Fresh Drama at Yale

And here is another round of fresh, juicy drama from my alma mater:

On March 6, professors and graduate students in Spanish and Portuguese arrived at their department mailboxes to find an anonymous letter expressing grave concerns about their department. The letter, which said it was written by a group of graduate students, was also passed along to several top administrators.

“The graduate students of Spanish and Portuguese wish to make known the level of discontent that we feel as a result of the highly negative atmosphere that has been created in our department,” the letter read. “Many issues related to Spanish and Portuguese are blatant acts of discrimination and harassment.”

Yes, and the very first issue I’m seeing is the poor writing skills. When I was a graduate student at that department, my writing in English also sucked something fierce, so I can identify. Oh, the beautiful days of writing pompous, drama-queenish missives in horrible English! I’m having a great day today, the Chancellor approved my tenure, the Research Grants committee meeting went beautifully, my sister is celebrating her birthday, so I can wax nostalgic over the memories of my wayward youth.

I understand that Yalie angst is not to everybody’s liking, so I’m putting the rest of the post under the fold.

For those of you who do care, I have things to say about the linked article.

The letter alleged that the department is rife with sexual harassment, targeting both department secretaries and graduate students. Specifically, the letter identified Spanish professor Roberto González Echevarría GRD ’70 as the “main assailant.”

I was Dr. González Echevarría’s student. He was not my thesis adviser but I took courses with him. The guy is absolutely brilliant. Once, when I was in the midst of horrible personal drama (I had a different vision of what constitutes “horrible” in those years), I came to his class in a nearly suicidal mood. By the end of the class hour, though, I was busily arguing and commenting on Cuban literature. The professor managed to get me out of my funk, and I don’t forget this kind of thing. In all of my years at that department, I did not witness anything even remotely resembling sexual harassment from him. This doesn’t mean anything but what I say: I (emphasis in I, me, myself) didn’t see or experience it.

“Our current secretaries, Susan Wheeler and Virginia Gutiérrez, endure the yells and condescending remarks of Professor González Echevarría on a regular basis. From demands that they make fresh coffee to yelling at them from behind his desk partway down the hall, his actions are some of the most misogynistic that anyone has ever heard,” the letter said. “His offhanded comments to female graduate students have not gone unnoticed either.”

With all the complaints I have about that department, one thing always struck me as very positive: whenever I would visit a prof’s office, the prof in question would ask me if I wanted coffee (it’s a department of Spanish, after all) and if I expressed interest, immediately ran to fetch me a cup. I valued that because a young graduate student of the female gender and a very Russian look would not enjoy being made to feel like anybody’s maid. I never heard any yelling either, but as we discussed on the blog recently, English-speakers do tend to invest the word “yelling” with weird meanings.

Dr. González Echevarría did once tell me I’m fat but I did not mind because hello, I totally am, and besides, the comment happened in a context that made it very inoffensive. He also once called me “our Russian beauty”, and I did mind the “Russian”, if not the “beauty”, part. But I can forgive a Cuban person for thinking that “All of you, Russian-speaking bastards who crushed my country, look the same to me.”

The letter, along with both students and faculty, identified communication problems within the department.

“The opinions of graduate students are never taken seriously by the members of the faculty of our department,” the letter read.

To this, I have to respond the following. My main issue with that department was the abysmally low intellectual standards of my fellow graduate students. Save for my BFFs R and O (I miss you, guys! It would be so cool to gossip about this over drinks) and my former friend D (I don’t miss you, jerk!), I could barely talk with anybody without dying of boredom. I don’t care if I sound condescending but I can’t stand talking with stupid people for more than 5 minutes. I begin to suffer physiologically. And when I was a student there (2003-2008), I suffered a lot. It is possible that the student pool changed dramatically since then but if it hasn’t, I am not surprised that these grad students’ opinions are not taken very seriously.

One graduate student who was not involved in the letter said last year, several students completed an internal survey and brought the results to Adorno and Valis, but that few of these issues were addressed. These concerns included some expressed in the anonymous letter, but also others such as meager availability of teaching positions for Spanish literature courses and a lack of transparency surrounding departmental policies.

Again, this angers me. Students don’t come to Yale to have literature taught to them by amateurs, and TA-ships are extremely rare since class sizes are tiny. However, people who want to teach literature while at Yale, find opportunities to do so. I, for instance, taught literature to heritage speakers from the area as part of the outreach program created by Yale. Not only was this experience very useful, it was extraordinarily gratifying and made me realize that I’m very good at teaching kids from underprivileged backgrounds. (Jesus, I think about Yale for 5 minutes and immediately this stunted grad student vocabulary comes gushing back into my brain).

In 2007, the University implemented a tenure track system that guarantees junior faculty members an evaluation for promotion, where formerly they could only be considered when a spot opened or was created in their departments. But professors and graduate students interviewed said this policy is largely ignored in the Spanish and Portuguese department – while junior faculty are evaluated for tenure as per the requirement, they have little chance of actually receiving it.

“It is very well known around the University and even outside of the University that the Spanish and Portuguese Department does not give tenure to anyone,” Poole said.

This part is absolutely true. There is no tenure-track at Yale. This is a department that wants only the super-super-superstars and hires people with tenure after they have made a name for themselves internationally. This totally sucks dick for young PhDs who come to Yale for what they believe is a TT job. However, however, but, but, but. Do you want to go to Yale to be taught by Dr. Completely Unknown to Anybody But His Drinking Buddies? And herein lies the problem.

To conclude, I want to quote my own words on the real problem at the department:

That department has serious problems, and I mean HUGE. But these problems have nothing to do with who’s chair or who controls “the budget.” Neither are they related to the dearth of invited visitors (you want to find out what a luminary in your field has to say? Buy her most recent book!) or lack of conference funding. The problem of that department is that it’s “all booze, no books”, and not even a 1,000 conferences will change that situation.

It is very shocking for me to find myself defending Yale, yet I can’t avoid thinking that the grad students at the department should take a long and hard look at themselves before they level criticisms. 

I would love to read that letter, of course. If anybody is willing to send me the text, I will be thankful and promise to meet any and all of the sender’s conditions, including never breathing a word of it to another human being.

P.S. In the spirit of full disclosure, I had been contacted by the article’s author for an interview for this piece but I didn’t send back any comments.