EINEWS & COMMENT -iiiii..i.i-..1..>^«

Harrison Case: No Calm After StormAfter mathematician Jenny Harrison gained tenure at Berkeley, settling a sex discrimination suit,

her critics began waging a public campaign against her and the university

Four months ago, Jenny Harrison was ap-pointed a full professor in the math depart-ment at the University of California, Berke-ley, ending a bruising 7-year sex-discrimina-tion battle and settling the lawsuit she filedafter being denied tenure in 1986 (Science, 16July, p. 286). But if Harrison and the univer-sity administration hoped her appointment-which came after a recommendation by anindependent review panel-would resolvethe controversy swirling around her career atBerkeley, they have been disappointed. Infact, the decision to grant Harrison tenure hastriggered a backlash in the department againsther and the university administration.

Soon after Berkeley chancellorChang-Lin Tien appointed Har-rison on 1 July, a public campaignagainst her was initiated by the SsSSSSonly other tenured woman in themath department, Marina Ratner. ERatner and five other members ofthe department wrote letters to ^^S gnewspapers and magazines, sent ____material critical of Harrison ^^^^iaround the country, andwrote public electronic mail A i-

, ,

messages criticizing her, the H,^^^^. ^administration, and the set- EL^SSS2 5tlement. Berkeley mathema- - SH^IS?;"tician Alexandre Chorin ac-cused Harrison of winning ** ^"^3^" s

"her appointment by a dis- ?Lgraceful campaign based onlies, distortion, and slander." His \*^ycolleague Robion Kirby added: "The \Harrison camp trashed the math de- .^partment from the mail room bulletin \^board to the Congressional Record overseveral years."

The critics' harsh words were not reservedfor Harrison. Berkeley math professor DavidGale called the process by which Harrisonwas reinstated "a monumental disgrace." Hiscolleague Murray Protter said the procedurehad "a facade of fairness" but was "stacked infavor of her appointment." Even Berkeleymathematicians who are not vocal critics ofHarrison have qualms about the fact that theprocess was secret and that details ofhow thedecison was made-including names of themembers of the review panel-have notbeen disclosed.

The conflict simmered through the sum-mer and into the fall. In August, admini-stration officials held a meeting with the

most vocal critics in an attempt to respond totheir attacks. This effort did not have thedesired effect: Not long afterward, nine math-ematicians from the department wrote anopen letter to the head of the academic sen-ate criticizing Harrison and the settlement.And recently the controversy has begun tospread beyond the university, as two math-ematicians from other institutions weighedin with strong opinions-pro and con. Yetthe number of vocal partisans on both sides issmall, and during the controversy the major-

Although the charge of gender discrimi-nation was the basis for Harrison's suit, thesettlement was not a verdict on whether Har-rison suffered gender discrimination whenshe was denied tenure in 1986. Science haslearned that the settlement was based on therecommendation of a seven-member panelof academics, five of them mathematicians,including two from Berkeley. The panel re-viewed Harrison's research and teachingrecord and unanimously recommended thatshe be hired as a full professor with tenure.The committee was instructed not to addressthe issue of sex discrimination in the tenuredecision; instead, they were asked to focus on

1/ ^^"^ whether Harrison is currently qualified|K^,, .^®^-^ for tenure at Berkeley.

'^^'^ ^^^^^^^ To decide whether Harrison deserved^^^*s .f tenure, the committee first compared her

^^^$^3^, nearly work to work done by the nine menIet j^ '-h^K f and one woman promoted to tenure in math

at Berkeley since 1977, when Harrison cameto the department. That early work includedher first two notable results, which had beencompleted by the time of the departmentaltenure review in 1986 (although the com-mittee also included in its consideration sev-eral papers related to the second result thatwere finished after the departmental re-view). The committee concluded that Har-rison's research put her in the lower middle

of the comparison group: above 3, equalto 2, and below 5. Her teaching, they said,

ts lenure in Lowsuit Settlement was above average, her supervision of^h ~11^ a ^L= graduate students "unusually good," and

-::E is her service to the university community5 SS~jS^ gS^S~DII;g~a comparable to that of the others. Based§ z~isisS ^5sSB ^ga" y on this combination, the committee rec-

ommended that she be Qiven tenure.

