Defining a Feminist/Activist

Perhaps the best synthesis of the thoughts and actions of Sarah S. Song '96 can be found in her writing on the issues she cares about.

The daughter of a Korean pastor from Derry, New Hampshire and a resident of Pforzheimer House, Song has devoted her Harvard career to writing and thinking about issues of social justice.

As president and senior editor of Perspective, Harvard-Radcliffe's liberal monthly, Song was an unrelenting critic of racial and gender inequality. And her senior thesis on the growth of a women's movement in Korea reinforced her interest in women, politics and writing.

A Social Studies concentrator, Song says she likes to focus her writing and studies on women's issues and on the ongoing effects of race and power in society.

In a November 1995 Perspective introspective, for example, Song wrote about how difficult she thinks it is for women, even at Harvard, to gain the same level of respect as men.

"Public women in America are wedged between two choices: present yourself in a gender-neutral or slightly 'masculine' way to be taken seriously ('substance'), or deploy your sexuality and charm ('the cunning of woman') to get ahead, but at the cost of not being taken seriously," Song wrote in that introspective piece.

Reflecting on that double bind, Song says now:

"[At Harvard] if you're networking or something, often [the attitude is that] if men get hired to do a job or they're in leadership positions, it's because they deserve it or they merit it," Song says sarcastically. "Whereas women, they used their arts and their wiles."

Faculty Mentors

In her fight against gender inequality, Song says she has found mentoring and advice from female professors at Harvard invaluable.

"One of the professors who has most influenced me," Song explains over lunch in the Winthrop courtyard, "is [Professor of Government] Seyla Benhabib."

Benhabib, with whom Song took a seminar on "Political Theory and the Public Sphere," inspired Song with lessons about the theory and practice of deliberative democracy.

"She's the most brilliant female scholar I've ever met, and when I first heard her lecture...I was shocked," Song confesses. "And then afterward I was shocked that I was shocked, because I had never met such a brilliant woman, and the fact that she was a woman was really significant to me."

Song, who will spend next year on a Rotary Scholarship studying political theory at Oxford University in the Department of Politics, plans to go into academia. She will apply this fall to joint J.D./Ph.D. programs in government and political science.

Undoubtedly, her decision to do so is influenced by experiences and relationships developed at Harvard.

Song worked the summer after her sophomore year as a researcher for Professor of Sociology Mary C. Waters. And she had what she calls a "very positive" thesis writing experi- ence under the supervision of Terry Aladjem, lecturer on social studies and associate director of the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.

"[Waters] really encouraged me," Song says. Like Song, Waters struggled after college with the choice between a career in academia or law, according to Song.

Song says Waters told her that she chose academia because "she wanted to stay somehow activist through the academic community. I think it's really difficult, especially here at Harvard as a tenured professor, to maintain a scholar-activist lifestyle."

Yet through her four years as an undergraduate, Song has managed to build exactly such a lifestyle.

While working as an editor of Perspective, Song reported on the magazine's efforts to diversify its staff and its point of view.

Writing in a Fall 1994 introspective piece, Song reported that a survey of Perspective staffers had identified a lack of concern with racial issues and a feeling of homogeneity among staff members.

"Many of us will enter and exit this place without ever really acknowledging that race is present in every institution, every relationship, and every individual," Song wrote reflecting on her reaction to the survey results. "We've come to associate color-blindness with politeness, but awkward silence undermines equality and tolerance; it does not make race go away."

In subsequent issues, Song says she and her fellow staffers worked to make race, class, gender and issues of inequality more prominent in the magazine.

Song wrote a feature article on "The Aftermath of Prop 187," which condemned the California proposition prohibiting illegal aliens from receiving social services as an excuse for racism.

"Whether conscious or not, the negative portrayal of illegals as indigent and racially 'other' strengthens and glorifies the dominant and 'normal' identity of citizens who believe they are the 'true' Californians," Song wrote in the Summer 1995 issue.

Today, Song says Perspective has come a long way. She says she thinks the magazine has worked to become more sensitive to and critical of which staffers stay and which leave.

"I think a lot of well-intentioned white liberals, particularly at Perspective, want to be very inclusive and want to also share in some sort of common experience, not necessarily of oppression but of disadvantage based on race, class or gender," Song reflects now.

Yet throughout this broadening emphasis on issue of race and ethnicity, Song did not lose her focus on issues of particular importance to women.

The magazine's Fall 1994 registration issue devoted several pages to the issue of redefining feminism. Song focused on the issue of Third Wave feminism, which is an effort to revive the feminism of the sixties with a nineties style of activism.

And in her own small way, Song says she has encouraged the women around her at Harvard.

"The Perspective just needs more staffers in general," she confesses. "But I have always had a keen eye for trying to encourage more women to come on staff, by having meals, and having personal conversations and encouraging women to run for office."

