Time For Some Action

THE WORST THING that can happen to a progressive cause at Harvard is for the University to establish a committee to look into it. The Committee that examined the issue of a Third World Center was a committee to find any alternative. The committee on special concentrations is essentially a committee to reject special concentrations. So when the University established a committee on women's studies, if should have been obvious that women's studies was really no closer to reality.

In almost four years of existence, the committee has done little of which to boast. There remain almost to courses in women's studies, and fewer scholars to teach them. But the committee has failed because it was designed to fail. It has no power to grant degrees or even to offer courses of its own. The only "power" it has is to plead and cajole other departments in to betting up their own offerings By now, it is clear the committee is just a diversionary tactic, granting on paper what it will never grant in reality.

The only way any meaningful women's studies will come to Harvard is if women's studies is upgraded to a degree-granting committee-Harvard is now the glaring exception in American higher education in its refusal to create a major in women's studies. Yale, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and many other top-flight institutions already recognize women's studies Yale. Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and many other top-flight institutions already recognize women's studies as a legitimate field of inquiry. A degree-granting body would allow-indeed, encourage-interested students to integrate knowledge on the subject.

Harvard's major objection to creating such a committee is that it believes that women's studies should be incorporated in to all regular courses. While such integration would be ideal, it seems disingenuous to suggest that the same Faculty that has allowed only 16 women into its ranks will be much more receptive to women's perspectives in the near future. Harvard has four years to convince the world that its low-key, integrative approach would work. Yet it has done virtually nothing.

Even if Harvard does not want a full department of women's studies, it has no real excuse not to create a degree-granting committee along the lines of Social Studies-one which could offer tutorials and treat women's studies in an interdisciplinary manner. There are students here who want to concentrate in women's studies, and most of the American academic community has endorsed the idea. Harvard owes these students more than a powerless and ineffectual committee.