Thu 27 Sep 2007
Gender Disparity in Bicentennial Medal Standards
Posted by admin under Bicentennial Medals
Posted at 2:44 pmMy friend Jeff claims that I have been “soundly trounced” on the issue of whether or not the same standards apply for male and female Ephs in the awarding of Bicentennial Medals at Williams.
[Previous discussion here. Strictly speaking there are two separate issues. First, are the standards lower for female Ephs and for male Ephs in general? Second, does any particular Eph, male or female, deserve to win? The second questions is much more difficult and contentious than the first. Here, let me focus on the former. Only those naive to the ways of places like Williams and to the unyielding reality of the underlying demographics believe that standards for men and women are the same.]
Jeff provides a handy “proof” of his claim, illustrating, in his view, that there are female Ephs with credentials more distinguished than Earl Potter ‘68 who have not won Bicentennial Medals.
By the way, Catherine Hill has better than “the same” achievements (President of a more prestigious institution, Vassar, as well as years of service to Williams) … she has not (yet) been awarded a medal. QED.
I do not think that QED means what you think it means.
First, Catherine Hill was awarded an Honorary Degree in 2006. An Honorary Degree is much more prestigious than a Bicentennial Medal. As a rule (counter-examples welcome), the College does not award both to the same person. Consider Nobel Prize winner Robert Engle ‘64, awarded an Honorary Degree in 2007. We all agree that he has displayed “distinguished achievement.” Why no Bicentennial Medal for Engle? Because the College awards honorary degrees to the real stars.
Second, even if you want to compare Cappy Hill to someone, the natural comparison is to Steve Lewis ‘60. Both are Williams graduates, Williams economics professors and Williams provosts. Both became presidents of elite liberal arts colleges. Why does Lewis only get a Bicentennial Medal after a decade of being a college president while Hill gets an Honorary Degree just as her college presidency begins?
But these are quibbles. The Lewis/Hill outcomes might have nothing to do with gender. Morty might just like Cappy and not like Steve. Instead, of looking at this difficult case, let’s take a simple test. Here are neutral descriptions of three alums in the same field.
1) Successful in business and owner of a minor league baseball team.
2) Successful in business and owner of a major league baseball team.
3) Successful in business and commissioner of Major League Baseball.
Which one of these three alums has most displayed “distinguished achievement” in his/her field? Now, it would be reasonable to say that none of them have, that baseball is such a trivial part of human endeavor that none of these Ephs deserve a medal. It would also be reasonable to think that baseball is so wonderful that all three Ephs should win.
But there is no possible objective criteria by which you can prefer Eph #1 over #2 and #3. What if I told you that, in fact, #1 had been awarded a Bicentennial Medal in 1994 while Ephs #2 (George Steinbrenner ‘52) and #3 (Fay Vincent ‘60) had never been so honored? What would your first guess be about the gender of Eph #1? That’s right! Eph #1 is female.
Tracy P. Lewis
Class of 1983
Awarded the Bicentennial Medal in 1994.Business woman and entrepreneur - first woman to own a minor league baseball team.
I am happy to grant that Tracy Lewis is a wonderful person (more wonderful than me) who has achieved a great deal (more than me). But if she had not been a woman, she would not have been awarded a Bicentennial Medal.
One example not enough? Fine. Let’s play again! Which of these four Ephs deserves a Bicentennial Medal?
1) Elected District Attorney in Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
2) Elected Congressman from 2nd District of Hawaii.
3) Elected Congressman from 2nd District of Colorado.
4) Elected Governor of Minnesota.
Again, maybe all of these Ephs deserve medals because elected office is so important. Many none of them do because politicians are venal. But there is no objective criteria imaginable by which a fair committee would choose #1 over any of #2, #3, or #4.
Who won? Surprise! It was Eph #1 in 1999.
Martha M. Coakley
Class of 1975
Awarded the Bicentennial Medal in 1999.Middlesex County District Attorney
Neither Eph #2 (Ed Case ‘75) nor #3 (Mark Udall ‘72) nor #4 (Arne Carlson ‘57) have won Bicentennial Medals. If any were female, they would have.
I am happy to play this game all day long, but, please, just think about the demographic reality. Women have only been at Williams for the last 30 years. Bicentennial Medal winners tend to be older because it often takes a lifetime to demonstrate “distinguished achievement.” Many/most female Ephs take substantial time off from their careers for family reasons while very few male Ephs do the same. Given all these facts (and without even entering the wonderful world of Larry Summers), there is no way that objective criteria would produce a 50/50 split between male/female medal winners.
What would the split be if the committee were gender-blind? Excellent question! I don’t know. There is already more male than female winners. A rough guess would be that 25% of the winners are female. If there were not a concern to make the winners look like Williams, the percentage would be much lower.
And, as always, this discussion should take nothing away from the female winners who would have won even if they were male. For example, it seems (counter-examples welcome) that every Eph Pulitzer Prize-winner has won a Bicentennial Medal. Sonia Nazario ‘82 and Stacy Schiff ‘82 fully deserved their medals. The same can not be said for some other female Eph winners. They were chosen, not for “distinguished achievement” among all Ephs, but for success in comparison to other female graduates of Williams.
It is an empirical fact that the standards for awarding Bicentennial Medals for women are lower than those for men. That may be a good thing. (I don’t really object much, if at all.) That may be a bad thing. But people like Jeff who would prefer that reality were other than it is should try to do that pretending elsewhere. They will have better luck.
