April 27, 2007
John D. Wiley
Chancellor, University of Wisconsin
161 Bascom Hall
500 Lincoln Drive
Madison, Wisconsin 53706
Dear Chancellor Wiley,
Both my husband Jon and I have felt very grateful to the UW-Madison. In 1962 Jon received an MS in Nuclear Engineering, preceded in 1960 by a UW-Madison BS degree in Civil Engineering. Though poor, through scholarships, loans, and jobs arranged on campus I received an Honors BS in English Education. I had been fortunate to be selected from high school to join the ILS program and had the opportunity to do Independent Study with Drs. Robert Poole and Gion Orsini, as well as studying under the masters: Drs. Fred Cassidy, Edna Thomas, Ricardo Quintana and Helen White. Can you imagine it!
We are currently members of the Bascom Hill Society and were happy to leave in our Will $250,000.00 (and hopefully more) as an endowment to the UW-Madison Nuclear Engineering department to train (as a priority) needy undergraduate Wisconsin students in that field.
These various activities and experiences at UW-Madison may account for our shock at the way Dean Sandefur relates (in his letters) so unprofessionally to Mary Layoun on the question of closing the Department of Comparative Literature (Mary Layoun, the then Chair of the Department, now on sabbatical). Such treatment also degrades the students enrolled in this world famous UW-Madison Comparative Literature Department. Some communications from Dean Sandefur to Mary Layoun, which we saw posted online, were disgusting both because of their rudeness in tone and because of their content, which is very far below the standards of integrity we had always associated with UW-Madison (copies attached).
Does Dean Sandefur not answer to you, as Chancellor? Have you seen those communications? Do you endorse them as legitimate professional communications, reflecting the spirit of professional cooperation at the UW-Madison? Perhaps there is no longer a spirit of professional communication, but rather just ‘power’ relationships at UW-Madison?
For example, Mary Layoun clearly expresses doubt in her letter to Sandefur of 5/11/06 that he is telling the truth in his 5/08/06 letter to her that “the APC judged the department [Comparative Literature Department] to be of low priority for the college in 2003-2004.” Is that statement by Sandefur about that role of the APC true or not? [Cf. highlighted sections of the letters from Sandefur to Layoun 05/08/2006 (a) and Layoun to Sandefur 5/11/2006. (b)]
Asking the Chair to disband her own world-famous department, as one of the communications does, is both cowardly and rude, and unprofessional. Furthermore, to disband the department is to show how ‘distracted’ mortals can become, according to Dante Alighieri (cf. Attachment [c]).
I read your article in Madison Magazine which discussed the budgetary problems facing the UW system. I’m also aware of the extraordinary success of the fundraising that has gone on in recent years at the UW. Your honorable statement near the end of the article is seminal. I refer to the statement you made which exhorts the citizens of Wisconsin to rededicate themselves (via state commitment) to truly support its “public university.” But do you want them to support a mediocre university? Surely, to disband the UW-Madison’s world famous Comparative Literature Department is a major step in creating a mediocre intellectual environment in the university system as a whole, no matter how much money is brought in to the university across the board.
Perhaps Dean Sandefur’s background in sociology has blindsided you as to what the study of comparative literature entails? Perhaps, under Sandefur’s influence, you think the study of aesthetics in literature is a “sociological question?” Perhaps you need to select associates who are more distant from national political issues than Sandefur? Have you read an intensive report of his background? It’s Online and available to you. On what basis, from that background, was he appointed Dean of the College of Letters and Sciences?
Perhaps we need to separate Letters from Science and appoint a separate Dean for each of those disciplines? Does your own background in engineering studies blindside you? I can understand that it could be so, after watching how my husband received two engineering degrees from UW-Madison with no background at all in Letters: there was no time to study anything but his own discipline. As Chancellor of a public university you should be more sensitive to such intellectual weaknesses and their potential consequences.
To dismantle the small, yet famous, Department of Comparative Literature at UW-Madison--which as I understand the statistics--brings more money into the university than the university spends on it, is stupid. It’s an especially ignorant act too when you look at the rigor of the requirements for both undergraduates and graduates who seek a degree from that department. Do you have any idea, for example, of the demands of having to learn four (4) languages, one of which must be a non-European language and an ancient or medieval language and then be required to study the aesthetical principles of literature in those various languages?
What is man to literary aesthetics or literary aesthetics to man, Chancellor Wiley? I see you commit yourself to the development of nuclear power for America. I am grateful to you for that and believe that sets you as a man above the crowd in the knowledge of science. I can recognize a marvelous aesthetics in getting non-polluting energy from an atom. Can you not grasp any need for mankind to have knowledge of aesthetics in literature from many lands and peoples? Only on a departmental level can that be competently done: only a departmental effort and cooperation can compare various aesthetical techniques. Imagine having an art history department abandoned as a department, making it no longer possible to see coherent comparisons in aesthetical principles in various art forms . . . no longer, for example, able to keep ‘track’ (through comparisons kept coherent by departmental cooperation) of a continuum of developments and contributions in mathematics, perspective, metaphysics, and philosophy relevant to various artistic periods and art forms. Where do you think great discoveries in the history of art come from?
With all due respect, don’t try to make a comparison to what you are doing by destroying the Department of Comparative Literature to what was done by combining Engineering Mechanics and Astronautics, and Nuclear Engineering into a Department called Engineering Physics. At least the university then had the sense to make the new arrangement a department.
What you and the APC have proposed and are now ‘asking’ of Professor Prospero Saiz (the new Chair of Comparative Literature) in cooperation with myriad numbers of departments is ridiculous, degrading because impossible to effect. (Cf. communications from Klein to Prospero [1/18/07 (d)] (Elaine M. Klein, Ph.D., Assistant Dean and Director, Academic Planning Program Review and Assessment), and from Prospero to Klein [1/22/07 (e)] attached.) Did your Administration ever respond in writing to Prospero and his fellow department members’ requests regarding Sandefur’s comments about destroying their department, which they read about in the Daily Cardinal ! (Cf. Online posting of Prospero’s on Feb. 21, 2007 (f) attached.)
I hope you will make the decision to keep the study of comparative literature in a single department. I also hope you will be totally honest with the public and tell them why, really, you want to close that department and who, truthfully, asked you to close it as an independent department? It certainly is clear to me that it has nothing to do with the budget. I do have a responsible opinion about why you are allowing it, but I don’t think it’s appropriate at this time to make my concerns public. You should speak first. My job as an alumnus and contributor to UW-Madison is to react to the policies you endorse. You should also encourage people to speak their minds on this issue of destroying a departmental study of comparative literature, and furthermore cease any form of intimidation of the staff involved for expressing their views. I know I will do my best to keep an open dialogue on the issue alive, especially since the decision to close the department can be reversed.
Perhaps you, as Chancellor, are not making this decision to destroy the Department of Comparative Literature? But you know it’s being done and you have the power to intervene in an appropriate fashion. If you don’t do that, you should make clear to the public who is behind the concerted effort to destroy the Comparative Literature Department, and why they want it closed down.
Sincerely,
Mary Gilbertson, Alumnus/1962
When asked her immediate response to Chancellor Wiley's June 4th letter to her, Mary responded, "I found the Chancellor's June 4, 2007, reply to my letter with Attachments to him of April 27, 2007, to be outrageously wily."