joint letter to AWM Newsletter
jta...@cims.nyu.edu
to the AWM Newsletter in September 2006:
In the July-August AWM Newsletter, President Keyfitz outlines the
difficulties involved in obtaining appointments for women on key
prize-awarding committees. We would like to add that even when women
are appointed to important decision-making bodies, they may not
be able to advance the careers of highly deserving women. As women who
have served on committees, we have observed that it is quite easy
for other members of the committee to deny the quality of a woman
mathematician and quickly dismiss her from the discussion. A single
outspoken committee member bent against women can seriously
hinder the possibilities of awarding a woman an honor which isn't
shared by 5 or 6 men as well. Even well-intentioned
colleagues often don't realize how their unconscious small assumptions
accumulate to become heavy drags on women mathematicians. This
can affect both the writing and the interpretation of letters of
nomination, as well as committee discussions. Even women
mathematicians may fall within this group.
It is imperative that the AWM address these concerns or women will lose
the gains we've made over the past 30 years. We need to demand that
men and women condemn openly sexist statements without waiting for
someone to be bold enough to file a lawsuit. We need everyone to watch
themselves for their own subtle biases. We need to educate people
about writing strong letters that will survive reading by even the most
biased committee members. If committees are more likely to choose a
woman when they are also choosing five men, then we need more prizes
awarded to multiple recipients. We need to stop the downward spiral
caused by judging mathematicians based on a lack of prestigious
positions, plenary addresses, top notch publications and awards,
without ever pausing to examine their research directly.
This does not even address the issues that may uniquely affect women
who are parents: the publication gaps and the temporary inability to
travel. There is almost no funding to help such women recover their
research programs. Certainly there is no funding available from the
NSF that will allow them to work part-time in research-only positions
at their home institutions like many top women mathematicians did in
the past. Given the societal pressure to work even with a young child,
few women mathematicians today even take unpaid leaves for childcare.
Instead they work fulltime jobs often keeping up their teaching and
service while their research is forced to the backburner. It is time
to provide grants, even small ones, which will allow women to recover
their research after children or to keep their research going while
having young children around. It is time for universities to offer
50% pay for 50% work. It is time that committees realize that many
parents with doctorates a decade ago may have only been doing research
for eight of those years if not fewer.
There are also the solved two body problems which often place women
at second tier jobs with higher teaching. Rather than holding the lack
of prestige against the women, it should be noted that her important
results have more weight for having been completed in what may have
been a less than supportive environment. What would she have done at
a top notch department with time granted to complete research?
What could she do now if offered funding or a top notch position?
Finally the AWM might attempt to spread the word as to which top notch
jobs are truly top notch for women and which have such incipient sexism
as to prevent the women there from succeeding. Sexism at times can be
so pervasive that it is more of a distraction from mathematics than
teaching, service and childcare combined. When the only recourse is to
file a lawsuit, there is really no recourse at all.
Anyone with ideas for effective action is encouraged to post them at
the "Effective Action for Women in Math Webforum" at
http://groups.google.com/group/WomeninMath
Sincerely,
Stephanie Alexander
Jean Taylor
Karen Uhlenbeck
sor...@comet.lehman.cuny.edu
Uhlenbeck have written. I'd like to add three opinions of my own:
THE BEST PERSON TO PROMOTE A WOMAN IS A
TOP MATHEMATICIAN IN HER SUBFIELD:
I'd like to add that when I serve on committees, as a relatively junior
mathematician, I have had some serious difficulty promoting women. In
fact, the woman most likely to be judged highly were those who were
nominated or promoted by a senior mathematician in her own subfield.
In this respect it seems that to best serve women, one does not place a
woman of my status on the committee just to have a woman but rather be
sure to appoint a few key senior men who are willing to promote
deserving women.
IT SEEMS BEST NOT TO COMPARE A
WOMAN DIRECTLY WITH A MAN:
Yet even then the person promoting the woman needs to be careful. It
seems to be treated as a grievious offense if the woman being judged
is compared directly with a man, to the extent that either a committee
member in his subfield feels it is necessary to defend the man against
this dishonor or a committee member who know nothing about his
mathematics decides to discredit him altogether. This puts one in an
awkward position when one is trying to promote both a woman
mathematician and a man of similar ranking. Instead it seemed more
effective to describe a woman mathematician as comparible to say a
young Karen Uhlenbeck rather than causing strife between the sexes. I
mention this as it might help readers who are in the position of
promoting women.