September 27th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
David, on the prior discussion (which you link to), you were clearly proven wrong and had no real response to the many posters who pointed out the flaws in your argument, I do call that a trouncing.
Fine, Hill was awarded something by the college, I was not aware of that. But are we really going to have go through the same exercise for every woman who has been awarded a bicentennial medal as we did a few weeks back? I could think of a host of reasons why Coakley would have received a medal beyond your simplistic analysis: local product (North Adams) achieves success, her prominence in prosecuting sex crimes and the nanny case, one of the most well-known and respected political figures in the state Williams happens to be located in. To me that is a lot more impressive (and appropriate for a WILLIAMS centric award) than, say, capitalizing on family connections to be elected to congress.
Similarly, I can think of a host of reasons why Steinbrenner has NOT received a medal despite his financial success. No need to spell out the obvious there.
Also, you seem to attribute some gender bias to Williams, as if the female winners have less “merit” however you definite that. But you neglect to take into account that, certainly until recently (and arguably still today) it was/is much HARDER for women to say, get elected to congress or become owner of a baseball team. Admissions is a good analogy here: you’d agree, I am sure, that somebody with a 1400 SAT and other ntoable achievements from an impoverished background is more “deserving” of admissions than someone with a 1450 SAT and basically the same set of achievements who grew up with any imaginable advantage. Well, to the extent that Williams recognizes the “first” of any race or gender to achieve something, that does not make Williams’ standards less rigorous as applied to that gender or race; rather, Williams’ standards properly recognize that achievement must be measured not merely by awards or positions, but also by obstacles surmounted.
So yes, you could say “Jackie Robinson would not receive the same level of adulation were he white instead of black” and you would be right. But does that mean Jackie Robinson’s accomplishments would have been as impressive were he white? Of course not, because his accomplishments are more than merely great stats, but also overcoming adversity, being a pioneer, displaying tremendous courage, etc. Hence why Jackie Robinson is on a stamp, and Stan Musial is just a great ballplayer.
September 27th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
1) I will return to the Margaret Kim example in due course. Time will tell who is the trouncer and who the trouncee.
2) I agree that there might be issues with Steinbrenner. But is there any possible criteria by which Tracy Lewis has achieved more than Fay Vincent in baseball or business? No. Note that it isn’t like Lewis is some self-made businesswoman who then bought a minor league baseball team. She was handed the team by her father. Now, all EphBloggers honor their fathers and the contributions they make to our lives. But “distinguished achievement” generally requires more than a gift from Daddy.
3) I find your rationalizations for Coakley’s award unpersuasive. Do you see any other awards being given for North Adams natives or for Massachusetts residents? No. Occam’s razor, please. The College wants at least 20% of the winners to be female and it does what it has to do to achieve that goal. And, again, it’s fine if you don’t think that what Case or Udall has done is that impressive because of their family advantages. But, if the domain is distinguished achievement in elected office, than a governor like Carlson trumps a county DA every time.
4) You really think that the obstacles to women like Lewis and Coakley are so much more serious than those faced by men like Vincent and Carlson that the dounble-standard is justified? A topic for another day.
September 27th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Jeff Z., right on.
David, you write:
Oh really? Two words: Dominick Dunne (medal citation reads “writer”.)
September 27th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
I am no fan of Dominick Dunne, but anyone with a Wikipedia page like this can make fair claim to “achievement.” But this is an empirical question! Which female Eph should have been awarded a medal in place of Dunne?
September 27th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
My God - give ‘em all medals and degrees!
September 27th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Kane,
Please stop with the baseless complaining about gender disparities.
You want to claim that the average female medal/diploma honoree is less qualified/successful than the average male honoree. Your evidence of this has been specious and jumps to conclusions.
To prove your contention, you would need to:
a) know the awards generating process
b) have a measure of qualifications for recipients (and know their gender, but that isn’t the hard part)
c) have data on the other aspects that the awards committee takes into consideration that might be correlated with success (to avoid bias)
So rather than write unsubstantiated rants that smell of white male bitterness, why don’t you be a good social scientist and:
first, interview people on the awards committee to figure out how it was done;
second, collect the biographies of honorees
third, figure out a way to measure/categorize the biographies
fourth, applying the mechanism you identified in the first step, look to see if women really are given a leg up
The analysis outlined above doesn’t necessarily have to be quantitative. Nor would it refute Zeeman’s “Jackie Robinson” argument. But the analysis would be much better than your blustering and baseless accusations.
You could probably even hire undergrad interns to help you out on it. Cross-generational learning community and everything.
In the mean time, stop arguing through innuendo and anecdote.
September 27th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
First, it’s a longstanding academic tradition to award an incoming President at a sister institution an honorary degree. It’s a sign of being collegial. “Yes, we know you go after the same students and try to poach our professors, but hey, we’re all friends here.”
Part of the goal of the Bicentennial Awards it to be somewhat provocative: to reward folks who have taken the road less traveled. An honorary degree is often given to (1) get a big capital contribution, (2) get an author’s papers for the college library, or (3) signal to the academic community that the college now means business in a certain area [We just built a new Arts Studio so artists are in this year].
The college can be more whimsical with a Bicentennial Medal. Given Martha Coakley’s accomplishments (was a groundbreaker in establishing interrogation standards for crimes against children, head of several women’s legal organizations) I think she deserves a medal.
