To the Editor:

      This letter is to inform the citizens of Brookline about Dr. Freda Salzman's on-going struggle to regain her position at the University of Massachusetts in Boston from which she was fired in 1969 in a manner that clearly reflects the discrimination against women at all levels of academia. When Freda and her husband George joined the Physics Department in 1965, they each had had the same professional experience. Their qualifications were identical and, because most of their research was done together, there was no question of either being more valuable to the department or the university than the other. However, George was given a full-time, tenured, full professor position, and Freda was given only a part time associate professor position. That denied her any chance of working towards tenure, the right to vote on many university matters, and the standard benefits that come with a full-time position.

      After three years of working to build up the new branch of the university, and working to build a good department, they had come into serious conflict with the administration many times over such matters as course requirements for students, departmental structure, and ironically, personnel matters. In 1968 Freda received notice that "University policy quite clearly prohibits the contemporaneous appointment, within the same department, of close relatives." That was the end of her job.

      Now, in 1972, after having gone through all the university channels, after numerous expressions of support for Dr. Salzman from the faculty and students of U-Mass and from scientists over the whole country, and after bringing her case to two government agencies on discrimination with no important action from them, the university administration is still refusing to respond to the issues raised by her and her supporters. They have never given a satisfactory reason for firing her and they will not rehire her.

      Dr. Salzman needs the support of concerned citizens, because she is now planning to attend the Jan. 28 Board of Trustees meeting and demand that they respond. Letters to the Trustees and the president of the university, affirming that the citizens of Massachusetts -- to whom they in fact are responsible -- cannot accept this treatment of women or this arbitrariness of the university administration, would be very helpful to Freda Salzman in her attempts to force some responsiveness.

      Would anyone interested in writing or in helping any other way please contact us at our home by calling or writing? Our number is 734-9386. Our address is 203 Fuller St., in Brookline.

Thank you for your concern.
Sincerely,
Amy G. Salzman
203 Fuller St.