Gloria Steinem ’56 Will Deliver Presidential Colloquium March 28

Feminist leader Gloria Steinem, who graduated from Smith in 1956, will return to campus to deliver a Presidential Colloquium at 5 p.m. on Monday, March 28, in John M. Greene Hall. The event is open to the public at no charge.

Steinem’s biography is expansive. Among the highlights:

• Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine in 1972, and she remained one of its editors for 15 years. She continues to serve as a consulting editor for Ms., and was instrumental in the magazine’s move to join and be published by the Feminist Majority Foundation.
• In 1968, she had helped to found New York magazine, where she was a political columnist and wrote feature articles. As a freelance writer, she was published in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine and women’s magazines in the United States, as well as publications in other countries.
• Steinem has produced a documentary on child abuse for HBO, a feature film about the death penalty for Lifetime, and been the subject of profiles on Lifetime and Showtime.
• Steinem’s books include the bestsellers Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, Moving Beyond Words, and Marilyn: Norma Jean, on the life of Marilyn Monroe. She also is the author of As If Women Matter, a bestseller in India. Steinem’s writing also appears in many anthologies and textbooks, and she was an editor of Houghton Mifflin’s The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History. Her latest book is My LIfe on the Road, an account of her life as a self-described “wandering organizer” and how encounters on the road shaped the movement for equality.
• Steinem helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus, a group that continues to work to advance the numbers of pro-equality women in elected and appointed office at a national and state level. She also co-founded the Women’s Media Center in 2004.
• Steinem was the founding president of the Ms. Foundation for Women, a national multi-racial, multi-issue fund that supports grassroots projects to empower women and girls, and also a founder of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, a national day devoted to girls that has now become an institution here and in other countries.
• She was a member of the Beyond Racism Initiative, a three-year effort on the part of activists and experts from South Africa, Brazil and the United States to compare the racial patterns of those three countries and to learn cross-nationally.
• She is currently working with the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College on documenting the grassroots origins of the U.S. women’s movement, and on a Center for Organizers in tribute to Wilma Mankiller, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.
• In 1993, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y. In 2013, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor.

Steinem’s appearance at Smith is part of the Presidential Colloquium Series, which regularly features influential thought leaders in a wide range of fields—from poets and writers to economists and policymakers who share their expertise, offer insights and inspire discourse on key social, political and global topics that call for our attention.