DIGITALHISTORYARCHIVE

CUNY Digital History Archive
Transcript of interview with Tucker Pamela Farley
Interviewers: Andrea Ades Vasquez and Yana Calou

May 15, 2016
New York, NY

Transcription: Transcript Divas Inc.
Transcript edited by: Elizabeth Eisenberg

Andrea: It is Sunday May 15, 2016. 1am Andrea Ades Vasquez and I'm with Yana
Calou, and we are interviewing Tucker Farley for the CUNY Digital History
Archive. We're in Manhattan. As the first question why don’t we start with if
you would like to say a little bit about your early life, where you were born or
anything about your time before finding Brooklyn College?

Tucker: I was born in Massachusetts, and I went to Oberlin College, which was a
perfect place for me because I had decided that I didn’t want to turn into a
fluffy, frilly person without a thought in my head. So that was good. I spent a
little time in Europe, and then I came back and worked in southeast Ohio, in
Appalachia as a schoolteacher in a public school with the first to twelfth
grades in the same building. Great education for me because we didn’t have
books, we didn’t have chalk, we didn’t have heat, we didn’t have anything. So
I got lots of good lessons on how to make it up as you go along [/aughter]. I
taught all the grades of high school, English and a few other things at the same
time. So they really taught me a lot- those students and I love them a lot.

I know that during the same period of time there was a wonderful essay, "The
Laying On of Culture," [/aughter] but I think I lived it.

Andrea: And what years were you there?

Tucker: That was '61 to '63, round there. And I did teach briefly at Saints Field High
School also.

Andrea: Where's that?

Tucker: It's in the same area, southeast Ohio. Then I decided that I would get a

graduate degree because I wasn’t having a very good success in working for
the black students in my classes who were discriminated against in my
opinion. The girls for example were not allowed into the home economics

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class because the home economics teacher told them, said that they couldn't
pass the test. So I decided if I can't change the whole school system by myself
maybe what I can do is write textbooks with my students in them. So I
decided to go back to graduate school. And I ended up- I had to pay for a
divorce to do this- and I ended up working in the Institute for Industrial and
Labor Relations at Penn State University.

They were running two schools at the time to determine whether all the lazy
workers in McKeesport and other Pennsylvania towns who were on welfare
would be better returned to being paid laborers if they got a traditional
diploma from high school, or whether they got vocational education. So one
school was vocational education, one school was traditional high school. And
I didn’t last long in that job because I said that these workers would get better
jobs if they had jobs available to them. It was the beginning of
deindustrialization and factories were moving to cheaper labor. So that was an
introduction to me that put me on the side of the workers I should say.

I did go to graduate school. I was very active in the anti-war movement. I was
one of the elected leaders when the National Guard came to the Penn State
campus with armed ammunition before Kent State and Jackson State. It was a
dangerous situation, and the university ended up hiring Theodore Kheel who
was a big labor management negotiator between the unions and corporations
to negotiate between the protestors and the university. And I was one of four
people elected to represent the demonstrators. So that was another
introduction to me to the way that labor and management were working in
those days.

We organized- I helped organize one of the first graduate student unions there
at Penn State. And when I graduated, I graduated at a time that the job market
had fallen through for academics, and I came to the Modern Language
Association at the end of the '60s and there were maybe four to six jobs
available for thousands of people. So I organized the job seekers caucus and
worked with other radicals who were organizing the MLA at the time and we
briefly took over the Modern Language Association, elected our own people.
And I ended up being head of the job market commission in the Modern
Language Association, and put on a big forum on the job market and invited a
radical economist called Bill Tabb to help us discuss the issues and see them
in a broader context than what they were looking at. So I kind of made a name
for myself in the MLA and got lots of opportunities to get jobs, so I would
take them and say, "Oh I'm sorry I can't take this job, but I have a good friend
who would be good for you."

And I went to CUNY because of open admissions. I really wanted to work, it
was one of two systems on in California and one in New York that had open

admissions, and that was what I wanted to do.

And which year was that?


Tucker:

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I came in 1970.
Right at the start.

I formed the New York Women's Labor Project right around that time. And a
group of us who had been active in the New University Conference, which is
the successor to SDS at that time, we developed a course a women's studies
course for working women, and taught it.

Which was before you were at Brooklyn, or when you moved there?
Just before that time I think I developed it.
But it wasn’t at the school?

No it had nothing to do with the school. In fact a lot of my activism wasn’t at
first at the school. We taught in union halls around the tri state area. And that
work ended up as being the basis for the women's studies program at Cornell,
ILR with Bobby Wertheimer. They developed a trade union women’s studies
program.

