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{shortcode-16f8ced088e32bb2d90bab8d4861646b946d7fa0}very Thursday night, dozens of men in suits descend on the Junior Common Room of Dunster House. A few of them, carrying fire pokers, stand watch at the door — ceremonial guards of the semi-secret conservative debating society.

Inside, the members of the John Adams Society adhere to stringent etiquette in their debates, always referring to each other as “gentleman,” even when discussions get heated. This year, they addressed their new class of potential members as the “men of Harvard” — an apt greeting, since no women were present.

Six individuals, including a female former JAS member and two prospective members, told The Crimson that JAS now informally excludes women. Students said that no women were asked to join the invite-only group, with the former member noting that returning female members were not asked to pay their club dues. Now, JAS is effectively functioning as a single-sex organization.

Under Harvard College policies, recognized student organizations — such as JAS — must be open to all students regardless of their gender identity.

The society’s officers — Chairman Elliott J. Detjen ’24-’27, Charles S. DeMatteo ’26, Pablo L. Manzo ’26, Conor G. Mannion ’27, and James M. Cox-Donovan ’28 — did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo wrote in a statement that no reports of gender discrimination by the John Adams Society have been filed with the Dean of Students Office.

“If students have these concerns, they should report them right away for the Dean of Students Office so they can review,” Palumbo wrote.

JAS has admitted women since the group was founded in 2014, with women serving in leadership positions at least as recently as 2017. The organization’s own constitution affirms the College’s non-discrimination policy, extending it to all aspects of membership.

In 2024, the group changed its motto from “Harvard’s premier undergraduate debate organization for political and moral philosophy” to the “premier organization for the reinvention of man at Harvard Square.”

And in September of this year, the debating group began quietly excluding women from its membership.

A freshman woman who was unable to join the group said the exclusion sends a worrisome message to conservative women at Harvard.

“The message is go back to where you belong — to the Radcliffe Quad and the kitchen,” the woman said.

The Crimson granted the students who spoke for this story anonymity to discuss the actions of a tight-knit and tight-lipped student group, whose decisions are rarely communicated externally. Many cited fears of losing friendships, isolating themselves from conservative spaces at Harvard, or cutting themselves off from career and political networks.

In an email reviewed by The Crimson, the freshman reached out to a JAS member to express her interest in joining the organization. She did not receive a response. When she spoke with a JAS alumnus, he informed her that the organization was no longer inviting female members.

“Over the summer I spoke with an alum and was told, basically, that the John Adams Society was no longer admitting women,” the freshman said.

The group has always been exclusive. Potential members must be invited to “petition” in order to become a member of the organization. In a 2017 Crimson article, JAS members said that, though the group’s website noted there was no “political litmus test” for membership, the group quickly became a home for conservative debate on a campus with an overwhelmingly liberal student body.

But now, students believe the group is excluding prospective members based on gender. Two freshmen men who were invited to petition the organization and attended the first meeting this year each independently confirmed that there were no women present.

A male freshman who attended the first meeting said he was unaware of the change, but confirmed that all of the roughly 20 petitioners and 30 members who attended the first meeting were men.

“There are not women there, I’ll tell you that,” the freshman said.

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The group’s shift to single-gender recruitment has been accompanied by a slow ostracization of existing female members, according to a female former member of the organization.

“There was no actual statement saying women are not allowed in the society, but more of, if you go to an event or you go to a debate, you will not necessarily feel welcome here. It is supposed to be like a man’s space,” the former member said. “That line was drawn in the sand — specifically this year of petitioning when no women were allowed.”

JAS requires all members to pay dues, as outlined in the group’s constitution. The former member wrote in a statement that in the past, if members — either male or female — did not pay dues, they received reminders to pay at the risk of losing access to the group’s communications.

But this year, no reminders came for the female members.

“You get removed if you don’t pay dues,” the former member wrote. “So from my understanding all women are removed.”

The former member said that to the best of her knowledge, men in the group were still paying dues, and JAS did not respond to a Crimson inquiry about the group’s dues.

Among at least some right-leaning students at Harvard, proposals for single-sex education have gained renewed appeal. A campus conservative magazine, the Harvard Salient, published a September article arguing that Harvard should “revisit the wisdom of separate education” for men and women.

Women’s presence “alters the dynamics of classroom discussion, dormitory life, and healthy competition,” the essay’s pseudonymous author wrote. “Male friendships are no longer forged in the fires of unalloyed fraternity but are mediated by social caution and the ever-present threat of scandal or misunderstanding.”

The Salient — which was suspended earlier this semester after publishing an article that appeared to invoke Nazi rhetoric — is one of several loci, beyond JAS, for conservatives on campus. The Harvard Republican Club and the Institute of Politics’ Conservative Coalition also offer outlets to right-leaning students.

So does the Abigail Adams Institute, a nonprofit independent of the University located in Harvard Square, which also hosts discussions and seminars on the humanities and works of the western canon. The AAI is open to university students and young professionals in the Boston area, and is not explicitly conservative, though it has financial support from conservative donors.

Even with options outside JAS, the women who spoke for this story said they felt the society’s shift was a meaningful loss for conservative women at Harvard.

“The issue is not all male organizations — it’s with the nature of a debate society, and the message it sends, and the consequences it has when you exclude women from explicitly intellectual spaces — especially when the spaces are one of a kind, like John Adams is at Harvard,” the freshman woman said. “You leave women of Harvard who lean right intellectually homeless on campus.”

The female former member added that she regretted that the next generation of conservative Harvard women would not have the same outlets she had when first arriving at the University.

“I feel incredibly sad, because it was a great community off the bat when I joined, and it pains me to see that other conservative women who are coming into Harvard will not have that opportunity, or that same experience as it might now be considered a hostile environment,” she said.

“Both men and women have stepped back from society, and it’s just becoming a bit more radical and close knit,” she added. “It’s becoming an echo chamber.”

—Staff writer Jack B. Reardon can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @JackBReardon.

–Staff writer Abigail S. Gerstein can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @abbysgerstein.