New center for masculine studies under fire

Article here. Excerpt:

'“Keep in mind, please, that this is a Center supposedly devoted to the study of men, not women,” said Bruce Bawer in his article “A Joke of a Men’s Studies Center,” published in Front Page Magazine. “Can you imagine a university press release in this day and age announcing the establishment of a new Women’s Studies Center and including more men’s names than women’s? Me neither.”

It is not the emergence of men’s studies that Bawer, a Stony Brook alumnus and author of “The Victims’ Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind”, argues against, despite what his book title may say. Rather, it is the “unbalanced” advisory board that he and Newsday columnist Cathy Young see as a problem for men’s studies, rather than an asset.

“The study of men and masculinities’ as conceptualized by Kimmel and his like-minded colleagues is, at bottom, an academic vehicle for a political attack on ‘white male privilege’,” said Young. “This is undoubtedly the brand of ‘men’s studies’ that Stony Brook’s new Center will promote.”

“[Men’s studies] is about fostering and nurturing serious research within the context of gender studies,” Kimmel said in response to criticisms aimed at the center. “To my mind, these critiques by the MRAs are inevitable. They spend a lot of time trolling the internet and yelling at people. That’s not serious research.”

Using highly recognizable feminists as advisors was key to banishing misconceptions of what the new center is meant for. Others, however, contend that such actions belie the true academic nature of male gender studies.

A petition started by an anonymous dissenter circulated forums and messageboards, with posters urging members to sign. “No womens’ [sic] programs of any kind permit male dominance of any type on their advisory boards, nor do they select men with a track record of antagonism toward and mockery of women and womens’ issues,” it said.'