Harvard's crackdown on single-sex clubs seems disingenuous at best

It appears Harvard wants to take some of the elite out of its notorious elitism.

That’s how it seems with the edict that would defang its oldest social institutions with the clearly specious goal of making the campus safe from sexual aggressiveness.

Students who would join ancient, off campus, all-male bastions like Porcellian, and more traditional single-sex sororities and fraternities, would be deprived of honors and student-body leadership positions. They also would be prohibited from applying for the coveted Rhodes and Marshall scholarships, among others. And belonging to one of these so-called final clubs that continues their sex-discrimination policies after 2017 would cost offending students the right to be chosen captain of a college athletic team.

For an institution that has regaled itself at every opportunity as the sine qua non of brilliance, freedom of choice and common sense in American education, this is perhaps the silliest of actions in a world of academe that is increasingly under assault from nearly every direction. No longer, it seems, will a Harvard man or woman have the right to freely choose their associates in a social living setting.

The policy propounded by President Drew Gilpin Faust and Dean Rakesh Khurana ostensibly is aimed at alleged sexual violence and other indiscretions at the clubs that have off campus quarters and have not been recognized officially by the college for two decades. Someone immediately pointed out that admitting women to these gender-select groups would do just the opposite of the intended consequences by giving the male members so inclined to predatory practices easier access. In other words, it would be like taking the chickens to the fox’s den.

Are they nuts? Probably not, but they are being disingenuous about the true reasons for this step. It pretty much reflects a philosophy that single-sex associations are threats per se, unhealthy and violent to equality. In this case, the women who have formed their own groups suddenly have found themselves, as one columnist noted, “collateral damage” in a policy truly aimed at men. Potential sexual assault is not the key element here, although it is always real on a college campus. It is the age-old fear that men cannot be permitted exclusiveness because it gives them advantages that prevents women from excelling. The brotherhood is a cabal of intrigue against the sisterhood.

While gender inequity clearly exists in areas like pay, the blanket allegation is being dramatically chipped away. Women are quickly moving upward in nearly every endeavor. The odds are favorable for the election of the first woman president of the United States in November. The battle lines are drawn here. But it would be an uphill challenge for the clubs to prevail given the atmosphere of political correctness that pervades most campuses. Faust holds most of the cards.

That would be true even with a large-scale counterassault by outraged alumni that includes litigation and threats of financial retribution; it is doubtful that the clubs could prevail. The institution has a $35 billion plus endowment making it almost impregnable to fiscal intimidation.

Furthermore, it seems unlikely that many Harvard students would risk the chance of being cut out of major resume building and career-enhancing opportunities in support of the freedom and satisfaction gained from a relatively short-lived experience in a social club, no matter how important that may seem at the moment and even later. The stakes simply are too high and the principles too abstract to override the future possibilities of success in the long-term by not going along.

Sadly, Harvard will have lost something here. No longer will it be able to lay claim to being the bastion of free thought and association, defender of the right of man and woman to thrive in an atmosphere that gives them the liberty to bond with others they select on a gender-restrictive basis. The country’s oldest citadel of higher education may believe that this misguided policy has struck a blow for equality, but in reality it has done just about the opposite by paying homage to those ideas that would make us all the same.

More troubling is the fact it is being done under false pretenses.

Dan Thomasson
(TNS)

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Dan Thomasson is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service and a former vice president of Scripps Howard Newspapers.