professor did not receive tenure, and out of this story Ms. Mentor has struggled for many years to derive a moral applicable to women in academia. She still has not succeeded—but finds it nevertheless an excellent tale, well worth retelling.
Ms. Mentor does, of course, attract other kinds of objections, the main one running something like this: “You are a mindless, bourgeois tool of capitalist patriarchy. Instead of encouraging community, you support individualistic solutions. You should be enabling your readers to work to overthrow…”
At which point Ms. Mentor tunes out, for she is not in the business of overthrowing capitalist patriarchy: her aims are far more modest, but much more immediate. She wants women to have power in academia NOW.
And so, rather than rock throwing (with which she does have some sympathies, however), Ms. Mentor prefers that women learn the fine arts of self-defense—and achieve the fine protection of tenure. A solitary woman, railing against injustice, has no power at all. But a team of women, all tenured, can speak with one voice and make the changes that will stop sexual harassment, achieve equal pay, get respect and money for Women's Studies, combat homophobia and anti-Semitism and class and race prejudices, allow paid leaves for child care and elder care, support accessibility and disability rights—and all the other things that are called “women's issues” and should really be human rights, and human responsibilities.
But only tenured professors have the power in academia—and so women need to get tenure. Ms. Mentor can help them, and will.
For only after tenure, can they really do what Ms. Mentor tells them to do.
Acknowledgments
Ms. Mentor's birth was attended by many midwives whose contributions of biting anecdotes, sharp ideas, raucous laughter, and delicious gossip should be lauded. Some prefer to remain demurely anonymous, but the first supporter Ms. Mentor can celebrate publicly is Joan Hartman, the editor of Concerns, who has never sought to change a comma of Ms. Mentor's, even at her most ranting. Ellen Cronan Rose and Ellen Messer-Davidow, Emily Toth's predecessor and successor as president of the Women's Caucus for the Modern Languages, also egged on the creation of “Ms. Mentor.”
In the wider field of academia and its environs, Annette Kolodny, Susan Koppelman, Robin Roberts, and Martha Ward deserve special commendation. They are Ms. Mentor's dearest chums, yentas, nudges, listening posts, and coconspirators.
Others whose ideas have especially enhanced Ms. Mentor's include Marleen Barr, Emily Batinski, Marilyn Bonnell, Stephanie Bressler, Mary Lynn Broe, Ellen Cantarow, Jane Caputi, Mary Wilson Carpenter, Sabrina Chapman, Barbara Davidson, Cathy N. Davidson, Carmen del Rio, Barbara E well, Cynthia Fisher, Elizabeth Fisher, Daniel Mark Fogel, Molly Freier, Linda Gardiner, Carol Gelderman, Lynne Goodstein, Suzanne Green, Mary Hamilton, Elizabeth Hampsten, Suzette Henke, Barbara Hillyer, Dominique Homberger, Florence Howe, Dorothy Jenkins, Leola Johnson, Rosan Jordan, Mike Judge, Andrea Lapin, Nancy Love, John Lowe, Wahneema Lubiano, Mary Jane Lupton, Deborah Martin, Michelle Massé, Carol Mattingly, Kenneth McMillin, Sally Mitchell, Janet Palmer Mullaney, Dana Nelson, Margaret Parker, Mary Perpich, Annis Pratt, Susan Radis, Gerri Reaves, Angelita Reyes, Lillian Robinson, Audrey Rodgers, Sue V. Rosser, Hal Ruddick, Adelaide Russo, Nina Schulman, Kimberly Clarke Simmons, Dale Spender, Susan Swartzlander, Bette Tallen, Linda Wagner-Martin, and Barbara Wittkopf.
The Women's and Gender Studies faculty of Louisiana State University should be cited for their energy and aplomb. The Economic and Social Justice Research Group of Baton Rouge NOW and the Women's Studies Consortium of Louisiana have contributed ideas and indignation.
