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History faculty reverses Weiss tenure decisionFirst department decision promptstemporary resignation. .VAV.V.•V'V .y. v/ !v^:»,v:-x:;' .:v:|xlt;v : • -RECOMMENDED—With history professor and provost Sheldon Hackney speaking for her, Nancy Weiss gained tenure recommendation.history department committee which read the works of scholars whose ages and fields of research are similar to Weiss’ concludedpossible reason for the negative vote at the Nov. 25 meeting was that Weiss’ was the last of four * tenure recommendations to beChallener’sBy CYNTHIA READIn a case which involved the reversal of a departmental vote and saw the temporary resignation of its chairman, the Department of History recommended tenure to Assistant Professor Nancy J. Weiss.Weiss is the first woman at Princeton to be recommended for tenure after completing six years as a junior faculty member.On Nov. 26, one day after a history department meeting at which Weiss was denied a tenure recommendation, department chairman Richard D. Challener ’44 wrote letters to President Bowen and the history faculty advising them of his resignation as department chairman and as a member of the Advisory Committee on Appointments and Advancements, effective in June. Bowen, who was in China at the time, did not see the letter.ReconsiderationChallener withdrew his resignation later that week, after a department member who had voted against Weiss requested reconsideration of her case. According to faculty rules, only a voter in the majority may call for reconsideration of a tenure recommendation in light of new evidence.At a second meeting, on Dec. 1, a majority of the tenured history faculty—about three-fourths of the twenty voting members—approved Weiss’ recommendation.Challener described his resignation as a “combination of frustration and principle.’’“I felt,Nancy Weiss deservedBy KERRY DOYLEThe university’s highest undergraduate and alumni honors were awarded to five persons at Saturday’s Alumni Day luncheon in Jadwin Gymnasium.John M. Doar ’44, former special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, accepted the Woodrow Wilson Award, an honor for a person who exemplifies “Princeton in the Nation’s Service.” The phrase was coined by T. Woodrown/:i HOtenure,” he said last Wednesday. “When she was turned down I knew I’d be in a very difficult position. You people (The Daily Princetonian) and others would be coming up to me and saying ‘what happened?’ and I would have to say I was not in agreement with my department.“I interpreted the negative decision in her case as a vote of no-confidence in the way I’d like to see American history shaped around here,” he said.Social historian neededOne explanation for the first negative vote, according to several history professors, was that some department members, aware of therestricted number of tenure slots allotted in the next five years, saw a greater need for a social than a political historian in the department. Weiss, along with three other American history professors, specializes in political history.“The negative vote had nothingBy JOHN ROTHCHELDStudent government representatives have expressed their satisfaction over the outcome of Thursday’s student referendum vote approving the replacement of the UGA by the proposed Undergraduate Student Government (USG).Student response on the referendum, solicited on a door-to-door basis Thursday night, wasaccept (the award) in the spirit in which it was intended, in honor of the Constitution and the House of Representatives.”Madison medal The recipient of the James Madison Medal, the highest award bestowed on an alumnus of the graduate school, was William O. Baker GS ’39. Baker is president of Bell Telephone Laboratories and a charter university trustee. He has served as scientific adviser to fourto do with the scholarship of the candidate,” Challener said.He admitted that he “made the mistake” of not lobbying for Weiss during the meeting, a factor which he thinks may have led to the first negative vote. He explained that he preferred to chair the meeting without taking an active role in thediscussion.“Many people said that if they’d realized he (Challener) felt so strongly, she (Weiss) would have passed the first time,” said one tenured associate professor of history.Challener said he had expected a positive vote at the first meeting because Weiss’ outside recommendations had been positive. He acknowledged receiving “rave letters” from two prominent outside historians in her field who had been asked by the department to read her recently published book on the history of the Urban League.Challener also noted that aoverwhelmingly in favor of the restructure plan. The vote was 2,449 to 347.“I think students are convinced that the new student government plan will be an improvement over the UGA,” said UGA president Quentin D. Easter ’75.Elections to come Between now and the end of April, when the USG is scheduled to officially begin its operations, thespeech, praised as models of publicservice Doar and past Wilson award winners Norman M. Thomas ’05 and Ralph Nader ’55: “They have proved the system can work.”The Freshman First Honor Prize was awarded to Peter A. Perry ’77 for the highest grades in his class at the end of his freshman year.Perry will receive $100 for book purchases, and his high school library will receive $150.that she is among the top two or three American historians of that group.Challener suggested that anotherstudent body must elect 32 representatives—11 University Council members, 3 USG officers, 2 committee chairmen, 4 class officers and 12 class delegates.“It’s important that people realize the need to come out and run for these positions,” Easter said. “The success of this new system will depend in a large measure on student participation.” The election process for the new student government will occupy about two months, beginning at the end of this week and continuing until the end of April.The first election will be for University Council seats, while the last will be final elections for class officers and class delegates.UGA treasurer Henry N. Massey ’76 said he considers the USG to bebasically a sound system, although “modifications will probably have to be made in the first year.”“As people work with the system, problems we haven’t been able to foresee will come up,” he added.discussed at that meeting, and the speeches concerning her decision were shortest.Professor of History F. Sheldon Hackney, who as provost serves as the university’s Affirmative Action officer, did not speak at the Nov. 25 meeting. He did speak for Weiss at the Dec. 1 meeting when asked his opinion.Hackney confirmed Wednesday that he feared other faculty members might have construed his support of Weiss as an Affirmative Action measure.‘Mythical quota9 f“People mentioned it (Af; firmative Action),” Hackney said. “It was obviously a factor, but no one thought of voting in order to fii| some mythical quota.” -The negative vote at the Nov. 25 : meeting was “about as close as a vote can come,” Challener said. A substantial majority of the professors reversed its vote at the Dec. 1 meeting.Challener believed that although there was no clear split in support of Weiss between European and American historians, the American historians voted for Weiss at both meetings.“The change was obviously among the European or non-Western faculty,” he said. The(Continued on page two)Doar, Baker receive Alumni Day honors
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Princeton Daily Princetonian
Princeton, New Jersey, US
Mon, Feb 24, 1975
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