The Theory of Communicative Action, his 1980s magnum opus, was not (to put it mildly) as accessible as some of his newspaper opinion pieces. But its central idea—that our nature as linguistic beings puts reason and the search for consensus at the core of who we are—remains an antidote both to intellectual relativism and Trumpian realism, which elevates national or individual self-interest above all other sources of human motivation.
After completing her BA at Barnard and her PhD in French at UC Berkeley, she taught women's studies at San Francisco State University and Yale University before changing direction and earning her law degree at New College of California. Helene put French literature in conversation with feminism in her studies and teaching.
The move to cancel gender studies is explicitly justified as a way to comply with Donald Trump's executive order of last year titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. That document makes the biological reality of sex a matter not of science but of law.