The CAUT Status of Women Committee has stooped to a new low with Sandra Bruneau’s article, "Whither Jill? A Reply to Andrew Irvine on Affirmative Action."

This article is not in any sense of the word a "reply" to Andrew Irvine’s fine statistical analysis of recent hiring at Canadian universities (Dialogue XXXV, 1996, pp. 255-91). At best it is a reply to a figment of Dr. Bruneau’s hyperactive imagination.

Dr. Bruneau repeatedly and shamelessly attributes to Professor Irvine many odious views which are nowhere to be found in the article under review — indeed, which are clearly and directly contradicted in that article. (The lack of specific page references for her attributions should have set alarm bells ringing in the minds of even the mediocre unionists who run the CAUT.)

Dr. Bruneau's disgraceful mischaracterization of Professor Irvine's article not only libels the author, it also insults the journal Dialogue which published it, including the editor and reviewers who approved it for publication. By suggesting that Dialogue would publish the kind of trash she claims the Irvine article to be, Dr. Bruneau perpetrates a serious mischief upon a respected international organ of Canadian philosophers.

Considering that the body of Professor Irvine's article is a sober — one might even say "dry" — statistical argument purporting to show that women have been significantly favoured in university hiring since the mid-1970s, relative to their availability in the qualified applicant pool, one would expect a review of it to address these statistics. But no such "reply" is to be found in "Whither Jill?" Evidently, statistical analysis is beyond the competence of this "educator."

Instead, Dr. Bruneau utters such nonsense as, "But what accounts for the decrease in women hired in university if there are equal numbers of men and women who receive doctorates?" Does Dr. Bruneau not yet realize, even after having read Professor Irvine's paper and the SWC supplement itself, that women still account for only about 32 per cent of earned PhDs in Canada? Yet they account for over 40 per cent of recent hirings: that's the statistical anomaly in need of analysis. It is mind-boggling that someone could have missed this central point of Professor Irvine's article.

In short, the CAUT owes those slandered by Dr. Bruneau's hatchet-job a rather large apology. And they owe all CAUT members a more competent and balanced discussion of this important issue — a discussion which the SWC is manifestly incapable of delivering.

Grant A. Brown
Management, University of Lethbridge