Enticing older professors to retire
is a discriminatory approach

Dear Editor,

If a university wants to replace current faculty with “enthusiastic professors that may be savvier in using technology to improve learning” (“URI enticing faculty into early retirement,” April 28-May 4), why not entice women to leave and replace them with men? And why not target female faculty as the group to entice to leave in order to avoid layoffs?

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Of course, that would be sexist – just as offering elderly faculty incentives to retire is ageist. Why is ageism more acceptable in academia than sexism?

I hope all elderly professors will resist such ageist pressures and stay at their jobs so long as they enjoy these jobs and do them well.