Helping women’s studies majors pay their rent?

If I had to name one place that might be considered the Vatican for rad fem ideology, I’d be tempted to award the laurel to the Wellesley College’s Centers for Women. These hallowed halls figured prominently in one of our classic stories from the Women’s Quarterly, “I Have a Degree in Women’s Studies-So Why Can’t I Pay the Rent?”

Well, it looks like the Pentagon is trying to help some Wellesley women’s studies types pay their rent. Here is a dispatch from the Boston Globe: 

“The Defense Department enlisted Wellesley College’s Centers for Women to advise the Pentagon on how to set up a top-level victim’s advocate office for military women who have suffered sexual assault or harassment, and to assist the families of soldiers in cases of domestic violence.

“The Pentagon awarded the grant earlier this year to come up with ways to implement a central Office of the Victim’s Advocate. It would augment similar programs in the different service branches to assist women who face the type of abuse that took place at the Air Force Academy last year, and has been alleged in other branches through the years.

“The recommendations, made in a report delivered to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld in September, have not been made public and are under review, according to project officials.

“But the involvement of Wellesley, a leading all-women’s college with an elite reputation, has already stirred up complaints by some conservative activists, who contend that creating a victim’s advocate office would create a culture of complaint in the military, presuming male guilt, destroying careers, and damaging morale.

”‘Implementation of a self- interested Wellesley proposal could create a new job market for women’s studies graduates schooled in man-hating ideology,’ says Elaine Donnelly, president of the conservative Center for Military Readiness, which has opposed gays in the military and women serving in combat roles.

”‘Sexual assault is always wrong and should be punished promptly at the local level,’ Donnelly said. However, a victim’s advocate ”would operate as an office of male bashing that would nuclearize the war between the sexes.”