The late Dorothy Ginsberg Fitzgibbons, Emily Toth's mother, was her first mentor. Emily Toth also owes much to other family members, including Sara Ruffner, Theresa Toth, Dennis Fitzgibbons, Ellen Boyle, and the late John Fitzgibbons. She further acknowledges that all her academic mentors were men, and fine ones: Philip Klass, Richard Macksey, Daniel Waiden, Stanley Weintraub, and Philip Young.
Pat Browne and Arlene Caney duly scheduled a Ms. Mentor session every year for half a dozen years at the annual American and Popular Culture Association convention.
Beauregard and Bunkie Toth contributed feline self-assurance: they mentor or maul every human they meet.
As a role model, living legend, and goddess of etiquette, Miss Manners, Judith Martin, is without peer. (Ms. Mentor has never met her, but worships her from afar.)
Patricia Reynolds Smith, the sagest of editors, jumped at the chance to aim Ms. Mentor at a wider audience, through the good offices of the University of Pennsylvania Press. She has been the perfect editor for Ms. Mentor's quirky humor and crotchety ways. Mindy Brown, Jennifer Malloy, Kym Silvasy, and Carol Gaines ably midwifed Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia into print. Eric Halpern wisely directs the Press.
Nicole Hollander, artist extraordinaire, created a cover drawing worthy of a goddess—or Ms. Mentor.
Finally, Bruce Toth has lived with Ms. Mentor's teeth gnashing and phrasemongering for some five years, and Emily Toth's for nearly thirty years. He finds them both witty and wise, which is the best sign of his own good taste.
Graduate School: The Rite of Passage
Anne, a straight-A student through high school and a summa cum laude from Bryn Mawr, has fallen in love with art history. She's trekked to every odd little church in every corner of Italy and says her soul is more Italian than American. Friends have found her lying down by the hour, staring at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. A boyfriend even broke off with her because, he said, “You love Michelangelo—even though he's dead and gay—more than you love me.” Anne can't deny it. And now, after five years of waitressing in Europe and discovering that tempestuous romances don't satisfy her soul, Anne wants to go to graduate school. She wants to get a Ph.D. in art history.
Beth has worked for several years in a biology lab, doing routine testings and samplings. But she loves to read novels. She continually regrets that her college major was General Studies, with just “Intro to Lit” and a few low-level science courses to certify herself as a medical technologist. She'd wanted a job that she could fall back on and pick up anywhere, since her husband's job requires a family move every few years. They also have two young children. But now Beth is thinking she'd like to do “something for myself.” She'd like to go to graduate school and really study literature in depth, not just as a fan.
Cassie comes from a family of intensely practical doctors and lawyers who've always considered her an oddball: she's obsessed with human motivations and peculiarities. At family events, when everyone else is talking money, Cassie is gathering gossip. When the doctors discuss hearts and the lawyers discuss writs, Cassie wants to know all about who, what, when, where, why, and how. Cassie majored in mass communications, but found her courses too technical, not satisfying her curiosity. She's figured out that what really grabs her is anthropology—comparative cultures—a field in which academic jobs scarcely exist. So she's considering graduate school in history.
Anne, Beth, and Cassie all need impeccable advice from Ms. Mentor, who will allow her sage readers to eavesdrop.
A Ph.D., Ms. Mentor declares, should be pursued only by those who love what they are doing. They should burn with curiosity and wonder; they should delight in discovering new things. Otherwise the graduate school apprenticeship is too long, and the required studies often dreary. Graduate students have little power and much stress: as fellowships and assistantships dry up, poverty becomes a way of life. And at the end, given the dismal job market in virtually all fields, most Ph.D.s will not follow in their professors' footsteps, even if they want to.
Still, Anne has the burning drive; Cassie has family money to fall back on. But Beth must be able to stay at one university for years of study. Then she'll need to move, possibly several times, to remote and distant places where jobs happen to open. Even with good child care and a husband willing to share a commuter marriage, her options are limited. It's not uncommon, now, for a new English Ph.D. to take five years to find a tenure-track job.
This is not