May 1, 2008
Double Whammy for Wheaton Professor, and Other Reading
- Kent Gramm, a popular and longtime English professor at Wheaton College, is out of a job because he won’t explain the reasons for divorcing his wife to college officials — as required by institutional policy, The Chicago Tribune reports.
- Dean Dad explains why good administrators sometimes make bad decisions.
- A study of postdoctoral researchers at Fermi National Laboratory found evidence of institutional gender bias there, Richard Monastersky reports on The Chronicle’s News Blog. The author, Sherry Towers, a physicist, examined the research productivity and career trajectories of 57 postdoctoral physicists working on Fermilab’s DZero collaboration, an experiment involving some 700 physicists around the world, from 1998-2006 and found that while female postdocs outproduced many of their male counterparts, they were much less likely to be permitted to present their papers at conferences, a fact that ultimately hurt their careers, Monastersky writes. See an article at Nature, and related posts at Historiann, Keeping It Simple, and Young Female Scientist.
- The National Academy of Sciences has elected 72 new scientists to its ranks, 16 of them women, Jeffrey Brainard writes on the News Blog. That’s an improvement over last year, when only nine out of 90 were women, he notes.
- Don’t miss an interesting discussion on The Chronicle’s Forums about how working professors cope with chronic illness, which was inspired by a recent post at Shifting Careers.
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On the academy and chronic illnesses:
I found reading the Forum postings interesting because only those who had had positive experiences with their colleagues and administrations had commented.
Unfortunately, I know a bit about the other side, the “dark side” of academia, from colleagues in multiple institutions engaged in worker’s comp and/or Federal court suits, etc.
As an example, a physician friend who works in a “college town” once told me, “You know, it’s amazing. They really want nothing to do with reasonable accommodation for anyone they don’t particularly know and like. I had one patient who was a worker at the college’s physical plant. When he developed a cardiac problem, I wrote him a note to request lighter duty. They immediately assigned him to lug mattresses, so he was forced to retire. Same tactics with faculty.”
This issue dovetails with the problem of bullying and mobbing in academia. A faculty member with a chronic illness has to have a “low profile” on issues of controversy in order to get an accommodation in scheduling, etc. — because the ADA is only as good as its enforcement. And that means a suit in Federal court which can last for years — and the courts are constantly tinkering with the definitions of disability.
So, while academia should be a better place to work for a person with a chronic illness, it all depends — on how “good” a little girl or boy you’ve been in the eyes of your chair, dean, et al.
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate May 2, 06:48 PM #
Well, taking a strictly objective view for the moment, it’s a case of people becoming more trouble than they’re worth. And in my own university I know a case in another department where a professor with a real or alleged chronic “illness” is milking the system for all it’s worth. And becoming more trouble than they are worth.
— Joseph F Foster May 3, 07:27 AM #
On Comment 2:
The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that the person be able to perform the duties of the job with or without a reasonable accommodation. That’s perform the duties of the job and that’s reasonable accommodation.
And of course, there are “dead wood” able-bodied tenured professors whom neither the faculty nor the administration will bother “removing”.
But a person with disabilities? More trouble than they’re worth.
Never mind all of the arguments/statistics about how likely any one person is to become disabled in his/her lifetime or have a close family member become disabled. (Higher probablilities than one would suppose.)
It is, quite simply, the law of the land.
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate May 3, 04:54 PM #
Response to Comment 3, Laws have been disobeyed before — this country was founded in revolution and disobedience to smuggling laws and the like.
And “disabilities” have been made up or fabricated before also.
I know what “perform the duties of the job” means. “Reasonable accommodation” is more mercurial.
— Joseph F Foster May 5, 08:16 AM #
There’s also the definition of what constitutes a disability under the law (as I indicated above).
Fascinating that disability legislation is compared to “smuggling laws and the like”.
And “reasonable accommodation” is usually first defined by the institution, not the individual. Should it be “unreasonable”, there are courts to decide.
With so much stacked in favor of the employer and against the disabled, I marvel at the vehemence of the objections voiced.
Perhaps some future chronic pain condition will prove more instructive to the “revolutionary” author of Comments 2 and 4 than words on this or any other blog.
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate May 5, 06:19 PM #