Letters to the Editor

To fully understand Pat Washington's case against SDSU, it is important to realize that the case is not just around her being a lesbian. There are many other issues that characterize her wrongful termination, and denial of tenure, from SDSU.

A few letters, like the one below, were written to various LGBT newspapers presenting Pat's case as being strictly that of homophobia. Such claims grossly underrepresent her case.

The letter below represents one of the those claims. Following that letter is a response from the Pat Washington Support Committee.

From SDSU Women's Studies

Dear Editor,

Recently, articles have appeared in the press accusing Women's Studies faculty at San Diego State University of creating an atmosphere of the closet and perpetuating a homophobic work environment. The sheer absurdity of this claim requires a response. Here four senior members of the department detail for you our political activism and scholarship of LGBT issues. We urge you to use your own judgement(s).

In the Fall of 2000 we offfered a 14-week community outreach course at The Center inHillcrest entitles "Lesbian Sexualities" for community members. We did so as out lesbians and attendance was about 15-20 students per week.

Susan E. Cayleff, Professor/Chair, adjunct faculty in American Indian Studies has been a gay and lesbian public ed speaker since 1973 in the Massachusetts, New York, Houston and San Diego areas. She was a founding member of the Lesbian Caucus of the National Women's Studies Association (1977-1981). In 1992, Cayleff and Zimmerman were the first faculty sponsors at SDSU for Lamdba Delta Lamdba, the openly lesbian sorority. Cayleff has also participated in the high school LGBT day that welcomes students to SDSU. Her biography on athlete Babe Didrikson won the 1996 Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Outstanding Book Award in San Diego. Cayleff was interviewed about Babe by the gay and straight press in Texas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, National Public Radio, Sweden, and Russia. She always presented herself as an out lesbian. Since 2001, she has contributed articles to the Encyclopedia of Lesbian Histories and Culture and the LGBT Encyclopedia. In the Spring of 2004, she will be teaching the SDSU graduate course, “Lesbian Lives and Cultures.”

Oliva Espin, a pioneering Latina lesbian scholar on issues of migration, lesbian sexuality, lesbian psychologies and therapy, received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Committee on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Concerns of the American Psychological Association (APA) (1999). She served as President of Division 44 (Society of the Psychological Study of Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues) of the APA (’92-’95). Prior to that she successfully passed the APA resolution refusing military advertising until they lifted their ban on homosexuality.

Espin’s scholarship has contributed significantly to LGBT issues: she has edited the Journal of Lesbian Studies and Contemporary Perspectives on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Psychology. Most recently, she was a member of the Board of Directors of The Center in San Diego.

Kathleen B. Jones has been an active/visible member of the lesbian and gay community for years. She was a board member of Diversionary Theatre (1992-5) and its Vice-President (1994-5). She and partner, Amy, have been active financial supporters of Diversionary. They also hosted a fundraiser for the Lesbian and Gay Historical Society in their home. Currently they are evaluators of the LA Gay and Lesbian Center’s Safe Haven Project, a youth advocacy program addressing bias/hatred against LGBT youth in LA city schools. Jones is past president, program chair and active member of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Caucus of the American Political Science Association (APSA). She coauthored “Queer Citizenship/Queer Representation: Politics Out of Bounds,” presented at the APSA (1996); it won the Best Paper Award by the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Political Caucus. In 2002 she offered a workshop on writing at The Center in San Diego.

Bonnie Zimmerman, internationally recognized as one of the founders of lesbian studies, created the first lesbian studies course at SDSU (1979) and has taught six different courses since then with a lesbian of LGBT focus. She has recently co-created the LGBT minor. She has published lesbian scholarship since 1976; has written or edited four books, and published more than 20 scholarly articles on lesbian topics and spoken on these topics internationally. She has written for the lesbian publications: Lavender Woman, Conditions, Lesbian Review of Books, and San Diego’s own Thursday’s Child.

