Defending Radcliffe

To the editors:

Carey E. Schwaber ’01 writes in her letter (Letters, April 16) that “institutional inertia” seems to be the only reason Radcliffe continues to exist as a part of Harvard University. While Radcliffe’s role as a “college” was definitely somewhat ambiguous in the two decades before the 1999 merger, Radcliffe’s presence in its current form is more than justified.

A primary objective of Drew Gilpin Faust, newly appointed dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, will be to increase the number of tenured women professors at Harvard, where the gender make-up of the faculty stands at an embarrassing and antiquated ratio of six male professors to every female professor. Dean Faust plans to accomplish this by giving qualified female scholars access to Radcliffe’s resources and research programs, which will in turn allow them to gain tenured positions in an institution apparently unconcerned with its faculty’s gender imbalance.

Under the terms of the merger, Dean Faust will also sit alongside the deans of the college, law, medical and business schools on the University Board of Deans. As the first head of Radcliffe to gain membership to the board, Faust will also be the first female representative of any Harvard “tub” to serve. Dean Faust’s unprecedented role within the University, coupled with her desire and ability to improve the position of female faculty at Harvard, will only enhance Radcliffe’s capacity to fight against the “institutional inertia” Schwaber so strongly opposes.

Nathan Burstein ’04

April 17, 2001

The writer is a student caller for the Radcliffe Annual Fund Phone-a-thon.