A Neglected Department

Blacks typically score lower than whites on standardized tests. But if University President Larry H. Summers were to suggest that the under-representation of blacks on University faculties is due to “innate differences,” he would justifiably be dubbed a racist and most likely be forced to resign. But when Summers, at an economic symposium a few weeks ago, explained the dearth of female faculty in terms of biological differences between men and women, he got away relatively unscathed; while he received flack from the media, many people defended Summers for waging the good fight against political correctness and for spicing up the intellectual discourse with his “provocative” insights.

That Summers could publicly ascribe gender differences to biology—and face less censure from the academic community than if he were to make the same suggestion in reference to racial differences—is very telling. For over forty years, scholars in many disciplines have studied the factors underpinning sex differences. Studies have repeatedly shown the predominance of social processes while chipping away at the theory that men’s and women’s inborn traits determine their place in society. Instead of encouraging new research, the Summers’ “innate differences” utterance demonstrated his complete ignorance of the research that has already been done.

The studies on sex differences, many of which have come to light in recent weeks, could fill libraries. But as far as Summers and most of the Harvard community is concerned, this research is nonexistent. “One of the reasons he [Summers] was ignorant about it, one of the reasons that people get away with saying outrageous things is that the rest of the [academic] community doesn’t have access to the relevant knowledge and research,” said Alice Jardine, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality (WGS). WGS, the logical nexus for this scholarship, is deprived of the adequate resources to study and spread knowledge about the sources of sex differences.

WGS, formerly the Women’s Studies department, is currently the most impoverished academic department in the University. Twenty years after its founding, WGS is permitted a pitiful 1.5 full-time-equivalents (FTEs), which means that it can have three professors that split their time between WGS and another department. And while Harvard grants WGS a maximum of 12 courses per year, Yale and even MIT both offer over 30.

Harvard’s neglect prevents WGS from developing a cohesive and comprehensive curriculum. The lack of support from the University means that courses disappear after one semester, forcing concentrators to constantly rethink their plan of study and discouraging non-concentrators from sampling courses that never appear in the CUE Guide.

With so few FTEs and opportunities for advancement, WGS is hamstrung to recruit and retain distinguished professors—and in turn to attract concentrators. “Harvard students tend to seek out big-name professors and frequently consider their scholarly celebrity status a significant draw, and WGS needs to have proper resources and funding to bring such distinguished academics to the committee, and more important, to keep them there,” said Tracy E. Nowski ’07, currently the only full WGS sophomore concentrator. According to WGS Assistant Director Kathleen Coll, there are only 38 WGS concentrators, most of whom joint concentrate with other disciplines.

Unlike with other concentrations, a WGS concentrator must constantly defend the legitimacy of his or her studies. The ubiquitous misconception on campus is that WGS is “a polemical discipline, that it is politically driven in a way that other disciplines aren’t,” said Jennifer C. Nash ’01, who graduated with a Women’s Studies degree and served as a teaching fellow for the Committee from 2003 to 2004. Many administrators also don’t recognize that WGS is promoting scholarship and debate rather than a particular agenda. “One of the battles we’ve had to fight is helping the administration to understand that we’re not a women’s or affirmative action center, but an academic center that does research,” said Jardine.

The status of WGS at Harvard is shameful. Reputedly the leading research institution in the world, Harvard is in fact stifling scholarship in this area. Summers himself articulated the need to support gender studies in his January 19 letter to the Harvard community: “As members of a university, we should do all we can to recognize and reduce barriers to the advancement of women in science. And, as academics who believe in the power of research, we should invest our energies in thinking as clearly and objectively as possible, drawing on potential insights from different disciplines, to identify and understand all the various factors that might possibly bear on the situation.” What Summers inadvertently called for was the expansion of WGS—the interdisciplinary concentration that allows for rigorous inquiry into the “various factors” explaining women’s under-representation on university faculties.

Ironically, Summers’ ignorant comment might do more good for WGS than twenty years of advocacy on the part of WGS faculty. Besides drawing international attention, the “innate differences” comment has generated a whirlwind of discussion on campus about the status of women at Harvard and inspired the formation of two task forces to support women faculty and women in the engineering and sciences. If the University genuinely wants to improve the quality of life for female students and faculty and to recruit female professors, it must demonstrate its dedication to women’s and gender issues. It can start by granting WGS legitimacy: increasing the number of FTE’s and courses, providing WGS with better facilities and incorporating WGS fields of inquiry into the general curriculum. Known as a leading research university, Harvard must live up to its reputation by recognizing and supporting the Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality on campus.

Asya Troychansky ’07, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Quincy House.