The other week I wrote about a report that a philosopher accepted to an NEH Summer Institute overseas “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Institute directors; if she fails to meet this requirement, she has been told her accceptance in the program will be withdrawn.” At the time, it seemed clear that there was no way an NEH-funded operation should be doing this and that, while there was some slim possibility of an explanation that made the whole episode seem reasonable, the Institute director or directors were very much more likely to be completely out of line in making such a demand. Well, guess what?
The National Endowment for the Humanities has apologized to a grant recipient who was told by the director of an NEH-financed seminar in Europe that she had 12 hours to demonstrate that she had adequate child care arrangements in place for her son or she would lose her spot. … An NEH spokeswoman, via e-mail, said Tuesday that the investigation by the endowment determined that the report “was, unfortunately, true. NEH has accepted full responsibility and apologized to the professor involved. We believe we are in the process of resolving the issue to her satisfaction. We have assured her that she is welcome to attend the institute to which she applied and, at her request, we have also extended the deadline to make it possible for her to apply for another seminar if she so chooses.” The spokeswoman added: “Asking an applicant to provide information regarding child care was inappropriate and should have had no bearing on the selection process. Qualified applicants who tell the NEH that they will participate full time in our programs should be taken at their word. We erred and are determined that it will not happen again.”
Good.
{ 44 comments }
Anderson 04.21.10 at 4:25 pm
Yes, good, but it doesn’t explain how this happened in the first place. If there’s no policy, then was someone simply making stuff up to harass female applicants? Has that person been reprimanded or assigned to different work?
Kieran Healy 04.21.10 at 5:00 pm
If there’s no policy, then was someone simply making stuff up to harass female applicants?
I do not have any insider knowledge about this thing. (I believe I know who the person involved is, but I’ve never had any contact with her.) Based on the statement, the most likely explanation is that, yes, an Institute Director (who would be a faculty member somewhere, and not an NEH employee) acting on his or her own initiative simply made rules up out of whole cloth and generally behaved like an officious ass in this matter.
Has that person been reprimanded or assigned to different work?
I have no idea. I don’t imagine the NEH could be all that pleased. Maybe someone from their office had a Full And Frank Exchange Of Views with them. I’d guess the person involved is still directing the Summer Institute — note the language in the statement saying that the Professor has been given the opportunity to apply to a different program if she wishes, suggesting that one or both parties may want to avoid facing each other across a table for the summer in light of these events.
Ano 04.21.10 at 5:39 pm
I wonder what people think is the appropriate penalty for the Director who made the unfortunate decision. It was wrong and sexist, and has mercifully been corrected. Let’s assume (for the sake of discussion) that the Director has apologized and accepted why he or she was wrong to the satisfaction of the accepted applicant. What is the right penalty?
Should the Director be fired as a summer institute director? Should he or she lose his or her job at the university? What if he or she is tenured? Or in a union that will fight the dismissal?
In the overheated blog-world, where Brad DeLong regularly calls people the stupidest person alive and calls for major newspapers and political parties to be shut down for making gross errors, it would seem that no penalty is stiff enough. But what level of offense is this? Is it abuse? What if you could be sure that the person wasn’t intentionally cruel, just tone deaf and of a different, more sexist era (and has apologized for such)?
Barry 04.21.10 at 6:22 pm
“What if you could be sure that the person wasn’t intentionally cruel, just tone deaf and of a different, more sexist era (and has apologized for such)?”
If they weren’t intentionally cruel, then I’d categorize them as not an appropriate person to exercise discretionary control over such funds and programs.
As for ‘tone deaf’, this is not tone deaf, it’s far worse. As for ‘and of a different, more sexist era’, that excuse don’t fly anymore either.
Kal 04.21.10 at 6:31 pm
The thing is, this wasn’t, like, a prejudiced remark. The Director was in a position of power, and he (I imagine) abused it in a sexist fashion. Even if there was an apology – and we don’t have evidence of one – that’s insufficient. This person clearly shouldn’t be in such a position of power. One way or another, they need to be relieved of the responsibility of deciding who is admitted to this program.
