Disparate lateral and/or vertical movement of proteeted class members: Better dissemination of oppor. tunities by posting all job vacancies. Informing protected class members of promotional policy. Analysis of job mobility and the development of career ladders where appropriate. Providing upward mobility programs. Revising seniority provisions of union contracts. Disparate effect in hiring for protected classes due to selection process: Awareness training program required for all interviewers and supervisors. Institution of applicant referral and requiring supervisor to indicate reason for rejection of protected classes. Standardization of selection procedures. Institution is viewed in an unfavorable light of local minority community: Institution develops a program which would allow community agencies the use of their facilities for meetings. Provides financial and technical support to community agencies in develop. ing new programs. High turnover rate among minorities and women. Require exit interviews for these employees to determine the reasons for excessive turnover. Institute formal grievance procedures to allow employees the opportunity to voice their dissatisfaction. Salary inequity between minority and non-minority and between men and women. Salary analysis by job title and organizational unit and proposed adjustments m pay where an inequity is found to exist. Despite the fact that obtaining a sound liberal education should be a hard task, the majority of today's students find it relatively easy to do well in their college courses. In fact, a recent front-page article in The New York Times indicated that throughout the country college grades are rising steadily and at an accelerating rate. And this pattern applies to all kinds of schools public and private, large and small, urban as well as rural. One senior at the University of Wisconsin was quoted as saying, "I never go to school any more, and I still get wonderful grades. There's a common consensus here that it's a lot easier to get good grades." But why do students find their college work such an empty challenge? The explanation lies in the increasingly widespread acceptance among faculty and administrators of an erroneous and dangerous educational principle that a student should not be required to do any academic work that he would prefer not to do. According to this principle, which is coming more and more to dominate the educational policy of our colleges, if a student prefers not to study science or history or literature, then he can attain his degree without studying any science, history, or literature. If he prefers not to take examinations, then he can either make special arrangements with his instructor or else choose his courses from among the everincreasing number that involve no examinations. If he prefers that his work not be graded, then he can arrange in many or all of his courses to receive an undifferentiated "pass" or "fail." Indeed, some schools now offer courses impossible to fail. There, attendance is not required, examinations are not required, papers are not required. Nothing is required. Mere registration for the course guarantees academic credit. If we continue to drift in this direction, the day may not be far off when a high-school student's admission to college will insure his college diploma a loud echo of the state of affairs in some of New York's South Bronx high schools where the age of the student determines the grade he or she is in. Indeed, college education is beginning to remind us more and more of the Caucus-race in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In that race, as many may recall, everyone begins running whenever he likes. There are no rules. But everyone wins and everyone must receive a prize. Yet a democracy cannot afford to turn its education And into a Caucus-race, for in the end the success of a democratic society depends in great part upon the understanding and capability of its citizens. in the complex world in which we live, to acquire understanding and capability requires a rigorous and comprehensive education. If we fail to provide that sort of education, then we shall have only ourselves to blame as misguided changes in our universities contribute to the decay of our democracy. (This article has been adapted from an address delivered to the Intercollegiate Conference on Undergraduate Education held at the University of Pennsylvania, February 24, 1973.) IN RESPONSE TO OUR APPEAL. Dear Professor Todorovich: The This is in reply to your broadcast letter, asking whether UCRA should continue. My answer is an emphatic Yes. There is no substitute body to which one may turn. AAUP is more interested in the claimed protections of the First Amendment for faculty disrupters than it is in a non-political campus, a rational interchange, or civility in academic conduct. If anything, the ACLU is even worse, now that it has adopted substantive political causes on its own behalf. As for the various teacher bargaining organizations, they show no interest in the things that matter to UCRA their cause is the traditional trade union one: more money for less work. To be sure, the campus disorders of 1964-70 have now largely ceased. In their train they have left several politicalized universities, of which