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Appointments Increase Women on Faculty

By Julie K. Ellison

A survey of department chairmen last week revealed that at least one full professorship and a number of non-tenured Faculty positions will be filled-by women next year. But total employment figures are expected to bring only a marginal increase in the current low percentages of women on the Harvard Faculty.

Last Tuesday, the Faculty overwhelmingly passed the recommendations of the Committee on the Status of Women to raise the percentage of women to 9.6 per cent in tenured positions and 19 per cent in non-tenured positions; however, department chairmen reported that because of few openings this year, the projected quotas are still far off.

'Best Will'

"The pace is such that, even with the best will in the world, the slots just aren't there," Seymour Slive, Chairman of the Fine Arts Department, said last night. "I don't think people can look for a drastic change in one or even two or three years."

Other factors which have limited openings, department chairmen said, are the current budget crunch and cutbacks in Federal research monies.

The Report on the Status of Women noted that as of December 1970, 2 out of 453 full professors. 11 of 184 assistant professors, 0 of 38 associate professors, 2 out of 11 instructors and 34 of 204 lecturers were women.

Full Professor

The German Department is the only department filling all of its openings for next year with women, giving a full professorship to Dorrit Cohn, presently at the University of Indiana, and two assistant professorships-one in German, one in Scandinavian-to Maria Tatar of Princeton and Carol Clover of Berkeley respectively.

A woman scholar is also under consideration for a newly created full professorship in History and Literature, sources said. The post will allegedly go to a specialist in Western European or English Literature.

Some departments, like Classics, have no appointments to hand out this year at all. Others, such as History, Government, Romance Languages, and Sociology, filled their few posts with men. Virtually no women were appointed in science departments contacted, with the sole exception of Ursula Levine, part of a husband-and-wife team in Biology.

Soc Sci and Hum

Most of the women to receive Corporation appointments will be found in the social sciences and literature. A second husband-and-wife team will share a training grant in Social Anthropology, receiving identical one-year lectureships. Janet Fjellman, the woman,may teach a course on the role of women viewed cross-culturally.

Elizabeth Tringham, currently at Cambridge University, will join the Anthropology Department as assistant professor. An assistant professorship in Economies will go to a woman now at Yale.

The Fine Arts Department has invited Ms. Porada of Columbia, an expert in Ancient Near Eastern Art. to be a visiting professor during the fall term.

The English Department and the Department of Afro-American Studies will each appoint one woman as lecturer. In addition rumors are afoot concerning the appointment of a woman to an assistant professorship in the Music Department.

'Encrusted'

Spokesmen for the departments which are hiring women said that there had been little resistance to the idea. Morton Bloomfield. Chairman of the English Department, said that only a few "encrusted people" had balked at appointing a woman as lecturer.

On the other hand. several department chairmen indicated that in the wake of the report on the status of women there is increased resolve not to hire a woman "just because she's a woman."

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