Virginia Woolf, to whom university admittance had been forbidden, watched the universities open their doors. Though she was happy that her sisters could study in university libraries, she cautioned women against joining the procession of educated men and being co-opted into protecting a “civilization” with values alien to women. Now, as Woolf’s disloyal (unfaithful) daughters, who have professional positions in Belgian universities, Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret, along with a collective of women scholars in Belgium and France, question their academic careers and reexamine the place of women and their role in thinking, both inside and outside the university. They urge women to heed Woolf’s cry—Think We Must—and to always make a fuss about injustice, cruelty, and arrogance.

Isabelle Stengers is a Belgian philosopher who has authored or coauthored more than twenty-five books and two hundred articles on the philosophy of science.


Vinciane Despret works at the intersection of ethology and human psychology and is a fundamental thinker in the field of animal studies.

April Knutson is lecturer in French at the University of Minnesota.