As things are, it appears that the practical consequence of someone attempting to keep this woman out of the institute (or subject her participation to absurd requirements) is: she has the opportunity to go to another institute. That doesn’t sound like justice to me.
Salient 04.21.10 at 6:45 pm
I wonder what people think is the appropriate penalty for the Director who made the unfortunate decision.
Detour: If I remember the details correctly, there was an incident here last year in which a (non-tenured) person made some blithely derogatory remarks, in a mass departmental email (not my department), regarding the fact that on some days, children are being brought to the university workplace by professors — together with some, uh, suggestions for childcare services which those professors could employ. That person’s employment was terminated, effective immediately, within 48 hours of the email. I don’t know of anyone who felt that the response was disproportionate, and that person’s action was clearly milder than inappropriately exercising discretionary authority against an individual over child care arrangements, which in turn… well it’s probably not necessary to go on and on about how the NEH incident is clearly worse.
So I wouldn’t feel put off to hear the individual in question has been reassigned or fired. Frankly, the “12 hours” requirement pulls this far far away from tone-deafness, in my eyes. There is no conceivable way, to me, that such a statement does not reflect vicious malice.
Maaaaaaaaybe Ano’s implied concern for the administrator would make sense if the demand had been to the effect of “we at [program] will need some assurance that you have made adequate arrangements for childcare” (this is still out of line, but conceivably not malicious). Twelve hour time limit, though? That’s the mark of someone overcome with some kind of anger while in the act of writing. ‘Within the next twelve hours’ arbitrarily attached to any demand smacks of maliciousness.
If nothing more than a FAFEOV took place, I’d want to leave it up to the harassed individual whether or not that and that alone is satisfactory.
dana 04.21.10 at 6:49 pm
But Kieran, you’ve failed to consider the possibility that this was the fault of the Dutch nanny-state! Or a union! Or tenure!
What if you could be sure that the person wasn’t intentionally cruel, just tone deaf and of a different, more sexist era (and has apologized for such)?
I don’t think it matters much practically whether his clearly sexist action was the result of malice or tone-deafness. It might not be the person’s fault that he was tone deaf and sexist, but if I were the NEH, I’d want someone else in charge of administering the seminar, or at least managing its funds.
alex 04.21.10 at 7:02 pm
Oh the speculation!
Ano 04.21.10 at 7:07 pm
It sounds like it’s a simple case of “you royally screw up (and in this case it’s not some kind of ‘mix up’ or ‘honest mistake’), and you are fired from that position.” That’s fair enough.
Now that the summer institute has relieved this person of duty, it has made a statement: you (being a sexist) have a flaw that renders you unfit for making admissions (and other personnel) decisions on our behalf. So now this person (who has been officially sanctioned for bigotry) remains on the staff as a scholar or teacher or whatever he or she does when not screwing up the summer institute? Is this a tenable situation? Or does it lead to a slippery slope where, once someone has been penalized, they have a scarlet letter?
What I’m left struggling with is: this person is clearly worthy of punishment, but is it possible to punish someone for any kind of “-ism” in a way that has any other effect but to ruin them in polite society? Is that the way it should be? On the other hand, I feel like I’m coming close to arguing “why should a little bigotry ruin a perfectly good academic career?”, which doesn’t sound like the correct view at all once you say it out loud.
On the other-other hand, we humans all have prejudiced thoughts now and again, though some lots more than others, and some acting them out much less than others. These thoughts should clearly not be considered “acceptable,” but it doesn’t feel right to have anyone who admits them or expresses them to be completely ruined forever, as though they have dome something clearly worse (like say spousal abuse).
So, I’m trying to ask questions that get people to discuss the subtleties here, and I really don’t want to be an apologist for the administrator’s behavior. I’m asking: should this person be completely ruined over this incident? Or just shamed but still supported (with an appropriate show of contrition)?
(Yes, I am a white male. Why do you ask?)