\idd ity of the math department seemedto want nothing more than to "get on

with the process ofdoing math," as one mem-ber of the department put it.

Is this a tempest in an academic teapot-a small group of disgruntled mathematicianswho can't accept fair settlement of a genderdiscrimination suit? Or has the university, ina hurry to avoid financial damages and badpublicity in an era of political correctness, be-trayed its own principles? Beyond those ques-tions, settlement of the Harrison case andthe reaction to it raise the broader question ofhow allegations of sex discrimination shouldbe handled at elite research universities.

Next, the committee tackled the ques-tion of whether Harrison should be ap-

pointed associate or full professor. It com-pared her recent work to the work done bythe 10 in the comparison group to move fromassociate to full professor (all 10 have earnedthat promotion). Harrison's recent work in-cluded her third significant result. Since thatresult is a central part of the recent contro-versy, Science assigned our mathematics cor-respondent to conduct a review of it (see boxon next page).

The independent review committee con-cluded that the quality of Harrison's latestwork, including her third significant result,was "in many cases comparable and in somecases higher" than that done by the 10 others

SCIENCE * VOL. 262 * 15 OCTOBER 1993324

U.II-·*·IIC I-C·C·C·LULI.·-.-r-e.- YCIUIIW.IL..ILL-L. CIICY..LU--.ll·ll-. .-·LIII-··l*- IY··l.r·ll. .-·L..-.

.I-.-)rrlt.lPISlna .·r..-.---L.-rn a.qDkr s-ciw-.

IblYI' -L- -I.-L.P--.LIrYb(YI

,,,,,,r.l.p.rrrYLr s.-.uuDCll..tlnn*r. pCLy·IL6UCYI·IYrr ni.*I.L·lrrn.L.k..j -...ICI.·I.L.ryr·r.! ,,·LDlllu(Y11·l.r.Llds . ._.._.;.c........·. '

.n.llica.iscr, .t#nil

Reviewing Harrison s Latest Workin a papr to appear this month as a research announcement in theBulletin of the American Mathematical Society, Jenny Harrison

sa as Stokes' theorem and extends it to new0do-mains. Because HarMson's'recent work played a key part in the sette-rnentofhsexiscrimininsainst the UHniritofCafrn,Science asked its mathematics correspondent, Barry Cipra, to obtainexpertjuge of Hrison's recent work. His report.folows

Stokes' e m is a generalization of Newton and Leibniz'sfundamental theorem of calculus. Loosely speaking, itequatesintegrtion on a geometric region such as a surface with integra-tiont on the rglon's boundary. Clssically, Stokes' theorem requires that these boundaries be nice, and smooth, but that's notalw the ca. That's where Harrison stepsoin.

Following work by the late Hassler Whitney atdthe Institutefor Advanced Su n in Harrisondeveloped a theory of00integratn for objects called chains, that makes sense of Stokes'0theore incases wre the bjectsbeinginegrated over aresowild -thatordinary integrtion breaks down. Part Fof her purpose,Harrison told S , if rms techniq that will allowscientists to do rigorous mathematical work with;-some of thefractlmodelsnowin vogue.The majority of the approximately 20 mathematicians con-

tacted by Science declined to comment on Harrison's recent work,citing unfamiiarityor a desire not to get involved ithem contro-versyw at Berkeley. Four, however, were willing to speak, all spe-cialist i c al s, Harrin' s subfield.Wh:Shshe's rel doing is calculus on fractals." says Robert

De of Bot University. Dvaney is unreservedly- im-pressed with Harrison's recent work, calling it "a beautiful synthe-sis Ofclaical idasthestablishes "a deeprelatishi betweenthe dimension ofthe spacyoure working in-the fractal dimen-

sion-and the smoothness of the /map [i.e., function] that you're deal-ingwith."

