Left Behind

From an e-mail message:

Hi FSP,

I'm an avid reader and sometimes commenter on your blog. I seem to agree with you about non-gender-based workplace issues but often disagree with you on gender-based issues. Nonetheless I always find your take illuminating. I would love to get your thoughts on a recent email exchange I participated in while at work as a post-doc at a major state research university.

On a department-wide email list for all post-docs, I received an invitation to an event that was not addressed to me. The email was addressed only to women; it invited women to attend a women's scientific society dinner held on the university campus. I understood that I was excluded from the event because of my gender.

This email traffic and the event itself are so far into my post-doc one of the only instances where I have felt discriminated against; this certainly isn't the norm. It would be easy enough for me to ignore this single incident, I suppose, but nonetheless it's rankled me. To me it seems like an example of a disconnect between the ideals of a discrimination-free workplace and the practices that supposedly further this ideal. I would be very interested to hear if you have a similar take (or not).

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Appended to the e-mail message was some correspondence between the postdoc and the organizer of the women-only event. In this e-mail exchange, the postdoc asked the event organizer to send such announcements only to women, the event organizer explained that it is difficult to maintain an up-to-date e-mail list and she doesn't want to risk missing anyone, and the postdoc politely suggested that she should attempt to organize a specific e-mail list anyway. She apologized for the spam, noted that she also gets e-mail about activities that are not intended for her, and suggested that he just delete the e-mails.

There are two issues here: the existence of an event specifically for women, and the fact that e-mails announcing the event are sent to everyone, even those excluded from the event.

My thoughts:

Ignoring all other considerations, it may not seem right or fair that women have women-only professional/social events like this. But we can't ignore those other considerations; they are important and explain why such societies/events even exist. Protesting a dinner for an underrepresented group should not be a high-priority target for dismay about discrimination in the workplace.

First let's make the workplace discrimination-free for everyone in ways that really count (e.g., opportunities, salary, resources, promotion, respect); then such organizations and events will not be necessary.

The exclusion of men from this dinner does not harm the professional standing or opportunities of the excluded men. The women who attend this dinner will not obtain special career opportunities that are closed to men. The dinner is an attempt to bring together certain people who might otherwise be at a disadvantage owing to their sparse representation in the workplace (a physics department).

As the organizer of the women-only dinner noted in her e-mail to the postdoc, as a woman in physics, she is well aware of what discrimination feels like. These women-only events, however, are not the cause of discrimination in the workplace and do not perpetuate it. They exist because there is discrimination, and these events are an effort to alleviate some of the problems.

I know some men in my field of science -- some of them quite young -- who do not think that discrimination against women in science is a problem. They don't think of their female peers as less intelligent or able than men, and therefore they simply don't see the problems. They are puzzled when women make a big deal about feeling isolated or excluded, or about being patronized or insulted. These men are certainly against outright harassment and abuse, but they wonder if the more quotidian forms of discrimination might be better interpreted as whining by overly sensitive women who see everything through the lens of gender.

Yet there is a problem. Look at the data on employment statistics in the physical sciences and you will see it.

To my correspondent: If you were excluded from an event intended only for members of an ethnic minority, would you feel the same way? I was recently talking with a colleague who told me about an event that he attended for Hispanic and Native American scientists and science students. I can't imagine feeling "discriminated" against for being excluded from this event.

I wish I could say that my only experience with "discrimination" was not being invited to an event like this.

Are there any female postdocs, grad students, or faculty with whom you could have a serious and respectful discussion about this topic? Maybe hearing about the experiences of someone you know in real life might give you more insight into how discrimination has affected some of your friends and colleagues. Unfortunately, the women we really need to hear from are those who didn't make it to grad school despite having the ability to succeed and thrive as scientists, but even among those who do make it, some surely have stories to tell.

Also: Do you know for a fact that men are not welcome at some of the events that are seemingly only for the women in your department? It seems that the dinner in question is intended only for women, but I have given talks or participated in panel discussions hosted by women-in-science and/or engineering societies, and men are welcome at these events, even if the societies have "Women" in their names. The events are advertised broadly because the events are open to all. Would you be interested in participating in some events if they were geared towards discussions of career opportunities (for example)?

