A French court awarded Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Alice A. Jardine 150,000 francs, approximately $30,000, in a lawsuit against a major French newspaper last week, ruling that the paper had acted improperly in falsely reporting her academic credentials.

A similar suit by Professor of Romance and Comparative Literatures Susan R. Suleiman against Le Figaro magazine was dismissed because a bailiff failed to deliver Suleiman's court papers before the filing deadline.

The two professors sued the magazine, a weekly supplement of France's major Le Figaro newspaper, for libel and defamation after an article in April 1994 attacked their academic credentials and the French section of Harvard's Romance Languages and Literatures Department.

In the article, journalist Victor Loupan characterized the Harvard French program as a community of feminist scholars devoted to the study of homosexual women of color.

At Harvard, "a classic author is a suspect author--better still, a banned author," Loupan wrote. "A contemporary work will be taught there if its author is a woman (at least), of color (if possible) and homosexual (perfect)."

The court upheld Loupan's right to criticize the French department in the above manner, writing, "If such a characterization is incontestably severe, it does not constitute, in itself, an attack on the honor or the consideration of the professors--and singularly of Ms. Jardine--as it is exclusively criticized as proceeding from debatable literary choices."

But the three French judges found that Loupan had acted improperly in criticizing Jardine's academic credentials.

Of all Harvard's French professors, only Jardine has any semblance of university qualifications, Loupan wrote, proceeding to mock those qualifications as insignificant.

The judges agreed with Jardine and Suleiman that the journalist went too far in defaming their credentials.

The court found that Loupan's characterization of Jardine's credentials could not have been found to have been made "in good faith," but rather stemmed from his intention to detract from Jardine's reputation.

Both professors said they were ecstatic to hear of the results.

"We're both very, very pleased and elated [with the decision,]" Jardine said.

"I'm delighted," Suleiman said. "This judgmentbears out Alice Jardine's and my sense that thejournalist had really stepped out of line."

Suleiman said she felt "vindicated" by thedecision. "[I am] happy that the results made itworthwhile to have expended so much effort on thecase, she said.

The judges awarded Jardine a combined total of150,000 francs in damages, which Jardine said herlawyer told her was the highest amountLeFigaro had ever paid in a lawsuit.

"In France, that's a huge sum of money to beawarded in a libel suit," Jardine said.