, ; azJames Yorke ofthe University 4

ofMarylandoe ofthe found rs &,of chaos theory, agrees. Be- / icause of its central role ithee ,calculus of several variables, E a s"anything new you can say about A d a. 4 sStokes' theorem is a vluable contribu-tion," he says. Not allof Harrison's new workinvolves difficult aais Yorke notes, but '"theparts that aren't that deep are quite pretty. And there are otherparts that are-quite deep."i

Dennis Sullivan at the City University ofNew York, a leadingexpert in complex dynamics, was positive. though, less effusivethan Yorke or Devaney. "It's always important in math to extendthe existing structures to their largest and most natural mainofdefinition," he says. A number of problems in mathematics arerelated to lack of smoothness, Sullivan says, and Harrison's geo-metric approach is one way of attacking those problems. "I can'treally say [ofHarrison's workl 'This is great' or 'This is not great,"':he says. "It's solidwork,and it's astep thatshould betaken. It's ustnormal, solid mathematics. I would be happy to do it myself."

Morton Brown of the University of Michigan goes further:"I wish I had done it," he says. While noting that he hasn'tclosely read her most recent papers, Brown says he knows theproblem she's working on and thinks it's significant. In Brown'sopinion, Harrison's research will be the basis for future workon integration of nonsmooth curves. "I think it will make amark in mathematics."

-Barry Cipra

in being promoted to full professor. There-fore they recommended that she be ap-

pointed full professor. The report's conclu-sion, provided to Science by Dan Siegel, Har-rison's lawyer, states: "Our overall impres-sion of Harrison is that she is an outstanding,creative mathematician whose research is ofthe caliber expected for tenure at Berkeley."

Chancellor Tien took the panel's adviceand appointed Harrison a full professor.Criticism began immediately, starting withRatner, a member of the National Academyof Sciences and a highly regarded researcherin the subdiscipline called ergodic theory.On 11 July, Ratner e-mailed the mathemat-ics and statistics faculty that the settlement"certainly does not make [Harrison] qualifiedfor the job, which she got through years oflying and a massive propaganda campaignwhich went unanswered." Ratner also wrote

critical letters that were published in the SanFrancisco Examiner and Chronicle and in thenewsletter of the Association for Women inMathematics (AWM).

When Ratner was asked by Science whatthe "lies" were that she had mentioned in here-mail, she said Harrison's claims of genderdiscrimination were false; in fact, Ratner says,

the department made an "exceptional effortto save Harrison's tenure." Ratner pointedout that Berkeley's Privilege and Tenure Com-mittee, a faculty committee charged withmonitoring grievances of faculty and allega-tions of misconduct at the university, spent80 hours questioning 25 witnesses to reviewHarrison's claims. (The committee was notresponsible for deciding whether Harrisonshould have received tenure; they were askedsimply to decide whether the process wasflawed.) In its September 1989 report, thecommittee concluded there was "no demon-strable evidence to the charge that genderdiscrimination existed in the department."Ratner also argues that the department hasmade "enormous" efforts to recruit women,including three offers to women in the past 8years, two of whom accepted. (One has re-signed; another is an assistant professor.)

Long-time Harrison opponent Rob Kir-by calls Harrison's charges of sexism in themath department "like being accused ofchild molestation when you're completelyinnocent"-because both kinds of chargesare so difficult to disprove. He says "peoplewent out of their way" to treat Harrison "asnicely as one can." She was given a rare 3-

SCIENCE * VOL. 262 * 15 OCTOBER 1993

year leave, he said, to spend time at OxfordUniversity. More generally, he says, the Ber-keley math department has elected severalpro-affirmative action chairmen. "Is it notcurious," he says, "that the department, oftenby huge majorities, should elect pro-womenchairs, and yet be called prejudiced?"

Although the settlement offered no con-clusion on the issue ofgender discrimination,university provost Carol Christ told Sciencethat "the [math] department was judged notguilty of sex discrimination in 1986 [by thePrivilege and Tenure Committee], and that'swhat the administration accepts."

For her part, Harrison argues that the pro-cess leading to the Privilege and Tenure Com-mittee conclusion was flawed. For example,she says, she couldn't question witnessesabout confidential matters. Nor could shegain access to confidential files she needed tomake her case. That material came out, shesays, only during pre-trial discovery in hersuit, a process that included 110 hours ofdepositions, questioning of 17 witnesses un-der oath, and the release to her of more than1000 pages of confidential documents. As aresult, Harrison claims, ifher suit had gone toa jury, she was prepared to document specific

325

instances of gender discrimination that af-fected her career in the math department.

