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When the complete merger between Harvard and Radcliffe — the historic women’s college — drew near years ago, female students expressed concern about Harvard’s true commitment to supporting women. Now, twenty-six years after complete integration, their fears are coming true.

This summer, in a shamefully obvious attempt to appease the Trump administration, the College quietly shuttered its Women’s Center and folded its staff into a new “Office for Culture and Community,” offering only vague communication about how it planned to continue supporting female students.

This campus isn’t always friendly to women, and Harvard needs to recognize that. Rather than indulge the whims of a far-right witch hunt in American higher education, administrators and students must recommit themselves to supporting women and take decisive action in pursuit of gender justice.

Our University boasts an institutional history of nearly four hundred years, but women have only been fully integrated for twenty-six. While integration was a major step, our campus still has a long way to go.

In 2024, 22.1 percent of surveyed female students reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact on campus. And only 37.7 percent of female undergraduates stated that they believed a campus official would take a report of sexual assault ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ seriously, per the Higher Education Sexual Misconduct and Awareness survey.

Beyond our physical safety, as of 2022, women made up only 29 percent of all tenured faculty, despite representing 53 percent of the college student body. A smaller pool of female tenured faculty means a smaller pool of women available to serve as mentors or positive role models across fields.

Moreover, misogyny is still far too prevalent among students. Our campus conservative magazine recently published an entire article on the virtues of single-gender education, citing Saint Thomas Aquinas to argue that “men are naturally inclined to certain virtues and vocations, as are women, and that these differences are harmonious rather than hierarchical in a simplistic sense.”

I feel this attitude echoed on campus when male students try to explain basic concepts from my own concentration to me, as if I’m not able to understand at the level our classes require. I feel it when I’m spoken over by a male peer in a discussion section. I even feel it when my female peers judge their own and others’ value based on patriarchal standards of appearance and behavior.

Gender equality has yet to be achieved on campus, and it certainly won’t happen without named and specific support.

The Women’s Center fulfilled this very purpose. Founded in 2006, the center was more than a physical space to hang out or host events — it was a powerful statement in support of gender justice and a force for change. Its work, from sponsoring well-attended events like discussions and comedy shows to granting awards for women’s leadership, honored a long history of female empowerment at Radcliffe and Harvard.

To quietly dissolve the center overnight is to do a disservice to the Radcliffe legacy, and to suggest that it is no longer necessary to support female students.

Worse still, one can’t help but notice that Harvard has maintained some identity-specific programming of the sort which remains politically favorable in the current climate: support for military affiliates and first-generation and low income students, alongside religious or spiritual programming and community engagement efforts. Of course, these initiatives are important. But their continued existence — as other diversity and inclusion efforts wilt — demonstrates just how closely Harvard is following the whims of public opinion, rather than the needs of its campus.

It’s ironic that meek capitulation has taken precedence over all the progress Radcliffe women once fought for. But to be clear, this isn’t just a Harvard trend. Across the nation, we have seen gender justice reframed from a serious social issue to a radical overreach of the feminist movement. One longitudinal analysis carried out between 2014 and 2023 found that young men developed more patriarchal orientations relative to young women and older men.

The Trump administration has capitalized off of and, in turn, codified this attitude, doing everything from narrowing the definition of sexual harassment in Title IX enforcement to trying to remove the word “gender” from UN human rights documents.

Our University must, then, lead the way in supporting women and refuting the assertion that gender-based discrimination doesn’t still have an impact. Physical spaces and events for women aren’t exclusionary — they play an essential role in welcoming students, supporting them in times of need, and bringing important visibility to the female experience on this campus.

We cannot forget the tangible effects of systemic patriarchal attitudes that create the struggles Harvard women face. In a misguided attempt to achieve political neutrality, Harvard has sacrificed an essential student resource.

The University must re-open the Women’s Center, re-commit itself to gender equality, and stand strong for the sake of its students. And if the administration continues to bow its head to far-right conservatism, we must all speak up against plain misogyny where we see it. We must all affirm, once and for all, the legacy of Radcliffe.

The women of Harvard need it, now more than ever.

Ira Sharma ’28, a Crimson Editorial Editor, is a sophomore in Mather House.