She later recalled that in her high-school commencement speech she attacked "specific examples of racism" in which a white classmate was ostracized for having a black friend.
(xi) Lawrence Buell, reviewing it in The New England Quarterly, called the book's attitudes toward these reformers "sympathetic yet critical".
Her husband, Thomas Parker, who had been senior tutor at a Harvard undergraduate House, was named vice president in charge of finance and administration.
"[8] Bennington, founded in 1932 as a women's college, was known, and sometimes criticized, as a free-spirited and innovative place with nationally respected faculty, especially in its arts and writing programs, and affluent students.
In the 1960s the board became concerned over financial problems, national unrest over race and gender, and changing student interests, and in 1969 decided to admit men.
[9] Admitting men increased the size of the student body and pressure on faculty resources, and plans for major new construction created the need to borrow money at a time when interest rates were high and energy costs were rising.
[10] The new president thus faced a budget shortfall, demands for affirmative action and racial inclusion, maintaining or restoring academic standards, and construction of the college's Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) buildings.
[8] Parker's first concern was affirmative action to increase minority representation both in the student body and the staff and to hire more women.
Her letter to the community of October 1973 warned that an Affirmative Action Program "in a narrowly compensatory spirit will surely fulfill the dire prophecies of those who fear quotas and reverse discrimination."
Parker told a New York Times reporter that "when people are angry or upset they tend to want to find someone to blame it on", but students and faculty said that their disagreement was not with the recommendations but that the president had withdrawn from them and that their concern was procedural: the meetings of the committee were secret, no students were on the committee, and there was no general discussion before the board expressed approval.
They issued a statement: "a number of trustees have begun to feel that the heat in the kitchen threatens to set the whole house on fire."
Their statement added that "Unfortunately, in now suggesting substantial compromise after having encouraged us all year to stand firm, the trustees have inadvertently made it impossible for us to function effectively in our current positions."
The bad feeling, according to an investigation by the American Association of University Professors, lingered, and was a factor in the "cataclysmic upheaval" of 1994 in which the board gave notice to a large number of faculty that their services were terminated and carried out fundamental restructuring.
She commented to a New York Times reporter that mood on Drew's campus was "calm" and "reflective", undergoing "an era of good feeling" and that such subjects as tenure were under free discussion.
[28] She explained to a reporter who asked about the book that there is a "certain immorality about the way higher education plays on the feelings of people who are told that they can't accomplish anything without a degree. ...
"[22] The New York Times Book Review said that the book "concludes that higher education has gone belly up" and takes on everything: "college degrees don't mean anything, the curriculums bears little relationship either to the job market or to genuine education; professors and administrators spend all their time wrangling over diminishing power."
Her proposal to do away with tenure, the review continued, does not address the issue of academic freedom, quoting the book that a "university teaching position should be an honor, to be enjoyed intermittently as a reward for proven accomplishment.