TO HELP A SPECIFIC WOMAN MATHEMATICIAN
MAKE HER WORK KNOWN TO SENIOR MATHEMATICIANS
AND ASK THEM TO PROMOTE HER:
Another effective technique that I've used to promote a woman
mathematician is to directly contact senior mathematicians in her
subfield and ask them to promote her. I begin by emailing them asking
their opinion of her recent research, often providing a link to an
arxiv posting. Then I ask if they might invite her to speak at a
seminar or conference. I have also done this for young men
mathematicians who seem deserving. I am happy to say that the people
I've contacted have often been very positive and receptive.
Occasionally I have been informed that the research is not as good as I
thought it was, and I welcome such an honest response.
OF COURSE PROMOTE YOURSELF
And, of course, promote your own work by submitting it to top journals
and writting introductions that place it in context as an important
result. Create a webpage for yourself highlighting your research,
including descriptions and/or abstracts as well as links to articles.
Send your latest work to seminar and conference organizing committees.
Go to speak to senior mathematicians privately to discuss your work and
ask for suggested future directions of research. I find senior
mathematicians are often impressed by solutions to problems they
propose. So work on problems of interest to the leaders in the field
as well as those you find interesting. And fight for time to do that
research!
Christina Sormani
rea...@math.mit.edu
An excellent way to support male and female research mathematicians
with children is to allow research funds to be applied for childcare,
especially during conferences and research visits. I obtained two
wonderful *unrestricted* summer grants from my home institution the
summer after I began my tenure-track job and the year before I was up
for tenure. I used both for extended summer travel visits *and* for
daycare, not to mention airline tickets for my son and mathematician
husband. These were research trips that benefited all of us.
However, once when gets tenure it is a different story. The internal
grants for tenured faculty must be used for travel expenses only:
childcare and transporting children are not allowable expenses.
On the topic of conferences, I think people have no idea how much one
spends for reliable, safe childcare during such an event. I just
organized an AMS sectional meeting this weekend and it cost $15 an
hour to hire a babysitter to take care of my one and five year-old.
This is money straight out of my pocket, and cannot be submitted to my
department or the NSF for reimbursement.
sor...@comet.lehman.cuny.edu
were some solutions:
1) Some places will provide a travel budget when inviting you to speak
and then you spend as you will without receipts. I don't think this
can be done with NSF funding, unless possibly it is rolled into an
oversized honorarium/consultant fee, at which point you do start paying
taxes on it.
2) Some people actually brought nannies and au pairs with them to
conferences.
3) Many people had their spouses watch the kids either at home or at
the conference.
4) Some people had child exchanges with colleagues at their home
universities where they left the kids when they travelled in exchange
for watching the colleague's kid when they travelled.
5) Many people left children with grandparents.
Personally I think the best solution is to negotiate a *higher salary*
so that these things are less problematic. Childcare is essential to
getting research done at home as well as for attending conferences and
you do need a salary high enough to cover it. At least make sure you
have as high a salary as a guy of equal rank.
I'm in a unionized position which makes it difficult to get a raise,
but my chair recently negotiated that I deserved more "years" of
seniority towards determining my salary. So even in an underfunded
public university with tiered salaries, raises are possible. Sometimes
it takes a saavy chair to figure out how this is done.
Note by the way, that invited speakers tend to be catered to much more
than those presenting contributed papers or just attending. AIM in
particular was very accomodating when I was invited to speak there. Of
course, there is the question of getting more women invited to speak in
the first place...
R. Kuske
Hi - Christina asked me to send along some information about
funding agencies and childcare costs.
> A number of topics related to diversity priorities of funding
> agencies have been discussed at a recent meeting at BIRS, and
> I also discussed this Deborah Lockhart at a recent NSF site visit.
> At the moment we are preparing a report, based on the BIRS meeting,
> which will again request NSF to review the basis for its
> funding decisions. In the meantime, Mark Green, Director of IPAM, has
> also raised this issue with NSF. Some background digging has revealed
> that this issue has been raised in various places at NSF in the past,
> but the conversation has been dropped. Mark sent an email to
Deborah Lockhart in October, in which he referenced an MPS report:
http://www.nsf.gov/attachments/102806/public/ResponseToMPSTheoryWorkshopReport.pdf
(in particular, Please note recommendation C1 on page 10)
Mark also found some other related recommendations by doing a search
under
childcare or child care on the NSF website.
Deborah Lockhart had confirmed in converation in September that these
topics
were discussed somewhere in NSF, but no one knew exactly at which level
the
rules about childcare were set. She said she would like to receive our
communications
about it.
