We admit that we have not read the bill passed by the Philadelphia City Council concerning the licensing of tour guides in the city’s historic district. As Professor Timothy Burke notes in “License to Imagine” (April Bulletin), the “legislation created a requirement for guides to be periodically tested on their historical knowledge.” He further voices [...]

I enjoyed reading in the April Bulletin (“Letters”) the observations of my old friend Leo Braudy ’63 regarding the difference between the relatively harsh justice handed out to miscreant male students by Dean of Men William C.H. Prentice ’37 and the genteel admonishments Dean of Women Susan Cobbs gave to wayward women. In the late [...]

The article “Swarthmore Says” (October 2008 Bulletin) inaccurately attributes the 1972 text of the Equal Rights Amendment to Alice Paul (Class of 1905). The text of the original Equal Rights Amendment, as written by Paul in 1923, was “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its [...]

In the April Bulletin letters, Judy Fletcher ’72 responded to conservative academic Robert George’s (’77) view on those in government who are “pro-abortion.” Fletcher stated: “No one is pro-abortion. They are pro-choice.” She went on to add that this issue should only be determined between a woman and her doctor. However, the vast amount of [...]

The photo of the women’s chorus from the 1965 production of The Boyfriend (April Bulletin, p. 46) was mislabeled. It was not a Little Theatre Club production but one of a series of faculty plays including, among others, The Mousetrap, The Man Who Came to Dinner, and Eva LaGalliene’s Alice in Wonderland.
The Boyfriend was directed [...]

I am writing in response to the article, “A Mind on the Right” (January Bulletin), which profiled conservative academic Robert George ’77. I don’t care how smart, well-educated, or well-credentialed someone is, anyone who can say “the most extreme pro-abortion legislator” is either being intentionally misleading or just doesn’t get it. No one is pro-abortion. [...]

It was interesting to hear Robert George talk about how much his students learned when he co-taught a course with Cornel West. Sadly, Swarthmore deprives its students of such an experience, because no professor publicly espouses a reasoned philosophy as different from the status quo as George’s. This remains a lacuna that the College should [...]

I could identify very well with your succinct story about Robert George’s journey from liberal to conservative, a journey that surprisingly started at Swarthmore and continued later. I also arrived at Swarthmore full of liberal sentiments imparted to me by high-school teachers, pastors, and friends. Through study and a deeper discovery of Christianity, I converted [...]

My daughter attends Swarthmore, and it’s clear that the bent of the College is towards a liberal view of politics. The Swarthmore College Bulletin has every right to slant in any political direction the College chooses, but if “A Mind on the Right” was intended to somehow balance the liberal politics of the publication, it [...]

I never thought much of natural law. It supposedly undergirds ethical systems with self-evident truths. For example, stealing is wrong, according to natural law, because it is inherently destructive of personal or community relations. This is presumably more elemental than saying that stealing is wrong because it is against custom, statutory law, or divine command.
Natural [...]