Dear [headmaster]:
I attended the Reunion earlier this month [June 2008], partially to see the school again and partially to assess it for my children (girls aged 7 and 5). The academic quality was generally shown to be outstanding. Posters in the science building included one about the use of liposomes, which I first learned about in my one course at Harvard Medical School (1977) and not mentioned at all in my subsequent formal four years of medical school. They provide a theoretically good way to manage such things as hemoglobin transport and selective cell destruction as with cancer therapy. whoever said “and a child shall lead them” was not thinking of liposome research, but the quotation is relevant nevertheless.
The school remains impressive and has improved since I attended. What follows is criticism with intent to improve the improvable; I do not want to be thought of as demanding or irrational.
The gender studies facility at the former [girls’ school] campus has missed some opportunities for useful instruction. If it is intended to provide a perpetual reminder of the old institution formerly the neighboring girls’ school], it fails. The issue of human gender can and should be studied apart from its leftist role as an apology for female needs. Women’s rights have improved during the past century; failure to recognize that men as well as women have differences from the average human personality will condemn the facility to obsoleteness when the growing trend against government dependence reaches its maturity.
Gender identity is known to be biologic. When a baby boy lost his penis to a surgical mishap decades ago, he was rebuilt and raised as a girl. As an adult, she killed herself after years of unhappiness. (John Money, the behaviorist who believed environment was enough, was discredited.) Not only men and women generally, but also homosexual people, have detectable brain differences. These facts, and the right to think differently from average, should be emphasized by a gender-identity program.
The director of the program mentioned to me that superintelligent girls are at risk of dropping out of advanced math classes because they are so often the only girls in those classes. A case can be made for segregated math classes, true. I heard no mention of the potentially more important issue of developing senses of man-ness and woman-ness: I am pretty sure that boys benefit from all-boy classes with a man in charge and girls do better in all-girl classes with a woman in charge if the subject matter is human relations and how to react constructively to new urges. Boys and girls each prefer not to risk ridicule from opposite-sex classmates. Not mentioned.
The director did mention interest in how, relative to Europe, fewer female politicians exist. Government growth and tax increases have been credibly linked to women’s voting. The male-female mindset difference that leads to such a fact (or defensible theory) should be known to a gender-studies program director.
As a physician with great intolerance of mindless protocols, I think what I call the mammogram paradox should be explainable by anyone interested in gender studies. The war on breast cancer has been won. The risk of breast cancer in a woman can be reduced to that of a man, or below, with these three habits. first, do not have an abortion, for doing so confuses breast-duct development. Second, ration brassiere time to 12 hours or less, so that when breast cancer cells do form they are killed in the lymph noes. Third, take 5mg of unreduced iodine daily. duct cells contain iodine pumps, and they can get strained if there is not enough iodine. Sure, the medically-organized-relying-on-nonsense  (conventional practitioners, or morons if you prefer) physicians will mention mammograms and not these preventive measures. But where is the outcry from organized feminists? A curious silence here. And the director of gender studies? Unaware of these published facts.
In higher education, gender issues are inextricably linked to campus censorship. Some behavior (rape, for example) is forbidden. Other behavior, such as respectful noncontroversial quiet conversation, is permitted. There is an intermediate range of behavior that is discouraged but not formally prohibited. I interpret available evidence to infer that some deviation into the semi-prohibited behavior is needed to induce sexual attraction. Evidence includes the fact that what constitutes sexual attraction in a man’s behavior has not been precisely identified; descriptions instead refer to “charisma” or other derivatives of the attractive behavior instead of the behavior itself. Women, meanwhile, are besieged with clothing fashions: what was provocative becomes uninteresting soon afterward. Biologist Amotz Zahavi notes that animals display otherwise irrelevant feathers, plumage, etc. I suspect there is cognitive dissonance involved, so that the animals do not mate with others that are genetically very similar to themselves.
College campuses and other environments that formally prohibit what is otherwise semi-permitted behaviors stifle free expressions of sexual attraction, also the expressions of man-ness and woman-ness that have no sexual intent. Thus bound and gagged, college men and women cannot safely display their personalities, can have their developing gender identities warped, and can easily get caught in bad marriages.
Perhaps advising students about the hazards of campus censorship should be a part of the curriculum, gender relevant or not. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education www.thefire.org provides good information in that context. So does the movie “Indoctrination U.” which can be previewed at www.indoctrination-u.com. [addendum 2018: it is viewable for free at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdbSP_Ramvs]
The opportunities to pursue these issues seem to exist and to be neglected. I regret that I cannot afford money gifts to the school and must confine my assistance to advice or to conferring with whomever is interested. I may be out of line writing to you like this, but I would rather risk reproof than allow a bad marriage to occur due to my silence. If my cognitive dissonance theory has any merit, then it can be expanded to help prevent child molesting, a big problem here in Maine. If my perspective on gender identity, or on anything else, would be of use, please let me know. I would be happy to help. 
Very truly yours,
Edward Harshman, Class of 1973