Gay and lesbian faculty members may no longer be desperate to hide their true identities in academe, but many are desperately seeking health insurance for their partners.
That point was driven home at the University of Wisconsin last December, when Robert W. Carpick, a leading researcher in nanotechnology (the building of extremely small, atom-scale structures), left for the University of Pennsylvania. The lack of domestic-partner benefits at Wisconsin was “a driving reason to look elsewhere,” he 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.