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The Review Committee

In the spring of 1993, Harrison and the university arrived at an agreement on a settlement involving the use of an outside review committee of mathematicians that would make a recommendation about her case. Officially, all details about the review committee are secret: who the members were, how many there were, their fields of expertise, what information they were given, and what criteria they judged Harrison on. The only information that has officially been released is that the committee did not reopen Harrison's 1986 tenure case, but instead considered whether or not Harrison's work up to 1993 qualified her for a tenured position at Berkeley. However, some unofficial reports about the review have appeared in the press.

A July 16, 1993 article in Science magazine reported that the committee consisted of seven members, two of them nonmathematicians, three of them mathematicians from outside Berkeley, and two mathematicians from the Berkeley department. A second article in the October 15, 1993 issue of Science reported the following details about the review committee. Two lists of possible committee members (for a total of forty-two) were drawn up, one by Harrison and one by then-chair of the department, Alberto Grunbaum. The two lists were then submitted to Provost Carol Christ, who, in consultation with the campus Budget Committee, made the final selections for the review committee. Neither Grunbaum nor Harrison knew who had been chosen to serve on the review committee. The committee's recommendation was reported to the chancellor, who is the one who grants tenure or not. The agreement was that, if the committee recommended not appointing Harrison, and the chancellor agreed with the decision, then she would have to drop her case against the university. (Science did not report one further detail about the agreement: If the review committee recommended appointment, but the chancellor denied it, then Harrison would be free to pursue her lawsuit.)

Science also reported that the review committee compared the file of Harrison's early work (as of 1987, which includes her thesis results and her work on the C² Seifert Conjecture) to the files of the nine men and one woman who had been promoted to tenure since 1977, when Harrison first came to Berkeley. The committee concluded that Harrison's work placed her in the middle of this comparison group. Science reported that the committee then examined Harrison's work up to 1993 in order to decide at what level (associate or full professor) the appointment should be made. According to Science, the review committee was given eight letters of recommendation, and later asked for and received two more letters. Asked about the university's position on the accuracy of these reports, Christ said that the university has ``no further comment at this time.''

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