Daily Pennsylvanian articles about sexism and Dell Hymes at GSE
Compiled by Jennifer Phuong and Miranda Weinberg
Sexism charged in tenure decisions, May 17, 1985
GSE developing its own harassment policies, October 2, 1985
Labov et al. cutting ties with GSE because of Schieffelin et al.'s tenure denial, March 28, 1986
Schieffelin et al. settling out of court with Penn about tenure, June 26, 1986
First in a three part series on sexism at GSE, November 30, 1988
Second in a three part series on sexism at GSE (this one about Hymes's retirement), December 1, 1988
http://www.library.upenn.edu/docs/kislak/dp/1988/1988_12_01.pdf
Third in a three part series on sexism at GSE (more forward looking), December 2, 1988
Letter to the editor from female GSE faculty members saying there's no sexism at GSE (including Nessa Wolfson), December 12, 1988
Two letters to the editor from men saying there's no sexism at GSE, January 18, 1989
About Dean Lazerson and his tenure at GSE, including a description of war between divisions, March 31, 1994
Article about women graduate student socialization with a reference to Hymes' harem, Susan Philips, 2010
Shirley Brice Heath’s reflections on Hymes’s deanship (paywalled, one key paragraph copied below: https://proxy.library.upenn.edu:11785/doi/full/10.1111/j.1548-1492.2011.01147.x)
However, the intensity of a new passionate love taken up alongside a life-long love can
blind us to what is painfully and clearly obvious to those looking on at how we play out our passions. At GSE, students—Master of Arts principals and teachers as well as doctoral candidates—soon began to feel—as the objects of new passion often do—that they wanted more. They called to Dell’s attention the all-white, all-male tenured faculty of GSE. No female or person of color had ever achieved tenure at GSE. Dell’s passion for what he saw as the social justice promise of ethnography of communication in the world of education did not include his own institution. This situation was surprising to many, for Dell had written in 1969 one of the most radicalizing texts in the history of anthropology—Reinventing Anthropology (see, esp., his opening chapter in this volume on the critical, political, and personal aspects of anthropology, 1969). In this volume he argued that all anthropological knowledge is dubious, because it is gained under the conditions of colonialism, imperialism, and oppression. Yet, neither he nor other administrators in universities of that time viewed these descriptors as appropriate incentive to bring about infrastructural changes to ensure inclusion of women and minorities within the power structures of higher education. (pp. 401-402)