While Song was active at the Perspective, the magazine championed issues controversial with College administrators.

For example, Perspective's editorials supported an ethnic studies curriculum and student control of public service. In addition, many Perspective members worked to sponsor a coalition to reform the Undergraduate Council--the Progressive Undergraduate Council Coalition (PUCC).

From these experiences, Song says she has gained an understanding of working with administrators, and she hopes that better channels of communication will develop between students and administrators.

"I think it worked in the beginning and I think that the intentions were really noble," Song recalls. "It began as a diverse coalition...If you have a diversity of opinions, then you have a number of options and there's a higher probability that a heterogeneity of opinions will sustain an internal critique of any organization."

"But there's often a trade-off between diversity and efficiency or inclusion and efficiency," she says. "Inevitably a few people end up taking over."

And while Song acknowledges that PUCC may not have met all of its stated goals, she says she still thinks real change will come to the Council, provided that individuals persistently raise issues important to students' academic and political lives.

Academic Pursuits

In, her academic work, Song has focused on ways in which women found empowerment in other cultures.

She spent last summer in Korea, interviewing members of a nascent feminist movement and middle-class housewives about issues of importance to them.

"How did this women's movement come to be and how did it break off [from the democratic movement]?" Song asked in her research.

"I tried to look at: What is this movement trying to do? Are they in anyway getting at the most important interests and concerns of urban middle-class housewives?" Song explains.

She examined discussion groups in public housing apartments which house 70 percent of the urban Korean population.

"There's a public sphere in itself. They're talking about issues that could be considered political," Song explains. "These women were talking about education: 'Our children are stressed out.' The examination system. Day care: 'We can't even work part time even though we have college degrees because there isn't adequate day care. Social norms expect us to say at home.'"

Critiquing Jurgen Habermas' appraisal of the feminist movement as a politics of withdrawal, Song saw in the Korean feminist associations a preparatory politics as academics and full-time housewives began to articulate the generalizable interests of women.

Beyond Harvard

This summer, Song will work as an intern at The Nation--a liberal weekly magazine based in New York City.

There she will continue to explore her interest in journalism while researching, copy editing and contributing writing to the magazine.

Of her interest in journalism, Song says she is interested in the possibility that journalism can do more than report sensational news.

Song says she has recently been reading the work of Walter Lippman '10 on journalism. Writing in the 1920s, Lippman expressed the state of journalism in newspapers as he saw it.

"What [he said] they end up doing is reporting not the ordinary goings on or even the goings on in your local town government," Song explains. "It's mostly concocted and sensational, and that's what people look for when they read the news--an alternative to watching TV."

Seventy years later, Song says journals such as The Nation can do more than report sensational news; they can reflect upon the "facts" of what happened, educate, and challenge readers to think critically about the "facts." But she has one reservation.

"I think [The Nation] is one of the more critical and informative journals of opinion, but I presume it is preaching to the converted," she says. "I'd be really interested in seeing what the income bracket of The Nation's readership is."

"The fact is," she adds, "Most people make little time for and have little interest in politics. Getting people to care and increasing participation in this grand game of politics is a problem to be addressed by the nations' leaders."

Song applies this same depth of scrutiny when she thinks about the more distant future.

Asked where she'll be 15 years from today, Song laughs.

"I'll probably still be in school," she says. "Trying to juggle social democratic action with academic life."

"I consider myself a social democrat," Song explains. "Given that the specter of communism has been quashed but also that capitalism isn't isn't disappearing any time soon, what can we do to make this place more equal for all?"

"Oh," she adds with a laugh. "Fifteen years from now I'll probably still be single."CrimsonJohn C. Mitchell

"[Waters] really encouraged me," Song says. Like Song, Waters struggled after college with the choice between a career in academia or law, according to Song.

Song says Waters told her that she chose academia because "she wanted to stay somehow activist through the academic community. I think it's really difficult, especially here at Harvard as a tenured professor, to maintain a scholar-activist lifestyle."

Yet through her four years as an undergraduate, Song has managed to build exactly such a lifestyle.

While working as an editor of Perspective, Song reported on the magazine's efforts to diversify its staff and its point of view.

Writing in a Fall 1994 introspective piece, Song reported that a survey of Perspective staffers had identified a lack of concern with racial issues and a feeling of homogeneity among staff members.

"Many of us will enter and exit this place without ever really acknowledging that race is present in every institution, every relationship, and every individual," Song wrote reflecting on her reaction to the survey results. "We've come to associate color-blindness with politeness, but awkward silence undermines equality and tolerance; it does not make race go away."

In subsequent issues, Song says she and her fellow staffers worked to make race, class, gender and issues of inequality more prominent in the magazine.

Song wrote a feature article on "The Aftermath of Prop 187," which condemned the California proposition prohibiting illegal aliens from receiving social services as an excuse for racism.

