Women's Studies

HARVARD has traditionally refused to take women seriously. Throughout its history, the University has treated women with callous neglect--as employees, as students and scholars, and as subjects for serious academic study. The Social Anthropology faculty was following a hallowed Harvard tradition, therefore, when it refused to renew the one-year teaching contract of Janet Fjellman, lecturer on Social Relations and a radical feminist. Fjellman's course, Social Relations 1002, "Women from a Cross-Cultural Perspective," is currently the only open-enrollment course on women's studies available to undergraduates. It will not be offered next year, for no one else is qualified to teach it.

The stated reason for Fjellman's dismissal is a familiar one--funds, it seems, are not available. Irven DeVore, acting chairman of the Social Anthropology faculty, said last week that he has no complaint about Fjellman's competence and that he personally has "tremendous respect for her intellectual abilities." But DeVore said that there are other--more urgent--areas of scholarship to which available funds must be devoted. He cited two other members of the Social Anthropology faculty with one-year contracts who are being rehired--Harvard's only specialists on Chicano and American Indian studies. DeVore said that ethnic studies must come before women's studies, both because the latter is "not totally unrepresented" on the Social Relations faculty and because ethnic studies is a legitimate field in itself, while women's studies should be integrated into existing departmental courses.

We commend the Soc Rel Department on its concern for Chicano and American Indian studies. But we are at a loss to understand the reasoning by which these three vital fields are placed in direct competition, while the rest of the department continues to offer while male-oriented courses without feeling financial stricture. Further, dealing out the aces of relative merit to these important fields of study, forcing them into competition for academic legitimacy, degrades all of them; if Harvard finds them worthy of study it should give them full and equal attention instead of making them scramble for tokens.

The demand for courses of women's studies is Large, and the two remaining courses on the subject are limited-enrollment seminars. The handful of Faculty members competent to teach about women can accommodate only a small fraction of the students eager to explore these areas. A poll taken at the end of Fjellman's course revealed overwhelming enthusiasm on the part of the 80 participants and a desire to purse the subject in more depth.

DeVore argues that the study of women should be integrated into existing Social Relations courses. We agree. Women are involved in the "social relations" which DeVore's Department studies, and it would seem good policy to take academic notice of this fact. Unfortunately the Social Relations Department has shown little disposition to break with the long-standing tradition of ignoring, distorting, and mystifying women's concerns.

THE ACADEMICS in the Social Relations Department can do much to dispel the confusion they have helped to create by setting up specialized courses on women. Women such as Fjellman on the Faculty could teach these courses, perform research, and supervise students--could in short, create the body of scholarship necessary to flesh out the study of women and insure its place in the study of Social Relations.

The myths and misunderstandings about women are just beginning to dissipate, and there is an obvious need for more courses and research about women, not less. Fjellman's course is a particularly important one because it traces women's oppression to its political, economic, and social causes rather than ascribing it to innate genetic inferiority. Man, not nature, has created woman's situation, Fjellman says; woman can change it. Her course provides the basis for an attack on the status quo.

We do not believe that Harvard's financial condition demands that it ignore women's studies. Like all bureaucracies, the University finds funds for those activities it considers important and discards the rest. We consider courses on women a vital part of the University's academic mission. As a start to fulfilling that mission, Janet Fjellman's course should be renewed and her course contract reinstated.