Nannerl O. Keohane: Women's Contributions To Duke

It is an exceptional pleasure for me as President of Duke to join in this celebration of the Woman's College. It could not have been done without the enthusiastic support of the Alumni Association and many folks on campus who pitched in to help with arrangements. But most of all, we are indebted to Mary Maddry Strauss, who dreamed up and chaired this 30th anniversary celebration, and her committee members.

We have gathered this weekend to recognize the importance of the Woman's College to the alumnae, to Duke, and to society. It is worth clearing some space in the clutter of everyday life to savor our history, with a whiff of nostalgia along the way. Let's also think about the women of Duke today and in the future; how do their lives compare with yours? what do they dream about and hope for? And what dreams and hopes do we have for them?

The experience of a women's college

In setting the stage for nostalgia, I must acknowledge that I am not an alumna of the Woman's College. As a senior in high school I failed to discover the unique advantages of the arrangement you all saw so clearly. You had the best of both worlds, a true woman's college experience along with all the benefits of a university education -- and the immediate proximity of all those Duke men.

It was a long way from Wellesley into Cambridge -- not to mention Hanover or New Haven. We spent a lot of weekends in genteel boarding houses in other college towns, with landladies who replicated the stern oversight we received back on campus. And when our dates were from Harvard or MIT, we risked life and limb scrambling back out Route 9 to exchange that last hurried kiss before signing in by 1 a.m. Where were the pennies in The Sower's outstretched hand when we needed them?

Nonetheless, I regard myself as one of you. Attending a women's college was crucially formative in my life, in much the same way that your Woman's College experience is important to you. We learned self-confidence, we grew as leaders; we formed strong bonds with other women. It was not all sunshine and laughter, but we had many wonderful moments of friendship and intellectual discovery; and almost every one of us would say that we are stronger because of that unique experience of a woman's education.

As you know well, the Woman's College at Duke was one of the most competitive colleges for women for a long time. Being accepted to the College was more prestigious than being accepted to Trinity. Bob Durden assures me that if a guy walked into a class and saw a bunch of women, he would usually drop out to avoid a C. That's how good you were, and are.

My first official visit to your campus was at the invitation of Jean O'Barr to celebrate Women's Studies in1989; and when I became president of Duke, one of the first things that struck me was the impact of the Woman's College on this university over the years.

Duke's early serious commitment to educating women, with the ample opportunities for leadership and personal development provided by the dual student governance structure, and the involvement of many talented and loyal alumnae, have set Duke apart from other co-ed institutions. Most of our peers came late to the education of women, getting religion only in the 1970s, and then only because they were losing coveted male recruits to more enlightened institutions. Others that have been technically co-educational since their foundings provided a theoretically equal experience; but until very recently, that experience systematically excluded women from leadership opportunities.

Last year I delivered a talk at Yale, where I went to graduate school, for the tercentennial celebration; in that talk, I compared the ways gender had influenced the evolution of several schools I know well -- Duke, Wellesley, Stanford and Yale. I found the contrasts quite arresting, and I learned a lot in preparing for that speech.

Let me give just one example -- what you might call the iconography on all these campuses. At Wellesley, in the main reading room of the library, hang the portraits of all the presidents. Nothing odd about that, you might say; the same is true for Duke and many other institutions. But the striking thing about Wellesley is that all the portraits are of women, great portraits of self-confident, wise women across a dozen decades. Wellesley has never had a male president, by the way; when the trustees appeared about to name one in 1911, the Wellesley Club of Minneapolis protested that they did not want a man in their "Adamless Eden," and they prevailed.

At Stanford, and God save the mark, at Yale, you would be hard pressed to find a single portrait of a woman in the hallowed halls where such icons are found. At Duke, our own lovely Mary Semans breaks the gauntlet of middle-aged or elderly males in the Gothic Reading Room, and thanks to a project of the Women's Studies program, the East Duke parlors now honor more than a dozen women. But there is clearly more that we should do. Our new Vice President for Student Affairs, Larry Moneta, has made it one of his priorities to push for more art celebrating women across this campus.

