you say? >> nancy spent much of her professional life after graduate school at harvard, as a marriage force in princeton's administration, so i'm honored you are here today nancy. princeton, had a woman's institution. it lasted only ten years. i think had it been able to gather the resources it needed in the way that radcliffe was able. it would have had an important impact on princeton's life. it is complicating because i look around me and i know that there are many women here that are loyal to the education institution that educated them and feel brisley about the

issues that i raised because in some way it may challenge their experience. the institution as faced full coeducation as harvard now has full coeducation. has a special experience. they are all different. you would -- i would love to engage you in a conversation about what happened at princeton, you know it better than anyone, you were there in the beginning and worked through it. but it has been a great strength for harvard to have had such strong alumni for so many years. and it -- i hope is a source of pride. what has happened in the period

that has followed, and i hope it's a source of pride also that with the tenure track system, harvard is now really addressing the question of the promotion of junior members of the faculty up and that will lead to more women on the faculty and a better balance. i don't know the pro portions to princeton faculty of women, it always seemed to me that you had stellar figures there, and so, i think one thing would be interested a more dynamic kind of conversation, about this, which we cannot have. thank you for your question. >> hi, i'm megan marshal, i was a fellow at red cli-- radcliffe few years ago and i think i was a member of the last class to

bed a -- to be admitted under that class. it's been written how the under graduates gawked at a woman coming in their midst in the library, do you know if it was 1843 until 1967 when lamont was allowed in. were there women allowed to use the libraries as independent scholars at that time? >> you know, widener library was fully open to women, i don't know when it began, but probably always as a main resource. so, that in 1894, when harvard

opened its graduate courses to women i would imagine that the library went along. >> i'm remembering that there are noveles about, jaffe, whatever they are, they talk about not being allowed to go to widener, i think the radcliffe under graduates -- >> no, no. >> is that wrong? i hope i'm wrong. good, i'm glad i am wrong. >> i think ms. jaffe may have gotten it wrong. i'm class of harvard class of '63, we were allowed in widener, what i remember from the under graduate years is that you were not allowed into the stacks. but that was any under graduate, you could get permission from

your thesis adviser and then you were allowed in the stacks. you had to otherwise wait and sit and wait for them to bring you the books. now it's changed. it's open stacks. any graduate can or under graduate can run into the stacks. but it was our under graduate library, so why go to lamont, it was full of all the smelly socks, right? well, i'm not sure it was open until midnight then. but the other thing was, i do think the graduate libraries were probably open to women, i don't know how far back, the other thing i wanted to mention, helen was that my class, harvard/radcliffe '63 was the first class to officially have a diplo diploma, and i always wondered why, and it was way before coeducational living, just my diploma has the signature above

bunting's signature and i think it's because a few year s earlier, harvard made their diplomas english and not latin. >> my name is judy smith. and i am a historian and was a student from '66 to '70, i want you to talk about the cost of invisiblity. that was interesting to me. could you expand on that a little bit? >> thank you, judy. the cost of invisiblity. here is something that may have been fairly short lived, you know by 1910, the buildings were being built on between shepard and linian, that i look out upon

each day. the radcliffe dorms, and so radcliffe was a visible presence. early on, and as i was actually delivering this talk. i was thinking, well, some of what i may be saying may be the kind of thing you say for some years but not for others. like, what was mrs. agasy saying, was she talking to elliott and the corporation and said something else quietly to women? you begin to get a student life at radcliffe like every other place. and then, young women are no longer invisible. they are giving plays and doing all the things that people do. they have organizations. and participating, so, it was something of the earliest years,

but it meant a certain lack of assertion i think that had to do with -- with the way that the education was carried on. as most of you know in 1944, harvard and radcliffe merged classes and put them in the yard, so professors were no longer marching to the radcliffe yard in order to be able to give their lectures a second time, that had to do with the men being away at the war, why have a empty classroom, when you have women in the classroom. that was never changed after the war. um, there's a certain -- what i sensed is a certain lack of assertion that i found, for example at welsly or smith,

about the power of the women's presence and the value placed on those female faculty members that were teaching them as well as the men. >> i want to add a anecdotal thing. i came by myself from missouri and took a cab from the airport and the cab driver could not find radcliffe. >> that is a wonderful story. it was invisible then. yes. >> i'm gabrielle schlessinger, radcliffe college. i'm asking my question with a particular perspective because for the last almost 19 years i've been working with a group called the committee -- it's largely concerned with the tenured women in the faculty. i wonder whether you think that the alumni can be marshalled in any effective way to produce

