For BU Alums Only

Only two months after Boston University's faculty council revealed that the salary gap between male and female full professors on campus was twice the national average for private research universities, BU president Bob Brown said the university has already made major progress toward bringing the school in line with comparable universities. After this fall's round of merit raises, female full professors are making 86 percent as much as their male counterparts, compared with 83 percent last year. Female assistant professors now make 92 percent as much as males, compared with 87 percent last year. Associate professors remain steady at 91 percent. ''I'm committed to compensation that is merit-based, gender- and race-blind, and market-driven," Brown said during a recent lunch with the Globe's editorial board. ''I think it's doable in one year." Brown also said he's talking with members of the BU community about what the university's core missions should be. But even as he tries to focus on the future, he said people often come to him with old grievances that, whatever their merits, he can't redress. Brown calls these gripes ''dead cats." ''They come to me and say, 'I have this cat that died,' " he said. ''It occurred in the previous administration. I say, 'I'll grieve with you, and then we'll go bury it, because otherwise it will smell. But I can't bring it back to life.' " Asked whether this was an oblique way of talking about problems he inherited from former president John Silber, Brown said no, any administration would have its dead cats and that a lot of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors are bringing ''cats I killed" to new provost Rafael Reif, who replaced Brown at MIT. But Brown said the metaphor helps people focus on what is realistic for a new leader to do. Now, when he goes to meetings and people complain about old issues, he said, they often say, ''I know, I know, it's a dead cat."


Q: At what point does our diploma become worthless?