was completely plagiarized according to her classmates.
This fraudulent Psychologist eventually had her license revoked for child abuse, with a very lengthy decision, by the AG of her state, after decades of predatory pediatric behavior. In effect. her state had licensed a sexual predator through the actions of corrupt academics, and many children were irreparably damaged as a result.
It would seem that "Psychology" needs to be monitored much more closely by competent and ethical people like Ms. Webb, and the "system" needs to encourage reporting of offenses and render accountability from all concerned in a timely manner.
7
My tablet does not allow me to read the whole article. If I did get it right, the case happened at the University of Chicago?
The professor or professoraster committed a crime of moral turpitude, for which he should have been chased from academia, his regalia burned in public to drumbeat and sound of trumpet.
3
I am thrilled Webb's time has come.
I am horrified at the systematic holding back of women and their work -- some of it at the Nobel level -- over the decades. There are cultural, personal and economic impacts as a result of the institutional misogyny of this country.
And yet, folks are worried by white male fragility...
Puhleeez.
9
In my Federal law enforcment workplace in Chicago, the government has just fired a person with -- count them-- two PhDs. One of which came from an internet diploma mill without any GMAT or testing requirements, for which one merely submitted a "white paper" that was largely composed by computer with minimal human intervention by the "doctor's" own smug admission. So forgive me if I'm jaded about PhDs and all the self-importance that they entail, having had to do everything for this pompous, incompetent boss several pay grades above my own, including participating on all his high-level phone calls. And no, though I could easily step into his role since he repeatedly asserted that he didn't have to know anything about the job, I "only" have education to a post-grad level...
4
men are right about women displacing them. women at the top of their fields will push down the bottom half of men who would have risen higher without having to compete with people who are their equals
deal with it
9
@true patriot
Exactly. Remember the old feminist truism: Women have to be twice as talented to get half as far as men … Fortunately, that's not hard.
1
Any sensible person who looks at this story, in my opinion, has to think that the University of Chicago has absolutely no way of determining whether the allegations from over fifty years ago are true or not (and hence "credible" has little or no meaning in this context), and has no way of determining what actually caused Marilyn Webb to drop out, but can justify awarding the degree on the basis of work she has done in the meantime.
Accordingly, it does something that is quite arguably right. It doesn't hurt that, in the current climate of #metoo, it gets good publicity and might get negative publicity if it didn't.
But I am amazed at the calls in these comments to identify the male professors. There are (at least) two sides to every story, and they are not around any more to defend themselves.
2
Marilyn
We are all so proud of you.
Your sisters in DC Women's Liberation and Alice Wolfson
8
A White male het friend asked when we can stop talking about discrimination. I told him when 20% of all leadership positions in academia, corporations and government were filled by non-White males. You can't point to a single female CEO and say the problem is gone. Plus, a single case of reverse discrimination is, for most White male hets, proof positive that things have gone too far, same with sexual assault, sexual harassment. There is a reason why, instead of showing top 10 successful female tech leaders in a documentary, those few that actually were given a chance, instead we are being shown the Holmes case in full color. See? that's why you don't give money to a pretty young blonde, we aren't discriminating, they are bad investments. And if people of color were the primary ones shooting up schools, things would look very different. But they are mostly White supremacists which are not referred to as domestic terrorists. And finally, just imagine if Obama had, on video, said he grabs women by the blank and then asked the Russians to hack his political opponents.... He wouldn't be president, he'd be in jail.
14
Congratulations to the two women, it's more than deserved. I'm truly disgusted by this though, and by the fact that it is still happening. https://hownottotravellikeabasicbitch.com/the-hidden-abuse-no-one-talks-about-in-graduate-school/
3
Can we name names?
5
One more bit of myopia: emphasis on Ivy League schools. There are hundreds of top-notch universities that offer opportunity to underserved populations.
4
This happened to me, too. In the ‘80s. I dropped out with a Masters. All these years later, thinking about it still makes me cry. I will never get over it.
17
This story made me think of my aunt, a brilliant math teacher in Chicago. She was African American, graduated college in 1942 from Tennessee State A&I University (then). When she took a special course offered by MIT, she made the highest score. But a white male got the award. She got a certificate.
I wonder what she could have done for society had doors been open to her. This is the tragedy of discrimination: how talent that benefits our nation is squandered because of bias. It's an angle rarely explored because we rightfully focus on individual stories of injustice.
24
After a while you wonder if you're marked. When I was child, it happened, multiple times by multiple older males. When I was in college it happened again. He was the most popular dean on campus. A real big wig. Flashy, foul mouths but only among friends. He called me to his office. Made it clear. I was ready to graduate. Had all the credits needed. Now I needed to do just one thing before I could walk across the stage and have my diploma handed to me. It had to do with my hand and his thing. I said no. He said I couldn't graduate. A part of me died right then and there. So I walked out of his office moved away and like so many of us I started a new life.
Long term the damage was horrific. Short term, well Trump and his comments brought it all back.
36
It's distressing to read all these stories of women who faced discrimination and worse in grad school.
My own story is much milder. My first thesis advisor gave me two weeks notice before he quit a tenured position to go play piano in Europe. (This was not music school.) I managed to write a proposal, get the committee assembled and just barely get advanced to candidacy in that short time. My second thesis chairman died in a car accident a short while later. Then the Human Subjects Committee refused to allow my psychology experiments unless I could guarantee in writing that there would be no results... which contradicted my proposal and the point of the experiments in the first place.
I'm happy for Dr. Webb: Sorry to learn what she and others went through but glad that she will finally get her degree.
9
These events are all too common in academia (I'm a Ph.D. scientist in academia). In my graduate career, I was propositioned by three advisors. I was naive and wondered "is this how it is?". My field is dominated by men and even in my current lab, the one male researcher is very clearly favored. Male staff made very inappropriate comments about women in two previous labs I trained in (in front of the boss).
The real problem is that there is no accountability in academia for the behavior of the faculty. The university invests in *them*, not their mentees or staff. Mentees and staff are expendable, and faculty know this. In my last institution, a famous up-and-coming scientist suddenly left the institution for another one, and then left that institution for another one a year later. Finally, it became public that he left the institutions for sexual harassment. All three institutions were aware. Another very famous scientist was simply taken off of committees when found guilty of sexual harassment of his mentee. He is still employed at his Ivy League institution. The mentees lose.
Academia has been a "black box" in regards to accountability for sexual harassment/bias against women. It's frequently a "good ole boys" club. Stories like the one in this article have to be publicly told to curtail this very common scenario.
22
Not only undocumented immigrants but immigrants in general experience discrimination at higher learning institutions. I was able to get my Ph.D., although my advisor paid little to no attention to me, and got a full time job at an institution classified as a Hispanic serving institution. I have worked for 16 years now and I am still at the receiving end of at least one micro aggression a week (I have a better word for that: discrimination). It has gotten better, when I was hired, the Chair of my department kept using the term "banana republics" to refer to the countries some of us came from. At least now they only make fun of my English... I think that is progress, right?
9
One thing standing in the way for low/middle class people getting PhDs is the amount of student loan debt. Unless you are a high achiever on a narrow track and know from the get-go what it is you want to study, which would win you scholarships and funding, I have found it difficult to consider going on to PhD studies because of the amount of student loan debt I carry from my masters degree. It is a dream of mine, but hard to justify knowing I won't make a killing as a professor and still carry a large balance of student loans.
11
Great article but don't be so sure that this kind of crime doesn't continue along race, gender and orientation lines. It's just more subtle. Much, much more subtle and harder to see. But there's a reason why each of these categories remain underrepresented across the professional spectrum.
9
1967! Yes, and way before then and up to present day. In terms of women in academia or the workforce, many of us lacked the power and protections of male defenders (e.g., predators of such ilk typically wouldn't mess with women who daughters/sisters/nieces/wives of powerful men), and without any acknowledgment of these sorts of events (or policy protections), many of us have had to simply quit to get out of the way. Good for her to have tested today's waters to have a wrong righted. And good for the University of Chicago for taking the right recourse.
8
These women deserve credit for pursuing the honors that were taken away from them. Congratulations!
Fair dealing is rare in life, and we all must be aware of prejudice and how it affects the people we encounter. Let's agree to see individuals more clearly, and support people rather than tear them down. Our culture and our country need the best from all of us if we are to survive.
4
Currently, right now, I am aware of a smart (and, somewhat unfortunately - beautiful) young woman in a PhD program who is being harassed at every turn as she fights to stay one step ahead of all of the blatantly unethical and immoral actors acting to sink her. And by the way, she comes from an very low income background and work hard to qualify for public assistance to attend college. We all have a stake in her success. This will be uncomfortable for all to hear but guess who's giving her a hard time - she's in a STEM field which is filled with professors, advisors and other students from other countries. If we are to be respectful in the discussion, we can basically say that these men have not yet achieved "wokeness" - or we can just surmise that the percentage of men who want to see women succeed and just them as equals is just still very small. The same can probably be said of these men (mostly Asian extraction - Indian and Chinese) toward people of African extraction. Time for a cross-university Board to be created that watches over how the powerless and marginalized are treated. This is not about ideology and inclusion, this is about human dignity and making we all collectively benefit from our best and brightest. And the dollars invested only to see some people tripped up and held back. It is not right, we can do better.
28
What you describe as having happened to Ms. Webb is indeed horrible. I don't want to belittle it. But, at the same time it happened half a century ago. The professors involved are dead and cannot defend themselves. I would guess there is no hard documentation. I am personally familiar with the University of Chicago during the mid 1970’s, and I have trouble believing such blatant harassment could have occurred there. Of course, I can’t really know.
We have taken to treating many individuals the same way as the anonymous professors, holding people accountable for events alleged to have occurred decades ago. This includes politicians and Supreme Court candidates. In many cases these judgements are consequential today.
In many cases, these credible allegations reflect the truth and our judgement today is fully warranted. In others perhaps not, simply because human memory is imperfect, and 50 years is a long time.
I am glad for Ms. Webb and that she is at last getting her doctorate. But at the same time, I have a reluctance to convict the unnamed professors, and the named University of Chicago, for events so long ago. If there is evidence that's one thing, this column doesn’t say; but the word "credible" has become overused.
5
@Alex
Your comment solves your own problem:
No one was named.
No one was convicted of anything.
I strongly agree that people are innocent until proven guilty.
@Alex
?? The two Supreme Court justices who have been credibly accused of sexual harassment and/or attempted rape were not "held accountable."
5
During my first few weeks in graduate school another student in my lab took me aside and explained that my advisor preferred male students. Nothing against me, that's just the way it is, so I shouldn't be surprised when the male students get credit for my work. I dropped out of the program a little over a year later. This happened less than 10 years ago.
306
@Anon Unfortunately, sociopaths are common in Universities. Indeed being a sociopath can be an advantage as having absolute confidence in one's ideas can allow one to push through problems. I always warn students to interrogate the current students when considering entering a PhD program, and before signing on with an advisor. Good departments try to ensure a student has a mentoring committee that can protect students from some of the actions of predatory faculty. Faculty often know which professors are a problem, but usually feel they can not interfere, worrying to do so risks damage to their own careers. That is a problem.
64
When I was 12 years old, 5" tall,and weighing only 69 lbs. because of malnutrition, a 35-year old very close relative tried to assault me. I was frightened, but picked up a glass milk bottle and told him that if he came near me I would break it over his head. I reported this to my mother and grandmother. They didn't believe me. I refused to back down and became known as "the little liar." I still wouldn't back down.
That was when i understood that I was on my own.
Shortly thereafter, I was sent to live with a 2nd cousin and her husband tried to kiss me once when we were alone. I was so angry that I almost literally flew at him and I knocked him down, probably because he was taken by surprise.
I didn't "tell on him", having learned my lesson. But he kept his distance thereafter.
When I was 21, I left home and obtained therapy. I married and had 2 children. I also became a professional. After a reasonably friendly divorce, I remain single. My surviving daughter and I are great friends.
It is wonderfully empowering to refuse to accept abuse. It surely is great for one's ego.
355
In 1973 I started law school at night. One-third of my class was women, which I believe was quite unusual at the time. We had no exams until the spring of 1974. The school, which was looking to achieve accreditation, had a policy of terminating students who failed an exam. When my class began its second year, it was noticeably smaller – and half of my classmates were women. We were still in the majority when we graduated in 1977.
60
@Noll
In 1973 my fiance was attending a prominent California law school --- and I used to notice when I visited that it was like a men's college. I'm ashamed to admit I kind of enjoyed the attention I got in this milieu, but I was still very young, and I just assumed that was the way things were in the world: lawyers were men.
I only knew of three female classmates of his. I know that upon graduation, he told me one of them was offered a job only as a legal secretary.
26
@Dorothy
Glass bottles are more effective weapons if you break them first to make jagged glass edges. So are hat pins (one of the reasons women used to wear hats)---8 inches long with a sharp point. A deep puncture wound will discourage any assailant.
Otherwise, bravo for defending your honor.
54
In the summer of 1963 I was preparing to start at a top university when I was raped. My family were immigrants, my father had just received a medical professorship at an excellent university and the rapist was from one of the "best" families in that town. I knew how hard my father had worked to improve our life and I also knew there was no chance of justice. So I left the USA without telling anyone what had happened and remade my life in Europe. No regrets, I've realised my dreams, only not in the USA.
294
@Jo Ann
Thank you for sharing your painful story of being raped and protecting your father's profession by choosing silence instead of reporting this reprehensible crime. It is terrible that you thought justice would not prevail without fear of retaliation against your father. You may have left America and "remade your life and realised your dreams," but you deserved to have lived a happy life and realised your dreams with your family.
50
@Jo Ann - I find your apparent assumption that Europe is free of rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and discrimination against women strange. Especially since you are living in a country where it wasn't until 1990 that women in all cantons had the right to vote. And where, until 1985, men had control over their wive's money. Did you remain single through the mid-80s? If not, how did you feel about the fact that the law gave your husband authority over your money? Even still today, if you, a woman, work for a company with fewer than 100 employees--as do 99% of the Swiss--you have no guarantee of salary equality. In many ways, the Swiss are ahead of the U.S. in dealing with many of the issues around discrimination against women, but that is a relatively new situation, and is not true in all situations.
13
Friends, this is still happening in America. It happened to me. I don't know what sins I committed against academia by daring to try to get a master's degree, but I must have done or said something wrong. I was the traditional Old Testament scapegoat. It was during the Great Recession when so many universities were using college students like ATM cards, but I also feel sure that racism was involved in my particular case. I was not the "right" color for my particular college. Lesson learned: stay with your racial group. Why do we have historically black colleges? Because racism in education is still alive and well. Don't want to hear that harsh realty young people? Sorry.
So my question is, if higher education is not a safe and nurturing path by which to lift people out of poverty and economic chaos, if so many colleges are now blatantly using students to make a profit (even non-profits do that), still awarding degrees of dubious value in the job marketplace, where are people supposed to turn now to lift themselves out of poverty? The business world? I don't see any evidence whatsoever that more businesses are offering low level employees a path into middle class security.
The military? That probably is still a good path for young people, but it carries a great risk to life and limb. Where are those past age 35 to turn?
Don't kid yourselves people. There are plenty of people being excluded from higher education, if only because they can't afford it.
15
I was in a doctoral program in the early 1990’s. While I was fortunate to get my Ph.D., I was surprised by the inappropriate attention that infringed on my naivete. Did that married professor and a member of the program’s approval committee, just ask me to lunch? Despite my never accepting, he persisted throughout my time there. Inappropriate, but
not criminal.
The criminal act came from a well respected psychiatrist who was in the same program and had alwsys treated my with respect. I was 26 and a pre-doc in a research program, and he was older and in the post-doctoral program. We took many classes together with a core group of friends.
I thought of him as a brother type figure. He was seriously courting someone from his ethnic community. I I never expected he even thought of me in a sexual way.
One day he tried to rape me when we just happened to be alone. I fought him off after what seemed a long time of struggling. There was no way I could have reported this without suffering the consequences. Women who report such incidents as this are courageous and aware they will be vilified by many. I did not have the guts to report it to any authorites. Yes, I took the easy way out. I am not proud of it.
299
@Ian Maitland
The way I read the comment is that the offending professor was on the approval committee and not someone with whom the commenter worked closely. We each have our own sense of propriety. If going to lunch with a married professor felt inappropriate, then for her, it was inappropriate.
Also, one "No" should have sufficed to indicate her lack of interest in a closer social relationship. Multiple invitations to unwanted social engagements borders on harrassment.
44
@SKM: Going to lunch with a professor is not, in my experience, typically a "closer social" or romantic relationship. It is an opportunity to make a connection to another person who is in the field.
If the member of the "approval committee" would be in a position to write a letter of recommendation for the student, then lunch could be a way to find out more about her research, how she thinks, what she wants to do next, and many other things that could strengthen such a letter. If only men did that, it would put women at a disadvantage.
