Faculty couples find a home at Penn

If you took “Ethics” sometime in the past few years, you might have seen something unusual: two professors teaching at the front of the classroom. More unusual? Those two aren’t just colleagues — they’re husband and wife.

Anita Allen and Paul Castellitto are one of many faculty couples at Penn. Like most other faculty couples, they are private about their personal lives, but students can often pick up on their relationship; Allen sometimes goes by the surname Allen-Castellitto. Like many faculty couples, the two teach in overlapping areas: Allen, the vice provost for faculty and a professor at Penn Law School, holds a secondary appointment in the Philosophy Department, where Castellitto holds an adjunct position.

“When the opportunity came up ... to teach [“Ethics”] together back in 2009, I just leapt up because I wanted to know — what would it be like to work with my spouse?” Allen said.

Allen and Castellitto co-taught an evening section of “Ethics” in the College of Liberal and Professional Studies that covered topics ranging from animal rights to abortion and torture.

The unorthodox practice of having two teachers in the classroom helped add a level of depth and diversity of opinion to the controversial topics covered in class.

“I’m a black woman; he’s an Italian man,” Allen said. “I am a little more liberal, progressive, feminist than him — I wouldn’t say he’s conservative, but he comes from a Catholic background, and he’s not instinctively feminist or instinctively social reform [minded] like I am. So we bring different politics in the classroom.”

Allen hopes that by co-teaching the class, they show students the importance of working with people whose ideas are different from your own.

“At a time in American society when there’s so much racial tension, modeling that people from different backgrounds can actually work together, teach controversial subjects together and even be married and have children together — I think it’s a phenomenal message to send to the student body,” Allen said.

In her role as vice provost of faculty, the topic of partners is something that Allen must often address in the process of recruiting potential faculty hires.

When Allen hires new faculty, she’s always thinking about accommodating for a spouse or partner.

“When I hear that we might be interested in recruiting a brilliant new neuroscientist or a brilliant new art historian, my first question is, is there a partner or a spouse that we need to be thinking about as well? Because we’re not going to be able to recruit this person unless we can offer some help with the placement of the other partner,” Allen said. “It’s hard sometimes to find, within Penn, jobs for both people. But it happens quite frequently that it does work out.”

Penn has policies to make it friendly to faculty with families such as its dual career program, which helps fund the hiring of a new faculty member’s partner or spouse, as well as parental leave for both parents and benefits for LGBTQ couples.

Penn’s history is sprinkled with faculty couples. One such couple is retired linguistics professors Gillian Sankoff and William Labov, the “father of sociolinguistics.” Sankoff was previously married to renowned sociologist and former Penn professor Erving Goffman, who died in 1982. Their daughter, 2006 College graduate Alice Goffman, now teaches at the University of Wisconsin.

CIS professors Steve Zdancewic and Stephanie Weirich were married in 1999 and came to teach at Penn together in 2002. (Tiffany Pham)

Computer science professors Stephanie Weirich and Steve Zdancewic, who both currently teach at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, are also married.

“We don’t do the same research projects, but we’re in the same field, so that means that I always have somebody to talk to about my research,” Weirich said. “You can develop that support anywhere — through your friends or through your colleagues — but it’s really nice to have a spouse in that role.”

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