Q&A with Maayan Sudai

GSL: Congratulations, Maayan! What most excites you about this new faculty position?

For me, becoming a professor was a belated dream. As a young girl I never envisioned myself as an academic. Because I was first generation to receive an academic education, I didn’t really know what to expect when I started my undergraduate studies, but pretty soon I realized that doing research and writing is a real passion, and so I decided to continue to higher degrees with the hope of becoming a law professor. Today I feel very fortunate for taking this path. This position gives me the intellectual and financial support I need to continue doing research and engaging in the great effort to produce reliable and ethical knowledge. I am also super excited to go back to my alma mater where it all began for me, and to Haifa which is a very cool city in Israel that is both multicultural and has great beaches.

GSL: How did you come to specialize in gender and science?

In my personal life I was always somewhat rebellious towards traditional gender norms. I advanced this impulse in feminist legal theory classes when I became a student. During my studies I was involved in a project meant to provide legal support to intersex patients who fought against the medical protocol of assigning babies with DSD (disorders of sex development/intersex) to female or male via surgery in their infancy years. Here is where science entered the picture. I figured that in order to develop a robust legal critique of the medical protocol, it was crucial that I also acquire an ability to critically examine medical and scientific knowledge, data, and protocols. I therefore started delving into the subject of gender and science more profoundly, and made it into a formal field in my doctorate studies. I was not only fascinated by the richness of theories and perspectives in the gender and science field, but was also extremely hopeful about the prospects of doing interdisciplinary work that would integrate gender critiques of law and of science/medicine productively.

GSL: What kinds of classes will you be teaching?

I will teach a class on sex equality, a class about reproduction ethics and the law, and a seminar about health law, bioethics and technology.

GSL: Tell us about your work with the GenderSci Lab. What is your role in the Lab and what sort research do you do?

I will be leading the “Biology and Sexual Diversity in Law and Public Policy” project, which aims to identify rising policy issues that depend on scientific knowledge, and particularly on biological claims about sex/gender. Too many times we see policy decisions and even legislation based on a misguided reading and interpretation of scientific studies and medical reports regarding sex and gender differences. Our hope is to facilitate a better-informed interaction between the legal and scientific fields in the area of sex and gender. Better communication means, for example, reviewing the reliability of scientific sources, critically observing how policy makers and legislators infer from scientific studies and evidence in policy-making, finding blind-spots in both scientists’ and law makers’ perspectives which may change the overall understanding of a topic, etc. Currently we are working on proposed legislation that seeks to define sex in a way that would exclude gender from its scope and would likely have far-reaching consequences to the health care of many sex/gender non-conforming individuals. The GenderSci Lab brings such a diverse set of perspectives from really smart people engaging to think collectively and deeply about cutting edge issues, and so I am really enthusiastic about what we can achieve together.

Originally published at https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/gendersci/blog/gendersci-lab-member-maayan-sudai-appointed-assistant-professor-law-and-women-and