Ano 04.21.10 at 7:12 pm
I’m pretty much convinced by Salient and dana’s comments that the administrator’s actions were so grievous as to be indistinguishable from malice a a practical matter. My questions above are, I guess, now all completely hypothetical and don’t really apply to this summer institute case.
ScentOfViolets 04.21.10 at 7:17 pm
This is one of those odd features of academia that make it so hostile to conservatives – instead of just saying that people should take responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences and leaving it at that, people in academia actually do take responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences.
Imagine that!
Colin Danby 04.21.10 at 7:22 pm
Ano, you might find the “what they are” / “what they did” distinction useful.
Barry 04.21.10 at 7:48 pm
.Sorry, it should read: “If they were intentionally cruel, then I’d categorize them as not an appropriate person to exercise discretionary control over such funds and programs.”
Barry 04.21.10 at 7:56 pm
Ano: “Or does it lead to a slippery slope where, once someone has been penalized, they have a scarlet letter?”
Perhaps this should be restated as ‘once somebody has done some bad things, they have a scarlet letter’.
Ano 04.21.10 at 8:00 pm
Colin Danby: that video is excellent, thanks.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t settle the matter. I think if a university sanctions somebody for the “what they did” in this case, it may put a serious, unavoidable, permanent “what they are” stink on them. Which may be the right outcome!
I am just asking what the proportionate penalty is here, and whether it is possible to try to punish a little without actually punishing much more. Obviously you want to err on the side of not punishing too lightly since the whole “sending a message that this is not tolerated” part of punishment is a very important aspect here.
Peter Macy 04.21.10 at 8:04 pm
Salient: I agree with you regarding the NEH case — the “12 hours” requirement does sound like real malice.
But I have a different intuition about the story you told about the non-tenured person who lost his/her job for sending out an email complaining about profs who bring their children into work. You say that you don’t know of anyone who sees this as a disproportionate response. Well, I do. Firing someone for sending off a stupid email is overkill, and I can’t imagine any university that I’m familiar with ever doing such a thing. Maybe there’s more to the story?
(BTW, I’m a prof who often brings his kids to work.)
LizardBreath 04.21.10 at 8:08 pm
I was also taken aback a bit by the instant firing for the stupid email (unless, I guess, “blithely derogatory” is worse than it sounds like. I suppose I can see it for a broadcast email that wasn’t just objecting to professors bringing in kids, but was profane or obscene about it.)
chris 04.21.10 at 8:32 pm
I agree with 16, 17: the email incident (since it doesn’t have the appearance of being done under official authority) is more on the scale of something that might be settled by a full and frank exchange of views, and possibly an official statement to everyone reached by the original email that no, this sort of thing is not department policy, thank you very much.
That’s quite different from someone who *was* acting in an official capacity and using that authority to harass someone. *That* person needs to be encouraged, as firmly as necessary, not to exercise such official authority in the future. Possibly that can be done without firing them, but if it leaves a stain on their record — well, I’m inclined to think it should. If they have anything else of note about their career, maybe it will seem small in perspective, but it at least seems to show that they are not the sort of person who thinks carefully before making apparently official statements based not on actual official policies but on their personal views.
rm 04.21.10 at 8:34 pm
A consequence should have some logical relationship to the screw-up. Whether an apology is enough really depends on the particular circumstances and the people involved, and if an apology is not enough, I would think removal from that administrative role of accepting applicants to the institute, not removal from other roles in the university, would make sense. It would be like removal from a particular committee. It would be a negative mark on one’s service record, which might or might not impact that person’s career, depending on where he (I assume) is in it.
I, too, am not so sure about firing a non-TT for an offensive email. That person has little power. It would have to have been very offensive.
djw 04.21.10 at 9:05 pm
Count me among the people who see the firing over the email as, given the narrow set of facts currently in evidence, a potentially disproportionate response.
What I’m left struggling with is: this person is clearly worthy of punishment, but is it possible to punish someone for any kind of “-ism†in a way that has any other effect but to ruin them in polite society?
