Letters to the Editor
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‘Klein’s Cadre’
Regarding “Klein’s Cadre” [Editorial, February 13, 2007], I am a Columbia Law graduate with a master’s from Princeton and have spent my entire career working in education because I love the field.
Many career educators could have, but didn’t, go to grad school in more remunerative fields because of their similar commitment. Should all of us also be praised as you singled out the new deputy chancellor for giving up millions?
Of course not.
People make life choices, if they are lucky enough.
Mr. Cerf’s decision to now work in the public sector is a matter of his current job preference, not a matter for public gratitude. It certainly does not inoculate him or the other public education johnnies-come-lately at Tweed from criticism about their work or their ethics.
DAVID BLOOMFIELD
President
Citywide Council on High Schools
Brooklyn College at CUNY
Brooklyn, N.Y.
‘Spitting on Veterans’
Mr. Gitell’s piece makes an excellent point, and is appreciated by all veterans [Oped, “Spitting on Veterans,” February 6, 2007].
A couple of important points about the controversy as to whether vets were spit on, or otherwise mistreated, should be made.
Mr. Lembke’s book was predated by his article on the same subject in a 1999 copy of the Holy Cross College magazine. In that same issue there were articles about numerous alumni veterans, two of whom related how they were spit on when returning to America.
Moreover, his research failed to uncover the “CBS Evening News” story on December 27, 1971, which did deal with a spitting incident. So apparently his efforts were not quite as thorough as his supporters like to believe.
Secondly, to discount all of the literally hundreds of accounts of veterans, including some I know personally, about such incidents occurring is simply unreasonable, as is the idea that a lack of heavy press coverage of such events amounts to proof that they did not exist.
The passion we see among anti-war activists and sympathizers to reject that unpleasant bit of the war’s history, regardless of the evidence, is a measure of their insecurity about the unkind and unjust treatment that many returning veterans did receive, and their compulsion to try to always retain the high moral ground in any debate about that war or any other.
RJ DEL VECCHIO
Secretary
North Carolina Vietnam Veterans, Inc.
Raleigh, N.C.
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