Anonymous professors should pay attention to University regulations
Regarding "NES dept. faces warring factions," Dec. 8:
You quote "several" anonymous professors in the History Department as saying some rather peculiar things. These professors lay down a "litmus test" for future cooperation between their department and NES: the University has to deny tenure to a specific junior faculty member in NES, Michael Doran.
Two of the anonymous professors say that if he is given tenure, relations between the two departments will be severely damaged. One senior professor says "We don't want him."
All these professors are speaking from behind the cover of anonymity; one of them is described as tenured, and there is reason to believe that all of them are.
I would respectfully refer my anonymous colleagues to the section in the 2004 edition of Rights, Rules, Responsibilities headed "Respect for others."
The section begins: "Respect for the rights, privileges, and sensibilities of each other is essential in preserving the spirit of community at Princeton. Actions which make the atmosphere intimidating, threatening, or hostile to individuals are therefore regarded as serious offenses. Abusive or harassing behavior, verbal or physical, which demeans, intimidates, threatens, or injures another because of his or her personal characteristics or beliefs is subject to University disciplinary sanctions." In the next paragraph it is stated that our University "attaches great value to freedom of expression and vigorous debate, but it also attaches great importance to mutual respect, and it deplores expressions of hatred directed against any individual or group."
"Rights" does not explicitly address the problem of persons who evade disciplinary sanctions through anonymity, but in the section "Distribution of written materials by members of the University community" it is made clear that anonymity is not held in high regard on this campus. Attribution, by contrast, "promotes and facilitates civility as well as vigorous academic debate."
The conduct of these anonymous professors might perhaps be described as ignorant, but as every first-year law student learns, ignorance is no excuse. Each member of the Princeton faculty has received a copy of "Rights." Michael Cook NES professor
Nobody in History speaks for everybody in the department
Regarding "NES dept. faces warring factions," Dec. 8:
I would like to clarify one element of your article. One anonymous faculty member of the History Department is quoted as having said "We don't want him" in reference to assistant professor Michael Doran.
My colleagues have a right to speak — but unless there has been a vote or decision of the faculty with the History Department, no one speaks for the whole.
All appointment decisions in the History Department are voted upon after a thorough discussion of the scholarly merits of case at hand.
This is how we proceed and we invoke very high academic standards that cannot be measured without reading the work and enlisting evaluations from colleagues in peer institutions.
In this sense, we cannot predict our appraisal of what we "want" should it even be relevant. Jeremy Adelman History Dept. Chair
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