Ano, you seem particularly interested in the question of punishment. I’m in the category of all other things being equal this person shouldn’t have a job with this kind of power any more, but the reasons, on my thinking, anyway, and I suspect others here as well, have nothing whatsoever to do with punishment. Removing this person from this position strikes me as a rational and direct response to some new evidence about this person’s fitness for the position; nothing more and nothing less. If I hire someone to do X, and they proceed to do X quite ineptly, and I let them go, am I ‘punishing’ them? Maybe indirectly, but that’s hardly the point.
And the public organizational apology is, well, what organizations that don’t want to have a reputation for sanctioning sexist behavior do. If forced between allowing their own reputation to be damaged for the sake of the reputation of their inept (at best) employee (or former employee), it would be quite eccentric to choose the latter.
LassLisa 04.21.10 at 9:26 pm
You know, if (as was stated) the people who saw the email thought that a firing was a completely proper response, I don’t feel a need to second-guess them. Yes, there are some emails fitting the description for which that would be appropriate – but you know, the people who actually saw it were agreed that firing was an appropriate course of action. So I don’t think we need to take that as some sort of general policy statement about all emails etc etc.
For the NEH case, this isn’t ‘sexism’ in the sense of hostile work environment or thought-crimes or any of the forms we’re familiar with and might find easier to tolerate. This is ‘taking action to exclude women from your program’. Especially with a twelve hour notice! Good Lord! I would not want someone who thought that appropriate and a proper use of power to be in any position of authority whatsoever, and would consider a ‘black mark’ completely proper. “If you abuse your power, there is an inclination not to give you any more” sounds just right.
LizardBreath 04.21.10 at 9:32 pm
20: This is right — whatever happens to the offender, the effect on the offender is secondary. The primary purpose should be making sure that similar incidents don’t happen again.
Ano 04.21.10 at 9:48 pm
Makes sense.
M. Gordon 04.21.10 at 9:59 pm
ScentOfViolets @11: Uhh…what enlighted part of the academic world have you been living in? And can I move there? There are a lot of things that you can say about professors, but “taking responsibility for their actions and accepting the consequences” is not one that springs readily to mind. My experience has been that the rapacity of higher academic achievement (especially at the top tier universities) combined with nearly irrevocable tenure basically gives people the opportunity to be complete assholes, and many, if not most of them, exercise this right liberally. Unless their asses are truly on the line, as they probably were in this case.
Salient 04.21.10 at 10:43 pm
Hmm, from the responses so far I see I must have misrepresented the situation as milder than it was, because I agree that what people have said about it sounds quite reasonable, but don’t agree that it applies to the case. Apologies for distracting you all… Probably my error was in using “blithely” (with some intended sarcasm) which I had substituted for the original adverbs “gleefully viciously” (horrible grammar, but more accurate?) Also, it’s quite possible a full and frank exchange of views did take place… which very probably would have led to a prompt dismissal, in this case (if the email was any guide). But yeah, sorry. We should probably leave off the email case because as folks rightly noted I didn’t give enough detail, but on the other hand I don’t feel comfortable sharing more under a pseudonym, it doesn’t seem fair of me to any of the parties involved. Sorry.
ben 04.21.10 at 10:48 pm
How refreshing to see an apology that contains an actual apology along with a frank admission of error.
Salient 04.21.10 at 11:25 pm
How refreshing to see an apology that contains an actual apology along with a frank admission of error.
True, and not only that, they made a positive assertion of the specific principle which had been violated: “Qualified applicants who tell the NEH that they will participate full time in our programs should be taken at their word.” That’s a meaningful assertion, possibly the most important specific thing the spokesperson’s message contained; it takes the statement far beyond “sorry you got hurt” and beyond “sorry we did something that was hurtful” and even beyond “we acknowledge that this specific thing we did was wrong” — it asserts an entire category of potential wrong behavior, by explicitly acknowledging the reasonableness of a reasonable expectation.
