When she was chosen to succeed Radcliffe President Wilbur K. Jordan in June 1959, Mary I. Bunting-Smith conceded that, with just one visit to the Cambridge campus under her belt, she certainly had "a lot to learn about Radcliffe."
How ironic that 39 years later, Radcliffe's future plans may depend on further scrutiny of Bunting-Smith's own groundbreaking achievements during her term as president of the college.
For 12 years, beginning in 1960, "Polly" Bunting, as she was fondly known, was a figure of stability at a time of great unrest at the University. As students took over University Hall and protested the Vietnam War, Bunting-Smith established a reputation as a Radcliffe devotee, an administrator interested in bettering women's education both at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
"She was somebody who was very caring, very committed to undergraduates and very committed to women and opening up opportunities for women," recalls Carol F. Lieberman '61, an undergraduate for one year during President Bunting-Smith's tenure and currently president of the Radcliffe Club of Boston. "She had a very down-to-earth and realistic way of trying to open up possibilities for women."
Founding various support policies and programs--including a habit of leaving her porch light on to invite students to visit and talk with her late at night--Bunting-Smith gained the appreciation of hundreds of Radcliffe undergraduates.
Along with this genuine interest in students and campus life, a survey of Bunting-Smith's presidency reveals an unswerving devotion to rationalism and, in the words of one fellow administrator, an ability to always "look at the big picture."
These characteristics are what--six months after her death--lead some to suppose that Bunting-Smith would be understanding and perhaps even supportive of current negotiations to end Radcliffe's status as an undergraduate college and refocus its objective toward becoming a premier women's research facility.
Breakthrough Institute
Arguably Bunting-Smith's most successful effort to open up possibilities for women was the establishment of the Radcliffe Institute for Independent Study, founded in 1961 and renamed the Bunting Institute in her honor in 1978. One of her first proposals as president, the Institute was created to help women whose careers were interrupted by family obligations to continue their academic research.
In a 1961 New York Times Magazine article, Bunting-Smith noted that the Institute's program was "tailored to fit the pattern of women's lives." As the Institute opened, she pointed to it as "a place to work free from the unpredictable distractions of family life, the compulsion to pursue the daily routine at the expense of a half-finished conception or dream, and the guilt over children rebuffed or questions unanswered."
Much of Bunting-Smith's vision of a facility where women could revive their academic studies came from her experience as a mother. In the '40s, she left her own microbiology work to raise four children while husband Henry Bunting taught at Yale University.
Although she was willing to give up academic interests to raise her children, Bunting-Smith remained active in her local community and its politics, later expressing frustration at the lack of expectations for women in society--particularly in academics.
"One prodigious national extravagance has been largely overlooked," she wrote of American affluence in the '50s and early '60s: "The waste of highly talented, educated womanpower."
At the time, the proposed Institute was quite controversial.
"The Bunting was so revolutionary at that point that everyone was not convinced," says Louise Donovan, who served as Bunting-Smith's executive assistant for the duration of her presidency. At the time debate raged concerning the legitimacy of Bunting-Smith's vision of working women returning to academic fields.
In part due to its novelty, the Institute received a good deal of media attention early on. Bunting-Smith herself was featured in a fall 1961 Time Magazine cover story when the first 21 artists and scholars at the Institute were granted their first awards, each of up to $3,000.
Donovan points to the quality of Institute fellows past as the key characteristic that lead to rapid acceptance in the academic world.
"They were such marvelous people," she says. "Any wondering whether it was going to work faded quickly."
Today, 37 years later, 40 Bunting Fellows are selected each year and each is given up to $33,000 to cover all expenses involved in resuming their studies, including the cost of moving to Cambridge and finding new homes. Despite this vast increase in award allotments, Rita Nakashima Brock, current director of the Bunting Institute, says the Institute has not changed that much in its 37 years.
"It was remarkably clear in its original mission," she says. "It has expanded some, but hasn't changed that much."
The only change she can point to is a greater professionalization and standardization of the fellowships. Whereas scholars once had to stipulate all sorts of specific monetary allocations, today the stipends are granted with less scrutiny.
According to former Harvard president Nathan M. Pusey '28, who worked with Bunting-Smith from 1960 to 1971, the Institute was representative of her vision of Radcliffe.
"She wanted Radcliffe to be a separate institution, and to become a senior institution," Pusey says. "We had similar ideas about Radcliffe."
Separate But Unequal
These ideas led to a litany of notable and lasting accomplishments during Bunting-Smith's tenure as president. Early on, she made clear that Harvard's conception of a separate but equal education for Radcliffe women was not truly pro- "She recognized that women were not beingtreated on a fair basis with men," Donovanrecalls. "They paid exactly the same tuition, buthad no houses, no masters and couldn't use Lamont[Library]." One element that Bunting-Smith saw lacking inthe Radcliffe education was the Harvard-styleHouse system. "'Cliffies" at the time did notenjoy the close relationships with Faculty andstaff that Harvard men did by living in such closequarters. To remedy the situation, Bunting-Smith set up aseparate House system at the Radcliffe Quadrangle.She combined the eight dorms into three Houses,North, South and East, and then built a fourthHouse on the West side of the Quad, later to berenamed Currier. "She painted the doors of the houses differentcolors," Donovan recalls of Bunting-Smith's quirkystyle. "Some people saw that as silly, but it wasvery visible and sort of fun." With the construction of Houses camestructured, localized intellectual communities newto Radcliffe. After some initial consternation,gradually more and more professors becameconvinced that the Radcliffe House system wasauthentic in its nature and agreed to becomemasters and scholars-in-residence. A Multi-Purpose Building One of Bunting-Smith's fighting points duringher tenure concerned study space for students atRadcliffe. In 1966, Hilles Library opened in theQuad as a replacement for the smaller library forstudents located in Radcliffe Yard. "She really wanted it to be a multi-purposebuilding," says Suzanne G. Kemple, associatelibrarian of Hilles Library. "Hilles has a cinema,an art gallery space, classrooms, rooms that canused for group study and the Morse music library." Bunting-Smith's vision of a building that wouldbring students and Faculty together to promotelearning and exchange ideas was realized with theconstruction of the unique building design ofarchitect Max Abramowitz. His alcove arrangement,according to Kemple, was meant to bring studentscloser together with the books of the library. Today, the old Radcliffe Library in RadcliffeYard houses the Schlesinger Library on the Historyof Women in America. Hilles itself changed when,in 1971, management of the library was transferredto Harvard. Kemple, however, does not feel thatBunting-Smith saw the library as any sort ofduplicate or equivalent to Lamont Library inHarvard Yard, noting that "Radcliffe Library wasoriginally a research library." Bumps in the Road At the end of her presidency, Bunting-Smith wasoccasionally the victim of the unrest andrebellion that characterized the Harvard andRadcliffe student bodies in the late 1960s. In May 1967, a handful of students participatedin a five-day hunger strike in protest ofBunting-Smith's refusal to allow an unlimitednumber of seniors to live off-campus. The crisiswas rooted in student disagreement with thePresident's steadfast conception of the RadcliffeHouse system. In December 1968, Bunting-Smith was forced tofly back from a conference in North Carolina tomeet with black student protesters who weredemanding minimum quotas for the admission ofblack students into future Radcliffe classes. By1969, chaos reigned at Harvard and an abbreviatedsit-in took place in the Radcliffe president'soffice.
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