Schor says graduates rated the concentration first in the quality of advising last year. She is equally enthusiastic about the undergraduates.

"It's a really talented group of people," she says. "They are very highly motivated, and [into] doing a lot of really interesting independent research. A lot of it is seen as very pioneering."

Popular Misperceptions

Concentrators feel that many Harvard students view women's studies as a "soft," politically charged discipline studied by artsy, radical feminists.

"When I first came in as a sophomore, I felt some trepidation. I thought that everyone was going to be really angst-ridden. But especially among my class, I think everyone's very happy-go-lucky," says Tefertiller.

"When I tell them what I'm concentrating in, people say, `Oh, how P.C. [politically correct],'" Annie Lederberg '96 says.

But the concentrators do share "the belief that women have been left out of the general curriculum, the belief that there should be some sort of equality," Mitchell says.

"Concentrators share the common view that women are important and women's issues are important," says Tefertiller. "I think they all would define themselves as feminists, but there's a spectrum of what that means. I'm more politically oriented. I'm critical of a lot of the philosophy because it doesn't apply to the real world."

Born Out of Controversy

From its inception, the women's studies department has come under fire as the product of liberal politicking rather than as a serious academic discipline.

Nevertheless, the faculty almost unanimously approved a concentration on Women's Studies in 1986.

At the meeting, the lone dissenter, Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53, said, "The appearance of this proposal on the Faculty floor marks a foolish and almost pitiful surrender to feminism."

One administrator at the time also questioned the necessity for a women's studies concentration.

"Is women's studies a new distinct discipline or rather a topic within a variety of studies?" he asked, in a memo The Crimson received from the Faculty office with the names withheld.

One Wellesley scholar says advocates of women's studies at Harvard have struggled for years to overcome such attitudes. Harvard was the seventh of the eight schools in the Ivy League to establish a women's studies concentration.