Harrison adds, however, that "I don'tthink the majority of people in the depart-ment are biased." Furthermore, she says, shedoesn't think it's "appropriate or construc-tive" to argue over charges ofdiscrimination now. "I justdon't want to rehash it." Nowthat she's a tenured member ofthe department, she says, "I justwant to prove some theorems,teach some students, and getalong with my colleagues."

Although Harrison says shedoesn't want to rehash the issueof gender discrimination, somesupport for her claims comesfrom two former chairmen of theBerkeley math department whoare advocates of hers. Morris RobicHirsch says Harrison was deniedtenure out of a "combination of habit andprejudice." John Kelley, who was chair whenHarrison was hired as an assistant professorin 1978, says there is "antiwoman prejudicein the Berkeley department, and, in fact, inall math departments." In addition, two fac-ulty member assistants to the chancellor, whowere responsible for reviewing women's is-sues, independently concluded Harrison wastreated unfairly in her 1986 tenure review.One specifically cited sex discrimination inrecommending that the department's deci-sion to deny Harrison tenure be overturned.

If Harrison's critics were upset with herfor claiming discrimination, they were alsoangry at the university for what they saw as abetrayal of its collegial principles in grantingHarrison tenure. As mathematician DavidGale put it in an e-mail to the math depart-ment: "Action at the department level is theprimary and most important part of thewhole appointment process ....Only in thisone case has the administration seen fit, forreasons I suspect we will never know, to vio-late its own rules by circumventing the entireappointment procedure."

Provost Christ acknowledges that univer-sity rules were not followed in the settle-ment, since those rules call for all personneldecisions to originate in the department."The department didn't have the conven-tional role," Christ says, "but this was not ausual case and we can't pretend the univer-sity entered into it with a blank slate." And,as Science has learned, the department wasnot excluded altogether. In 1991, when thepossibility of a settlement was being consid-ered, the then-chairman of the math depart-ment, Alberto Grunbaum, consulted about adozen members of the department concern-ing the possibility ofsettling. The dozen were"primarily Harrison critics," says Grunbaum,and "the majority" felt settling was "the lessundesirable path."

Furthermore, Christ says, the procedurewas not unprecedented. She cites two previ-ous cases at Berkeley in which sex discrimi-nation suits were settled via a review proce-dure bypassing the department: EleanorSwift in Berkeley's Boalt law school and

Margarita Lovel in the art his-tory department were deniedtenure in departmental votesbut reinstated after extra-departmental reviews recom-mended tenure. "In each case,"says Christ, "the departmentaccepted [the outcome], andthey are well functioning mem-bers of the department."

In Harrison's case, however,a contingent of the math de-partment has not accepted theoutcome. One reason is their

Kirby suspicion that the universitypredetermined the outcome of

the external review that recommended Har-rison's being given tenure. In an open letterto the math department in July, Berkeleymathematician Murray Protter "speculated"that out of fear ofbad publicity, which wouldadversely affect state funding and private do-nors, "the university lawyers decided thatsettling the case was the only preferred route.To settle the case meant giving Harrison aposition on the faculty. The problem arose asto how this could be done with an appear-ance of fairness, but in a way which wouldnot jeopardize the end result."

One reason for fear of badpublicity, say some of the critics,was that while pursuing her law-suit, Harrison contracted throatcancer. Christ concedes that afactor in the university's deci- _sion to settle was that Harrison'scancer "made her a sympatheticplaintiff." But that was not themain reason for settling, Christinsists. The "overwhelming con-cern" she says, was to avoid "theprecedence ofhaving tenure de-cision by jury rather than [peerreview]." In addition, she says, a Carotrial would have caused "ex-treme divisiveness in the math department."

Christ denies that the university's will-ingness to settle the suit before it went to ajury meant that the outcome of the settle-ment was predetermined in Harrison's favor.In fact, she calls that charge "not very cred-ible," because even if the administration haddecided to stack the deck in Harrison's favor,they could not have done so, since a widerange of people, not all of them part of theadministration, were involved in selectingthe review panel.

Science has learned that the selection pro-cess began with Harrison and Grunbaumagreeing on a list of 42 people, the majority

I C

mathematicians. In an attempt to rule outbiased reviewers, a university official trustedby both sides interviewed candidates byphone. Harrison had no say in picking thefinal seven on the review committee; theseven were chosen by Christ in consultationwith a 10-member academic senate com-mittee known as the Budget committee.