We have 9,364 living Woman's College alumnae and another 21,270 women alumnae of Trinity since the merger, and compared with many of our peers, we have a goodly number of buildings named for women'"the Doris Duke Center in the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, Baldwin Auditorium, Baker House, Biddle Music Building, the Nanaline Duke research center, Lilly Library, Giles, Wilson, Gilbert-Addoms.

This is one obvious way in which gender matters: an institution's iconography, conception of itself and its history, and the messages that sends about who can wield authority, who matters around this place. We have done a middling job, I would say, of preserving the vision of Woman's College, neither the worst nor the best in the country. Our proud tradition serves us well -- when we draw conscious attention to it, and when our students acknowledge it.

Remembering our history

It began with the three Giles sisters, who persuaded president Craven they could do the academic work their brother had come to Trinity College to do in the 1870s. They graduated in 1878 after a combination of private classes and sitting in on a few regular lectures with the men. Since they had no emulators or companions for many years '" I've often wondered why this was so '" the Giles sisters were, alas, an aberration, though an important one; no one could say, after that, that women could not do the work at Trinity, and the ground was prepared for later growth.

Our early credentials included the admission of women to graduate education in 1892; and as all of us should know, in 1896, Washington Duke tied a string to a $100,000 gift'"the requirement that education be provided for women on equal terms with men. As those of you who study philanthropy would be quick to observe, judicious, well-directed gifts do make a difference. This strong proto-feminist male benefactor made the difference by requiring that women be given a chance to be educated; how appropriate that his statue welcomes people to East Campus. With strong women in his family and his genuine beliefs in equality, he set the course of this institution for a long time to come.

President Kilgo, ahead of his time on feminist matters as he was on race, suggested a women's co-ordinate college as early as 1902, but nothing came of it at the time. When the Woman's College was formally organized in 1930, a crucial new day dawned. The model was set from the beginning: women students should have academic work that was basically the same as their male classmates, and quite a few of their classes should be on the other campus, to which you should have full rights of access; yet you also had your own space, and your own student government, parallel to that of the men and equal in legitimacy. You also had, as role models, some strong women deans who are the stuff of legend even today.

Compared to what passed for co-education at the time, Duke women in those early days of the College were fortunate; they were nurtured, cared for, assured of their value'"yet also, often, treated with condescension. To understand this rather odd mixture, it helps to know something about the battles that were fought on our behalf, and in celebrating the Woman's College, we need to honor those who fought them.

Dean Alice Mary Baldwin was a true heroine, and we owe her a great deal; I envy those of you who knew her. She arrived in 1923 as Trinity College Dean of Women, became the first woman faculty member as a professor of history in 1924, oversaw the creation of Woman's College, and led it with a sure hand through her retirement in 1947. In her fascinating memoir, she reminds us that her chief aims, in the discussions with President Few and others around the creation of the Woman's College, were "to have full opportunities for the women to share in all academic life; to have the advantages of the university libraries, laboratories, faculty, while at the same time giving them the opportunity to develop leadership and college spirit through their own organizations while learning to work with men through membership in some common student organizations."

She had her work cut out for her as a colleague of a president who, as she notes wryly in her memoir, had five sons and, in her words, "little knowledge of teenage girls." It was with great difficulty that she prevailed upon President Few to permit the inclusion of showers in the dormitories; he believed women cared only for baths. Few also wanted to put a high iron fence around the entire women's residential quadrangle, to be locked at night; Dean Baldwin persuaded him that such a thing "would only lead to many escapades by both men and women." She knew us well.

Dean Baldwin had tact and perseverance in equal measure, though she did not always get her way. Those were different and difficult times, and it is a measure of her greatness -- I do not use the word lightly -- that she often helped her students enter law or business or medicine against their parents' wishes'"a risky activity at a very young college.

I know some of you remember one of Dean Baldwin's longstanding colleagues'"often her co-conspirator against the university administration'"the first Woman's College dean of students, Mary Grace Wilson. In 1990 she received the University Medal for Distinguished Meritorious Service, and the Mary Grace Wilson Professorship of Religion was created in her honor.

Many other women deserve to be named in this celebration; I know that other speakers will do so, and that you will recall them fondly. Our university is still young, and we anticipate with joy and gratitude that some of its chief women pioneers will be among us for quite awhile yet. Anne Firor Scott, Mary Semans, Juanita Kreps and others can give us a wonderful living history... continued