Gender 'not a minus'
While I appreciate the vote of confidence in your March 28 editorial, it is simply not true that gender has been a "plus factor" in any of my recent appointments — the appointments of women or the appointments of men (which have occurred in about equal number). What is true, and what I believe is truly important, is that we have gone into all of our searches intentionally looking for both excellent women and excellent men. The idea is not to make gender a "plus," but to make sure it is not a "minus." Our experience shows that if your eyes are truly open to candidates of both genders, you will find excellent candidates of both genders. Then you can appoint the very best candidates you find and end up with both women and men in leadership positions. Shirley M. Tilghman President, Princeton University
Editorial shows bias
I have just read the somewhat schizophrenic statement on your editorial page entitled "An excellent woman, again" (March 28, 2003).
In response to President Tilghman's appointment of Janet Rapelye as the new dean of admissions you praise Princeton's choice, express a bit of condescension about how much harder a job Rapelye will have to do now, and criticize President Tilghman's refusal to admit that she's hiring women because they are women and to own up to the "gender preference" in her "pattern of appointments." It is difficult to tell if The Daily Princetonian Opinion Board is truly happy to see what they interpret as "gender-based affirmative action" or if they are, rather, dismayed that another woman has been appointed to an important administrative position at the University. I doubt, somehow, that it is the former and suspect that the 'Prince' editors are expressing a sanitized and indirect version of "Can't a man get a job around here anymore?" Why else would they take this occasion to challenge President Tilghman and pointedly accuse her of misrepresenting her own approach to making appointments?
The Prince Opinion Board might consider the following: Would they have been prompted to detect a pattern of gender preference if President Tilghman had appointed men to the provostship and the deanships of the Woodrow Wilson School and the School of Engineering, or would they have been "blind" to the role of gender and instead evaluated the individual qualities and qualifications of each individual appointee?
I'll close by repeating an anecdote told by the feminist legal scholar and political activist Susan Estrich, who spoke at the University yesterday. At a symposium on the implications of the Time-AOL merger she had the nerve to wonder out loud why out of 29 people appointed to the new board of the conglomerate, not one was a woman. After the formal part of the discussion she was approached by a wealthy and influential man who said, "The problem with you, Susan, is that you're always thinking about gender." "The problem with you," she retorted, "is that you never do." Deborah Epstein Nord Professor of English Director, Program in the Study of Women and Gender
Probably not secrecy
I agree with the 'Prince' opinion board that it is difficult to look at the pattern of President Tilghman's appointments and not see a trend toward the selection of women. However, why would Tilghman deny this pattern if it truly described her actions in this matter? She was not hesitant to publicly support affirmative action based on race through her administration's amicus brief to the Supreme Court earlier this year. It seems unlikely to me that she would be ashamed to publicly declare her support for affirmative action based on gender, if that is what she is truly doing with her appointments. Perhaps the correct explanation is that the history of past discrimination against women in the academy is making Tilghman's string of appointments look calculated in comparison, when in reality it reflects a pattern that should not seem so foreign to us. Heather Aspras '03
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