Word: jasanoff
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...actually create positions for spouses and to make that an official policy is tricky, because then everyone that’s hired will expect that for his or her spouse,” Diebold Professor of Indo-European Linguistics and Philology Jay Jasanoff says...
...happen to know of several of cases where Harvard has missed making a first-rate appointment for that reason,” Jasanoff says. “Most people who have dealt with Harvard have some sense that Harvard could try a little harder on this score, but of course it’s part of being “number one” that you don’t have to try that hard...
Associate Professor of Linguistics Bert R. Vaux has suffered from this pressure. He asserts that in 1999, Jasanoff “ordered that [the number of students receiving an A or A-] should be no more than 25 percent.” Jasanoff denies giving a specific directive but admits that the 25 percent target “corresponds approximately to my philosophy.” Regardless, enrollment numbers in Vaux’s two big courses, Social Analysis 34: “Knowledge of Language” and Linguistics 80: “Dialects of English...
...wrong because they are arbitrary and increase the chances that students will get grades lower than what they deserve. Furthermore, they’re not at all necessary to achieving the wider task of raising standards—if that indeed is the goal of people like Mansfield and Jasanoff. There are many classes at Harvard that lack quotas but still have such difficult requirements that few students earn grades...
...Jasanoff says he is “interested in seeing to it that our courses are responsibly graded.” But, as Vaux points out, “In practice, grading is profoundly subjective.” As such, professors must try their best to set clear requirements for their students. If 70 percent of students produce A-quality work in a class, then so be it. We students are motivated to try our best when we think an A is within reach but not guaranteed. Arbitrary quotas are no way to make us do better work...