Posted on 06/23/2010 8:00:33 AM PDT by reaganaut1
The first decade of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study ended on a high note with the presentation of the Radcliffe Medal to writer and organizer Gloria Steinem on May 28. “I’m definitely living to 100,” Steinem said, “but now I have to”—in order to earn the medal. A 1956 Smith alumna, Steinem, 75, told in her speech of how, as a member of the Smith College board, she and then-Smith president Ruth Simmons imagined a merger of Smith and Radcliffe in the late 1990s, shortly before the formation of the Institute. Steinem saw Radcliffe, as it negotiated with Harvard, “in the position of an abused woman trying to negotiate with her abusive husband. Ruth and I decided that what Radcliffe needed was a girlfriend.” It turned out to be too late in the process for such a bold initiative. Still, Steinem looks back on those years as an outgrowth of a time when she “finally stopped being retroactively mad at Smith for the very non-feminist 1950s of my student days, which really wasn’t their fault. The 1950s were nobody’s fault.”
With a nod to David Letterman, she next launched into a “Top Ten” list of concepts and principles that she has settled on for living effectively. For example, Number 10: “Don’t ever believe that men can’t change.” She gave the example of a notion that once prevailed: only women possessed the fine-motor skills to type. Then, “Suddenly computers appeared and voilà! Men could type!” Number 9 was: “All grownups should be able to get married as long as they don’t hit each other, but I hope we stop thinking that only lifetime partnerships mean success.”
(Excerpt) Read more at harvardmagazine.com ...
Oh happy day !
BURP!!!....
Suddenly computers appeared and men could type? I learned to type long before that. She is an idiot.
Gloria, one of the great thinkers and philosophers of our time.
She’s 75 years old and she’s still stuck on stupid.
You left out “most of the alumni”.
The best part of the Harvard Magazine is the personals, which I try never to miss. In fact, I plan eventually to have my sons read them so that they can see what lies behind the facade. A very amusing window into the private lives of our ever-so-sophisticated “elite”.
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