Jenny Harrison finally won tenure last summer in the mathematics department at the University of California at Berkeley. But the debate over whether she deserves it continues to rage.
Denied tenure in 1986, Ms. Harrison waged a seven-year battle against Berkeley, accusing it of sex discrimination. Since rejoining the department, she has been the subject of a heated electronic-mail exchange that she and others say borders on harassment.
Some professors in the department have attacked her appointment in e-mail messages they sent to mathematicians at Berkeley and around the country. One accused her of “years of lying and a massive propaganda campaign.” Another wrote that she had obtained her appointment through “distortion and slander.”
The critics insist that they are not harassing her. They say that Ms. Harrison’s charges of discrimination went unanswered for years and that they are simply setting the record straight.
The situation so deteriorated that Ms. Harrison complained to John L. Heilbron, vice-chancellor of the university. He intervened, met with six math professors, and asked them to stop the messages.
Ms. Harrison was denied tenure in 1986 by a vote of 19 to 12 and sued Berkeley three years later. This year, she and the university reached a settlement that granted her a new tenure review by a committee independent of the math department. The committee did not examine her old tenure case. Instead it considered her current qualifications and compared her record with that of 10 other professors who had won tenure in the department.
Last summer the panel unanimously recommended that she be granted tenure as a full professor, and Berkeley’s chancellor, Chang-Lin Tien, agreed. Berkeley, however, maintained that it had treated her fairly and that her qualifications had improved since she was denied tenure. The department now has about 60 full-time professors, three of whom are women.
Ms. Harrison says she knew some of her colleagues would have trouble accepting her. But she never expected what she calls a “vocal and public retaliation.” She hastens to add that the majority of math professors have treated her warmly.
“I thought people would be willing to jump over the net and shake hands,” she says. “But looking back, I guess I’m not surprised. I have claimed in the past that there was a hostile environment, and this just confirms it.”
It is just such remarks that anger Robion C. Kirby and Marina Ratner, two math professors who are her most vocal critics. They say Berkeley told them to keep quiet about the case while it was pending. But they could no longer do so after Ms. Harrison held a news conference to announce her appointment and, they say, to “trash” the department once again.
The recent squabbling began when Ms. Ratner sent an e-mail message to department members. She wrote that Ms. Harrison had been “imposed on our Department by the Chancellor’s order. This certainly does not make her qualified for the job.”
“In this country,” Ms. Ratner wrote in the message, “people are unable to withstand shameless, intimidating lobbying (such as hers), especially if it is `politically correct.’” Mr. Kirby and Ms. Ratner maintain that Ms. Harrison was denied tenure because her scholarship, while adequate, was not strong enough to merit a lifetime appointment in a leading department like Berkeley’s. Mr. Kirby has written a 25-page “history and critique” of Ms. Harrison’s case, defending the department’s handling of it.
Mr. Kirby says it is not surprising that the most recent committee granted Ms. Harrison tenure, since it compared her record -- 18 years after getting her doctorate -- with that of faculty members who were only five or six years past their Ph.D.
“She’s not a bad mathematician,” Mr. Kirby says. “She won’t disgrace the math department. But we passed on hiring a lot of people in her area who were stronger than she is.”
Ms. Harrison says Mr. Kirby is misinformed, but she declines to get into a point-by-point rebuttal. “It will just drag this out indefinitely,” she says.
She defends her work. In 1991, she obtained the confidential files of eight math professors who had received tenure at Berkeley while she was there. Those records, she says, show that her qualifications were at least as strong as four of the eight men who won tenure.
Ms. Harrison’s supporters view the messages and continuing debate as harassment.
“I think they went beyond the bounds of collegial and civilized discourse,” says Morris W. Hirsch, a professor in the department. “I thought and still think she’s a very good mathematician. I think the department made a mistake in not granting her tenure originally.”
Mr. Hirsch expects the controversy to die out soon. The fact is, he says, Ms. Harrison is a tenured professor and she is at Berkeley to stay.