NYT: Gender Pronouns Can Be Tricky on Campus. Harvard Is Making Them Stick. [View all]

The push for personal pronouns like “they/them” and “ze/hir” can ignite a power struggle in college classrooms. The Kennedy School of Government’s solution? Stickers.

For generations of future diplomats and cabinet officials educated at Harvard’s renowned John F. Kennedy School of Government, orientation day has come with a name placard that the students carry from class to class, so their professors can easily call on them.

When Diego Garcia Blum, 30, got his placard last fall, the first-year graduate student immediately took a Sharpie to it, writing “He/Him” next to the big block letters of his name. Other students did the same thing, writing “She/Her” and “They/Them.”

“Yup! Day 1,” Mr. Garcia Blum, recalled, adding, “That’s when I thought, the students are ahead of the school.”

But despite its reputation as a bastion of the establishment, the Kennedy School followed the students’ lead, agreeing to provide clear plastic stickers this semester with four pronoun options that students could apply to their name cards: “He/Him,” “She/Her,” “They/Them” and “Ze/Hir.”
<snip>

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/19/us/gender-pronouns-college.html