I was resolved to sustain and preserve in my college the bite of the mind, the chance to stand face to face with truth, the good life lived in a small, various, highly articulate and democratic society.

" But Butler agreed saying "We should have women teachers with fuller lives and richer experience not so many dried-up old maids" Gildersleeve recorded this remark in her memoir without comment. She shared an "intimate" relationship with the British Spurgeon with whom Virginia Gildersleeve annually shared a rental summer home (see [5] - Our Story)
Following World War I Virginia Gildersleeve became interested in international politics. org) to keep alive the spirit of international understanding even as isolationism gripped her country.

Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (October 3 1877 – July 7 1965) was an American academic the long-time Dean of Barnard College and the sole female US delegate to the April 1945 San Francisco United Nations Conference on International Organization which negotiated the UN Charter and created the United Nations.