Therefore, in order for the review panel tobe biased in Harrison's favor, says Christ,"the chairman [of the math department]would have had to stack the court. I wouldhave had to stack the court. The Budget com-mittee would have had to stack the court." Inaddition, argues Christ, the university hadlittle motivation to pick a pro-Harrisonpanel, since as part of the settlement, Har-rison waived her right to sue if the outcomewent against her. As for the committee, asenior university administration official saysit included "experts in her field, people gen-erally knowledgeable about mathematics,and representatives of the mathematics de-partment." Eight letters of evaluation werereceived by the committee from a list of peo-ple agreed to by Harrison and Grunbaum.During the review the committee asked forand received two more letters.

The university would not divulge thenames of the members of the committee orthe outside letter-writers. Nor would the uni-versity divulge details of the settlement pro-cedure. Asking for more information, a groupof Harrison's opponents wrote universityvice chancellor John Heilbron. In late Au-

gust, Heilbron met with sixHarrison critics. Heilbron alsoinvited Grunbaum and JackWagoner, current chair of themath department. At the meet-ing, Heilbron discussed somedetails of the settlement but re-fused to name the committee orrelease their report or the let-ters of recommendation thecommittee solicited from othermathematicians. Heilbron alsowarned Harrison's critics thatthey were "perilously close to

Thrist violating the faculty code ofconduct" because their public

criticism of Harrison could be construed asuncollegial.

The next protest, an open letter to BruceBolt, chairman of the faculty Senate, sent inearly September by nine members of themath department (Kirby, Gale, and sevenothers), focused on the "substantial damage"done to the math department and to "thecause of due process at Berkeley." Harrison'spublic criticisms of the math department forsexism and her attacks on the Privilege andTenure proceeding (including describing itto The Los Angeles Times as a "kangaroocourt") left "the impression in the publicmind," the signers wrote, "that the Berkeley

SCIENCE * VOL. 262 * 15 OCTOBER 1993

on

326

math department is sexist and the machineryof due process at Berkeley is rigged."

Recently, the controversy has begun to

grow into a discussion of the tactics femalemathematicians who feel they have beendiscriminated against should use. LenoreBlum of the Mathematical Sciences Re-search Institute, an independent researchcenter associated with Berkeley, who is a

founder of AWM, wrote a 24-page account

of the Harrison case called "Breaking theSilence." Blum's account is bitterly critical ofHarrison, Harrison's closest supporters, andtheir tactics. She writes that those skepticalof Harrison's claims "became targets ofcharges of sexism, and this created an atmo-

sphere of fear and intimidation...in thesetimes, accusations of sexual discrimina-tion... are loaded and deadly serious, as

Harrison supporters well knew."

In a letter to Ratner, written in response

to her letter in the Examiner, and submittedto the AWM newsletter, mathematicianMel Rothenberg of the University of Chi-cago writes: "Much ofthe anger in your letterseems to flow from the fact that Harrison andher supporters waged a vigorous public andlegal campaign to reverse a departmental de-cision. There are mathematicians who feelthat such activity is improper and somehowunprofessional. I don't agree. Such cam-

paigns, while sometimes unpleasant and dis-ruptive of academic tranquillity, are a legiti-mate way of coming to grips with serioussocial issues. To characterize them generi-cally as forms of intimidation or harassmentis to deny the legitimacy of any forms ofsocial protest."

Yet while the opinions were sharp, thecombatants were few, according to Berkeley

provost Christ: "The number of people voic-ing disagreement with the decision is quitesmall." In fact, the majority of the math de-partment seems eager to move on. More than20 department members sent Harrison mes-sages welcoming her back. Among thosewho stayed out of the fray, opinions varywidely, as Science's interviews show. Someresent the university for keeping the processsecret, others resent Harrison for draggingthe department through a grueling battle andfor not "going where they love her," as onemathematician put it. Others said they "ad-mire her courage" and are "elated that she'sback." Most, however, simply want to putthe heat of the controversy behind them andget back to their theorems.

-Paul Selvin

Paul Selvin is a postdoc in chemistry at UC Berkeley.

