Fair Mindedness, Qualified
At times, Johnson’s principles seemed somewhat ambiguous. He recommended to Chancellor Brown and Mr. Finley Shepard that Mrs. Vanamee be made Assistant Director in recognition of her work as Acting Director during his leave in Rome. But Mrs. Vanamee resigned because, she wrote Johnson, “your recommendation was not approved or accepted owing to my being a woman and as such ineligible to the directorship in the event of a vacancy in that office.”
She was right. And, although she had her backers, notably the level-headed Marshall Brown, Dean of Faculties, and although the Chancellor told Johnson that “to the very best of my knowledge and belief, the fact that Mrs. Vanamee is a woman had no part whatever in the attitude of Mr. Shepard and myself toward this suggestion,” she did not get the job. “Perhaps,” the Chancellor continued, “Mrs. Vanamee does not realize that this would be creating an office. At the present time it does not seem best to create such an office.” But he did not say why.
The reason becomes clear in Johnson’s handwritten letter to the Chancellor:
As to the sex question, I am sure that Mr. Shepard regards that as an obstacle to the conferring of such a title. I think he said so in so many words to me that he did not think it desirable to have a woman as ‘Director’ and that this would be an embarrassing title.
So much for equal opportunity in the face of still another example of the Golden Rule of Education. “The hand that holds the gold writes the rules.” Johnson had genuflected before the throne.