Virginia Gildersleeve

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Virginia Gildersleeve – Life, Career, and Legacy

Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965) was a pioneering American academic, longtime dean of Barnard College, cofounder of the International Federation of University Women, and the only woman in the U.S. delegation to the 1945 United Nations Charter Conference.

Introduction

Virginia Gildersleeve was one of the foremost women academics and institutional builders of the 20th century. As Dean of Barnard College for over three decades, she shaped women’s higher education and fought for women’s opportunities. Her international engagement—most notably as the sole female U.S. representative at the 1945 UN Conference—extended her influence into global diplomacy and educational reconstruction. Her legacy is complex and at times controversial, but her imprint on institutions, intellectual women’s networks, and the shape of higher education for women is enduring.

Early Life & Education

Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve was born on October 3, 1877, in New York City into a prominent New York family.
Her father, Henry Alger Gildersleeve, served as a judge on the state Supreme Court.
She attended the Brearley School, a prestigious girls’ school in Manhattan, graduating in 1895.

After finishing secondary school, she enrolled at Barnard College (then affiliated with Columbia University) and graduated in 1899.
She earned a fellowship to pursue graduate work in medieval history for her M.A. at Columbia University.

Gildersleeve later pursued a Ph.D. in English and comparative literature at Columbia, completing it around 1908.
Afterward, she taught part-time in English at Barnard and Columbia, gradually advancing in academic rank.

Academic Career & Deanship at Barnard

In 1911, Virginia Gildersleeve was appointed Dean of Barnard College, a role she held until 1947.
Her tenure transformed Barnard from a relatively marginal women’s college into a strong, respected institution.

Some of her key contributions at Barnard include:

• Advancing women’s access to professional schools at Columbia: She worked to integrate women students into Columbia’s professional schools (e.g. journalism, law, medicine).

• Curricular reform and modernization: She expanded the curriculum to include courses like political science, hygiene/health, and social sciences, which were previously uncommon in women’s colleges.

• Maternity leave for women faculty: She introduced policies at Barnard that gave women faculty the option of a paid term off or reduced pay for a year following childbirth—an early step toward institutional support for women scholars.

• Institutional independence and strength: Under her leadership, Barnard maintained independence while leveraging connections with Columbia, attracting strong faculty, improving prestige, and solidifying finances.

Her deanship spanned pivotal decades for women in higher education, and she was both praised and critiqued for the selective, elite orientation she nurtured.

International Engagement & UN Role

Gildersleeve’s influence extended beyond academia into international affairs:

• In 1919, along with Caroline Spurgeon and Rose Sidgwick, she co-founded the International Federation of University Women (IFUW), intended to foster cooperation, exchange, and advocacy among academic women globally.

• During World War II, she chaired the advisory council for the U.S. WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), a naval reserve unit for women.

• In 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her to the U.S. delegation at the San Francisco Conference on International Organization, which drafted the United Nations Charter. She was the only woman in that delegation.

  • On the UN Charter drafting team, she secured responsibility for the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) component, helping to embed goals like “conditions of economic and social progress and development” and universal human rights into the charter.

• In March 1946, she served on the U.S. Education Mission to Japan, assisting in rebuilding Japan’s educational system in the postwar era.

Her participation in diplomacy and reconstruction signaled that she saw women’s leadership as not confined to campuses, but as integral to postwar global order.

Views, Controversies & Later Life

Virginia Gildersleeve’s legacy is not unambiguous; some of her positions and actions have drawn controversy:

• Admissions policies & religious/ethnic quotas: During her deanship, efforts were made to moderate the proportion of Jewish students admitted to Barnard and Columbia. Some historians note that admission criteria shifted to include interviews, recommendations, geographic diversification, and psychological testing—mechanisms that critics argue functioned to limit Jewish enrollment.

• Opposition to the State of Israel / anti-Zionism: After her retirement, Gildersleeve founded and chaired the Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land (1948). She lobbied against U.S. support for Israel and sought to reverse the UN partition decision.

• Personal life & relationships: She lived many years in companionship with Elizabeth Reynard, a Barnard English professor. They are buried together in Bedford, New York. Some biographers have speculated about aspects of her personal life and identity, though Gildersleeve described herself in later writing as “celibate” and protested discrimination against single women scholars.

• After stepping down as dean in 1947, she settled in Bedford, New York, and later moved to a nursing home in Centerville, Massachusetts, where she died on July 7, 1965, at the age of 87.

She authored a memoir, Many a Good Crusade, published in 1954, and a collection of essays titled A Hoard for Winter.

Legacy & Impact

Virginia Gildersleeve’s impact spans multiple spheres—education, women’s networks, international diplomacy, and institutional culture:

1. Women’s higher education
   She played a key role in expanding the intellectual horizons of women, pushing for equal access in curricula, professional training, and on-campus autonomy. Her leadership strengthened Barnard’s reputation and capacity.

2. International networks for women academics
   Through the International Federation of University Women, she fostered global solidarity and exchange among women scholars. Her vision contributed to sustaining women’s international intellectual engagement in the face of war and shifting geopolitics.

3. Institutional influence on global governance
   Her role in drafting portions of the UN Charter (especially ECOSOC’s mandates) left a durable imprint on how global institutions conceptualize economic and social aims.

4. Continuing funding & memorials
   After her passing, in 1969, the Virginia Gildersleeve International Fund (VGIF) was established to support women’s education and development projects around the world.
   The VGIF has granted hundreds of awards to support women’s leadership, education, and vocational projects.

5. Complex historical memory
   Modern scholars pay attention not only to her achievements, but also to her limitations and contradictions—her selective elitism, her role in admissions controversies, and her views about the Middle East. Nancy Woloch’s recent biography, The Insider: A Life of Virginia C. Gildersleeve, examines her as both a powerful actor and a conflicted figure.

Her life raises important questions about power, privilege, gender, institutional norms, and the kinds of leadership that shape institutions and nations.