Why the Nazareth College discrimination case is really weird.
By now you’ve probably seen the Slate article and Jezebel coverage of the woman who received an offer for a tenure-track position in the Nazareth College philosophy department, made a bunch of requests as a part of negotiating her offer, and then had the offer rescinded by the college. The story is getting a bunch of internet press as an example of what can happen in real life to women who lean in professionally to advocate for themselves.
In case you’re not familiar with the story, here is the letter the woman reportedly sent with the full set of requests:
As you know, I am very enthusiastic about the possibility of coming to Nazareth. Granting some of the following provisions would make my decision easier[:]
1) An increase of my starting salary to $65,000, which is more in line with what assistant professors in philosophy have been getting in the last few years.
2) An official semester of maternity leave.
3) A pre-tenure sabbatical at some point during the bottom half of my tenure clock.
4) No more than three new class preps per year for the first three years.
5) A start date of academic year 2015 so I can complete my postdoc.
She ended the email by writing, “I know that some of these might be easier to grant than others. Let me know what you think.”
The college allegedly came back not only denying her requests but revoking her offer entirely:
Thank you for your email. The search committee discussed your provisions. They were also reviewed by the Dean and the VPAA. It was determined that on the whole these provisions indicate an interest in teaching at a research university and not at a college, like ours, that is both teaching and student centered. Thus, the institution has decided to withdraw its offer of employment to you.
Thank you very much for your interest in Nazareth College. We wish you the best in finding a suitable position.
Taken at face value, it seems pretty disturbing.
Lots of things are very strange about this case, though. The first thing that’s weird is that no one is identifying the woman. The Philosophy Smoker blog that broke the story just identifies her as W, presumably because she is worried about further professional repercussions if she shares her story in a personal way. But academic circles are small and gossipy; there aren’t very many tenure-track positions available in a given field per year and everyone in the field knows what they are and who is in the running for them. It is at best surprising that no one on the internet seems to have commented on the case with personal knowledge and that W has not come forward to tell her own story in her own voice. She also didn’t respond to an interview request from insidehighered.com.
In addition there is the fact that the college itself is silent on the topic. Nowhere can I find has any college spokesperson given even a perfunctory remark on the case. I wouldn’t suspect the department to offer detailed comments on their hiring and offer process in any circumstance, but the total silence is puzzling.
In the end the source everyone keeps returning to is the initial Philosophy Smoker post, on a blog which exists to represent the point of view of non-tenured philosophy faculty and recent graduates without positions yet. There is no other comment either from the job candidate or the college, there are no legal allegations, and outside of the traditional women’s press channels there is little in the way of mainstream media attention.
Something is very strange about this case.
Even if we take the facts as set out in the initial article at face value, there is something odd about the delivery of the hiring condition requests. The comments in the Slate and Jezebel articles, as well as some of the reader remarks on the initial blog posts, make pretty heavy weather of the gender discrimination implicit in the case, insinuating that if a man had delivered the requests in the same way he not only wouldn’t have had the job offer rescinded but in fact would have been more likely to have some of the requests granted.
I find the insinuations troubling, especially with so little solid, verified information about the case. Gender discrimination is a big deal. It is real, it is unethical, and it is illegal. There is ample data to show that women are less successful than their male counterparts when they try to negotiate job offers. So when we allege it, we need to be really pretty sure that’s what’s going on. In this case, there are a number of requests all included together, including a salary request, a maternity leave request, and a bunch of conditions designed to protect the candidate’s research time. In the college’s alleged response, the first two requests are ignored without comment; the substance of the reply focuses on the candidate’s apparent prioritization of research relative to teaching.
This just leads more questions. How much flexibility would a tenure-track candidate assume that a hiring institution has over starting salary for an entry level position? What are the odds that any college would dismiss a request for a semester of maternity leave without comment? And what are the chances that, upon receiving this letter and knowing that the maternity leave request will automatically expose the college’s response to more scrutiny, the hiring department replies to the research time requests totally revoking the job offer? What are the odds that a job candidate accepts this without further publicity, or that the college doesn’t try to get ahead of the story when the media begins to break it?
Something here doesn’t add up. I am vaguely queasy about the reading audience leaping to conclusions about gender discrimination in a case where the facts aren’t verified and backed up because it undermines the significances of the many legitimate gender discrimination cases where they occur – and they occur a lot. I’m not saying that the W/Nazareth College incident didn’t happen, but I am saying that no one reading that initial blog has enough information to comment on it too deeply.
I care about hiring discrimination, and maternity leave discrimination in specific, more than just about anything else. I have personally suffered and I have numerous friends who have suffered and who continue to suffer at the hands of profoundly discriminatory practices that are often undocumented. I take it seriously. That means that when these cases come up, there is a real burden of understanding them. This one becomes a black hole really fast, and that worries me.
