Turmoil

Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges were in the midst of the political upheavals of the 1960s when Gutmann and her classmates arrived on campus.

The tensions that were building between students and administrators would eventually lead to the 1969 University Hall takeover. The Vietnam War was tearing a rift through the center of Harvard and the nation as a whole.

All female students still lived in the Radcliffe Quad--it wasn't until Gutmann's junior year that women were lotteried into the River Houses. Milk and cookies were served every night at 10 p.m. and Mary Bunting, then-president of Radcliffe, wandered through Hilles Library chatting with students.

One of Gutmann's college roommates, Peggy Goldman '71, remembers their dorm, Bertram Hall (now part of Cabot House), as a "hodge-podge" of students, mostly minorities with some foreign students.

"We were definitely not of the social establishment," Goldman remembers.

The Amy Gutmann who arrived at Radcliffe was not the same one who graduated four years later, friends recall.

"Amy was always a very quiet person, very shy, and on the outside a little ill at ease with everything going on then," Goldman recalls. "However, if you delved beneath the surface, she had an iron-clad will."

In fact, many of her friends remember her drive and pizzazz. One long-time friend, Judith E. Fradkin '71, recalls that Gutmann was "really transformed by Harvard."

"She was a person who was really involved in finding herself and figuring out her philosophy of life," Fradkin says. "She talked a lot, and listened a lot. She was very involved in other people. All the kinds of social justice issues were very important to her even back then."

Although she participated in few extracurricular activities, Gutmann and her friends did join several organizations in Phillips Brooks House.

The big story, of course, was the personal and academic fragmentation of the campus. Gutmann watched the tensions and conflicts at Harvard with great interest--and always from the sidelines, her friends recall. She pondered the issues, listening carefully to the debates and attending the mass meetings held at the Harvard Stadium.

"She was never deterred from her purpose, and that was to get a good education.... I respected her for that," Goldman says. "Amy was never very outspoken--she stayed very quiet. However, whenever you asked her about something, she had a thoughtful opinion. She just never broadcast that."

Soon after arriving--and partly in response to the turmoil around her--Gutmann became interested in philosophy and switched her concentration from math to social studies--the subject that would dominate her life and work for three decades. She threw herself into her new subject, always studying and working.

"She was never a flashy student, she was always industrious and always came through," Goldman says.

In the spring of 1971, Gutmann graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe and embarked for England as a Marshall Scholar.