faber was a crime akin to turning over the poems to theologians. so, i realized right away that this was an opportunity to revisit a story in changed times. and here's where writing about what you can connect to came into it. all of my books, with one exception, that book about research, have been about strong, remarkable women. karen horneye was the first, the psychoanalyst who took issue with freud odd idea busy sexuality. marie currie curie, and a book about one strong woman, a woman name hally flannigan. so, there was another reason that i connected to this. even though the love relationship had been floating around in the atmosphere, times had changed and this was a story that could be embraced, even celebrated, about two women who loved and empowered each other. >> and now i am delighted to introduce tonight's author. nancy malkeiels from princeton university and was the longest serving dean and the first woman dean of the college, a scholar of 20th century american history. her previous books include witness h it in young, jr. and the struggle for civil rights and farewell to party of lincoln, black politics in at the age of fdr. her new book "keep the damned women out o'recounts the recess stance to, the motivations for and the implementation of coeducation at ivy league colleges such as princeton and harvard and oxford and cambridge in britain. it didn't hit home to me how recently coeducation occurred until i was visiting colleges with my father 15 years ago and he gasped, there are girls at harvard. professor's comprehensive research detail houston the admission of women into these conservative institutions was driven mostly by men. university leader who were inside in preserving an elite applicant pool. derrick bach, says in screening occupy single sex colleges responded to the surge of interest in coeducation in the late 1960s, nancy has written an exceptionally thoughtful, balanced and judicious account of a sum that aroused passionate feelings at the time on both sides of the issue. we're very pleased she is here with us at harvard book store tonight. please join in welcoming professor nancy white mal ky el. >> thank you very much. a pleasure to be here tonight and to have an opportunity to talk about my new book. now she has already told you about the book to you have to forgive me if i repeat just a little built of what she said. it addresses the flood of decisions for coeducation at elite colleges and universities in the united states, and the united kingdom in the period 1969 to '74. literally dozens of single sex institutions went co-ed in this very short space of time. i've chosen to focus my book in the united states on the all-mail if ayes, princeton, yale, harvard and dartmouth, on three women's colleges, vassar, which went co-ed, and smith and wellesley, which had high level reports recommending coeducation, but backed away, and in the uk, to focus on churchhill, claire, and king, the first three members rams at the wherever of cambridge to admit women and the first five at the university of oxford. i'm complaining the remarkable clustering of decisions for coeducation between 1969 and 1974. why did so many very traditional, very conservative, very elite, very old, colleges and universities decide to embark on such a fundamental change? why then? how did those decisions get made? how was coeducation accomplished in the face of strong opposition? and with the admission of students of the opposite sex to formerly single-sex schools what happened? in other words, how well did coeducation work in its early incarnation, those are the questions that framed this book. let's begin with why it happened and why it happened then. as now has suggested, it happened because it was in the strategic self-interest of all-male institutions like princeton and yale, and later dartmouth, to admit women, by the late 1960s, these schools would begunking to see their applications d-line, along with the yields. the high school students, the school referreds to as the best boys no longer wants to go to all-male institutions. the key issue then was the ability to continue to attract those best boys. this is the time, by the way, when harvard begins to pull away from yale and princeton in the competition for the best high school men. coeducation then became the means for places like princeton and yale to shore up a first-rate applicant pool and a first-rate enrolled student body. it was not the result of any high-minded moral commitment to opening educational opportunities for women. it was not a matter offed a -- a myth to educate women. not the result of deep thinking about how to educate women. rather, it was about what women could do for previously all-male institutions. about how women would help these schools renew their hold on the best body. women, in other words, played the instrumental role of improve thing oidioid indicational experience of men, and therefore it's not surprising that going co-ed did not always, well, serve the women who were admitted to the early co-ed classes. later point which may be up expected, the protagonist in the story are men. save for polyup bunting, the president of radcliffe, every strategist, every decisionmaker, everybody leading the charge for coeducation, was male. so, coeducation resulted not from organized efforts by women activists, but from strategic decisions taken by powerful men. what happens when it did? i've already hinted about that in terms of changes in application patterns in the late 1960s, but there's more to understand than terms of the context of the set -- 1960s. everything about the 1960s speaks to the question, why then? civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the student movement, the women's movement, by the end of the 1960s, colleges and universities looked quite different than they had at the beginning of the decade. the the composition of student bodies gap to change to include a major number of public school students and students from lessed a vega students, students who are catholic and jewish, evening students who are african-american. so admitting women followed lodge include from these other demographic changes, at well men and women in the 1960s demonstrate together. protested together, registered black voters together, not going to school together seemed increasingly outmoded. so all of this bears on why high school students changed their minds about the attractiveness of all male schools. what some of the factors bearing on the implementation of coeducation? i think there are two important points to mention. first, probably obviously, leadership matters. the more skillful the president, the easier it was to imagine and then move the institution to embrace the different future. presidents deal with alumni, and mobilize internal planning and execution to make coeducation happen, but the other way, the less effective lead are, the easier wait for the many forces of opposition to throw sand in the gears. second point is that process matters. the more an institution invested in careful analysis and planning, the more likely it was to introduce coeducation reasonably, smoothly. in the absence of adequate process, newcomers are especially women, had a more difficult time. it would be difficult to overestimate how tough it was to make these changes happen. there was fierce opposition from alumni as well as significant resistance from many faculty and students. let me give you some examples to illustrate the point. as for alumni, let's start with the title of the book "keep the damned women out." it comes from. a 1970 letter from a dart mouth alumnus to chair of the dartmouth trustees. he wrote: for god sake, for dartmouth sake and for everyone's sake, keep the damn women out. he could not have been more typical in his sentimentses. for an example from my university. why this death wish on the part of princeton, one of alumnus wondered? if women were admit node doubt a very fine school would emerge but princeton university would be lost forever. coeducation, another alumnus said, would dilute what the called princeton's sturdy masculinity with disconcerting mini-skirted young things cavorting on its playing fields. so another alumnus put it this way: what is all this nonsense about admitting women to princeton? a good old fashioned whor house would be more efficient and much, much cheaper. is a for tackty the insults -- faculty the insults dame in different varieties, both subtle and explicit. some were supportive, some opposed, but virtually everybody but the newly admitted women students on the spot by asking for the woman's point of view, no matter whether it was a course in literature or psychology, or the woman's point of view might be relevant, or a course in calculus or statistics where such a view clearly wasn't. as for explicit insults consider the art history professor at dartmouth who posted slides of nudes on the screen, winning his hand up -- running his hand up and down the sides of the -- or the oceanography professor 0 who'd pick pure odd sea crete temperatures, squid, lobster, and naked win oreck the yale hoyt department chair who responded when hi was asked by women student to consider offering a course in women's history, he responded that would be like teaching the history of dogs. now, students were not always much better about welcoming their female classmates. there were regular outbursts from men unaccustomed to having women in their classes. the ben nine version went this way. it's girl. it talks. male students often told their female counterparts they did not really belong on their campuses. perhaps not surprisingly, dartmouth offers the most striking examples of that behavior. dartmouth men hung banners from their dormitory windows declaring no co-eds. co-eds go home. they shouted out numbers, meant as ratings of attractiveness as women entered the dining hall. as if they were rating the quality of a dive. fraternities delighted in and got away with drunken, degrading, dangerous behaviors, physical intimidation, aggressive sexual encounters, and scores of verbal assaults on women students. in the third year of coeducation, -- this is one of my favorite dartmouth stories -- the winning entry in the annual intrafraternity hums competition was the song "hour our hoe cohogs. verses of outrageous sex ugly attacks on women and co hog was a nickname for women students. won't explain further but trust me it was derogatory. the judge of the competition, the dean of college, chose the cohogs as the year's most original submission and joined the fraternity members in an exuberant public rendition of the song. let turn now to the specific case of radcliffe and harvard, given where we are located. it's a less lively story but a point of lesson in the complexities of institutional change. i will read some brief passages of from the book and other parts of the story as we go along. by all rights, harvard should have been the first mover in the coming of coeducation. the circumstances were -- radcliffe was a half mile up the street from harvard, with students whose academic qualifications fully matched those of harvard students. radcliffe women had been taking classes with harvard men since the the 1940s. the colleges merged most of their extracurricular activities in 1950s. the