The Ticker: "A new discipline: male studies"

Article here. Excerpt:

'Born out of reaction to the current women’s and men’s studies, the male studies field was officially established at Wagner College on April 7. According to InsideHigherEd.com, a group of scholars congregated at Wagner College in Staten Island to announce the creation of the Foundation for Male Studies. The foundation will support a conference and journal aimed at exploring the struggles and celebrating the triumphs of men. “Based on the same theories as women’s studies [it] is grouped together with [women’s studies] as gender studies,” the website says.

Another distinction between men’s and male studies is that it targets all ages. The foundation’s website states that male studies is a “multidisciplinary study of the male human being, boys and men,” whereas, “men’s studies, by definition, has focused on fully grown men.” The discipline will recognize all the various interpretations of males based on culture and the foundation notes that male studies is not a strictly western discipline.

Claiming to be an underrepresented minority, organizers and supporters of the discipline are justifying it by stating that society really isn’t as male-dominated as many think it is.

Supporters argue that elementary and secondary schools, as well as higher education, have been “heavily influenced by feminism.” The claim is that males experience an academic discrimination leading to gender-gaps of enrollment and graduation rates.
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“We don’t need male studies, because overall studies are done by, and conducted on, males and most of what we learn comes from a male perspective,” said the chair of the psychology department, Samuel D. Johnson, Ph.D.

Noting that men have had the upper hand in academia for as long as anyone can remember, Johnson understands the need for women’s studies but male studies is something that he doesn’t understand.

“It’s a reaction to feminism. They are looking at it as a denigration of maleness,” he said. “Gender studies is probably a more apt rubric to do it under because that covers both and gender studies also covers the LGBT aspect.”'