Katherine ends her letters with:
>"If the world were a logical place, men would ride side-saddle."  --Rita
>Mae Brown

We know the world isn't a logical place, and yet we expect it to be.   As a
museum director, I certainly wish our donors and constituencies would follow
the same logic as mine.

Whether Mr. Herring intended his fatalistic expression to be openly
realistic, I don't know.  Perhaps, having resigned his position, he no
longer has e-mail access and is completely unaware of the strange aftermath.

Is it racist to be realistic?  As several writers have observed, obtaining a
museum position is still a matter of "who you know"  or "who you are" in too
many cases.

In a number of academic disciplines, notably history, university faculties
choose from within their own network - if they can get away with it.

Senior college faculty can still call a friend at a graduate or professional
school, and obtain admission for one's graduating student.

We gasp at racism, any whiff of it, but what are we DOING about it?  Who
among us has risked the loss of one's own job, in order to demand loudly
that racial or ethnic or gender imbalance be corrected -- and corrected
NOW -- within our own institutions?