> There are also some interesting comparisons between NSF and
> NSERC (Canadian Science/Engineerng funding agency): NSERC does
> allow reimbursement for some childcare costs related to conference
> travel, but not all. At the same time, NSERC does not give targets to
> institutes for diversity in their activities. As I am presently chairing one
of the NSERC Math Grant Selection Committees, I would be happy to
pursue these questions there.
Marianne
Rachel's posting was good news to me. I am pleased that this very
important issue is being brought up, especiually within NSF. It was
also mentioned in interviews of a German biology Nobel Prize winner.
I was thinking though that maybe this string should be split - awards
for women tend to go to well established researchers, while childcare
is something we mostly need in our early or mid careers, so we are
talking about two issues that impact women at different points in their
careers.
It seems easier for me to think of ways to help early career women, but
I have trouble coming up with what to do help mid ot top career women
to get recognition in proportion to their merits. I do see that awards
make a huge difference, since departments use them to make themselves
look good with respect to other departments and within the school - if
they can look good thanks to women, they do treat women better, since
the awardees help raise the department's status. This status impacts
many things, including the money departments get from their colleges,
up to the NRC rankings...
It would be great to have more postings concerning how to increase the
number of awards to women - I am so at loss trying to come up with
ideas for this.
Best,
Marianne
Jenny Harrison
C. Sormani
Jenny's idea of awards for senior mathematicians
is a good one even for men. It seems that the only
senior mathematicians being awarded for top notch
research are those who relocate regularly getting
incentive years of no teaching to entice them to the
new location. While there may be some advantage
to the movement of mathematicians and a stirring of the
culture, regularly relocating mathematicians put their
graduate students though a lot of difficulty. So awards
which don't require relocation would be excellent.
On another note, in my field, Riemannian Geometry, getting
a 3yr NSF award when one is already tenured is becoming almost
as competitive as a Sloan.
Christina
C. Sormani
When I ran for AMS council last year I had suggested
the creation of top paper awards. Such awards, which
could consist only of a distinction plus a special mathscinet
review, would go to the young and old alike and would
be for a distinctive paper. I felt this might resolve
the issue of mathematicians with lots of nonresearch
responsibilities who still occasionally produce a star
paper.
The idea had been to have the papers nominated by the editors
of the journal they appeared in and then reviewed by panels
of experts in the field. I had originally suggested 1000
papers a year, as that seemed to be at the level where the
top journals in each field would have the majority of their papers
recognized. But a more selective award could be considered, or a
multitiered system. A multitiered system would take little extra
effort on the part of the nominators and panelists, since it is
really not much harder to rank the top 20% than the top 5% and often
panels do exactly this as they narrow down their decision anyway.
I was not elected and so I feel such an award was not popular
with people. It may have the same level of suspicion as the
AMS fellows idea: that in certain departments there would be an
expectation that everone get the award. Of course, the current
situation is that in certain departments everyone is expected to
get an NSF grant before getting tenure. Such a distinction, however,
is at the whim of federal funding and can become more selective over
time or field specified in a way the mathematics community has no control
over.
Christina Sormani
Associate Professor
Department of Mathematics
CUNY Graduate Center and Lehman College
http://comet.lehman.cuny.edu/sormani
Martha Smith
providing grants for childcare and household help for young women
scientists so they can do research. Perhaps checking out for extending
to or forming a parallel organization for women mathematicians.
Martha Smith
C. Sormani
The AAUP recommendations:
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/issuesed/WF/
These may prove useful when negotiating change at your
university. These has links to the AAUP statement, as
well a model institutional policies for stopping the
tenure clock, paid leaves of absense and affordable
onsite daycare.
The AAUP also recommends organization of women of different
fields within a university:
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/issuesed/women/westOrganizingWomen.htm
Martha West writes there:
"Women faculty are eager to work together if they perceive a threat or
benefit to themselves as a group, as we saw in our efforts to protect our
salary equity review. It is much more difficult, however, to get faculty
members' attention when the problem is one woman faculty member fighting
her individual battle for tenure or promotion. Many women faculty hesitate
to get involved in such situations, not understanding that we are still
facing systematic prejudice that affects us all.
In my experience, the University of California system continues to operate
under a double standard: ordinary men make it, but ordinary women often
don't. Women must be outstanding to be assured of success. Since we all
would like to consider ourselves "outstanding," we have little incentive
to join the battle on behalf of those around us who may not have been
anointed as the "rising star" in the department. Yet, what happens to
ordinary women will determine our degree of success in integrating our
campuses."
While here we are a forum of women research mathematicians, we may well
be able to help address the survival of the "ordinary women". Personally
I feel way too many of the exceptional women I know in math are treated as
if they are just ordinary. Aside from the indignity to them, there is the
problem that the young women coming up are held to their standards both
by the men in the department and sometimes the extraordinary woman
herself.
