A Step in The Right Direction

AT LAST, a perceptible melting in the glacier that is Harvard's women's studies program. Perennially reluctant to advance a viable women's studies curriculum, the Faculty is now taking steps to create a new joint-tenure slot in the field. Under a plan proposed last year, individual departments can compete for the newly-authorized position, which would allow it to hire an extra scholar primarily involved in studying women's issues within the discipline. To date, only three departments--Anthropology, English, and Psychology and Social Relation--have drawn up lists of potential candidates, but others may follow suit.

The proposed position is a crucial step forward for the women's studies program, long a weak link in Harvard's academic chain. While other schools, including Yale, have begun to offer degrees in the field. Harvard has, by word and by actions, dismissed the discipline as illegitimate. A Faculty member committed to the field will provide not only physical support toward women's studies but also a symbolic endorsement of the field by the administration.

Similarly encouraging is the Faculty's decision this fall to grant permission for a first-ever women's studies concentration at the College. The Committee on Special Concentrations--which has in the past turned a deaf ear on women's studies proposals--approved an undergraduate concentration on "Gender as a Variable in Social, Scientific and Humanistic Studies." Although unrelated to the push for a joint tenure slot, the committee approval is confirmation that Harvard is willing to treat women's studies as a serious field of study.

Unfortunately, the Faculty's action can only go so far without the active support of the departments. The Faculty's insistence on integrating women's issues into existing curriculums rather than forming an independent department or degree-granting committee is a legitimate goal. Within this framework, however, department participation is vital since the addition of one scholar clearly cannot go far in bolstering the College's paltry women's studies offerings. Only a few departments--such as Afro-American Studies, which now offers a course on Black women writers--have risen to the call. And, that so few departments bothered to vie for the new slot does not augur well for the futures of this grassroots approach.

When the potential candidates nominated by the departments for the women's studies position make their appearances on campus this year, the Faculty would do well to seek out a scholar committed not only to women's issues within one field, but also to the cause of women's studies College-wide. Individual department heads, for their part, must also be vigilant for women's studies scholars within their respective disciplines; the appointment of one new scholar does not relieve them of their responsibility to incorporate "women's studies" within all studies.

In the past, this integrationist approach to women's studies has translated into a de facto repudiation of the discipline. The Faculty should seize upon the creation of the new joint-tenure position as an opportunity to evaluate women's studies throughout the College, and light a fire under the program.