However, the principle of “seeing what’s valuable” must, in turn, involve distinguishing this value from what is not valuable and being ready to know when to let things go. In contrast with much of Pfoho, the Radcliffe Parlor Room in Holmes Hall––a large, well-lit room with antique furniture placed sparsely in an arrangement that seems to invite a rather stiff form of socializing––has hardly changed at all since the 1950s. “This room probably has much the same feel as when the Radcliffe girls were here,” Harrington says. The room is conspicuously empty, and as a result has a slightly eerie, forgotten atmosphere. “I think it’s a bit on the down and out,” Harrington comments. “We’re actually about to renovate it because I think it’s a little bit sad.”

Yet with renovation comes loss, and negotiating the the inevitability of this loss is not always easy. Walking into Lowell’s Junior Common Room, the first thing that stands out is the room’s vivid historic wallpaper, which depicts scenes from early American history, including George Washington crossing the Delaware. The wallpaper has been in Lowell since 1930. “People say, ‘Why don’t you paint over it and put some student artwork up?’” she [WHO] says. “But really the only other place you’ll see this is in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.”

The danger of losing this sense of history is especially great in spaces that were formerly part of Radcliffe. The cold, grey, tunnel-like hallways of Pfoho’s basement do not at first appear likely to hold much historical significance. Yet Harrington has taken us down here for a reason. She pushes back a door inscribed with the words “On Harvard Time” to reveal a large, dusty room framed by shelves heaving with cascading books. Rows of studio lights hang from the ceiling, and the windows are covered with blackout blinds; the room is poised for filming.

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Yet years before this room served as the “On Harvard Time” studio, it was the home of the Harvard-Radcliffe Film Workshop. The workshop, which ran for a two-year period in the mid-1970s, was created by Bob Doyle, then a research fellow in the Visual and Environmental Studies Department. “You can see multiple layers of history here,” Harrington explains. “In the ’60s, it was the Moors Music Library, and it was full of records.” We walk through the room, and Harrington points out a set of sound booths built into the wall. “Back in the day, people would go in there with their records and listen with headphones for the music classes they were taking.” The image this conjures––of a much slower-paced, deliberate way of studying––contrasts sharply with the the current reality of rows of students glued to their laptops in Lamont.

Looking up at the lights hanging from the ceiling, Harrington remarks, “These are artifacts from what was I think in Radcliffe’s history the nerve center of music and broadcasting.” Yet despite that fact, the room is about to be gutted. “We’re going to turn it into a social space, a dedicated party room, and a lot of this––the bookshelves––will go. It’s sort of sad, but on the other hand…it’s a generously sized space, and we have a need for that.”

THE RADCLIFFE PERSPECTIVE

A copy of The New Yorker and a couple of cocktail napkins rest atop the coffee table in front of the Khuranas. Underneath the table lie partially obscured artifacts from the Radcliffe days—a couple of plates, a book with pictures of old common rooms, a Radcliffe pennant. Rakesh pulls out one in particular: a black and white sketched poster of a woman with a tired but unrelenting face. The caption reads, “She will die, but she will never give up.” The woman is Alice Paul, author of the original Equal Rights Amendment, and the quote is from the psychiatrist who evaluated her while she was on hunger strike and in prison for her work in support of women’s suffrage.

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Khurana sees the poster as emblematic of the type of complex relationship between Harvard and women that runs through Cabot’s history as a former part of Radcliffe. “The idea of even women being educated on par with men was a revolutionary idea…. Social change begins here,” he says. The co-Masters use the artifacts that fill the their home—from posters and yearbooks to pictures of Radcliffe alumnae Eleanor Roosevelt ’41 and Benazir Bhutto ’73—to tie them to the revolutionary spirit of Radcliffe and to encourage them to look critically at the Harvard of today. “I think this value of pushing the boundaries, this pioneering, looking for social change, I think that that’s something we try to foster,” Stephanie Khurana says.

For the future dean and his wife, artifacts have the potential to reinvigorate this spirit and to evaluate whether or not  how we act today does justice to the goals and struggles of those who came before us. As an example, they both reference Helen Keller and her struggle for inclusive education. “What was the project that people here were trying to get done, and have we done it?” Khurana asks. “If the idea was to create an inclusive learning community where everyone felt that they had a place here and that they were coming at it in a way that each of their contributions and gifts and biographies were recognized as valid and valuable, I don’t think we’re there yet.”

STORIED OBJECTS

The Khuranas project the same sense of energy and hope for change that they see in the Radcliffe artifacts. Both have something to add to the others’ answer for almost every question. They discuss empowering students, fostering diversity, and finding ways to refresh how they see the world. Eck is equally welcoming, greeting us at the door with a smile and immediately ushering us to the nearest artifact—a bust of Abbott Lawrence Lowell’s dog, Phantom, which sits like a real cocker spaniel under the piano in the foyer. Eck, who has served as Lowell’s master for three times as long as the others put together, carries with her a sense of history and tradition. As we walk through the Masters’ residence and Lowell, she is keen to tell everyone we pass that she is showing us “the Harvard properties.” The difference between her and the Cabot House Masters seems to well analogize the difference between the artifacts they each highlight.

While the Cabot artifacts we discussed are mostly posters and pictures that speak to the spirit of Radcliffe, the Lowell artifacts carry a sense of the wealth and culture that is synonymous with a more conventional conception of Harvard. Eck takes us past portraits of Lowell after Lowell, a trousseau chest, a checkerboard, and various other antiques, and portraits of Lowell after Lowell.