Lisa Pollard (Not Registered to Vote): Teaches courses on Muslim, Jewish, and Christian women in the modern Middle East, and courses on gender. Her research interests focus on gender and nation building in 19th and 20th century Egypt.

Colleen Reilly (Democrat): Teaches courses in professional writing and computers and writing, including a course in gender and technology. Her current research explores how gender and sexuality help to construct and are constructed by technologies.

Karen Sandell (Unaffiliated): Teaches social work courses focusing on issues relating to women, children, and society. Her current research interests include teaching innovations in social work education, technology and social work education, and feminist practice.

Kindra Steenerson (Democrat): Teaches a wide variety of topics including the construction of gender, institutional sources of oppression, and feminist scrutiny of the media.

Anita Veit (Democrat): Teaches courses in the sociology of gender, children, family, sport, and birth and death.

Barbara Waxman (Democrat): Teaches literature by and about women, multicultural autobiography, fiction, and autobiography about aging and Victorian literature. Her research examines memoirs of the bilingual/trans-cultural experience.

For those not counting, the party affiliation tally of the 20 professors (now 19, as one recently passed away) teaching in the WSM is as follows:

Democrats 15
Not Registered 3
Unaffiliated 2
Republican 0

This all reminds me of the time when the aptly named Dick Veit (English Department) falsely accused the College Republicans of trying to exclude blacks and Jews from their club. At the very time of his accusation, the English Department had thirty-three professors, none of whom were Republicans. Veit insisted that his department was always professional and never tried to exclude anyone.

I guess the questions for Jose Hernandez are really quite simple: What happens when you flip a peso 20 times and it never comes up heads? Can Jose see that the system has been rigged? And, will he have the courage and integrity to create real diversity and inclusion in Women’s Studies?