[Editorial] Comfort women paper facing international condemnation should be retracted

Harvard Law School professor J. Mark Ramseyer. (Screenshot from Harvard Law School website)

An academic paper by Harvard Law School professor J. Mark Ramseyer that portrays the former comfort women as prostitutes is facing a drumbeat of denunciation from around the world. The comfort women were forced to work in brothels for the Japanese army during World War II.

Even though the growing controversy has been picked up by mainstream American newspapers such as the New York Times, neither Ramseyer nor the journal that has accepted his article have altered their publication plans.

Academic freedom is no justification for misrepresenting brutal sexual crimes in wartime. Considering that Ramseyer’s piece doesn’t have the slightest academic grounds to support it, it ought to be retracted.

Erik Maskin, a Nobel laureate and professor at Harvard University, is one of more than 2,400 economists from around the world who signed a statement criticizing Ramseyer’s paper, according to media in the US. The New York Times reported on Feb. 26 that these economists have criticized Ramseyer for using game theory “as cover to legitimize horrific atrocities.”

Amy Stanley, a professor at Northwestern University, and four other scholars of Japanese history posted a rebuttal online in which they noted that in his claims that comfort women had agreed to voluntary contracts, Ramseyer had not produced any actual contracts signed by Korean comfort women.

“An international chorus of historians called for the article to be retracted, saying that his arguments ignored extensive historical evidence and sounded more like a page from Japan’s far-right playbook,” the New York Times reported.

But Ramseyer has not officially acknowledged his errors, and the International Review of Law and Economics reportedly still plans to print his paper in its March issue.

Their positions are incomprehensible. Scholars are entitled to discuss any sensitive topic, but brazenly printing an article that denies universal human rights and defends sex crimes against children leaves a stain on academic freedom and authority.

We hope that Ramseyer will waste no time in voluntarily withdrawing his article.

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