Description
In 1923, Fannie Fern Andrews, an American international educationalist and peace activist, formulated “a plan for establishing a foundation for instruction in international affairs at Radcliffe”. It claimed women were particularly committed to, equipped for and in need of the study of international relations. The funders disagreed: they told Radcliffe to hand over to Harvard. However, Andrew’s vision was taken up by Ada Comstock, President of Radcliffe and her Dean, International Law scholar Bernice Brown. Their work saw the Harvard-Radcliffe Bureau of International Research founded in 1924 and, despite co-option, both serving on the five-person committee with Brown as Secretary, a role she would hold for the two-decade life of the Bureau. From 1924-42, it fostered the careers of over two dozen women international thinkers, published volumes of their work, and gave rise to the first generation of women international relations scholars in the academy. Though not the same feminist project envisioned by Andrews, by 1942, through Comstock and Brown’s patronage, diplomacy and advocacy, it had built a world of women’s international thought in the academy and bequeathed a generation whose careers would shape the field and last until the 1980s. Exploring the role of Comstock and Brown highlights how important senior women educators and their institution-building were to women’s international thought in the academy. The paper argues that such work should be seen as knowledge production and a product of, as much as a response to, the deeply gendered academy. Above all, it deserves recognition for its contribution to IR.