Of course, it all depends on where lunch was supposed to be and how he asked her. But the fact that somebody thinks that something is inappropriate does not by itself make it inappropriate. The standard is not and should not be exclusively a subjective one. Lunch with a married professor at the Four Seasons is likely to be inappropriate, at the student/faculty lunchroom less so. It is not inappropriate for a professor with innocent intentions to invite a female student to have the same sort of conversation that, for decades, male professors have been having with male students.
14
@SKM Thank you.
4
My son, an honor student at at prestigious university in Philly was denied his Ph.D. after almost 5 years because he revealed the failed and flawed research work of a former student, the darling of the professor in charge. In fact the utter dishonesty of the former student was finally admitted to in an e-mail exchange between my son and the former student when after almost a year of trying, the former student's work could not be replicated in the lab under any conditions. Finally my son presented the lab and math work that proved the prior work was totally contrived and false data was manipulated. Out of spite the professor in charge who was filled with anger and resentment that his protege had been exposed as a liar and cheat, denied my son his Ph.D. After another year of study my son left with his master's degree and later he pursued a law degree that he earned with honors. I sent this article to him this morning and suggested he consider contacting the current college president and request that his Ph.D. be conferred upon him. He earned it.
16
I thank Mr. Kristof for sharing the poignant stories of Dr Webb and Dr Dembe. It’s so gratifying that they ultimately triumphed despite being victims of gender discrimination earlier in their lives.
The above incident brings up the intriguing issue regarding the effect of education vis a vis the presence of “implicit bias” (including chauvinism and misogyny) in our subliminal minds or the “Id” as described by Freud.
My mother was a valedictorian in European history and she always emphasized the importance of education as it opens our minds. I always believed that but as an adult, I realized that the above premise is not always true. The effect of education doesn’t always completely eradicate the primal urges or inherent tribalism of human psyche as exhibited by the numerous examples of atrocious behavior by the members of educated elites on a global basis.
My late mother would have applauded the emergence of the “#metoo” movement. This movement is so very critical to deconstruct the existing highly institutionalized, societal structure of patriarchal chauvinism and misogyny - specially in our country, as exhibited by the “beyond the pale” behavior of the current incumbent in the White House.
6
Dr. Webb is not the first woman to wait decades for the conferral of a PhD she had earned.
Christine Ladd Franklin studied mathematical logic at Johns Hopkins University by special arrangement since the University did not, at that time, admit women. She completed a dissertation, but the arrangement by which she had been allowed to study did not extend to the conferral of a degree.
She turned to the study of color vision, in which she made an international reputation and, four and a half decades after her studies there, Johns Hopkins offered her an honorary degree for her work on color vision. She refused it, saying she would rather have the mathematics degree she had already earned, and Hopkins complied with that demand.
For more details see the book "Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: The Pre-1940 PhD's" by Judy Green and Jeanne LaDuke.
15
I'm sure these reported facts are true, and shocking. It's an important story. However, careful about over-generalizing.
I spent 9 years in higher ed earning 4 degrees (1975-84) and no female friend or fellow student ever reported this kind of behavior. I never saw evidence of it. On the contrary, good female scholars were rewarded. As for discrimination, today's scenario is the opposite of the article. Any male who pursues higher degrees in any discipline related to communications, education, psychology, politics, literature, or the arts is required to be a male feminist, by digesting, never questioning, and citing feminist cultural theory. Otherwise, there's the exit. Upper-year classes can be 95% female, and most college hiring is now female.
5
Society, in general, felt that professional women would be taking jobs away from men who supported families. So most working women had to settle for less, no matter how educated they may have been. Women are still accepting less, in position and money.
11
So why aren't they being named? You can't slander the dead. Others might confirm these stories or similar ones though.
5
@Jeoffrey, why is that necessary?
By focusing on the University of Chicago academic misogyny and patriarchy related to white women, black women are typically expected to be grateful, invisible and silent.
The MeToo meme movement was founded by a black woman Tarana Burke.
The second University of Chicago was founded with Rockefeller oil money. After the first was an academic and financial failure.
On the edge of Bronzeville aka black Sourh Side Chicago. Which would become a
fertile laboratory for U of C research. Including many notable pioneering socioecononmic educational historical legal political black academics. .
Barack Hussein Obama taught at the University of Chicago Law School. Michelle Robinson Obama was a senior executive at the University of Chicago Hospital. The Obama daughters attended the University of Chicago Lab School.
The University of Chicago was and still is mostly a corrupt crony capitalist corporate plutocrat oligarch welfare colonial apartheid Jim Crow South Side white European American Judeo-Christian supremacist institution.
What is left of black Woodlawn looks like Europe in the aftermath of World War II. A malign legacy of black street gangs, black and white Christian ministers and The Woodlawn Organization and the Chicago Machine. While Bronzeville gentrifies and moves closer to Hyde Park and Kenwood.
3
While I admire Nicholas Kristof's work immensely, it is ironic in the extreme. Women have beeb speaking up on these issues for years, often at great personal sacrifice, but it takes a man to be heard.
11
@Christine Gray
*been
Webb’s and Dembe’s unfortunate experiences are the tip of a very ugly iceberg. Although they moved on to fulfilling teaching positions, they were denied the opportunity to realize their potential as faculty at prestigious universities.
Dissertation advisors enjoy absolute power over their hapless charges, many of whom are vulnerable to predatory behavior. This has to change.
My wife was in line for a position at a good liberal arts college. The chair of the department referred to her presentation as brilliant and was obviously taken by her intellectual verve. But her own advisor inserted a less talented male candidate—not even his student—who had not applied for the job. This behavior is not only unethical, it is criminal. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism for bringing such a heinous individual to justice and exacting compensation for loss of job and income. Talented women and members of racialized subcultures are especially victimized by such blatantly discriminatory treatment because the inherited academic apparatus is still predominantly white and male.
Hiring committees routinely refer to white male candidates as desirable because they “look like Ivy League professors,” while women and others are consigned the default status of #2, never to be chosen.
Chicago should censure these monstrous academics so that the world will know. Granting Webb and Dembe belated PhDs is not nearly enough.
“[M]oral development?” “[E]ducational psychology?” Who’s kidding whom?
11
As the son of a mother, a brother of great sisters, I read about these men and ask how such animals could exist? I have witnessed executions of young criminals barely aware of the forces that shaped them and fueled their crimes. And yet these men, these scions of business and academia who so destroyed the lives and ambitions of women like my beloved wife and daughter, they must have been fully aware of their pathology. And yet we execute the poor and uneducated with ease and regularity.
8
Thank you for this interesting essay.
1
At the oral exam on my doctoral dissertation (on 17thc Catholic religious art), one of the examiners turned out to be ardently Catholic. He demanded to know if I believed in miracles. My research had revealed extensive faking of miracles in a Catholic cathedral. He should have been unhappy about what was going on in that building in the 1600s.
Instead, he wasn't happy with me.
People don't realize how much scholars are at the mercy of Ph.D. examiners.
18
It almost appears as if Cheryl Dembe Just Missed being part of that Nobel Prize, if her work was so similar to work that got the Nobel, maybe some special category should be made for those who were sidelined by their situations and abuse, yet they wrote papers which may well have affected and caused the writing of Nobel Level work, which other people then get the credit for.
6
In the early 90's, I was the only female in my Democratic Theory seminar in grad school at Penn State for a masters degree in political philosophy. I pointed out that ancient Greece was--by definition--an oligarchy, not a democracy, since slaves and women could not vote (the same point Susan B. Anthony made about American democracy centuries later). The next day, my graduate cubicle in the student office was plastered with profane and pornographic words and pictures, as retaliation from all the male students in the program. I thought "if men are so threatened by the truth in a context in which you are supposed to learn critical thinking, then we truly are in a culture of male supremacy." After earning 36 credits, the interim head of the department refused to allow me to finish my thesis, telling me it would be better to "apply my talents elsewhere." Decades later, I approached the female department head about having my degree granted. She said she was well aware of the misogyny and discrimination in the department at that time and affirmed what happened to me, but said that she had worked to improve the department and that the courses I had earned could not be used for a degree today, because it would not reflect the prestige of the program SHE built--in which the Democratic Theory seminar now points out the biases of the past. #MeToo owes a debt to all of us who spoke out before the culture was ready to hear us.
29
Congratulations to these two women.
Maybe universities aren't the best place for an education.
And certainly universities have a lot to learn about humanities.
5
It's a cautionary tale how many years women suffered sexual exploitation by men in power, being forced to change their life trajectory. As times changed so has a "me too" generation established, no longer willing to tolerate such violation. And to those wronged women from the past, it is uplifting to learn they are being compensated for what long ago they duly deserved.
5
It is shameful what Marilyn had to endure, but there have been many prospective Ph.D. students who have been thwarted by hostile, uncaring, unhelpful, or inept advisers. I am one. Life throws challenges to all. Being male offers no immunity.
4
Robert Zimmer is one of the great college presidents. We need more like him. (Harvard, are you listening?)
2
I'm glad that, after so many years, the two women Nicholas writes about have gotten their degrees. But should we really celebrate too much when the head of the university describes what happened as a "mistake?" A mistake is when a professor confuses two students with the same name and gives one the grade the other earned, and then apologizes and corrects the error. This was no mistake -- it was sexual assault. And what was at issue was not "academic integrity" but criminality.
16
Kristof comments that UChicago is has advancedfrom 50 years ago, but glosses over the fact that Dembe contacted them in 2000, only to be ignored. The "bad old days" were not all as far back as he implies.
11
The college gives her a PhD!....Imagine if the professors' descendents--after paying "general respect" to their now deceased relatives--would offer her an apology, on their behalf and express support for women's dignity everywhere
6
As a college professor I am always stunned to read stories such as this one. It has never occurred to me to see my students through a sexual lens. In fact, the idea is repugnant to me. It is unfathomably unethical to act in such a way that to even think that any professors would breach their professional responsibilities makes me upset. Even in 1967 any professor with an ounce of humanity should know better not to make sexual advances on a student.
Still, when I was in graduate school I witnessed faculty who, while not sexually aggressive, said things that were, shall we say, unfortunate in terms of making students feel uncomfortable. It still makes me queasy.
128
@Metaphor, believe it. In 1975 I was a student at Arizona Western College in Yuma AZ. My female colleagues and I quickly learned to keep an eye out for our male professor as he walked down the aisle between the lab tables in our chemistry lab. As our attention was focused on watching a rising temperature for one experiment or another, we would lean forward and lower down a bit onto the lab counter so our eyes could be level with the temperature gauge and we could closely monitor time and temp. The professor would then proceed to casually walk behind us and grab as many derrières as he could. When we compared notes after lab class, we decided enough was enough and the next time he started down our aisle we all whipped around, crossed our arms over our chests and glared at him as he walked the gauntlet of our animosity. He never did it again. As far as i know.
36
It does not surprise me that the locus of these atrocities was the University of Chicago, not that it had any monopoly on abusing talented young scholars. But the university was a mean place in those days. I am happy to see that it is willing to overturn the unfair verdicts that some of its professor handed down to cultivate their version of the Life of the Mind, or, as it turns out, to pursue personal advantage at the expense of the students.
7
In the 50’s and 60’s the discrimination favored white male Anglo-Saxon Protestant candidates for the Ph.D at the Ivy League universities and many of the oldest prominent state universities. U. of CA system broke this mold.
2
Then there’s the story of the math PhD prospect that had a mentor that used him as a slave for years, basically stealing his work while denying him his PhD. The student had enough and shot the professor to death.
7
@Paulie
At the University of Chicago in the 1970s, two friends and I were standing around the imposing table where many a visiting (female) speaker had been shredded and humiliated, where we were soon to defend our thesis proposals.
We asked ourselves what we would do if those professors behaved in such a way to us.
One friend, who came from a wealthy East-Coast background and became quite a distinguished professor, said she didn't think it was necessarily wrong to sleep with a professor for advancement.
Another, who came from a blue-collar family in Iowa and ended up becoming a beloved and distinguished professor at a far less august place, said he was working class; he'd shoot them.
While said in a joking tone, we often wondered why it took so long.
Women who can be so easily silenced and undercut are at particular risk for having their work lifted in the great shark tank. Life of the Mind.
2
Naming those two professors will help stop this in the future. If it's credible, you should.
7
She and Dembe should sue the university for breach of contract. Neither was guaranteed a Ph.D, but there was either an explicit or implicit guarantee that they would be able to present their work for judgment on the same basis as any male student - without having to submit to the puerile sexual instincts of emotionally immature professors or being brushed aside because of their gender. They paid good money and worked hard, and the University pulled the rug out from under them. Total bait and switch, total ripoff. Unlike sexual harassment, there WAS vocabulary for that back in the 60's.
7
In true spirit of reparition for a wrong done, the University should also give a financial settlement to these women for the loss of earning potential suffered in their careers by not earning their phD at the appropriate time.
10
After reading this, makes me more proud to be a UofC grad!
1
Dr. Webb finally got frocked. High time, and outstanding. She deserves it.
I was given my diploma with the understanding that I would never be allowed to work in my field because "...you aren't young, you aren't pretty, and you don't kick out your heels.".
That was ten years ago. Things may have changed, but they haven't changed all that much. And no, I have never worked in the field in which I received my Ph.D.
10
This is great news for the two women who were so badly treated decades ago. On the other hand - it is disgusting that it happened at all and that they were denied degrees that they had earned.
Bitter sweet victory
3
In the 50’s and 60’s the discrimination favored white male Anglo-Saxon Protestant candidates for the Ph.D at the Ivy League universities and many of the oldest prominent state universities. U. of CA system broke this mold (literal)!
Dr. Webb's story is an old one.
And it's not just that advisors want sex with the female Ph.D candidates.
It's that they're friends with the candidates' estranged husbands, or that they're jealous of a particularly clever dissertation, or that they're antisemitic.
In some cases, people I know have had to wait for their advisors to die before a new one is assigned, and then presto! the Ph.D is conferred.
A rough world out there. And in -- I'm sorry to say -- the small-potatoes world of academia, pettiness and bullying thrive.
7
Congratulations on the completion of your doctorate degree. It is long overdue. So sorry you were sexually harassed by your committee members. The programs can be difficult enough without the harassment roadblocks. I’m
glad you enjoyed a successful career and now capped it with a PhD.
1
And if a student enrolled in a PhD program does register as having a disability for a mental health issue, the department should not disclose this information to all the other graduate students in the program. And should not deliberately omit this student from the department information loop. And should definitely not be told by a college administrator that "if you are bullied, you don't belong here." Even if you are magna cum laude and have won outside fellowships. That still does not make you good enough if you have a disability.
The irony of Mr. Kristof's fine column is jaw dropping. Here's what keeps women out of Phd commencement exercises and anything else of enduring value you want to name: autonomy over their own bodies. Men, ignorant and supercilious, go unchallenged in their self appointed dominion over women including the financial and physical. The broader culture wrings their hands and wonders what the Supreme Court will decide. As if that male dominated group, the one which declared pieces of paper people and dollar bills have first amendment rights, has the divine right to proscribe the rights of women as distinguished from those of men. The year is 2019, not 1967, and the ongoing servitude and objectification of women is beyond shameful. Ideally, the next POTUS should be a hybrid of Lysistrata and Lisbeth Salander.
8
Congrats, Marilyn
1
Many years ago I met a friend of mine who I knew had been enrolled in a master program in another state. She had been always an outspoken person and very assertive. She bluntly told me she had not finished because the only way to finish was to have sex with her advisor. I was astonished. I asked her why she had not fought back and denounced the guy. Unfortunately, she was sure that she wouldn't succeed. The professor was too powerful, too well-known to be challenged and she dropped out. To my surprise - not hers, probably - a friend of ours, a professor himself, didn't believe me when I told him the story, even though we both knew her very well. It is a sad memory for me until this day. I wonder how many girls faced the same obstacle.
8
I'm deeply appreciative of this article and the premise that justice will not be denied, even if it arrives late. Yes, the arc of the universe is ever-bending. And those of us who see injustice must continue to fight for lasting change. I can't imagine living in a world before the Civil Rights Act, before Title IX. I'll do all I can to stop those committed to oppression from turning back the clock. We cannot afford to be silent, apathetic nor anything less than diligent.
"Nobody is free until everybody is free"
--Fannie Lou Hamer
7
I, a woman, entered a PhD program at a large well-known mid-Western University in 1967. Got my PhD in 1974, after three years of study and a master, and 2 yrs of fieldwork under the auspices of ACLS in Africa. I was one of the few women in the program but never had any problems with male (or female) professors. My committee was all men and they accepted my dissertation with the revisions I suggested.
2
I came from a musical family and wanted to become an opera singer. My musician father told me bluntly in the early 1960s that if I wanted a career: 1) I would have to establish it in Europe since the few major opera companies in this country wanted established singers with European successes on their resumes; 2) and that ambitious female musicians, especially singers, (and many males as well) would have to sleep around with conductors to get gigs. He then informed me that he would not support my going to a conservatory and that I would have to major in music in a liberal arts university so that I could at least learn another skill.
