To the Editors:
With regard to Roger Kimball’s comments about the recent appointment of the artist Laylah Ali to the position of Assistant Professor of Art at Williams College (February 2001), I write to clarify the reasons behind our recommendation of Ms. Ali for the position. My colleagues and I are not unaware of the fact that Williams College is an affirmative-action employer, but that was not the reason why we voted to hire Ms. Ali. The criteria that matter to us in a studio-art search are the quality of the applicant’s creative work, his or her exhibition record, the articulateness of the candidate, and the evidence of his or her effectiveness as a teacher of studio art. A majority of the art department faculty concluded that, in those categories, Ms. Ali was the strongest candidate for this position, in a pool of applicants impressive, I might add, for its size and quality. My colleagues found her creative work to be fresh, genuinely original in conception, sophisticated and nuanced in content, and effective formally. Her presentation during an on-campus interview was judged to have been very articulate, informative, and engaging. We felt that her résumé‚ was very strong: she has received an impressive number of exhibitions and awards for a young artist. Ms. Ali taught briefly at Williams several years ago, and her teaching evaluations were remarkably high. Support for Ms. Ali’s appointment in the art department was, and is, broad, crossing generational, gender, political, and disciplinary lines.