Radcliffe College
Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was founded in 1879. In 1999, it was fully incorporated into Harvard College. The college was named for the early Harvard benefactor Anne Mowlson and was one of the Seven Sisters colleges.
For the first 70 years of its existence, Radcliffe conferred undergraduate and graduate degrees. Beginning in 1963, it awarded joint Harvard-Radcliffe diplomas to undergraduates. In 1977, Radcliffe signed a formal "non-merger merger" agreement with Harvard, and completed a full integration with Harvard in 1999.
Within Harvard University, Radcliffe's former administrative campus, Radcliffe Yard, is home to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Former Radcliffe housing at the Radcliffe Quadrangle, including Pforzheimer House, Cabot House, and Currier House, has been incorporated into Harvard College's house system. Under the terms of the 1999 consolidation, Radcliffe Yard and the Radcliffe Quadrangle retain the "Radcliffe" designation in perpetuity.
History
19th century
The "Harvard Annex," a private program for the instruction of women by Harvard faculty, was founded in 1879 after prolonged efforts by women to gain access to Harvard College. Arthur Gilman, a Cambridge resident, banker, philanthropist and writer, was the founder of what became The Annex/Radcliffe. At a time when higher education for women was a sharply controversial topic, Gilman hoped to establish a higher educational opportunity for his daughter that exceeded what was generally available in female seminaries and the new women's colleges such as Vassar and Wellesley. These schools were in their early years and had substantial numbers of faculty who were not university trained.In conversations with the chair of Harvard College's classics department, Gilman outlined a plan to have Harvard faculty deliver instruction to a small group of Cambridge and Boston women. He approached Harvard President Charles William Eliot with the idea, and Eliot approved. Gilman and Eliot recruited a group of prominent and well-connected Cambridge women to manage the plan. These women were Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Mary H. Cooke, Stella Scott Gilman, Mary B. Greenough, Ellen Hooper Gurney, Alice Mary Longfellow, and Lillian Horsford.
Building upon Gilman's premise, the committee convinced 44 members of the Harvard faculty to consider giving lectures to female students in exchange for extra income paid by the committee. The program came to be known informally as "The Harvard Annex." The course of study for the first year included 51 courses in 13 subject areas, an "impressive curriculum with greater diversity than that of any other women's college at its inception. Courses were offered in Greek, Latin, English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish; philosophy, political economy, history, music, mathematics, physics, and natural history." The first graduation ceremonies took place in the library of Longfellow House on Brattle Street, just above where George Washington's generals had slept a century earlier.
The committee members hoped that by raising an endowment for The Annex, they could persuade Harvard to admit women directly into Harvard College, but the university resisted. In his 1869 inaugural address as president of Harvard, Charles Eliot summed up the official Harvard position toward female students when he said,
"The world knows next to nothing about the capacities of the female sex. Only after generations of civil freedom and social equality will it be possible to obtain the data necessary for an adequate discussion of woman's natural tendencies, tastes, and capabilities...It is not the business of the University to decide this mooted point."
Harvard Examinations for Women
From 1874 to 1881, Harvard administered the Harvard Examinations for Women to increase women's educational opportunities, after being pressured by the Women's Education Association of Boston. During these seven years, 107 women participated; 36 received certificates. The low number of certificates received by women led Harvard to change the exam in 1881. At the time, women could also be admitted into the "Harvard Annex", the women's version of a college education. The "Harvard Examinations for Women" included subjects such as history; literature of Shakespeare and Chaucer; languages such as Latin, French, and German; botany; and mathematics. These tests were similar to the admittance exam given to men applying to Harvard College. When a woman passed a subject, she would receive a signed certificate from Harvard's president acknowledging her passing mark.The Harvard Examinations for Women were ended two years after "Harvard Annex" officially became Radcliffe College, the women's equivalent to Harvard College.
When confronted in 1883 with the notion of females receiving Harvard degrees, the university's treasurer stated, "I have no prejudice in the matter of education of women and am quite willing to see Yale or Columbia take any risks they like, but I feel bound to protect Harvard College from what seems to me a risky experiment."
In 1888, Harvard President Eliot communicated to a faculty member he intended to hire, that "There is no obligation to teach at The Annex. Those professors who on general grounds take an interest in the education of women...feel some obligation but there are many professors who think it their duty NOT to teach there, in which opinion some of the Corporation and Overseers agree."
Eliot was strongly against co-education, saying, "The difficulties involved in a common residence of hundreds of young men and women of immature character and marriageable age are very grave. The necessary police regulations are exceedingly burdensome."
In December 1893, The Boston Globe reported, "President of Harvard To Sign Parchments of the Fair Graduates". Students seeking admission to the new women's college were required to sit for the same entrance examinations required of Harvard College students.
The committee persevered despite Eliot's skepticism. The project proved to be a success, attracting a growing number of students. As a result, the Annex was incorporated in 1882 as the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, with Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, widow of Harvard professor Louis Agassiz, as president. This society awarded certificates to students but did not have the power to confer academic degrees.
