A New Look at Harvard, Radcliffe, and Women

By Alvin Powell

Contributing Writer

In 1997, as Harvard prepared to mark the 25th anniversary of women living in Yard dormitories, people repeatedly referred to the event as the anniversary of coeducation at Harvard.

The only problem was that they were wrong. Coeducation began not in 1972, when women moved into the Yard, but in 1943, when Harvard and Radcliffe students began sharing classes together.

Harvard History Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich heard some of the mistaken references and realized she'd heard them before -- and not just in reference to that event. She came to the conclusion that there is a lot of confusion surrounding the relationship between Harvard and Radcliffe and the role of women in the history of the two institutions.

"It became very obvious to me that very few people, myself included, had a sense of the history of women at Harvard and Radcliffe," Ulrich said. "It is amazing that an institution with such a sense of history really didn't have a sense of its own history with respect to gender."

Luckily, Ulrich, the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History and director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, was in a position to do something to clear up that confusion.

She contacted Mary Maples Dunn, director of the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation at Radcliffe College's Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. Together they began planning a conference on the issue.

The one-day conference will be held on Saturday, Nov. 14, "Gender at the Gates: New Perspectives on Harvard and Radcliffe History." The conference is cosponsored by the Charles Warren Center and the Schlesinger Library. The conference will kick off a year of work on gender at the two institutions, concluding with a second conference next fall.

In between, a group of students will conduct research on the subject of women at Harvard and Radcliffe. Their work will be jointly funded by the Schlesinger Pforzheimer student research fund and the Warren Center student research fund. Conference organizers are also considering publishing the students' findings in a book.

"We thought it would be good to have Harvard and Radcliffe institutions that are dedicated to American history come together to examine the issue," said Ulrich. "As we began to talk, we discovered a lot of interest in the issue."

Dunn said people have the impression that because Harvard started out as a men's institution, women weren't involved in its early history. Nothing could be further from the truth, she said.

"Harvard may have been a men's institution, but they couldn't have run it without women," Dunn said. "We feel there's lots to learn here."

Dunn said she's hoping students, faculty, staff, and alumni/ae will be attracted to the conference. Registration closes Oct. 28.

Current Research

Two seniors, Jennifer Stetzer and Karen Lepri, are planning on presenting at the conference research they have conducted on women at Harvard and Radcliffe. Stetzer is examining the 1969 student strike, the role of Radcliffe students in the strike, and the strike's impact.

Lepri is delving further back in time, using drama at Radcliffe -- and the cross-dressing that the single-sex productions required -- as a lens through which to examine attitudes toward women of the day.

Lepri said she's interested in the choices that were made and how they affected and reflected attitudes about femininity. For example, women would often produce Shakespearean plays in which they wore robes instead of pants. This became particularly important after the Radcliffe Student Organization passed a rule in 1894 prohibiting the wearing of pants by women in theater.

While wearing pants was prohibited, no objections were raised when Radcliffe women donned fake beards for the very same productions.

"I'm curious about how all this related to standards of femininity at the time," Lepri said.

Lepri likes the idea of a conference, largely because she thinks a lot of people don't know that women were at Harvard even before Radcliffe opened in 1879. Women wanting to learn Greek sat in on classes, she said, and professors' wives sometimes helped with research.

Ulrich said the past is important, not just to preserve knowledge, but because it can teach lessons about living today. Students, for example, can understand that generations of students before them struggled with issues and problems similar to those that are facing them now.

"I think perhaps the past can teach us something," Ulrich said.

Another example is that it's easier to understand why Harvard doesn't have more tenured women faculty if you also understand that Radcliffe didn't have its own faculty. Radcliffe students were taught by professors from Harvard.

"I'm the first woman to be tenured in American history," Ulrich said. "That would be unthinkable if Radcliffe were a separate institution."

Full Schedule

The one-day conference will begin when Dunn welcomes attendees, after which Ulrich will present a half-hour session on potential areas of new gender-related historical research.

Other sessions will include presentations by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, professor of American studies and history at Smith College, on "The Great Debate on the Education of Women: President Eliot of Harvard and President Thomas of Bryn Mawr," and Sally Schwager, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, on "Taking up the Challenge: The Origins of Radcliffe." Others will discuss reports from roundtable discussions on areas such as undergraduate life, campus activism, classroom dynamics, graduate and professional schools, Radcliffe's roles, and women faculty and staff.

Though no workshops will specifically address the ongoing discussion about Radcliffe's future, Ulrich said she's sure the topic will come up. And knowing the past -- for Radcliffe or anything else -- can only help those discussing the future, she said.

"I think that people who don't understand the past don't understand the present," Ulrich said. "And you need to understand the present to make it better."