AROUND HIGHER EDUCATION: Radcliffe folds into Harvard

and Adam Sofen The Harvard Crimson CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- (U-WIRE) One hundred twenty years after it first pried open the door for women's education at Harvard, Radcliffe College announced Tuesday it will dissolve. An agreement between Radcliffe and Harvard officials paves the way for a formally coeducational Harvard College and a new Radcliffe Institute under the university's umbrella. The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, unveiled to staff, alumnae and the press yesterday, will become a non-degree-granting sector of the university on equal administrative footing with Harvard's nine faculties. "This really is the fulfillment of more than 120 years of a journey that Harvard and Radcliffe undertook together, but separately," Harvard President Neil Rudenstine said. The Institute will "sustain a commitment to the study of women, gender and society," according to officials. However, leaders have said that the issues of gender will not remain Radcliffe's exclusive focus. The tie that will bind the new interdisciplinary center together has yet to be determined exactly. "An Institute for Advanced Study can and must define its intellectual foci, so it has both intellectual coherence and, I hope, excellent connections with intellectual activity that surrounds it," Dean of the Faculty Jeremy Knowles said. Radcliffe President Linda Wilson also announced that she will step down at the end of June. Wilson, who will take a year-long paid sabbatical before moving on, is Radcliffe's seventh and final president. Wilson said that it has been a "rare privilege" to lead Radcliffe. "Ten years is a long time to stay in this seat," she said. "I want to invest everything I can in this institution and this is one way I can do it." Director of the Schlesinger Library and former Smith College President Mary Maples Dunn will become the interim head of Radcliffe, serving until Rudenstine appoints a permanent dean. A special committee, which will include at least some current members of the Radcliffe Board of Trustees, will assist in the selection and confirmation of the first Institute dean. Dunn said that she expects to be the acting head of Radcliffe for between six months and a year but that she will stay on until a permanent dean is selected. "When they find the dean of their dreams, I'll retire again," she said. According to one source, the wording of the agreement was bounced back and forth throughout the weekend and the final papers weren't initialed until minutes before Monday's 3 p.m. press conference. While Tuesday's announcement is not officially binding -- a detailed legal document is still in the works -- it sets forth a series of general principles that have been agreed upon by the two institutions after more than a year of closed-door negotiations. Rudenstine said that it should take between 30 and 60 days for lawyers to work out a legally binding agreement. "It's really just a technical matter from here," he said. Among the principles announced Monday is an agreement that female undergraduates will now be admitted to Harvard College only, not Radcliffe. The signing of a legal contract at an unspecified future date would end Radcliffe's status as an independent institution. Since 1977, Radcliffe has maintained its own land, endowment and an administrative structure answerable only to its own self-perpetuating Board of Trustees. Under the new proposal, all of that will change. The Board of Trustees will cease to exist. Radcliffe's land and buildings will be folded into the university and Harvard will then own the Radcliffe Quadrangle. Harvard will contribute $150 million to Radcliffe's present endowment to form a $350 million dowry for the new Institute. Fifty million dollars of those funds will be used to support undergraduate financial aid for both men and women. The dean of Radcliffe will not have the formal consulting power regarding the welfare of undergraduates that Wilson has technically enjoyed as president. But some hope that, as a full member of the University's inner circle rather than a nagging neighbor, Radcliffe will now have the power to affect real change for Harvard's women.