Anti-gay discrimination may no longer be a major issue within the progressive walls of the ivory tower, but many gay and lesbian faculty members say the lack of health and other benefits for their domestic partners is, Burton Bollag writes in The Chronicle’s special issue on diversity in academe.
It certainly is to Robert W. Carpick, a top nanotechnology researcher who left the University of Wisconsin for the University of Pennsylvania last December, Bollag explains:
The lack of domestic-partner benefits at Wisconsin was “a driving reason to look elsewhere,” [Mr. Carpick] says. Penn offered him a job; the fact that it offered such benefits clinched the deal, says Mr. Carpick, who married his partner of 10 years in Canada in 2003.
“It’s very difficult putting your heart into working at an institution when you’re not being treated the same as colleagues down the hall,” he says.
The good news is a growing number of institutions are taking note and extending such benefits to domestic partners, though less “out of a sense of justice” and more because such benefits are considered a key factor in recruiting and retaining top faculty talent, Bollag writes.
He notes that “the stronger the institution, the more likely it is to provide benefits for same-sex partners.” Sixty percent of the 125 universities that received the highest ranking in U.S. News & World Report’s annual survey provide same-sex-partner benefits, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group. And more than 80 percent of the magazine’s top-50 institutions do, too.
The bad news is the vast majority of colleges still don’t offer such partner benefits, while some that do — e.g., the University of Kentucky and the University of Michigan — face legal challenges.
Related materials:
Ohio Court Upholds Dismissal of Suit Over Domestic-Partner Benefits
Why Aren’t There More Gay Presidents?
Same-Sex Partners of Pennsylvania-System Profs to Get Benefits
More on Domestic-Partner Benefits
Domestic-Partner Benefits Unconstitutional
New Hampshire Drops Appeal of Ruling Requiring It to Extend Benefits to Same-Sex Couples
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