Woman in Headline

To the Editors of the Crimson:

I take serious objection to the sexism in the headline: "Anthro. Dept. Names Tenured Woman" in your issue of March 6.

The news story which followed announced the appointment of Sally Falk Moore as Professor of Anthropology at Harvard. That was the news, not Dr. Moore's sex. Dr. Moore is a distinguished scholar who happens to be a woman, not a woman chosen in lieu of a scholar. It is blatantly insulting to an outstanding human being to imply even remotely that she was appointed because she is a woman rather than as the result of a national search for the most qualified anthropologist in the field of comparative law.

The very point of affirmative action is to ensure that women and members of minority groups will have equal opportunity to be considered for tenured appointments on the basis of stringent academic criteria. It is not because there have not been qualified women that so few women have been appointed in the past; rather, it has been the exclusion of women from consideration by the imposition of irrelevant criteria.

I still fume as I recall a discussion when I was on the Hopkins faculty. An outstanding philologist was under consideration for tenure. One member of the Committee objected to her appointment on the ground that she would not be as available as other faculty members for collegial discussions because she would not be able to join the Faculty Club--from which women were excluded! Despite that troglodyte, she was appointed (and the Faculty Club was later moved to change its rules) but the very discussion brought to light the absurdity and the extent of sexism in academe.

We have come some distance from that day, although not so far as justice requires. However, so long as reportage stresses the sex and color of appointees (of course, only when they are women or blacks), the scholarly qualities of the individuals named are made to appear secondary to sex or race. This academic community is damned lucky to have recruited Professor Moore. When I meet her, I will apologize for the demeaning incivility of the Crimson story. Sexism appears to be no faculty monopoly. Leon Elsenberg   Presley Professor of Social Medicine