I guess I should be glad that he recognized that I might want, or need, to work for a living.
4
@EAK
Obviously, a huge number of female singers succeed. A major problem is that far more women than men try to be singers, probably because the men are encouraged to enter fields with a better chance of succeeding and making a living.
The sexual harassment of women is, of course, another story, entirely.
Interesting that the article would focus on a story from the University of Chicago. This wouldn't be the only one. A colleague of mine once told me his story of a two-decade struggle there in a similar situation...
3
Yes, the War on Women still goes on. Men, especially white GOP men, now fight daily to control women's bodies. Is it cultural? Is it some sort of 'biological imperative'? What?
The progress is incremental but there. Sen Warren is seriously considered as a viable President. Sen Harris amazes us with her committee performances dragging GOP white males across the rough scrubbing board. AOC doesn't miss a beat with her preparation and brilliance.
We men with wives and daughters appreciate this progress. My 3 Granddaughters may soon have a level playing board due to the efforts of these amazing women.
Thank you Nick.
15
Yes, it reminds me of a class I took in the mid-1970s at one of NYC's colleges. The prof was a distinguished sociologist, consultant to the UN and author of our textbook. He came to class each evening drunk, called 2 females out into the hall and began kissing them; both got A grades. When I graduated the next year, I wrote to him telling him I found his behavior unacceptable and that he should stop drinking and stop sexually abusing the women. I never heard back. Yes, I still know his name.
11
@Patricia Farrell
Tell his name!
2
I guess this is an optimistic article and certainly well written, but it fills me with rage. And I wonder why are these sleazy, threatening scoundrels protected even in death? They did not hesitate to rob her career from her. Why are their reputations courteously preserved? Name them.
27
I would agree if they were here to face the accusations.
@Mary Holland
I understand some caution here, but I think if the University of Chicago found her accusations credible, decades later, then revealing their names would be appropriate.
It is true they can't defend themselves, on the other hand they're not around to suffer from it and they never faced any consequences whatsoever in their lifetimes, died imagining they'd gotten away with it. They essentially stole a career from this woman, yet they faced no penalties - no jail time, no financial reparations, no apology, nothing.
Name them.
5
Furthermore, the names of her advisors and committee members are part of her academic history. It's not fair to her to ask that she not be able to refer to such individuals by name. It's like a little of the shame of THEIR behavior rubbing off on her. She did nothing wrong and has every right to tell her full story, without protecting the reputations of individuals who harmed her.
4
I wonder if the face slobberer was Lawrence Kohlberg, who published research on moral development based exclusively on male subjects.
8
@Dawn Baker
Could be. Another reason to name them -- to confirm or deny your speculation.
2
I was chased and physically abused by the males a large and wealthy NY private school. When it was clear that I was not going to kow tow to the bully boys of the upper classes, and that many of the girls at the co-ed school in Riverdale felt that I was being cheated and threatened as well as phiscally abused on campus , no one did anything-I begged everyone, including my parents and gym teacher. A couple of students felt this was an impossible situation, and we had to "shut up and put up with it" because we were the least powerful and no one cared about the low man on totem pole idea.
In fact, one or two teachers noted the misbehavior by the schools administration, but refused ato act because they feared for their non union jobs.
Of all the girls in the school who claimed to be sympathetic-none objected or acted-all let events silently to take their course . It was a time when such beatings, and rock throwing, choking was normal. I was even attacked in a school hallway by the lower school's chief administrator who lifted me up from behind by my hair, up 6 inches off the floor, and when I swung back at my assailant-thought he would have me arrested or expelled.
I left under a cloud some monts later-I found the way prepared : no private school in NYC would accept me as a student. The real horror was that my own family agreed that there was nothing to be done. Que Sera, Sera
7
@meloop When I read stories like this, I cry. As I have cried and yelled and 'talked back' for the last 50 years. For all the "advancement" of humans, our society is just one step away from tribal kill or be killed of our ancestors. And don't think that it so much 'better' now with MeToo or Title IX. Women and especially women of color are still fighting, screaming for their lives, education or right to walk down the street while pregnant and not die.
I am ecstatic for Dr. Webb that she is getting her degree because it is important to her. However I look at her life's work as the greater accomplishment. She does not need the stamp of approval of U of C.
3
feminism: the belief that women are people with rights
22
@true patriot
faux feminism: the belief that men are people who do wrongs
There are way too many stories of PhD advisors delaying dissertations, as well as stealing work and ideas of PhD students. Ask anyone who has been through the process – each will know of, or have been through, one of these stories, including sexual harassment. This column is but a drop in the proverbial bucket.
11
thank you for this article.
4
This brought tears to my eyes. I hope that there is a special place in Hades for all of the men who are sexually abusive and/or threatened by women who are as accomplished or better than they.
To both of the women in this story; I am sorry for this unjustifiable delay for the doctorates you both so obviously deserved.
4
Sexism, racism, classism, child abuse and inequality all reflect a hierarchy of worth, a taxonomy of value, a stratification of privilege and a caste system of power and wealth that has made a mockery of the declaration: "All 'men' are created equal." Let the reparations begin!
4
Congratulations Marilyn! I’m so glad you finally got your PhD you more than deserve!
1
I was with the author until this statement:
“Children from the top 1 percent are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy college than kids from the bottom 20 percent.”
As we say in academia, “no duh.”
1
Who ran those universities? Who runs these tax-free bastions of inculcation now? That's right, liberals. Who bans speech? Who coddles losers? Who spells 'Hypocrite' with every uttered word? Who permits deranged loudmouths shouting "freedom" to harass and terrorize invited speakers? Liberals do. The same liberals this clueless Dudley Dooright bows down to. They are loathed. Finally we have a political outlet and movement to express our deep, deep antipathy toward them. And we will press the matter with messianic conviction. It's coming.
1
@Amelia
I'm so glad to hear that Conservatives never harass or oppress women. I guess our President is the perfect example.
5
Cheers to Dr. Webb. Many view universities as the 'source' of liberal, anti-conservative thinking. They don't believe in righting a wrong like this. There must have been another , 'correct' , side to the story. The same people who view that wronging the right like pardoning war criminals because they are American is the way to go. The next thing you know, Larry Nassar and all the Catholic abusive priests will be issued blanket pardons.
2
@Walking Man
One of many puzzling comments here. Last I checked it was Trump who was contemplating pardoning war criminals. And he's not a liberal.
2
"...there’s little notice of the absence of undocumented immigrants..." Sorry, America First. If there are slots open they should go to American citizens, not illegal aliens.
1
Academia, populated by the elite, are sexists. More sexist than blue collar workers who vote for Trump. What a surprise.
'Who dropped out?', indeed. We should not have to wait 50 years to find out. Deserving women - heck, humans of any kind - should not have to wait 50 years to be given what they would have earned but for the despicable, selfish, boorish behavior of some male.
7
A "credible" assertion against two dead men! Columns like this are directly responsible for the assumption that all women are victims. Nick's fascination with abuse of women is a fetish.
4
@No, it was credible enough for Webb’s college to finally grant her doctorate.
2
More writings about the 1960s.
We are supposed to conclude this was common and continues apace.
Men are violent. Men are evil. White men, especially, if you leave out Muslims by the look of their women.
My father must have been a minority of one.
2
I sympathize entirely with the plight of all of these students. As an academic I have seen gender/sexual orientation discrimination end the careers of many excellent students. Such behaviors are both criminal and completely unacceptable under any circumstances.
I do want to add that some students are more than willing to "fly a false flag" to further their own ambitions. During my thirty years career I have adjudicated many instances of students accusing faculty of such behaviors that were patently false. In those instances the students often withdrew their complaint and tried to salvage thier academic reputations; however, they also often continue to harass faculty members and this often either ended careers or prompted the faculty member to seek other employment.
I mention these instances not to denigrate those students who have valid complaints but to underscore the difficulty in discerning those that do not have a valid basis for charging a faculty member. Those bad faith complaints make the task of ferreting out truth in similar cases that much more difficult, and, I am certain, often allows some culpable faculty members to escape any consequences for their actions.
11
@Paudy Connellan
I have seen similar behavior described as the child of a highly regarded faculty member and a grad student. My parent was either loved or loathed as a teacher. When students who were overly sensitive to criticism of any sort felt slighted (or got an appropriate grade they earned), there was complaint usually picked up by rival faculty which was never supported by investigation. Yet these same faculty were also known to have their own abusive proclivities with students (some willingly an unashamedly, others devastated). I totally agree with your assessment.
Academia is a cut-throat as business. Just like the corporate world and world in general, there are wonderful, ethical folks and those who pursue power where the ends justify the means.
I am glad Marilyn Webb has finally received the recognition she deserves.
2
"The two professors were dead, but Zimmer discussed the issue with colleagues who investigated, reviewed Webb’s work and found her story credible."
The only witnesses to the alleged assaults are dead except the accuser. But #BelieveTheVictim #MeToo full steam ahead!
And while we are at it, $500K cash for every descendant of a slave!
Every accused CEO must be fired now! Even before a fair adjudication!
4
poor people poor people poor people
It’s a shame those distinuguished profs. responsible for Dr. Webb’s loss couldn’t be named.
5
@Deering24
It would have been an even greater shame if Dr. Webb waited until they could no longer defend themselves to bring her charges.
@Deering24
There's no reason not to name them.
2
@Ian, missed the part where her college validated her claims, did you?
2
I've heard from women-friends who are in the university system that this behavior is rampant among professors. I think the only thing that will stop it is if these abused women go public, just as the #METOO movement suggests. University hierarchy will do everything in its power to keep a lid on these abuses, so women should not waste their time going "through channels". My granddaughter wants to enter the field of science, and her father is not encouraging her because of the shabby way women are treated. That's really unfortunate...we're losing valuable talent.
8
@J. G. Smith
About seven years ago, the physics department at Stanford was congratulating itself for accepting three women in their incoming graduate class. Or one. I can't recall, except only one that I know of graduated, and she was from a prominent, wealthy academic family.
I wonder if they will congratulate themselves on same this coming fall.
These professors should be named
7
Congratulations to Dr. Webb.
Doctoral dissertation advisors, committee members, and faculty members, I find, have ridiculous variance. Including morality. Including integrity. Including indifference. Including pure bullying. Never mind in terms of talent, competence, attitude, behavior. And psycho-pathology. I suspect students differ too, but they are without power. The unforgivable variance exists because university administrators are largely powerless and some measure of incompetent (I am generalizing). What do you suppose a well meaning dean can do to a tenured professor?
I distinctly recall being cautioned by a faculty when I was a doctoral student, to stay away from a couple of faculty (they are "Nazis"). I could not escape, I faced the tyranny. The solace of "this will pass, and they will remain miserable" was pretty profound. I never saw them willingly, after I finished. But each time I did, I recall wanting to spit with some urgency. I still do.
Anyone with too much power, zero accountability (tenure), and with incompetent and indifferent administrators are likely to turn into prison guards who know they can get away with pure brutality. Of course there are lots of doctoral students who had perfectly decent, valued advisors. I have seen them at a distance too. Then there are ones that Dr. Webb faced.
The faculty Dr. Webb faced deserve to go to jail. Or rot in hell for ever. You go Dr. Webb.
3
Women are still keepings heads under the foxhole because men are still pigs. However as pesticides and food companies wreck havoc on men (and testosterone), women are making progress. Soon, women will be the only gender to get a PhD or MD and time matches on.
1
how much money did these two women lose over the course of their lives because they did not have that Ph.D.?
9
Congratulations on receiving your doctoral degree. My Chair disliked women and Jews. I knew I was screwed. I was luckier than Dr. Webb and received my PhD in 1977. 42 years later, I still have nightmares regarding the Chair of my Committee, who haunts me approximately once a year now.
10
@judith
What possessed you to choose him as your Chair then? I got my Ph.D. in 1979, and I got to choose my chair/advisor.
https://teachingcommons.stanford.edu/teaching-talk/selecting-dissertation-chair-and-committee
1
Gee wiz now it makes me question women who received Ph.D.'s' from the University of Chicago in the l 60's, did they sell their souls to get the degree? Go for you Marilyn Webb, you proved you could be successful without selling your soul for that Ph.D. Shame on University of Chicago.
3
Repost of comment NY Times lost in their queue.
What a shame that this woman and others were denied the opportunities that earning a Ph.D. offers to its holders. Even sadder is how common this sort of thing continues to be. Women and girls are the losers here. Men just continue to network without the women. But women, as smart and savvy as some of them are, continue to be treated like third class citizens on the job, in academics, and when it comes to other issues like medical care.
It's a real shame that women are forced to fight for minimal recognition while men are recognized even when they do nothing extraordinary. Men don't like being cheated. Guess what, women don't either and we don't like having doors slammed in our faces when there's no reason.
5/25/2019 8:09pm
7
My mom was born in 1920. She graduated from high school at age 16, and received a BS from Brooklyn College two years later. She then earned a Master's degree at Columbia, where an advisor told her not to bother with a doctorate, because "women didn't need to do that." Ignoring that advice, she pursued, and earned a PhD at Yale, while living through World War 2, getting married, and having her first child. She was a feminist, before that was a "thing." She later liked to tell feminist audiences that she would've liked to have had more (than three) children...
7
And the story continues...ageism is also a factor. There are many subjective reasons why minorities do not get recognized by those in their fields be it in academics, or any field where a person needs assistance from those in "higher positions" than theirs. I am so happy for Dr. Webb. Congratulations to her!
1
There are many of us out here. One of my biggest regrets is not finishing but the professors literally made it impossible for me to safely complete my dissertation. Men in my program were shocked at how I was treated in the 1980s and, to their credit, expressed shock to the professors in our department meetings. They were allowed to complete their work, fortunately,
10
This news truly brought tears to my eyes! What a fateful decision Dr. Webb made to contact the University of Chicago as a birthday gift to herself. I am so proud for her, and for Dr. Dembe, and grateful to Robert Zimmer for helping to find the necessary avenue to correct this injustice.
And while it is a joyous story, it is also heartbreaking, for the scores of us women and others who have experienced similar treatment in graduate programs. In the early 90s I, too, experienced harassment that nearly derailed my academic career. After a pause of over a year from coursework, it was the new dean of the graduate school who wrote me to ask why I was not currently enrolled. A face-to-face meeting at his invitation was the impetus to continue and finish, without which I likely would not have done.
And I would also like to thank Nicholas Kristof for bringing this story to light. It is so very important to document these stories. And I am privately celebrating with both of these women.
Congratulations!
342
I'm sorry, U Chicago knew then and knows now, so their integrity is long gone. It is expedient for them to grant this degree and to turn a PR nightmare into a win (thanks, Kristof!!). Congratulations to soon-to-be Drs. Webb and Dembe, but this token is scarcely justice. A better test would be, of course: will anyone hire them into posted, competitive tenure-line positions (one not among the many rigged, special hires)? Since they likely do not have the other requirements generally needed for such positions these days, chances are slim--even putting aside rampant age discrimination and ongoing gender discrimination. And one cannot make up for lost time. Their opportunities for academic careers were crushed long ago, and therein lies the injustice.
11
@jer I agree, one future was closed off to her decades ago because she didn't get her doctorate, but what deeply impresses me about Dr. Webb is that she nevertheless went out and accomplished more than most psychology PhD.s would have: founded a feminist newspaper, a college women’s studies program, wrote books and magazine articles, served as editor in chief of Psychology Today, became an expert on death and dying and co-chair of a journalism program. It's people like Marilyn Webb who inspire me to keep slugging despite the obstacles in my path.
9
@jer, What you're describing is the cost of opportunity, which is incalculable. Yes, it's expedient for UChicago to grant the degrees, but in today's world, they could just as easily have issued a "sincere" apology and closed the case. This outcome is the better of the two.
1
I am so sorry to learn how Marilyn Webb was treated by two U of Chicago professors and how she suffered for it. Yet she asserted herself years later and prevailed in rectifying the wrong. She has my admiration.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s I was a nontraditional graduate student (over 35) at a major university, where I earned a Ph.D. degree. Until I read this piece I didn’t realize how lucky I was to have a sympathetic department which understood I had other priorities I had to attend to (two small children) and later a move for my husband’s work which necessitated my writing my dissertation from across the country (chapters sent back and forth by mail—way before email attachments). I was always treated fairly and equally. Thank you for reminding me.
351
The examples are poignant, belated successes that also are tragic in the decades of lost opportunity, the opportunities for promising careers that were denied these women. I'm baffled by the tone of this article, which appears to suggest that we have solved the troubling issue of gender discrimination in academia (such that it now serves as a cautionary example reminding us to be on the lookout for other forms our social myopia might take). Certainly we should be ever vigilant for systemic discrimination, and I like the question posed of what society's current blindnesses might be - but issues of gender discrimination are still rampant throughout society, academia included. Sadly, Mr. Kristof, we cannot put concerns about gender myopia behind us just yet.
