Wilson's 'Quiet Diplomacy'

Linda S. Wilson, a University of Michigan administrator with a background in chemistry, was named the seventh president of Radcliffe last week after a search which took the school more than 16 months to complete. Wilson, in an interview on the day of her appointment by the Board of Trustees, describes her experience with the search process and her concept of the presidency.

Crimson: How did you go from being a chemist to an administrator? When did you make that choice?

Wilson: Quite a long time ago actually. In part because I had the opportunity to work with two very distinguished gentlemen. They invited me to join them. I decided that the opportunity for professional growth was better there than I thought it would be doing what I was doing so I took a deep breath and left. And I'm very glad I did. I missed teaching, but I used to construct opportunities for teaching along the way.

Crimson: Is it hard to be a woman in science?

Wilson: Probably. There are some comforts that come from being among women but I've always been--ever since I left undergraduate school--in the company of men as colleagues and friends, and whatever accommodations I may have made I made them so long ago I don't remember them very well.

Crimson: Do the same accommodations still have to be made by women today?

Wilson: Not as much as they do as when I was younger. I can remember receiving a letter from a college that had an opening that I was applying for that said, 'your credentials are wonderful, you should be an associate professor instead of an assistant professor, but we don't want to hire you [because you are a woman].' That would never happen today. Someone might think it, but one would never write it down. Things are much better. When I first went to Washington University I was not allowed to meet with the other administrators--they had never had a woman in the administrators' loop. When I first began to meet with them there was this short period of discomfort and then we got our attention focused on the issues and everything was fine.

Crimson: Harvard is somewhat well-known for its low rate of women faculty--7 percent tenured women faculty. Are you comfortable with that?

Wilson: It's important, I think, to remember that Harvard's low rate is linked to its unusual way of tenuring faculty...The number of women who received Ph.Ds in the 1970s and 1960s was not high, and people who are tenured are senior in age. It takes a while for that pool to go through the system. I will be delighted when the workforce in academia is more evenly distributed. I think it will be beneficial for students and certainly beneficial for scholarship in general. I'm not knowledgeable enough about Harvard to know if it is an unusual problem here. One could say that if the system has this effect perhaps we should question the system.

Crimson: So is it your belief that thelow rate of tenured women faculty hiring atHarvard is due to the lack of available, qualifiedwomen?

Wilson: That's certainly a significantfactor. I'm not familiar enough with the Harvardscene to say whether that's the dominant factor orone of 20 factors. The pool of women who are verywell-trained who want to be at a particularinstitution is very small. One has to make anextraordinary effort to recruit them, but everyonein the country is trying to recruit them.

Crimson: There was a lot of concernhere, particularly from women faculty members thatthe new president be someone who could speak outon issues that related to women faculty. do youfeel like you're in a position to do that?

Wilson: I feel very close to thefaculty. It's been interesting to me that, exceptfor those who specifically looked at my vitae,most of my colleagues assume that I am a member ofthe faculty. I take care to disabuse them of thatif I discover that they made that mistake. I feelquite comfortable to speak out on any issue onwhich I feel well-grounded and in which myresponsibilities cover that scope. I try to becareful not to extend my reach where I'm notwelcome or where it's not really part of my rolebecause one can tend to do damage there. One ofthe things that I explored when I was looking atthis job was just what exactly is this role, whatare the issues. I will not be afraid to speak upif I have ideas that I think would be useful.

Crimson: Some people in women's studieshave suggested that one way to [increase the sizeof the department] is for Radcliffe to getinvolved and take an active interest. Would you bewilling to stand up at a faculty meeting andadvocate that?

Wilson: Well, faculty meetings areplaces where faculty get up and advocate things,not presidents. When Matina Horner stands up at afaculty meeting she's standing up as a facultymember, not as a president. I would be veryinterested in learning more about the women'sstudies program and raising the status of women'sstudies.

Crimson: Do you consider yourself afeminist?

Wilson: I've never put a label onmyself. I'm not typecast as an active supporter ofwomen because my portfolio is on a differentscope, but I've worked as much as I could more ina quiet diplomacy style because I've been in innercircles in the institutions I've been working withand I've had the opportunity to tweak the systemat the right time, to get the point across. Ifound that to be a very effective strategy.

Crimson: What do you see as the maindifferences between your style and MatinaHorner's?

Wilson: Well, Matina is a scholar in avery relevant field. I am not a scholar of thesame kind. I have tried to do as much writing andthinking as I could, but it has more of aninstitutional focus...I think Matina and I havemany things in common and some real differences. Iwill draw very deeply on her knowledge but I won'ttry to replicate her