Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia

Emily Toth

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780812215663
• eBook ISBN: 9780812208115
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Counseling

In question-and-answer form, Ms. Mentor advises academic women about issues they daren't discuss openly, such as: How does one really clamber onto the tenure track when the job market is so nasty, brutish, and small? Is there such a thing as the perfectly marketable dissertation topic? How does a meek young woman become a tiger of an authority figure in the classroom-and get stupendous teaching evaluations? How does one cope with sexual harassment, grandiosity, and bizarre behavior from entrenched colleagues?Ms. Mentor's readers will find answers to the secret queries they were afraid to ask anyone else. They'll discover what it really takes to get tenure; what to wear to academic occasions; when to snicker, when to hide, what to eat, and when to sue. They'll find out how to get firmly planted in the rich red earth of tenure. They'll learn why lunch is the most important meal of the day.

Muddles and Puzzles

Ms. Mentor prides herself on being able to help with virtually any problem, however peculiar. Academic matters are her speciality, but she rarely hesitates to give advice on anything at all. (She prefers Thai food to British, for instance—as anyone with a palate should.)

In this section, she presents a stew, miscellany, gumbo, casserole, potpourri, or what-have-you. Oddments, in short, for the cogitation and delectation of learned sages and gentle readers.

Ms. Mentor hopes they will provoke debate and study.

She does not recommend the appointment of committees.

Notorious Woman of Letters

Q: I happen to have the same name as a very famous woman professor. She's also quite notorious for, it's said, sleeping with big names of all sexes to get where she is now. (I am skeptical about that. As Ellen Goodman says, “If women can sleep their way to the top, how come there are so few of us there?”)

But that's not my problem. My problem is that I sometimes get mail intended for this famous woman. And sometimes, especially when it's from foreigners, it's very spicy and salacious and detailed. Yes, I know I should just send it off to her, but of course it is addressed to me (sort of), so I always read and photocopy it.

But that's not my question, either. I know what I'm doing is wrong, and that's one of the pleasures.

My question is this: I recently got several letters addressed to her in a language I can't read (I think it's Arabic). I'd like to get one of the Arabic scholars at my university to translate the letters for me, except that I'm afraid of what they might say to this famous woman, or about her (and, by implication, me).

How do I cover my privacy—and hers?

A: Ms. Mentor is intrigued by the niceties of your personal ethics. And she agrees that it is unwise to share gossipy and delightfully wicked letters that are très amusant with just anyone, such as whichever professor of Arabic happens to be around. And, of course, what if the letters in Arabic are actually to you and not to the famous woman whose name you're lucky enough to bear?

What if the letters contain illicit or explicit suggestions, or sordid and kinky revelations about widely known individuals whose reputations have hitherto been unstained? What if the letters are nothing but lurid, irresponsible gossip, full of imagination and far-reaching innuendos?

The more she thinks about the possibilities, the more Ms. Mentor feels she has come up with the perfect solution.

You should send the letters, unopened, to Ms. Mentor, immediately.

She will handle them.

A Cosmic Question

Q: Among male academics, which discipline has the sexiest guys, and which one has the most sexist? Please hurry your reply. I need to know at once.

A: Ms. Mentor will pass along some of the conventional wisdom that she has gathered over the last half-century. She does not vouch for its veracity.

• Engineers make faithful husbands: they are plodders who lack imagination.

• Political scientists are the best dressed at their annual conferences (say publishers' representatives).

• Psychologists have the highest rate of sexual harassment of graduate students.

• Sociologists think they have marvelous senses of humor.

• Psychologists and sociologists are most apt to have beards. Next likely: men in English departments. Least likely: men in business or military science.

• Physical education (kinesiology) professors have the best-toned bodies.

• Men in agriculture have a peculiar habit of referring to women as “females,” never as “women” (or even “ladies” or “girls”).

• Veterinary men have gentle hands, and can treat your cats.

• Mathematicians are most likely to button their shirts wrong, letting their belly buttons show.

• Men in theater or dramatic arts have the best hair.

• If you want someone to hum “Some Enchanted Evening” romantically in your ear, on key, try a professor of music.

• Men in the humanities are unsure about their masculinities, because they cannot fix their own cars.

• Men in Spanish have macho ideas.

• There are scarcely any men in French, human ecology (home economics), or nursing.

• Men in art or interior design are not necessarily gay.

• Historians sometimes smell musty.

• Archaeologists always do.

Overall, however, Ms. Mentor thinks the question both too deep and too silly to dignify with a reply. She exits, harrumphing.