Put another way, the Bicentennial Medal is a teaching device: it’s meant to tell the students, “See, these people didn’t follow the straight and narrow–they figured out unique ways to leverage their Williams education. This could be you in 25 years.” This is one of the reasons Morty moved it to Convocation weekend.
Unfortunately, the college can’t give a Bicentennial Medal to every deserving alum, so there’s bound to be some, “She shouldn’t have received the medal, she should.” Rather than grousing about who didn’t get the Medal, enjoy the serendipitous choices of those who did. Gathering all of them together in a room would make a fascinating gathering.
Because Williams is a great college, we have an embarrassment of riches (or candidates, to be more accurate). There are a number of colleges who would be hard pressed to award such medals year after year. This is a good problem to have.
September 27th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
I’m not clear on why I should care about this “issue.” Are the men (apparently) who are being cheated (supposedly) out of this major (purportedly) award upset? Do they even know there is an award?
September 27th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Further, bicentennial medals are only given to alumni who are going to accept it, show up, and be happy/proud (thus eliminating Steinbrenner, for example, or congressmen most likely).
It only took a couple replies to get the sophistry of the “empirical claim” line once again when you aren’t making any sort of empirical argument whatsoever. you are making a claim based on anecdote and assumption. that is not empirical. It is not my duty to empirically defend the bicentennial meda, it is your duty to empirically critique it. you have yet to do that. this is tiring and embarrassing.
Please god, do not return to Margaret Kim again. the only “due time” to return to that is “never”. You bashed a fellow alum for no good reason with no good evidence. It was a poor showing. Don’t bring it up.
please, david, come up with a new/original/less-spurious argument next time you want to bring up outdated terms like “PC” and make reverse discrimination arguments. it’s more interesting/less frustrating to make the same arguments with new topics rather than repeat both arguments and topics.
September 27th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
(d)avid is makes a series of excellent points!
Check. The honorary degree committee decides on Bicentennial Medal winners. They look for “distinguished achievement in any endeavor.” They accept nominations from all, but get most of them from the nice folks in the alumni office. The list of pass nominees is maintained and used in following years.
Check. The nice thing about being distinguished is that there is generally a public record of your achievements. Having studied this in some depth, I know as much about the collective qualifications of the 100 winners as almost anyone.
Check. I have seen no evidence that any other aspects are taken into account other than distinguished achievement and service to the College. Alums are certainly favored, but non-alums are also honored. I see no patter in the 100 winners to suggest otherwise. (There might be evidence of racial stuff going on, but leave that for another day.)
Check. I had dinner with a member of the committee from a few years back and quizzed him about the process. There were no surprises.
Check. I have read all the biographies provided by the College (which are often just a sentence or two) and read much background material on many of the winners. Who do you have to thank for this nice Wikipedia page? Me.
Not done but excellent suggestion! One simple test might be to see which winners have pages on Wikiepdia (not a bad measure of distinguished) and which do not. I would wager that male winners are more likely to have pages than female winners, that male winners are more likely to have appeared in the New York Times than female winners, and so on.
Good stuff. If my predictions above are correct, would you grant that the standards for men and women are different? If not, what test would convince you?
September 27th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
LOL…david, your own wikipedia page disproves your own comments. you say the school favors alums but “non alums are also honroed”. Problem with that statement is that former Williams President John Chandler is the ONLY awardee who is not an alumni.
d’oh!
again, even if you follow the seemingly neutral suggestions of
(d)avid, you fail the critical Jackie Robinson test.
The fundamental problem, David, that your thesis has is that quantifying “distinguished achievement in any field” is not easy, as has been pointed out numerous times. So while you might claim disparate consideration due to gender, we see completely legitimate decisions. And it is really a worthy question: why, oh why, do you care so much?!?
September 27th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
I appreciate the spirit of Guy’s remarks. The fact that women are favored in the process has been obvious to me for years. But it has never been high on priority list to make this fact more widely know. At least it wasn’t until recently.
Guy writes:
Well, that’s a nice theory and I don’t mind the sentiment but . . .
First, if these are the criteria, then the College ought to say so. Honesty and all that jazz.
Second, I do not think that this is the criteria. The awards are more likely to go to scribblers of various sorts, folks in non-profits and art. But, within those fields, it is the most distinguished who win. There are scores of folks in the class of 1988 who work in non-profits. Did the College pick one who choose a different path? No. They picked Cathy Salser ‘88, who was (easily) the most distinguished in that field of my peer group. I have trouble pointing to more than a couple of winners who won because they “didn’t follow the straight and narrow.”
Third, whatever else one might say about Coakley and Lewis, their careers are exactly on the standard path. Hundreds of Ephs have done exactly what they did in just the order that they did this. They are completely typical. Coakley’s bio is similar to most other DAs. Lewis joined her father’s business. Nothing wrong with either choice, but their paths were the very picture of conventional.
September 27th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Did you want a medal, David?
September 27th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Kane, “no surprises” is hardly a description of the decision process.
Again, this begs a series of questions:
1) How many people are nominated from folks outside the alumni office?
2) How does the alumni office decide who to track and who not to track? What puts someone on their radar screen?
3) When does the alumni office decide to nominate someone?
4) Who is selected to serve on the committee?
5) How are they selected?
6) What instructions are given to the honorary degree committee?
7) What criteria does the committee use to make its selections? “Excellence” is not an answer.
8) What voting rule is used?
9) Are there informal norms that influence the decision making process? For example, is there log rolling? Is consensus the norm?
Without knowing the data generating process, you can’t hope to model the process (and agree that quantifying success or excellence is unlikely to be convincing — categorization seems a better approach).
