Published Monday, December 15, 2003
Gender Studies Appears to Disappear
Once-celebrated masters program closes its enrollment
By Andrew K. Mandel
APPIAN STAFF WRITER

In March of 2000, the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) voted unanimously to create a masters program in gender studies, “the first program of its kind in the nation,” said Jerry Murphy, HGSE dean at the time.

Three years later, the administration has closed enrollment to the masters program, leaving students who came to Harvard to pursue gender studies mystified by the lack of courses and advisors in their area of interest – and what feels like the school’s sudden lack of commitment to their field.

Though Jane Fonda did give and later retract the bulk of her $12.5 million donation to form a gender studies center at HGSE, the masters program has in fact been closed because “we currently do not have enough courses that deal exclusively with gender – taught by senior or ladder faculty – to offer a program,” HGSE Dean Ellen Condliffe Lagemann wrote in an e-mail message.

These days, the center for gender studies at HGSE is a table in Conroy Commons, where a handful of students in a self-formed group called “Gender Matters” drink cider, share flyers about local events of interest and discuss ways in which they can piece together coursework in the field they moved to Cambridge to study.

One of those students is Emily Sullivan, who was the assistant to the executive director at the Wellesley Centers for Women when she applied to join the masters program in gender studies. An e-mail message from the Office of Admissions in March informed her that, due to “restructuring,” the program was not admitting any students.

A similar message worried Shannon Lee, who hadn’t applied anywhere else. It also surprised Becky Branting, who was then told by the Admissions Office that Administration, Planning and Social Policy was a flexible program and “an appropriate way for you to focus on gender studies.” Erica Fletcher got identical advice about Human Development and Psychology, consulted the 2002-03 catalogue, and saw a series of courses that seemed appropriate for her career interest in developing after-school programs for girls.

Fears somewhat assuaged, these students all decided to matriculate at HGSE.

But since then, they have faced a lack of courses in their field, no administrative attempt to unite them, and vague responses from officials about the future of the masters program. They are increasingly frustrated about their decision to come to Cambridge – and worried that America’s top-rated school of education will not give the study of gender the prominence they believe it deserves.

Fletcher was moving to Boston on the day she saw the new catalogue, stunned that the nine courses she had anticipated were whittled down to four, a figure that includes one class billed as an examination of race, class and gender. Courses that Fletcher was counting on – with “a concrete, practice-oriented focus on how gender affects the schooling and development of boys and girls” -- were gone.

“When I look at the catalogue from 02-03, it is just so plainly obvious that gender has been wiped almost entirely from the school,” she said.

Lagemann said she brought in Visiting Professor Helen Haste “to supplement what we have and to help the current crop of doctoral students finish their dissertations.”

But Haste’s fall course, “Reconstructing Gender,” is akin to an introductory survey course offered to undergraduate women’s studies majors, rather than a graduate-level offering, several members of Gender Matters said.

“I have a friend who never thought about these ideas before, so for him it’s valuable,” said one student in the group. “It’s Gender Studies 101.”

Also recommended to them were courses offered by the Graduate Consortium in Women’s Studies, of which Harvard is a member. The semester’s course: folk music of the British Isles and North America.
“This is not why I spent $30,000,” Sullivan said.

The course offerings are better this spring, Fletcher acknowledged, but without a centralized body or program coordinating or advocating for gender studies, classes such as “Rethinking Girls Education” and “The History of Women’s Education” ended up being scheduled at the same time. However, students alerted the administration to the problem, and the calendar was rearranged.

Fletcher said several members of the Gender Matters group met with Associate Professor of Education Wendy Luttrell last week to discuss the possibility of a late-spring module that fills many of the curricular gaps students are discovering. As far as Fletcher can tell, there are no courses that focus on boys’ needs in school, for example.

Although a masters program in gender studies is not listed as an option on the 2004-05 application, Lagemann said enrollment to next year’s program is not necessarily closed.

“This decision has not been made yet and is very much on the faculty’s agenda,” she wrote in an e-mail message.

Lagemann said she supports gender as a lens for academic work, noting that she wrote the first book on women’s history published by the Harvard University Press. Still, she declined to say whether a masters program in gender studies should exist at HGSE.

“That is up to the masters committee to decide,” she said, citing the committee chaired by Professors Susan Moore Johnson and Robert Peterkin.

Sullivan said the members of Gender Matters will attempt to apply pressure on the administration to reopen enrollment to the program, but she is skeptical about the power of masters students.

“We’re only here for a year,” she said. “Are they really going to listen to us?”

Last year, a group of masters students mobilized after the contract of Lisa Machoian, acting director of the Gender Studies program and an instructor of three courses in gender studies, had not been renewed.

They knew that this departure – with no plans to hire a new director – spelled trouble, and when they learned that enrollment to the master’s program had been officially closed, they organized a petition signed by over 200 students to “save gender studies,” according to Allison Folino, Ed.M. ’03. On Commencement Day, a small group of students also wore suffragist sashes in support of the program.

Filling the Graham Chair in Gender Studies, vacant since Carol Gilligan left HGSE for New York University two years ago, is not a specific priority in this year’s faculty recruitment efforts.

“We now have Senior Faculty authorization to do a very wide search for people in any discipline or professional field. Our priorities are diversity and extraordinary talent,” Lagemann wrote in an e-mail message. “It may be that the current search will bring people who do work involving gender.”

Students such as Sullivan worry that gender studies is simply not a priority.

“There’s a real perception that gender equity has been achieved,” Sullivan said.

“That’s how you know you’re in the feminist movement,” Fletcher added. “Wherever you are, you’re marginalized.”

Andrew Mandel, a student in the Technology in Education program, is a member of the Appian Board of Editors.