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The AWM's Position

Over the years, the membership of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) has followed closely the Harrison case. Carol Wood of Wesleyan University says that, during her tenure as AWM president in 1991 and 1992, there were members who wanted AWM to take a stand on the case. ``The AWM has an interest in seeing women succeed at the top levels of mathematics,'' says Wood, so Harrison's case, as well as others that were not so famous, have been discussed at AWM meetings. But ``The AWM Executive Committee was unanimous in its view that a professional organization should not make judgments on individual tenure cases,'' she says. ``The AWM had a policy that was in place before Harrison's case came up, saying that the AWM would not take a position in a dispute between an individual and an institution.''

What organizations like the AWM can do, she notes, is formulate general guidelines that may be of use in tenure disputes. Therefore, in February 1992, the AWM Executive Committee drafted a ``Statement on Dispute Resolution'', which was published in the May-June 1992 issue of the AWM Newsletter. ``I was instructed by the AWM Executive Committee to take the document to Harrison and Berkeley and to make it available to other places where it might be helpful, which I did,'' says Wood. The statement outlines a procedure for forming an outside committee of mathematicians to review a disputed tenure case and says that such a route is preferable to resolving such cases in court.

The AWM Newsletter has over the years published a number of articles about the Harrison case. After Harrison was appointed to a tenured position last summer, the September-October 1993 issue of the Newsletter carried the triumphant press release of the Jenny Harrison Support Committee, and, a few pages later, a letter from Marina Ratner containing blistering criticisms of Harrison's actions over the years. Then, in the following issue, the Newsletter Editorial Board stated that they would publish no further comment on the Harrison case, saying ``we intend not to discuss the personality or the intentions or the actions of individual colleagues, nor can we dissect and compare their mathematical abilities and accomplishments.'' ``The very small number of women in the top mathematics departments has made the Jenny Harrison case extraordinarily visible,'' the statement goes on to say. ``We should direct our endeavors to increase the number of worthy women mathematicians at the top level of the profession. Then, the right of women to do mathematics will no longer become confused with the discussion of personalities.''

The AWM, now a powerful, respected organization in the mathematical community, is seen very differently today than when it began in the early 1970s. Will the Harrison case also look different in twenty years' time? ``While the AWM is now widely accepted by the establishment, it nevertheless had its beginnings in confrontational politics,'' remarks Joan Birman of Columbia University. ``I was there, I was beginning my career, and frankly I was embarrassed by the tactics of some of my unpleasantly aggressive women colleagues. I did not want and I was absolutely certain that I did not need their help. A natural (and very arrogant) corollary was that if they had to resort to such unattractive behavior it had to be because, if one took a good hard look, one would see that they did not have the goods. That was in 1973. With the wisdom of hindsight I am now forced to admit that things were not as they seemed, and that the women mathematicians who participated in confrontational politics in those days did a real service for the rest of us, probably at considerable pain to themselves. Of course, those days are past $\ldots$ or are they?''

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