If you insist on riding this hobby horse (which is of interest to no one but you, people only respond to avoid having people think ALL Williams alums are misogynist pigs), write a strictly factual post where you describe how honorary degrees and medals are decided. People might even find that post of mild interest.
September 27th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
1) Relative to other Ephs in finance, my career has not been nearly as distinguished. Joe Rice, Chase Coleman and many, many others should win ahead of me. (By the way, it does not seem that Ephs in finance, other than Trustees, are, uh, over-represented among the medal winners. Lots of artists though!)
2) Why do you waste our time with quibbles like this, Rory?
Did you read the College web page? It says:
Which part of “non-alums” do you not understand? It may be true that only one non-alum has won but that is hardly the point. (I am not sure that the Wikipedia page is complete. It relies on the College’s records which are, definitely, wrong.)
True. But what makes you think that Steinbrenner wouldn’t show up. He is an involved generous alum. I see no reason to believe that Case, Udall or Carlson would not attend.
September 27th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
(d)avid,
I am happy to grant that you can come up with an endless series of questions, wanting ever more detail about the process. Indeed, one could spend a lifetime just answering your question 2.
Even if I answered this with a paragraph, you would want more detail. Even if I spent a day interviewing all the members of the alumni office and posting a transcript, you would have more questions, you would claim that a day was not enough. You would want me to audit all their e-mail. And, even if I spent a year on this project and wrote a book on just the answer to that single question, you would then want me to do the same for all the people who have worked in the alumni office over the last 15 years.
But, at this point, it becomes absurd. By your criteria, no one who hadn’t written a dissertation on the topic would ever be able to make a claim about any selection process.
Who knows where that might end? I often stupidly claim that high SAT scores help one get into Williams. Silly me! I have no basis for that judgment. Just anecdotes! I need to determine
And on and on. But be serious. I do not need to see into the black box of the committee to compare their publicly stated criteria to the public result and note the disconnect.
September 27th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Great come back, Kane. Yes, it is totally unreasonable for someone to know what they are talking about before accusing institutions of sexism and denigrating the accomplishments of female alums. The retort is especially rich coming from a man who wants the Iraqi civilian fatality authors to make their data public (a position I agree with).
Dude, “no surprises” is not a helpful description. “Excellence” is a completely vacuous criteria. If you think my questions could fill entire dissertations, you are very lucky that you did not try to turn your PhD into an academic career. A short phone interview with someone in the alumni office and one or two of the people on the committee would suffice. You’ve certainly wasted more time on other obsessions in the past.
If you don’t know anything about the deliberative process, then you can’t prove anything about bias. All you can claim is that female honorees aren’t meeting your definition of “excellence,” which says a lot more about you than Williams.
September 27th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
when do you plan to tell your daughters that their accomplishments will always be diminished on account of their genders? I’d say start now — don’t want them to get too many big ideas.
September 27th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
On the face of it you could argue that Martha Coakley’s bio is conventional, but she has pushed the boundaries in a number of areas.
First, she was a member of the first class to admit women (my class, the Class of 1975), which, while it went pretty well, was not a cakewalk. She was the student member of the search committee that appointed John Chandler President. She won the Citizenship Award my senior year. She was active in bringing together a “Women at Williams” reunion. She was President of the Women’s Bar Association in Massachusetts (I might have gotten the title wrong, but that’s the gist of it). She helped draft guidelines on how to question children about abuse cases. She has been active in fundraising for the Alumni Fund, serving as Class Agent. She was the first female Attorney General in Massachusetts. At this point, she is definitely an activist Attorney General. And, perhaps most amazing of all, she’s about the only state official that The Boston Globe hasn’t taken pot shots at.
September 27th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Contrary to the assertion in Mr. Kane’s original posting, Steve Lewis was given an honorary degree in 1987, for the same reason that Cappy Hill was — because the college customarily grants honorary degrees to members of the faculty who are named presidents of other colleges while they are still on the Williams faculty. His Bicentennial medal cited his achievements in both developmental economics and his years after Williams as president of Carlton.
September 28th, 2007 at 5:21 am
What are the configuration and composition of one of these medals? Would it be suitable as a coaster? A trivet? A hot plate? A paper weight? A door stop? A material of repair for a hole in the roof? Could it be melted for buck shot? In case of a WWII-style scrap drive could one be openly and justly proud about one’s contribution to the cause should one’s neighbors see a medal set out at one’s curb for pickup?
September 28th, 2007 at 8:29 am
1) Thanks to the information about Steve Lewis’s honorary degree from anonymous. I stand corrected on that point.
2) Since I have failed to convince fair-minded readers like (d)avid and Rory of a point which I find obvious, I must be doing something wrong! Since this is a complex topic, I will try and break it down bit by bit over the coming days.
3) (d)avid insists that I
I have already done this! I had dinner with a committee member and quizzed him/her extensively about the process. I have had many discussions with alumni office folks (via phone and e-mail) on this and other topics. Now, no one in the alumni office likes to reveal dirty laundry to me, but they are happy to discuss the process. (Of course, like me, they can not read the minds of the people on the committee.)
(d)avid claims:
I know plenty about the deliberative process. And, even if I didn’t, you can determine a lot by just looking at the outputs of the process.
This would be a lot more productive if you would focus on the specific examples I give. The criteria is not “excellence.” It is “distinguished achievement in any field of endeavor.” That is the standard. No reasonable person would claim that, say, Martha Coakley (as elected DA) has demonstrated more “distinguished achievement” than Arne Carlson (as elected governor).
