Campus & Community

Radcliffe’s Capital Campaign garners record $101M

3 min read
Drew Gilpin Faust, Linda S. Wilson, and Mary Maples
Radcliffe leaders future, past, and present were on hand at a gala dinner at the Sheraton Commander Hotel to celebrate the Radcliffe Capital Campaign’s success in raising more than $100 million. From left, Drew Gilpin Faust, incoming dean of the Institute; Linda S. Wilson, former president of Radcliffe College; and Mary Maples Dunn, acting dean.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study has announced the successful completion of an eight-year quest to secure $100 million in gifts from donors. At a gala dinner, Acting Dean Mary Maples Dunn revealed the final sum raised: $100,981,189. The new funds will provide financing for two professorships, one faculty associate, 14 full or partial fellowships, Schlesinger Library acquisitions, the Radcliffe Public Policy Center, and much more.

“This is a proud moment for Radcliffe,” Dunn said, “to be celebrating the conclusion of the most ambitious fundraising effort in our history. There were many challenges along the way, to be sure. No one knew at the onset, in the summer of 1992, what changes were in store for Radcliffe College. Our own consultants predicted that we would only be able to raise a maximum of $82 million in gifts from our donors. We certainly proved them wrong. In spite of the rumors from the press, the merger agreement, the transition and evolution of Radcliffe from a college to an institute for advanced study, we persevered.”

Mary Maples Dunn with presentation
In a comic interlude at the Radcliffe Campital Campaign’s closing gala, the Institute’s acting dean, Mary Maples Dunn, was interrupted by ‘George Washington’ who presented Dunn with a scroll commemorating the campaign’s success in raising more than $100 million.

Provost Harvey V. Fineberg, Radcliffe Dean-designate Drew Gilpin Faust, Radcliffe President Emerita Linda S. Wilson, and Nancy-Beth Sheerr, former chair of the alumnae board, were among the 80 in attendance at the Sheraton Commander Hotel in Cambridge to hear Dunn report that Radcliffe had received five gifts of $2 million or more and 13 gifts of between $1 million and $2 million.

Campaign donations allowed the Institute this year to offer stipends to its 60 fellows and scholars for the first time in Radcliffe’s history. The stipends are to help cover expenses, such as child care or moving costs, directly related to fellows’ study at Radcliffe. This year’s fellows include academic and independent scholars, scientists, writers, artists, lawyers, a musician, and a filmmaker. Their research ranges across such diverse topics as the “Genetic Investigations of Biorhythmic Behavior in Hawaiian Crickets” and “My Brother’s Keeper: An American-Jewish Lawyer’s Struggle for Palestinian Human Rights in Israel.”