We need to remember that the young woman coming up who don't have an NSF
grant or are struggling to get a distinctive paper published, might be
suffering from sexism and try to find some means to assist them rather
than to consider them to be subpar ourselves. This might mean reaching
out to a senior mathematician in her field. It might mean writing a
letter to the dean. It might mean sheltering her from a service overload
so she can get that next grant application done with perfection.
It certainly means treating the woman as a respected colleague and
ensuring others do as well.
I don't know the statistics in general, but among women I know, it
isn't a matter of not getting tenure so much as not even staying for the
tenure review or not even accepting a job at a top university. Many
of these women are deciding to leave academia altogether for
a position where they will be respected, well paid and treated as a valued
commodity rather than a barely qualified affirmative action case. Others
are choosing to work at top colleges rather than research institutions
because they get more respect there. If universities want more women
faculty, if only to keep the students and government happy, then they
need to meet the demands of women: more respect, equal access to do
research on their own terms, and benefits that match the needs of the
individual.
Christina Sormani
C. Sormani
In Alexander-Taylor-Uhlenbeck's original email they
mention finding supportive men for panels. Martha
West also mentions this on the webpage:
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/issuesed/women/westOrganizingWomen.htm
Martha West writes:
Finally, to paraphrase Abigail Adams, "Remember the gentlemen." We must
continue to build coalitions with our male colleagues who understand the
problems women faculty face. Although women faculty may have reached
critical mass at some colleges and universities, there are many women who
work in departments with only one or two women colleagues. In departments
with few women, women faculty may not be supportive of each other, making
the backing of understanding male colleagues even more crucial to women's
success. Finally, whether we are white women or women of color, we will
maximize our power if we work in coalition with male faculty of color, as
well as with white male faculty who are also interested in change from
within.
My comment:
In mathematics we have almost no latino or African men, but I have found
Asian men are often supportive when discussing sexism. Of course, one
must acknowledge they too suffer discrimination as the standards for
Asians to succeed seem to be set at such a high level that they are
woefully underrepresented among tenured faculty as compared to the quality
of their doctoral work. By bringing up this topic with Asian mathematicians
one opens an environment of mutual support.
Martha Smith
are supportive in some ways but not in others. For example, some men may
be supportive of arranging a woman's schedule to facilitate
child-bearing leave or child care, but might not take women's opinions
on intellectual matters seriously. Some men may be just the opposite.
Also, my experience is that men with daughters interested in math or
science are often among the most supportive.
Martha Smith
C. Sormani
If you have been receiving all the postings
to the WomeninMath group as seperate emails
and find this annoying or distracting, you can
go to:
http://groups.google.com/group/WomeninMath?hl=en
Select (in the orange bar):
"Unsubscribe or change membership"
and then select how you want to read the group.
C. Sormani
For those of you who are at universities that do not
yet follow the AAUP recommendations...
Lets be honest, mathematicians are not necessarily the
most persuasive, politically adept or activist people.
However, those of us at strong institutions with activist
students who are future leaders and reporters can enlist
these students to the cause.
Lets all forward the AAUP recommendations to smart young
woman reporters at out university newspapers! I can just
imagine how some of these saavy undergrads can pull quotes
and promises out of a dean. If you have a masters in Journalism
at your university, then contact them first.
Sample letter to send a student journalist:
--------------------------------------------------------
Dear ___________,
I thought you might be interested in pursuing an
article concerning the unfair treatment of women faculty
on our campus. In 2001, the American Association
of University Professors published a Statement
of Principles on Family Responsibilities. This
statement along with links to the official policies
of model institutions are available at:
>
> http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/issuesed/WF/
>
It is now 2006 and our university still does not
meet the standards set by the AAUP.
Sincerely,
------------------------
sorm...@member.ams.org
anonymously in response to the initial Alexander-Taylor-Uhlenbeck
letter and a discussion among her colleagues regarding the IMU (which
selects the speakers at the ICM):
____________________________________________________________
My impression is beyond "Women do not have a good political base in
the International Mathematics Union" and almost approaching "the
International Mathematics Union" is actively hostile to the presence
of female mathematicians.