presidents of both institutions were enthusiastic. but realizing coeducation in cambridge turned out to be a surprisingly complicated endeavor. in april 1961, nathan marsh piercy, a classical scholar complete his eight years as president of harvard university, approachedded hit colleague, mary burnting, microbiologist, beginning her second year as president of radcliffe college wishes the equivalent of a proposal of marriage. would radcliffe be interested, he asked, in exploring the possibility of becoming fully a part of harvard university? the inare invitation came as roosevelt a proposal from bunting, who had told him earlier what her ambitions were for radcliffe. she wanted the harvard corporation to invite radcliffe to become part of harvard college. she wanted to re-organize the radcliffe dormitories on a house basis, like harvard. she wanted to give up the graduate school to harvard, and then join harvard college and radcliffe college. she had in mind that harvard would take on the whole responsibility for women's education, and radcliffe, which functioned as an undergraduate college on an equal basis with harvard college. follow that road map turned out to be much more difficult than bunting might have imagined. functional code occasion would be realized by 1972, the formal merger between harvard and radcliffe was not to be concluded until 1999. understanding the long, often torturous path to merger requires reckoning with the deep investment oft radcliffe trustees and alumni in stream prestige of their college, and re helping quiching any part of that, compromising the institution's fundamental independence, was not to be undertaken lightly. a series of steps taken in the 1960s and early 1970s, mainly at president bunting's initiative but what i have president piercy's cooperation, both -- brought harvard and rad discloser together. harvard first began awarding degrees to rad deliver students, graduate and under graduate in 1963. in 1966 the hard regard registrar's office took eve radcliffe's undergraduate recommending registration, including course enrollment and academic records and issue shoance of transcripts. astonishingly in 1967 harvard opened it undergraduate library to radcliffe women. women students had been excluded from the library for decade on the ground they'd would distract harvard men from their studies. the harvard crimson announced the news of the opening of la hospital to women with the headlines, la mont will open to cliffies after 20 sell but years, noting the move would have been inconceivable when lamont opened. the student quarterly described it as the crumbling of but one more male bastion in harvard yard. with -- embarracking on coeducation and harvard and radcliffe students lobbying for it, the radcliffe governing board voted in february 1969 to initiate discussions with harvard with a few to merging the two institutions. the criminal -- crimson declared in a banner headline, cliff proposes marriage to 10,000 men of harvard. the harvard corporation responded affirmatively. we can say at once, the president wrote to bunting, that in principle we welcome the prospect of a merger, which shall be happy to join with you in discussion of when and how a merger might be e affected. pussy -- piercy promised bunting that harvard would get to work to identified the questions needing answers and expressed the hope that the questions could be resolved and the merger accomplished by the fall of 1970. but that didn't happen. it was not at all easy to accomplishment part of the issue was resistance on the radcliffe side. it was not simply a function of institutional chauvinism. skepticism of harvard was ground net hard regard's history. harvard had had one tenured position created specifically for a woman faculty member, but no other tenured women among its faculty. there were a handful of women assistant professors, but faculty members who were not tenured have little influence in the university, and there was no path to tenure from the assistant professor rank at harvard in those days. harvard had no women administrators and the number of male undergraduates at hard vair wad four times the number of students at radcliffe. so, there was reasonable cause for radcliffe's trustees to worry about merging the college into a less than hospitable male university. the radcliffe alumni association's merger committee tried to envision a restruck tired relationship between radcliffe and harvard that would be consistent with their desire to preserve a radcliffe entity which they said could focus on the interests and contributions of women and to provide richer educational experience for undergraduate women. but the become part of harvard without losing radcliffe's identity was a difficult proposition. the committee believed that the full incorporation of women into the mainstream at harvard would have to previous seed any further consideration of the dissolution of rad consecutive college. and that was -- radcliffe college and that was not going to happen anytime soon. in the meantime the radcliffe alumni leaders believed radmanovic cliff tooth be doing what it could to aide women in completing and making full use of their education. a closer relationship with harvard was one thing. a merger, which would effectively eliminate radcliffe college, they believed just should be off the table for the foreseeable future. at the same time, the other part of the problem was resistance on harvard's side. the faculty of arts and sciences at harvard was simply not ready to be party to what they regarded as the disappearance of radcliffe college. you could say they were also not ready