But I did start teaching women's studies courses at Brooklyn in 1970.

Tell me about the way you said you came to CUNY about open admissions.
What did you hear about it, why? What attracted you?

What attracted me, I thought it was the right way to run the university.
Especially a university that was a city university. And I had been teaching
students who didn’t have enough food to eat during the day for some time. I
thought that they should get the best teachers that they could have, and I
thought I was a good teacher and actually go there.

Because open admissions began pretty abruptly, it was supposed to take five
years to come into being, but because of the demand it actually happened
much quicker than we thought. So there was a lot of hiring happening all at
once, and of course the student body grew so quickly like in a year. I'd love to
hear about what your impressions are?

When I first came I was horrified by some of my colleagues who were talking
about having to teach the ineducables. And it just floored me and really
motivated me to begin to concentrate ... I left my work in the unions really I
left to for CLUW, the Coalition or Labor Union Women, but mostly I began
to concentrate on developing programs for CUNY people and for community
people. I began teaching in kitchens, and school libraries, and places like that
to help women from the community who might possibly want to come back to
school to have a little contact with the school. And started the Women’s
Center there too in order to give them a support in the school. And to have a
place that was more radical and offer more radical or offer more radical
programs than perhaps the Women's Studies program- which I had been

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Andrea:

Tucker:

[ 00:10:34]

Andrea:

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working on too- could do since that one had to pass faculty council and all of
that and be very respectable. And the Women's Center would have more
freedom.

When you first arrived on campus in this moment of open admissions was
there also an active anti-war movement?

Yes there was an active anti-war movement. I got there and I said, "Where are
the anti-war activists?" And Hoby Spalding thought I was an agent [/aughter].

And who did you run into, what did you find in that area? Renate had
mentioned there were demonstrations, you mentioned the anti-war activity.

She was already involved in that, she was on campus.
She was there before you?

Yes she was on campus before me. And she was active and there were
students who were active. And the students introduced themselves to me
immediately, we became good friends and we worked together. The students
that I worked together with a lot were Hope Singer, Debbie Cherry, Rosella
Mosarino, those three particularly. And then after we started getting courses
towards a program Carol Lafason, and Davida Mayan.

Have you stayed in touch with them? You remember their names so well.

I do remember their names. I'm losing my memory so I may forget them, but I
don’t think I will. They were wonderful. I mean, the students...It was a time
when you could really be buddies with the students. When I first started
meetings for the Women's Studies program we had students, faculty, and staff
all together. No hierarchy. And it was very exciting those early days.

That's interesting that you mentioned staff as well, because usually we hear
faculty and students. Who were the staff members, what was their role?

Anybody who wanted to come could come. And once we first started teaching
as a program ... I'll tell you the story of how we got this, but we got an office
and a staff person who was very active with us and I included her on
everything, Pat Corsia. She had worked on Wall Street as a secretary before
she came to Brooklyn College, and she had had her heels racked with a ruler
for wearing sling back pumps. She was very happy to enroll into a more
congenial atmosphere in the women's studies office. But I'm getting a little bit
ahead of myself.

Yes because we want all the details. It sounds like an amazing moment there
all this activity?


Tucker:

Andrea:

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[00:14:57]

Tucker:

It was wonderful, I started teaching women studies, I was hired to teach
women's studies. I sold myself to the college as somebody who wanted to
teach women's studies. And the students had apparently been active in saying
they wanted women's studies, and so I was hired to teach women's studies and
I started doing that.

In fact the first course that I offered in women's studies, they didn’t bother to
put limits on it or check the registration. And if the first hour it got to be over
100 people. So it was definitely wanted. And people in those early courses
would bring their mothers, and their sisters. It was an amazing time because of
course there were no materials and my experience in making it up as I went
along was very useful in not having books and texts. So we did some very
good work in inventing what we needed to do.

What was the reaction of the administration at this moment, they had a lot on
their hands right?

The administration they didn’t react so much but the English department was
amazed. And first they wanted to close it immediately, but then they realized
they would get good FTEs from having that many students with an English
teacher.

When I came I was not given an office. I was not given a desk. I was not
given a chair. I was not given a telephone. I was wandering the halls as a
fulltime faculty member.

And so you were brought in to teach before the center, or the women's
organization, or any of those, all that?

Oh you know I had to do that. That was later.
Right, so when you first came in there's all this activity, anti-war stuff-
-Mostly anti-war stuff...

-And obviously you're really attracted to open admissions and people very
much attracted to women's studies at this time clearly? It was early '70s.