But I think getting more women speakers at the ICM would have a
disproportionately positive effect on the ability of women to crack
the highest levels of respect in mathematics. In fact, my field of
applied math (i.e. algorithms and theoretical computer science)
studies things like how a very small bias in a random system can have
giant global effects over time. But you don't even need a mathematical
analysis: Suppose all of mathematics was fair and gender blind except
the ICM speaker invitations. Now you have 2 comparable junior
mathematicans: one male and one female, and they are completely the
same by every measure except the guy was invited while still quite
young to speak at the ICM. Now "objectively" he is the better
mathematician. When places like Harvard say "they can't find any women
who are good enough to hire in math" it's very likely that subtle
things like this are a large part of the portion of the discrimination
that is not conscious. Yes, people know that the ICM is sexist, and
yes, they should factor it in, but they still get all impressed by the
young guy who was invited to speak there and dub him a "star". And of
course every such honor biases later award committees to award more
honors, and the differential on paper snowballs over time.
My only suggestion for how to change who is invited to the ICM might
be to find out who is on the speaker committees, do your own research
as to who deserves to be asked in your subfield, contact the members
of the committee who you think might be supportive, and without even
bringing up the issue of women speakers, suggest them as excellent
possible names of "a bright young mathematician you know who should be
asked". It's certainly worked when I've done it for other venues:
I've gotten great young people (men and women both! :-) named as
speakers, program committee and editorial board members. But ICM might
be a tougher nut to crack. Maybe someone can spearhead a
subcommittee of us to go through the list of who is on the speakers
committees this year (or next year, I'm ignorant of the calendar) and
maybe we can brainstorm a list of a few names of up and coming women
mathematicians we can suggest to them.
-anonymous poster
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My opinion:
Doing a little research in response to this posting, apparently prize
committees are only revealed at the ICM:
http://www.mathunion.org/General/Prizes/FormerSelectionCommittees.html
Looking at the committees for the Fields Medals I must say that
quite a few of the men I know who served on the committees are
supportive of women (Nirenberg, Caffarelli, Lax, and Cheeger were
all faculty at CIMS when I was there). One questions how strong
the letters were in support of women and whether any women were
nominated.
For information about how to submit nominations for IMU prizes:
http://www.mathunion.org/General/Prizes/NominationGuidelines.html
Perhaps it is essential that a top mathematician who has either
delivered a plenary address in the past or served on a committee
make the nomination. Also one must look for extra top notch
young women with credentials like NSF postdocs or Sloans and
some key important result. Getting more than one person to nominate
her might be crucial.
Note the plenary lecturers are not necessarily under 40, but it is
unclear how to nominate someone for such a lecture without contacting
the prize committees and saying the person is worthy of such a prize.
So why not nominate a 45 year old woman for the Fields Medal and
pretend not to know her age? Any of our Emmy Noether Lecturer's
young enough?
Christina
Judith Roitman
Jenny Harrison
Marianne
I see I missed a number of postings!
I think pushing the idea of awards to less young mathematicians is
absolutely great!
So I want to re-attract attention to it!!! What can we do to make this
happen?
Maybe we need a wealthy donor to come up with an earmarked prize for
50+?
On another side, Christina, I know plenty of hispanic mathematicians :)
!! But, most of them are foreign born, and for all I know their
families were not poor - either well off or
at least one parent with a college degree... (sounds familiar?).
Cheers,
Marianne
Jenny Harrison
improved if we limited awards for recent breakthroughs, although to
mathematicians 50+. That way, people would be encouraged to keep
trying as they got older, and the award would not be for some dusty,
albeit important, result from decades before. We already have a
number of prizes for that category, anyway. This new category of
prize could be exciting for everyone, since we all get older, except
for those who want to give up and want everyone else to, as well!
Jenny
sorm...@member.ams.org
proposed the paper
awards which would probably not be as selective as what Jenny Harrison
is proposing.
In my department, CUNY, there are two things the 50 plus people do that
draw attention
from the department: get published in Annals, get an NSF grant. Both
of these are highly
selective for Full Professors, although perhaps still not selective
enough for someone
in Jenny Harrison's department.
The difficulty with coming up with a new highly selective prize is that
women won't get it
for the reasons described in the original Alexander-Taylor-Uhlenbeck
letter (see the webpage
below for the link to this forum which includes that letter and other
older posts).
On the other hand, the important paper award which would not be so
selective going to say 1000 papers a year, and maybe with the top 100
receiving a higher level of recognition, would still help women lkike
Jenny. Her recent results are in a collection of top notch papers, so
she could be noticed for receiving an exceptionally high number of
these paper awards.
The idea is, if men aren't willing to choose women as best geometer or
some such one person per year selective prize, but are willing to give
us prizes which go to 6 or more people in a subfield, then the
accumulation of such smaller prizes could well be a means of proving
ones worth similar to the way high citations help those in fields with
relatively high citation rates.
