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Fiction Contest "Wanted: Female Faculty"
Adapted from Stanford Alumni Magazine, March/April 1999
leurenmoret@yahoo.com
Karen Sawislak's tenure case in the history department at Stanford University
has provided supporters with an opportunity to press for more female faculty on the
campus. She was denied tenure two years ago by then-dean John B. Shoven who
found her work "narrow" and "not º path-setting" and that her
scholarly productivity was "substantially below the norm." His decision
opposed nearly unanimous approval from her department (26 faculty voted for
tenure, one abstained) and from the appointments and promotions committee of the
School of Humanities and Sciences (5 of 6 recommended tenure).
For 19 months Sawislak's appeal of Shoven's decision dragged through
the grievance process and attracted attention, building support along the way. With
pressure from faculty/student demonstrations, and headlines supporting her case, it
ended up on the desk of President Gerhard Casper. He informed her that she had
been given bad advice within her department about scholarly standards and offered
her the chance to begin the tenure process all over.
She does not find the effort of going through the tenure process a second time
appealing, "This has turned into something that's about much bigger issues
than my tenure case. I've been caught up in a struggle over power and image
and an effort to show that the system is fair when many of us believe it is extremely
subjective and often, as I believe in my case, biased against women."
Less than 20% of Stanford's faculty are women and only 14.5% are tenured
professors. A 1993 report from the provost's office showed that among 21
comparable universities, Stanford ranked 19th in its percentage of women faculty.
The percentages of women sharply decline as tenure is considered, but are most
noticeable at the highest levels‹all seven schools which make up the University are
headed by men. Ten of the 67 department chairs are women, and 17 of the 237
endowed chairs are held by women.
Although winning tenure at Stanford is reserved for the best scholars in the world,
the selection of its No. 2 Executive, former Provost Condoleezza Rice, appears to have
been made by a different standard altogether. The person in charge of academic and
budget affairs for the campus, she was also the de facto chief affirmative action
officer on the campus. Sitting on her rosewood desk in her plush office, she said
"I am myself a beneficiary of a Stanford strategy that took affirmative action
seriously, that took a risk in taking a young Ph.D. from the University of Den-
ver." An African American hired at the age of 38, she had never served as a
department chair, when she was appointed by President Casper.
Her stated views on campus affirmative action were made to the Faculty Senate:
"I don't believe in and will not apply affirmative action at the time of
tenure. It will be a slippery slope if people believe a woman's case passes if
it's borderline and a man's case doesn't. It would be a mistake."
Her stated reservations about "goals and timetables" for affirmative action
have brought Stanford under federal scrutiny. The University is now undergoing a
U.S. Department of Labor investigation of its promotion and hiring practices, sparked
by a 400-page complaint from several dozen female scholars, among them Colleen Crangle.
In the wake of the U.S. Department of Labor investigations, Stanford University
Provost Condoleezza Rice, left the University in June and is now a Hoover Institution
scholar and adviser to presidential candidate George W. Bush. Pressured by criticism
of the merger of Stanford and UCSF hospitals and the Labor Department investiga-
tions, Stanford University President Gerhard Casper, on September 15, announced his
departure.
Despite the departure of the two top campus executives, things may not change
unless highly publicized tenure battles and federal scrutiny forces compliance with
affirmative action guidelines. Pushing for more hiring of women faculty, law profes-
sor Barbara Babcock, one of the leaders of the Faculty Women's Caucus states
"Stanford is an incredible can-do place, if something doesn't get done here,
it's because we don't want it to get done."
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