my own Cornell is one of the worst. Another part of their evil legacy is the surviving recollection that the techniques of confrontation politics can most easily be brought to bear against academic institutions, many of which have never recovered from these earlier episodes. Moreover, plenty of inflammatory issues, or pretexts, will continue to be available long after Vietnam has been forgotten. And finally, the notion of quotas sanctioned by government is still with us as a threat to the right of every man and woman to a fair chance and to the fundamental ideal of academic excellence. When things were at their nadir in 1969-70, UCRA was our last line of defense. We continue to need it in every respect. The basic job, therefore, is to explore ways and means for keeping the organization in being. George H. Hildebrand UCRA is happy to report, that the Pittman reverse discrimination case described earlier (see Measure $20) has had a happy ending. In a brief letter, Professor W. Cooper Pittman informed our office of the following: "On November 15th the Trustees voted a normal contract, with pay retroactive to August 21st. I was asked to mail to my correspondents a short letter, saying that the matter had been amicably adjusted. On November 22nd the President was replaced. I want to thank you again for your effective help. For the success- Dear Colleagues: .. I herewith enclose my membership fee (or part of it; I do not remember how much it should be). I have let my membership drop for a time, but now it seems to me that the Affirmative Action programs and similar stupidities make an organization as yours necessary. The statement concerning heredity as an important factor in man's life was excellent, and I am glad that some persons have dared to say the truch even concerning such hot issues. Sincerely, Bengt Loefstedt Department of Classics University of California REQUEST FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ADVERTISEMENTS Recently a number of announcements of job openings have appeared in scientific journals and elsewhere in which reference is made to race, sex, or ethnic background of the prospective applicant, usually in such a way as to suggest or state that those applicants will receive preferential treatment. If you receive or notice any such announcement, please send it to us at UCRA's New York Office, along with information as to when and where it appeared. intend to send to the advertiser a dignified letter, informing him that such references are contrary to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Executive Order No. 11246. We also want to put together a file of such advertisements for the edification of the bureaucrats of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, to acquaint them with the actual effect of their programs. The names of our sources will remain, as always, confidential. We APARTHEID ACADEMIC STYLE Editorial Board, Measure Gentlemen: I contributed to your endeavor a year or two ago because I agreed with the reasonable kind of commentary in Measure concerning the disruptions taking place at universities and the kinds of irrationality being expressed by very vocal minorities within our faculties. I am now dismayed and even repelled by your tedious campaign against affirmative action programs and the HEW. Although I agree completely that our efforts should be to admit the most qualified students to our institutions and to appoint the best qualified persons to our faculties, it is possible to make that point and then to try to treat the problem of discrimination within that context. You have taken what seems to me to be a paranoic attitude to the subject and are running the issue into the ground. Can there be any real doubt in your minds that blacks and members of other minority groups, as well as women, have been denied certain opportunities without reference to their qualifications? It seems to me that anyone who has observed the mechanisms of student admissions or faculty appointment processes or has reflected on these matters, as they operated until the very recent past, must admit that discrimination has been widespread. I cannot fault you or anyone else who stresses the need to emphasize individual qualifications in these matters rather than group origin. But to continue on this subject in Measure, issue after issue ad nauseam, is to alienate a great number of people who must begin to doubt that you share the goal of our public policy, which is to remove discrimination from the academy. Dear Professor Johnson: We indeed expected to receive some letters with comments similar to those in your communication. Various colleges and universities have, over the past few years, been subjected only gradually to H.E.W. pressure. Therefore, even now the degree of appreciation for the magnitude and intensity of the problem varies considerably from one institution to another. Also, many among us who entered the Academy some years ago and are presently in secure positions - by reputation or by tenure or both have been learning about recent hiring difficulties only from second or third hand sources. No wonder, then, that the recognition of the full scope of the new wave of injustices has been slow in coming. The editors of Measure were at first no exception to the