Professor Harvey Mansfield of Harvard University answered questions and gave lectures on campus concerning his book Manliness and what he sees as an ever increasing “gender-neutral society.”

Mansfield’s lecture Tuesday night, part of the John W. Pope Lecture Series, in the Nelson Hall Auditorium was sparsely filled.

His lecture, entitled “Manliness and the Defense of Liberty” drew a small crowd of professionals and few students — barely filling half of the large auditorium.

“I thought there would be lots of people there,” Sanford Kessler, associate professor of political science, said.

The quality of Mansfield’s lecture Kessler believed would draw a crowd is the controversy surrounding his subject matter — manliness and roles of the male and female gender.

These qualities coupled with Mansfield’s defense of former President of Harvard University Lawrence Summers’ comments concerning the difference between men and women in the top echelon of science and mathematics were hot topics for those who attended.

When asked by one attendee if “Lawrence Summers’ resignation was manly?” Mansfield answered “no it was not manly” and felt Summers should have gone out in a blaze and not just resigned.

Criticism came with the title of Mansfield’s lecture.

One attendee didn’t feel Mansfield addressed the issue of “the defense of liberty” and questioned whether Mansfield could give a discussion concerning “Manliness and the Defense of Tyranny” to which Mansfield agreed.

“He didn’t really talk about the topic,” Kessler said. He spoke more of “manliness and what we think about that.”

Kessler and students in his political science seminar, “Classic Perspectives on American Democracy,” had an opportunity yesterday to question Mansfield about his arguments for manliness and gender roles. Speaking in front of a smaller audience gave Mansfield the opportunity to discuss and defend his work.

Questions arose concerning Mansfield’s definitions of different sexual roles, and in Kessler’s view he didn’t “get off as easily” as he had at the Pope lecture.

When questioned by a student about a woman’s choice to stay at home or seek a career, Mansfield replied that choice is “hostile to any relationship” and “hostile to love.”

Although Mansfield fielded a barrage of questions for an hour and a half, some students weren’t satisfied with his answers.

“He seemed to avoid a couple of questions,” Anne Scheunemann, a senior in biochemistry, said.

She didn’t, however, disagree with all of his assertions.

“He makes valid points,” Scheunemann said. “There are obvious differences between men and women, but it doesn’t make one sex better than another.”

Stephanie Brown, senior in biochemistry, didn’t agree with Mansfield.

“I thought it wasn’t perhaps well-based in fact,” Brown said.

Kessler, who supplied the prologue and first chapter of Mansfield’s book so his students could be adequately prepared, worried about the judgments critics formed against Mansfield.

Kessler worried “people will argue for and against of reading the whole book” and not realize the “the elegant, philosophical argument.”

While Kessler and professors in the political science department embraced the opportunity to discuss Manliness with the author, his visit did not enthrall another member of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Cat Warren, director of women’s and gender studies, did not read the book but felt that Mansfield’s Manliness did not represent “exciting intellectual or interesting work.”

“I don’t think Harvey Mansfield is dangerous,” Warren said. “I think Harvey Mansfield is ludicrous. People are smart enough when they read and sort out these arguments to know what has validity and what has little intellectual credence.”

She did qualify the previous statement by questioning whether Mansfield’s “argument dismissible?”

“At one level, yes,” Warren began. “At another level when we see people like Lawrence Summers parodying parts of these arguments and these arguments influencing institutions like Harvard you have to worry a little.”

Mansfield’s departure from campus had mixed reactions. While people like Warren believe money from the Pope endowment could better be spent on speakers, even “conservative” speakers, rather than Mansfield, others, like Kessler, embraced a speaker who is “more moderate than he appears to be.”