Bunting-Smith adopted a role that was unusual for a Radcliffe administrator. At her president’s residence on Brattle Street, she often left her porch illuminated in the evenings to let Harvard and Radcliffe affiliates know that they were welcome to come in to speak with her—a tradition that she carried over from her time at Douglass College. She also showed her appreciation for the Radcliffe maids by inviting them to a formal tea in her home.
“She was very supportive and welcoming to the women on campus,” Susan T. Friberg ’64 said. “I had a decision to make as to whether or not to accept advanced standing. My mother contacted her and asked her to help me with the situation. President Bunting then invited me to her home to speak to me personally. I thought that that was a very good thing.”
Bunting-Smith also implemented a number of institutional changes that she believed would improve the quality of education for her female students—even if, as some people feared, these new measures would cause the distinction between Harvard and Radcliffe to break down.
“I don’t come to Radcliffe with a preconceived notion that the right way to do things is with Harvard or without Harvard,” Bunting-Smith told The Crimson in 1960. “But I do feel Radcliffe is obligated to offer the very best educational opportunities and if this can be done through Harvard, then that is the way it should be done.”
Among the changes advocated by Bunting-Smith was the affiliation of Harvard Houses with Radcliffe dorms, the first of which were between Quincy House and Holmes and Comstock Halls. These affiliations were aimed at raising the level of what Bunting-Smith called “dinner-table education” at Radcliffe. They also granted women accessibility to scholarly conversations with professors and research assistants that had previously only been granted to male students.
Men in many Harvard Houses, Kneerim said, had the opportunity to dine with junior and senior faculty members. But Radcliffe women had “keepers” who watched over them in the legal role of parents.
Kneerim said that she and her classmates were “all keenly aware” of these inequalities. “Surely we were all deeply affected by the fact that there were no women in leadership,” she said. “You can imagine how extraordinary and marvelous it was when suddenly Radcliffe had a woman president [again]. It was an exciting revolution.”
Bunting-Smith’s most enduring legacy remains the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, which allowed women to return to their studies even after they married and started families. Bunting-Smith believed that women could maintain their traditional roles as mothers while assuming a place in the workforce.
In her 1961 address to the University Women’s Forum, Bunting-Smith said that a woman’s expected role as a wife and mother should not prevent her from joining the workforce—rather, educational institutions should be expected to cater to her unique needs.
“The Radcliffe Institute was certainly a big step in helping women scholars whose careers had been interrupted to do scholarly work with the support of the Institute,” Metz said. “I know that that was one of her first projects, and it was seen as a big step forward for women during that period.”
AN INFLUENTIAL VOICE
Although Bunting-Smith’s tenure predated the emergence of the women’s rights movements of the late 1960s and ’70s, many Radcliffe alumni became actively involved after they graduated.
“We were breaking the ice out there for daughters who came along and the granddaughters who are entering universities now,” Kneerim said. “I have seen so many phenomenal changes for women. We were decorations in the past.”
Metz says female students should now to turn to Bunting-Smith as an example of the life that they should attempt to lead.
“Celebrate the accessibility of the university now. You need to realize that you’re standing on the shoulders of people like Mary I. Bunting who worked very hard and made many sacrifices,” she said. “Women do have a somewhat different life trajectory because of their gender. Different cultural patterns exist and that is fine. There doesn’t have to exist a contradiction between being an excellent professional in a given field and being feminine. Women now should honor both.”
—Staff writer Barbara B. DePena can be reached at barbara.b.depena@college.harvard.edu.