Date: Thu, 28 Dec 1995 20:04:04 -0500 From: Eileen Appelbaum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Yale strike-breaking aimed at women Hi netters, Whether you agree or disagree with the desire of graduate students at Yale to bargain collectively over job descriptions, grievance procedures, health benefits, and so on, the latest steps taken by some Yale faculty members -- as reported on the front page of Tuesday's Wall St. Journal -- are clearly unacceptable. Out of almost 200 graduate students who have withheld their labor and are participating in a grade strike, three have been singled out for disciplinary action. All three are women -- two are foreign students from England and India, who can be threatened with loss of their student visas, and the third is an African-American woman. They appear to have been selected both because they have been elected to leadership positions by the other graduate students and because the administration thinks they are especially vulnerable to this kind of pressure. In one department, the instrument of this disciplinary action is a young woman, a second-year untenured faculty member, who apparently has been encouraged by the safely tenured senior members of her department to bring charges against the graduate student whose work she supervises. The career of this young faculty member has, thus, also been put at-risk. Yale tenures only about three percent of its junior faculty. It is my experience that most universities have an aversion to controversy. In this timid, don't-rock-the-boat environment, this young assistant professor may find herself facing the same types of questions as the three graduate students brought up for disciplinary action should she have to go into the academic job market. As a tenured full professor earlier in my career, I served many times on hiring and tenure committees. I always insisted that senior faculty in my department take the risks in controversial situations. It is unconscionable that Yale should encourage an untenured faculty member to act as the point person in this situation. Like my own daughter, who is a graduate student at Yale and active in the union, many Yale graduate students were sought after by other universities as well. What message is Yale university sending to bright undergraduates, especially young women, as they consider where to pursue their graduate studies? Eileen Appelbaum Associate Research Director, Economic Policy Institute Executive Board Member, Industrial Relations Research Association