NUCLEAR POWER

Superphenix Set to Rise AgainPARIS-Superphenix, France's seeminglyjinxed fast breeder reactor, which has not

produced a single kilowatt of energy in morethan 3 years, looks set to rise up next year likethe mythical bird it is named after. The $5billion reactor, the largest fast breeder in theworld, has just been given the seal of ap-

proval by a public commission ordered by thegovernment to look at the pros and cons ofrestarting.

It still has hoops to jump through: a safetycheck and approval from the ministries ofindustries and environment. But the consor-

tium of French, Italian, and German power

utilities that run the plant are confident theycan get it running by next summer. TheSuperphenix that rises out of the ashes will,however, be a different species of bird fromthe one planned 20 years ago. The consor-

tium plans to turn the reactor into a "de-breeder," one that will incinerate more plu-tonium than it produces and so eat intoEurope's plutonium stockpile.

In 1973, when work on Superphenix be-gan, planners foresaw continued growth ofnuclear power and a consequent shortageof uranium. Fast breeders were the solution:A core of uranium and plutonium is sur-

rounded by a blanket of nonfissile uranium-238, "waste" from conventional reactors.Fast neutrons emitted from the core as itbums transform the uranium-238 into fissileplutonium-239, which can be used as reactor

fuel. As the reactor generates power, it"breeds" more fuel than it consumes.

Superphenix, the first commercial-scalefast breeder, was built at Creys-Malville on

the Rhone River near Lyons and was fired upin September 1985. Two years later it was

temporarily shut down after it sprung leaks inits liquid sodium cooling system. Other inci-

dents followed, culminating in thecollapse of a turbine hall roof dur-ing heavy snow in December 1990.

By May last year, repairs andalterations had been carried out andthe reactorwas ready to fire up again.But Pierre B1regovoy, then France'ssocialist prime minister, put plansfor the plant on hold. Europe's nu-clear politics had changed: Fewerconventional reactors were beingbuilt and uranium was in plentifulsupply; environmental groups

warned ofthe dangers of transport-ing and reprocessing plutonium, which is notonly highly poisonous but is the stuff thatbombs are made of. Beregovoy established a

commission to investigate the benefits of re-

starting the plant and the proposal to use

Superphenix to incinerate plutonium.Getting a fast breeder reactor to debreed

is not that difficult. "In fact," says JeffreyLewins of Cambridge University's engineer-ing laboratory, "you have to make an effort tomake it breed; it's simpler to make it con-

sume." The rate of breeding is governed bythe relative quantities of uranium and pluto-nium in the core and the amount ofuranium-238 in the blanket. If the blanket is com-pletely replaced by a steel container, the core

will bum more plutonium than it creates.

Calculations by Superphenix staff and theAtomic Energy Commission indicate that a

"plutonivorous" fast breeder could inciner-ate 15 to 25 kilograms of plutonium whileproducing 1 billion kilowatt-hours of elec-tricity-scarcely enough to make a dent inthe tonnes of plutonium produced byElectricite de France's reactors each year.

The technological fix ofburning up waste

in a nuclear furnace has not won over envi-

SCIENCE * VOL. 262 * 15 OCTOBER 1993

Debreeder. Superph6nix's core.

ronmentalists, who have condemned thecommission's recommendation to give Su-perphenix the go-ahead. Former environ-ment minister Segolene Royal emphasizedthe continued risks involved in transportingand reprocessing plutonium. Greenpeacedenounced the secretive nature of the inves-tigation, calling it "a parody of democracy."

The Superphenix consortium is anxiousto get the reactor back on line. The annualcost ofupkeep and repair ofthe idle plant andsalaries for its 700 staff may reach $140 mil-lion this year, 20% more than if the plant wasrunning normally. If restarted, the existingcore and a second one ready on the shelf willgenerate electricity worth $1.3 billion.

By French law, a nuclear plant that hasbeen shut for more than 2 years must gainsafety approval again as if it were new. But itsowners are confident that a new-look Super-phenix will soon take flight. The project'sassistant director, Alain Roux, predicts: "We'llbe ready to raise the bars in June next year."

-Alexander Dorozynski

Alexander Dorozynski is a science uriter living inParis.

327