To the Editors:

The Review seems incapable of producing accurate reporting of faculty politics.

On March 5, its story on faculty reaction to the budget crisis “utterly misconstrued its subject matter...in a one-sided way,” as I wrote in a long letter published in these pages a week later. The Review admitted one serious error, and did not dispute the rest of my plaint.

Now again, in the April 30 issue, the Review quotes me commenting supportively on a supposed “faculty petition...for a higher salary increase cap than the two percent proposed by the College.” In fact there never was any such petition or discussion.

The faculty never asked for a larger salary increase than the two percent the College offered. It did petition the Board of Trustees simply to meet with us to discuss the budgetary situation. As is now well known, the Board refused to do so.

Since this latest report comes less than two months after the first, and since both errors cast the faculty in an unfavorable light, readers may legitimately wonder whether the Review’s errors reflect incompetence or, worse, bias.

The Review owes the faculty and its readers a correction and an apology.

–Marc Blecher
Professor of Politics