In subsequent years, ongoing discussions with Harvard about admitting women directly into the university still came to a dead end. Instead, Harvard and the Annex negotiated the creation of a degree-granting institution, with Harvard professors serving as its faculty and visiting body. This modification of the Annex was chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as Radcliffe College in 1894.
By 1896, the Globe could headline a story: "Sweet Girls. They Graduate in Shoals at Radcliffe. Commencement Exercises at Sanders Theatre. Galleries Filled with Fair Friends and Students. Handsome Mrs. Agassiz Made Fine Address. Pres Eliot Commends the Work of the New Institution." The Globe said, "Eliot stated that the percentage of graduates with distinction is much higher at Radcliffe than at Harvard" and that although "t is to yet to be seen whether the women have the originality and pioneering spirit which will fit them to be leaders, perhaps they will when they have had as many generations of thorough education as men."
20th century
In 1904, historian Mary Caroline Crawford wrote the following about the founding and early days of Radcliffe College:"...it set up housekeeping in two unpretending rooms in the Appian Way, Cambridge....Probably in all the history of colleges in America there could not be found a story so full of color and interest as that of the beginning of this woman's college. The bathroom of the little house was pressed into service as a laboratory for physics, students and instructors alike making the best of all inconveniences. Because the institution was housed with a private family, generous mothering was given to the girls when they needed it."
In the first two decades of the 20th century, Radcliffe championed the beginnings of its own campus, consisting of the Radcliffe Yard and the Radcliffe Quadrangle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not far from Harvard University. The original Radcliffe gymnasium and library, and the Bertram, Whitman, Eliot, and Barnard dormitories were constructed during this period. With the 1920s and 1930s, dormitories Briggs Hall and Cabot Hall were built on the Quadrangle, and in the Radcliffe Yard, the administrative building Byerly Hall and the classroom building Longfellow Hall. Mary Almy was the architect.
English professor Barrett Wendell warned his colleagues about continued cooperation with Radcliffe, saying that Harvard could "suddenly find itself committed to coeducation somewhat as unwary men lay themselves open to actions for breach of promise." In Wendell's view, Harvard needed to remain "purely virile."
In 1923, Ada Comstock, a leader in the movement to provide women with higher education, who hailed from the University of Minnesota and Smith College, became the college's third president. She was a key figure in the college's early 20th-century development. Speaking of her, one alumna remembers that "we were in awe of 'Miss Comstock... and knew even then that we had been touched by a vanishing breed of female educator. Ada Comstock had an extraordinary presence—she radiated dignity, strength, and decisiveness." In the early 1940s, she negotiated a new relationship with Harvard that vastly expanded women's access to the full Harvard course catalog.
Growth
David McCord set the college apart from the other Seven Sister institutions, saying "there is one respect in which Radcliffe differs from her sisters, and this should be made clear. Although she divides with Barnard, Bryn Mawr, and Wellesley all advantages of a large city, and enjoys the further privilege of being front-fence neighbor to Harvard University, Radcliffe alone has had from the first the strength of a university faculty....Thus, from the beginning, Radcliffe has been a woman's Harvard. It is still a separate institution, with its own corporation, receiving from Harvard no financial aid." Because it had a university – as opposed to "collegiate" – faculty, Radcliffe was unique among the Seven Sisters in being able to provide a graduate program with a wide number of opportunities for students to pursue advanced studies.M. Carey Thomas, the second president and chief visionary of Bryn Mawr College, lobbied against the conversion of the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women into Radcliffe College precisely because the Cambridge rival's access to a university faculty competed with Bryn Mawr's own academic ambitions. Between 1890 and 1963, Radcliffe awarded more than 750 PhDs and more than 3000 masters degrees to women. During the 1950s, the school conferred more PhDs to women than any schools other than Columbia and the University of Chicago. In 1955–56, the college produced more female PhDs than any other institution in the United States.
Because Radcliffe's faculty was Harvard's, in the college's first 50 years, professors from Harvard, each under individual contracts with the Radcliffe administration – duplicated lectures, providing them first for men in the Harvard Yard and then crossing the Cambridge Common to provide the same lectures to women in the Radcliffe Yard. Professor Elwood Byerly wrote that he "always found the spirit, industry, and ability of the girls admirable—indeed, the average has been higher in my mathematics classes in the Annex than in my classes at the college.
In March 1915, The New York Times reported in 1915 that all of the prizes offered in a playwriting competition at Harvard and Radcliffe that year were won by Radcliffe students. One of the Harvard contributions received honorable mention.
In the early 1960s, the newspaper also reported that "taking the same courses and exams as Harvard, 60 percent of Radcliffe's girls were on the Dean's List as compared with 42 percent of Harvard men ."
Dorothy Howells noted that, "Allegations were made that Radcliffe was a "vampire" and a "temptress" enticing the teacher from his career-advancing research and publication with the lure of additional income."