Now, it is possible to define achievement in such a narrow fashion that the most qualified person is the person who run. If the “field” were restricted to “Massachusetts county DAs active in child abuse prosecutions” then, obviously, Coakley is more distinguished than Carlson.
But that would be absurd! It would mean that the committee could award a medal to anyone and justify that award by defining “field” in a suitably narrow fashion. Do I even need to debunk this?
All of this is different from Jeff’s overcoming-obstacles thesis. I have not addressed that objection as of yet.
September 28th, 2007 at 10:12 am
I’m tired of wasting my time on this topic and I am commenting strictly as a favor to Zeeman, so this is the last comment I’ll make (much to the joy of everyone else participating).
The process is critical to determining whether a bias is based on sexism. Especially with a standard a lot as “distinguished achievement.” Suppose this were the process:
The process is not explicitly sexist. The only place you could claim it is sexist is that social networks are relied upon to get on the radar screen. People not in the social network might be unfairly discriminated against, but the criteria isn’t sexist.
Or, imagine this scenario:
If women and men have different propensities to choose professions, one would expect that some categories will be overweighted with women and others with men. Again, the criteria is not overtly sexist (but the society that pushes genders into different professions might be). Here is an even simpler selection process:
Among the pool of distinguished persons, picking “pioneers” does not seem like an entirely inappropriate criteria.
Until you establish the process of how the decisions are made, your claims of preferential treatment are baseless. You may have made calls and conducted the interviews, but you haven’t conveyed any of that information. Quite frankly, you are ideologically driven so “trust me, it is biased” doesn’t cut it.
Focusing on the specific examples would not be more helpful. It is easy to cherry pick cases and set up false comparisons. I’m not even convinced that the people should be compared. There are a lot of alums/people doing good work. A handful get picked each year to be recognized. It could be a random lottery as far as I am concerned. Trying to decide who is more or less worthy is a pointless exercise (especially when the criteria used might be idiosyncratic or whimsical).
The fact that you think Coakley’s achievements are not “distinguished” reveals a lot about how you view the world and gender. Go re-read Zeeman’s and Guy’s comments. Her career is certainly “distinguished” and you are either being obstinate or sexist.
September 28th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Just to follow-on David’s last point, you can’t say that simply because someone is a governor, which is higher ranking than a DA in a political hierarchy, they are automatically more “distinguished.”
Here’s a hypothetical counter example (since I know nothing about Arne Carlson in any event). A man is elected President, the highest office in the land. That man is elected solely because of his name, inherited wealth, and family connections, rather than any accomplishment of his own. On the contrary, he had failed egregiously at every endeavor he previously attempted. His misguided policies lead directly to the needless torture, rape and death of thousands of innocents, both from his own country and from other countries, and in a few short years he turns a robust economy with a balanced budget into an economic free-fall and record deficits, not to mention destroy America’s international credibility. I realize this scenario seems incredibly far-fetched, but would such a man be “distinguished” simply because of his title? Hell, by your standard, Stalin is more distinguished that Martha Coakley … after all, he is a higher ranking official.
Again, I don’t know anything about Arne Carlson, but not every governor is distinguished. Coakley, on the other hand, was certainly unusually distinguished in her chosen field (law enforcement, not just elected politics) at the time the medal was awarded … I’d say, in fact, the college should be applauded for its prescience, given that she has since continued her assent to the point she is now the highest ranking law enforcement official in Massachusetts.
September 28th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Jeff,
If your “hypothetical” President were a Williams alum, wouldn’t you think he should be honored by the College? What do you think the reaction of the College community would/should be? Regardless of one’s feelings about the President, doesn’t the office of the President deserve respect?
September 28th, 2007 at 10:37 am
No. I think respect is earned, regardless of your occupation. Again, not saying Bush is Stalin, but what if an American President enacted policies as bad as Stalin, or Mao, or Hitler? Obviously, they would not warrant any sort of positive recognition from Williams.
September 28th, 2007 at 10:55 am
(d)avid provides a whole bunch of scenarios about how the process might work and then claims:
I have already explained how the process works but am always happy to repeat myself. (I also just left a message for committee member Keli Kaegi. I’ll report back once I talk with her.) Nominations come from anywhere. (I have nominated people.) Most come from the alumni office and people on the committee (including students). Almost all those nominated are maintained in a list that gets passed on from year to year for the honorary degree committee, which does the actual work. All awards must be approved by the president and trustees, but this (always?) pro forma. Brief sketches of the person’s achievements are maintained in the file. The committee meets and selects. I think that meetings only happen a couple times a year, when the trustees are in town. I do not know if the main listing is organized by class or name or field.
This is unfair and I think that you are guilty of bad faith. I NEVER SAID THAT COAKLEY WAS NOT DISTINGUISHED. I said that, in the field of elected politics, she (as a county DA) is less distinguished than Carson or Udall or Case. This is just an empirical fact, if the word distinguished is to have any meaning.
Now, I admit to having not addressed Jeff’s argument, that medals are given not just for distinguished achievement in absolute terms (by which governors and representatives trump DAs) but for distinguished achievement conditional on obstacles overcome (which would depend on the specific life histories of those involved.