to take full responsibility for the education of radcliffe students. so, there was plenty of evidence of cooperation between the two institutions, by the beginning of the 1970s, the harvard and radcliffe presidents stood side-by-side in delivering welcome speakers to entering women and baccalaureate speeches, and women began to live in harvard houses and freshman dorms and parents of hard regard and radcliffe frenchman joint in the same freshman parent's weekend. women students became eligible to compete for prizes and traveling in post graduate fellowships reserved previously for men. women and men had equal claim for tickets on big football games. the athletic departments were merged. women gap very, very, very slowly to be appointed to the harvard faculty, and radcliffe alumni gained the right to vote in elects for the harvard board of overseer and the first two women took their seats on the governing body. nathan piercy retired in 1971 from the presidency of harvard. having accomplished close integration of harvard and radcliffe. he had succeeded in admitting to the harvard grad wad school of arts and sciences women who would eave otherwise matriculated at radcliffe. harvard had again awarding degrees to all radcliffe students. radmanovic cliffground atwatts took part in harvard commencement ceremony. the separate administrative boards has been dissolved and a joint harvard radcliffe administrative board to see the to academic standing and progress, disciplinary matters relating to undergrad bat and joint administrative work had been established and harvard and rad deliver embarked on the statemented of coresidential living. harvard and radcliffe students studied together in the same classes, had the options of living in same dormitories, plus participate in the same extra click're am differents, earned the search bachelor deals elf the same -- polly bunting to the creation of a house system at radcliffe, renovation of existing tomorrow dormitories and the building of a new set of residential facilities, the integrate of faculty tutor's the radcliffe houses and the building of the library which served radcliffe women and also attracted harvard men to the radcliffe quad. bunting created the radcliffe institute, pioneering vehicle through which talented adult women had the time, opportunity and the support to engage fully in intellectual pursuits or creative work that would shape their lives and careers. but the remaining anomaly at harvard and radcliffe, two separate corporate structures, with separate governing board, endowments, budgets and administrative arrangemented had not been addressed before piercy left office. both piercy and bunting wanted to effect a merger but were unable to accomplish it. piercy's freedom of action with limited in significant part by the vietnam war related turmoil. that rocked the harvard campus from november 1966 through april 1969. calling in the police to clear university hall in the wake of the student tipover of the building in april of 1969, had been hugely controversial with damage to piercy's credibility in the corporation as well as the faculty. it also resulted in the foreshortening of his term as president, which was originally intended to run until he reached retirment age in 1973. but in fact it was announced in march 1970 that he would step down in june 1971. buffeted by forced largely external to harvard, unable, smoothly to manage the university amidst the turmoil those forces caused on campus. piercy lost the authority in the maneuvering room to lean on the harvard faculty to embrace the internal rear arrangements required for merger, and bunting blocker had no faculty of her own, and no independent authority over the harvard faculty, could not herself have led them to a different conclusion. with the reluctance of many radcliffe trustees to rehelping quiche what they considered to be fund. fundamental suspect's radically identity christ whether i something seemingly so straightforward asner jerry could be so difficult to achieve. let me stop there. the story obviously goes on for another 25 plus years, but i'd like to stop there and i would welcome your questions. yes. >> know anything about the women who applied to these universities in the early days? >> the women who applied to these universities in the early days were often the daughters or granddaughters 0 alum anytime... >> >> they tended to be students who were better qualified academically on average than them one. the male population at these schools was pretty broad one but the wind then read the top of us distribution. >> we know the argument with single-sex education to be dominated by the men so talk about the feminist movement. >> the questions of how with did would be treated with that were going coed for not raised all that much debt several the women's colleges one of coeducation that smith and wellesley both had high-level committees to study the question and both had reports that came in the same period one recommending coeducation. one of the most interesting phenomenon comes from smith will those from the undergraduate student body in the late '60s and early '70s. the first to polls showed two-thirds of the women students wanted steffens' to admit that. and it looked to a bareheaded - - they were headed in that direction with the high-level trust the administration to make sense what you do for our coeducation and the students had flipped their opinion and two-thirds were opposed to the coeducation. why? the first reason at that point there was on experience with the students going to places like yale and princeton. and the reports that kickbacks said this may