Regrettable Delay

To the Editors:

We note with concern that you published in your April 20, 1972, issue a letter from us concerning the situation at Simon Fraser University. This letter was written on July 15, 1971. Our statement referred to events that occurred about a year ago and was directed to the context of that time and not to this. We still believe our statement was appropriate then, but we are not certain that we would want to say exactly the same things today. Published now in fact the letter is not what we have to say, but what the editors of the New York Review have to say, using us as their proxies.

We therefore protest the length of time it took to publish our letter, your editorial freedom to take it so totally out of context, and we protest even more strongly the fact that you published it without also making public that it was written practically ten months before.

Michael M. Ames

Dorothy E. Smith

The University of British Columbia

Vancouver, Canada

The Review, which receives thousands of letters each year and has only a limited space available for them, is often obliged to delay publication for long periods. Correspondents who wish to retract or amend statements made in letters should so advise us.—The Editors