But, we can be pretty sure that this is not the criteria in use since we do not see any meaningful evidence of this occurring among the male winners. Can you point me to a single male winner who is, in absolute terms, less distinguished than a male non-winner in the same field? I can’t find any. That would suggest that overcoming obstacles (at least ones not having to do with race and sex) plays no part. And, if race and sex are the only obstacles that matter then, obviously, we have a goal/quota system in all but name.
You can’t really be that much of nilhist, post-modern screw-ball, can you? There is a committee and it does the best that it can. Williams has graduated hundreds of writers. Was it just an accident that all (?) the ones that have won a Pulitzer have won medals? Is it really “pointless” to try to distinguish between Pulitzer winners and non-Pulitzer winners? The mind reels.
September 28th, 2007 at 11:18 am
David,
Why do you say that a DA is automatically less distinguished as an elected official than a Congressman? Depending on where he or she is elected, the DA can easily represent more people than a U.S. Representative. For example, the Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx DA’s must be elected by more people than the various NY City representatives. The same would be true for the Fairfax County, Virginia Commonwealth’s attorney. It would also be true for Middlesex County, Massachusetts (approximate population 1.45 million since 2000, according the U.S. Census). Moreover, as Jeff pointed out, a DA’s law enforcement role is, in many ways, quite different from that of a governor or legislator, making direct comparisons on “distinction” difficult.
September 28th, 2007 at 11:30 am
1) I am happy to grant that some DAs are more distinguished then some congressmen. But is the DA for Middlesex county more distinguished than the governor of Minnesota? Give me a break. Come up with any objective measure of distinguishedness than you like and Carlson will beat Coakley.
2) Again, one can always define “field of endeavor” narrowly enough to ensure that one’s preferred candidate wins. Maybe the reason that Lewis was picked over Vincent and Steinbrenner is that the field of endeavor was minor-league baseball! But if the award is to have any real meaning, the fields must be large enough to encompass lots and lots people. Any scheme which included a reasonable number of fields (10? 20? 40?) would place Coakley/Case/Udall/Carlson in the same field of endeavor. The same is even more true for Lewis/Steinbrenner/Vincent.
September 28th, 2007 at 11:40 am
David,
Perhaps Coakley was a better DA than Carleson was a governor? Simply because one is in a higher elected office does not necessarily make one more distinguished. For example, whom would you consider more distinguished: Spiro Agnew (Vice-President of the U.S.) or Robert Morgenthau (Long standing DA of New York County)? Granted, distinction is hard to measure “objectively,” but that’s what the group making these decisions has to do.
September 28th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
On Pulitzers, here is a Kane-style argument: Grace Rubenstein ‘01 won a Pulitzer for some reporting she did for the Eagle-Tribune. She has not, however, been awarded a Bicentennial Medal. Dominick Dunne has never won a Pulizer (I believe?), but did win a Bicentennial Medal. The honorary degree committee obviously favors men over women, since in the field of ‘journalists’, Rubenstein is clearly more distinguished than Dunne. It’s an empirical fact.
(d)avid, Rory, Jeff Z: want to ditch KaneBlog and start our own SaneBlog?
September 28th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
By the way, Bill Willis overcame as much adversity, displayed at least as much courage, was at least as much a pioneer and played his game better than and at as high a level as Jackie Robinson but does not have his likeness on a postage stamp and otherwise does not receive adulation close to the extent that Robinson does. Of course, none of you has the foggiest notion about Willis’ identity - a condition which is further evidence of the general (and not surprising) truism that public recognition is a haphazard matter, full of inequity.
September 28th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
PCE,
Grace Rubenstein is not a Pulitzer-winner. Do I need to debunk this in the same way that I did Kim’s (alleged) Emmy?
But I appreciate the attempt! My argument would certainly be falsified if there were any/many non-winner female Ephs who were more distinguished in their fields than winner male Ephs. Examples welcome!
Whitney asks if “Perhaps Coakley was a better DA than Carleson was a governor?” No. Carlson was a fine governor and Coakley was a fine county DA. I appreciate Whitney’s fair-minded attempts to come up with some explanation for why the committee would pick Coakley over Carlson/Case/Udall when the latter three are all more distinguished in the field of elective office than the former. And, in any specific case, it might not be gender that played the key role. Perhaps Coakley had a friend on the committee.
But there is simply no way to argue that she (or Lewis) are more distinguished in their fields than male Ephs who have not won.
September 28th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
OK, I can’t stand it anymore. The slanderous attack on Coakley and other female winners of Bicentennial medals has forced me to end my self-imposed exile from Ephblog for one - and only one - comment in response.
David, you are making stuff (and if this were not a family blog I would use stronger language here) up. A simple question: what category of achievement did the selection committee actually use when they decided to award Coakley? You have invented the category “elected office” and then asserted that “objectively” others are more “distinguished.” You have created a bizarre little game that has no necessary connection to reality, save as a reflection of your subjective perceptions.
There are, of course, other categories that Coakley might fit into, which do not include those individuals of the invented category “elected officials” How about “field of law”? How about “prosecutors”? How about “natives of North Adams made good”? I strongly suspect that the selection committee did not construct the category “elected official” when deciding upon Coakley. I strongly suspect there were a number of factors in their minds and, possibly, “election” was not especially important. But, of course, we do not know for certain in this particular case. You are, once again, asserting from ignorance (I say “once again” in full knowledge of the shameful and embarrassing take-down, on the Deltoid blog, of your feeble efforts to justify your claims of “fraud” toward the Lancet Iraq studies). Or do you know for certain what precise categories the selection committee actually used in this case? If you do not - and at this point, after sullying the good names of many Ephs, you will need to put forth some pretty solid evidence (mere report of lunch with anonymous Alumni Office staff does not get the job done) - then you should shut up.
