Radcliffe Experts Discuss Legacy of Horner Years

Outgoing Radcliffe President Matina S. Horner has created a community for women's scholarship and education during her 17 years as the institution's head, members of a Commencement panel concluded yesterday.

More than 150 women and a handful of men gathered at the Agassiz Theater to discuss "The Horner Years: The Growth of Women's Education at Radcliffe." Susan Ware, an associate professor of history at New York University and a former visiting scholar at Radcliffe, moderated the four-member panel.

Panelists said Horner has helped make the women's college one of the foremost resources for the study of women's lives. In addition, Ware said, the retiring president brought the school through a crucial time in which Radcliffe was a haven from "the climate in Harvard Yard, [which] was chilly to the study of women."

"Radcliffe College provides a room of one's own," panelist Rose Coser told the crowd. A professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Coser said the women's institution "provides a network--something that comes natural to men but not to women."

This "network," other panelists said, is created by the women who participate in scholarly research programs at the Bunting Institute, the Murray Research Center and the Schlesinger Library.

Coser, Ware and Kip Tiernan, a Bunting fellow and founder of Boston's first homeless women's shelter, said they found the Radcliffe community to be a nurturing, scholarly environment.

Tiernan, who will receive an honorary Harvard degree during Commencement today, called the Bunting Institute a "sanctuary" where fellows can "follow their visions."

"We come to the Institute as strangers, and we leave as sisters," she added.

Although these three speakers lauded the growth and extent of Radcliffe's graduate and research facilities, the fourth panelist, Heather R. McLeod '90, said Radcliffe also needs to bring this nurturing environment into undergraduate life.

"The solution to [discrimination against women] at Harvard-Radcliffe must lie in the relationship Radcliffe has with its undergraduates," McLeod said.

And Ware warned that Radcliffe "must not be blind to the dangers of separatism and marginalization," adding, "There is much in the Harvard-Radcliffe relationship to suggest these dangers."

But one alumna attending the discussion, Florence T. Revelle '24, said she was encouraged by the strides in coeducation made by Harvard and Radcliffe. "When I graduated from Radcliffe, Harvard Law School didn't admit women so I had to go to Yale Law School," she said, adding, "we've made great progress."