Once His Auditor, Always His Audience

Q: My husband was my professor. (Yes, yes, I know: well, they didn't have rules about sexual harassment when we got together.) Now, years later, he still can't stop pontificating at me. Recently, sarcastically, I suggested installing a podium in our living room. He was genuinely thrilled with the idea. How can I get him to stop being such a pompous ass?

A: Your query reminded Ms. Mentor of a much-married professor she once knew in the Far West, who won the heart of a young lady from a tiny town who worshiped his mind. And so they were wed, but the professor had many a child support and alimony payment to make from his past lives, and the newlyweds were quite poor, especially when the new wife (his fifth) immediately became pregnant. “I want to bear Roger's child,” she said, radiant.

But her glow faded when she found herself living in a trailer, which was all they could afford on the remnants of her salary. And her beautiful and brilliant Roger now spent his off days in front of the TV, hairy in his undershirt, scratching his testicles with a fork.

(Yes, dear hearts, a fork. Ms. Mentor and Miss Manners would both have preferred a spoon.)

Your problem is simpler, Ms. Mentor feels. You're just a captive audience for a man who expects to be worshiped. Unlike doctors and judges, who may be merely experts on spleens and writs, university professors are permitted to pontificate everywhere on everything (they're on TV every night). Academic men can get enormously inflated views of their own worth and interest. (This is rarely a problem with women: most women are not appreciated enough.)

But now that Ms. Mentor has pontificated a bit herself: What should you do?

The usual marital solutions include therapy; encounter groups; church or synagogue counseling; or immersion in mindless television, including talk shows and psychic friends and home-shopping networks. Ms. Mentor recommends some kind of intervention, so you don't seem to be the only spoilsport who fails to recognize his greatness. He may think about trading you in for a younger, more worshipful model.

Assuming you want to keep him, then, you need to get him to pay more attention to you—or at least less to himself.

At home, tickling or flailing at him with a loofah bat can be good starters. Another waker-upper: insist that he give you a long essay test and grade it immediately. Or you give him a test. Or ply him with heavy doses of carbohydrates—fettucine Alfredo is especially good—so that he stretches out snoring after dinner and never launches into his lecture at all.

Or you can enroll in medical school and threaten to dissect him.

He'll have to notice that.

So Young, So Flatulent

Q: Under stress, I tend to have intestinal troubles, which result in (how can I say it) gas. I don't have tenure. What if I fart at a bad moment?

A: Ms. Mentor knows that there are few situations more embarrassing for the young. That may be why there is no juvenile equivalent for the term Old Fart.

Moreover, the social edginess accompanying flatulence appears to cross all classes and cultures. Consider, for instance, the famous time that Queen Elizabeth's horse (to be frank about it) farted during an official military ceremony.

The Queen apologized to the nearest soldier, who responded, gallantly, “If you hadn't spoken, Your Majesty, I would have thought it was the horse.”

For the nonroyal, one of the best coverups is to imply—by facial expressions and nose-twitching—that the gas was leaked by someone else. Polite people will ignore it, and you're beyond the prankish undergrads who store the expelled gases under their coats and then flap them at unsuspecting strangers.

There are medical products and antacids; calcium sometimes helps. In social situations, avoid such “fart foods” as carbonated drinks, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, onions, pretzels, nuts, and dried fruits. And, of course, eschew anything with beans (“Beans, beans, that terrible fruit / The more you eat, the more you t——”).

If all else fails, and you are socially embarrassed, just smile weakly. Most adults are forgiving, especially if what you emit is not loud. Even if it is the toxic silent-but-deadly variety, most people would rather pretend it did not happen.

After all, the next eruption could be their own.

What the Ladies Think

Q: I have a colleague (male) who persists in asking me for “the woman's point of view” on almost everything: curriculum, nuclear arms, language requirements, dirty rock lyrics, baseball. He's persistent and shallow. What should I do?

A: Ms. Mentor senses a maladroit form of gallantry. Your colleague wants to include you in conversations but also note your “femininity” (whatever that may mean). He does not realize that the best way to welcome women as colleagues is to be inclusive—asking everyone for opinions on nuclear arms—rather than singling out women as a “special” instance of expertise.

Some people would confront your colleague (“Whaddya mean, women's point of view?”) and lecture him on some of the subtler forms of sex discrimination. Ms. Mentor, however, would smile serenely and say, “Women have varying points of view on everything, just as men do,” and ask him his opinion.

Ms. Mentor believes that serenity, charm, and mild condescension will do much to make academia a less snarly and more pleasant workplace.

Mentor or Malice?

Q: An older female colleague, something of a mentor, recently proposed a departmental course of action with which I strongly disagreed. The other members of our small department, all male, sided with me. I don't wish to alienate this woman, whom I admire for what she's done for me and other women (she is the only woman full professor in our college unit). To make things even dicier, I have now been elected department chair, although I am an untenured assistant professor. I believe my female colleague helped engineer my election (which I did not seek), perhaps to give herself further power within the department. Do you have any suggestions as to how I may navigate the deep waters I see ahead?

