Constance H. Buchanan ’71 AM

Constance H. Buchanan ’71 AM, of New York City; Sept. 16, of complications from Parkinson’s disease. She led the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School for two decades. Hired at age 30 in 1977, she stayed at Harvard until 1997. Along with directing the Women’s Studies in Religion Program, she was a faculty member and associate dean at the school and spent six years as special assistant to the president. Her greatest legacy was directing what is known as WSRP, which annually hosts five full-time research associates who serve as visiting faculty for a year and work on book-length projects. She published Choosing to Lead: Women and the Crisis of American Values in 1996, became a senior program officer at the Ford Foundation in 1997 and retired a decade later, well into her Parkinson’s diagnosis.