One Ear to the Ground, One Eye on the Past

When the Harvard College Women’s Center (HCWC) opened last September, hundreds of students, faculty, administrators and alumnae filled the space, sipping on punch, eating crab puffs, and listening to laudatory speeches from deans and vaunted faculty. The Radcliffe Pitches infused the evening’s energy with their spirited harmonies. Suddenly, in the midst of the joyful chaos of that evening, I felt a hand touch my arm from the middle of the crowd. A well-dressed woman of about 50 years stepped toward me, a bit tentatively, and whispered in my ear: “I am beyond elated for you, and for this day to come to Harvard. But please do not continue saying yours is the first women’s center. There were many others, hard-won and reluctantly abandoned, and you must know that we were here too, before you.”

Although many may have passed off this gesture as less than pivotal, I’ve thought about this moment each day since it happened, reflecting upon it as I worked with my student intern staff on the weighty and complex task of creating a lasting vision for the new Women’s Center. Admittedly, I had (along with many others) touted the new Women’s Center as Harvard’s first. I’ve since become humbly, acutely aware of the implications of historical amnesia—and the fact that five previous women’s centers were opened, and then closed, in the last 35 years at Harvard College. The reasons varied, but each time the closure happened, a new and even more committed crop of students arose from the remains to begin the effort again. This year, together with 12 talented and exceptionally hard working student interns, I’ve been committed to making sure that this women’s center fulfills its mission by attending to the legacies of the past, while being responsive to the present.

This past year has taught me many important lessons. I was not surprised that many students and student organizations rose to the occasion, bringing ideas and energy for projects of importance to them from the moment our doors opened. I was caught off guard, however, at the cynicism that greeted the opening of the Center this year on the part of some, who wondered aloud about the relevance of our primary mission (to raise awareness of women’s and gender issues, and to celebrate contributions by women that challenge, motivate and inspire) in the midst of so much progress for women, both at Harvard and in the world at large.

Still more surprising was the suspicion directed at the HCWC for fulfilling our secondary mission of providing comfortable, friendly, social and meeting space. The year’s activities—over 400 meetings and events in our space in less than 240 days of operation—confirms that we have much to offer the community in this respect. We will continue to counter the specious idea that we can’t be both welcoming and weighty by cheerfully and confidently being both.

The Faculty has recently affirmed that a Harvard education should “seek to prepare students for civic engagement, to teach students to understand themselves as products of—and participants in—traditions of art, ideas, and values, to prepare students to respond critically and constructively to change, and to develop students’ understanding of the ethical dimensions of what they say and do.” Exploring gender, and challenging gender inequity, complements these goals, and will thus continue to be the focus of our work. Far from having a rigid view of what gender can and should mean to each of us, the HCWC stands instead for the centrality of self-determination. The Women’s Center fosters creativity, support, and freedom to decide the ways we can most authentically live and fulfill our missions as liberally educated human beings.

Gender equity has not yet been fully realized in our country, let alone the world. In the inaugural year of Harvard’s first female president, the country once again considers whether a woman should be the United States presidential nominee of a major political party, and women continue to earn 80 cents for every dollar earned by men. As our cultural story continues to unfold, the Women’s Center’s primary mission is to enable meaningful and sometimes difficult discussions, debates, and explorations of the ways that each of our lives is shaped and shifted according to our gender, and to provide opportunities for envisioning a world where our choices are no longer constrained by the fact of our gender.

Discussion about the role of gender and the realities of women’s experiences that start in the classroom can be deepened, deconstructed, and enriched through the work of the Women’s Center, whether it be in a dinner discussion of 20 students at the center presided over by an illustrious Harvard alumna or in a crowd of 400 wordlessly absorbing the visionary truths of filmmaker Byron Hurt. These events, and many others made our first year exciting, interesting, sometimes controversial, and never dull. The HCWC will continue to be responsive to the issues that matter to students, and it will continue to keep its ear to the ground for the sound of future progress.

The most recent women’s center will remember the energy, vision, and legacies of the five generations of women’s centers before us, truly committed to making their hopes for gender equity at Harvard and in the world a reality. And yes, it will continue to be a friendly, kind, supportive place, a home for many students already, and in the years ahead, a home for many more.

Susan B. Marine is director of the Harvard College Women’s Center.