Jenny Harrison
sorm...@member.ams.org
for 50+ would not go to women even if it was explicitly stated as an
award for a result achieved over 50. Let's look for example at a
typical conference in Geometric Analysis. These conferences regularly
invite 4-5 50+ speakers all of whom have some inspiring new results
usually all men. What about the featured reviews at the mathscinet
again presumably chosen for the quality of the result? What appears to
be the prerequisite for a featured review? Similar to the conferences:
well known author plus a really good new result. I think a committee
reviewing awards for 50+ results will do the same thing. I have been
told explicitly to my face that "there are no good results by women
this year" when questioning conference organizers for inviting no
women.
The papers award would be given to so many people that men would lose
their defensiveness. The idea would be that strong people would
accumulate more of these awards. That a woman who is an associate
professor and wants to go up for Full Professor can point out she has
5-6 such awards and the guy who got Full Professor last year only has 3
or has 5 but 4 of them are from years earlier.
Here is a question for Jenny Harrison: what would it take for a woman
who is an associate or Full professor somewhere to get an invitation
for a full professorship in your department? Would 3-4 recent Annals
quality papers look impressive to them? And of course it would be
expected to have an NSF grant. Also a few key conference talks might
be needed so her name is on people's tongues. This is my naive guess
as to what a bare minimum would be. The papers award is meant to
replace the need to actually submit to Annals.
Jenny Harrison
> Here is a question for Jenny Harrison: what would it take for a woman
> who is an associate or Full professor somewhere to get an invitation
> for a full professorship in your department? Would 3-4 recent Annals
> quality papers look impressive to them? And of course it would be
> expected to have an NSF grant. Also a few key conference talks might
> be needed so her name is on people's tongues. This is my naive guess
> as to what a bare minimum would be. The papers award is meant to
> replace the need to actually submit to Annals.
>
I have never sat on the hiring committee, but I regularly attend
department meetings when a case for appointment is brought forward.
Although many factors are considered, letters of recommendation
matter the most -- not NSF grants, prizes, ICM talks, or publications
in the Annals. However, if a mathematician had achieved some of
these, one would think that strong letters would be easy to come by.
(I.e. Christina Sormani's criteria are probably sufficient but not
necessary.) A mathematical presentation given by a faculty member who
supports the appointment is also important so that we can all see
what mathematics has been done by the candidate. Comparison with
others in the field is a factor and this is usually done in letters
of recommendation. I am never sure how people can be compared so
definitively, though. It is just the common practice. I cannot
imagine our department turning someone down because she did not have
an NSF grant as long as her letters were strong.
Now you might ask, how does one get the attention of potential
recommenders? This would be a great topic for this group. I have
seen one or two very organized young men simply fly to where the big
shots in their field are, hang out with them for a few weeks, send
them papers, go to conferences where these people will be, and
suggest collaborations on papers, all with the conscious view of
asking for a letter down the line. This was done over a period of
years and did not work all that well. For me, this seems too
deliberate, but perhaps some version of this would be helpful. What
do others think? (I will mention my own experience here for
completion. My path has been unusual and I don't recommend it, but
for what is is worth I have focused on teaching my students what I
have learned that is new in graduate seminar courses and
undergraduate experimental courses. The word is getting out through
them and through a few experts who have paid attention. I certainly
tried to tell numerous experts directly over many years, and knocked
on door after door, but was largely ignored until recently. Now I
am collecting the new results into one large monograph without
publishing them individually as they all fit together into one
whole. It probably won't be released until next summer when I am not
teaching. This highly unusual path is only possible with
tenure.) Would others share their stories and recommend strategies?
But let me close with this: It used to be very important to be in
residence at a place such as Berkeley in order to do cutting edge
research. The only way to know about what was going on was through
superstars in residence, who were sent preprints from everyone around
the world who wanted their attention, and through lectures of
visitors and faculty. This was a system frought with problems of
abuse, including favoritism and retaliation. We should all be
grateful to the internet for changing all of this. We can now
directly find out for ourselves what is happening in our fields. If
you have good support from colleagues and a reasonable teaching load,
it hardly matters where you are anymore. With access to knowledge,
time to think, and peace of mind, many things are possible for our
creative minds. Wikipedia, Amazon.com, GoogleBooks, and the
MathSciNet are indispensable. You don't need prizes and you don't
need to be at Berkeley.
I hope this helps.
Jenny
sorm...@member.ams.org
>I think that our chances of attracting support for this would be
> improved if we limited awards for recent breakthroughs,
I would like to add that officially NSF grants are supposed to be based
on quality of the proposal, work resulting from prior support, and the
past
five years of research. In fact, the limitation to the past five years
of
research has hurt the assessment of women with recent maternity leaves.