8
Congratulations to Dr. Webb for finally gaining her PhD! I am about her age and in the mid-60’s I attended law school for one year. The sexual harassment was overwhelming so I left after a year and moved to a smaller city with my husband where, to my horror, attorneys and judges were dismissive and derisive about women who wished to enter the legal profession. I entered social work but when I turned my attention to obtaining a doctorate in the 80’s, my professional goals were again treated as a joke by men in the community. Other women I knew who wished to move up professionally felt ignored, dismissed, and degraded. I can’t begin to imagine how many other women swallowed their dreams and either entered more traditional women’s careers where they felt accepted or remained home with a family. In the end I finally was able to enter a strong doctoral program and was treated courteously and professionally by male faculty and obtained my PhD at age 68. I have been very lucky this way, and only wish other women of my generation would have had the same opportunity. We lost the gifts of so many silenced women.
518
Yes, it is amazing and wonderful. But also very, very sad. These women had their chosen paths and livelihoods stolen from them. I'm around their age and, for me, it isn't difficult to note that our lives are way more than half over, even if we live to 100 (we can hope). And the debt for them really has not been and won't be repaid. Congratulations to the university for at least completing the circle for them. Both doctoral awardees are more amazing -- for making something wonderful of themselves despite discrimination.
462
“There’s little notice of the absence of undocumented immigrants [in graduate programs]”?!
WOW!
It is one thing to strive to treat people fairly and decently and in accord with US and international law (regarding migration in general and refugee status in particular).
The mind boggles at the idea that one of the “problems” with graduate education in the US is the paucity of people here illegally—or the failure to sufficiently acknowledge (and therefore support?) those who are here. We might start with the question of why a student would fail to have a student visa.
As an equity matter, however, have we effectively guaranteed “need-blind” access to education, along with the necessary supports, for Native Americans—the descendants of the few that survived the genocide that was the birth of the US—or to the descendants of those brought here from Africa as chattel, on whose backs we built the country? I would respectfully suggest that we address those issues before we begin to channel resources towards those here illegally.
As someone with two terminal degrees (an MFA and a PhD), I can assure Mr. Kristof that “those with mental health challenges” are quite well represented both in the professoriate and in the ranks of graduate students.
Regarding trans students—just like all other students—they should be provided the resources they need and accorded the respect they deserve to fulfill their maximum potential.
Don Unger, Worcester, MA
10
@Don Unger Thank you so much!! As a Navajo Indian from poor parens I knew I had to work my way through college so chose a California State School because it was cheaper then the UC system and I could waitress my way through and pay for living and school expenses. When Reagan gave us Native Americans college scholarships in my 2nd year, I was in complete shock to just go to school and not work 30 hours a week. Watching undocumented students go to prestigious schools I couldn't afford still pains me and I get criticized when I bring it up to people in California. Really thanks again
A less well recognized form of sexual discrimination stopped my first effort to get a Ph.D, although I finally got one in another place, after starting over.
I received my MA in 1959 at University of Virginia, then an all-male school for undergraduates. My department liked my work well enough to nominate me to Phi Beta Kappa, usually closed there to women.(I was eligible because my undergraduate school did not have a chapter).
Yet my major professor put difficult barriers in the way of a Ph,D degree. I wanted to expand my thesis, but he followed old rules which forbade that if the author being studied was still living. (I was working in the 20th century and could only compare this author with another living author.)
Also I had married, and my husband now accepted a job in another part of the country. It was a job at a university with an excellent library, and I continued to work until I received a letter from my director informing me that he did not have time to read what I had sent. He was working on another project by a male student.
So my project died. Several years and two children later, when we had moved to my husband’s next job, I had the chance to go to Emory University graduate school. I had to start over in 1972 with course work, and write a totally new dissertation. My husband died of cancer while I was working, but I finished this Ph.D in 1980 and later taught with tenure at Morehouse until retirement.
33
All the academic scholarly cloaks aside, university professors are perhaps no more than another group most concerned with self-preservation. Not only young women, but many eager, idealistic persons, yes young men as well, drawn to scholarship and research can can face a daunting imbalance of power in PhD granting Universities - find that they need to get personal acceptance from the priesthood already in charge - academic professors with tenure - usually who have spent years honing their scholarly personas.
Abuse doesnt have to be the wet slobbering sort to still deeply affect a young person's hopes and aspirations which can depend on the whims of a few who have already occupied some small academic niche, demanding a tall price for entry to others.
18
Unsupported accusations against dead men is not an appropriate standard for determining whether these women have been wronged or merely failed to meet the required standards.
2
Fortunately, as noted in the article, that’s not how these PhDs were adjudicated.
26
@No She had her work as proof. And we were all there and can attest.
5
@No Which is obviously why the universities delved deep into the women's dissertations and realized that their institutions had been grossly unjust and unfair.
For example, "A faculty committee reviewed Dembe’s work as a doctoral student and was impressed; it resembled contemporaneous work at Cornell University that later won a Nobel Prize. So Dembe, too, will be awarded a Ph.D."
You might consider reading the article. It's quite good.
6
My daughter was charged with criminally violating the leash law , letting her dog endanger another. We proved that the alleged victim was lying and the charge was dropped. Later, she charged that her Ph.D advisor had harassed her. She proved his alibi was false and he was fired. Today, sexual harassment charges are not unlike criminal charges. The key to prevailing is irrefutable evidence. Bare allegations that are totally true won’t do the trick. Most men get off because of a lack of proof. That’s just the way the system works. So whether it’s an off leash dog or a harassing professor, you are unlikely to prevail unless you can prove your case to a level approaching certainty.
5
@michjas
retired attorney + teacher F/70
The casualness with which you state a burden of proof, "prove your case to a level approaching certainty," is chilling. And wrong. Under both Title IX and EEOC cases, there are clear standards for evidence and for where the burden lies . . .and when it shifts to the one charged.
"Irrefutable evidence" may have helped with a leash law dispute and with your daughter's problematic PhD advisor, but be careful about your characterization of rules of evidence and burdens of proof in settings like this story describes? And among these exceedingly capable and informed readers?
1
Something very similar happened to me at Princeton in the early 1980s, only they made me--young, female, ashamed, terrified, from another culture--sign a nondisclosure agreement, and then they sealed the files.
24
Nicholas, you are a kind and ethical journalist whom I admire. In this interesting piece I wonder why the two offenders are not named. They should have been identified, especially since their universities corroborated the story. The only reason I can think of to not name them is that you or the victim didn’t want to offend these professors’ families since they are both deceased.
I, too, was subjected to sexual abuse in the 70s at the university level. For the last thirty years I’ve wondered how to have the last word. My recourse will be to it all write down; I got the degree elsewhere. As the years have passed my outrage has grown exponentially along with the women’s movement. I don’t want to go to my grave silent.
Think of the untold stories that surround us. Enough to cause a major tsunami.
22
There's still plenty of discrimination and sexual assault against women going on in academia, with all due respect, Mr. Kristof. Try to get a hold of the Google crowd-created document 'Sexual harassment in academia.' It's continuously being updated. Women still leave PhD programs because they can't face the trauma of facing their abusers, or because they know beforehand that the university won't back them up. I consider myself exceptionally lucky to be completing a dissertation in a small university department comprised of talented and supportive women. But they themselves face endless discrimination and belittling remarks from their institute head - you guessed it, a man. What I've come to realize is that it never ends.
17
@Person I wish your story was less common. I dropped out of a grad program in the mid 1980s; although I was not abused, I felt zero support or encouragement from the male professors. I could see how fellow female students and professors were treated by tenured male faculty, and I knew this was not for me.
My husband has been in academia for 23 years. The number of women we've known who have been harassed (physically, mentally, and emotionally) and drummed out of their tenure-track jobs is jaw-dropping. And these days, some of the students join in, complaining to administration that these women are "disorganized," "always late," "don't know the subject," "favor women in the class," or "grade unfairly." Honestly, I think a lot of men have simply gotten better at hiding their harassment. Not much has changed.
10
Brava to you Dr. Webb. Well done.
4
Some of today's more frivolous claims of sexual harassment can make us forgot what a serious problem it really is. Thank you for this article. And thank you to pioneers like RBG, whom I admire and respect even more when I hear stories like this.
5
Having spent the better part of my career as a professor in higher education, I can attest that Dr. Webb's story rings very true to me. Aside from the United States President and Congress, the greatest cowards I have ever had the misfortune of encountering are University administrators, with professors coming a very close second.
17
We continue to live in a hierarchical society where people at the top bully, abuse, demean, scorn people with "lower status' in overt ways or in very subtle ones. Usually, the perpetrators of this behavior are me, but women are also guilty of using their power in a nefarious manner. Our current president uses his top position in the political hierarchy to demean anyone who doesn't bow to his version of reality. Our corporate elite uses their power to lord it over many of their female and male employees. Paying themselves more money in one year than their average employees can make in a lifetime certainly indicates a contempt for the "lower status" working stiffs. Representatives of "God" (the highest status of all) in the Church have used their power to molest children. In our schools, we can see this hierarchy of status resulting in a culture humiliation and bullying of both boys and girls. The problem is much deeper and more wide-ranging than the antediluvian sexism of some entitled men.
11
A PhD is inadequate reparation considering they were heading towards Nobel Prize level work.
How do you make up for a lifetime of lost research, lost career, lost discovery?
In the sexual harassment case, how about posthumously stripping of the offending professors' titles, honors and authorship in publications? Not harsh, merely a strong deterrent that says, your posterity is at stake.
17
What a loss for these women, and for society, that they did not receive the recognition that they earned?
5
Well, it ws my sad experience in graduate school that professors have virtually unlimited power to punish students they do like for social or political reasons. And that academic administrators are entirely unwilling to review, much less discipline, outrageously unethical conduct by a professor. Correction: this is true of they student is from a disfavored social class, as a white male from a poor family in the rural South, I was fair game for viscious mistreatment. (And no, I'm not a right wing Christian, I'm an Obama Democrat, with a 1540 GRE). Eh, I have no desire to ever return to America after that experience.
3
This is a heartwarming yet bittersweet story of belated justice. Moreover, as a few other posters have mentioned, I wonder over the years, how many countless women of color and people of color have faced similar instances of harassment, indignities and injustices perpetrated upon them as well?
10
I was totally ignored by one of my grad school professors (a very famous historian) - because I’m male. I was warned from day one: he doesn’t pay any attention to guys. He regularly cancelled our meetings, and treated me with indifference. His female grad students, on the other hand, all got good jobs.
Sex and sexism are more complicated than they first appear.
9
An ad I see on this article on line (and on many Times articles) says "The 39 Hottest Female Survivor Contestants" and shows a huge-breasted young woman, not wearing much. Somehow, I wonder how far we've advanced since 1957.
12
If this is a model going forward to correct past injustices, I imagine that there are many other women who should be awarded PhD's in this manner.
4
Not just the abusive professor(s) -- academia was and still is structured to back up the perpetrators, not the victims, and fighting for equality is just part of the extra work for women, minorities, and first-generation college goers have to do to win in that system.
6
What a shame that this woman and others were denied the opportunities that earning a Ph.D. offers to its holders. Even sadder is how common this sort of thing continues to be. Women and girls are the losers here. Men just continue to network without the women. But women, as smart and savvy as some of them are, continue to be treated like third class citizens on the job, in academics, and when it comes to other issues like medical care.
It's a real shame that women are forced to fight for minimal recognition while men are recognized even when they do nothing extraordinary. Men don't like being cheated. Guess what, women don't either and we don't like having doors slammed in our faces when there's no reason.
5/25/2019 8:09pm
7
One cannot help but zero in on the year 1967, and the tragedies and triumphs of that decade. The two Kennedys and Martin Luther King assassinated, the deep and unnecessary involvement in the Vietnam War were the tragedies. The triumph of the decade was Neil Armstrong landing on the Moon. And now we have Dr. Webb losing her chance then for a PHD because two professors, while smart enough to become a professor were totally dumb in their understanding of women.
Kudos for Dr. Webb for her sticktoitiveness and putting some humanity back into that challenging decade.
3
@Tom Osterman:
"Smart enough to become professors" shows a lack of understanding of higher education. When I began teaching at a university in the States, I was shocked at the lack of intelligence in my department. Some PhDs are much easier to earn than others.
A PhD for me nowadays indicates the person can survive a highly manipulative system. It does not necessarily include any real form of intelligence.
2
I'm glad the U of Chic is finally, far too late, redressing these wrongs but the problem of no accountability by university professors, particularly regarding graduate students remains.
Curiously, undergrads have far more power, both in numbers and, frequently, political connections. But grad students? They are TOTALLY dependent on their departments and advisers and have little contact beyond that.
I was a teaching assistant to several professors but one had me running personal errands for him. I remember him ordering me to carry a stack of books somewhere, despite having my wrist in a plaster cast! Another would work me till midnight or all night the day before I would leave to go home to see my family. And HIS research always took precedence over mine. And he wasn't even a "bad guy"! And compared to what these women (and others) went through it was TRIVIAL, but still a sign of power and no accountability.
Power corrupts and we see this every day, from the White House, the Attorney General, the Senate Leader, and various governors. No accountability means there's no limit to the corruption.
14
This is a story about ultimate, long-overdue success, and about tragedy generated by a culture of male sexual privilege and abuse. I can imagine some saying, What great progress has been made over 50 years! Okay, maybe, in a way.
Listing all the ills reported daily in the media isn't necessary. We may have taken valuable steps in some areas, but has the heart and soul of our country really changed to value and appreciate the worth of each individual? Have we begun to place personhood over power? What progress has genuinely occurred if half of us voted for a man who is the antithesis of integrity?
I am delighted about Ms Webb's and Ms Dembe's well-deserved acknowledgement. I hope they are multiplied by the recognition of millions of others as well.
9
Of course. "It's a sad comment on the way things were in the past" rather than "The University of Chicago disgraced itself and did nothing about it for decades." Administrators always dodge acknowledging responsibility. It's so much easier to just say, "That's the way things were back then."
13
This is justice of a sort, but at the same time, what have we as a society lost due to the flaws in the men and the system that caused these women to stop short of a doctorate? It sounds like Dembe was on a Nobel Prize track. Her knowledge and know-how were thwarted. Society may have even more than she did.
So I congratulate these women while praying that the system has come further than it seems.
11
"We" need to start preparing our kids – male and female – at least in grade schools to prepare for the job market. Otherwise, it ain't going to change.
1
Kristof writes: "let’s learn from that experience and try to avoid other kinds of myopia that lead people even today to drop out and never fully deploy their talents — for then we all lose." I couldn't agree more, but we need to ask, what sort of society would allow everyone to develop their talents to the max? Certainly not a society in which ignorant, bigoted, profit-hungry men make the rules. Not a neoliberal society in which plutocrats prosper and half the population is impoverished and students drown in debt. What about a socialist society that puts people over profits? It would be far from perfect but it would at least be a start.
12
I was engaged to my husband and we married while I was on spring vacation during graduate school at a major university.
As a result I was denied advancement to candidacy by my mentor, the department head, despite the fact that my master's paper received the highest grade from four professors.
My husband is Jewish. I was not. I was dropped from a teaching assistantship while I was on my honeymoon and received a letter from an anonymous "committee." I was told not to change my maiden name, which was Nordic. I received horrible anti-Semitic literature in my mailbox.
Almost 3 decades later I earned my Ph.D. with the help of feminist male professors.
27
@HLR I am appalled that anyone would criticize your husband's last name but an also confused about why you felt the need to change your name. I have been married for over 40 years and still carry the name I was born with. I find it offensive that women are assumed to take the name of their male partner - aren't we past that in 2019???
@Mary Pat
Fine Mary Pat, but that was NOT the point.
3
The only thing I’d like to take issue with here is the idea that “we were largely blind to sexual harassment and gender discrimination”. No, most women were not so.
38
Even this problem is not solved. Women are still experiencing it today and School’s are covering it up. It’s changed and yet, not.
10
“Half a century ago, we were largely blind to sexual harassment and gender discrimination, so talented women were pushed out “
Nonsense! We knew what oppression was in 1969; there were major women's rights and women's liberation movements going on. Rape and sexual assault were against the law. People weren't blind to it; the patriarchal society countenanced it and certain malevolent men took advantage of it.
Women were pushed out because of blatant discrimination, active prejudice, deliberate disparagement — not because anyone was blind it how egregiously wrong it was.
34
Let’s not fool ourselves. This kind of behavior goes on in universities today. A woman may still find herself pressured for sex in return for what should be given based on her ability to perform ACADEMICALLY. It may not be as easy to get away with as it was in the 60s, but it happens today more often than many are aware. There are plenty of powerful men in academia who think their power gives them certain rights. And it still gets swept under the rug, and many women are still afraid to report it (for good reason—including the sweeping and the rug). I am aware of a man who, very recently, was investigated after numerous complaints spanning years, yet kept his job. It took more years and more complaints before he was finally told to leave. How many women never reported? What percentage kept their mouths shut? When these men are to all appearances untouchable in their power, what message does that send? It took so many years to manage to get this guy out of his position of power over women. Reminds me of the gymnastics coach, Larry Nassar. So many years, so much more abuse than shoyldve been if only people had listened and acted. .