Well I was teaching those courses with our program at the beginning. I taught
them both in the School of Humanities. We had five schools during that
period of time. Tom Birkenhead, who was the Dean of the School of Social
Science, hired me to teach in the School of Social Science, and so I taught
women's studies courses in the School of Social Science as well as in the
School of Humanities.

That was very good because it gave me a grounding to begin organizing and
agitating for a more programmatic approach and for other people to be
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Andrea:

Tucker:

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included in both schools. So I co-taught at one point with Freddie
Wachsberger from Art, for example, and with Renate Bridenthal from
History. And eventually over a period from maybe '72, '73, we got committees
going in both schools and I was appointed to be the head of the committee.

So there was a committee in each school and then I was the head of the two
committees- a Women's Studies program that would include the two schools.
And so the people from social science worked on a social science introductory
course. And the people from humanities worked on an introductory course in
humanities. And then we brought it together for advance course for majors
that would combine the two, and left room in the middle on the middle layer
for courses from the different department to contribute to women's studies
development. So people could major, get a co-major at that time in women's
studies. By 1974 it was approved in Albany.

And what was the student body like then?

The student body as I knew it was very mixed. There was the open admissions
people who were wonderful. Many of them were given mediation at that time.
But I found them very bright, and alert, and attuned to the realities of life in
ways that some of the other students weren’t. So I liked that very much.

And they were all interested in your classes?
Well I wouldn't say they were all interested in my classes.
And was it mostly women who came to the classes?

Who came to the women's studies classes? Because I taught regular classes
too. Yeah it was mostly women and their mothers and sisters.

How do you mean?

Well people got so excited they brought their families to take the class, too. It
was great. [/aughter]

[laughter] That’s great- They saw it was a real opportunity? That's interesting.
Yeah it was, it was wonderful.

And so you didn’t feel a lot of resistance from the administration, you had this
pretty diverse group of students attracted to the classes and obviously
women's studies. Tell us about how the structure started forming, the first
meetings about forming the women's organization I think came first and then?

There was already a Brooklyn College organization which was primarily
students. The women's studies group developed its own programmatic task
and orientation, and it was open to anybody who wanted to come, any faculty


Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

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Yana:

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member, any staff member, any student. And so we had big meetings, and
people took on tasks. Is that what you're asking?

Yeah and I remember when Renate was telling us about the first meeting you
didn’t know how many people were going to show up and it turned out to be a
really big group like 100 people or something. And she described it the same
way you did, and people had all these different interests, and people took it in
many directions.

And yes we have heard that you were really so wonderful with students. So I
was interested in your connection to students and how that worked. And also
what directions you took, you sort of took charge. And I know the women's
center was very much something you -

That came later. At first we did the women's studies program.
Tell us what happened after those first meetings that you just described?

Well they narrowed down to task groups and I remember working with
students as I developed curriculum that I thought would be appropriate to put
before faculty council and the curriculum planning committee. I got myself an
office by that time, we would sit there together and open books, I would bring
in the books that I thought would be the most appropriate because they would
have women writers in them. When I started teaching in the English
department at Brooklyn College there was one woman in the curriculum in
American Literature.

Virginia Woolf?

No she wasn’t in American Literature. But the one woman in British literature
was Jane Austin, and the one in English was Emily Dickinson, so we had two
women. My friend Paul Lauter in MLA was working on developing a Heath
anthology which would include a lot of women, a lot of people of color, and
working class writers. And so I would bring in a variety of writers that I
thought should be included.

And then the other task as I saw it, I remember working with the students to
tell them how I was thinking, what did they think about that, they loved it. I
thought that the way that the earlier textbooks had divided things into periods
was problematic. For example in English they would have people like Dryser
in American literature be the person who was writing the new naturalist kind
of literature. But before that there were all these wonderful women writers
who weren’t even in the books. So I would bring my other books along and
say, "Here, look see these other women, look at that dates. We should
include." "Yes we should include, oh let me read that!"

So we had a kind of collaboration that I thought was wonderful because I felt
they were interested in what I was doing, and I was interested in how they

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Andrea:

Tucker:

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Yana:

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were feeling. To me we worked together and it was very important to include
the students.

And did they make it neatly through curriculum committees? I mean they
have to go through a series of approvals when you design classes to introduce
new material?

We did. The biggest problem came a little bit later when they wanted me to
teach a lesbianism course that I had already been teaching at Barnard, that
students at Barnard had hired me to teach a lesbianism course. But we already
had the program by that time.

So take us back to the beginning of the center and the program?

