674
PARTISAN REVIEW
Stanford Senate. One of the measures setting up the new course pro–
vides that the program be supervised by a special committee of nine
faculty members, a lecturer or instructor (normally without tenure),
three student, members nominated by the official student body, the
Dean of Undergraduate Studies, and the Deans of Humanities and
Sciences, and Engineering
ex officio:
It
then goes on to say, "To
achieve the goals and objectives of the program, the membership of
the committee shall be constituted taking into account such factors
as gender, ethnicity, academic discipline, and field of expertise."
(Campus Report,
April 6, 1988, p. 6.)
This is truly unprecedented, and on its face horrendous. In my
long life in the academy, I know of no university body that has
established criteria of race and sex in the selection of personnel in
setting up a committee to administer a purely academic intellectual
function, where only academic discipline and field of expertise are
relevant. Where have we heard of this before, aside from South
Africa and Nazi Germany? Possibly in the segregated areas of the
South before
Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education.
Let us hope that this provision will not be implemented. That it
was included in the motion adopted testifies to the hurried character
of the proceedings of the Senate. It cannot possibly reflect the con–
sidered judgment of the fifty-five Senators or the thousands of fac–
ulty members at Stanford whom they presumably represent.
P .S. One slight redeeming note. At the final meeting of the
Faculty Senate, preceding Commencement, a motion was adopted
to modify the language of the provision setting up the supervisory
committee of the new course. It now requires only that members of
the committee be especially concerned with issues of gender of
ethnicity, as well as representative of academic disciplines and field
of expertise.
- Sidney Hook
"News stories in
The Peninsula Times
of Palo Alto and in
The Stanford Daily,
written
by reporters on the scene at the time the Stanford Senate approved the change,
describe the repeated threats of disruption of the Senate meeting by a large group of
militant minority students if the proposed changes were not adopted. The text in
both papers carried graphic pictures of the demonstrators. -S. H.
