Who-Stole-Feminism.-How-Women-Have-Betrayed-Women

122 WHO STOLE FEMINISM?Professor Herman Belz, a distinguished political scientist, noted withalarm that curriculum transformation was being implemented at Maryland,although it had never been voted on or endorsed by the faculty. Nothaving access to the administration's channels of distribution, he publishedhis misgivings in the faculty newspaper:Faculty who are concerned to preserve and maintain intellectualintegrity and freedom of academic inquiry in the University shouldexamine carefully the recommendations of the [curriculum transformationcommittee] report. They should be aware of the potentialthreat to disciplinary autonomy that it contains. And they shouldtake steps to bring the subject of curriculum transformation into thefresh air and open forums of public debate, where through the formsand procedures of critical deliberation we govern ourselves as anacademic community. 12At the "historic" panel discussion, Ms. Schmitz would refer to protestsin the school paper as "hysterical and extreme" backlash. 13She assuredher sister panelists that transformation at Maryland would be unaffected."But we . . . have to keep educating the leadership."Ms. Schmitz became known to the Middle Tennessee State Universityfaculty when, under the sponsorship of the Tennessee Board of Regents,she conducted a curriculum transformation workshop in February 1990..In March 1990, the Advisory Committee for Curricular Transformationbecame prominent. This committee, which had been given no charge bythe faculty senate, asserted that its authority to transform the curriculumstemmed from the regents: "This committee was formed in response to amandate from the Board of Regents based on the findings published inthe 1989 statewide report on the Status of Women in Academe." 14Pursuing what it took to be its mandate, the Advisory Committee forCurricular Transformation sent a lengthy (eighty-seven-item) questionnaireto the Middle Tennessee State faculty querying them in detail abouthow they ran their classes and asking questions designed to test theirlevel of feminist consciousness. The advisory committee asked the professorsto analyze their assigned readings, their lectures, and their audiovisualmaterial and to reply to questions like "How often were the pronouns'she' or 'her' used? How often did examples relate only to typical maleexperience or use only males in examples? How often are women shownin positions of power or action? How often are men shown in familial ordomestic roles?" One section asks whether the instructors agree, agree