---

Letter Leader The lead letter on the correspondence page of the November 1 New Republic is by President Joanne Creighton and addresses recent coverage by that magazine of issues surrounding affirmative action, the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and educational excellence. In her letter, Creighton discusses recent work by Stanford University researchers that casts new doubt on the efficacy of the SAT in accurately measuring the aptitudes of many African American students. "The argument that merit should be the sole determinant in college admission is flawed insofar as the mechanisms to determine merit are flawed," Creighton writes.

Dickinson and Ackmann Class Chronicled In its "faculty" section in the October 29 issue, the Chronicle of Higher Education highlighted an MHC community-based learning class that is held at Emily Dickinson's home in Amherst. Women's studies professor and Dickinson scholar Martha Ackmann teaches the class. The Chronicle's reporter, who joined the group for the day, relays how his experience in Amherst and during the class's field trip to Harvard's Houghton Library allowed him to glimpse "the infinite in a day of finite details." Peppered throughout the article are Ackmann's thoughts on the poet and her work and on scholars' attempts to understand both. FP student Angela Scibelli, a member of the class who once worked at the homestead, also receives several paragraphs. The piece makes mention, as did the recent New York Times article on Dickinson, of the Emily Dickinson International Society Conference that was held at MHC last August. Ackmann directed the conference.

First Snow Emily Dickinson Lecturer Mary Jo Salter penned a review for the October 17 New York Times Book Review of a new edition of short stories by Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata. Michael Emmerich's new translation of Kawabata's First Snow on Fuji "turns out to be a 100th birthday gift of genuine importance," Salter writes. Kawabata, Japan's first Nobel laureate for literature, was born one hundred years ago and died in 1972, a suicide.