23
Wow! Congratulations to both! At least late life recognition gives some sort of gratification!
2
I knew a woman who was in the graduate department in physics at Harvard in the late ‘60s. Her thesis adviser refused to read her dissertation so she never got a Ph.D.
214
@lsl I woke up this morning thinking about how when I arrived in grad school at SUNY New Paltz in the fall of 1989, I did my first paper on a Shakespeare sonnet 129. I had come from SUNY Buffalo (whose English department was legendary at the time) and then Rutgers for some grad work. The professor grading my first paper gave me an F at the top of page 4. It was a 12 page paper. I never did another assignment for any English class, and went back into journalism. There was, I believe, a bias issue with the paper: the professor was closeted, and the topic of the paper was "too gay."
The sonnet begins,
"The expense of spirit in a waste of shame. Is lust in action; and till action, lust. Is perjur'd, murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel..."
16
@Eric Francis Coppolino The problem, here, is that your story, while common, doesn't fit the narrative so many are looking for: Evil straight white man harassing white woman. Whenever the situation varies from that, there is little interest and, in my experience, disbelief. A man being harassed or experiencing bias from a gay man? From a woman? How could it be? The diversity of harassment and abuse of power, whether sexual in nature or otherwise, is vast in the many forms it takes. But only one form is considered acceptable and worthy of empathy by those interested in a MeToo movement.
8
Bravo! Glad that Dr. Webb and Dr. Dembe finally found ways to get their long-overdue degrees. But sad to think of how their careers might have been different if they had had the title of “Doctor” decades earlier. For women, especially in male-dominated fields, the title can make a world of difference. So disheartening when male supervisors derail their women students...
10
Perhaps it was my field of study-Anthropology and Education- that made my graduate study and work a positive experience.
Perhaps it was because that was the 80's, and the University was woke.
Perhaps it was because I was a non-traditional student and older than some of my professors.
Perhaps I was just lucky.
I do, however, know that this behavior went on then and continues to this day. Thank you for this article.
8
Perhaps the Nobel Prize committee would like to take a look at the work of Dr. Dembe...and award her a special prize on behalf of all the people--women, minorities, lgbtq-- who never stood a chance of even being considered for this ultimate honor because they were harassed, demeaned and diminished along their way. One can only imagine how much better the world would be if all its bright citizens were allowed to contribute. Thank you for writing this column, Mr. Kristof.
14
It is nice to read that Dr. Marilyn Webb is feeling positive in spite of the damages and lost opportunities from her experiences decades ago.
8
““For a university, academic integrity is the most important thing,” Zimmer explained. “If mistakes have been made, they need to be corrected.”
As a veteran of several institutions of higher education, this assertion is blatantly false. Propping up their own academic reputation, sustaining top-down bureaucratic management, and making administrators look good is what it's all about. The ship of academic integrity sailed a long time ago. If it were still in dock, there'd be
no admissions scandals,
no Division 1 sports programs,
no NCAA, especially blocking athletes' compensation and conducting faux investigations,
no legacy admits,
no donor admits,
no forging of crime statistics,
no ignoring women's complaints about sexual harassment,
no trading favors for grades and opportunities,
no favoring sports over academics,
no pushing for enrollments at the expense of academic quality,
etc.
73
@Marsha Pembroke Amen. One of my most cherished moments as an older graduate student was meeting a younger colleague in the women's bathroom after a brutal seminar during which I was bullied by several male graduate students and the professor ("bullied" a term yet another student used to describe the session). As my young colleague washed her hands and checked herself in the mirror, she said, "If there's one thing graduate school has taught me, it's that academia is the last place for new ideas."
If you think the gender issues are solved, you don't know very many women graduate students.
37
@Marsha Pembroke
As a veteran of several institutions of higher education, one should know enough to avoid dangling modifiers (:-)).
1
I received my Ph.D. in a scientific field in 1981. My advisor was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a perfect gentlemen. Because of him, I was able to get a job in academia and became the first woman in an all male department. The challenges were many and there were few scripts available for those of us who were first to follow. But, I certainly recognize how important it was that a man of stature was willing to advise me and to promote me without expecting sexual favors as part of the bargain.
32
Of course it is good and right that Drs. Webb and Dembe are finally receiving their well-deserved doctorates. But this is such a heinous tragedy and we can't simply congratulate ourselves or our society in any progress that might have been made in the last half century. New and continuing injustices and suffering (and death) goes on. Just as heinous. Our government and a wide range of leaders from both major parties still perpetuate new evils: taking away women's rights, warring and bombing in various countries...well the list is too long to get into. We in the US continue the tragic history that has created this country, or to use another word, empire. The massacre of indigenous people, the enslavement of Africans are just two crimes. There are so many. When will be as a people develop the real moral sense and sensibility to face ourselves. Drs. Webb and Dembe are two brilliant women who illustrate the individual nature of the "American Way." Do we have the moral courage to face our real heritage and history?
14
I am Dr Webb’s age. Am I ever lucky to have worked with not just a distinguished scientist, but a very decent man too! Thereafter, I worked with more men, our work required close physical proximity, and over night experiments. They were all very decent and protective. My sincerest thanks to all these men who were great mentors and colleagues. Mentors can make or break one’s life.
40
I have nothing but empathy and regard for this woman and the injustice she faced, but Kristof needs to recognize that sexual harassment in the academy is not a gendered behavior. I have seen and encountered it from women, often. NYU had a recent highly publicized case of a woman professor harassing a male student. In that instance, dozens of so-called feminists wrote in support of the woman faculty member and condemned the male student because the professor is so "accomplished" and the accusation could hurt her standing. See, it's not the emergence of the MeToo movement that is problematic. In fact, it is well over-due. It is the hypocrisy of the movement, trying to gender sexual harassment, as if it is only perpetrated by men on women, that is a distortion that has already badly compromised an essential call for change. Let's move past identity politics and victimhood culture and begin dealing with these complex problems of power imbalance as they play out in reality: Across all kinds of settings and mixes of people. Until we are willing to confront harassment and misuse of power, whether it is sexual in nature or otherwise, whether treatment of students in the academy or staff in the office of a U.S. senator, we will not make the progress we need to make it stop.
17
“Sexual harassment in the academy is not gendered behavior”: first, it is sexual harassment, not gender harassment. And the Avital Ronell case certainly needs discussion. But one case of a female professor behaving inappropriately does not mean sex is insignificant. On the contrary, the outlier underscores the pattern. Male faculty are more likely to be granted power both formally and casually, and this compounds the unwarranted male privileges they likely experience in daily life. In the face of statistics, the fact that a commenter here uses this case to claim sex/gender is not a factor simply underscores the fact that it is.
The Ronell case exposes matters of great concern, including through the letter mentioned here (a draft, some say). See Masha Gessen’s New Yorker article. Both parties identify as, respectively, lesbian and gay. The case shows how professional misconduct may be a matter of explicitly sexualized conduct or poor boundaries more generally. And with this we come full circle: women are more likely to learn about boundaries, since we are held to a higher standard and have more to lose. Male faculty, again and again, probe students about their personal lives, demand personal favors, and seek personal gratification, whether it be praise or sex. Whether or not it is sexual, this most often follows a pattern according to sex of the offending faculty member.
4
@Rose Liz Women are held to a higher standard, how? When women commit sexual harassment or even sexual assault (tragically and ironically, as Asia Argento, one of the leaders of MeToo, is alleged to have done) it is not confronted by the movement as evidence of the complexity of this realm of behavior. Simplifying the complex behavioral realm of harassment or assault for the sake of a political narrative may gain some brief momentum, as MeToo did, but failure to recognize the complex myriad nature of this messy domain just means more denial and rejection of those who have suffered in it. Over time, such artifice will result in a flame-out of what was an essential development, had it strived for inclusion and integrity rather than brief emotional catharsis. Again, hypocrisy is rampant in most activist movements. MeToo has been no different. It's a shame.
2
Higher standards in general, following on my response to your claim it’s not about “gender” [sic] and that more is involved.
It is well documented that women faculty are expected to work harder, perform to a higher standard, do more service work, and then when women do this and, say, receive tenure, they are resented and are even expected to protect male colleagues from their own feelings of inadequacy. (See “how to be successful without hurting men’s feelings” for a satirical take on this.)
There is plenty of writing about this available. If someone is only interested in, or has only heard about, Avital Ronell’s case, that says something about skewed sampling in the press or in readers’ exploration.
Women who do raise concerns or file complaints are routinely retaliated against. If they succeed in lawsuits NDAs are required, so these realities remain hidden. To most of us. Having done research, I am aware of many successful lawsuits against my university on the basis of sex discrimination. Because these cases are covered up by NDAs, those who are uninformed continue to feel entitled to intone, “it’s not about gender” [sic].
Listen and learn more if you’re interested, or keep making stuff up on the basis of an anomaly if you prefer.
2
Getting the Ph.D. led to the next problem. My department head only took men's resumes to hiring fairs. If you got an academic position on your own, he naturally took credit for it. This in the late 1970s University of Michigan.
I had filled a discrimination complaint (federal no less, meaning federal funding was on the line, a big issue) and encouraged others to do so. A person considering adding her name was threatened to "not even think about doing it" or her funding would be cut.
Strangely, my entire record of all the classes I passed and the grades disappeared (a lost micro dot they said). A Dean started a search and it turned up on his desk within days, not so lost.
I left academics disgusted but I still wonder if my records were suppressed when I applied for non academic jobs. If I had had money, I would have gone to Europe and never returned. More flexibility with the healthcare and more support for an area adjacent to my degree would have allowed me to contribute in that area.
35
While I sympathize with Marilyn, I am worried by the following:
"The university formed a dissertation committee — two white women and a black man, reflecting how universities have changed — and agreed that Webb would submit as a dissertation a book she had written, but with a new theoretical framework."
This committee looks too much like a PC committee and the worry is that in the enthusiasm for justice, the issue of quality is going to be on the back burner.
It is deplorable what happened to her in 1967. But it does not follow that her dissertation is of high quality. It might be, and it might not be.
7
@Ludwig
Your assumption that her committee will not review her book for quality is baseless. You looked at the gender and race of the committee members, nothing more, and jumped to the conclusion that they did not care about quality. Why would you not presume that because the committee members are academics at UC that they will uphold the high standards of such an institution?
13
@Ludwig I found the composition of the committee problematic too, but for a different reason: Too often in academia, women of all colors and men of color are called upon to spend their time righting the wrongs of institutional sexism and racism rather than advancing their own research, which is what academia rewards. So, you see a threat to quality where I see a common form of continued sexism and racism.
4
I interpreted that aside differently: not that the committee was chosen intentionally in a "PC" way, but the fact that the committee most suited to judge her work turned out to have two women and an African-American man -- something that wouldn't have been possible at UC in 1969.
7
If a PhD is awarded on the basis of research that makes a contribution to the body of knowledge, which I realize is questionable—especially in the field of “education”—what kind of sense does it make spending money so that people with mental disabilities can start such a program? Is there something here that I’m simply incapable of understanding? Can we expect Dr. Singer at Princeton to complain that there are not enough trees enrolled in graduate school?
9
Discrimination comes in many forms. I experienced this first hand when I applied for my company sponsored PhD program. I had a master's degree, and I had met all the requirements including acceptance to a PhD program at a public university. I had letters of recommendation from my immediate supervisor and the endorsement of the Technical Director of the company. As the time came and passed for selection, I asked the chair of the selection committee about the status and he stated that the committee were told that I had withdrawn my name from consideration. I found out that a
company VP had intervened and falsely planted that story. What goes around comes around though, as that VP was subsequently caught up in a scandal that resulted in his being debarred from participation in government contracts.
23
@old reprobate
re: "I applied for my company sponsored PhD program"
Presumably you needed the company sponsorship because you couldn't finance your PhD program yourself. That says something about American education.
2
Dear Dr. Webb and Dr. Dembe,
Welcome to the club we struggled to join. The power dynamics of the academic system can be overwhelming, with little recourse for the student in those days. It took me a long time to find a committee even remotely interested in a dissertation on the relationship between the childbirth experience and postpartum depression. It is not only the gender of the student, but can also be the gender of the topic.
34
This doesn’t only happen to women. I was suddenly not qualified to continue my funded assistantship for my doctoral work after rebuking my male professor’s overtures....despite having had the smarts to be competitively awarded a grant to do my Master’s thesis research. My life has never been the same. I hope the students at Emerson College were not subjected to this abuse.
25
Why do these two distinguished professors get a pass? If they were still alive would they be facing the consequences of having derailed Ms. Webb´s ambitions? By keeping their names a secret it contributes to the pressure of maintaining silence by the current generations. If shame is the only motivation for change, so be it.
28
@R Alas, the answer is all too obvious. Lawsuits. Academic institutions and the media either should have enough evidence to win a lawsuit, or they shouldn't bring the charges at all.
4
Interesting question, evidence to win a lawsuit required to file charges versus evidence to warrant filing charges which may or may not win a lawsuit. The economics is clear, but the ethics murky.
2
Right. Plus, the dead don't have a chance to defend themselves, although what they could possibly say, except phony excuses, is beyond me!
Congrats to Dr. Dembe and Dr. Dembe - this is a wonderful achievement. I can relate to their struggles, but I would like to point out that abuse in the academy in not only a male preserve. I got my doctorate in sociology from the University of Toronto at the age of 52 - it was 1998. A week before my oral defense a very powerful woman in my department suggested that I spend another year writing - in other words, she tried to stop me from getting my degree. Space is too limited here to describe the ageist discrimination I have experienced at various Canadian universities - so it's not only sexual harassment, but ageism that presents a barrier to women's educational achievements.
41
@Deirdre Smythe I went back to university in my 40s to complete my BA (in the 90s). I went to speak with a professor, a female, during her office hours. During the discussion, she sighed and said `The problem with this university is that they take anybody.` I graduated with an honours degree with distinction, and the 5th highest average in my class, getting the lowest grade in her class, of course. I now work at a major university in Canada, and it is one of the most toxic environments I have ever encountered. University administrations see themselves as kingdoms unto themselves, from internal conflicts and bullying; plagiarism, not by students but professors; budgets being used for vanity projects instead of investing in student learning, all swept under the carpet. This is within the ranks so it stands to reason that students will treated with the same disrespect.
5
I received a Doctor of Ministry degree from Fordham University in 2014. I want to thank all the women who came before me for making it possible for me to reach higher than I ever imagined.
38
This is the key, heart-warming sentence:
“If mistakes have been made, they need to be corrected.”
But how many mistakes are never corrected, let alone acknowledged? Here's where I have to bring politics into it. Dr. Webb suffered a lifetime of trauma from sexual abuse, but this pales in comparison to the millions of people killed, maimed and abandoned to a life of refuge. Nobody, not one nation, has apologised for the invasion of Iraq, or for the other four ongoing civil wars. Nobody was responsible? How convenient.
Dr. Webb suffered from Sozialpolitik yesterday. She gained some form of justice, and I congratulate her spirit and resilience. Today, the world is suffering from Realpolitik, but there is no one to punish the offenders or seek retribution. Why? Because the military-industrial complex is far more powerful than the MeToo movement.
I enjoy reading about social justice, however belated. I wish there were more articles on political justice, but this form of justice seems to have died with the Nuremberg war crimes trials.
25
"Children from the top 1 percent are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy college than kids from the bottom 20 percent."
Rather than taking applications and sorting them for those who already demonstrate talent, our august institutions of higher learning would make a greater impact on society if they engaged in active recruitment, vigorously reaching out those from underserved communities who would benefit most and make the most valuable contributions. Most students outside of the most elite high schools can't even identify most of the Ivy League universities (and other elite institutions) or their programs and don't have the foggiest idea what opportunities they present or even how to apply. Currently admissions committees at these institutions skim the cream then boast about how they make them successful. But they are already successful! These universities would have a greater impact if they actively sought out and recruited promising students from underserved communities and made THEM exceptional.
23
In 2013 I decided to keep my job working in IT and data analytics I needed to get grad degree; industry was demanding PhDs. Being a non-traditional (read old age 50) student I had experience extreme prejudice even applying for programs. Nobody cared that I was a recognised expert in this field and had many publications to my name. I found a well respected university and started taking classes. My 1st advisor, from China, promised, in writing, full funding. He changed his mind and gave it to an unqualified Chinese male student. Advisor 2, from India decided they wanted to focus on his side business instead of advising students. Advisor 3 did everything possible to "flunk" me stating that I did not know what I was doing. She refused to 'waste funding on an old person'. She is 6 years older than me. When I applied for 2 grants and was just needing her to sign on to the projects she refused. I appealed to the University EEOC and Title IX offices only to be told professors could do whatever they want including things that were clearly sexual, racial, and age discrimination. I thought it was only me. I ran for Academic Chair of the Grad Student Government and won. Three years and 347 formal complaints of discrimination, 4 cases were resolved because they resulted in criminal convictions. I left without the MS and certificates I had earned because of school policy. I have to defend and be awarded my PhD in order to get the rest.