One of my colleagues once complained to me that male grad students and postdocs would not feel "welcome" at a panel discussion on careers because the event was organized by women and most of the panelists were women. The event in question was open to all, and was not even sponsored by a women-only professional society. It was just organized by women, that's all. My colleague feared that the event would therefore be attended mostly by women and would focus on "family issues", and therefore men would be uncomfortable about attending. He feared that men were being excluded, even if not in an official way. I told my colleague that if I restricted my participation in professional events to those that were attended by a majority of my own gender, I would never go to a conference or committee meeting or even a faculty meeting. He said "That's different". Is it so different?

But I digress. From time to time, I participate in events that are restricted to women STEM faculty on my campus. In those cases, the announcement e-mails only go to the women STEM faculty. There aren't many of us, though, so it is easy to restrict the list. In the case of a large and frequently changing population, it's probably better to err on the side of not missing someone, even if this results in an irrelevant e-mail to others.

In any case, the dinner mentioned in the e-mail above is likely part of an effort to alleviate a problem -- the underrepresentation of women in a particular field of the physical sciences -- with a social/support/networking event. These events don't solve the overall problem, but such events were important to me early in my career when I was often treated in a different (not as good) way as my male peers when it came to salary, resources, and professional opportunities. Meeting with other women scientists helped build my confidence and provided me with much-needed advice.

All early career faculty should have access to support networks and career advice if they want such things. Groups that provide peer support or other mentoring for early career academics and that are open to everyone should be present on every university campus. In addition, in certain departments or university units, there may be a need for additional support organizations for various underrepresented groups.

Women-only societies or dinners may "rankle" some men, but I hope that men who support the ideals of a discrimination-free workplace will realize that real discrimination occurs in the scientific workplace. If we ever solve these problems, perhaps women-in-science (or analogous) groups will seem like quaint anachronisms rather than a lifeline, but we are not there yet.

What I Said

Yesterday I described how a Great Man of Science sat in my office and explained to me some exciting research done by one of my recent PhD students and me, as if the work had instead been done by one of our collaborators, a very famous scientist (the Other Great Man of Science mentioned in yesterday's post).

What did I do?

First I wanted to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding the conversation. Did he really have no clue that I was involved in this research or was he just expressing himself in an awkward way, focusing for some reason on the fact that my famous colleague supervises the lab in which one part of the research was done (by my student) and just not expressing himself well?

It soon became clear that he had no clue. His further statements proved it.

I have previously been in situations in which someone didn't realize that I was one of many co-authors on a paper, and that hasn't bothered me as long as I really was a minor co-author.

In the case under discussion here, however, I was offended because Great Man didn't even remember that we had met not-so-long ago (~ 6 months) at a multi-day workshop that focused entirely on this research, much less that I was one of the organizers of the workshop. He thought he was telling me something I didn't know.

In talking to him, it was clear to me that, in his mind, this research was associated only with Other Great Man of Science. Despite the fact that he had abundant evidence to the contrary during the workshop ~6 months ago, he had erased the existence of the rest of us from his awareness of this research: the students, a not-famous but nevertheless awesome colleague, and me. In his casual conversation about this research, the only one worth mentioning was the Other Great Man of Science.

Other Great Man of Science is definitely not responsible for this situation. He is a nice person, a quiet man, and a great supporter of all students involved in our project. He has been generous with his time and research facilities, and he is not a back-stabber. Our research collaboration involving 3 professors at 3 institutions and students at each place has been successful because of positive interactions among the groups.

For Great Man to believe that this research should be credited to Other Great Man, and to express this to my (apparently forgettable) face, with no recollection that I had even been at that workshop, was truly strange. It was not malicious. The Great Man's habit of savoring the names of other famous men was a feature of his visit to my department. At one point, he compared himself to Max Planck.

