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To: Coleus
The one that rankles him most dates from his undergraduate days at MIT, where as a young woman in a class dominated by men he was the only student to solve a complicated math problem. The professor said a boyfriend must have done the work for her, according to Barres.

Two comments:

1) That's horrendously unprofessional.

2) I've never known (or heard secondhand about) a female physics student who's ever had anything remotely like that happen to her during my career. Undoubtedly things like this used to be more common, but I can't believe it's widespread now.

I'll give a counter-anecdote. There was a female physicist who was being considered for a position at a university where I worked. This researcher was very highly regarded; even as a grad student, I knew who she was by reputation alone. I chanced to overhear a discussion about her hiring; there was general agreement that hiring her would be great for the department, because as a woman and a minority, she would count towards two of the department's affirmative-action targets.

Those words hit me like a punch in the gut. Here was someone whose work I admired, someone I looked forward to having as a mentor. But to the department, that counted for nothing: her value was as a token. Her genitals and her yellow skin color had value while her world-class mind did not. And this value was assigned by the attempt to redress the wrongs of racism and sexism!

Can one eat enough, to vomit enough?

48 posted on 07/15/2006 9:11:53 PM PDT by Physicist
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To: Physicist

That is PRECISELY what is horribly wrong with affirmative action.


51 posted on 07/15/2006 9:51:14 PM PDT by rlmorel (Islamofacism: It is all fun and games until someone puts an eye out. Or chops off a head.)
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