Gilligan, Chair Empty

The staff's fanatical crusade on behalf of Harvard's oppressed women has reached comical heights. It has also clouded its reason. The staff trips over itself in its praise of Professor Gilligan while injecting only the mild qualifier that her work is "controversial." Her work is not merely controversial. It espouses a gender-based behavioral determinism that many women and men find offensive. While open scholarly exchange should never be obstructed, we need not go out of our way to laud the promotion of ideas which are divisive and damaging.

Further, the establishment of a permanent chair in gender studies is undeserving of our endorsement, regardless of who fills it. Gender studies, and other fields that the staff deems "progressive," are politically motivated enterprises of questionable academic legitimacy.