A: Ms. Mentor does indeed see sharks lying in wait—as well as icebergs, sandbars, and knife-wielding pirates. Ms. Mentor is appalled that a department would elect an untenured person, with no job security, as chair. In that role, you will

• have to struggle with the dean for department resources—and then hope that the dean will favor your tenure;

• have to say no to faculty members who want money, released time, computers, and the like—and then hope that those disgruntled colleagues will vote to give you tenure;

• have little or no time to publish—and then have to argue that you've published enough to receive tenure anyway.

You will also, inevitably, make enemies among students, secretaries, maintenance staffs, and faculty you don't even know, for real or imagined slights.

Ms. Mentor wonders why your colleagues have elected you chair. Perhaps they're fond of you; perhaps they feel that the leadership experience will be good for you. You may indeed be the brightest, most capable person in the department. (You did, after all, write to Ms. Mentor.)

But too often such a peculiar election suggests deep discord. Possibly there's chronic feuding, and no one else would take the job. Possibly not enough people know or care that academia is deeply hierarchical, and that an untenured, low-on-the-totem-pole person will have no clout. Such a chair cannot be effective in getting respect or resources for the department.

Or maybe somebody just dislikes you and wants to make you squirm.

You need friends and supporters, and your mentor, Professor Senior Sister, is the key. Forget your recent disagreement; shrewd people don't take professional tiffs personally. Invite Professor Sister to lunch, where you'll make a point of praising her: for a recent publication, or a teaching achievement, or for spectacular mentoring. This praise is sincere, but also useful.

For Professor Senior Sister knows the department lore and history that you need to know. Ask about feuds and factions, triumphs and terrors, and how Prof. Sister handled them. There is nothing so flattering, or so wise, as a request for advice. Prof. Sister can be (has to be) your best source and ally.

Will the men in the department resent this alliance? Probably—but every department has soreheads who hate the boss on principle. (They probably have unresolved conflicts with their fathers.) You'll do best by forming connections with everyone through regular meetings, lunches, and social events. Try to appear open-minded, candid, and honest, while being attuned to mutinies, conspiracies, and backbitings.

You may also comfort yourself by reading academic novels: Alison Lurie's The War Between the Tates is a particularly good satirical window on faculty meetings.

Finally, though, Ms. Mentor advises you to quietly consult job lists and put out networking feelers. A department that would choose an untenured assistant professor as chair has troubles, and you may prefer to spend your academic life elsewhere.

But having been an administrator may turn out to be your ticket to ride.

Plagiarism

Q: I suspect one of my colleagues is plagiarizing from my research and publishing it under his own name. How can I rescue my good name—and my research?

A: Ms. Mentor regrets that plagiarism seems to be a more and more common offense in academia—along with scientific fraud of all kinds. When Congressman John Dingell (D., Mich.) investigated the field, he found a snake pit of cases, including one that seemed to involve Nobel laureate David Baltimore. With the vital, committed Dingell no longer chairing the Energy and Commerce Committee after the 1994 elections, Ms. Mentor suspects that all kinds of despicable and new shenanigans have ensued.

Researchers do know that “who discovered what” can be murky. In science, recently, as many as one hundred or more authors have been listed on papers: one notorious paper credited over eight hundred “authors.” Yet in other instances, there have been grievances and suits from researchers whose names have been left off published reports. In one Research I university alone, there were recently four cases of faculty and graduate students filing grievances and suits against each other—all claiming plagiarism (“theft of intellectual property”).

In the humanities, plagiarism can be messy to prove. If a Harvard professor publishes under her own name part of a student's interpretation of a Shakespeare sonnet, is the professor guilty of plagiarism? (Ms. Mentor thinks yes; many academicians would say no.) If a Pennsylvania student writes the first draft of her professor's book on contraception and it is eventually published under his name only, is the professor guilty of plagiarism? (Ms. Mentor thinks yes; many academicians would say no.)

And what of the Southwestern university professor who suddenly begins writing and publishing about feminism—just at the time he begins directing the first student who's dealt with feminism in a dis...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Graduate School: The Rite of Passage
• The Job Hunt
• The Conference Scene
• First Year on the Job
• The Perils and Pleasures of Teaching
• When Cultures Collide
• Muddles and Puzzles
• Slouching Toward Tenure
• Post-Tenure
• Emerita: The Golden Years
• Final Words
• Bibliography: Women in Academia and Other Readings Sampled by Ms. Mentor
• Index