"Keep the Damned Women Out": The Struggle for Coeducation (The William G. Bowen Series Book 102)

As the tumultuous decade of the 1960s ended, a number of very traditional, very conservative, highly prestigious colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom decided to go coed, seemingly all at once, in a remarkably brief span of time. Coeducation met with fierce resistance. As one alumnus put it in a letter to his alma mater, "Keep the damned women out." Focusing on the complexities of institutional decision making, this book tells the story of this momentous era in higher education—revealing how coeducation was achieved not by organized efforts of women activists, but through strategic decisions made by powerful men. In America, Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth began to admit women; in Britain, several of the men's colleges at Cambridge and Oxford did the same. What prompted such fundamental change? How was coeducation accomplished in the face of such strong opposition? How well was it implemented? Nancy Weiss Malkiel explains that elite institutions embarked on coeducation not as a moral imperative but as a self-interested means of maintaining a first-rate applicant pool. She explores the challenges of planning for the academic and non-academic lives of newly admitted women, and shows how, with the exception of Mary Ingraham Bunting at Radcliffe, every decision maker leading the charge for coeducation was male. Drawing on unprecedented archival research, __“Keep the Damned Women Out”__ is a breathtaking work of scholarship that is certain to be the definitive book on the subject. Contents List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Setting the Stage: The Turbulent 1960s Part I. The Ivy League: Harvard, Yale, and Princeton 2. Harvard-Radcliffe: “To Be Accepted by the Old and Beloved University” 3. Yale: “Girls Are People, Just Like You and Me” 4. Princeton: “Coeducation Is Inevitable” 5. Princeton: “A Penetrating Analysis of Far-Reaching Significance” 6. Yale: “Treat Yale as You Would a Good Woman” 7. Princeton: “The Admission of Women Will Make Princeton a Better University” 8. Harvard-Radcliffe: Negotiating the “Non-Merger Merger” 9. Princeton: “I Felt I Was in a Foreign Country” 10. Harvard-Radcliffe: Playing in the “Big Yard” with the Boys 11. Yale: Yale Is “Not Yet Coeducational” 12. Princeton: “We’re All Coeds Now” Part II. The Seven Sisters: Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley 13. Vassar: “Separate Education for Women Has No Future” 14. Vassar: “Vassar for Men?” 15. Smith: “A Looming Problem Which Is Going to Have to Be Faced” 16. Smith: “Recommitting to Its Original, Pioneering Purpose” 17. Wellesley: “Should Wellesley Jump on the Bandwagon?” 18. Wellesley: “Having the Courage to Remain a Women’s College” Part III. Revisiting the Ivies: Dartmouth 19. Dartmouth: “For God’s Sake, for Everyone’s Sake, Keep the Damned Women Out” 20. Dartmouth: “Our Cohogs” Part IV. The United Kingdom: Cambridge and Oxford 21. Cambridge: “Like Dropping a Hydrogen Bomb in the Middle of the University” 22. Cambridge: “A Tragic Break with Centuries of Tradition” 23. Oxford: “Our Crenellations Crumble, We Cannot Keep Them Out” 24. Oxford: As Revolutionary as “the Abolition of Celibacy among the Dons” Part V. Taking Stock 25. Epilogue Manuscript Collections and Oral History Transcripts: Abbreviations Interviews Index A groundbreaking history of how elite colleges and universities in America and Britain finally went coed As the tumultuous decade of the 1960s ended, a number of very traditional, very conservative, highly prestigious colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom decided to go coed, seemingly all at once, in a remarkably brief span of time. Coeducation met with fierce resistance. As one alumnus put it in a letter to his alma mater, "Keep the damned women out." Focusing on the complexities of institutional decision making, this book tells the story of this momentous era in higher education—revealing how coeducation was achieved not by organized efforts of women activists, but through strategic decisions made by powerful men. In America, Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth began to admit women; in Britain, several of the men's colleges at Cambridge and Oxford did the same. What prompted such fundamental change? How was coeducation accomplished in the face of such strong opposition? How well was it implemented? Nancy Weiss Malkiel explains that elite institutions embarked on coeducation not as a moral imperative but as a self-interested means of maintaining a first-rate applicant pool. She explores the challenges of planning for the academic and non-academic lives of newly admitted women, and shows how, with the exception of Mary Ingraham Bunting at Radcliffe, every decision maker leading the charge for coeducation was male. Drawing on unprecedented archival research, "Keep the Damned Women Out" is a breathtaking work of scholarship that is certain to be the definitive book on the subject. "As the tumultuous decade of the 1960s ended, a number of very traditional, very conservative, highly prestigious colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom decided to go coed, seemingly all at once, in a remarkably brief span of time. Coeducation met with fierce resistance. As one alumnus put it in a letter to his alma mater, "Keep the damned women out." Focusing on the complexities of institutional decision making, this book tells the story of this momentous era in higher education--revealing how coeducation was achieved not by organized efforts of women activists, but through strategic decisions made by powerful men. In America, Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth began to admit women; in Britain, several of the men's colleges at Cambridge and Oxford did the same. What prompted such fundamental change? How was coeducation accomplished in the face of such strong opposition? How well was it implemented? Nancy Weiss Malkiel explains that elite institutions embarked on coeducation not as a moral imperative but as a self-interested means of maintaining a first-rate applicant pool. She explores the challenges of planning for the academic and non-academic lives of newly admitted women, and shows how, with the exception of Mary Ingraham Bunting at Radcliffe, every decision maker leading the charge for coeducation was male. Drawing on unprecedented archival research, [this book] is a breathtaking work of scholarship that is certain to be the definitive book on the subject."--Jacket