So this is what I did after swiftly contemplating my options:

I said something similar to what many commenters to yesterday's post indicated that they would have said. I said "Yes, of course I know about that research because a large part of it has been my work." Then I launched into a calm but very detailed description of the project, highlighting the work of my student, placing Other Great Man's contributions in context, and describing the evolution of the project. I wondered whether, even though he clearly didn't remember me, he remembered the excellent presentations of my former student, Young Awesome Scientist, from the workshop? I continued to elaborate for a while about the research, in what I hoped was an authoritative but nice way.

He was definitely somewhat embarrassed, although I don't think the feeling went too deep. He mumbled something about not being good with names and faces, then changed the subject to his favorite topic: himself and other famous people he knows.

Right after my monologue and his mumbled excuse, he said "Oh, so your field is Z? I know The Greatest Man of Z Science of the Last Half of the 20th Century. Have you ever met him?"

Indeed I have. I do get out now and then, including to workshops that I help organize on fascinating research topics that even attract Great Men of Science as participants, although some of them, despite being impressed by the research, have a selective memory about the experience later.

Invisible Me

Not long ago, a Great Man of Science came to my department, gave some talks, and met with faculty, students, and researchers. I have met him before, most recently ~ 6 months ago, but we do not know each other well at all.

I expected him to be familiar with only one part of my research; i.e., research on topic X, as it was in the context of my work on X that we most recently met. Therefore, during my individual meeting with him in my office, I was amazed to hear him say:

My good friend, Other Great Man of Science, is doing some really interesting work on X right now. In fact, he is transforming the way we think about X, and has some recent results that are very exciting.

I was stunned when he said this, and sought clarification. I thought maybe I heard him wrong or somehow misunderstood.

I was stunned because he was talking about my research group's work on X.

The interesting ideas and results have not been generated by my collaborator, Other Great Man of Science, who is at another university. In fact, the exciting results are primarily the work of one of my recent PhD students, as part of her doctoral thesis work.

Other Great Man of Science was a collaborator on the NSF grant that funded this work, but he has not been the most active member of the group and has not been a driving force behind the research. In fact, although I enjoy working with Other Great Man, his part of the project has been lagging.

My PhD student (now graduated) has been the most visible person doing this research and making the interesting discoveries and interpretations. Great Man also met her 6 months ago and saw her present her research results, at length. Yet Great Man erased her from his perception of the collaboration as well. In his mind, the only person worth remembering or mentioning is Other Great Man of Science.

It was surreal to have my group's research described to me by someone else and attributed to a colleague, as if my student and I did not exist.

My ego, which is generally healthy but not too huge on most days, was wounded, but not mortally so, as I am dealing with the situation by wallowing in outrage and contempt for this particular Great Man of Science (as a person, not as a scientist).

I hasten to say that Other Great Man of Science is not responsible for this situation. He has not taken undue credit for the research. In fact, he has been very supportive of my student and would be the first to confirm that it is primarily her work and that she has made the most interesting discoveries of the work thus far.

It is Great Man of Science's perception of the research that is the problem. He sees his famous friend; the rest of us either don't exist or can't possibly be important. Given the incredible amount of name-dropping he did during his talks in my department, this may be a habit with him.

If you had been in my place when this Great Man gave credit to his famous friend for the ideas and work of one of your students and/or you, despite the fact that you and your student had published and given talks on the research (and Other Great Man had not) and you knew that Great Man had been present at those talks (and had asked questions at the time), what would you have done? Confronted him immediately? Let it slide because who cares what he thinks -- he won't change his ideas and why cause an embarrassing situation, assuming the Great Man of Science is capable of being embarrassed? Expressed anger? Used humor? Nodded silently? Wondered if he was losing his mind?

Later I shall reveal what I did, but for now this post is a cliff-hanger.

