Word: memorandum
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...habits, worn and frazzled as a castoff garment." He had a theory that war between the States could be stopped by getting a war started with some foreign power (Lincoln's observation on this later was "One war at a time"). On April 1 he sent a memorandum to Lincoln embodying this and other suggestions which implied that "Lincoln was a failure as a President but he, Seward, knew how to be one." One of many Lincoln classics is the gentle but ice-cold reply that Seward got, subscribed (without Lincoln's usual abbreviation) "Your obedient servant...
Dean Ferguson's memorandum appears to assume that the University has no choice in the matter. It treats the existing policy as the dictate of an implacable budget rather than as the result of a choice among alternatives. At least one alternative, it must be evident, there is. The University may seek to assure itself only that it is going to be able to pay the prospective appointee his salary as an associate professor, leaving to the future the question of whether it either can or wants to appoint him to a full professorship. On financial grounds there would appear...
...basic logical fault of the policy assumed as inescapable in Dean Ferguson's memorandum is that it undertakes to postulate present action on the basis of essentially unpredictable future events. Out of an apparent overweening fear of the future, it forges gratuitous shackles for the present...
According to the memorandum, "each man was considered on his merits, absolute and relative. . . . All the decisions reached in the spring of 1939 were made jointly by the Administration and the Departments concerned. Usually the departments were unanimous; in no Department was there more than one dissentient opinion...
Concerning the widespread protest aroused by the dismissal of the ten assistant professors, the memorandum says: "The men lot go were commonly "runners up" for permanent positions--men who lost out in competition, occasionally by very narrow margins...