Professor Nancy Malkiel is giving a talk on “Keep the Damned Women Out”: The Struggle for Coeducation on Tuesday 1st November, at Brasenose College.
Beginning in 1969 and mainly ending in 1974, there was a flood of decisions for coeducation in the United States as well as the United Kingdom. In her new book “Keep the Damned Women Out”: The Struggle for Coeducation, Nancy Weiss Malkiel, professor emeritus of history at Princeton University, asks these questions: Why did very traditional, very conservative, very elite institutions decide to embark on such a fundamental change? Why did so many schools act in the late 1960s and early 1970s? How was coeducation accomplished in the face of strong opposition? What was the role of institutional leadership? And, with the admission of students of the opposite sex to formerly single-sex universities, what happened? In other words, how well did coeducation work in its early incarnations? Professor Malkiel’s talk will focus on these questions, with particular attention to the similarities and differences between coeducation at Cambridge and Oxford and coeducation in the Ivy League.
Nancy Weiss Malkiel is a scholar in 20th century American history. She joined the Princeton faculty as an assistant professor in 1969, was promoted to associate professor in 1975 and to full professor in 1982. She transferred to emeritus status in 2016. From 1987 to 2011, Professor Malkiel served as Dean of the College, the senior officer responsible for Princeton's undergraduate academic program. All matters relating to the curriculum, academic advising, academic regulations, and scholastic standing fell under her aegis. As dean, she also had oversight responsibility for the offices of Admission, the Registrar, Undergraduate Financial Aid, and Teacher Preparation, as well as for the Princeton Writing Program, the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, and the residential colleges. From 1982 to 1986, Professor Malkiel served as the founding master of Dean Mathey College, one of Princeton’s six residential colleges.
Professor Malkiel is a trustee of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. She served previously as a commissioner of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and as chair of the assembly and a member of the board of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education. She is a former trustee of Smith College, Princeton Day School, and McCarter Theatre in Princeton.
Professor Malkiel received a B.A. (1965) and an honorary degree (1997) from Smith College and an M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1970) from Harvard University.
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