Academic Angst

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

The Austin Chronicle

Editor

Louis Black

Publisher

Austin Chronicle Corp.

Publication Date

1999

Abstract

MIT released its tenure findings with a splash of publicity, reporting the information in the faculty's official newsletter and on the school Web site, at http://www.web.mit.edu. The dean of the university, Robert J. Birgeneau, introduced the study by asserting that MIT's faculty "remains overwhelmingly white male ... to the detriment of the students, the faculty, and MIT as a whole." The MIT committee recommended that the university take "affirmative actions" to remedy the problem of inequity at the school, including "addressing the serious under-representation of minority faculty at MIT." Hopkins says that MIT administrators are "absolutely on board" the mission to reverse gender inequity at the school. "The amazing thing was that the dean of the university backed the women. ... He said, 'At the end of the day, we're all scientists. You give us data and if it's convincing, we're going to be convinced. You can't argue with data.'"

Comments

Originally published by the Austin Chronicle Corp. HTML fulltext available through remote link.

Share

COinS