Concerned Graduate Students in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Harvard

In December 2020, Harvard Law School professor J. Mark Ramseyer published an article online in the International Review of Law and Economics (IRLE) that attempted to analyze the “comfort women” (wianbu, ianfu) within the framework of legal contract theory. According to anthropologist Sarah Soh, "the term 'comfort women,' an English translation of the Japanese euphemism ianfu, refers to the tens of thousands of young women and girls of various ethnic and national backgrounds who were pressed into sexual servitude during the Asia Pacific War that began with the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and ended with Japan's defeat in 1945" (Sarah Soh, The Comfort Women, xii).

As graduate students in the humanities and social sciences at Harvard University, we express our solidarity with the comfort women and our deep concern about the article’s methodology and problematic implications. Since its publication, several notable scholars have detailed the numerous flaws and serious empirical shortcomings of his article, which together undermine his argument. Our intention is not to rehash the rigorous critiques of the article that these scholars have already published (please refer to the Resources page by "Feminists on Ramseyer"). Rather, we seek to voice our perspectives as graduate students and educators in training. We recognize this situation as a teachable moment about academic best practices, professional standards shared across disciplines, and the necessity of remembering the purpose of humanistic and social science research.

We highlight the problematic nature and implications of the article’s methodological shortcomings. Revising previously held arguments is a core feature of scholarship, but revisionism requires sound empirical evidence, which previous critiques have shown the article does not contain. Thus, the article is a work of denialism, not revisionism as some have characterized it: it denies the coercion, violence, and colonial hierarchies that characterized the “comfort stations” (wianso, ianjo) and women’s experiences. The framework of contractual dynamics, moreover, ascribes agency to women in a perverse way by portraying them as economic agents with free choice. While we do not make any claims of the author’s specific political views, we note that the vocabulary, frameworks, and tactics in the article are in line with those used by other more explicitly politicized scholarship, which actively seeks to deny the severity of the experiences of the comfort women as well as downplaying other historical atrocities. The article results in the distortion and extrapolation of moments of complexity in history to a reductive characterization of the issue that can be appropriated for political ends.

Comfort women have embodied the multiple layers of subjugation, hierarchy, and violence present under Japanese imperialism, whether they be gendered, patriarchal, and/or colonial. Scholars from across the world have highlighted these facets of the comfort women issue by uncovering and carefully analyzing diverse empirical evidence. Failing to engage with this body of scholarship and distorting sources contribute to perpetuating structural violence by disparaging the survivors’ reputations and categorically dismissing the reliability of their testimonies. This rhetorical re-victimization, moreover, lays the groundwork for re-victimizing the comfort women in material terms by denying their legal and monetary claims.

Since the article’s publication, some have attempted to frame this issue in terms of an academic freedom debate, but to defend the article on this basis is to miss the point. We hold academic freedom as a central value for maintaining the integrity of scholarship, but it is premised on the trust that the research and conclusions are consonant with the empirical evidence, which encompasses both primary documents and testimony. To claim academic freedom without serious engagement on the de/merits of the article is a perversion of that tenet and undermines the very basis of rigorous intellectual conversation. Productive academic debate is only possible and meaningful if all sides are standing on relatively equal footing in terms of the quality of research. If this notion is abused as a shield for releasing unsubstantiated and irresponsible arguments that discount war crimes, it is merely a form of structural violence.

We offer our statement as a reminder of the purpose of rigorous academic research in the humanities and social sciences. Research—when meticulously conducted and empirically grounded—elevates the human experience in all its complexity, contradictions, and inequities. As graduate students, researchers, and educators in training, we believe in the vision of intellectual work that serves humanity. The abuse of discursive power, as exemplified by Ramseyer’s article, has no place in that vision.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

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