Radcliffe Day 2014

Alumnae/i, fellows, faculty, students, researchers, University leaders, and friends will gather to celebrate 15 years of the Radcliffe Institute, founded in 1999, and 135 years of Radcliffe, founded as the Harvard Annex in 1879.

We will honor Drew Gilpin Faust with the Radcliffe Medal, which we present annually to an individual who has had a transformative impact on society.

We hope you will be part of Radcliffe Day on May 30, 2014, to reflect on the past, savor the present, and imagine the future.

Join the conversation on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RadInstitute
#radday14

Program

10:30 AM

From Civil War to Civil Rights: The Unending Battle to Vote

In Celebration of the Work and Life of Drew Gilpin Faust

Ever since the ratification of the 15th amendment in 1870, the United States has grappled with the ideal of universal suffrage. Recent obstacles include the Supreme Court decision invalidating key parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, passage of voter-ID laws, and proposals for redistricting. This panel will explore why and how the world’s greatest democracy has long struggled over which of its citizens can vote.

• Daniel Carpenter RI '08 (moderator), Allie S. Freed Professor of Government and director of the Center for American Political Studies, Harvard University, and director of the social sciences program, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
• Lani Guinier ’71, Bennett Boskey Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
• Darlene Clark Hine RI ’04, Board of Trustees Professor of African American Studies and professor of history, Northwestern University
• Tony Horwitz RI ’06, author of Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (1999) and Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War (2012)
• Robert Korstad, Kevin D. Gorter Professor of Public Policy and History, Duke University

(Jacquelyn Dowd Hall RI ’04, the Julia Cherry Spruill Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is no longer able to participate in the panel.)

12:30 PM

Annual Lunch

Presentation of the Radcliffe Medal to Drew Gilpin Faust 

2:15 PM

Gender and the Business of Fiction

Who reads? Who writes? Who reviews? Who wins prizes? How does gender influence what counts as literature and how literary fiction is reviewed and received?

• Gish Jen ’77, BI ’87, RI ’02 (moderator), author of World and Town (2011) and Tiger Writing (2013)
• Ann Hulbert ’77, books and culture editor, the Atlantic
• Claire Messud RI ’05, author of The Emperor’s Children (2007) and The Woman Upstairs (2014)
• Elisabeth Schmitz ’86, vice president and editorial director, Grove Atlantic

4 PM

What Is Life? The Science and Ethics of Creating New Life in the Laboratory

How has knowledge of the human genome transformed the biological sciences? How should we assess the promises, perils, and ethics of creating new organisms in the laboratory?

• Eric S. Lander (moderator), president and founding director, Broad Institute of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); professor of biology, MIT; and professor of systems biology, Harvard Medical School
• I. Glenn Cohen JD ’03, RI ’13, professor of law and codirector, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, Harvard Law School
• Linda Griffith RI ’11, professor of biological and mechanical engineering and director, Center for Gynepathology Research, MIT
• David Liu ’94, professor of chemistry and chemical biology, Harvard University; senior associate member, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT; investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
• Pamela Silver RI ’12, professor of systems biology, Harvard Medical School; founding core faculty member, Wyss Institute, Harvard University 

5:15 PM

A Celebration with Friends, Food, and Drink

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