English professor John Richetti stirred up controversy recently by sending a letter highly critical of another Penn professor to the English and Communication departments.
Richetti sent the letter to express his discontent with statements made by the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, in an article in the New York Times this past Sunday.
The "Sunday Styles" section article looked at factors such as body language, personal grooming and language usage that could affect the outcome of the election.
In the article, Jamieson was quoted as saying, "Words found on the SAT verbal exam should not appear in candidates' speeches," and she urged candidates to refrain from using words like "gilded" and "panoply."
"People who speak in sentences that contain parenthetical phrases [and] people who begin a sentence and then deflect to add a series of illustrative examples before they end the sentences" do not seem authoritative, she told the Times.
Richetti took offense at these statements and sent a letter to all of his colleagues in the English and Communication departments to express his displeasure.
Calling the article in general "offensively vulgar," Richetti took issue with Jamieson's statements in particular.
"This disgracefully simple-minded, pseudo-rhetorical analysis of the most important events in the most crucial election of my lifetime from one of my Penn colleagues is an insult to me and I should think to all of us who teach writing and communications," Richetti wrote in the letter.
"The theory of communication she enunciates is in my view nothing less than Hitlerian and [endorses] demagoguery of a pernicious kind with appalling complacency," his letter concluded.
While admitting his letter was strongly worded, Richetti maintains that this was in no way a personal attack against Jamieson.
"I admire her," Richetti said. "She is my colleague, but my position is that saying this is like a self-fulfilling prophecy."
"That's the price of being a public figure," he added.
While admitting that "there is some truth in what [Jamieson] is saying," Richetti warned that this type of analysis is "condescending not only to the electorate but to democracy."
Calling himself a "rabid anti-Bush Kerry supporter," Richetti acknowledges that he is hardly non-partisan.
"I think [George W.] Bush is the worst president the U.S. has ever had," he said, "and I've been through a lot of them."
Jamieson did not return calls for comment. Several faculty members in the Communications and English departments also declined to comment.
