More than half of last year’s class of Bunting fellows at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study say they are “concerned” by recent changes in the fellowship program, according to an open letter published last week in the Radcliffe Quarterly.

In the letter, 27 former fellows suggest that Radcliffe may be neglecting its commitment to gender issues and runs the risk of “stifling the maverick and reducing younger professionals to assistants or designated heirs.”

The fellowship program has become the focus of Radcliffe’s dramatic redefinition after an ad hoc committee advised the Institute last February to streamline its many programs.

In an e-mail message sent yesterday, Radcliffe Institute Dean Drew Gilpin Faust described the letter from the former fellows as a “misunderstanding” of the fellowship program’s history.

The Letter

The letter urges alumnae to “sustain” the legacy of fellowship founder Mary Bunting.

To that end, the letter asks alumnae to dedicate funds to explicitly support work by fellows in “socially marginalized groups who are at vulnerable points in their careers or lives.”

The fellows expressed concern in their letter that the new centralized Radcliffe fellowship program will only reward well-established academics.

Former Bunting fellow Cameron Macdonald said this week that the fellowship program should play a crucial role in assisting women whose careers have been sidetracked by family or other responsibilities.

“The obligation to care for dependents, be they elderly or children, generally falls to women,” Macdonald said. “The tenure clock rarely takes that into account in dealing with junior faculty.”

Macdonald, who is also a visiting assistant professor in social studies and women’s studies, helped draft the letter along with former fellows Denise K. Buell, an assistant professor of religion at Williams College, Francesca Sawaya, an associate English professor at the University of Oklahoma and Kathleen M. Sands, associate professor of religious studies at UMass Boston.

The Fellowship

In response to the former fellows’ letter, Faust discussed Bunting’s legacy as the subject of her dean’s letter in the same issue of the Radcliffe Quarterly.

The Institute plans to name a group of Bunting fellows next year, Faust said.

“We expect most of these individuals to be at early career stages and to see in their fellowship year the possibility of important career advancement,” she wrote in an e-mail yesterday.