University of Virginia Library

The content of Mr. Williams
letter entitled "Faculty Defense"
points up all too clearly the fact
that the caliber of entering graduate
students in the Department of
Government and Foreign Affairs is,
indeed, declining.

Aside from shaking my faith in
the ability of the Woodrow Wilson
Fellowship people to judge graduate
student material, Mr. Williams'
letter strikes me as woefully uninformed
as to the machinations of
the Department. Further, as he so
readily admits, Mr. Williams really
doesn't give a damn what's going
on.

As a fourth year grad student,
and one who has survived three
departmental chairmen, two graduate
advisors, and the comings and
goings of innumerable disgusted
faculty members and graduate students,
I feel immeasurably better
qualified to comment on the
disastrous situation within the Department.
Indeed, the state of
affairs is such that should there be
no improvement in the current
student-faculty deadlock, it may be
necessary for myself and other
students who are concerned with
the present and future Department
to take the matter before more
nationally recognized forums.

But to return to Mr. Williams'
letter, I find his lack of intellectual
awareness and curiosity profoundly
disturbing qualities in one who
professes to want to teach. There
are two possible explanations for
Mr. Williams' opinions. Either he is
naive and/or uninterested in the
welfare of our Department, or, he is
fiendishly clever in playing up to
those who will be paying out his
fellowship money over the next few
years. If the latter is the case, he
should go far in this Department,
and perhaps obtain one of those
all-too-common "quickie" M.A.s
and even a more meaningless
three-year Ph.D. One only need
toady to the right people to make
these dreams come true.

The dull, unquestioning student
can certainly reach his goal of a
ticky-tack house in the ticky-tack
suburbia of contemporary Silent
Majority America. Such standards
may be tolerated in the business
community or in American society
in general, but should be brought
into serious question in an academic
community, theoretically
dedicated to the pursuit of Truth
and Learning. Unfortunately, Mr.
Williams' attitude toward graduate
education and the role of the
student therein is all too coincidental
with that of the men who
have in effect been running this
Department for the last twenty
years — an outlook so out of touch
with reality as to defy rational
response.