(submitted in response to Carey Goldberg’s March 23,
1999 New York Times article “M.I.T.
Issues Report Acknowledging Sex Discrimination” also published in the Cleveland
Plain Dealer under the title “MIT Admits Discrimination Against Female
Professors”)
Dear Editor,
I applaud your newspaper and
M.I.T. in handling the release of the School of Science’s report acknowledging
sex discrimination against tenured female professors. While the likes of presidential candidate Pat Buchanan and U.S.
News and World Report columnist John Leo insist on telling us such
problems no longer exist, the M.I.T. report as well as the recent controversies
over the lack of Black law clerks at the Supreme Court and the New England
Journal of Medicine’s article “The Effects of Race and Sex on Physicians’
Recommendations on Cardiac Catherization” clearly demonstrate that sex and
racial biases are as persistent and dangerous as ever.
As M.I.T. Faculty Chair Lotte
Bailyn states in her comments on the report, “Our first instinct is to deny
that a problem exists (if it existed, it would surely have been solved by now),
or to blame it on the pipe line or the circumstances and choices of [individuals].” This tendency may be reinforced by the
fact that “new arrivals” often feel included and supported as did M.I.T.’s
junior women faculty members.
Unfortunately, the “glass ceiling” soon becomes apparent.
Perhaps the most important
and chilling finding of the report was “… that the difference in the perception
of junior and senior women faculty about the impact of gender on their careers
is a difference that repeats itself over generations. Each generation of young women, including those who are
currently senior faculty, began by believing that gender discrimination was ‘solved’
in the previous generation and would not touch them. Gradually however, their eyes were opened to the realization
that the playing field was not level after all, and that they had paid a high
price both personally and professionally as a result.” I believe that this situation is
analogous to the minority experience and I agree whole-heartedly with Dr.
Bailyn’s suggestion that “though these data refer to women, the methods used
and recommendations made can and should be adapted to … under-represented
minorities.”
Acknowledging that a problem
exists is the necessary first step towards its solution. Without a willingness to coldly and
frankly look at ourselves in the mirror, the diseases of racism and sexism will
only continue to grow in us like an untreated cancer. M.I.T.’s courage should
not only be applauded, but also emulated.
Its report admits “a common defense for MIT’s small number of women
faculty is that ‘Cal Tech and Harvard are doing just as badly’. But to be as bad as these unenlightened
institutions is not a defense we should take! Given its particular strengths in fact-finding and
problem-solving, MIT should lead in this area, not settle for the unimpressive
record of more traditional institutions.”
This report is not about
whining, complaining, demanding an unfair advantage, avoiding merit, or any
other negative connotation of “affirmative action” that Messrs. Buchanan and
Leo would have us believe. It is
about affirmative action and equity in the true sense of the terms. Even those who are obviously at least
as good as their colleagues and often, in the words of the report,
“exceptional” still face tremendous obstacles and are discriminated against institutionally
if at times subconsciously. This
is not imagined or fantasized. The report, in the words of the School of
Science Dean Robert Birgeneau, “was very data-driven and that’s a very M.I.T.
thing.” Let’s hope that in the
very near future this type of honest self-examination will be “a very American
thing.”
Milton Alan Turner