Solar Flare

The main character and narrator of the novel Solar by Ian McEwan is Michael Beard, a repulsive Nobel Prize- winning physicist who had the stereotypical experience of a flash of brilliance as a young physicist, soon after which he intellectually burned out. Beard drifts into being involved in developing green technology (wind, solar), but he's not too interested in it until he steals the ideas of a postdoc who was having an affair with Beard's 5th wife (an affair she initiated in revenge for her husband's many affairs) but who dies in an accident in Beard's home when he trips over a polar bear skin rug, whose dangers were foreshadowed, soon after Beard returns from a bizarre trip to the Arctic, where he (Beard) encountered an angry polar bear. Is everyone with me so far?

That's just one small part of the book, most of which consists of tale after tale of excess: eating, drinking, lying, stealing, womanizing. It is not a pleasant book, but it is not entirely without its charms. If you can get past the absurd plot and the revolting characters, it's possible to enjoy some of the writing.

Except for one part, which, for me, was even worse than the Polar Bear of Doom scenes:

In the part of the book I particularly loathed, Beard agrees to head up a government committee charged with promoting physics in schools and attracting more students and teachers to physics. He doesn't give the committee much thought when he agrees to be part of it. The committee consists of three physics professors, various school teachers and headmasters, and a professor of "science studies".

At the first meeting, everyone on the committee introduces themselves, and Beard is curious to hear from the professor of science studies because the field is a "novelty" to him. The professor begins by noting that "..she was the only woman in the room and that the committee reflected one of the very problems it might want to address."

Fair enough. Good point. The committee is sympathetic to this. I was sympathetic to this.

The science studies professor, however, goes on to explain a recent research project in which she studied a genetics lab that was trying to isolate a particular gene in lions.

"Her purpose was to demonstrate that this gene, or any gene, was, in the strongest sense, socially constructed. Without the various "entexting" tools the scientists used.. the gene could not be said to exist... The gene was not an objective entity.. It was manufactured by their [the scientists'] hypotheses, their creativity, and their instrumentation.."

Now everyone, including me, thinks she is a blathering idiot, as intended by McEwan. When the science studies professor is done speaking, one of the physicists asks "Do you honestly believe that what you don't know about doesn't exist?"

Beard, as chairman, doesn't want to waste time arguing about whether genes are real or not, so he ends the discussion, and moves along to other items on the agenda, noting vaguely that they will have time to discuss these issues in subsequent meetings.

Later that day, the committee holds a press conference to a group of bored reporters. Tedious questions are asked; tedious answers are given. The committee's aims are worthy; there's nothing newsworthy about it.

But then: "a woman from a midmarket tabloid" asks about the underrepresentation of women in physics. Beard says that the committee will be looking into this to see if there were new ways to address the issue.

All would be well if he had stopped there. But of course he doesn't stop there. He keeps talking.

"He [Beard] believed there were no longer any institutional barriers or prejudices.. And then, because he was boring himself, he added that it might have to be accepted one day that a ceiling had been reached.. It was at least conceivable that they [women] would always remain in a minority.. There might always be more men than women who wanted to work in physics.."

He then goes on to explain that the brains of men and women are different, and that it's not about superiority, merely that there are innate differences in cognitive ability and interests. Boys are better at problem-solving etc.

Does some of this sound familiar?

Anyway, the reporters at the press conference are not particularly energized by these claims, but the professor of science studies is. She expresses her violent revulsion of what Beard has just said, then announces her resignation from the committee. She walks out. The reporters perk up and follow her out.

This is just the start of Beard's trouble with the "women and physics" issue, especially once journalists unearth his long troubled history with women (the many wives, the many affairs). And then it gets worse for him when he participates in a debate about the issue. He is the only Scientist in the debate.

Beard repeats what he said at the press conference; the cognitive differences between men and women etc. He is irritated. He wonders aloud if gravity is also a social construct, and he is booed.

A woman in the audience who rails about Beard's "hegemonic arrogance" speaks in "stern, headmistressy tones". The academic who debates him has "a red and blue frock, with a twittering voice to match". After the debate, Beard thinks he has done OK, considering how boring the twittery woman was.

But things soon go awry, and the plot gets even more farcical. Beard's career is (temporarily) destroyed by hysterical women who, helped considerably by the media, portray him as a sexist Nazi elite hegemonic unfeeling white male. Or something.

