Free Honest Doubt by Amanda Cross Page A

today’s undergraduates. But you didn’t come to hear the woes of teaching Shakespeare.”
    â€œIt all helps to get the picture. Surely they listen to you in faculty meetings,” I said. I doubted it, but I had to get him off Shakespeare and onto more practical subjects. I plan to read all of Shakespeare when I retire, but he’s not on the top of my list at the moment.
    â€œMy dear young woman, if you suppose that, you can’t be a very good detective. Surely you have already concluded that nobody listens to me. Not unless they want something; what do you want to know?”
    â€œTell me about faculty meetings,” I said, not looking embarrassed. I was even getting to like the old chap.
    â€œAh. Now you’re sounding like a detective. Faculty meetings are where we all get off our high horses and sound like boys in a frat house deciding on whom to pledge.”
    â€œReally?” I said. Old Longworth was beginning to surprise me.
    â€œAs near as makes no matter, I do assure you.”
    â€œYou do have a tenured woman on the faculty; hasn’t she made any difference?”
    â€œApart from the other professors wishing they could frankly admire her legs, no.”
    I think my mouth dropped open at this. I shut it, but couldn’t decide if he was trying to tell me the woman had good legs, or they wished she had. He sensed my question.
    â€œShe has great legs, but she doesn’t think that’s the part of her accoutrement they ought to be considering, and she’s quite right. I’m afraid most of the men in this department haven’t greeted women’s lib with open arms. Tony—Antonia—has to sit in on any interview with a female candidate to keep the old boys from admiring
her
legs.”
    â€œWas Professor Haycock like that?” I asked.
    â€œLeader of the pack. His hatred of women scholars, and Tony in particular, was the one fact everyone in the department agreed upon.”
    â€œDo you dislike her?”
    â€œI don’t. She’s nice to me, which is sufficiently unusual around here to win my affection. Beyond that, I admire her. She could have settled in as one of the boys, and written a book showing how women had ruined the wonders men had contrived, but she didn’t. She’s not a queen bee—I bet you didn’t think I knew that term—and she really fought to get another tenured woman into the department. That really fluttered the dovecotes; imagine, two women sitting in on meetings of the tenured faculty.”
    He looked positively gleeful at the memory. Since Professor Longworth seemed ready enough to gossip about his colleagues, I didn’t want to lose the moment. He might tell me things he wouldn’t tell me at another time, starting from scratch. When interviewees talk, keep them talking—that’s my motto.
    â€œSurely all the professors don’t think exactly alike?” I said, astonishment ringing in my voice.
    â€œEach had his separate reason for turning down Catherine Dorman for tenure.”
    â€œSuch as?” I asked encouragingly.
    â€œHaycock I’ve already mentioned. He was the only one who admitted he was against women, period. The others were sophisticated enough not to put it quite so plainly, to say nothing of affirmative action rules. They didn’t like her last ten refereed articles, or she was not properly obsequious to Freud—that was the opinion of our chairman, Daniel Wanamaker, who, as I understand it, is seriously considering retiring and taking his antediluvian opinions to the South.”
    â€œAnd who will be chairman when he does leave?”
    â€œA good question, my dear. Who indeed? I would like the job, and I’m willing to call myself the chair,
tout court,
avoiding the sexist title, but the others think I’d be too tolerant of views they don’t like; the Lear syndrome, it’s called, and I don’t have it. I’m not supposed to