not be so perfect as you think. that we are not taking in as seriously end of a classroom for north hampton. those at had the opportunity from many small colleges to go for a sinister or one year to dartmouth. as exchange students. when they got to dartmouth they discovered it wasn't quite so simple. that was one of the reasons. the second is the women's movement. this was the unusual relationship because they were both alumni and gloria steinem in particular beginning 1969 trannineteen 70 to speak out on the subject of issues and to campaign for equal rights for the equal rights amendment and against restrictions on abortion. and gloria steinem was hired to be the commencement speaker. she gave a speech that said essentially we are not ready to go coed. we need to get our heads together as a live-in and it would be a feminist act for smith college to remain a college for women. so the women's movement also had some significant influence because that reluctance in the 1970's to embrace the close relationship with harvard, they thought they had given away a bit too much to reassert data independence and control over its own resources. and she thought of that as a feminist act. >> i am a little curious about the lack of overlap. i am surprised the vietnam draft to did not play into the resistance to little too late warm for men that are applying for the young women. so i guess somewhere it is your fault. >> so what happened by this spring of 1970 the intense anti-war activism and concern a over a black power over the black panther leader since the spring 1970 and the president made his famous statement to his alumni that he doubted a black man could get a fair trial anywhere in the united states of course, one of those activism is that anti-a vietnam war protest when yale men and women participated in protest relating to the treatment of the black panthers, they were working together on a common cause. to allow them to put aside up petty annoyances of the first year coeducation add year -- that year at yale to show it is a complicated and difficult transition because they were working together for larger purposes. against the war and in the interest to promote black rights in the united states. >> he was not drafted anyway in vietnam. >> that was an issue. >> did any do a better job than others to prepare for the arrival? >> is sound chauvinistic to say but truly i believe princeton the best and most careful job. there is nothing in princeton's history to lead me to believe that would be true. surprising everyone i think but the way in which they did that to engage in careful deliberation process , of painstaking slow process over a long period of time with the question of coeducation figuring out how to best do that. so then to establish the committee and how to implement that and then the assistant dean of students to be responsible to work for the implementation of coeducation because princeton had relatively few women that first year. one hundred freshmen, 70 transfer students with a program called the critical languages program and to get them to know them all. to establish a relationship with them. to intervene and they needed help. with more than 500 students in the first year. did they could not do that there was too many. and to have a great time working relationships with of provost and to pay attention when she said that needs to be done. so that special assistant to the president was marginalized never position to participate in major decision making conversations. >> dan to lobby from the house side. >> that thing that differentiated with absolutely no process. sixty-seven through i'm sorry the late 66 through 67. and then with that possibility dead-end yale said we will establish our own college for women but spending the better part of the year, 10 months to imagine what that looks like. said that report of that viability happens did. and 1968. and for the colleges for women. but prints and may actually go coed and that was complete the unacceptable to get out ahead of yale. so in a period of two months with no planning he got the yale faculty to vote for coeducation for september 69 and in fact, that is when princeton committed within - - a admitted women after deliver it careful planning process with endless discussions of the trustees to try to settle their views. >> and the director of admissions that they have not approved coeducation for the fall and then and for the 20th of april they were forced to decide in the fall of 69 the competition is stunning. with the planning emboss says in the bank. sold to embark on coeducation to establish a penny -- foundation that they could produce. >> through the 1970's that is clearly the responsibility of pour reckless women. and the did minister edith board had responsibilities with the extra curricular activities so that notion that there was a college was hard to sustain for decades to engage in some important endeavors and so then what finally happened that day engaged in quiet negotiation to establish as a fact what had then reality. >> there wasn't a college left that didn't have a faculty there just wasn't anything left as a real college to preserve so what is amazing seven them to survive. [applause] >> we will the move in this podium thank you. [inaudible conversations]

Related Keywords

Vietnam , Republic Of , United States , Princeton , Devon , United Kingdom , Hyde Park , United Kingdom General , Houston , Texas , Cambridge , Cambridgeshire , Britain , American , Ky El , Derrick Bach , Nathan Piercy , Radmanovic Cliff , Harvard Radcliffe , Marie Currie Curie , Sea Crete , Asner Jerry , Doris Faber , Gloria Steinem ,