Other than a few glimmers here and there in the novel, when the reader might sort of feel some sympathy for Beard because he is, at times, cynical in an amusing way, this is one of the few episodes in which he is portrayed sympathetically. He blunders into this crisis unwittingly. It's true that he is a serial philanderer, but he is not sexist. He was only saying things that were true and scientific, backed up by research. He is just a simple scientist, and is a victim of these crazy women who don't understand science.

There are many good reasons why Beard's career as an administrator should have been destroyed, so it is ironic that he is brought down by these events, which, we are supposed to believe, aren't even his fault. The novel is otherwise a relentless, over-the-top depiction of a repulsive person who continually outdoes himself in disgusting behavior. Yet Beard becomes a sort of martyr-scientist, a well-meaning white male scientist attacked by people who have no understanding of Science but who are interested in demonizing men, concocting hysteria, and ignoring the undeniable fact that men and women are different.

I have read several reviews of this book, but none of the ones I read mentioned this particular episode. Some focused on the polar bear theme, and many rave about how well the author did with the "science" aspects of the novel (climate science, physics). Some reviewers, who seem to recognize that the book is a strange collection of disgusting anecdotes, resort to the rather desperate opinion that the book is so bad, it's actually brilliant. Overall, I would say that reviews are mixed but positive; e.g., Solar is not McEwan's best, but compared to what other authors can come up with, at least the ones who are still alive, it's awesome. And so on.

I think the book is a mess. Even so, despite the despicable parody about stupid women who don't understand science and the general unpleasantness of the plot and characters, I seldom regret reading a book, even ones I hate, this one included.

One-way Traffic?

One of the committees I was on this year recently consumed quite a lot of my time, and involved a marathon session in which a group of faculty from all over the university got together and discussed other faculty. I (mostly) enjoyed the wide-ranging debates and glimpses of academic life in other disciplines. I had particularly intriguing discussions with an art historian and a psychologist, and felt overall that my time on this committee was well-spent.

This was my first time on this committee, which I agreed to join in part because I had always found this committee's methods a bit mysterious and I wanted to know how it worked.

Here are some miscellaneous observations about this committee experience:

1. My generally optimistic view of academics was confirmed. There were a lot of nice people on this large committee. These were faculty who devoted quite a lot of time to tasks intended to help other faculty, and in particular early-career faculty. I would say that the committee is moderately powerful -- not as powerful as a P&T Committee but more powerful than most policy committees. Yet these faculty were not in it for the power or for settling scores or whatever other cynical reasons people might imaging would impel professors to take on a time-consuming committee assignment.

2. When evaluating other faculty, the Liberal Arts Professors (LAPs) and Fine Arts Professors (FAPs) were harder on their colleagues than they were on the scientists, engineers, or social scientists. In fact, the LAPs and FAPs were harder on their colleagues than the scientists etc. were on anyone.

I certainly am not going to make a sweeping conclusion about this based on one experience with a particular set of individuals. Nevertheless, I found this phenomenon quite interesting. Warning: I am about to muse about this one anecdotal event despite the small sample size and lack of a control group, statistical analysis, IRB permission, and coffee.

Hypothesis: The LAPs and FAPs were not comfortable being highly critical about research topics far outside their expertise, so they tended to give the benefit of the doubt to science and engineering faculty. They were more critical of fellow professors, even highly successful ones, because they felt that they had a more solid basis from which to be critical.

The converse was not true -- science-technology-engineering-math (STEM) and social science faculty showed no particular propensity to be more critical of any particular discipline than another. Does this mean that we STEM etc. faculty are nicer? Or are we so egotistical that we think we know something about everything? Or is it because we are not intimidated by the non-scientific research in the same way that the LAPs and FAPs are intimidated by more quantitative fields?

These last questions remind me of a part of the novel Solar (by Ian McEwan), about which I will write more tomorrow. The main character is a loutish Nobel Prize-winning physicist. As a university student, he seduced a young woman by intensely studying up on Milton, her major intellectual interest. He read Milton, he read criticism of Milton, and within a short amount of time he could converse as an apparent expert, impressing her greatly and winning her heart. This woman became the first of his 5 wives.

