With a dean appointed, planning for the Radcliffe Institute's intellectual agenda and programs has begun. In a July letter to the Harvard community, President Neil L. Rudenstine described the consultations with alumnae and faculty members undertaken by acting dean Mary Maples Dunn and by dean-elect Drew Faust, and announced the creation of an institute ad hoc advisory committee.
Rudenstine said the committee, whose members all come from outside Harvard, was formed in consultation with Dunn and Faust and will be available to discuss issues ranging from the institute's position within the University to the selection processes for fellows and academic priorities. The last topic includes "the Institute's simultaneous commitment to all fields of learning, and to the study of gender, women, and society," as Rudenstine put it.
Members of the committee, who represent a wide array of disciplines and include leaders of the country's most prominent advanced-studies institutes, are: Caroline Bynum '62, a history professor at Columbia; W. Robert Connor, president of the National Center for the Humanities; John D'Arms, president of the American Council of Learned Societies; Wendy Doniger '62, professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago; Phillip Griffiths, director of the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton; Ellen Lagemann, president-elect of the Chicago-based Spencer Foundation, which focuses on education; Carolyn Makinson, of the Mellon Foundation staff; Frank Rhodes, former president of Cornell; Alison Richard, an anthropologist and provost of Yale; Neil Smelser, director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, in Palo Alto; Shirley Tilghman, professor of molecular biology at Princeton; and Winifred White Neisser '74, senior vice president, Columbia Tristar Television.
The committee's work is expected to be completed by the end of the fall academic term. Faust arrives in Cambridge to serve as dean in January 2001.
