"There were more women on the faculty in literature who happened to be interested in questions of gender," she says.

Since there are very few people working on the intersection of the natural sciences and gender issues, Suleiman says she does not foresee expansion into that area in the near future. Although many concentrators explore women's health issues and are pre-med, their focus is more oriented towards social policy than science, she says.

While most concentrators would define themselves as feminists, "people who say `feminists think' or `mainstream feminists think' are assuming certain views. That doesn't account for the diversity of feminism," Stulberg says.

Rather than trying to indoctrinate students with a particular feminist agenda, Walsh says Women's Studies 10a, a concentration prerequisite that she teaches jointly with Professor Lynne Layton, offers many different ways of defining feminism.

"The purpose of 10a is to present a whole range of feminist perspectives, and to show that gender theories do not exist in isolation," Walsh says. "For that matter, there are many, many definitions of feminism."

Suleiman says the concentration is only political insofar as it opposes discrimination and oppression against women.

"If it is political to claim that women should not be an oppressed group in society, and that historically and institutionally women have been an oppressed group," she says, "then I am proud to say that we are political."

"Who is kept at home? Who has to wear the veil? Who has their feet broken? Who is subjected to female circumcision so that they don't get any sexual pleasure?" Suleiman asks. "If to say that these practices are generally horrible is political, then I am proud to say that Women's Studies is political."

Suliman challenges the motives of the concentration's critics. "I defy any of them to claim that they are not political," she says.

Concentrators say their individual beliefs, both political and personal, cover a wide range.

Lederberg says she has found that the students "have a variety of perspectives and different points of view."

Rather than creating an atmosphere in which a particular view of feminism is espoused, Lederberg says that in her Women Studies courses the only lack of exchange occurs when students "avoid confrontation," because of "an excess of deference and unwillingness to challenge" their classmates' opinions.

Not a Department

At Harvard, women's studies is an interdisciplinary concentration, and not a department, as it is at Wellesley and the University of California system.

Some professors from these schools say that the lack of departmental status hurts the legitimacy of women's studies at Harvard.

"Achieving departmental status made a big difference for students to sort of have a sense that women's studies was a legitimate area of study," says Evelyn N. Glenn, chair of the University of California at Berkeley's department.

The number of majors at Berkeley increased by 50 percent after the university bestowed departmental status on the Women's Studies major, Glenn says.

Concentrations at Harvard which are administered by committees, such as Social Studies and History and Literature, enjoy considerable prestige.

Suleiman says not only was departmental status not feasible for Women's Studies when it was established, but it's also not necessary. She says that since Women's Studies is not a single discipline, the concentrators can benefit from the flexibility of the interdisciplinary committee in designing their programs.

And despite the barbs of conservative critics, the credibility and the size of the department continue to grow, evolving according to the needs and interests of the undergraduates it serves.