WOMEN PROFESSORS

To the Editors of the Crimson:

I am male, over thirty, and a holder of a Harvard doctorate. Unlike students at Harvard College, I was fortunate in attending a college where the number of women professors was considerably higher than nine percent.

Those who have never studied with first-rate women teachers do not know the disciplined wit, the balance, and above all the sanity that women possess.

The crotchety and donnish tone of Harvard professors in English and American History is evident in the type of graduate student they process. What passes for brilliance is often a perverse and adolescent nostalgia.

My chief concern is for the Radcliffe students who inevitably become grotesque caricatures of their more male teachers. It is disastrous for women students to be subjected year after year to the exclusive tutelage of American men.

Finally, it should be recognized that professors are pious about motherhood as a strategy for challenging the equality of women as colleagues. Benito Rakower