However, it does help for a 50+ mathematician with a sudden burst of
energy and I believe it is the policy to avoid just giving perpetual
grant
renewals to the stars of the past.
sorm...@member.ams.org
> >
> > Here is a question for Jenny Harrison: what would it take for a woman
> > who is an associate or Full professor somewhere to get an invitation
> > for a full professorship in your department? Would 3-4 recent Annals
> > quality papers look impressive to them? And of course it would be
> > expected to have an NSF grant. Also a few key conference talks might
> > be needed so her name is on people's tongues. This is my naive guess
> > as to what a bare minimum would be. The papers award is meant to
> > replace the need to actually submit to Annals.
> >
>
> I have never sat on the hiring committee, but I regularly attend
> department meetings when a case for appointment is brought forward.
> Although many factors are considered, letters of recommendation
> matter the most -- not NSF grants, prizes, ICM talks, or publications
> in the Annals. However, if a mathematician had achieved some of
> these, one would think that strong letters would be easy to come by.
> (I.e. Christina Sormani's criteria are probably sufficient but not
> necessary.) A mathematical presentation given by a faculty member who
> supports the appointment is also important so that we can all see
> what mathematics has been done by the candidate. Comparison with
> others in the field is a factor and this is usually done in letters
> of recommendation. I am never sure how people can be compared so
> definitively, though. It is just the common practice. I cannot
> imagine our department turning someone down because she did not have
> an NSF grant as long as her letters were strong.
>
Does anyone have input as to how to ensure the letters are top quality?
I have seen letters written for job candidates at CUNY which are so
easily interpretted
in a negative light that, regardless of the intention of the letter
writer, practically
elliminate the candidate from contention. In fact I have taken it upon
myself to
email a letter writer more than once pointing out exactly how a letter
can be construed
negatively and received new letters!!!!
Phrases I've seen interpretted negatively: "she works well with
coauthors", "her research would be even more stellar if she spent less
time on service", and of course the usual "she works hard".
Although I used the pronown "she" here, I've seen similar phrasing
viewed in a negative way for men as well when there is someone on the
committee particularly opposed to that man.
Perhaps someone should write an article for the Notices about how to
write a tight letter of recommendation: one which doesn't have lines
that can be twisted into the negative, and one
that is careful to give plenty adjectives describing theorems, and yes,
how to compare mathematicians, because as arbitrary as that may seem it
is an essential component for deciding whether someone is worthy of
position in a similar department.
sorm...@member.ams.org
Jenny Harrison wrote:
>
> But let me close with this: It used to be very important to be in
> residence at a place such as Berkeley in order to do cutting edge
> research. The only way to know about what was going on was through
> superstars in residence, who were sent preprints from everyone around
> the world who wanted their attention, and through lectures of
> visitors and faculty. This was a system frought with problems of
> abuse, including favoritism and retaliation. We should all be
> grateful to the internet for changing all of this. We can now
> directly find out for ourselves what is happening in our fields. If
> you have good support from colleagues and a reasonable teaching load,
> it hardly matters where you are anymore. With access to knowledge,
> time to think, and peace of mind, many things are possible for our
> creative minds. Wikipedia, Amazon.com, GoogleBooks, and the
> MathSciNet are indispensable. You don't need prizes and you don't
> need to be at Berkeley.
>
There are still many reasons to be in a top department: teaching loads
are
often lower, postdocs are available, graduate students are more likely
to
end up as future leaders, seminars are well funded, courses are taught
by
visiting profesors from around the world, libraries are well stocked...
In my case, CUNY has a high teaching load but excellent location which
allows
us to run regular seminars in many fields and also to attend seminars
and special
topics courses at places nearby. I have definitely grown
significantly as a mathematician
learning from people because of its location. I am not as quick to
learn from papers
as from talks and so being here has been crucial for me. I will add
that I have managed
to avoid the high teaching load with grant funding.
If I were located at a university with a 2-3 load, only a weekly
colloquium rather than
a differential geometry seminar, and no regular access to top
mathematicians, I would
be a much narrower mathematician. I might still have good results but
I would be less
likely to have broadened my knowledge significantly past my
postdoctoral work.
This is why it is still essentially to get more women to top
departments beyond the postdoc
level.