more effective change among departments which may particularly stagnant or be reluctant to tenured women? >> i kind of think i should not interfere in this. i think that this is a domestic dispute that had best be carried on with within the parties here. certainly something that i respect and i would urge but that would be as an advocate for women's equity. not someone who can make a pronouncement. so, my advocacy side says yes. my speaker side says, you talk about it in the gathering, i'm glad you raised the issue. >> i'm phyllis willner, also,

class of 1963 -- >> it was a great year, i'm the class of 1963. >> with the extra signature on the diploma, but our commencement was held in sanders theater, the women were not allowed to march in the yard, but that year, the harvard commencement got rained on. just to fill in a fact about lamont, pardon me for making a statement when i was supposed to ask a question. the summer school opened lamont to all comers including women and the radcliffe women who were enrolled in the harvard summer school were rath annoyed to say the least that it was the external women who had the access to lamont during the summer school long before it was

opened to women all year round. >> right. i remember that very well. because i was a graduate student and could go into lamont in the summer only. and there was also a rumor, it may have just been a rumor because i was just a student, that a big paint job had to go on in the bathrooms before the women entered. to deal with the graffiti, yes. >> susan, holder of harvard and radcliffe stamped degree in '81, might have been one of the last years you got two stamps. and first of all, helen thank you for a lovely thoughtful talk. and i loved your image of radcliffe as a sort of -- was it a hostage, which made me wonder about other situations like say

barnard and columbia, where, did it work out differently? did columbia or did they handle themselves in a way that opened the doors for women differently? >> thanks for the question. they always had their own faculty and that made a difference because that faculty could be women and men. and so, it was not quite as vulnerable, it was a school within a university. and therefore the women's college of the university until columbia went coeducation. >> it still exists. >> it is, and it's very powerful and a wonderful resource. it's interesting that barnard, had a very long-term dean of i think she was serving from 1911

to '47. virginia gildersleeve, and she was able to negotiate key agreements that enabled barnard students to take courses in the graduate school in a way that was unusual. and she also was important in opening up professional schools to women earlier, for example, than in the case of harvard. so i think they were in a stronger position or it had stronger -- a stronger head in that position. and so, therefore, it has never been the kind of quote hostage. it's interesting to me that maybe i mentioned this, that princeton established a women's institution very similar to radcliffe, but it did not last but ten years and that is

because unlike radcliffe, which was able to get donors as you can see by the substantial buildings here and in the quad, eveland college was not able to get donor, so folded after ten years. radcliffe is in between, therefore, yeah, i think hostage is a good word though. >> thanks. >> hello, my name is cory, i'm part of the class of 2012, so i'll been transitioning from student body to alumni in about a month. as you mentioned the under graduate college is one of the major hearts of the campus, i was wondering what you thought the role of the student body should be going forward in addressing the inequalities that exist here? >> i was talking to a group of under graduates at lunch, you may have been one of them, i

cannot see too well back there. about what it's like. and some of the women i was talking to, were in the women's center and active in that and i think that is a wonderful thing. i think it should be out of the basement, and into a room with light and air, but that is another story. i hope for a future time. and i think it's wonderful that that is now something that is part of the official harvard as opposed to something that was just gerrybuilt by students without the funding. they need funding. i don't know, i think that what is -- they used to do a good job of doing, and maybe still does, is to look at places where inequity exists. where are the pockets at harvard in which male dominance still rules? i was told a lot about the final

clubs today. and i'll leave that to -- as a question mark, is that one of the pockets? are there others that we need to know about? so much has changed for better. but it's important to thing about where change needs to happen. and i was hearing you know, that one of the significant areas that the under graduates raised today at lunch was in the whole area of sex education and dealing with the miseducation of students who come and go out in the kbhunt of younger piem as -- the community of younger people as well. >> hello, i'm laurie from the history faculty at simmons college and i bring greetings from across the river to our radcliffe sisters. there's also a question that i would like to ask. i used to at one point rent a

room from barbara solomon, and we used to have really almost heated discussions about class. and elitism and the particular college s she focused on in he wonderful book. i was wondering if you could comment on whether or not there really were class issues involved in change and how quickly it happened at the elite seven sister schools as opposed to some of the other schools that women attended who were more working -- who came from working class backgrounds. >> that's a rich and complicated question. what is critical to an answer to that question has to do with financial aid and the possibilities for financial aid.

