Opening Up the Fellowships

Women can now apply for 15 Harvard College fellowships and prizes that used to be restricted to men, because a vote of the Corporation last week enrolled them in Harvard College.

The newly-opened awards, with a total endowment of $4.3 million, include the lucrative and prestigious Knox fellowship, but not the lucrative and prestigious Shaw or Fiske-De Jersey fellowships.

Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel for the University, who devised the plan to open up the awards, said he had hoped to include fellowships such as the Shaw--which is limited specifically to "young men"--by broadly construing the term "men." But yesterday Steiner said that he had not been able to find "any good case support."

About $9 million worth of endowed fellowships are now open to Harvard students of either sex, and $560,000 worth are still for men only.

Harvard men are not being admitted to Radcliffe College, so 12 awards with a total endowment of about $300,000 will continue to be limited to women.

Steiner said yesterday that the University will not take further action to open up the remaining restricted awards.

"It's hard for me to say that this isn't totally equitable," he said.