Composing a Life

priorities of the new administration was educational. If an institution is lucky, it gets a few drops of vision and integrity mixed in with the politics. It has always struck me that for all his lack of integrity Nixon seemed to be an effective president until he got caught.
    Anger was an achievement, a step away from the chasm of despair. Women in this society tend to be disproportionally damaged by such experiences, because we are too ready to accuse ourselves of failure and too reluctant to surrender trust once it is granted, whether to a spouse or an institution. Often, American men learn to project their disappointments outward, like Lee Iacocca using his rejection by Ford to fuel new achievements; women tend to internalize their losses. When a proposal is turned down or a job not offered, women tend to say, I wasn’t worthy. Men more often contend that the process was crooked.
    I taught at Amherst for another year and a half after Julian’s death and considered remaining there, because I found myself so rich in friendships, perhaps more and more diverse than at any other time in my life. But the faculty at small colleges, because of their isolation, become especially dependent on the institution. It was frustrating to watch those who felt battered or threatened by the new administration and to be unable to help. There had been only a single grievance petition presented in the three years that I was dean; now there were so many that the college established a new committee to review them.
    I wrote to the president when I resigned, after going on unpaid leave, “Over the past three years, I have experimented with a number of possible ways of remaining affiliated to the college and continuing to use my influence for improvement. This is because when I came to Amherst I was making what I believed to be a permanent commitment, and it was in the nature of my job that I cultivated an admiration for the institution that has only been relinquished with reluctance. . . . The question for me has been one of trust. Returning to the institutional dependency of teaching on a two-semester basis would have required a degree of trust and commitment I can no longer muster.”
    Amherst is a curious place. All that confidence of virtue based on past donations for the training of poor youths for the ministry, now supplemented by tuitions in five figures to train corporate lawyers and stockbrokers. All those worldly and successful executives on the board, who let nostalgia for their undergraduate days cloud their perceptions of the present. A faculty of high intelligence and considerable integrity cocooned in complacent myths. It is easy for an institution like Amherst College to live on its capital, but the capital that is slowly being spent is not the endowment—that continues to grow, for wealth attracts wealth—but the institution’s moral capital of trust and good will and reputation.
    Finally, the question is not about what was done to me or what has been done to other women. Many institutions celebrate the transition to integration by a series of human sacrifices, so that only the second or third woman in a given role has a chance of survival. After that, things slowly improve. The issue is that society supports the privileges of places like Amherst in the belief that educational institutions contribute to a consensus that involves both openness and continuity, intellectual skepticism and moral commitment. They will not do this without criticism.
    I see the women I have worked with on this project pouring their energies into their work, and I know that the society benefits, but I puzzle about whether they should cultivate cynicism and disengagement rather than risk trusting those who are not trustworthy. The new president of Amherst told me once, when he was toughing out the faculty protests at the end of his first year (with board support), that he “keeps his bags packed.” It may be that he had learned from my experience, but it was the wrong lesson. In retrospect, I don’t wish that I had kept my bags packed. The phrase is current in many parts of corporate America, where some companies treat executives as replaceable pawns to be moved from place to place. Only a few value loyalty and understand that it can be cultivated only where it is reciprocated. Commitment is elusive without trust, and yet the double standard itself creates a double bind as the trust and idealism of those who cannot defend themselves are