and they differ institution by institution, i was horrified to learn how late real financial aid started at smith, and i knew that at wellsly, the founder wanted to help the calico girls as opposed to silk girls get an education. so financial aid was more possible. that was a rich and complicated issue. and financial aid is really at its core. and also the outcome, the outcome of the education. i mean, simmons i have always valued because of -- i think of it more actually for graduate students now because of the smith students that want to come to the library school, simmons always had a practical outcome in mind, that these women would go out and work, that is an important element. how are the liberal arts

understood as leading to the world of work and could there be connections made? it's a complicated negotiation that goes on. and it's certainly a lot better now than it used to be, that is something we can fully say in all of our private institutions now because of the resources of scholarship and the burden of loans. >> hi, nancy, i'm in the class of '65 at radcliffe and '02, rias, and my mother was the class of '30 at radcliffe. this follows from exactly. i loved the talk, i mean just every word of it was so fabulously interesting and informative. i was going to ask you about a little bit more about the sort of ethnicity class, radcliffe versus some of the other women's colleges, because i think you clearly, all of the elitism and

all of the saltenstahles and others who ran the place, certainly in my generation and i think in my mother's, you know, you could, the radcliffe was better on things like working class jewish women getting to go to school and really sort of other immigrant women, perhaps. and it seemed really even when i went to college, who got in where, who went where, so, there was a little more, i don't know whether you have done comparative work of that sort. you were asked about princeton and yale, i'm curious about the seven sisters and the differences. i mean, it's very brief. >> it's a question i'm very interested in. and have been interested in and sometimes i've been criticized for. there's the question of the

quota, for those of you who do not know about the quota, many elite schools or schools that try to be elite, set a number of jewish students attending. and sometimes it was 10%, sometimes it was 7%. i have to tell you, that i was not allowed to see that folder when i studied this institution. and so, i cannot really comment on that. but, it was a concern particularly -- the administration of urban schools of which radcliffe would be counted one, available on public transportation, where you didn't have to live in a dorm. at barnard and at radcliffe,

there was a concern about, usually it was called the jewish problem. i have to tell you in the 1940s, there was a folder that came -- that was he created in the 1940s with that name in the archives and i felt very awful because that had a specific meaning in 1944 when it was established. so, the fact that my guess is that the fact that you could not -- you could be at radcliffe and not be residential opened things up more as it did for harvard men. and i know the irony of course about president elliott was that he opened up harvard for working class and for ethnic groups. and for catholics. i mean, we are not talking just there are quotas on everything,

right. what is interesting to me is that he held the line on women so tight. and was there a relation between the two? and some people argued that maybe there was, because if you are going to be light on the adm admitance of male students you have to be for female as well. i don't know. it's a curious thing to me, i do not have specifics and now you know why. >> barbara, davis scholar and harvard graduate school of education. this is a bit of a statement, so forgive me, dean. >> quick statement. >> the cambridge school of architecture is something that you did not mention today which was established here for women who were not allowed to go to the graduate school of design. >> and went to smith college.

>> right, it became smith and then in 1942 they were finally allowed to the graduate school of design when all the men went to war. one of the reasons they did not want to actually become part of harvard or radcliffe in the research i've done is because they wanted to learn as a group of women, in a style that was appropriate for women. and that they felt. and i'm wondering if in some of your research you've come across, going back to faculty, women faculty that sometimes the women's college or women working together is really sometimes the best? >> yeah, well, certainly the institution that i work at would argue that. the institution that i graduated from would argue that, and it's hard to know, times do change. historically, women's colleges particularly elite women's colleges have produced a lot of leaders and of course, wellsly is very proud of its two

secretaries of state. but i don't know what the situation is now. and things may be very different in terms of what women's lives are like. if they get the kind of support that they need for the issues that they face. and i -- so therefore i leave it as a sort of clause that it still marts whether you are female in the world. and it -- you still come to college with a certain set of things that are not -- are somewhat gendered, so, what can i say, i came to college with a certain stubbornness that i guess was gender too. yes, i -- this is the matter that -- i always say i'm agnostic about women's colleges because i don't know whether -- in speaking in general -- they

should be or not be distinkt institutions. i worry if they disappear and crease to cease to be a place where they can be valuable for a certain kind of women. and speak to women in a certain kind of way, that a coeducational institution must tread cautiously about. >> thank you for your presentation. my name is marilice, i'm the glass of 1962 and we did get the last diploma in latin and it was signed by both presidents. in regard to lamont library. both widener, and radcliffe was

opened to midnight. i managed to sneak into the stacks so i could study as late as i wanted. my question for you is that my class generally when it was announced that radcliffe was no longer going to be an under graduate college was pretty unhappy. and i think we felt that harvard was not ready. that harvard had to make a lot more progress and that if radcliffe lost its morale voice and influence, and ability to talk to harvard that harvard would not change. and i'm wondering now from your historical perspective, do you think that it has been a good influence on harvard or should radcliffe have stayed an under graduate college for a little while longer?

>> well, what i am aware of is in the recent past, harvard has made extraordinary strides to the parity, the one to one is a great stride ahead. bringing in young women early on in their career and helping them as they move up the tenure line is a great stride ahead. i think there have been positive changes. i think we will only know in 20, 30 years the answer to your question, okay. and i hope the answer to your question is, that harvard is now so aware of the issues that