First we did this program and we didn’t have really time that was adequate
and that sort of thing. So in the summer when a lot of people come to the
school and take summer school courses, we didn’t have faculty who were
hired to be there. So we hired two students, we engaged two students to be the
summer coordinators. That's where Carol Lafason, and Davida Mayan came
in, and they worked with Pat Lafason the staff person in the office, and they
were our coordinators in summer as students. I just loved that, I thought that
was very consistent with the kind of education that we were fostering,
encouraging, and developing at that time.

Tucker, do you know if you would maybe have any letters from students
thanking you, that maybe you would share and we could get permission from
them to share? Or any kinds of anything like this. I saw in the archive there
were some letters from students looking for recommendations for graduate
school and thanking a lot of the program faculty for opening this field up in
this line of enquiry.

I think that was a little later, that was a little later. And there should be
somewhere in the files if they weren’t disappeared like other files which
seemed to have gone. I had to fight for my job during this period as an
untenured faculty member, but that was after I had founded the women's
center. It's s a great story that fight. And founding the women's center is a
great story. And the women's studies program is a great story, they go one,
two, three like that.

If you tell me you want to talk about this now I'm happy to do it. But
chronologically they're like that.

In order, this is great, it's really interesting. I mean are we up to the women's
center?

No we aren’t. the women's studies program, I brought in a woman from the
department who it turned out didn’t share the kind of broad based pedagogical
experimentation that I'd been describing to you, and thought it was dangerous

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Andrea:

Tucker:

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and inappropriate. And who went to the administration and worked to not
have the people who have been involved in the real pedagogical feminist
approach to the program meet with the provost at the time to instate a
women's studies program committee to run the program. And it was originally

At that point two people were appointed, one person was appointed by this
other person to run a program who had never really been involved in the
founding of the program.

Who was the provost at the time?

Marilyn Gittell. But she hadn’t been active with us in doing the work. So
when it was proposed by the senior faculty member who literally raised the
hand of another person and said, "This is the person who should be the
coordinator," and held this woman's hand up, she was appointed the first
coordinator. I don't know how much Renate has told you about this already, so
stop me if I'm just repeating. And I was excluded as the as the radical.

The first women's studies committee, for several weeks I think Renate would
know she was included. And apparently from what I heard, I wasn’t there,
they mainly talked about what the logo should be. And the women who had
been involved in developing the women's studies program were dissatisfied
and went back to Marilyn Gittell and said, "This is not going to work, we can't
do this. This is not a proper coordinator for us." I wasn’t there so I don’t know
exactly what they said but this is what I understand. And they said, "We need
Tucker back," and the other woman stopped being the coordinator at that point
and I came on.

Who was that person?
She was the one from the French department, Mary Ryan was her name.
Okay I'm sure it's in the files. I see this is all the nitty gritty of the really -

I don't know how much nitty gritty you want but anyway the questions that
you asked about the original founding did include a problem with the
administration. The administration unknowingly did it but then corrected it.
So where does that leave us?

The very beginning, so you had coordinators?

Once that wasn’t the case anymore and we were back to the group of people
who were working on the program and had been working on the program, we
said we need co-coordinators. So from then on we had co-coordinators and
that was good.

And what were the main concerns? What were the original, early concerns
that you wanted to deal with the other women?
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Tucker:

[00:30:10]

Andrea:

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Yana:

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With the other women who were faculty? I wanted and I think that the
majority of us wanted to make sure that the kind of broad based inclusiveness
that we had started with would be part of what we expected from all the
courses. So that people who were offering a course in psychology, or a course
in sociology, or whatever from the other departments, from French from
anything, would apply to the program with a course description. And that we
would check it to see is this an inclusive program, or is an all-white, upper
class kind of literature or psychology, or whatever it was. Are we really
interrogating the scholarship here? Because that was part of the plan as those
of us who worked on it understood it.

And we didn’t want just one person lecturing from the front of the room and
everybody else sitting in the room just taking notes. We wanted to have the
students discussing, and participating. We wanted that kind of openness in the
classroom so that they would be a feminist pedagogy.

And were they team taught classes?

Occasionally if we got the money for it, they were. I remember I taught with
both Freddie and Renate.

Do you remember what the first class that you said you were teaching even
before the program, the one that the 100 people was called? What were some
of the topics?

Oh it's 100 in the first hour. Topics I may have records in my files, I'm
inviting you to come down and look at these files. Or they may be in those
three boxes. Somehow they are somehow unprocessed in the Brooklyn
College library. I saved all my women's studies curricula so you should be
able to find that out.

So you were teaching some clearly a labor component, clearly women in
American literature.

I don’t think it was restricted to American literature actually. I think in that
very first course I even brought in sex manuals and said, "Let's look and see
what they're telling people here," they were very revealing. So I brought in all
kinds of materials. And the students would bring in materials.

