To the Editor:
Perhaps the single most shocking revelation in your article on the collapse of the Pomona English Department is that the former chair of that department, Kevin Dettmar, writes an advice column for department chairs for The Chronicle: “Ask the Chair” (“When a Department Self-Destructs,” The Chronicle, August 21). You show in detail how Dettmar presided over a morass of financial unaccountability (“it’s impossible to fuck up the budget,” he said), and allowed personal conflicts to simmer and fester (“conflict...is not my strong suit.”). Your thoroughly researched article shows the absolute mess Dettmar left for Kunin, the succeeding chair, who faced attacks, investigation, and persecution when he tried to install minimal common-sense guidelines for faculty members wanting large sums from the department. (Kunin is “principled to a fault,” comments Dettmar.)
A basic question for readers of your reporting is how widespread the kinds of abuses revealed at Pomona are. The fact that The Chronicle dispenses advice to chairs around the nation from an administrator with Dettmar’s abysmal track record is not reassuring. Does The Chronicle really consider Dettmar to be exemplary? Perhaps then the paper should consider hiring other Pomona figures to write advice columns. The investigator hired by the college, whose sanctions against Kunin were dismissed by the California court could write “Ask the Investigator.” Gabrielle Starr, who told The Chronicle, “We continue to uphold the principles and practices of academic freedom and open discourse across our entire campus community,” could write a public-relations column. And should Dettmar do the decent thing and step down, he might be replaced by Kyla Tompkins, who has recently been hired away from Pomona by the University of Buffalo to chair one of their departments (“Tompkins told the investigator that she is very good at running meetings.”).
Michael W. Clune
Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of the Humanities
Department of English
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland
