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Crimson Canaries?

Yesterday an op-ed by James Taranto was posted in the Wall Street Journal about Shatter the Ceiling, a link to which can be found here. It described Shatter the Ceiling’s mini-documentary as offensive, Lani Guinere as Clinton’s “quota queen,” and, by the end, women who are willing to speak out against gender disparity at HLS as canaries who are apparently bitter that we just don’t cut it in the Harvard system.

This is how Shatter the Ceiling is being characterized by the Wall Street Journal.  What matters more to us, though, is what YOU think.  We invite you to share your thoughts, feelings, and reactions — whatever they might be — to this journalistic response to Shatter the Ceiling and our activities on the HLS campus.  Are you angry?  Inspired? Challenged?  We want to hear about it!  All voices are welcome in sharing your thoughts and stories below!

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A Metamorphasis of Sorts

By Rebecca Eisenberg, May 1993

Like many people at Harvard Law School, I came to law school as the inevitable culmination of a journey that began in grade school with student council, and continued with student government and local political activism ever since. In high school, I was elected both “Most Likely to be Elected President” and “Biggest Complainer” by my senior class. In other words, I was someone who liked to set the rules, and was vocal about them when I disagreed. Although fame and prestige certainly entered my mind, the true force behind me was a search to find justice.

My first encounters of feminism occurred when I learned about the sexual “double standard.” Immediately I rejected any societal rule that deprived girls of fun simply because they were girls. A strong believer in women’s liberation from an early age, I was perhaps known by some as promiscuous or gutsy, but was never, as far as I can imagine, ever, considered to be a “man-hater.” Perhaps that was because my lifetime goals always seemed to conform to the social role that society dictated for men rather than for women. So, I pursued my academics and extracurriculars with a compulsive drive to be the best — not just the best in my gender — and reached age 18 as high school valedictorian and one of my school’s first women to attend math-and-science-oriented Stanford University.

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