The State University of New York at New Paltz scrapped a search for a dean this month after controversy erupted over one of the candidates, a lesbian and former nun who years ago described herself as a witch.
Roger W. Bowen, the university’s president, made the decision to abandon the search for a dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and to start anew in the fall. He would not comment on the matter. A spokesman for New Paltz said the president did not believe that any of the three finalists were academically qualified for the job.
The three candidates, selected from a pool of 120, were Rosemary Keefe Curb, head of the English department at Southwest Missouri State University; Stanley Israel, head of the chemistry department at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell; and Claude L. Schochet, a professor of mathematics at Wayne State University.
Dr. Curb was not the top choice of the 11-member search committee, but her candidacy captured the most attention. The search committee knew that her areas of expertise included gender studies, black studies, and drama. They didn’t know that a book she helped edit 12 years ago would prompt an uproar from other professors, local residents, and a New York state legislator, or that it would draw a crowd of reporters during Dr. Curb’s visit to the New Paltz campus.
“Rosemary Curb has excellent credentials,” said Amy Kesselman, an associate professor of women’s studies at New Paltz, who helped lead the search."Her sexual orientation and whatever religious beliefs she has are irrelevant to her qualifications for the job.”
Dr. Kesselman noted that faculty leaders had issued a statement of concern expressing"shock and disappointment” about the"hostility” directed toward Dr. Curb, and that the statement had drawn applause at a faculty meeting.
Critics of Dr. Curb’s candidacy cited the book she edited, Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence (Naiad Press, 1985), in which she and other women describe their experiences as lesbians while they were nuns.
One chapter contains an exchange among Dr. Curb and two other women. She asks them about their spiritual beliefs and practices, then gives some details of her own:"I think of my spirituality as grounded in the earth -- quite a contrast from the mortification of the flesh I practiced in the convent. I don’t go around hugging trees, but I do feel that impulse. I’ve never been initiated into a coven, but I like to call myself a witch because the word carries such patriarchal taboo, and I feel a solidarity with the women who were burned as witches. I’ve participated in ritual circles celebrating solstices, equinoxes, and full moons.”
Dr. Curb also writes in the book that she conducted such rituals at Rollins College, where she taught from 1979 to 1992."Leading a ritual circle with women who have never practiced any pagan ceremony gives me a chance to preach my spirituality and practice consciousness-raising,” she writes.
Professors at New Paltz say a local resident, Peter Shipley, got hold of a copy of the book and then widely distributed a lengthy and critical press release about it and Dr. Curb. The Associated Press reported that Mr. Shipley leads an organization called National Catholic Forum. He could not be reached for comment, but he told the A.P. that Dr. Curb"is a militant anti-Catholic who admits she’s practiced witch rituals. If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was someone’s idea of a big joke.”
In an interview, Dr. Curb would not"confirm or deny” whether she considers herself a witch."What he’s doing is conducting a witch-hunt, and I will not play that game,” she said of Mr. Shipley. She noted that she had won teaching awards at Rollins, and that the rituals in which she led students were “theatrical events,” directly related to her research in theater.
Lesbian Nuns, she said, was a product of her work in women’s studies and typical of the kind of scholarship done in that field a decade ago."It has become a sort of staple, a classic in the women’s-studies community,” she said of the book, which has been translated into six languages. Quoting passages out of context"deliberately misrepresents” the purpose of the book, she said.
“When I wrote the introduction to Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence, I was writing as an individual scholar,” she added. “I wasn’t speaking as an administrator or certainly as a dean.” Dr. Curb said that her candidacy for administrative posts elsewhere had not been controversial, and that it was “inappropriate for someone not connected with the university, especially an elected state representative, to interfere in the search process of a state university.”
John J. Guerin, a Republican Assemblyman whose district includes New Paltz, issued a press release last month, after Dr. Curb’s visit to the campus. In it, he said his office had been"deluged” with calls about her candidacy. Subsequently, he saw Dr. Curb’s curriculum vitae and Lesbian Nuns. Then, he said, he telephoned President Bowen. Mr. Guerin said he told Dr. Bowen that he was issuing a statement on Dr. Curb’s candidacy.
In the statement, the lawmaker said that while the candidate’s personal life is her own business,"the controversy here is that Ms. Curb has expanded her personal lifestyle of witchcraft, pagan rituals, lesbianism, and lesbianism in the convent into a rather narrow ‘academic’ focus.” As a result, Mr. Guerin said in an interview, Dr. Curb was not the best candidate for the deanship, and he suggested that other candidates"would provide a more universal perspective on the liberal arts.”
“That may be very politically incorrect to say,” he added, “but most people don’t want their kids going to a school where the dean is an admitted witch and where she says she has engaged in attracting other people into pagan rituals. I don’t know why that’s such a surprise to Ms. Keefe Curb.”
Members of the New Paltz search committee weren’t sure if the controversy affected the president’s decision to abandon the search, but called his decision to scrap all three finalists “unusual.”
Kenneth F. Burda, vice-president for institutional advancement, said that the decision was not unusual, and that the university had not scrapped the search. Rather, he said, this was a completed search that failed.
Dr. Burda said neither the controversy over Dr. Curb nor the phone call from the state lawmaker had affected the president’s decision.