For almost 30 years, Boston College professor Mary Daly has admitted only women into her classes. The Jesuit college is now demanding that Daly allow male students into her classes.
The step Daly has taken to ensure freedom of thought in her feminist classes — the exclusion of men — is counterproductive and wrong. She should either reconsider her policy of segregation, or take that policy elsewhere.
Daly and her student supporters argue that there must exist a place for women alone within the University; a place where feminist issues can be discussed by those who are most intimate with them.
However, the classroom should not be such a place. Universities ideally educate anyone who enters their doors, regardless of race, gender or creed. Likewise, students are theoretically allowed to pursue any area of study they deem fit.
Although feminist issues concern women, the aim of feminist education should not be to alienate and stigmatize men, but to educate them. Men should be helped to understand the issues so they might learn from their mistakes.
To assert that educating men on feminist issues is a waste of energy, as some student supporters of Daly have argued, is as destructive to male-female relations as the stereotypical, ignorant man. To break this stereotype, cooperation and mutual education are far more effective than exclusion and antagonism.
Unfortunately, the issue of individual rights and the perceived discrimination against the white male always includes such crusaders as the Center for Individual Rights, a conservative law firm in Washington, D.C., whose latest triumph ended affirmative action at the University of Texas. The center is backing Duane Naquin, who has threatened to file a lawsuit if Daly does not allow him into her class on feminist ethics.
Daly has taken a leave of absence this semester rather than teach a class with men. Boston College, in return, expects Daly to retire rather than face the pressure a lawsuit against the college would bring.
Instead of allowing opportunistic, politically motivated lawyers to gain legal decisions out of racial or gender-based disputes, we should practice wisdom and understanding when dealing with these issues. Men and women love and need each other; this is a fact, regardless of sexual orientation.
Advancing from this premise, it would be wiser to admit men into a class teaching radical feminism in order to show them how women really feel about certain things than to be obstinate and allow legal vultures to reap political benefits.
Daly should make the decision to allow men into her classes. This will defuse the pending lawsuit, allow a tenured professor to keep teaching and give men at Boston College a chance to communicate with the women they see every day about issues not discussed every day.