To the Editor:
The Women's Studies Program Committee was recently impugned in a number of anonymous fliers headed "Pop Quiz." I wish to refute the implications of these inaccurate and offensive postings.
Differences of opinion will always occur about such important matters as faculty hirings; but these fliers go far beyond matters of opinion. These anonymous fliers not only cast aspersions on the motives and proceedings of the committee in its current hiring for a faculty position, but also, far more seriously, deride the qualifications of candidates - guests of the college - for that position.
Contrary to implications in these posters, the Women's Studies Program has invited candidates whose work we believe to be of great importance to feminist study; we have invited only persons about whose merits we are convinced by close scrutiny of their materials; and the outcome of this search is far from pre-determined. These fliers imply that white candidates, by virtue of their race, are incapable of doing vital work on cross-cultural issues; this is not an opinion we are willing to endorse.
These anonymous fliers are an inappropriate and unnecessary way to register opinion. Members of the committee, both faculty and student, have been available for discussion and feedback concerning the candidates. Each candidate has been available for questions at two public forums, at which student feedback is actively solicited to help the committee make its choice.
Whatever agendas the author(s) of these fliers may have, they are not likely to be served by such aspersions on the good faith of a student-faculty hiring process and such extraordinary impolitic attacks on candidates.
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