When Cooler Heads Don't Prevail

Everyone involved in the investigation of whether Ruth Hubbard '45, professor of Biology, effectively excluded men from her Currier House seminar on "Biology and Women's Issues" agrees on one thing: that the whole question was overblown to the point of absurdity.

The Faculty Council, charged with reviewing the case, decided Wednesday that the facts were too vague. No one could be sure whether the three undergraduate men who attended the first seminar withdrew from the course because they were excluded as males, or because they didn't have the background in feminist literature necessary for an advanced course on women.

All of the male students have said repeatedly they would not charge that they were excluded, although one of them has complained about the "separatist attitude" expressed by several women who said at the first meeting of the course they would not take it if men were enrolled.

But when the Independent ran a long article suggesting that Hubbard's course violated Title IX of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) barring discrimination on the basis of sex, the University's Title IX compliance officers had little choice but to go ahead with the investigation.

The case certainly received a lot of publicity. Both The Independent and The Crimson ran series of articles on it, and University Hall administrators have received numerous calls about it from The Washington Post and Ms. magazine.

"It was an exercise in futility," Hubbard says.

Although Hubbard asked the council not to make a general ruling on women-only seminars--on the grounds that the Harvard curriculum is little more than a curriculum in men's studies--the council finally issued a statement Thursday that does little more than restate HEW's Title IX.

"We didn't have much choice," one council member said Thursday. "We couldn't rule on this particular case, and we had to respond to the publicity somehow."

Ursula W. Goodenough, assistant professor of Biology and chairman of the Faculty Standing Committee on the Status of Women, summarized the feelings of just about everyone involved when she said this week, "It's ridiculous that this should be the first Title IX case at Harvard--particularly when there's been so much discrimination from the other side."