Professor Synnott's research focuses on two main areas: higher education and American women’s history. Her first book dealt with access to and discrimination in higher education: (1) The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination and Admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900-1970 (Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1979). Dr. Synnott updated her research on this topic with three recent publications: (2) “The Evolving `Diversity Rationale’in University Admissions: From Regents v. Bakke to the University of Michigan Cases,” presented at the February 28, 2004 “Symposium “Revisiting Brown v. Board of Education”and published in Cornell Law Review 90:2 (January 2005); (3) "A Friendly Rivalry: Yale and Princeton Universities Pursue Parallel Paths to Coeducation," in Going Coed: Women's Experiences in Formerly Men's Colleges and Universities, 1950-2000, ed. Leslie Miller-Bernal and Susan L. Poulson (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004); (4)"The Changing `Harvard Student': Ethnicity, Race, and Gender," in Yards and Gates: Gender in Harvard and Radcliffe History, ed. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Since living in South Carolina Dr Synnott has researched and published on desegregation in higher education, for example, (5) "Federalism Vindicated: University Desegregation in South Carolina and Alabama, 1962-1963," Journal of Policy History I:3 (July 1989). This research led her to examine the role of a white woman civil rights activist in South Carolina, Alice Norwood Spearman Wright, who served as executive director of the South Carolina Council on Human Relations, a biracial, middle-class organization, from 1954 to 1967. The most recent of Dr. Synnott’s two book chapters on Wright is (6) "Crusaders and Clubwomen: Alice Norwood Spearman Wright and Her Women's Network," in Throwing Off the Cloak of Privilege: White Southern Women Activists in the Civil Rights Era, ed. Gail S. Murray (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004). “My goal is to finish a political-social biography of Alice Spearman Wright that focuses on her biracial activities. Most of my manuscript is complete, but it is sprawling, much like an untamed dissertation draft (a situation familiar to most doctoral students). I am optimistic that within the next year or so I should be able to impose discipline and a tighter structure on the manuscript and reduce it to a more publishable length of about 450 typescript pages.

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