Ivy League Trading Cards: The Heroes of Early Women’s Education

When I wrote the blog post last year, Yale Needs Women, I found myself cringing at how President Kingman Brewster handled coeducation. He didn’t so much throw open the gates as grudgingly unhook the latch—mostly because Princeton had just started to admit women, and Yale’s admit rates were taking a hit. Brewster famously insisted on still admitting 1,000 men each year to ensure Yale’s mission of “producing male leaders” wasn’t disrupted. The women? They could come—so long as they didn’t get in the way.

Yale, in short, was pretty awful. But many Ivies were pretty bad. Dartmouth women arrived in 1972 to frat chants, hate mail, and banners reading “Better Dead Than Coed.”

But there were some heroes in the fight for coeducation. I thought I’d use ChatGPT to create some trading cards of the Heroes of Ivy League Coeducation. Here’s my first attempt. At the bottom, I’ll show you how you can help me out!

Ezra Cornell (Founder, Cornell University)

When Ezra Cornell founded his namesake university in 1865, he declared it would be a place “where any person can find instruction in any study.” And he meant it.

Cornell admitted its first woman in 1870—five years after opening. No quotas, no separate college, no trial run. Just a simple idea: if someone wants to learn, they should be allowed in. Critics complained. Ezra and co-founder Andrew Dickson White didn’t care. They saw no reason a woman couldn’t study alongside a man. It wasn’t progressive for its time—it was radical.

Elizabeth Cary Agassiz (Founder, Radcliffe College)

Across the river from Harvard, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz built an institution out of sheer persistence.

In 1879, when Harvard refused to admit women, she helped create the “Harvard Annex”—a program where women could learn from Harvard professors, but not as Harvard students, and certainly not with Harvard degrees.

It was a workaround, but a smart one. And in 1894, that Annex became Radcliffe College, with Agassiz as its first president. Radcliffe offered the same professors, the same academic rigor, and—eventually—joint diplomas. Harvard resisted, delayed, and hedged. Radcliffe just kept teaching women.

It took until 1999 for Harvard to finally formally merge with Radcliffe, ending more than a century of half-steps and polite distance. By then, Radcliffe had educated generations of women at the highest level—often under conditions that made clear they were guests, not equals.

Frederick A.F. Barnard (Columbia University — It’s Complicated)

Frederick Barnard served as president of Columbia University from 1864 to 1889. He believed, passionately and publicly, that women should be admitted to Columbia.

Columbia’s trustees disagreed. Repeatedly. From the 1870s all the way to his death in 1889.

Also in 1889, after years of hearing “no,” a group of women led by Annie Nathan Meyer opened a new college—Barnard College—just across the street. They named it after the one man in power who had fought for their inclusion.

Barnard never saw Columbia admit a single woman. But in the end, his name went on the building—just not the one he’d hoped for. Columbia kept its gates closed and gave him a plaque across the street.

It took Columbia until 1983 to finally admit women to Columbia College, the last in the Ivy League—nearly a century after Barnard began his push.

Add Your Own

This was just the first bunch. Create your own using ChatGPT. if you submit them here I can add more to this list in the future. All you have to do is:

1. Copy an image of one of the card images above into ChatGPT and ask it to describe the card.
2. Add information about your own hero.
3. Tell ChatGPT to make an image of the new card.
4. Upload the new card and description here.

I look forward to adding more cards to my list. If I get enough new cards, I’ll update this post in 6 months with the new collection.