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.

She added that the Bunting fellowship could also provide an opportunity for established academics “to change directions or develop new capacities.”

But Sands expressed concern that despite the acknowledgement of a “continued commitment to women, gender and society” in Radcliffe’s mission statement, women and gender do not play a “clearly central role” in the fellowship program’s latest incarnation.

“So far as we can see, there are no specific procedures in place to actually make that happen,” she said. “We wonder therefore how deep the commitment of the new Radcliffe Institute is to structuring that.”

But Faust points to this year’s class of fellows, which she described as “heavily focused on gender issues,” and the recent appointment of four prominent women scholars as Radcliffe faculty as reflections of a “strong Institute interest in gender studies.”

The Life Of The Letter

Though the letter was initiated and written by Bunting fellows, former Bunting director Rita N. Brock and public policy fellows Deborah Belle and Kathleen Coll also signed the letter as “additional supporters.”

The letter came as a result of a series of regular, open meetings between fellows last spring after the ad hoc committee report was released to the fellows, explained Sands.

The fellows’ response was “mixed” last spring after several meetings with Faust to discuss the proposed changes, Sawaya said, and a written response to “keep the dialogue going” was deemed appropriate.

Macdonald stressed that the letter was intended as constructive criticism.

“Most of us are really excited about the changes that are happening at Radcliffe,” she said.

But maintaining the fellowship program’s “affirmative action mandate” in “at least some” of the fellowships is paramount, she said.

“Instead of being a community of equals, there really does appear to be a kind of a star system instituted,” Sands said, emphasizing that recruiting prominent women does more to help Harvard’s faculty diversity problems than to advance feminist scholarship.

But Faust said Radcliffe will continue to encourage scholarship on gender issues.

‘The stated mission of the Radcliffe Institute gives a prominent place to the study of women, gender and society, and Radcliffe’s programs will continue to do just that,” she said.

--Staff writer Catherine E. Shoichet can be reached at shoichet@fas.harvard.edu