`MIT Materials Department tenure discrimination settlement` *(matches canon)*

$850,000 settlement for a woman denied tenure under Tom's predecessor. Surfaces in Tom's first two months as department head and sets up the women-faculty problem he inherits.

I told you that a lot of the problems we face when you get out there are not technical problems, they're management problems, people problems. When I became department head in '95, this department had a terrible reputation about women. My predecessor happened to be a male chauvinist par excellence. In my first two months I was asked how much we were going to contribute to the eight-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar settlement for the woman who didn't get tenure under him. I said, well, you know what my budget is. He left me with a two-million-dollar deficit. Where do you want to take it from? That's what I told the assistant dean, and she kind of grudgingly hung up, and they didn't take anything from me then — just took it later.