Day: April 4, 2012

On intervening

annejjacobson3 Comments

What does effective intervention look like?

I’d like to collect together some readings on intervening in situations where bias is operating.  I know we’ve mentioned here some web sites in the past, but perhaps we can get a number of sources together.  One kind of situation is the sexist professor who, let’s suppose, consistently grades women unfairly, ignores them in class, and so on.  Is there writing on what a colleague can do to address this situation?  How might a department do it?

The second sort of situation is more the bias among equals.  This topic might cover both the situation where the woman professor is ignored at meetings to the female grad students who hears male grad students talking about why women can’t do philosophy.

And there are all sorts of others.

Disclosure:  I’d like to get sources together so I can point to them on this site at a paper I’m giving tomorrow.

Interview with Linda Alcoff

Jender

at NewAPPS.

On being hired as a cure for sexual harassment:

Several faculty members outside philosophy had known about the problem and had assumed hiring a woman would solve the problem, as if a young fresh Ph.D. would be able to ‘fix it’ by herself! I was furious at the older faculty who assumed I could have this thrown my way in my first year while I was trying to learn the ropes as a teacher, but I was also moved by the sad tales of students. I counseled them with the usual advice: keep records, write things down, make a report. They were terrified, wanting to stay in the profession without making enemies, and looked to me again to solve the problem.

What did you do?

So I made the decision to seek another job, then blow the whistle, or at least share what information I had with the Provost. I was able to land another job, uprooting my family again in the space of a year, and spilled the beans. I left, and he left soon after, both, as it turned out, to greener pastures.

But go to New APPS and read it all!