Dr. Stoke's Resignation (original) (raw)
Dr. Stoke's Resignation
https://www.nytimes.com/1964/04/18/archives/dr-stokes-resignation.html
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April 18, 1964
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April 18, 1964
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The resignation of Dr. Harold W. Stoke from the presidency of Queens College deprives that institution and the community of an able and respected administrator. The changes that inevitably accompany the shift from the traditional college program to that of a major university system have played a part in making the president's tasks more burdensome at all the municipal colleges.
But Dr. Stoke could probably have shouldered those added burdens had he not been faced by the threat of renewed harassment over the issue of alleged discrimination against two Roman Catholic faculty members. Aided by a noisy and militant group of off‐campus supporters, the two teachers have been accusing the college administration for over six yearsin fact, before Dr. Stoke assumed the presidency ‐of withholding promotions from them because of their faith.
After scores of hearings and investigations, the Court of Appeals in Albany last December dismissed the teachers' complaints as unfounded. But earlier this month‐two weeks before Dr. Stoke decided to hand in his resignation‐the Court of Appeals ruled that the State Commission on Human Rights may deal with complaints of bias in public education and thus re‐enter and reopen the Queens case.
The court's decision, giving disaffected faculty members the right to sidestep the entirely adequate channels open to them within the educational structure, is an invitation to chaos. Its ultimate effect may well be for college departments to avoid judgments of merit altogether and to promote faculty members uncritically on the basis of seniority alone. Both the independence and the quality of higher education have been placed in danger. The degree to which Dr. Stoke's resignation underlines that danger may make it difficult to persuade an educator of comparably high qualifications to succeed him in what has become an embattled post.
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