Feminist Philosophers reports on some egregious behavior under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities:
a good friend of mine (a tenured philosophy professor in the states) was just accepted to an NEH summer seminar in [European city]. She’s a single mom and, obviously, wants to bring her son along. But, she says, she “has just been given 12 hours to “demonstrate†that she has full-time childcare arrangements for her son for the month of July that “are to the [completely unspecified] satisfaction†of the Institute directors; if she fails to meet this requirement, she has been told her accceptance in the program will be withdrawn. She was notified of said acceptance on Monday.â€
The mind boggles. Then again, I’ve always thought it a very fortunate accident of nature that men are never in a position where they are responsible for offspring genetically related to themselves. (Is there even a word for that?). If they were, it would really be impossible to have a proper career.
Update: Edited to clarify the role of the NEH (as funder, not organizer). And just to be clear, I don’t have any inside knowledge on this incident beyond the post quoted above. As I say in comments below, perhaps some further details will emerge that make the whole thing an unfortunate misunderstanding or otherwise resolve things. We’ll see, I guess.