Faculty Involvement

In the spring of 1942, Radcliffe invited many public figures, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Joseph Kennedy, to speak about the war.

"Joe Kennedy was very big on the Harvard campus, and he supported help to Russia," Castleman says. "And he was so damn good-looking."

Professors also became more vocal as the war progressed. As the number of enlisted Harvard men increased and class sizes dwindled, Radcliffe women took more and more classes at Harvard--a trend that would eventually lead to the official abolition of separate lectures for men and women.

In an address to the college in February 1942, a Radcliffe dean spoke of opportunities for graduate work and the importance such work would have in the war.

"In the war effort, college work is important. Oxford and Cambridge are still functioning in warstricken England," the dean said. "There is a great connection between graduate study and our way of life. Such study won't help us in winning the war, but it will help in reconstruction."

With the war such a constant topic of discussion on campus, it soon became difficult to avoid taking sides in the ongoing debates.

A Radcliffe News student poll taken in the spring of '42 showed that nine of every 10 students favored retaliation for the Japanese bombing of defenseless Manila with an American counter-bombing of Japanese cities.

War propaganda was unavoidable, even in the college newspapers. Camel cigarette advertisements advocating women's participation in the war appeared almost daily in The News.

"What, a girl is training men to fly for Uncle Sam?" teases the ad. "Don't let those eyes and that smile fool you. When this young lady starts talking airplanes, brother, you'd listen too."