"Whether conscious or not, the negative portrayal of illegals as indigent and racially 'other' strengthens and glorifies the dominant and 'normal' identity of citizens who believe they are the 'true' Californians," Song wrote in the Summer 1995 issue.

Today, Song says Perspective has come a long way. She says she thinks the magazine has worked to become more sensitive to and critical of which staffers stay and which leave.

"I think a lot of well-intentioned white liberals, particularly at Perspective, want to be very inclusive and want to also share in some sort of common experience, not necessarily of oppression but of disadvantage based on race, class or gender," Song reflects now.

Yet throughout this broadening emphasis on issue of race and ethnicity, Song did not lose her focus on issues of particular importance to women.

The magazine's Fall 1994 registration issue devoted several pages to the issue of redefining feminism. Song focused on the issue of Third Wave feminism, which is an effort to revive the feminism of the sixties with a nineties style of activism.

And in her own small way, Song says she has encouraged the women around her at Harvard.

"The Perspective just needs more staffers in general," she confesses. "But I have always had a keen eye for trying to encourage more women to come on staff, by having meals, and having personal conversations and encouraging women to run for office."

While Song was active at the Perspective, the magazine championed issues controversial with College administrators.

For example, Perspective's editorials supported an ethnic studies curriculum and student control of public service. In addition, many Perspective members worked to sponsor a coalition to reform the Undergraduate Council--the Progressive Undergraduate Council Coalition (PUCC).

From these experiences, Song says she has gained an understanding of working with administrators, and she hopes that better channels of communication will develop between students and administrators.

"I think it worked in the beginning and I think that the intentions were really noble," Song recalls. "It began as a diverse coalition...If you have a diversity of opinions, then you have a number of options and there's a higher probability that a heterogeneity of opinions will sustain an internal critique of any organization."

"But there's often a trade-off between diversity and efficiency or inclusion and efficiency," she says. "Inevitably a few people end up taking over."

And while Song acknowledges that PUCC may not have met all of its stated goals, she says she still thinks real change will come to the Council, provided that individuals persistently raise issues important to students' academic and political lives.

Academic Pursuits

In, her academic work, Song has focused on ways in which women found empowerment in other cultures.

She spent last summer in Korea, interviewing members of a nascent feminist movement and middle-class housewives about issues of importance to them.

"How did this women's movement come to be and how did it break off [from the democratic movement]?" Song asked in her research.

"I tried to look at: What is this movement trying to do? Are they in anyway getting at the most important interests and concerns of urban middle-class housewives?" Song explains.

She examined discussion groups in public housing apartments which house 70 percent of the urban Korean population.

"There's a public sphere in itself. They're talking about issues that could be considered political," Song explains. "These women were talking about education: 'Our children are stressed out.' The examination system. Day care: 'We can't even work part time even though we have college degrees because there isn't adequate day care. Social norms expect us to say at home.'"

Critiquing Jurgen Habermas' appraisal of the feminist movement as a politics of withdrawal, Song saw in the Korean feminist associations a preparatory politics as academics and full-time housewives began to articulate the generalizable interests of women.

Beyond Harvard

This summer, Song will work as an intern at The Nation--a liberal weekly magazine based in New York City.

There she will continue to explore her interest in journalism while researching, copy editing and contributing writing to the magazine.

Of her interest in journalism, Song says she is interested in the possibility that journalism can do more than report sensational news.

Song says she has recently been reading the work of Walter Lippman '10 on journalism. Writing in the 1920s, Lippman expressed the state of journalism in newspapers as he saw it.

"What [he said] they end up doing is reporting not the ordinary goings on or even the goings on in your local town government," Song explains. "It's mostly concocted and sensational, and that's what people look for when they read the news--an alternative to watching TV."

Seventy years later, Song says journals such as The Nation can do more than report sensational news; they can reflect upon the "facts" of what happened, educate, and challenge readers to think critically about the "facts." But she has one reservation.

"I think [The Nation] is one of the more critical and informative journals of opinion, but I presume it is preaching to the converted," she says. "I'd be really interested in seeing what the income bracket of The Nation's readership is."

"The fact is," she adds, "Most people make little time for and have little interest in politics. Getting people to care and increasing participation in this grand game of politics is a problem to be addressed by the nations' leaders."

Song applies this same depth of scrutiny when she thinks about the more distant future.

Asked where she'll be 15 years from today, Song laughs.

"I'll probably still be in school," she says. "Trying to juggle social democratic action with academic life."

"I consider myself a social democrat," Song explains. "Given that the specter of communism has been quashed but also that capitalism isn't isn't disappearing any time soon, what can we do to make this place more equal for all?"

"Oh," she adds with a laugh. "Fifteen years from now I'll probably still be single."CrimsonJohn C. Mitchell