rule. Like you, they had no doubt in their minds "that blacks and members of other minority groups, as well as women, have been denied [in the past] certain opportunities without reference to their qualifications"...and that such "discrimination has been widespread". All of them were involved in one way or another in earlier antidiscrimination drives on their own respective campuses. They greeted with approval the Executive Order 11246 of 1965 and congressional Civil Rights Acts and hoped that all this would advance, into our lifetime, the day when all persons would be judged solely by what they are not according to what background they happen to come from. David B. Johnson Professor of Economics and Dean of International Studies and Programs The University of Wisconsin However, by the middle of 1970, we were in for a painful disappointment. News began to filter through our UCRA communications channels that programs ostensibly devised to fight old ills were introducing new forms of wholesale discrimination. Subscribing to the motto that two wrongs do not make a right, many of our members started looking into the matter and discovered with the greatest alarm that the hardest push in this direction was supplied by the very government that was supposed to support and guarantee equal treatment for all and every one of its citizens. In the name of a public policy "to remove discrimination from the Academy"which all Measure editors share without reservation - Affirmative Action programs, requested and coached by H. E.W., demanded the deliberate introduction of discriminative quotas. Finding no other academic group bent over this problem, UCRA did whatever it could to analyze and publicize rampant misdeeds. Its goal was not to emphasize "individual qualifications" but to publicize malpractices. The editors of Measure and UCRA's Board of Directors thought they diagnosed a rapidly spreading epidemic rooted in thoughtless expediency and they tried to combat it by stimulating antibodies based on principles. Our endeavors will soon enter the third long year. Some skirmishes have been won, like that involving Mr. Pittman (see story), and numerous press and magazine articles which appeared lately have advanced the problem into the area of public debate (with most of the available documentation supplied by our office). Many government officers, including those in H.E.W., have taken lately a somewhat more reasonable stand. Nevertheless, the main battle is still being lost. Victims abound. Take, for example, the case of Martin S. Goldman, doctoral candidate at Clark University at Worcester. A native of Philadelphia, Mr. Goldman studied while teaching others. He worked in predominantly black schools and learned, first hand, about deficiencies in existing curricula. Like many others of his generation, he proceeded to translate his understanding into action. Faced with a choice of possible specialties, he put heavy emphasis on courses in black history. His intent was to teach at some college or university, and his first experiences looked promising. Two years ago, in April of 1971, the University of Michigan, Dearborn Campus, invited him out for an interview for a position in Afro-American and Urban history. He flew out to Dearborn and after giving a paper was offered a one-year half-time appointment on the spot by the Dean of Liberal Arts and the Chairman of the Department. He told them that he had not yet begun research on his thesis and would very much appreciate it if they would hold the offer open for the following year. (He had only passed his Ph.D. orals the day before the interview). They said they would try, but of course could make no promises. The next year he received a note telling him how impressed they were and that he was still the top candidate for the spot. Last spring the Chairman called and said that because of budget problems no position was funded but that Mr. Goldman would be reconsidered for this year. call to the Chairman, Dr. Donald Proctor, broke the news, however, that a new dean had been installed and that he had passed down the word to hire blacks. Though still very impressed with Goldman's work, said Proctor, the department would have to follow the dean's orders a bitter disappointment for someone whose hopes have been kept high for almost two years, and who was receiving during the past few months similar treatment from other quarters. From the University of Louisville: A "Let me say that so far as any new appointments are concerned this department is an affirmative action employer. We encourage applications from all qualified persons, including women and members of ethnic minorities." Mr. Goldman never heard from Chairman C. W. Brockwell, Jr. again. From West Chester State College (Pennsylvania): "I regret to inform you that our low enrollment for the Fall semester, 1972-73, has caused the College to cancel the assignment of additional faculty complement to this Department... "Please believe that I am deeply distressed that the position for *My best wishes to you for a successful career now and in the future". Incidentally, West Chester has been ad- From Nassau Community College (under "In reply, I wish to say From Tufts University in Medford, Mass. "I must tell you that we hope Cordially yours, |