Mary Maples Dunn, who presided over Radcliffe’s merger with Harvard, dies at 85
Mary Maples Dunn, a historian and advocate for women’s education who presided over Radcliffe during its merger with Harvard, died on March 19. She was 85. “Mary always believed firmly in what women could do,” Harvard President Drew Faust said. “She made that clear both in what she said and in the model she represented.” An educator for more than four decades, Dunn arrived at Harvard in 1995, after serving a decade as president of Smith College. She had intended to retire from Smith, but her devotion to libraries and to building access for women led her to accept a position as head of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. That again was a likely last stop, but when Radcliffe tapped her to serve as interim president, Dunn rose to the occasion, steering the women’s college through its merger with Harvard and its transformation into an institute for advanced...