LOCATION: 6-120. Book sales for The Exceptions starting at 4:30PM and panel begins at 5:00PM
Panelists include: Nancy Hopkins, Amgen Professor Emerita of Biology, MIT; Kate Zernicke, National Correspondent for New York Times; Leigh Royden, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Geology and Geophysics, MIT; Lorna Gibson, Matoula S. Salapatas Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, MacVicar Fellow, MIT; and Sangeeta Bhatia, John J. and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT. Moderated by Ruth Perry, Professor Emerita of Literature, MIT
In 1999, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology admitted to discriminating against women on its faculty, forcing institutions across the country to confront a problem they had long ignored: the need for more women at the top levels of science. Written by the journalist who broke the story for The Boston Globe, The Exceptions is the untold story of how sixteen highly accomplished women on the MIT faculty came together to do the work that triggered the historic admission.
The Exceptions centers on the life of Nancy Hopkins, a reluctant feminist who became the leader of the sixteen and a hero to two generations of women in science. Hired to prestigious universities at the dawn of affirmative action efforts in the 1970s, Dr. Hopkins and her peers embarked on their careers believing that discrimination against women was a thing of the past—that science was, at last, a pure meritocracy. For years they explained away the discrimination they experienced as the exception, not the rule. Only when these few women came together after decades of underpayment and the denial of credit, advancement, and equal resources to do their work did they recognize the relentless pattern: women were often marginalized and minimized, especially as they grew older. Meanwhile, men of similar or lesser ability had their career paths paved and widened.