It is still happening and it isn't limited to women.
91
Though not as bad as this story, I still remember an older female first cousin telling us how her chemistry professor would not give a grade higher than a "C" to a woman. This was the early 1960s and as an 11 year old boy, it was news. But similar stories were told by other girls during my teens. Perhaps things are better now, but if they are, they are not as good as they should be.
38
@Terry McKenna I had a similar experience when I matriculated at UC-Berkeley. On the first day of class in Chem 1A lab, our instructor entered the lab, looked around the room, then pointed his finger to each of the 5 women in his class and recommended we women drop Chem 1A right now because we weren't going to pass! None of us took his advice and we all passed but it was unnerving to know he wasn't on our side.
45
It’s not merely the sexual harassment, it’s often the complete dysfunction of faculty committees, lack of transparent rules and oversight, lack of clear grievance procedures, and ability of individual advisors to exploit students as researchers and TAs and for personal reasons that are a blight on the system of doctoral advising, especially of women.
99
And upper administration paying lip service to Equal Opportunity, and hiring Title IX Coordinators, only to use all this apparatus to cover up rather than address problems.
10
In 1973, as an undergraduate, I took a history course in U.S. Constitutional Law. I vividly recall the professor telling me I had no business pursuing a legal career. I should get married.
A few years later, another sentence vividly recalled. During orientation at the law school I ultimately graduated from, the dean announced that the incoming class included 25% women--a first.
26
@Catherine
Likewise, in the same time frame, I was told by my academic mentor that a career in the diplomatic corps was no place for a woman; and that a career in law was simply not appropriate for a woman (schools in the northeast had classes that were about 1% women). On matriculation my Ph.D. advisor informed me that they had a very hard look at women, and almost did not admit me, because women so often did not finish their Ph.D's. It took me an extra decade to finally pursue a wonderful, fulfilling and successful career in the law. Times have changed, at least a bit.
20
The people to whom institutions are currently blind are single mothers (and their children), a demographic already oppressed by disproportionate financial and social challenges. Unlike other discriminated against groups, there are no centers to lobby for the rights of single mothers. We are often too short of time and money to attend relevant on-campus meetings with administrators or the student government (such meetings are often held at night in any event, when parenting demands make attendance impossible) and stretched too thin to engage in elaborate efforts to change administrative positions and address (inadvertent) discrimination. There is the definite, pervasive, shallow assumption that somehow single mothers made bad choices and deserve their lot in life, coupled with the misogyny and ageism that shapes perceptions of middle-aged women. Proactively creating policies that support single-mother families in graduate school makes an invaluable contribution to campus culture, reflects better current demographics, and gives the children of single mothers the opportunities for stability and advancement that they really need.
40
@Simon
Setting aside that, in the absence of a death or grievous injury, it takes *two* people making a decision for a woman to become a single mother--though we apparently make it easy for some men to ignore that fact--where, pray tell, should a single parent look for solutions to the problem of ensuring safe childcare so that she or he can be productive at work?
I suspect you aren't suggesting the federal government should kick in.
Perhaps you mean humans should stop having children?
Apparently that would be easier than to stop having adults who don't believe all children are deserving of quality care and supervision, and their hard-working parents of support in obtaining it...
21
@Sarah
Rather than focus on this in a sexist way, we need to focus on reality, universities offer degree programs, not participation trophies and speciality groups. The campus groups all are Student groups meaning they are created and run by students. This is reality, create your own group, don't expect others to care more about your success than you do.
People choose to raise children and this includes single fathers. Back in the early 1980s we had a group of students with kids. We took turns babysitting, had study groups, organised clothing swaps, held garage sales and so on so we would be able to graduate. I am happy that what we informally put together is still in place today as a formal student group. Where there is a will there is a way and it doesn't include expecting others to do it for you.
5
@Simon. You respond to Sarah's insights about helping single mothers complete their university educations to make a better society and a more secure family and you say "That is not a University priority, and nor should it be. If they need services for the decisions they have made then find them elsewhere."
That is exactly the mentality that keeps academic women second class, especially single mothers, and permits less able men to move forward without posessing as much merit. A university full of smart people could easily figure out how to have all-age child care with enough spaces for all the students and staff. Make it a lab school. See, that wasn't so hard to contemplate was it?
Or maybe you are thinking that universities shouldn't have student health and student mental health, veterans services , international student services, the writing center, first college student in the family support, the food pantry for hungry students who are just barely making it financially, and the clothing closet for students when they go on job interviews and the list goes on.
Simon, to be polite, your words are old school and not in a good way. Sure hope you are not making a living in education. You would be a lonely person in our faculty group and with our students. You would hold them back, discourage them, prey on their insecurities, and make them quit.
Sarah, on the other hand, would be a fabulous faculty member and her students would thrive and achieve great things.
15
Congratulations to Marilyn Webb and Cheryl Dembe, whose long denied rewards were finally awarded.
It's a sad tale that there are men, even today as has been proven time and again, who have not yet come to terms with the fact that the old prevailing rationale of the male of the species being the superior gender is a long gone, outdated mentality and perhaps women should be grateful for the likes of recent vile predators, that have been called out and prosecuted, for being the cause of the MeToo movement giving women the voice they were denied for so long and able to fight back on equal terms whatever the profession. It's high time it was brought home to men that women are at work to do the job they chose to do not as entertainment for their impulses and lack of morality.
20
I've been teaching for thirty years now, and I certainly know of students whose careers have been truncated, whether or not they actually received the doctorate, by having supervisors who were bullies and harassers. It is unfortunately still happening, although progresses beginning to be made.
58
Ms. Webb went on to establish a distinguished career and important contributions to society. It's the application of the knowledge gained, not the degree itself that matters. Paul Volker went on to a very distinguished career despite not having completed his graduate degree. I have known many others who have done the same.
I also recall a joke someone posted in the graduate student computer room when I was working on my advanced degree. "The only good dissertation is a done dissertation, and any done dissertation is good enough."
16
@tencato
Yes, and no. To be admitted to the pantheon of those who are distinguished by the imprimatur of a doctoral degree is to be accorded the recognition that work presented by that person is something to be attended to and may be worth the effort of engaging with it. A degree paves the way; it offers legitimacy; it creates the possibility of making a difference that much more available. The path of working at that level without a degree is possible yes, but oh, so much more difficult.
13
A very inspiring and wonderful story even though it of course does do atone for all the injustice and anguish Ms. Webb endured. Also it is important as you point out that these types of stories and injustices also occur for racial and ethnic minorities and working class especially first in family university and graduate students. I was one of the latter (but a white male) but inspiring, supportive mentors offset the tone deaf and elitist professors and administrators I encountered as a graduate student and young faculty member at major research universities. But without doubt my path was much easier than the ones faced by women and people of color.
10
In the late 70's my graduate department looked askance at a mother with small children trying to get her doctorate, and so despite high scores didn't offer any financial help except for a job with many hours. That was me. Finally a female professor in another department finagled a grant so that I could both study and care for my children. Several years into this graduate psychology program one of my professors had the decency to apologize. He said they had not known how to take seriously a woman who was also a mother, seeing me and women like me as well-meaning, touchy-feeling (his word) types, not capable of serious work and research. He said as a faculty they had misjudged our potential. I'll say.
103
@Molly Layton I had a similar experience, but a different outcome. Also in the late '70's, enrolled in a graduate program, I became pregnant. I had no plans to drop out since my baby was due in the summer and I planned to be ready to finish my coursework that September. But at the end of the Spring semester during a meeting with my program advisor (also the department head), he noticed my advancing pregnancy with obvious disdain and remarked that it was a pity I had "squandered" the resources of the department when I so clearly was not serious about getting a degree. I told him he was mistaken, but when I tried to register the following Fall, I learned I'd been dropped from the program. The reason? I'd demonstrated "grossly inadequate commitment to and understanding of the intellectual rigor needed to successfully persue advanced studies". To appeal that decision, I would have neeed to apply to the head of Department....guess who?
26
It is tragic that Dr. Webb had to endure these experiences and, frankly, it is reasonable to "out" the perpetrators even posthumously. They lacked honor and humanity despite their intellectual gifts.
While there was - and remains - this kind of systemic silence in the face of this kind of abuse, it is heterogeneous. Lynn Margulis, a famous biologist and National Academy member, was admitted to the University of Chicago at age 15. She ultimately received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, but I don't remember her having stories of this kind of abuse. Perhaps she just didn't talk about it.
The point is that there are bad people in every domain - even when they are good at their job. What is inexcusable is a system of "not bad" people who allow it.
19
@Reader Looking back in history, different standards and beliefs regarding the roles of men and women (for example) were held by society.
It's simplistic to condemn these people as "bad people"; you live in a different society and are judging based on the standards and beliefs of current society.
Fifty years from now similar things will be said about beliefs that we now take for granted, but that future generations will view with horror.
9
@ms "Society" always included women, and women have never considered sexual assault and abuse a "standard and belief". Excusing sexual and psychological violence as a "standard of its time" is simply untenable.
3
@ms
There's a big difference between "beliefs" and abuse. Even one of the commandments related to "coveting" someone's wife. No, abusive people were then and now abusive people.
1
In UK all student grading is double blind : professors never grade their own students, never set exam questions for their own students, and do not know whose exams they are grading since each exams assigns a different PIN number to each student.
Why is it that apart from law schools no universities in USA use blind grading : that not only guarantees to eliminate bias but removes all power the professors have over the student.
176
@Thomas Anantharaman
Because the US wants to ensure discrimination based on age, skin color, gender, sexual preferences, economic status and so on remains firmly in place. The intent is to classify Americans then start driving wedges between the groups, then fan the flames of hate.
My mother had white skin, my father's was black. I am not supposed to exist and was born a crime. I gave up on check boxes and identify as Human. When I was living in Europe all of this race/gender drama was a non-issue. I fit in for once in my life. Back in the US my decision to identify as Human was and still is met with hate.
14
@Thomas Anantharaman What you say is true, but would not and could not apply at the PhD level. To be a PhD student is like being an apprentice and could not be done anonymously. Very few people would be qualified to evaluate a given PhD student's work, which is highly specialized. This makes the advisor-advisee relationship very personal and, yes, subject to abuse of power. My institute has a system of co-advisors, a kind of godfather/godmother to the PhD student, to mitigate the high-stakes relationship between advisor and advisee. Anonymity is a remedy for a number of problems (orchestra auditions, for example), but not for PhD study.
21
Although it's common, it's not completely true. I've served on a number of academic committees where the advisor leaves the room during deliberations and has no role in decision making beyond review of the student's proposal and dissertation. Like you I wish it was always that way. It's usually a departmental or college-level decision. It's a worthy goal we should work toward.
9
I know just how you feel, having managed to get my PhD in the face of the most vicious sexism and discrimination.
The fact that it was directed at men in this particular instance, and that it came from a coterie of self-proclaimed feminist faculty and staff hasn't prevented me, I hope, from remaining a staunch supporter of women's rights, even more so as I mature.
The great Austrian feminist Therese Schlesinger pointed out that the kind of feminism that focuses on men as a class is simply not on par with that which focuses on class itself. Universities are nothing if not class-based.
To answer Mr. Kristof's final question: so long as one of us is oppressed, we are all oppressed. So long as universities can find someone to exploit without consequences, they will do so.
23
@WOID
Thank you for the post. It feels.good to know there are others who believe as I do. We will be much closer to true equality when the words Human Being replaces male/female, gay/straight, young/old, religious, etc.
Everyone has basic inalienable Human Rights. It is time drop the adjectives. Humans are like diamonds. Our features, beliefs, preferences, character, ethics and so on are the facets that make is who we are. Our flaws give us brilliance and fire.
2
@WOID
retired attorney F70 Chicago school/IL license
There is a knot in my stomach as I read this report and these tales of abuse. I started in medicine and switched to law. Wanted choices and got them at at a price for personal space and bullying. Six ft tall blue-eyed blonde.
I was the "first woman ever hired to do X" three times right out of law school. Long hours during night classes while litigating my pre-law school specialty days with US Atty and DOJ lawyers.
1) General Counsel hired me to be U.S. division attorney in a multi-national corporation's HQ campus. Deputy GC was an aging playboy and bully. My boss was terrified about how to "supervise" a woman and didn't. Women paralegals guided me.
2) Hired after one-year in corporate OGC into national medical association's Chicago HQ office. First woman to ever be federal legislative counsel. My boss had to be told by Deputy GC (a woman) to hire me. Write legislation+testimony for Congressional committees+prep the Board members/men delivering my testimony in their D.C. hotel suite. My rule prep night: we practice and no alcohol. After the hearing, lunch can include alcohol. The guys always did well because were prepared well.
3) First and only woman hired to join a well-known university under a three-year contract to establish a health policy think tank. Finished in two years.
What have I learned? I'm a teacher: I can teach all I know and still know all I know! Basta.
1
The subject at hand is women who were thwarted in their academic career by male professors who were unfair and immoral. A related issue that has surfaced here in the comments is the shocking power that one professor can have over a student's career. My father fell victim to this when a professor on his committee decided my father didn't know enough about the professor's own sub-specialty (totally unrelated to my father's specialty). This professor was infamous for doing this to students, and other members of the committee spoke up in my father's defense. To no avail. My father still got hired at a university and even became a full professor, rare for someone without a doctorate. But he didn't have the career he might have had.
30
Sadly, this is an all too familiar story, not just for me, but for many women I knew personally while pursuing my master's and Ph. D. I remember telling a friend that I found my master's advisor so honorable: he did not try to seduce me until AFTER my defense, and when I refused (he was at least 30 years older than I), he didn't protest or go further than forcing me to kiss him on the lips. I can still remember his bad breath.
Congratulations Dr. Web, from Dr. Cook--we persisted!
60
Congrats to Dr. Webb.
Her treatment at the hands of her professors is one of the many reasons I feel we need to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. I'm 50 and I remember hearing about women fighting for the ERA when I was a grade school child in the 1970s. I thought it was a good idea back then and I think it is still a good idea today. Come on America. Let's get our act together and pass the ERA.
62
@Judith
I attended "the last ERA march" and still have a button to prove it. Bring it on!
4
Great story with, fortunately, a happy ending. Dr. Web - congratulations!
11
Things may change, but it seems more in form than in substance. What I didn't learn until after several years of PTSD is that, in some humanities PhD programs, actually earning the degree often depends as much on politics and strategy as on intellectual acumen.
26
Nicholas, great column. My daughter and I were discussing the #MeToo movement this evening. She thought it happened suddenly. I informed her that, until recently, it took great courage for a woman to accuse a man. She probably wouldn't be believed, and would end up losing her job and being publicly shamed. Many women chose to suffer in silence. A positive development of our internet connected age is that disenfranchised groups connect, share and advocate for change. We're not alone any more. More people are willing to come forward. Also, anyone with a cell phone can publish evidence. It's no longer the abuser's word against the victim's. Misogyny and bigotry are gradually being rooted out, freeing us to reach our full potential.
44
Who were the professors? We have seen is cases like Harvey Weinstein, as well as Catholic priests, that seemingly isolated cases are often part of a bigger pattern of abuse. In (at least) one such case, the perpetrator apologized to the victim, appealing to sympathy by convincing the victim it was a one-time lapse, triggered by mitigating circumstances that might warrant the victim refraining from initiating an investigation. That turned out to be totally false, and the perpetrator was concealing a pattern of violent behavior. When one victim comes forward, that gives others the courage to do likewise, because they know their stories will have more credibility.
The fact that these were prominent professors suggests they were relying on their prestige to shield them from accountability, by giving a presumption of professional integrity. A prestigious professorship can be very powerful armor against accusations like this. There is every reason to publicize the names, especially for the sake of other victims preyed on by the same professors who may also be seeking authentic, albeit delayed, justice and vindication.
60
@anon, agreed. They need to lose their reputations bigtime.
2
@anon
This story is one of the great cover ups in American history. They are dead. They don’t have a right of privacy for their despicable acts. Why doesn’t Mr Kristoff want us to know their identity. There can only be one logical reason.
2
I was in graduate school in the mid-1980s. “Quid pro quo” was going strong then, too. It was the same thing when I sought work after graduation.
27
...that was for a Master’s, by the way, not a Ph.D. And I did not come from a disadvantaged background (dysfunctional family, yes, but not poor). My undergraduate degree was from a top university, and my graduate school was equally grand, yet some professors and bosses saw me as just another available female body, and treated me accordingly. It was such a different world back then! One professor in my grad program chose a new student to sleep with each academic year. Everyone knew about it. No one reported it. There was no one to report it to.
