‘Abolish Tenure’

Re: “Abolish Tenure,” Max Boot, Opinion, March 18, 2005. The tenure system is not where the mistake lies. The tenure system exists to protect academic freedom, and rightly so. We need only to look back at autocratic systems in the past – and present – to see how much that right is worth protecting. The question that should be pursued is: What was the tenure committee thinking in granting tenure to an individual such as Ward Churchill, who doesn’t possess a Ph.D. and whose behavior in other areas should have raised numerous doubts? Here is where the fault lies. Because a tenure committee made such an egregious mistake in this case does not mean the tenure system deserves to be abolished. That would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

KATHERINE MEEKS
Manhattan

‘Harvard’s 10,000’

Re: “Harvard’s 10,000,” Editorial, March 16, 2005. It has been disheartening to see my fellow conservatives piling on the courageous Nancy Hopkins in their overriding concern for academic freedom and their impatience to take potshots at her shock and nausea, implying that she herself is proof of what the president of Harvard said. What about discussing what was said, too?

If the president of Harvard had said genetic differences between blacks and whites might be responsible for there being fewer blacks than whites in science, he would, deservedly, now be sitting on a nice peaceful riverbank meditating on the genetic differences between species of fish while he takes a long-deserved permanent vacation from the troublesome world of academe.

TONI RACHIELE
Manhattan

Harvard University’s President Lawrence Summers should step down from his post at his earliest convenience, and not because of his recent pronouncements regarding the place of women in the different faculties, which caused the uproar in the university’s ultra progressive minded alumni. Mr. Summers ought to have known that you can not throw a rock in the Harvard University campus without hitting a least 10 far left-wing proselytes before it lands.

MIGUEL A. GUANIPA
Whitinsville, Mass.

As Ronald Reagan memorably said, “There you go again.” You have no basis for describing the 218 faculty members who voted no confidence as “radical” or “left-wingers”; that language has damaged many universities and individuals in the past.

A university president’s primary role is to help the faculty and students to engage research and teaching effectively. The job description includes raising funds, engaging the support of alumni, and connecting the university to the community, the nation, and the world; in short, empowering the people who are the university to fulfill their commitments to honest scholarly work.

A strong president will assess strengths and weaknesses and propose initiatives that can enable the institution to deal with new areas of research, new ways to enrich the academic enterprise, better relationships between town and gown, more effective responses to questions that confront research and teaching, and a more collegial community free of intimidation or victimization. A president must defend and protect the institution against efforts to compromise or commercialize the work of scholars and teachers, and against any effort to impose standards of behavior, curriculum, or research by any outside body. Erosion of the autonomy of the university is both dangerous and unacceptable.

SUMNER M. ROSEN
Professor emeritus
Columbia University
Manhattan

‘Put an Economist In Your Tank’

Re: “Put an Economist In Your Tank,” John Stossel, Opinion, March 10, 2005. Mr. Stossel is on target in pointing out that gas prices have to be adjusted for changes in the general level of prices in order to know how much they have really increased. But his article goes on to pose an interesting issue. He points out that bottled water, which he claims is so simple to produce, actually costs a lot more per gallon that a gallon of gasoline. But if that is the case, why doesn’t competition among all the firms that sell bottled water drive the price down?

The answer becomes clear if we compare the price of bottled water with the price of a quart of oil, which also has to be placed in small containers, packed in boxes, loaded and doled out by hand, etc. We also should note that ice cream cannot be driven up to the grocery store and unloaded into huge vats and pumped out to consumers. Mr. Stossel should have consulted a better economist.

DAVID M. O’NEILL
Senior Economist
Center for Business and Government
Baruch College, CUNY
Manhattan

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