BOB writes:

I thought you might find this Washington Post article interesting.

Phyllis Richman, a woman who applied to a graduate professional program at Harvard in 1961, finds a letter in which a Harvard faculty member asked her how she planned to balance her career with her family obligations. A half-century later, she wrote him a rude letter in response. He responded:

Dear Phyllis Richman,

My 1961 letter to you states that you were potentially admissible to the professional program in city planning at Harvard University, but should consider the fact that finding a fulfilling career might come in conflict with potential family obligations.

You were about to make a considerable investment of time and money. I thought it fair that you be aware of employment conditions as I then perceived them.

This is not a letter that I would write today. While far from perfect, conditions for women working in the profession of city planning are, I believe, far more accommodating than in 1961.

Sincerely,

William Doebele

Although this was a surprisingly forthright reply for these times, what he should have said in his final paragraph was:

“While conditions in the profession of city planning have changed and become more accommodating to wives and mothers who choose to give insufficient attention to their family responsibilities, I would suggest that such questions are as pertinent today as they were then.”

Laura writes:

Excellent. If only he had the courage and insight to speak the truth.

Notice that Ms. Richman, a former restaurant critic, is divorced. She brags of having traded in her first husband for a more enlightened one. She’s a typical feminist of her generation. She thinks everything Phyllis Richman has done is the cat’s pajamas.

This paragraph in the original letter from Doebele is well put:

However — to speak directly — our experience, even with brilliant students, has been that married women find it difficult to carry out careers in planning, and hence tend to have some feeling of waste about the time and effort spent in professional education. (This is, of course, true of almost all graduate professional studies.)

He might also have said that those “who find it difficult to carry out careers in planning” have taken educational opportunities from those who might not have had the same difficulty. Richman wrote:

I’d say, though, that the choice of how to balance family and graduate school should have been mine.

Sorry, Phyllis, but you did not own Harvard University. If you had, then the choice would have been yours alone. Given that businesses and institutions make considerable investments in preparing individuals for demanding careers, and typically do not wish to squander those investments on dilettantes, the choice is not just a personal one at all.

Jay from Goshen writes:

Perhaps this is an unwarranted assumption, but I will assume that Phyllis Richman is Jewish. She mentions being a grandmother and from the article, has more than two children.

I wonder how many grandchildren Ms. Richman has, and whether these children Jewish, according to Jewish law?

The demographic split in the Jewish community mirrors that of the Christian mainstream, but in overdrive. The Orthodox are massively outbreeding the non-observant, who are aging and shrinking. I wonder whether Jesse Powell has any prognostications to offer on the subject. By my own very amateur back of the envelope calculations, the “crossover” should happen in 25 years as the Boomers start dying.

So, while Ms. Richman was fretting about career, her people (non-observant Jews) were dying off. But I guess that doesn’t matter. And these people moan about “sustainability”! Maybe they are so obsessed with sustaining exotic fauna because they can’t sustain themselves.

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