George Washington University's Katrin Schultheiss calls out (mostly male) dissertation advisors who desert their grad students

Back in the late 1980s, I applied for admission to various doctoral programs in history. A couple of months later, I was shocked to receive a phone call from an internationally renowned scholar. He congratulated me on being admitted to his university’s program and invited me to the campus to talk with him in person.

When I arrived at the appointed spot, a young woman introduced herself as one of Professor Famous’s graduate students, apologized on his behalf, and said he could not be there after all but she would be happy to talk with me. Far from being offended that I had been bumped from his schedule, I was flattered that I had made it onto his radar at all.

I ended up matriculating at the university, though I eventually switched to another male adviser (for intellectual reasons and not because Professor Famous tended to schedule advising meetings during walks to his car to feed the meter). My new adviser — I’ll call him Professor Prominent — was well regarded but not a superstar like Professor Famous. Professor Prominent was an excellent teacher and my conversations with him were always pleasant, and sometimes even inspiring.

I accepted as "bad timing" the fact that he had a secretary put a pink "While You Were Out" message in my mailbox informing me that he would be out of town for my comprehensive oral exams. But maybe that was a sign of what was to come. When it came to providing guidance and feedback on my dissertation, I remember clearly the downward slope of his engagement with my work: I received a page of comments on my first chapter, a postcard of comments on the next two, and an efficient "looks good!" on the remaining three.

Nervous that his comments did not, in all likelihood, reflect the actual quality of the dissertation, I turned to a junior faculty member, a woman, who generously agreed to read the complete thesis. A week or so later, she returned it to me with detailed comments and suggestions throughout. It was her thoughtful remarks that enabled me to revise the dissertation and eventually turn it into a publishable book manuscript. In the university’s records, I remained a student of Professor Prominent. The junior faculty member who actually did the work of commenting meaningfully on my dissertation was relegated to "committee member." Her only reward was having to write letters of recommendation for me for years to come.

It has taken me two and a half decades to recognize that my experience of having a senior male nominal adviser and a female (usually more junior) actual adviser is common throughout academe.

In fact, I myself have served in the intervening years as a "ghost adviser" to several graduate students of more senior male professors without recognizing that I was part of that pattern. When I recently asked an online group of female historians whether they had ever served as a ghost adviser for the students of a male colleague, I received more than 100 responses in a matter of hours. ...