Good News and Other Things
Dec. 10th, 2023 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pennswoodsOn Friday, I received an email from my department's tenure and promotion committee supporting my application for promotion to full professor. The letter of support was 22 pages long and included data collected from student members of the committee and quotes from the 7 external reviewers both from the US and outside the US (probably Europe) who wrote in support of my promotion. My chair, who also needs to write a separate letter, emailed me yesterday for a few points of clarification. This then goes to the Dean who needs to review everything and then write her decision letter by mid February. (This then gets reviewed by a university committee before being sent to the Provost and finally the President so the the final decision is expected in May/June).
Anyway, this first step is important because my department is embroiled in a major power struggle (mainly between the former chair and current chair who are both full professors and on the promotion committee) and I have been doing everything possible to stay out of things. This has paid off.
In other news, I am the president of an organization for Virtual Exchange that is based in Brussels. We have decided to give our first award for service to the field this fall. The board voted unanimously to award it to the founder of our graduate student SIG and co-organizer of our research series who happens to be a PhD student. She is impressive and we hoped that such an award may help her on her job search since she is in the final year of her studies.
That being said, she is a Palestinian-Jordanian studying in Canada. She is understandably beside herself right now, and as president, I would normally be the one to notify her of this award. However, I can understand this may not be welcome news to receive from an American.
If she accepts the award, we plan to announce it at a conference in February, which she won't be attending, so we need to find a different way for her to accept, probably through video. The conference organizers have been apprised of this and are considering what is best., There will be several Israeli colleagues in attendance and we are trying to anticipate how best to feature her acceptance speech (in which she may want to speak from the heart about Gaza) without alienating other members of a small community we are trying to grow.
I spent time thinking about how this award could be interpreted (as a bid in support of Palestine and against Israel) and this line of thinking frustrated me. I know people will think this. But it seems the wrong decision to avoid recognizing someone who has really gone above and beyond because her ethnicity makes it too political.
Anyway, this first step is important because my department is embroiled in a major power struggle (mainly between the former chair and current chair who are both full professors and on the promotion committee) and I have been doing everything possible to stay out of things. This has paid off.
In other news, I am the president of an organization for Virtual Exchange that is based in Brussels. We have decided to give our first award for service to the field this fall. The board voted unanimously to award it to the founder of our graduate student SIG and co-organizer of our research series who happens to be a PhD student. She is impressive and we hoped that such an award may help her on her job search since she is in the final year of her studies.
That being said, she is a Palestinian-Jordanian studying in Canada. She is understandably beside herself right now, and as president, I would normally be the one to notify her of this award. However, I can understand this may not be welcome news to receive from an American.
If she accepts the award, we plan to announce it at a conference in February, which she won't be attending, so we need to find a different way for her to accept, probably through video. The conference organizers have been apprised of this and are considering what is best., There will be several Israeli colleagues in attendance and we are trying to anticipate how best to feature her acceptance speech (in which she may want to speak from the heart about Gaza) without alienating other members of a small community we are trying to grow.
I spent time thinking about how this award could be interpreted (as a bid in support of Palestine and against Israel) and this line of thinking frustrated me. I know people will think this. But it seems the wrong decision to avoid recognizing someone who has really gone above and beyond because her ethnicity makes it too political.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-11 06:00 pm (UTC)Hugs for the state of the world complicating the just acknowledgement of the PhD student's excellence. If I may offer my easily-ignorable two cents, I'd encourage you to notify her because your position as president of an international org outweighs your nationality. Also, she could easily misinterpret your choice to delegate that duty as you not supporting the choice or chalking it up to motives you do not possess. Anyone who think the choice is political isn't going to be convinced otherwise by anything you do, and there's no point in trying to appease those making judgments in bad faith. The award can only help her in the job search.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-11 07:59 pm (UTC)Thank you for your comments about not trying to appease people who will interpret my choice however they want. I really cannot control others and I need to get better at just letting that go and acting upon my beliefs and not out of fear for anyone else's.