| The percentage of {{U}}(19)
{{/U}} hired for tenured positions at Harvard University's Faculty of Arts
and Sciences has declined {{U}}(20) {{/U}} year since 2000, prompting a
group of professors to complain that the Ivy League school's leadership isn't
doing {{U}}(21) {{/U}}. The proportion of women receiving tenured job {{U}}(22) {{/U}} went from a height of 36 percent during the 2000-2001 {{U}}(23) {{/U}} year to 26 percent in 2001-2002 and then to 19 percent in 2002-2003. Last year, just 4 of 32 tenured {{U}}(24) {{/U}} were offered to women. The numbers all {{U}}(25) {{/U}} to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the largest {{U}}(26) {{/U}} of the university which {{U}}(27) {{/U}} both the undergraduate school and the graduate school of arts and sciences. The {{U}}(28) {{/U}} has prompted 26 professors to {{U}}(29) {{/U}} a letter to President Lawrence H. Summers, who has {{U}}(30) {{/U}} over every year of the decline. Summers has agreed to meet next month with the professors. "There's no {{U}}(31) {{/U}} that hiring as many extraordinary women members of the faculty as we can has to be a crucial priority for the university," Summers, who took over as president in 2001, told The Boston Globe in Wednesday's {{U}}(32) {{/U}}. The letter suggests that Summers may have inadvertently caused the decline by failing to {{U}}(33) {{/U}} the issue, by concentrating new hires in disciplines with fewer women, and by seeking out "rising young stars", who are more likely to be at an age when women pause in their careers to have children. Summers said that some of the responsibility lies with Harvard's academic departments. Departments nominate and review candidates for senior jobs, though all must ultimately be approved by him. Overall, women currently make up 18 percent of Harvard's senior faculty and 34 percent of the junior faculty, proportions similar to those of peer institutions. |