On 11Oct2006, at 9:19 PM, Carolyn Kunin wrote:


<excerpt>


<color><param>0000,0000,FFFF</param><smaller><x-tad-smaller>> I can't
 imagine the college would sit by while someone who is clearly and
openly</x-tad-smaller></smaller></color></excerpt><excerpt>

<color><param>0000,0000,FFFF</param><smaller><x-tad-smaller> > insane
teaches there</x-tad-smaller></smaller></color></excerpt><excerpt>



 Dear MR,


 You may be surprised to learn that when I made this argument years
ago, Don Johnson tried (seriously? it seemed so) to argue that in the
fifties the quality of Russian/Slavic Departments was so low that he
didn't think my argument was valid.


 Carolyn

</excerpt>

I'm not (surprised, that is). I joined a Slavic Department in 1963
that for a few years was something of a looney bin. Our university was
hastening at the time to take advantage of the post-Sputnik federal
support for Russian/Slavic studies, and went in the space of three
years from a one-woman Russian program within the Modern Languages
department to a full-fledged  Oriental and Slavic Languages and
Literatures Department, with Russian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian and
Hungarian courses, and a PhD program plan in development stages. In
moving in this direction with sometimes less than deliberate speed,
the department made a few ill-advised hires. No one on the faculty was
clinically insane (I think), but a few were, in layman's terms,
somewhat bonkers. 


In fairness to my alma mater, I should add that after these early
growing pains we evolved into a very respectable Slavic studies
program, staffed by individuals as sane as yours truly. 


Earl Sampson


<fontfamily><param>Geneva</param><smaller>"The most beautiful
experience we can have is the mysterious ... the fundamental emotion
which stands at the cradle of true art and true science." - Albert
Einstein (1879-1955).</smaller></fontfamily>