These academic letters of support or censure are getting increasingly silly. So you got only 5 current members of the history department (and one "emerita") to sign a letter of support for the Chair and you still published it.
Probably there were other members of the department who agreed with you but failed to sign, but such a dribble of support for the Chair would have been better left as individual letters.
As these academic letters get more numerous, the readers of these letters get more sophisticated. As letter campaigns go, this is pretty pathetic. From reading your weak letter and looking at the signatories, I guess the faculty really doesn't support the Chair as much as I thought they would. Your plan to help the Chair seems to have backfired.
by G. Swanson on November 27, 2002 at 3:09 PM