Had the statement only said, “Asking an applicant to provide information regarding child care was inappropriate and should have had no bearing on the selection process,” this wouldn’t have confirmed agreement on why it was inappropriate. Adding a positive statement which makes the reasoning explicit crosses into genuine meaningful apology, by explicitly acknowledging and agreeing to the legitimacy of not only the specific complaint, but the general reasonableness of the expectation that was violated.
Or, as Kieran said: Good.
Colin Danby 04.22.10 at 12:20 am
Short of knowing a whole lot more about these situations than we know, discussion of “punishment” is blowing smoke. Moreover, hysterically raising the stakes makes it harder to call people on low-level, routine problems. We need to be able to have thoughtful (i.e. non-nuclear) discussions over whether a particular policy or practice has discriminatory effects.
As a general point, what’s good about this case is that the bloggysphere can help shift a social norm in the right direction. It’s easy to imagine norms under which the policy that this academic faced would seem obvious, reasonable, even kind. (Patriarchy can be caring!) In fact you don’t have to imagine at all, because those norms are widespread and powerful *today*, and I’m surprised defenders of the policy involved haven’t shown up yet in this comment thread — is the bat-signal broken?
So yeah, what’s useful is a public airing that can lay down some markers, so that hopefully this happens less in the future.
bay of arizona 04.22.10 at 1:31 am
Its sweet that there is so much sympathy for this guy who just made a mistake. /s
Here’s my question: How long has the director been in a position to issue that type of ultimatum? What are the chances that he has done this to other women as well? And how do we know he won’t revert to his old ways after the heat dies down?
The email thing does seem like an overreaction, maybe there were other offenses and this was simply the last straw.
Salient 04.22.10 at 2:00 am
Its sweet that there is so much sympathy for this guy who just made a mistake. /s
…wait, um, who are you snarking at? Nobody here’s been saying that, I don’t think.
George 04.22.10 at 2:18 am
I think there’s a bit of confusion over responsibility.
Here’s my understanding of the situation, which may be inaccurate:
1. The NEH funded the summer seminar in question.
2. Somebody associated with running the summer seminar (likely a tenured or at least tenure-track faculty member who applied for the NEH grant that funds said seminar) is responsible for the email asking the applicant about child care, not anyone who works for the NEH.
3. Those who run these NEH-funded summer seminars are responsible for abiding by NEH rules.
4. This particular person failed to do so.
5. This particular person may or may not now be in hot water with the NEH in terms of being able to secure similar funding in the future.
6. Termination is a highly unlikely outcome of this person’s actions.
Carry on…
Salient 04.22.10 at 3:13 am
Termination is a highly unlikely outcome of this person’s actions.
Well, ok. The fact that this is so doesn’t mean it’s wrong for individuals to state that termination seems like it could be a fair/proportionate response here, if only because it helps clarify a community expectation that might hopefully reduce the number of future incidents. Some noteworthy clamor over this incident, one hopes, will raise awareness in administrators’ minds, discouraging similar incidents in the future.
But anyway, I think the main purpose of this thread was to draw attention to how unusually^1^ good this was as a response and acknowledgment of wrongdoing. The coin-flip-side of public shaming for wrongdoing, more or less, is public recognition for thoroughly doing the right thing in response. There’s a lot of little details in this response that are noteworthy: the attentiveness to the speaker’s request for the opportunity to apply to alternative seminars, for example, and the deferential wording of “We believe we are in the process of resolving the issue to her satisfaction,” which acknowledges and emphasizes the aggrieved individual’s right to determine what response is satisfactory in full.
^1^I don’t mean unusually for the NEH, I mean unusually for public apologies through spokespersons.
George 04.22.10 at 11:16 am
@Salient: No argument from me!
chris 04.22.10 at 1:32 pm
termination seems like it could be a fair/proportionate response here, if only because it helps clarify a community expectation that might hopefully reduce the number of future incidents
Pour encourager les autres?
That doesn’t seem right either.
Termination is either the right thing to do *to that person based on that person’s actions*, or it isn’t; if you want to send a message, hire a messenger. The whole affair isn’t about that person, but what you do to that person *is* about that person.