43
@Passion for Peaches Many professors and bosses still see accomplished women as just another available female body, not as people with unique experience and skill sets, with careers of their own. Not as potential leaders to mentor. It amazes me that they are always shocked when I move on!
2
Although the university confers a degree, individual faculty members - especially in doctoral programs - wield a great amount of power and play a key role in the degree-earning process beyond that of teacher or even mentor. These two cases are very different, but they both reveal weakness in the system. The death of a faculty member, particularly a dissertation director, can be a nightmare for the students and the university has a duty to assist students in these situations. As for the sexual harassment, that is a sad, old story on many campuses which I hope is being rewritten. Congratulations to both degree recipients.
28
This is a nice story with a happy ending for the 2 women who were treated unfairly by men. But I know a LARGE group of young men from the 60's who were discriminated against by an entire country. Granted many have succeeded thru their own willpower but many others never received a helping hand and if alive are still suffering. I recently went to a VA hospital and observed many mental and physical issues from that period. Nam vets were never treated like all other vets by their fellow countrymen. I don't expect it to change and just wanted to vent. I wish all the luck in the word to both women in the article.
44
I don't know if you are reading this Dr. Web. This story warmed my heart. Congratulations!!! I also want to express my gratitude for your service in working toward making this world a better place.
24
I realized a long time ago that true tolerance isn't a matter of checking boxes, of simply avoiding racism, sexism, homophobia, or whatever else is being directly talked about. To be truly tolerant requires cultivating a general attitude of tolerance for all harmless differences, and seeing the human in everyone, even if it isn't what you're used to or what you expect.
11
This is a wonderful ending for these two women's pursuits. I am so grateful for the women of their generation and the one that followed that paved the way for my to have all female mentors as I earned my PhD. I also appreciate this reminder to look for who is not being supported today. We must pay it forward.
26
Indeed things have changed and University of Chicago is doing the right thing by awarding these doctoral degrees to Marilyn Webb and Cheryl Dembe. Good for both of them! I hope that they both celebrate this achievement with family and friends.
And don't give up hope - the world is still changing. The science department I serve in (a large midwestern research institution), has enough women faculty members that there are entire doctoral committees where every professor is a woman. Imagine how empowering that feels to students and professors alike!
34
The system in general is not great, anyplace, even today, and I write this with over 30 years of experience supervising MA and Ph.D students.
While there is supposed to be a "chemistry" between student and adviser, anything based on a subjective relationship can turn problematical. It is not just problematical in issues of potential sexual problems and discrimination and abuse of power. Often it all depends on the personalities of adviser and committee. A wise student chooses carefully, but not every problem can be foreseen and not every system allows full degrees of choice for the student.
Universities while aware of the problems usually seek solutions in rules and bureaucracy. This rarely works.
What would a better system be?
I'm not sure that I know, but I do know that at my stage in life and career, I now accept only older students with careers who are doing the dissertation and degree for "fun" or personal fulfillment.
6
@Joshua Schwartz
"I'm not sure that I know, but I do know that at my stage in life and career, I now accept only older students with careers who are doing the dissertation and degree for "fun" or personal fulfillment.
Where does that leave students who are pursuing obtaining their doctorates for serious reasons ?
8
@DJS Doing doctorates with my now professor students. In any case there are few jobs available now. I take students who have careers and do not need me to find them non-existent jobs
8
@Joshua Schwartz Wait a minute, I returned to a large Midwestern university to once again pursue my Ph.D. when my fourth (of five) children left for college. In the five years that it took to complete the doctorate (worked on campus as a GRA), four of our children completed baccalaureate degrees. I'm completing my 18th year as a university professor---teaching research and measurement--and ed psych---moved up the university "ranks" without a hitch! Never underestimate the potential of mothers when they leave the "nest"!
1
Please don't use the past tense when referencing sexual harassment in higher education - we are still blinded by it. Maybe in 10 years, when the people in power at the University of St. Thomas have changed, I will try to get an honest response to the career derailing sexual harassment that I faced there. The confidential settlement was paid as severance to further cover up what happened - it should have been separation - not taxed. Too many higher education institution still promote and protect predators - primarily men.
74
Brought to my mind Churchill's quote about being able to count on Americans to always do the right thing - after we've exhausted all other possibilities.
Well done Dr. Webb. Sounds like you made quite an impact even without those letters after your name.
28
The population identified here is not valued, not taught, even to speak, the English of accomplishment or grace. As a literacy volunteer in a county jail, I've sat with men who just cannot describe the events of their arrests, at least to my ears.
Standards, testing, our means of evaluating worth denigrate too many. Every human mind, is a brilliant instrument, full of ability and perception.
Troubled, marginalized peoples, who aren't in the mainstream, have equally beautiful intelligence to our own. Essentially, we need to find ways to access what they have to offer. It doesn't work to insist that they ace SATs.
Our charm and privilege gets us jobs, marriages, apartments, enables us to negotiate with the law. We're slow to make room for the equal magnificence of difference. As an small example, deep prejudice remains, in colleges, against athletes of mythical, radiant, physical genius and intuition, but who cannot do algebra.
Even more than the pox of illiteracy, growing up in the mean streets, sour, bitter, with nothing given, robs children of the possibility that they themselves can give: they have no venues and examples of that.
That's why I am deeply in favor of a 3 year national service requirement for all young people. The main focus of it should be to line youth up with ways of offering themselves to us. Doing so will require us to learn to enjoy being surprised by the unexpected.
14
@Eric
3 years without being paid is a long time. Are they going to live as homeless? Surely you are not going to pay every young person a living wage for 3 years.
@Eric What are you talking about? What does that have to do with Nicks piece?
@Eric: Has this something to do with the article?
Oh, Nick! Thanks so much for telling this uplifting story, and for the message that we still have very, very far to go.
12
Mr. Kristof noted:
"Children from the top 1 percent are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy college than kids from the bottom 20 percent."
It is not as simple as just giving people from the bottom 20% a chance. I know. In my high school, there were gangs and shootings and teenage pregnancies.
It was a vocational school and I joke that our sheet metal class was career training for how to make license plates when we ended up in prison.
For many of my friends, the unpleasant truth is that there is no way they are qualified to get into state universities let alone Ivy League schools.
In my opinion, this is the problem we need to address for the bottom 20%.
Other countries don't have these problems.
We have the biggest, most sophisticated, and technology advanced military in the world. Why can't we have the best education system in the world for all of our citizens?
And I recognize that all people should not go to college but lets have that education system give those people basic reading, writing, arithmetic, and trade school / tech training.
127
@Independent
Responding to your comment about the military: 30 years ago when I was teaching I clearly remember being admonished not to use any more copy paper than absolutely necessary--and feeling guilty when I made copies for each child when we were studying maps. Last winter I was distressed to hear that a local school needed copy paper, pencils, and crayons to finish out the school year. When do you suppose the military ever worried about having enough copy paper--or anything else, for that matter? Our priorities are shameful.
54
@Independent
You wrote :"It is not as simple as just giving people from the bottom 20% a chance. I know. In my high school, there were gangs and shootings and teenage pregnancies...And I recognize that all people should not go to college but let's have that education system give those people basic reading, writing, arithmetic, and trade school / tech training."
Why do you hold the education system responsible ?. How do you expect the education system to address gang violence, shootings and teenage pregnancies ?
I concur that this country should afford ALL students with a a quality education, but the best school can not compensate for larger societal problems , or home environments.It wasn't my school that read to me, took me to story time at the public library , took me to get my first library card as soon as I could write my name ,which they taught me how to do, who took me to the library frequently, or who helped me with my math homework.
I was the only child of five to be admitted to the Ivy League. My siblings and I had the same parents & teachers,.My father started first grade at 4 , graduated from high school at 16, and from an Ivy League College at 19. His younger sister did not do well in school.
Neither the best educational system , nor economic privilege can ensure admission to the Ivy League, which is extremely competitive, while ALL students should be afforded a quality education in this country, & a safe learning environment.
@DJS
I think we are saying the same thing. We should have the best educational system in the world, similar to our military.
With that, some will go to trades, some to state university, some to Ivy League.
One thing I know is that all my Republican friends say people need to pull themselves by their bootstraps.
Then when they have children, they move to the best school district they can afford.
7
Justice delayed is justice denied. But, at least we can take comfort that justice was at last done while these two women were still among us and still able to appreciate that the tables had turned. I was touched by these stories.
On the larger issue of social justice generally, we are, unfortunately, pursuing the impossible.
A kid from the 1% 77 times more likely to go to an Ivy or other elite school? Well, when one understands that one of the unexpressed purposes of elite schools is to confer elite status and, furthermore, if that ability to label a young person with that status were taken away, these places would either cease to exist or to matter. That's why they exist: to give economic/cultural/social elites the ability to confirm their existing status. This is also one big reason the Ivies are so very reluctant to change, so very hesitant to open the doors wider: if they did so, the legs would be knocked out from under them, massive funding would shrink, professors would lose, the whole facade would melt and slip into the soil.
Being on top means never having to say you are sorry. The discrimination of the Ivies against Jews and blacks, among others, is well documented. The have paid no price whatsoever. Zero. They could be accused, right now, of blatant discrimination against the non-rich. Who cares? Who really cares?
Yes, we should seek social and economic justice but we should understand that it is a task never to be finished, only ardently and faithfully sought.
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@Doug Terry
I want to stand up a cheer for Marilyn Webb! Congratulations to both of you!
1
As a PhD student, congrats to these women. But this also highlights the sheer power individual advisors have over the careers of their trainees. That must change.
238
@Ben it is indeed a power thing - i know of a case [1973] from a major SF bay area univ where a prof arbitrarily refused to support a male student [on racial grounds]. After 10 years of work the student was disgraced; the prof went on to further power, fame, AND fortune. The ‘fortune’ partly based on the denied/ disgraced student’s research-work.
26
You said it, Ben, you said it!
3
I'm thrilled for Dr. Webb, since the Ph.D. was so important to her. But honestly, I think she's had a far more satisfying, productive and useful career outside academia than she would have had inside. Congrats on her life!
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@RJ You may be right, but shouldn't that have been her decision?
14
Congratulations, welcome to the club, and I'm so glad you had the guts to follow through...
25
A standing ovation! Applause and congratulations, Dr. Webb...
30
Congrats to Dr. Webb! Congrats to Dr. Dembe, too!
Relieved to read that both scholars are finally receiving acknowledgment for their hard work. A heartwarming read for me? Not so much. Triggered my own heartbreak about the sexism that I also experienced in graduate school.
They (should have) earned their degrees in the 20th century.
I earned my degree in the 21st century.
36
We have come so far and yet we still have far to go. We must continue the work that is underway while also looking ahead at what else needs to be done.
8
It is stories like these that make real what the world was like before I was born and also make real how far we have to go.
21
While I am happy that these women finally got their PhDs, I am sad for the academic work they never had the chance to do and the students they never supervised. I am also sad to say that sex discrimination is still alive and well in academia. For instance, I faced opposition because a professor decided I couldn’t do it because I’m also a mother and tried to set me up for failure. I quickly realised that he was not going to support me and essentially arranged my own change in supervision to two women (because the Associate Dean took his side). It’s taken a bit longer, but I’m planning to finish this year. However, I agree that the power imbalance between professors and students is too great and does allow worthy students to fall through the cracks.
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Not just women have suffered unjust treatment in PhD programs. There was a notorious case in the '70 or 80's in the Bay Area when a male math doctoral candidate, infuriated over an endless stream of delays, murdered his professor, was tried convicted, and served his entire sentence without parole.
11
@Joan In California
It was at Stanford in the 70's, and I remember it well as I was also in the mathematics department.
5
Theodore Streleski had spent 19 years as a doctoral student at the time he murdered Prof. Karel de Leeuw, who had briefly been one of his advisors. Streleski claimed that he had been treated badly, and said in court that his murder of Prof. de Leeuw was "logically and morally correct."
6
@Joan In California & SP Phil
It seems fair to think Streleski himself was more the problem than any just or unjust treatment he received.
2
Women must never stop asking, standing up, and speaking up for the right to simply an equal seat at the table.
Thanks for stories of hope, Mr. Kristin and NY Times, to remind us why we keep fighting.
26
@Suzanne It just doesn't seem like a story of hope to me, it seems like a terrible story.
On the basis of many years of experience and testimony from others: When it comes to alleged experts in some area or another of moral theory/development/practice: CAVEAT EMPTOR. Watch your wallet, watch your back, watch your front, and those of you care for. Far too many of such officially bejeweled folks think that their "expertise" renders them immune to sleazy behavior or at least to charges of such.
18
Ph D students make a commitment that is not rewarded in real time with a professional salary. Any payoff depends on a credential offered at the discretion of a very few professors. If those few act dishonorably, it can cause tremendous distress and essentially force someone to write off years of effort.
We need to make sure resilient systems are in place to make sure other students are not "trapped" by the strict design of their degree program. This includes the freedom to switch advisers and, if necessary, academic departments at will. Anything less creates a license for professors to exploit graduate students.
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@Alan
Does the fellowship follow when they switch departments at will? Doubt it.
@Alan Only in very few cases would a graduate student be qualified to change departments, and that would ordinarily require a new application and a delay. And likely a hit to reputation. And why would they want to? They have worked toward a speciality in the field their department covers. Did you mean change institutions maybe? That does happen but has many downsides as one can imagine—including damage to the applicant's reputation.
@Rose Liz and @Chris Know
Thank you for the comments that pointed out the excess brevity of my post. Obviously, switching departments is a last-ditch remedy, and few students would be qualified to flip between unrelated areas.
But at many universities, there is significant overlap between many pairs of departments, enough to give students a credible threat of a transfer. Fellowships and the like generally would not follow, but a student and their potential new department and new advisers can work out what is available in terms of support, choice of advisers and timing before any decision is made.
The point is not to create a wave of transfers, it is to limit the potential for abuse of the students.
1
Dear Ms. Webb
Please identify the men who caused you so much harm. There may be other women who received the same treatment but were afraid to come forward. It's good to see the University of Chicago making amends but it would be fantastic to see all of Academia make amends. It's too late for my mother who was driven out of of the Ivy League in 1947 by male hooligans posing as students and professors. After that she attended the University of Chicago (The Hutchin's years) and graduated with an MA in 1952 (where she met and married my Dad who received his the same year).
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@mutabilis
Agree. The NYT needs to name names because
1) it can protect itself legally where smaller publications can't,
2) perpetrators tend to be serial perpetrators with many more victims over decades of abuse while they held their positions of power, and
3) many victims don't even realize they were victims until they see the pattern emerge or realize that they have recourse in new receptive and sympathetic ears.
11
@mutabilis
For what possible reason does the University not identify the people who were determined to do horrible things after they died. I wonder how they defended themselves?
3
@mutabilis
The first paragraph refers to Lawrence Kohlberg, ironically famous for his work with a theory of moral development.
6
This makes me very sad. My mother and aunt both went to the University of Chicago. Both eared bachelors and masters degrees in the ‘50’s. It was their neighborhood school as they grew up in Hyde Park.
Brilliant woman, and now I realize we beyond lucky in many ways.
33
Thanks to Mr. Kristof for this article and thanks to Ms./Dr. Webb for her determination to have her earned degree finally awarded, She earned it
When i was a young college professor in the late 60's and 70's, i believed i was already progressive in my ideas and attitudes, but not until my university established a task force on the status of women did i begin to realize how ignorant I was and how many structural barriers there were for my colleagues who were women I have much to thank them for. I will remember them again now that i have the example of Dr. Webb to remind me of how much work we had to do and how much remains to be done to make Higher Education a realm of dignity and equality for women.
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Thank you for sharing these stories. It's inspiring to see that things have changed, and important to focus on your conclusion about how others may be falling through the cracks.
17
These are proud, proud moments. We must do even more!
14
I can only say what others have posted here: I cheer that these two scholars will receive their Ph.D.s; yet, so many women were thwarted in this goal for decades past 1967. It was not always harassment, just a sincere belief of established male scholars that women were not going to pursue academic careers. It took a mighty effort, unrelenting, to push back against that and have a career.
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@Jo
It would be instructive to see hard stats on the "so many women who were thwarted." Certainly some women, and some men, where thwarted for all sorts of reasons. But I was in grad school (even at Chicago in the 70s) and saw many women attain doctorates. So, sure, let's do what we can to right wrongs, but let's not overstate the situation on anecdotal authority.
7
@hmi
History is written by the victors. The stories of the people who were forced out were never codified into analyzable data. Do you think these programs did exit interviews of the people who left? It would be naive to equate the absence of one kind of evidence with evidence of the absence of truth. "Hard stats" are a luxury reserved for those whose experiences and truths were judged worthy of record when they occurred.
19
@hmi
Can’t you look at the names of the graduating classes for hard stats? Most are gendered. I guess you don’t have the entering classes for numbers thwarted, but there is ample qualitative data.
2
This is, at once, is the most sad and exhilarating piece I’ve read today. My undergraduate experiences figured in my seeking out a gay male faculty advisor for my Masters Thesis.