Jenny Harrison
>> But let me close with this: It used to be very important to be in> residence at a place such as Berkeley in order to do cutting edge> research. The only way to know about what was going on was through> superstars in residence, who were sent preprints from everyone around> the world who wanted their attention, and through lectures of> visitors and faculty. This was a system frought with problems of> abuse, including favoritism and retaliation. We should all be> grateful to the internet for changing all of this. We can now> directly find out for ourselves what is happening in our fields. If> you have good support from colleagues and a reasonable teaching load,> it hardly matters where you are anymore. With access to knowledge,> time to think, and peace of mind, many things are possible for our> MathSciNet are indispensable. You don't need prizes and you don't> need to be at Berkeley.>
Judith Roitman
On Nov 20, 2006, at 10:57 PM, sorm...@member.ams.org wrote:
>
> Jenny Harrison Wrote:
>
>> I think that our chances of attracting support for this would be
>> improved if we limited awards for recent breakthroughs,
>
> I would like to add that officially NSF grants are supposed to be based
> on quality of the proposal, work resulting from prior support, and the
> past
> five years of research. In fact, the limitation to the past five years
> of
> research has hurt the assessment of women with recent maternity leaves.
>
Perhaps one helpful thing in another area would be to open up NSF
applications to information about events such as serious illness,
maternity leaves (I would want to generalize that to recent births or
adoptions --- not all universities have decent maternity leave
policies), etc.
Marianne
> her results before 40, we would have had a female Field's medalist,"
Well, excuses for posting what other people told me informally... I'm
not in the field, buy I was told that she actually almost got it!
The story says that this was in the times when there was no interaction
with the Soviet mathematicians. Karen and a Russian lady (I must be
getting old, I forgot the name, but she was already a top one)
independently and near simulaneously proved a major result. According
to the story, the Russian lady got her result a tad earlier, but
nobody in the West knew. Continues the story that the Fields medal was
given to a third person, to avoid conflict. I guess
that person in addition to help bypass the US-URSS competition also
handily was a man :).
Ever since, for me personally Karen was as good as a any Fields
medalist. I just have a huge admirationn for her.
Jenny Harrison
sorm...@member.ams.org
>
> Perhaps one helpful thing in another area would be to open up NSF
> applications to information about events such as serious illness,
> maternity leaves (I would want to generalize that to recent births or
> adoptions --- not all universities have decent maternity leave
> policies), etc.
Interestingly I know someone who served on an NSF panel in which a guy
was dismissed for a lack of publishing and then learned later he had
had cancer and felt really bad the decision was made without that
knowledge. This person suggested that I mention my maternity leaves
and particularly the fact that I was seriously ill during the second
pregnancy on my NSF application. I didn't take the advise thinking the
proposal looked strong enough without it and that I did not have
obvious publishing gaps. Actually the gaps are so delayed (since
everything takes two years to publish) that it is only now that my
record is starting to look bad. This year, I do mention the maternity
leaves within the prior support (explaining why it was spread over 5
years). I doubt I'll get the grant anyway at this point so I might as
well give an excuse for the gap. I'll report if there is any obvious
response to this on the panel's response and if I do get a grant, then
maybe it does help.
sorm...@member.ams.org
for the Fields Medal.
She was born in 1942 and so was 40 in 1982, the year she won a
MacArthur Fellowship. This info is available in S. Ambrose et al.
"Journeys of Women in Science and and Engineering, No Universal
Constants", Temple University Press and on her webpage:
http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/uhlen/pers.html
In S Donaldson, "Remarks on gauge theory, complex geometry and
4-manifold topology", in M Atiyah and D Iagolnitzer (eds.), Fields
Medallists Lectures (Singapore, 1997), 384-403,
he mentions that Uhlenbeck's papers that appeared around 1982
"contained essentially all the analysis required to put this picture on
a firm footing. The papers do not discuss "bubbling" explicitly -
perhaps the arguments were supposed to be obvious to experts by analogy
with the work of Sacks and Uhlenbeck in the harmonic maps case."
The winners in 1982 were Connes, Thurston and Yau. Interestingly
Hamilton's paper introducing the Ricci flow appeared in 1982 which
ultimately has beaten out Thurston's approach to Poincare. One never
knows what mathematics will ultimately prove more useful.
Interestingly Gromov also would have qualified that year. And isn't
it amazing two out of three Fields medals went to people in geometric
analysis?
There will always be many great mathematicians overlooked for a Fields
Medal because it needs to be rewarded to the young and thus only to
people whose mathematics not only comes to them when they are young but
is clearly influencial and important within a couple of years.
Obviously there will be field bias depending on the committee.
What is more of a concern is why there are so few women ICM speakers
and if we need to nominate more women for Fields Medals in order to get
them considered for positions as an ICM speaker. I don't think we need
to follow the age rules in these nominations!