The successful seduction of this woman by pretending to know and care about Milton..

".. was a turning point in his development, for he knew that no third-year arts person, however, bright, could have passed himself off after a week's study among the undergraduate mathematicians and physicists who were Beard's colleagues. The traffic was one-way.. The reading was a slog, but he encountered nothing that could remotely be construed as an intellectual challenge, nothing on the scale of difficultly he encountered daily in his course."

Once the physicist has this realization, he feels "intellectually free". Remarkably, although McEwan lets many more obnoxious thoughts and actions pass with no subsequent enlightening experiences to alter the physicist's perception of himself and others, this particular episode is later put into humbling context: many years after the seduction-by-Milton event, the physicist tells the story to a professor of English, who says:

".. you've missed the point. If you had seduced ninety girls with ninety poets, one a week in a course of three academic years, and remembered them all at the end -- the poets, I mean -- and synthesized your reading into some kind of aesthetic overview, then you would have earned yourself a degree in English literature. But don't pretend that it's easy."

On my university committee, I don't think any of the STEM or social sciences faculty shared this fictional physicist's view that the liberal arts are "easy". I saw no evidence that we underestimated the LA or FA research, or thought "I could do that with little or no effort" (because it's so easy).

One of the great things about these all-university committees is that diverse faculty are sitting in a room together. It's difficult to feel (too) skeptical about the rigor of another discipline when faculty from that discipline are sitting across a table from you, making interesting and persuasive contributions to the discussion. The LA and FA professors did need to explain some things to us scientists about the culture of their disciplines -- Why did so many LAPs, for example, seem to have determined the outcome of their research before they started the project? -- but I detected no contempt for "unscientific" research. And whenever we were faced with a research project that seemed truly bizarre, no matter what the topic, we all tended to agree about it.

I don't know why the LA and FA faculty were so harsh on their colleagues. I do know, however, that despite this tendency, the committee overall had no trouble reaching consensus on what what we thought were the best of the best of the faculty/research documents we were examining, no matter what the discipline, so in the end, I don't think the LAPs and FAPs were at a disadvantage by having sharks for colleagues.

Finger on the Button

The administrative staff members at a university's Sponsored Research Office (SRO) are the ones who actually submit proposals on behalf of the university and individual PIs. They push the button that sends the proposal to the funding agency.

When preparing an NSF proposal using FastLane, PIs have the following options in terms of giving "access control" to their Sponsored Research Office:

• permission to view the proposal but not submit it (yet)
• permission to view and edit but not submit (yet)
• permission to view, edit, and submit

Of course the most efficient option for PIs is to go straight to the third option, so that the SRO can view, then submit, the proposal as soon as the proposal is ready. This option, however, is preferred only if you have a very competent and communicative SRO staff person working with you. Fortunately, that is the majority of SRO administrators I have encountered, but there have been some notable exceptions.

The view-edit-submit option makes me uncomfortable at the early to intermediate stages of proposal preparation because:

- The proposal might look like it is complete, yet not be in a form that I want submitted to the NSF. PIs are supposed to upload a project description and project summary by a specified internal deadline, a day or 5 before the funding agency deadline, so that the SRO can check the budget, budget justification, font types, font sizes, margins etc. In some (most?) cases, however, the proposal isn't submission-ready by the time of the internal deadline. There might be a support letter missing, for example. The proposal is ready enough for viewing and checking, but not for submitting.

Flexible and nice SRO staff are willing to examine a not-quite-final version of the proposal, as long as the parts they need to see are available, then submit the proposal when everything is assembled, up to and including the day of the proposal deadline. With these particular SRO staff people, I am willing to click the view-edit-submit button at an early stage. But:

A few years ago, I had uploaded some, but not all, components of a proposal before I left for a research-related trip abroad. I had finished and uploaded the budget and other required forms, but the internal deadline was still a week away, and I planned to work more on the project description, summary, and references while traveling. This was >5 years ago, and I was traveling in a part of the world that, at the time, did not have ubiquitous internet access.

