The News & Observer (April 18) ran a flabbergastingly silly letter taking issue with the Pope Center’s recent study by Melana Zyla Vickers on Women’s Studies programs in the UNC system:

“The Pope Center for Higher Education Policy hires a consultant affiliated with an organization whose stated mission is to combat feminism on campus. She submits a report criticizing women’s studies programs on UNC system campuses (news story, April 1). And the Pope Center claims that the university is spending money unwisely?”

Note first the use of the ad hominem circumstantial fallacy — that because the author of the study has (actually, had) a certain affiliation, that discredits her work. Whether her findings and conclusions have validity, however, has nothing whatsoever to do with her past affiliations. And need I point out that when the Pope Center spends money, it’s money voluntarily given, but when UNC schools spend money, it is largely money confiscated from taxpayers. Taxpayers have grounds for complaining about the waste of their money, while individuals do not have grounds for complaining about the way others spend their own money.

“The more glaring irony is just how out of step the Pope Center is with American culture, including the conservative movement it endorses. Have its staff members missed the reports in which President Bush credits Laura Bush with winning him the 2004 election? Did they overlook the fact that women’s rights were used as a pretext for military action in Afghanistan and Iraq?”

Obviously, the writer of the letter hasn’t read the study, which has nothing to do with women in American culture or Afghanistan. It is quite possible for it to be true, as Melana Vickers contends, that Women’s Studies programs are intellectually feeble without denying that Mrs. Bush may have been important in President Bush’s reelection or that the Taliban treated women hideously.

“I hope that the folks at the center aren’t so blinded by their political agenda that they are unable to recognize the importance of women’s and gender issues to contemporary culture. Our students need to address these issues in university classrooms (among other arenas) where a variety of perspective are considered in a respectful and responsible manner.”

We don’t have any political agenda. We aim at promoting educational excellence. The use of university classrooms to tendentiously discuss various “issues” doesn’t promote excellence. And as the report found, Women’s Studies courses fail to give a variety of perspectives and are intellectually irresponsible because they leave out anything that doesn’t fit with the radical feminist mindset.