At Penn, the cause of "gender equity" has become an excuse to institutionalize reverse discrimination. Yesterday, at an open meeting convened by Penn's Association of Women Faculty and Administrators, biochem professor Phoebe Leboy reported on the dismal state of gender equity at Penn. Her evidence? Penn does not have as many women faculty as men, and the ratio of faculty women to men is not changing as quickly as it is at peer institutions. Her gripe? Penn is not seriously committed to the cause to gender equity. Her evidence for that? Penn is not keeping its alleged promise to encourage departments to hire women while at the same time discouraging them from hiring men:

Leboy also referred to promises made by the president and provost to organize incentives for departments to hire and promote women while creating disincentives for them to hire and promote men.

According to Leboy, the administration has created small incentives via a fund through the Provost's Office, which was announced in a letter to deans and department chairs. However, she could not find clear evidence for the creation of disincentives. She supplied anecdotes of discrimination inherent in the selection processes of new faculty members as evidence of that.

[Penn Provost Robert] Barchi said that disincentives are being instituted on an individual departmental basis. He said that he had discussed recruitment policies with all the deans and that they were doing the same with department chairs.

The Daily Pennsylvanian--which is not currently in top student paper form, and has not been for some time--reports this jaw-dropping discussion with the affectless aplomb of perfect ignorance. The reporter knows not what she reports. But readers will. And the honest ones will cry foul as long and hard as their lonely dissenting voices can.

It is no secret that Penn plays demographic games at hiring time. Nor is it a secret that those games come into play full force during tenure review. When I was up for tenure, for example, I was told by a Penn administrator that based on my vital statistics, my chances looked very good. He told me point blank that if I were black, he would be able to guarantee me promotion, but that as a woman, the odds were very much in my favor. Such comments are often classified as harassment, but I was not being harassed. I was being told the truth, as ugly as it was.

Even though I am no stranger to the ugly truth of Penn "affirmative" hiring and promotion practices (practices which, it should be noted, are hardly unique to Penn, and wholly reflect prevailing campus orthodoxy about the importance of diversity and the acceptability of engineering faculty and student populations to reflect multicultural ideals), I confess myself to be thoroughly shocked by the information that Penn is not only creating incentives for departments to hire women, but actively instituting disincentives to hire men. I am shocked, too, that such a practice has become so embedded in the misguided utopian pseudo-morality of higher ed administration that it can be discussed as frankly, unapologetically, and openly as it was in yesterday's public forum.

Two points, for what they are worth:

1) Imagine such a discussion taking place with roles reversed: what would the outcry be if the Penn administration copped to officially discouraging the hiring of women, or minorities? No need to answer the question. We know what the outcry would be, and we know how far-reaching it would be. It would be national news. There would be talk of lawsuits.

2) I hope I speak for more than just myself when I say that to be hired and promoted under such a system verges on absolute meaninglessness. To know that the accident of one's genetic code has played a major--possibly even decisive--role in one's career cheapens the career itself. It renders one's accomplishments hollow, and oppresses one powerfully with the knowledge that the cynical social engineering of others has as much or more to do with one's putative success than one's scholarship or teaching. As a woman (here I invoke the sacred mantra of identity politics), I would rather be judged entirely on my own merits--or lack thereof--than on the basis of my ability to contribute to some corrupt statistical concept of "equity." I would rather fail all by myself than "succeed" because I am female.

I'm betting this DP piece won't be up on line in its present form for long. But I've got a PDF of it that I'll post if the need arises.

UPDATE: From the comment section beneath the article:

I am astonished at two things.

First, that a University receiving public monies would create "disincentives" to hiring men and openly admit it in a newspaper.

Second -- and perhaps more disturbing -- is that the "reporter" did not follow up on this admission. Is she so inured to such bias that she didn't notice it? Or is she demonstrating her agreement with such blatant discrimination?

I can only hope that male candidates for positions at the University aggressively pursue discrimination lawsuits and end this disgusting policy.

Astounded
student
Philadelphia