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GOLDSEA | ASIAN BOOKVIEW | NONFICTION

Making More Waves
Beacon Press, Boston, 1997, 310pp, $18
New Writing by Asian American Women

EXCERPT:

osalie Tung joined the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business in 1981 as an associate professor of management. In her early years at the Business School, she garnered praise for her performance. In the summer of 1983 a change in leadership brought a new dean and new department chair to the school. According to Tung, "shortly after taking office, the chairman of the management department began to make sexual advances toward me." In June 1984 the chair awarded Professor Tung a twenty percent increase in salary and high praise for her achievements in research, teaching and community service.
     However, when Tung came up for tenure review in the fall of 1984, her chair's evaluation of her performance changed dramatically. "After I made it clear to the chairman that I wanted our relationship kept on a professional basis," she stated in her charge, "he embarked on a ferocious campaign to destroy and defame me. He solicited more than thirty letters of recommendation from external and internal reviewers when the usual practice was for five or six letters." Although a majority of her department faculty recommended tenure, the personnel committee denied Professor Tung's promotion. Tung later learned through a respected and well-placed member of the faculty that the justification given by the decision makerswas that "the Wharton School is not interested in China-related research." Tung understood this to mean that the Business School "did not want a Chinese American, an Oriental [on their faculty]." Of over sixty faculty in the management department, there were no tenured professors of color and only one tenured woman. At the entire Business School, with over three hundred faculty, there were only two tenured people of color, both male.





     Tung filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in Philadelphia alleging race, sex, and national origin discrimination. She also filed a complaintwith the university grievance commission.

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