Faculty Meeting Proposal Was Not From The Administration

To the editors:

Following “Poor Planning Sunk The Administration’s Proposal” (Letters, Feb. 28), we should like to make it clear that our suggestion at the Faculty Meeting on Feb. 22 (when we offered to try to mediate, and to identify and explain Faculty concerns to the President and to the Corporation) was in no sense an “administration proposal.” The idea was our own, and we had hoped to move the Faculty forward from the divisive situation that currently obtains. Nor, of course, were we trying in any way to substitute for the properly deliberative and consultative processes of the Faculty.

We had informed the Dean of the Faculty and the President of our thinking, for to have suggested a new conduit between University Hall and Massachusetts Hall without their knowledge and acquiescence would have been even more quixotic than our effort ultimately became.

We did not, sadly, adequately explain our suggestion in that large and busy meeting, and we are not surprised that our idea was open to misinterpretation. But the implication that it came from the administration is incorrect. It derived, simply, from a shared concern for the Faculty about which we deeply care.

JEREMY R. KNOWLES

THEDA SKOCPOL

SIDNEY VERBA ’53

February 28, 2005

The writers are the former Dean of the Faculty, the Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology, and the Pforzheimer University Professor, respectively.