34
It's great this is happening and great that academics are thinking about today's students. But there is another swath of women between 1967 (and earlier) right up to today who were similarly denied the opportunity to finish - or once finished, denied the opportunity to get a job, particularly in "male" fields like physics, philosophy, chemistry, and so on. Denied proper jobs, they/we could not get published and denied publications, could not get proper jobs.
There are many, many women who had less opportunity and who are even today discriminated against, this time on the basis of age! "She's accomplished and all that but, you know, 50 or 60-something and white. We're really looking for young, 'recent Ph.Ds' (the code phrase), from 'underrepresented groups' (second code phrase). When underrepresented groups actually include all the women who have been denied opportunity, then we will have made some progress. That, and there need to be economic reparations.
106
Everyday there are glimpses of how times have changed in the USA for the better.The Marriage Act, Affordable Care act, Lilly Leadbetter act. This story offers hope. I feel positive and energized. Unfortunately, I remember who is president and I am feel negative and tired.
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Irony that Kohlberg’s theory of moral development which dominated at the U of Chicago at that time until Harvard’s Gilligan moved the discussion to women’s voices is at the heart of this case in point. Meanwhile at places like MIT, in places where graduate women were so few during that time esp. in applied sciences that the male graduate students outnumbered women many fold with no female mentors available except in Applied Linguistics. Also the understood quid pro quod was working in advisor’s research without recognition before an individual could ever progress on their own thesis was a common untold story - free labor in a vicious publish or perish world. Educational psychology, indeed.
36
@Boston Born
Carol Gilligan I've read about and heard of. Kohlberg's work reminds me of when we read Emile in my Philosophy of Education class for my Masters in Education Policy.
1
@Boston Born
I immediately thought of Kohlberg being the professor of moral development in question...
2
I went to graduate school at the University of Chicago. I'm sure if you scratched the surface, you would find dozens, if not hundreds, of cases like this.
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@Floyd Hall Yes, absolutely. When a former U/Chicago professor took over the Social Science Research Institute at Northern Illinois University where I worked with the intention of going for a masters (and onward), I was summarily told that I "...was incapable of doing the math."
He refused to support me. This in spite of a couple years earlier being nominated as "Outstanding NIU female student" by a respected Sociology professor. It was the late 1980s. So, I got a masters in education instead solely because the professors were welcoming. Journalism is my field and I never went into education. I still miss Sociology.
21
@lechrist I asked my advisor, a well known Latin American historian, for any book suggestions so I could start to build my bibliography. He suggested I go to the card catalog and start there. He knew nothing of my subject -- Argentine economic history -- and showed little interest in it. I did it by myself. No one to trade ideas with and no courses on Argentina or any other South American country (course offerings were limited to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean). I had many obstacles to deal with, especially a dearth of secondary source material, which had ground to a halt after the start of the Dirty War, including a meager collection at the Regenstein. It took a good 6-8 months longer than it should have. My advisor offered little or no input. When I finished, I moved to Mexico, but he promised to send the paper with his comments. They never came. I wrote a couple times to see if he sent it and whether it had been lost in the mail. Nothing. On a trip back to Chicago, my wife went in to pick up the paper -- I was too mad and might have slugged him. The grade was good. His comments were quite nice. So my wife asked why he never sent it. He said he checked with the college and they said he didn't have to, so he didn't. Anyway, guess what his next book was on. Bingo. He took my thesis and used it as a road map to get a Fulbright in Argentina. Guess who was mentioned nowhere in either the acknowledgements or the bibliography. Right again.
14
"Children from the top 1 percent are 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy college than kids from the bottom 20 percent."
This is more astounding than other economic figures indicating African American families have 10% of the income and/or assets of comparably sized white families.
Largely because your education sets the stage for your future income, giving that 77 times more likely figure more long-term impact.
I was heartened last week to hear about the Morehouse College alum who paid off the entire student debt of the graduating class he addressed, until I heard Elizabeth Warren note that students shouldn't have to rely on the generosity of billionaire alums to solve the student loan crisis.
Back to your original topic about women held back in the late 60s from sexual demands of their academic higher-ups: Like you, I'm glad they finally got their due, but even so, I think about how many opportunities lost due to "dreams derailed" in their prime.
As black students can surely identify with, the higher the hurdles they have to climb-- even before taking on student debt.
30
I am heartened by these stories of reparations. However, Mr. Kristof states, "Half a century ago, we were largely blind to sexual harassment and gender discrimination, so talented women were pushed out...." With this statement, he generalizes from the lack of awareness on the part of the white male population in positions of power to the population at large, purporting to state a "truth" that is in fact not true at all. Who is "we," Mr. Kristof? I am a few years younger than the women in this commentary, but I remember very well the sexual harassment and gender discrimination that was accepted as "how things are," and not only "half a century ago," but continuing through to today. Although there was not a commonly used language for these sociopathic behaviors, "sexual discrimination" certainly was used in the late 1960s--what do you think the basis of the bra-burning demonstrations and the women's movement was, if not sexual discrimination? Yes, that term was used 50 years ago, and even earlier. "We" were most certainly not blind to sexual harassment and gender discrimination--your kind were. To say that everyone was blind to these forms of injustice is to perpetuate the very sort of attitude you claim to condemn. Be careful about saying "we'' when what you mean is "white mean in positions of power." Those white men are not synonymous with "society," and their view of the world is not the view of everyone else.
379
@Alicia. You are correct, Alicia, except that it wasn't only white men. In 1965, as a college sophomore, when we boys were terrified of the draft while the girls were angry at dormitory curfews, I spoke at a large dormitory meeting to say that so many complaints and problems could be minimized, if not solved, by treating us 19-20 year old boys and girls equally -- same risks, same freedoms. The dormitory overseer, a woman in her 50's, loudly scoffed and tried to embarrass me by telling the crowd how little I knew about women. Nice, huh? As a professor myself now, I'm aware of men in positions of power but more deeply, I deplore irrational inequality of treatment...by both men and women, of all colors.
17
@Alicia
Thanks for the reminder, from a male person who benefits from it.
10
@Alicia
You are making a very good point, but you are unfairly attacking Mr. Kristof!
13
How many Women have been in similar circumstances ? I know of plenty, although most are not in the upper levels of Education, but average, routine “ Jobs “. Here’s an example : my own Mother is now 80 years old, and lives in Florida, with my stepfather. She is one smart, tough cookie. But, she had to drop out of School after the tenth grade, and never returned. Why? She was the eldest of fifteen children, born to poor farmers. She had to stay home and help HER Mother care for the neverending babies. She has felt inferior and “ less then “ more educated people since. Not true. We devalue girls and young Women, and consider them worthy sacrifices, “ for the common good “.
Stop this, now.
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@Phyliss Dalmatian My mother in law’s family only had enough money to board two high schoolers in a town large enough to have a high school. She had to drop out so her brothers could attend. She was a smart woman who thought her lack of education was a personal failing.
17
@Phyliss Dalmatian
I had a cousin, the youngest daughter, in Arkansas that was taken out of school so she could perform her mother's work (washing, cooking, and cleaning) while her mother worked in the fields. Her mom could make more as a farm hand than her daughter could. My Aunt and Uncle raised 8-10 kids with only two daughters. The eldest daughter was married at the time. The sons were also routinely taken out of school during planting and harvesting and beyond. All of their education was spotty. This happened in the 1950s to white poor folks.
8
Marilyn is a friend of mine for several decades now, though I only learned of these"obstacles" to her PhD a few years ago. Knowing her brilliance and how much she has accomplished - and her kindness and decency - I was flabbergasted that this could happen to her, and so sad for the waste and her personal pain. At least my empathy has provided a good setup for the joy I feel for her now, which is tremendous.
Her courage and stance to claim what is rightfully hers is very inspiring and I hope two things will come out of it: One, the obvious, that it will be a little easier for women to stand up for themselves and for others to support them when injustice has occurred; and, two, that the bad things that happen to women (to people) will be a little less likely to keep them from going forward. Life, as is well known, is not fair, and we must do all that we can to thrive whatever misfortune befalls us, whatever the cause. Here's hoping that the women affected by MeToo, so many of us, will have more conviction that it doesn't have to define them - as it has never defined Dr. Webb.
137
As a long-ago alumna - though not at the PhD heights of thse great ladies -- I am cheering and tearing up that my alma mater finally Got It Right!
42
What needs to be mentioned continuously and repeatedly is that COST is, in the United States, what keeps people without money
out of colleges and universities, Ivy League or not. MONEY, the All-American dream, is what the vast majority of USAmericans lack for access to the basics of a democratic society: health care, an adequate wage, and public education worth the name.
67
@citizennotconsumer
If you want to talk money, the lack of opportunity for poor and minority to access higher educationcots all of us taxpayers money. These unfortunate people will earn much less, so pay little or no taxes. Guess who makes up the difference.
That's the money angle. Then there's the whole other angle. Lives unfilfilled; their production of intellectual and material goods for society not realized. Targeted discrimination is a lose-lose
proposition.
1
Congrats, Dr. Webb. It's never too late to get to the right outcome. Huzzah!
31
There are many moral and ethical imperatives in our society that need addressing either by law or by actions like those taken by the University of Chicago. It is encouraging to see such progress in gender issues, yet there are racial, orientation and socio-economic issues that remain and cherished progress periodically comes under assault.
Thank you NYT for reporting the good news which is available to read so rarely these days.
44
@A Goldstein and the Times, Wasn’t there some sort of fuss about a President of the University of Chicago in say 2010/ 2011? An affair with a younger colleague? And a wife in the History department? Someone remind me?!
I warmly congratulate (soon-to-be-)Dr. Webb on receiving her doctorate, and I think what she describes is terrible.
I do wonder, though, at the question of "What groups of people drop unnoticed out of Ph.D. tracks?" It certainly used to be the case, if it's not still the case, that a considerable number of those who enter a Ph.D. program do not go on to complete the degree, if my personal observations have any validity. The reasons for this might in many cases have nothing to do with sexual harassment or discrimination against oppressed groups, even if it does in some cases.
11
@Mark The point of the article is not why people drop out in general, but specifically, what groups of people drop unnoticed out of Ph.D. programs specifically due to the oppression you refer to.
27
@Mark what does your comment have to do with this story? frankly nothing. neither of these women wanted to drop their program. They were forced out.
2
@Galway: Sure, but the very way the question was posed invites the reader to assume that the cause is oppression or discrimination on the basis of membership in some "group." Anyone who drops out is an individual, not a group. There are lots of reasons why a person might drop out of a Ph.D. program. If a student from a low-income background drops out, is that necessarily a result of oppression or discrimination? Maybe such a student is relatively more worried about earning enough money to support themselves. Maybe it's the smartest thing they ever did.
Is there a doctor in the house ? - Aye, now there is ! (Congratulations)
Things have changed dramatically in just 5 years (let alone 50), but you are correct, there are still many more groups that are left out of any gains/status, and we should not leave anyone behind. Rights denied to some are rights denied to all.
I am going to show this story to me daughters, to enlighten them how far we have come, and they will pick up the torch to fight for equality for all.
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@FunkyIrishman
Aye, but when one asks if a doctor is in the vicinity, you don't want a PhD in psychology rushing forward to volunteer their services. You want the doctor with the prefix medical- at a minimum.
You probably don't want a psychiatrist or dermatologist either. I'm guessing you want someone trained to recognize medical emergencies, quickly assess the situation, and begin resuscitation efforts if that's what the situation requires. Ideally an emergency room physician, anesthesiologist, intensivist, cardiologist, or general surgeon.
There's a cartoon in your meme somewhere, too bad I can't draw. Or rather I draw about as well as most PhDs would be of assistance in a medical crisis.
2
@foodalchemist Doctor from the Latin docere to teach and generally means learned. The word was used long before there were even universities. Church Fathers were doctors of the Church.
If it is that important to you then I suggest that you use "physician".
As for the comment re the status of psychiatrists and dermatologists, a fair share of those seeking "doctors" or "physicians" would likely need these.
20
@Joshua Schwartz You just said more eloquently what I would have commented myself. Thanks for educating.
6
Reading this article makes me feel so proud of my father. He was a professor at two major Universities for over 40 years. In 1967, he would have been in the second decade of his life as a professor. I don't know the exact dates, but I do know that my father was responsible for encouraging women, and particularly women of color, to enter the PhD program in his Department. At the ceremony in 2015, celebrating his life's work, one of the Black women professors whom he had mentored spoke about how she wouldn't have tried to get her PhD without the encouragement of my father. I, too, credit my father for encouraging me to follow my dreams: I have been a physician now for 40 years, and when I began women were very much in the minority. Yay, Dad!
581
@Katherine Wonderful; please publish your Dad's name.
6
@Katherine Yay, Dad
7
@Katherine
Who is to say that there were not more men like your Dad?
Mine, for instance.
We like to obsess on Evil.
And the media normalizes it.
7
I am so glad for the eventual positive outcome of this story. But the unequal power structure in universities about who leads and sits on dissertation committees and has the ultimate power to grant PhD's is still in place. And unfortunately, the unbalanced power relation between professors and students is still a fertile ground for sex discrimination and sexual harassment. We must never stop working to correct this situation.
158
@Rebecca Hogan
Fifteen years ago, when I wrote my dissertation on silence and the conditions that cause silence in women writers, I had to fight for approval of both my proposal and final write-up of the case study I conducted. One of my case study participants was a leader in the academic discipline of composition studies and her voice was widely recognized and powerful. Still...such a fight against a system that has constructed parameters which encourage the work of some groups and excludes the work of "others." Silence has been broken by Dr. Webb. Brava!!
43
Declaring victory over sexual harassment in academia because some women are receiving their PhDs now is analogous to declaring victory over racism just because Obama was elected.
The Tumblr blog "Academia is Killing My Friends" is filled with modern day anecdotes of not just sexual harassment, but other forms of abuse that grad students of different backgrounds face (https://academiaiskillingmyfriends.tumblr.com/).
It's equally important to note that many bad actors from days of yore are still in power due to academic tenure- John Searle, Tim Hunt, and William Harris (whose misdeeds were covered by the NY Times itself; https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/nyregion/william-harris-columbia-harassment.html) went many years before their infractions and views were noticed. The concept of academic freedom, while important in many contexts, was readily abused by these individuals and extended to mean greater individual liberty at the expense of others.
15
What an amazing & wonderful story! Congratulations, Dr. Webb!!
38
This is very encouraging. Vindication for past injustices makes possible more opportunities going forward for the next generation.
31
Congratulations to her. It makes a difference in your emotional outlook. The long-time head of the Subsidence Research Project in the U. S. Geological Survey and renowned international expert in subsidence, Joe Poland, left Stanford for war work in WWII and didn't finish. Years later, some of his team quietly got him reinstated and submitted some of his papers as a dissertation. He was quite overcome when it was announced at a symposium.
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@Mike Carpenter
I sincerely congratulate Joe Poland as well, but I do think there is a slight difference here.
32
@Leslie Parsley - Yes, there is a difference, but they are both stories of integrity and fairness.
30
@Pat Boice
They are sort of opposites. Hers is a story of unfairness eventually made right. His is one of devotion of subordinates and colleagues.
7
Thank you, Nick for this story, and congratulations to Marilyn Webb!
45
Thank you...a heartening story!
20
Congratulations to the University of Chicago for righting a wrong that these two women suffered for DECADES!!
You are so right, Nick. This is an optimistic, feel good article. It is so heartening to be able to want to read editorials, essays, and articles again in the Times that can shine some hope and see a glimmer of movement forward for all people from all places. The two stories about the women and their long deserved PhDs is the tip of the iceberg but you are allowing that "hope" to shine on through.
Thank you and enjoy Paraguay.
76
Great story! I have a similar one, as many women do. In 1968, my husband and I were offered full rides to the MFA Program at Iowa, but he preferred a Ph.D, and our writing profs warned us "You go there at the expense of your marriage," because of male predators. I gave in and we were admitted with full rides to the PhD program at University of Washington. Seattle. Year one, we scraped by on my TA and my husband's Woodrow Wilson Fellowship; however, before year two, we were called to the Grad. Dept. of English and told, "We've discovered you two are married, and, well, we can't have students living too high on the hog, so only one of you will get a TA." Since the Woodrow Wilson required schools to reciprocate with second year support, I said the obvious: "You're obligated by contract to support a Woodrow Wilson student year two, so what you're saying is that I have no support." Amid the Chair's ensuing laughter, I walked out and applied for work. While my husband finished his MA, I received an Academy of American Poetry Award and took a secretarial job at the Cloud Physics Lab, where I helped edit my boss's Cambridge Press book. I followed my husband to his five university admin jobs, taught at each one, carried two lovely children, and earned an MA and MFA along the way. Now, I'm carrying around my heavy award-winning poems of witness, while my husband publishes delightful poetry books. I get it. A female friend's book of poems is titled We Were Meant to Carry Water. Amen!
20