I said I'd skip the painful details, but since Richard highlighted my post .... The clause I quoted is the one that keeps ROTC activities off campus! The two cases don't have to be treated the same, but once you break from principle, you either have to articulate a new principle or resign yourself to making ad hoc distinctions. If there were a new principle, and it did not allow the possibility of an exception for ROTC, it seems to me that it would have to treat gender and sexual orientation differently. Religion is not at the crux here -- you don't have to be Muslim to get into those separate gym hours. So this does seem to me to be more than a "so what?" kind of issue.
 

Not having been in the position where I had to make these kinds of tough calls, I'm more amenable to the new gym policy and to ad hoc distinctions more generally, but I agree with Harry that this highlights the problem of resting the campus ROTC ban on the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

My understanding is that the original reason for campus unrest around the ROTC issue was to protest the university's connection to the military, period, full stop. I think that's the correct position to take -- I believe that the values of a university are in basic conflict with the values of the military -- but it's not a position with as many takers these days, so I can see why opposition would have fallen back on the more palatable discrimination criteria.

Now, that said, I do think there's an important difference between supporting a policy that "discriminates" against men and one that bans gays and lesbians. One could support the former on grounds similar to those which argue for affirmative action based on race or class, while no such support is available for the latter.
 

Hmm. I wonder how you would rewrite the Harvard nondiscrimination clause then. "No discrimination on the basis of sex (but only insofar as excluding women is concerned, excluding men is fine), sexual orientation (but that just means no excluding gays, excluding straights would be OK [and in the ROTC case, this is just a pretext, ROTC is excluded even if Congress repeals DADT]), ...."? You might be better off saying there is no principle, and we'll just go with the flow from one day to the next.
 

5:59pm here.

Your response muddies the waters. Achieving equality can legitimately require different things from individuals and from institutions. It makes sense for the institution to require that individuals treat each other in a non-discriminatory fashion while itself having some "discriminatory" policies, such as affirmative action based on race and class. These are two different means to achieving the same end. The same principle underlies them; there's no need to throw up your hands in mock exasperation like that.

And my point about ROTC was precisely that it's unwise to use the anti-discrimination policy as a weapon against the military's involvement with Harvard, since it obscures the larger issues and is ultimately more the fall-back tactics of activists rather than a really principled position. Perhaps this wasn't clear in my post, but you seem determined to misread it.
 

I think we understand each other. Affirmative action implies that a little bit of temporary inequality is good if done in the service of reversing past inequalities. Raising it as a rationale in the case of the gym hours seems a poor fit, and the use of a more generalized "equality" argument for single sex gym hours (this trivial bit of inequality gives conservative Muslim women an equal opportunity to exercise, which they would otherwise be denied) calls into question just what "equality" means today. As for ROTC, I understand that you wouldn't go by the sexual orientation argument, but that is the official argument. Some of the most uncompromising opponents of ROTC at Harvard have been equally emphatic that their opposition is based entirely on this rationale, and the minute it goes away they would be happy to have Harvard ROTC students enjoy the same privileges and support as other student groups. There is more than a little suspicion that things would not actually play out that way, so I was curious how your substitute principle that "the values of a university are in basic conflict with the values of the military" would be formulated and how widely it would apply.
 

Thanks for the response, Harry. For my part, I think affirmative action is also a remedy for on-going inequalities and disadvantages, not just past one. Racism and sexism are still with us, sadly. As for the appropriate formulation and scope of my proposed "university/military incompatibility" principle, I think I'll hold off for now, lest I take this conversation completely far afield. Anyway, you are certainly right that this gym policy "calls into question just what 'equality' means today," and to the extent that it prompts a serious discussion of that question, it will have been all to the good, I think.
 

Thanks for that. Just to be sure you understand, there are people in this community with whom I disagree over ROTC, but whose reliance on the sexual orientation argument I respect. To make my analogy go away, you dismiss them as "activists" lacking a "really principled position." That characterization of those folks, much as I disagree with them, I thought unfair (though--sorry for that-- I surely didn't need the sarcasm to tell you so!).
 

Harry,
On your last sentence of 8:59, wondering whether 5:59/7:35 might be correct in thinking DADT is (maybe it once was) the pretext or fallback for opposing ROTC under any terms, I doubt it very much. I for one, 'hard left FAS' as I may be in the words of one non-FAS colleague, would welcome having ROTC on campus absent the policy in question. I recently had a ROTC freshman advisee, and would much rather he had been able to do it at Harvard.
 

As I indicated just above, Richard, I certainly accept your bona fides on that. But then to return to the reason I raised the ROTC issue: You would consider it (at least the policy you support treats it as) a violation of Harvard's nondiscrimination principles if Harvard were to provide T fare so your freshman cadet can get to his ROTC exercises at MIT. Don't you then agree that closing the gym to men, something that others here consider a trivial accommodation but has not been done at Harvard for a long time, is also a violation of our nondiscrimination principles? Some have argued that the gym closure is a trivial courtesy, not a breach of gender equality. Having supported the position that T fare for your freshman is not a trivial courtesy but a blow struck against nondiscrimination, would you agree that the closing of the gym to men is not the trivial matter several others have written it off as being?
 

I haven't declared, even decided, maybe, on the gym closure issue, Harry, but agree it is non-trivial and should not simply be slipped in as being such. But I do think some accommodation would be reasonable. I know gender-separated gyms, where there is choice to belong or not, are not models going by the letter when we're talking about University policy, but they might give an indication of legitimate sensibilities in the larger society that merit attention and suggest a way forward. The separate bathroom argument? Again, though, I agree it's not trivial.
 

How about if they hang a sign up that says "Voluntary Muslim Women Only Gym Hour -- We Request Your Cooperation -- And Remember, We Know Where You Live"?

Just trying to help.
 

Maybe this issue falls in the same category with female circumcision and, as one of the Harvard students says in defense of that practice, “We all have different perspectives of what womanhood is, and we have to recognize that.”