After a few days, I went to an internet cafe filled with young men playing violent computer games. In my e-mail inbox I saw something far more terrifying than the virtual explosions and shootings on the monitors around me. I saw an automatically generated e-mail confirming the submission of my proposal. The SRO had submitted my incomplete proposal to the NSF.

In fact, this should not have happened at all because the proposal was so incomplete. The internal deadline had not even passed. Why did the SRO submit the proposal? I called my university in a panic. The SRO staff member who was handling my proposal had submitted it just before leaving on vacation.

I had to withdraw the proposal and reconstruct all the documents, some of which I had foolishly not brought with me because they had been completed and approved before I left. I learned that if you withdraw a proposal, you cannot recover the files on FastLane, and so I had to build the budget all over again with the help of a heroic department accountant (now retired, alas) and co-PI.

That experience traumatized me, and although that SRO staff member did not last much longer in her job, it took me a long time to bring myself to select view-edit-submit as an early option for SRO access. Lately, I have gone back to selecting this option when I know that a particular very competent SRO staff person is handling my proposal.

Just before a recent proposal submission, I learned that this particular person would be out of town during the relevant time frame for proposal submission. I gave the SRO permission to view, but not submit the proposal.

For some reason, my proposal therefore came to the attention of the competent person's superior at the SRO; someone with a long administrative title and no doubt awesome administrative responsibilities.

He sent me a very snippy e-mail saying that because I had not given his office access to submit the proposal early enough, he was going to delay submission of my proposal. He said that, furthermore, because my proposal appeared to have a target date rather than an actual deadline, he saw no reason why I should insist on the proposal's being submitted by a certain date.

By the time he sent that e-mail, his office had access to submit my proposal, in plenty of time before the deadline; I just hadn't selected this option right way. In addition, if he had looked at the cover page and saw what type of proposal it was and/or had looked at an internal document that clarified the issue of the deadline, he would know that I wasn't just being an imperious jerk who selected a random date for a deadline and expected everyone to work according to my schedule. The NSF program director had specified an optimal date, which was now going to be missed owing to the SRO administrator's little hissy fit.

SRO guy also questioned something in my budget -- specifically, an issue related to whether I could justify the amount of student support I was requesting relative to the proposed research.

What?? How does he know how much time it takes to do a particular type of research?

The budget had already been approved by the accounting office, my department chair, and my college's dean. The budget item in question was justified in the proposal -- in the project description and budget justification. The last thing I need is an administrator wondering whether I am asking for too much money for graduate students relative to the amount of work they will be doing. That typically is not a problem.

The overall theme of SRO guy's e-mail was that because I had offended and inconvenienced his office by not giving them immediate access to submit the proposal when I first initiated proposal preparation in FastLane, he was going to punish me in various annoying little ways. He cc'd his e-mail to the dean and my chair and someone else I didn't know.

He did not cc the co-PI, but I did. The co-PI thinks my reply was perhaps even a bit too nice. I did not mention my earlier emotional trauma regarding premature submission of a proposal, but instead just dealt with his points, one by one. My purpose was to appear calm, reasonable, and polite, and to get this proposal submitted as soon as possible.

Now I have two things to worry about:

1 - If I select view-edit-submit right away, my proposal might be submitted prematurely, causing major problems and inconvenience for all concerned. I know this is unlikely to happen again, but unless I know that a trusted SRO staff member is handling my proposal, I feel anxious about it.

2 - If I select view-edit but not submit first, I might offend this snowflake administrator whose feelings are easily hurt and who then punishes me by delaying submission of my proposal and raising spurious questions about the details of the proposal.

Ideally, faculty and administrators work together to optimize proposal submissions. The process involves effort and communication on both parts. Faculty need to follow internal procedures and meet internal deadlines for submitting proposals, but if we do that, we shouldn't have to worry about the delicate feelings of the administrators who have the ultimate power to push the button and submit (or not) our proposals to the funding agencies.