Your passion and zeal to attack publicly female Ephs is depressing and hurtful. You pose as being “objective” but, somehow, that supposed objectivity blinds you to the mean-spiritedness and narrow-mindedness of this entire project. I, for one, hope that those people in positions of policy-making authority at Williams will continue to do what they have always done: ignore you.
That is all. I will not engage in this exchange further because I have no expectation that David will learn. If he has proven anything over the years at Ephblog, it is that his ideological biases are beyond meaningful revision.
September 28th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Dave,
On what basis do you think Carleson was a better governor than Coakley was a DA? I’m genuinely curious. I’m confident that you are not approaching this in a mean-spirited or narrow-minded way, but I simply don’t understand your reasoning.
September 28th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
I thank Sam for his comments.
What “slanderous” attacks? Everything that I have said about Coakley and Lewis is true. If there is a factual mistake, please point it out. My writing may not be politic (?), but it is accurate. And, again, I do not know if Coakley/Lewis received medals because they were women. It might have been for some other reason. But they were not nearly as “distinguished” in their fields of endeavor as other Eph men who have not won.
A fair question! Can anyone locate the actual news release? I can’t. I can, however, point to similar releases from recent years (here and here). Consider some of the stated fields of endeavor.
I have argued that the field of endeavor for Coakley is something like “elected office” or “US politics.” Sam points out (correctly!) that, for all I know, the field was “Massachusetts Prosecutors” and that, therefore, Coakley was the most distinguished Eph available.
The examples above provide evidence for both of us. We see some broad categories like “education” and “international public health” which suggest that I am correct. But incredibly narrow fields like “stemming genocide in Sudan” suggest that Sam is correct. Now, this is a longer dispute, one that I don’t want to dive into unless Sam wants to participate.
The short version of my position is that it is obvious (to me) that the committee did not pick a category like “stemming genocide in Sudan” and then look for the Eph that demonstrated the most distinguished achievement in that area. Ha! They knew about all the good work that Eric Reeves ‘72 had done, decided that he deserved the award and then wrote up the language. To the extent that there was a runner-up, someone who might have won in place of Reeves, it was someone else in the category of social-awareness, consciousness-raising, fight-against-evil stuff. They would not have just picked the #2 Eph on Sudan.
This is the sort of attitude that I most object to, especially coming from an academic like Sam. I have an hypothesis that the standards for men and women Bicentennial Medals are different. (d)avid, at least, provides some guidance as to the evidence that he thinks I need to gather. I think that I have done enough (in depth discussion with a former member of the committee) but am happy to do more. (I do not know why Sam thinks that this is just from lunch with someone from the Alumni Office.)
But Sam implies that nothing I could do could ever shake his faith that Williams treats men and women equally everywhere and all the time. So, most helpful would be if Sam (like (d)avid) offered concrete suggestions as to the evidence he would like to see on the question.
One word: Nigaleian.
September 28th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Whitney asks:
I never said that! I think Coakley was a fine DA (I live in Middlesex county). From what little I have read, Carlson was a fine governor. So, in terms of distinguishedness, a fine governor trumps a fine county DA every time just because governors are more powerful, important than county DAs on average. You are correct that some DAs are more powerful/important/distinguished than some governors, but that just isn’t true for Coakley/Carlson.
September 28th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
David,
You provide your own answer while failing to realize it. The committee does not come into it with the following:
-a list of all alumni/possible award winners (I think that when you haven’t given a non-alumni one to anyone other than John Chandler in 14 years, its safe to say it is an alumni award)
-a list of categories to fit those alumni into.
So instead, it gets its imperfect list of nominated alumni, all of whom have been nominated for a range of reasons (publicity, genuine goodness, ability to donate a large amount…whatever it may be) and then it selects imperfectly from an imperfect list, concocting “fields” and “distinguished achievement” in an ad hoc manner. AND THAT’S FINE.
Thus, all your hypothetical situations prove absolutely nothing. yet you keep bringing them up. you unnecessarily bring up individuals and strike them down. Grace Rubenstein DID win a pulitzer. She was on the staff that won a pulitzer. It wasn’t an individual pulitzer, and we don’t know how much she did or did not do to help that series of articles, but she did win one. Just like a player who doesn’t see the field during a Super Bowl win still won a Super Bowl. No, in fact she won it more than that player…who knows if Grace did a lot of the background work for her fellow reporters? You certainly don’t.
If you don’t care much about it…why do you bring it up multiple times? respond so often? minimize the achievements of female ephs? link to Nigelian (wtf? why would you do that? You looked bad doing that also!!!)?
Propose your list of people you think should win, fine. but it is truly ugly and bad form to do so by criticizing those who won. “So and so deserves a bicentennial award…” does not need to include the statement “more than that other person.” good god.
PCE: I don’t think I have the energy to write a blog of my own, but maybe something can be arranged. i’d certainly need a copy editor or something like that!
September 28th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Rory writes:
We agree. By the way, I was wrong to think that it was the Committee on Honorary Degrees which did the picking. It isn’t. I think that it is the Nominating Committee of the Society of Alumni. In any event, the process is almost certainly as you describe it.
