Curator sues museum over firing

Abstract

Last week, a federal court held its first hearing on anthropologist Anna Roosevelt's gender-discrimination lawsuit against the Field Museum of Chicago, which fired her in Dec 2002. The museum says it was because she was double dipping by holding a second full-time job at the University of Illinois, Chicago; but Roosevelt claims the museum dismissed her because she had repeatedly spoken out against what she perceived as sexist attitudes among many of her male colleagues and supervisors.

Anthropologist Anna Roosevelt stirred up her peers in 1996 when she suggested that human settlers may have had a significant ecological impact on the Amazon hundreds of years before modem-day loggers came along. Now, she's taking on her former bosses at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Last week, a federal court held its first hearing on her gender-discrimination lawsuit against the museum, which fired her in December 2002. The museum says it was because she was double dipping by holding a second full-time job at the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC). But Roosevelt claims the museum dismissed her because she had repeatedly spoken out against what she perceived as sexist attitudes among many of her male colleagues and supervisors.

Roosevelt was hired by the museum in 1991 and by the university in 1994. For the next 5 years, she, worked half the year as a museum curator, at half salary, and half as a full professor at UIC. "But after the agreement expired," says Felisia Wesson, the museum's general counsel, "she continued to work full-time at UIC for half the year even though she resumed drawing a full-time, full-year's salary from the museum." Roosevelt disputes that claim, saying that for years she took unpaid leaves of absences from, UIC for a portion of each year and only became full time in January 2003.

Museum officials say her conduct was unethical and, thus, grounds for dismissal. But Roosevelt says that the museum was "looking for a pretext" to fire her. Both sides agree that their relationship had been strained, but disagree on the causes of the tension. For example, Roosevelt says that the museum denied her research space for her collections but routinely granted it to male curators. In response, museum officials say that they first needed title to the collections, which she refused to hand over.