In this new and expanded edition of their controversial 1994 book, the authors update their analysis of what's gone wrong with women's studies programs. Their three new chapters provide a devastating and detailed examination of the routine practices found in feminist teaching and research. Feminists have often called women's studies the "academic arm of the women's movement". With close to 700 women's studies programs and departments currently in existence throughout the United States, academic feminism is now a strong presence on college campuses and beyond. But, as Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge charge, the attempt to make women's studies serve a political agenda has led to deeply problematic results: dubious scholarship, pedagogical practices that resemble indoctrination more than education, and the alienation of countless potential supporters. For the 1994 edition of this book the authors interviewed dozens of women -professors, students and staffers - who, like themselves, had invested time and effort in women's studies.
These individuals speak eloquently of their frustration and even despair over the problems and conflicts they experienced in programs where education was made subservient to politics. Faced with intolerance and "ideological policing" on the part of both activist colleagues and true-believer students, some of these women withdrew altogether; others, while maintaining their formal association with women's studies, took inner flight. All are troubled and alarmed about the future of feminsm in the academy. To reveal the root causes of these tensions and animosities, Patai and Koertge present an incisive analysis of the self-defeating ideological games feminists play in colleges and universities. In the late 1990s, Patai and Koertge once again examined women's studies programs, attempting to gauge what changes, if any, had occurred since their critique nearly a decade ago. This time they use primarily documents generated from within women's studies itself - program mission statements, course depictions, newsletters, and e-mail lists devoted to feminist pedagogy and women's studies, and, not least, the writings of well-known feminist scholars.