Rabbi Toba E. Spitzer ’85-’86 said while she was undergraduate, she wasn’t sure she would even live to see the creation of women’s studies as an academic field at Harvard.

In 1985, Harvard was the sole Ivy League school without a Women’s Studies major. University officials appeared unconcerned about playing academic catch up, and the standing committee that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences had formed in 1982 to examine the issue of women’s studies had to start its work from scratch.

“Harvard was a bastion of patriarchy,” said Spitzer, who later became the first openly gay person to head a rabbinical assembly.

In 1985, the Committee—chaired by current Comparative Literature Professor Susan R. Suleiman—began to flesh out a new concentration proposal that required faculty approval.

“When I became chair, the Committee on Women’s Studies had existed for a number of years, but it didn’t have a lot of resources—let’s put it that way,” Suleiman said.

Her first action as Chair was to secure a listed phone number for the committee; an office and an administrative assistant followed.

Elizabeth Young ’85-’86, then president of the Radcliffe Union of Students who served on the Committee on Women’s Studies while the new concentration proposal was being crafted, said she had been concerned about the general status of women on campus: there was a “very low” number of women faculty, several episodes of sexual harassment, and lingering safety worries.

“It was clear that there was no institutional place for Women’s Studies,” said Young, now a professor of English and Gender Studies at Mt. Holyoke College. “We knew there was extremely exciting intellectual work out there that we really wanted to bring to Harvard.”

“It seemed strange that Harvard was behind,” she added.

FIGHTING FOR A CONCENTRATION

The Committee began monthly meetings to hammer out the particulars of the concentration proposal, but Suleiman said she still wanted assurance that Harvard administrators would support the Committee when the issue came up for a faculty vote.

She sat down for lunch with then-Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence to ask point blank whether he would welcome a proposal from the Committee. Spence said he would.

“Then we really got going,” Suleiman said.

The Committee was also adamant that Women’s Studies be a concentration, not a minor, modeling it after other interdisciplinary concentrations such as History and Literature or Social Studies.

In the spring of 1986, the Faculty Council approved the proposal, and in November, the proposal for a women’s studies concentration went up for a full faculty vote. The Committee on Women’s Studies began to steel themselves for the decisive faculty meeting.