But, to be clear, I think that it is more than this. That the committee consciously and unconsciously strives to come up with a group of winners that “look like Williams.” That it tries to avoid having all old winners or young winners, all men or all women, all whites or all non-whites, all artists or all non-artists. Now, just because this is the case (as it almost certainly is) does not mean that standards have to be different. It all depends on the applicant pool.
I think that this is just a fantasy. When an award is made to the “staff” of the Eagle (or the New York Times) it does not mean that every employee or even every reporter gets to (honestly) claim to be a Pulitzer-winner. I think that any reporter that contributed to any of the winning articles could put Pulitzer-winner on her resume (as along as she made it clear that the award was a staff one). But, see the link above. I half dozen people are listed in the articles as having contributed to the winning articles. Grace Rubenstein is not one of them. As far as any of us know, she was on vacation the week that those winning articles were written. It is simply incorrect to refer to her as a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. I would bet/hope that she does not do so on her resume. (By the way, I think that a similar dynamic is at work with regard to Kim and the Peabody, but more on that some other day.)
I linked to Nigaleian as a counter-example to Sam’s claim that my posts do not influence senior Williams people. That series did. (This series certainly won’t.)
I think that this is excellent advice. I hope that I am smart enough to take it . . .
September 29th, 2007 at 11:43 am
By the commonly accepted definition, Sam, David isn’t slandering anyone. Narrow-minded; almost by definition. Mean-spirited, sure, but we’re discussing high-powered winners of top awards here. These aren’t tender, impressionable applicants or undergraduate authors; they’re not hothouse flowers. They can stand a little investigation.
Also, and not for nothing, I was disturbed by how much your post seemed geared toward stifling all discussion on the subject. Do you think any female recipient of a Bicentennial Medal feels her achievement diminished by this conversation? Do you think Martha Coakley cares of what David speaks? I ask that in all seriousness. You indicate that David’s analysis of awards standards is tantamount to a public, “depressing” attack on female Ephs. Other commenters suggest that the achievements of women as a group have been impugned. Rory thinks it’s “truly ugly and bad form” to criticize award-winners at all. Better stay away from the E! Channel, then, fella!
I think you’re all nuts, and taking this discussion way too seriously and personally. We’re talking about an award here, with a dually objective and subjective criteria (”distinguished achievement” paired with committee choice). It’s a visible and prominent honor, one whose conference carries the weight of the entire college. It’s perfectly reasonable to debate, discuss and even criticize such selections. David thinks that committee displays patterns of bias in its selections, and has examples to back up his argument. His tic of over-generalizing is annoying, but not exactly unexpected. Disagree if you want (I kind of do); think that, if correct, his conclusion really doesn’t matter (I REALLY do); attack his motives in a nasty, self-congratulatory ad hominem post if you must. But please let’s not pretend we’re gallantly standing up for the honor of Ephwomen here.
September 29th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Ben,
There’s a significant difference between what one should expect from E! channel and what a williams alum should expect from ephblog. And you completely misrepresented my statement…it was gender neutral. It is really bad form to criticize winners when proposing that someone else is worthy. When nominating somebody for something, you generally don’t put down the other candidates. David’s manner of posting is doing exactly that. Not only is it doing that, but it does so in a manner that reeks of the whining of privileged white men about “reverse discrimination”. It is truly ugly to do things that way.
Ben, you’ve presupposed that I’ve been posting to defend Ephwomen while being able to take a holier-than-thou tone. In a word: no. I’m not gallantly standing up for the honor of ephwomen when I post, I’m getting mad at David for his insensitivity and willingness to make bold claims of opinion/hypothesis as though they are fact. I’m especially pissed off when that happens and he’s making such claims about women, low-income students, or people of color.
None of that is unexpected…but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow or let slide. nor should it.
It’s ugly to minimize the accomplishments of fellow ephs on “ephblog”. I can’t believe I have to defend that statement. Heck, even Kane agreed! lol.
David, Grace Rubenstein, to my knowledge, has not claimed to be a “pulitzer winner”. That, and any subsequent claims, have all come from third parties. In the chance that she did not win one and third parties are incorrect, we should make it very clear she has in no way claimed such an honor herself. A quick google search shows only that Harvard and Williams are claiming it as such.
September 29th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Just a couple of things:
1) Frank, I assume you are just being provocative and contrarian when you assert that “overcame as much adversity, displayed at least as much courage, was at least as much a pioneer and played his game better than and at as high a level as Jackie Robinson.” By the way, I’m writing a book on sports and American society in which race plays a huge role, and so when you say that “none of us” has any clue what you are talking about, you must mean most of us . . .
Willis may not even have been as good a football player as Jackie Robinson, but even if he was, and even if we acknowledge that both are Hall of Famers, you’d have a hard time convincing me that Willis was as accomplished as Robinson as an athlete inasmuch as, you know, he probably wasn’t. But beyond that, in the 1940s it is quite clear that Major League Baseball was far more popular and important in American society than was professional football. And Jckie Robinson had to go to spring training in Jim Crow Florida. So the idea that his hardships were not greater than those of Willis is pretty dubious. Robinson did so on a much bigger stage and had to confront Jim Crow in the South in a way that Willis did not — and baseball had a much longer history of segregation than the NFL did. Your point stands, I think, but your overstatements do not.
On another issue, Dave’s attempt to posit that higher elected office equals greater accomplishment is pretty much one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read. It really is tiresome continually to read assertions and interpretations posited as fact.
dcat
September 29th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Derek: Of course, I disagree.
September 30th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Frank –
Fair enough! You’re wrong, of course, but fair enough!
Cheers –
dc