But Mary M. Gaylord, the chair of the Romance Languages and Literatures Department, responded in a letter to the Globe: "Harvard bashing has always been a popular pastime, locally and nationally."

In an interview, she described the article in Le Figaro as "the French bashing on the Harvard bandwagon," saying, "that is a common bandwagon to get on in the U.S."

In the January/February issue of Lingua Franca, a magazine that reviews academic life, Susannah Hunnewell notes at the end of a report on the Figaro case, "Whatever Loupin's [sic] errors, he may have been on to one thing: Harvard's French department is in some disarray."

"Since three professors left in quick succession in the late '80s, the department has had to supplement its faculty with visiting professors, among them the distinguished Tzvetan Todorov," Hunnewell writes.

"In one sense, Loupin [sic] can't be blamed for wondering if 'old authors are suspect' at Harvard: two of the French department's four tenured professors, namely Suleiman andJardine, specialize in twentieth-centuryliterature," Hunnewell adds.

But professors in Harvard's French sectionagree that the program is not overly feminist,though many of the professors are interested infeminist issues.

"Feminism, like beauty, is in the eye of thebeholder," Suleiman says.

She says she does not believe that the Frenchsection is feminist if that means "a bunch ofdogmatic militant feminists who teach nothing butworks we consider `politically correct."

But she says that "many of the professors inthe [section are] interested in work by women andquestions of gender,"

And Associate Professor of Romance Languagesand Literatures Nadine D. Berenguier says "thereis a strong interest in feminism represented byProfessor Jardine and Professor Suleiman and theother faculty members."

Jardine is one who admits she is interested inworks by women and considers herself a feminist.

"I have always though of myself as a feminist,if that means advocating social and economicjustice for women," she says.

But she adds that the entire section cannot belumped together and considered feminist.

"We don't work in the same century, we don'twrite the same books," she says. "You can't lumpus together."

"If you talk to each individual woman, you willfind that their relationship to feminism is verydifferent," she says.

Gaylord agrees that the professors cannot belumped together and labeled according to onecriterion.