Some Alumnae Blast Rosovsky For Too Few Female Faculty

A small number of the 110 members of the Radcliffe Alumnae Council have charged Dean Rosovsky and the administration with failing to make a "sincere effort" to place tenured women on the Harvard faculty.

Yesterday's statement, which was not officially approved by the majority of the council members, was issued in response to comments made by Rosovsky at a council dinner Thursday night, in which he blamed departmental resistance for the University's slow progress in hiring women faculty members.

Anne Murray Morgan '46, president of the Alumnae Council which visits the University every two years, said the general membership had not been given the opportunity to either sign or review the statement.

The statement requests from Harvard institutions and Harvard spokesmen on this subject [more women faculty] a "more vigorous commitment than that evidenced by Henry Rosovsky."

It accuses Rosovsky of having "offered an artificial choice between academic excellence and the hiring of women."

Eva Kampits '68, a council member who had wanted to sign the statement and said she would send a letter of her own to Rosovsky, explained that she felt he had turned academic excellence and the hiring of women faculty into two separate questions.

Dean Rosovsky would not comment on the statement last night.

Morgan said she felt the statement had never really progressed beyond draft form and that it had been one "without thought." She added that it had been "absolutely disowned" by the council as a whole, even though the group may not have "agreed totally" with Rosovsky's method of approaching the problem.

Most members felt, however, that "he had presented the case very rationally" and harbored "no anger" in the matter, she said.

The statement ended with the question, "How long, Dean Rosovsky, How long?" in reference to an earlier statement that some council members "see all too few evidences of constructive change in the status of women here" at Harvard.

Both Kampits and Morgan said they see the statement as an essentially individual response to Rosovsky's comments.