Most people tend to think of the academic world -- or at least in the social sciences -- as one in which almost everyone tries to be politically correct and that there can’t possibly be any discrimination because everyone is supposedly very conscious about equality, fairness, and justice. Well, as the Associated Press reports, apparently that’s not the case at U.C. Santa Barbara, where the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently ruled that it unfairly discriminated against a female professor for taking family leave time:

The University of California, Santa Barbara, was admonished by [the EEOC] for allegedly denying tenure to a professor after she took time off to have two children. . . . It was a rare ruling. The commission said it made “reasonable cause to believe” rulings -- the harshest action it can take -- in only 6.4 percent of its more than 26,000 discrimination cases last year. It could lead to a lawsuit by Freeman if voluntary conciliation talks fail. . . .

Before the 41-year-old professor had two children, now 5 and 8, Freeman was embraced by the UCSB political sciences department, said her attorney Charlotte Fishman, executive director of the San Francisco-based Pick Up the Pace group that seeks to raise the number of tenured women nationwide. After Freeman’s children were born, the department’s evaluation became increasingly critical and ultimately undermined her tenure review, Fishman said.

“We’re saying she was subjected to higher standards that would not apply to somebody who did not have children. What happens in academia is there are some people who think you’re not really committed if you have a family,” Fishman said.

I’m not sure which is more surprising -- that a social science department would commit such a blatant case of discrimination, or that the Republican-controlled EEOC actually ruled in favor of a plaintiff claiming discrimination against an employer. By the way, I just checked UCSB’s political science department faculty page, and it shows that only eight of its 24 faculty are women.

At any rate, it’s nice to see that universities and departments should understand that they need to put their money where their mouth is. In other words. if they claim to be non-discriminatory, then they need to back that up with positive action, not do the exact opposite -- what a concept.