Du Bois Vacates Zemurray Chair

Cora du Bois, Samuel Zemurray, Jr. and Doris Zemurray Stone-Radcliffe Professor of Anthropology, will retire this June.

Mis du Bois holds the only Radcliffe chair in the University and is the only female tenured faculty member at Harvard. She has held the professorship since 1954.

The Zemurray chair was given to Radcliffe in 1948 with the stipulation that it be filled only by a distinguished woman scholar in any academic field. Helen Maud Cam, professor of English Constitutional History, held the position before Miss du Bois.

Bernice Brown Cronkhite, dean of the Graducate School, Emerita, said yesterday that the purpose of the chair was not to ensure that a woman got on the Faculty, but that a woman not be barred from the Faculty because of her sex.

Miss du Bois is a social anthropologist. Perhaps her most famous book is The People of Alor, a social-psychological study of an East Indian island. She has done field work in India and gives a graduate seminar in "Problems of Socio-Cultural Change."

Successor

Miss du Bois' successor has not as yet been chosen, Mary I. Bunting said yesterday that a committee was formed last spring to choose a qualified woman to fill the chair and that at least 30 names have been suggested--soem from abroad, some relatively young, and some distinguished older scholar. Mrs. Bunting declined to mention any names since these women are not aware that they are being considered for the position.

Because the chair is open to a woman in any academic area, members of the committee to choose a successor represent various departments. Mrs. Bunting is the committee's chairman; members include: Roger W. Brown, professor of Social Psychology; John L. Clive, professor of History and Literature; Giles Constable, Henry Charles Lea Professor of Medieval History; Jean-Jacques Demorest, professor of Romance Languages and Literatures; John H. Van Vleck, Hollis Professor of Mathematics and natural Philosophy; and Charles A. Whitney, professor of Astronomy.

Miss due Bois must retire at the end of this academic year because she will have reached the age of 66 before June.