WOMEN AND MINORITIES IN FACULTY APPOINTMENTS AT THE GSD

To the Editors of the Crimson:

Here in an explanation 40 set straights the facts which. The Crimson article about the GSD of September 25, unfortunately missed.

1. My complaint against the GSD, dated July 1. 1971, was a class or group action. I initiated it, that is all. Detailed investigation by HEW over many months resulted in confirming discrimination as charged. Specific remedial action is required, set out in eight points.

2. The next step is to implement the actions required by HEW to remedy the situation. My application for a position at the GSD serves to develop standard and procedures for fair open faculty hiring that are equal for all applicants. The GSD to date has not set up any procedures, though it has hired a few women. The two are not the same. Specifically due to my application I can prove that: no information is available at the GSD concerning qualification requirements. Job responsibilities, teaching hours, renumeration, or in fact anything at all that might be useful to an applicant including what type resume should be prepared, recommendations, etc. There are no guidelines on what an applicant might expect in terms of interviews, reviews by faculty committees, etc. The process of hiring is and has been shrouded in secrecy. Nothing in this has changed since the HEW findings.

3. Instead of application forms I got an ultimatum from Dean Kilbridge last week that he would make public a two-page statement full of incorrect and value-statements about my qualifications, prepared without asking me any information and even without a complete resume--all of which I offered to supply in an organized way in order to establish orderly uniform faculty hiring procedures.

One must raise the question, is the kind of twopage ultimatum I got from Dean Kilbridge the method by which Harvard graduate schools hire faculty? Are male professors hired in this fashion? Or was I singled out for harassment because I brought the HEW action?

A check with Mr. Walter Leonard in the president's office revealed that he knew about Dean Kilbridge's ultimatum. Leonard suggestion was I should sue the University which was confirmed by a telephone call to me from James Sharaf, attorney in the office of the General Counsel of the University. The purpose of this harassment evidently is to goad me to sue the University in order to delay the implementation of the HEW findings by protracted litigation. All this, of course, has been done before in many civil rights cases. Unfortunately. The Crimson seems to be unaware of the implications.

4. The Crimson was side racked into a nit-picking discussion by Dean Kilbridge about one job I held 26 years ago at Skidmore. Owings and Merull. In the meantime it was unequivocably established that I worked there--something that the sophisticated research techniques of Dean Kilbridge at the GSD apparently were incapable of establishing. But for The Crimson to be unable to check out a simple fact is a sad comment on its journalistic abilities.

The Crimson failed however to mention in the interview printed that the GSD has not developed any fair open huring procedures that assure open competition for available teaching jobs by diversity of talent. This is required by the HEW findings based on a group or class action.

5. Dean Kilbridge's statement reprinted in The Crimson, "Critics are skilled, professional architects and out of Hosken's league," is contrary to fact and may be libelous according to my lawyers. Wellknown architectural critics, for instance, Mumford, Gideon, Ada Louis Huxtable (N.Y. Times), Wolf von Eckhart (Washington Post) don't have architectural degrees and have never practiced architecture at all. But since Dean Kilbridge makes value judgments about critics' qualifications and architectural qualifications one must ask: as a nonarchitect and with not published work as a critic is he qualified to make any judgments of this kind?

Finally, this most important question must be raised: is it in the best interest of the GSD to have a non-architect as dean? Should quality education in architecture and the all-important environmental concerns be in the hands of someone with no background or training or experience in architecture or visual design? Before Kilbridge became Dean he taught at the Harvard Business School. On checking with his office his secretary states that the Dean declines to make his resume available "as a matter of policy" except upon his own initiation. But resumes are readily available to the press by anyone I ever contacted at universities.

The majority of architectural schools around the country are run by architects. The GSD has always been run by architects as far as I know. The record of the school since Kilbridge took over has been a matter of constant concern to alumni (ae) and professionals in the environmental field. As an architectural and urban critic and alumna of the GSD I talk to hundreds of professionals. I know these facts, and I am concerned first and foremost about quality. It seems high time for change at the GSD.