Mixed bag
Correct me if I am wrong — and authoress Mattera ("Where the boys aren't," April 29) will be most happy — but it was 1980 at the University of Michigan and there was a crunch. Something had to go. Should it be Geography or Women's Studies? Should it be one of the elements of a traditional liberal education, one in fact going back to antiquity — or should it be a new age, compensatory 1970s way to create tenure-track positions and cake courses for a certain gender? Guess which one won.
Also, regarding Jack Lessenberry's April 1 article, ("Why GM failed," April 1), Henry Ford was not wacko, a judgment made even ignoring the Model T and the vast fortune therefrom.
Even if he had never founded and run (eventually badly) an industrial empire which even the Soviets admired, he would be still hailed as a genius of the manufacturing process. Ford was an engineer of huge scale. What's more, he despised the "money men," because they invented and bolted together nothing. God knows what he would think of these early 21st century bankers! And, he did have concern for the well-being of the common people and his employees. He famously opined in his (ghost-written) 1920s autobiography: When you hire a man you are taking on a partner — something to ponder in light of the corporate blood bath of the 1990s, post.—G.M. Ross, Lowell
