AP News, January 19th, 2007
A Harvard University professor who accused the school of gender discrimination has withdrawn her resignation, but said Thursday that the school's landscape architecture department remains a bastion of sexism.
Martha Schwartz, 56, complained that the department has never had a tenured female professor in its 106 years.
"I'm not pointing at any one person or any one thing, but this should have happened a long time ago," Schwartz, who lives in London, said in a telephone interview.
Schwartz, who has taught at the university since 1992 while developing an international landscape architecture practice, submitted a letter of resignation Friday.
"How can this lack of parity be allowed to exist in this day and age in any department within Harvard University, no matter how small the department may be?" she wrote in the letter to interim President Derek Bok.
Schwartz said the president, the dean of the graduate school of design and a host of fellow faculty members persuaded her to stay.
"A couple people who I respect very highly encouraged me to try to change things from the inside," Schwartz said.
Alan Altshuler, dean of the Graduate School of Design, said all three senior appointments he has made since taking over in 2004 have been women.
"And we are now far along in the consideration of Martha Schwartz. I prefer to leave it at that," he said in an e-mail.
The landscape architecture department has six tenured professors and 11 non-visiting adjunct faculty members, four of whom are women. Roughly 70 percent of the department's students are women.
