Charity Hirsch

Secretary, Support Committee for Graciela Chichilnisky

Personal Statement

"Many years ago Graciela told me a story about the school she was in in Argentina. The best student would get to lead the other students as the school marched in to assembly. She was the best student but always something was wrong; her shoes weren't polished, there was a button off her dress. Always there was a reason and it finally dawned on her, she would never lead the school, she was a Jew. Then she said to me, "But I never experienced the discrimination as a Jew in Argentina that I've experienced as a woman in academia." Recently, many years after her telling me this story, after twelve years of legal struggle with Columbia in which she asked for no one's help, she mentioned she was feeling overwhelmed by Columbia's counter attacks. Knowing how to set up a support committee, I volunteered."

Charity Hirsch,

Secretary, Support Committee for Professor Graciela Chichilnisky

7926 Hill Point Road,

Cross Plains, WI 53528,

Phone: (608) 798-3814,

mwhirsch@chorus.net

7926 Hill Point Road
Cross Plains, WI 53528
11/9/03

Dear Professor X,

Thank you so much for signing the letter to President Bollinger. Your signature means a lot to Graciela, I know.

In regard to your suggestion that we talk to the “other side” at Columbia, I thought that was an excellent idea and brought it up to the Support Committee. One of the members said he’d already tried to do that and was turned away because the “matter was in litigation and couldn’t be discussed”. I feel confident that is true and actually quite reasonable, once a matter goes to litigation, it is in the hands of the lawyers who don’t want their witnesses talking to you.

Though I agree there is a risk that Graciela has no case, I doubt it. Her case was adopted by the Legal Advocacy Fund of the American Association of University Women. Through my academic feminism contacts I know two of the lawyers who reviewed the papers of her case and they
both were in favor of its adoption and told me that hers was a particularly egregious case. Also, the courts gave her a restraining order when the PIR offices were trashed, I doubt that is done lightly. Several of the members of the support committee were working for PIR at that time and vouch for the destruction and one was not paid because of the freezing of her funds. So I think the story is basically as she tells it, and more besides. Did you know that her snail mail on campus was being disappeared? And she just shared with me recently a letter she wrote earlier to her attorneys when Columbia wouldn’t provide her with a live phone! I think it’s clear some one, or some group, did not want her to stay and tried to drive her out with harassment and unequal treatment.

And a man of her talents could and would leave but women rarely have that luxury. Especially if you have ever sued, you’re blackballed. I remember when Prof. Y (a woman) was suing and she was invited to give a talk at another university. The chair there went to the guy who had invited her very agitated because Prof. Y might sue them. She never got an offer from anywhere else during, or since, her suit. If you sue, you are permanently blacklisted; which is why I advise women who are treated badly by a place they wouldn’t want to work, not to sue as they will never be able to work any place else.

There is a catch 22 for these women. To make it at all in such a world they must be very inner-directed and resistant to group disapproval (being a Jew in Argentina, or, perhaps, a Christian Scientist in the south). They must learn to work and produce without mentoring. Why? Well, for example, your mentoring of Graciela led to stories that you had done her work in exchange for sex, for Moe his friendship with Graciela while we were in Boston led to similar charges. For Y her PhD supervisor not only had sex with her but claimed her work as his. Her friendship with Moe gave credence to the story being circulated to the effect that her work was really his, being given in exchange for sleeping with him. When stories like this are used against women, one can’t really blame them for being poorly mentored so that they behave in inappropriate ways. Who is likely to teach them the way to behave to get along and how can they accept that mentoring when they have had such bad results from it?

Having now been intimately involved in two cases of academic discrimination and more superficially involved in countless more, I can tell you the situation is basically damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The same characteristics that are admired in a man, “aggressive, bold – whatever” become pejoratives in a woman, “difficult, foolish” because, of course, they are different ways of looking at the same behavior. As another academic woman once said, the line between what is correct and what isn’t for a woman is very fine indeed, but for a man is as broad as a pasture (I remember a mathematician who as a chair was not supportive of women describing himself, after the Unabomber was caught, as being very troubled about the Unabomber’s decision to leave mathematics and counseled him, essentially promising him a job if he stayed. I dare a woman to behave as Ted Kositsky did (not going out with the crowd after her seminar, dropping into a secretary’s office to ask him to marry her, etc.) and be treated as a desirable colleague.

So thank you very much for not saying, “yes, she’s brilliant but she is difficult, she deserves what she gets”, or “she’s so tough, no wonder they want to get rid of her, she can take care of herself.” Hers is just one particularly flagrant case is a much bigger battle to change both individuals and institutions but if the people who are discriminated against don’t fight this battle, who will? Thanks for your help.

Sincerely,

Charity Hirsch