Since 1972, Zimmerman has been active in lesbian movements in Buffalo, Chicago, and San Diego. She is a founding member of the Gay and Lesbian Issues Committee and SDSU and argued successfully for domestic partnership rights. She served as an openly lesbian President of both the National Women’s Studies Association and Chair of the SDSU University Senate, among other accomplishments.

Professors Cayleff, Espin, Jones, and Zimmerman

San Diego State University

Counterpoint to the Previous Letter
From the Pat Washington Support Committee

Dear Editor,

In the pats two months their have been several “letters” to the editor” of various LGBT presses from women’s studies faculty and former graduate students at SDSU that grossly misrepresent Professor Pat Washington’s professional record and the circumstances surrounding her tenure denial and termination. We would like to respond to some of those misrepresentations.

Most recently, four women’s studies faculty questioned how they, as lesbians, could possibly be accused of discriminating against Washington, also a lesbian. No one denies the lesbian “credentials” of SDSU’s women’s studies department, but a singular focus on those credentials deflects attention from other issues at play in Washington’s tenure denial and termination—namely, the differential treatment accorded her and her professional record. Despite its strong lesbian profile, the department cannot obscure the fact that it held Washington—the only black full-time faculty members in its 30-year history—to vastly higher standards than the white women it granted tenure. Nor can it obscure the fact that it imposed these higher standards on Washington just six months before she was required to submit her tenure portfolio—a product that normally takes six years to develop.

Other letters point to women’s studies’ hiring record to dispute Washington’s claim of discrimination. “Since 1990,” the refrain goes, “the department has conducted five searches for new professors, and all five of those searches resulted in the hiring of women of color, including Washington.” Missing from this glowing account of all those minority hires is the fact that three white women were appointed to tenured or tenure-track positions during this same time frame without having to go through searches. This points to another example of differential treatment on the part of women’s studies—namely, women of color hires were required to compete in national searches, while white women hires were simply given their jobs. Moreover, despite what is depicted as a decade-long “minority hiring frenzy,” Washington’s firing results in the department’s having no full-time Black faculty. Given that Black receive proportionately more PhDs than Asians, Latinos and Native Americans, having two Asians and two Latina, but no Black, full-time faculty is itself suspect.

As it placed itself out in the women’s studies department, Washington’s big for tenure was more political than professional (a sort of taxpayer-financed version of a sorority “rush”), and her tenure denial and termination had more to do with malice than with merit. Although tenure and promotion are supposed to be based solely on teaching effectiveness, professional growth (publications) and service, this clearly did not hold true in Washington’s case. Her service was off the chart. Her teaching scores averaged 4.1 out of a possible 5 (objectively “above average” and well within range of the departmental average of 4.26). Her peer teaching evaluations for the tenure review period uniformly lauded her as an “outstanding” or “excellent” classroom teacher. Tellingly, in her seven years at SDSU, she won eight of the university’s top teaching awards (the next highest award-winner in women’s studies received five awards in 16 years). These are documented, verifiable facts—less scintillating, perhaps, than rumors, innuendoes, and “timely” anecdotal potshots—but infinitely more supportable. Moreover, Washington produced eight refereed (or peer-reviewed) articles from the time of her appointments in 1996 to the time she went up for tenure in 2001 (only two articles were required for tenure and promotion when she was hired). In sharp contract, the majority of Washington’s similarly situated white colleagues got tenured and promoted to associate professor with only one or two articles each. Publication “quality” is not an issue for Washington either, because, when put to the test, her articles can, and will, match the pre-tenure articles of her colleagues—quality measure for quality measure.

Pat Washington has more than earned tenure and promotion at San Diego State University. We will do whatever it takes, for however long necessary, to make sure that she gets the tenure and promotion she so richly deserves. We will not give up until the racism is exposed and Pat is reinstated.

Sincerely,

Nicole Murray-Ramirez, chair,
Pat Washington Support Committee

Jess San Roque, vice-chair,
Pat Washington Support Committee

Maggie Allington, publicity chair,
Pat Washington Support Committee