Ruth Hubbard, a member of the Harvard faculty from 1974 to 1990 and a member of the Radcliffe class of 1944, noted that "the senior professors were less than thrilled to have to repeat their lectures at Radcliffe. The lower rank faculty members, who were sometimes detailed off to teach the introductory science courses at Radcliffe instead of teaching Harvard students, felt even more declasse."
Marion Cannon Schlesinger, Radcliffe Class of 1934, noted that "there were, to be sure, certain professors who looked with horror at the incursions of women into the sacred precincts of Harvard College, even at the safe distance of the Radcliffe Yard, and would have nothing to do with the academic arrangements by which their colleagues taught the Radcliffe girls. Professor Roger Merriman, for example, the first master of Eliot House and a professor of history, would not have been caught dead teaching a Radcliffe class.".
During World War II, declines in male enrollment at Harvard and heightened sensitivity about the use of resources called for a new, more efficient arrangement concerning faculty time. Under the leadership of President Comstock, Radcliffe and Harvard signed an agreement that for the first time allowed Radcliffe and Harvard students to attend the same classes in the Harvard Yard, officially beginning joint instruction in 1943. Equally significant, the agreement ended the era in which individual faculty members at Harvard could choose whether to enter contracts with Radcliffe.
The agreement instead opened the entire Harvard catalogue to Radcliffe students, in exchange for which Radcliffe made a payment to Harvard of a fixed portion of Radcliffe tuitions. President Comstock noted that the agreement was "the most significant event since our charter was granted in 1894." All Harvard faculty, whether interested or not, had a legal obligation to teach Radcliffe students. In practice a few holdouts on the Harvard faculty maneuvered around this obligation by announcing that their classes had "limited enrollment" and then limiting enrollment solely to male students. At the time, both Harvard and Radcliffe were adamant in telling the press that this arrangement was "joint instruction" but not "coeducation." Reacting to the agreement, Harvard President James Bryant Conant said, "Harvard was not coeducational in theory, only in practice." Indeed, Radcliffe continued to maintain a separate admissions office which, by general acknowledgment, was more stringent in its academic requirements of applicants than Harvard's. Most extra-curricular activities at the two colleges remained separate.
Following World War II, Radcliffe negotiated a higher ceiling on its student enrollment. This success was orchestrated in tandem with additional housing construction. Moors Hall was completed in 1949, Holmes Hall in 1952, the Cronkhite Graduate Center in 1956, and Comstock Hall in 1958. The added dormitory space and national recruiting campaigns led to an increasingly national and international student body.
In 1961, the Jordan Cooperative Houses, an option for students to engage in more communal living, with student responsibility for shopping for food, preparing meals and housekeeping, were built, and the college purchased Wolbach Hall, an apartment building also known as 124 Walker Street, in 1964. Radcliffe constructed Hilles Library in 1966 and the Radcliffe Quadrangle Athletic Center in 1982.
Also in 1961, then President Mary Bunting reorganized the autonomous Radcliffe dormitories into "houses," mirroring Harvard's houses and Yale University's residential colleges.
The three houses were eventually consolidated into two. In 1970, the college completed construction of Currier House, the first Radcliffe House designed with the "House Plan" in mind. South House eventually was renamed Cabot House in 1984 while North House became Pforzheimer House in 1995.
Bunting felt that the house system would give Radcliffe students an intellectual community comparable to what Harvard students were getting, bringing together faculty and students in a way the free-standing Radcliffe dormitories did not, and allowing all to see with greater clarity the aspirations, capabilities, and interests of undergraduate women. Speaking generally about her philosophy for Radcliffe, President Bunting noted that "part of our special purpose is to convey to our students and through them to others that there is no basic conflict between being intellectual and being feminine."
Bunting also established the Radcliffe Institute in 1961. The institute – a precursor to the current Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study – gave financial support, access to research libraries and facilities, and recognition to scholarly women who had taken time away from intellectual pursuits to focus on home and family. In providing women with a venue to return to academia, Bunting was recognizing that traditional academic institutions were premised on a male life trajectory where a scholar's domestic concerns were taken care of by someone else.
The Radcliffe Institute, later renamed the Bunting Institute, was an institution premised on the needs of a female life trajectory, providing opportunities that might otherwise have been truncated by women's decisions during early adulthood to leave academia to raise children.
In the 1930s, Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell took a dim view of Radcliffe, maintaining that the time Harvard professors spent providing lectures to women distracted the faculty from their scholarship, and providing Radcliffe women access to research facilities and Harvard museums was – in his view – an unnecessary burden on the university's resources. He threatened to scuttle the relationship between the two institutions. Radcliffe was forced to agree to a limitation on the size of its student body, with 750 spaces for undergraduates and 250 for graduate students.
A ceiling on enrollment of women when compared to the enrollment of men was renegotiated upward at various points throughout the relationship with Harvard and remained constant in Radcliffe's operations until it began its ultimate incorporation into Harvard University in 1977.