The community expects that if individuals make arbitrary demands like this, the organization will officially retract them. That’s what the community should expect, and has a right to expect.
Heur 04.22.10 at 2:01 pm
I agree that the original NEH email was harsh and unfair. However, I can think of several questions I would have before firing anyone.
I suspect, like all good readers, in absorbing the original episode we all had some types of images in our heads. The hapless mother, overworked, overburdened, trying hard to make headway in a difficult career, slapped in the face with a 12-hour deadline to procure affordable childcare for a month overseas. The sneeringly callous, insulated NEH administrator, who probably has never had to lift a finger to care for his (it’s a male, of course) in his life, and has no concept from within his privileged existence as to how others struggle.
And these images, these assumptions of context, drive our thoughts as to the just corrective action. Worse, they commit us cognitively to a conclusion that may not be as well supported by the facts as we believe. This instinct, which we all have, is IMHO one of the aspects of human nature that make rational public discussion of any issue so incredibly difficult.
But suppose that those initial images and contextual assumptions are not true. Substitute other scenarios. The NEH administrator is a single mother, of exceptional competence and dedication, who, in her zeal to ensure a good attendance rate, overstepped; the NEH administrator is an outstanding employee who, for personal reasons, was simply extremely distracted that day; etc.
These are all scenarios in which termination might not be best for the NEH, or some type of just response.
And while it may seem difficult to simply take the attitude “I don’t know enough to have an opinion as to how this should be justly resolved,” perhaps that is actually the right attitude to take.
Kieran Healy 04.22.10 at 3:04 pm
Let me just reiterate what I said in my comment above, and what others have mentioned: this is not a question of an “NEH employee” or “NEH administrator” doing anything. It’s a question of a faculty member at a university organizing an NEH-funded event and doing something completely at variance with the NEH’s policies. The question of “termination” of an “employee” does not arise. It’s more a question of the organizer misusing authority they did not even have in the first place.
Incidentally, after following this up a little more, I can assure you, Heur, that this whole thing really is just what it looks like.
[Edited for even temper.]
alex 04.22.10 at 3:06 pm
Oh well, in that case, roll out the tar and feathers.
Salient 04.22.10 at 3:32 pm
The question of “termination†of an “employee†does not arise.
Sorry, I get it now. The NEH didn’t “hire” the professor to act in the capacity of Director for the seminar in the first place — they funded the thing, presumably via grant proposal submitted by the professor, but the NEH aren’t really in control of it, in the sense of administrative authority. This only finally clicked for me after your comment #36; thank you for reiterating.
Anderson 04.22.10 at 7:22 pm
There are a lot of things that you can say about professors, but “taking responsibility for their actions and accepting the consequences†is not one that springs readily to mind.
That applies equally to “humankind in general,” doesn’t it?
David Margolies 04.22.10 at 7:23 pm
He or she should have to look after the child for several evenings of the conference.
Minor nonsense 04.22.10 at 9:23 pm
I don’t see fired in that release. That is the only acceptable thing. This namby pamby crap only increases this kind of behavior.
Remember the first time someone lies to you, they are just seeing how much you will swallow.
Western Dave 04.23.10 at 1:02 am
Once more with feeling:
You can’t fire the idiot who sent the e-mail if you’re the NEH. You can cancel the funds for the summer program, but then it doesn’t run punishing everybody. You can put a note in the idiots file that will ensure he will never get to run another institute. You might be able to dock the idiots’ stipend, but if the idiot quits and is the only one running the darn thing (which is usually the case), then it’s dead in the water again punishing everybody. So public shaming looks really good here as option. And of course, the home institution of the scholar might get wind of this incident too. Surely they have a public embarrassment clause or something.
chris 04.23.10 at 1:16 pm
@40: What did the child do to deserve that?
Heur 04.23.10 at 1:29 pm
Oh okay. I see now that the information was there in the post and your first comment too. Thanks for that Kieran (and I thought the unedited post was plenty even-tempered).
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