Harvard Law School professor of Japanese Legal Studies J. Mark Ramseyer has faced an outpouring of public criticism from government officials worldwide against his upcoming paper, which claims that sex slaves, known as âcomfort women,â under the Imperial Japanese military were voluntary employed.
Ramseyerâs paper stoked international controversy by disputing the historical consensus that âcomfort womenâ â a euphemism commonly used to refer to women and girls used as sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese military before and during World War II â were compelled into sex work against their will.
Unlike many scholastic disputes, which do not stretch far outside academia, Ramseyerâs article has drawn strong responses from high-ranking government officials of several countries, including the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, and even North Korea.
Dozens of demonstrators gathered outside Johnston Gate Saturday afternoon in a protest organized by the Korean American Society of Massachusetts against Harvard Law professor J. Mark Ramseyer, calling for him to apologize for his recent controversial paper on âcomfort womenâ and for the publishing journal to retract the article.
Ramseyerâs paper âContracting for sex in the Pacific War,â which will be published in the International Review of Law and Economics, stoked international controversy last month by claiming that sex slaves under the Imperial Japanese military, known as âcomfort women,â were voluntarily employed. Many of the comfort women were from Korea, and Ramseyer has faced significant backlash in South Korea since the paper was widely publicized in late January.
Harvard Law professor of Japanese Legal Studies J. Mark Ramseyer reportedly sent a thank you message to a supporter this week whose email denigrated Koreansâ ânational characterâ and called Ramseyer Japanâs âonly hope.â
Ramseyer is already under fire in Korea for a paper that claims â against the historical consensus â that sex slaves under the Imperial Japanese military, known as âcomfort women,â were voluntarily employed.
âComfort womenâ is a term used to refer to women and girls from Imperial Japanâs occupied territories â many of whom were of Korean origin â that were sexually enslaved by the Japanese military before and during World War II. Ramseyer drew international backlash last month with his article, âContracting for sex in the Pacific War,â that claimed that those women were gainfully contracted to Japanese brothels.
Bioengineering professor Kevin K. âKitâ Parker wrote in a statement to The Crimson Thursday that he plans to teach a course on data analysis and policing strategy in fall 2021, despite cancelling the course this semester after student backlash.
In the statement, Parker â a professor at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences â said he is continuing the research that he planned to conduct in the class on the Springfield, Mass. police department, and criticized Harvard students who pushed for the courseâs cancellation in late January.
Parkerâs course Engineering Sciences 298R: âData Fusion in Complex Systems: A Case Studyâ would have enabled SEAS graduate students to use data analytics to study how the Springfield Police Department deploys Counter-Criminal Continuum policing, or C3 â a law enforcement strategy â in the cityâs North End neighborhood. C3 was developed by a friend of Parkerâs and is based on Unit