And did students come to you personal, did they open up to you outside of
class because of the things that you were teaching in class?

They did, but they also did in class. They did in class. And we did journaling

in class. And I carried that over when I started teaching in kitchens and
libraries because I wanted to develop a program for returning women. We did

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Yana:

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Andrea:

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a lot of journaling in those classes, so if I can segway into Project Second
Start -

This the Impact the Project Impact?

I think it was renamed yeah. It started out as project Second Start, and then it
was Project Chance. In the New York Women Labor Project I was working
with a woman named Susanne Paul who came in and she became one of our
teachers. And she ended up teaching Empire. And she and another woman
Dolly Robinson, got a grant to do a study of women who returned. Older
women as they called them in those days- who returned to school.

And as we had suspected the biggest proportion of students in those days in
the early '70s for CUNY in Brooklyn at least, we didn’t do all the schools. But
at Brooklyn College the biggest population was returning women. And so we
made a case, they didn’t, they did the study. But it seemed to me that a good
case could be made that the university and the college should take account of
the returning women population and accommodate these students
institutionally. So that was part of my impetus for starting Project Chance.
And I went down to -

So was that an offshoot of the women's studies program Project Chance? Or
was it something completely different?

Well I have to give you a little background here. Another project that was
happening was Lilia Melani from the English department was suing CUNY,
and one of the people that joined that suit was Renate. So Renate and Lilia
were more involved with the suit. I was involved with starting women’s
studies and I was really the only faculty member that started the women’s
center in the beginning.

So there were two parts to the starting of the women's center that were helpful
in institutionalizing it. One was actually getting a space and hiring some
people at the college, and that’s a story. And the other was making sure that
there was a long-term project at the university which would link the women's,
in my view, should link the women's studies program and the women’s center,
and that was Project Chance.

And created funding for?

Yes. So coterminous both things ... Renate went off to write because she was
part of the suit, she wanted a better job description, she wanted to get away
from being a lecturer and become a faculty member.

I was just going to say wanted tenure.

I remember we were sitting on my bed in Brooklyn one time and I'm telling
her about this idea of getting a women's center going. And she said well you'll

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have to do that on your own. I was so crushed, my dear sister leaving me. She
said, "Yes I'm going to go off and write," which she did. Which was very
good, that's what faculty members are supposed to do. I was still crushed.
[laughter]

I did two things, one was go back to the plan of inviting everybody faculty,
staff, students, day, night, whoever wanted to be involved to come and talk
about a women's center. And the other was to proceed with the data that
Susanne Paul and Dolly Robinson had by now finished on the returning
women. And use that to support the need for a women's center. And to support
the women in the community who might not had made it back through the
gates of the academy at that point, but who might want to.

I had two very dear friends in Ohio when I was teaching in Appalachia, one of
them ended up with four children trying to commit suicide. And the other one
was institutionalized her husband. They were perfectly, reasonable,
wonderful, normal, average women with kids in a small town. And I lost
them. I would write letters to them and I couldn't find them. The letters would
come back, "Addressee unknown." So these women were my heart and I
thought if they were in the city where would they be, what would they be
doing, and what would they need, what would they want? And that's why I
went into the kitchens and the libraries of the communities, especially the
poor communities and started teaching English 1 to women who wanted to
sign up and take those courses. And we journaled.

In one course for example very early on one of the women read a journal entry
about how she had been beaten. How she was sorry she was to late to the class
but she had been beaten but she had come anyway. And another woman said
well that had happened to her. And pretty soon every woman in the class
except one confessed that she had been beaten for going to this college class.
And I used that to decide well we should have a hotline at the women's center
when we get it.

And at the end of that semester the one woman who didn’t say she had been
beaten for coming to an English | class, in the community stayed afterwards
and beckoned to me, to come talk to her which I did. And she said that she too
had been beaten but she was too embarrassed to admit it. Even though all the
other women had. Do you have a Kleenex, is there a Kleenex around?

So part of the work of teaching the women in the classes in the community
help me to see what might be useful to do in the women's center, in designing
the women's center and helping to envision how it might function. It was the
first women's center at a university, just as the women's studies program was
the first program to give credit toward graduation in a co-major, or major in
the world really. It was the first one.

So those things were going on at the same time. Now switch to the women's
center. The women's center was a big huge group of all different kinds of

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Andrea:

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Tucker:

women, from the day school, the night school. In the early days I had some of
the secretaries who were interested. Not too many faculty, I don’t remember
faculty being particularly interested in the women's center.

And the women who came from the neighborhood were a diverse group. What
neighborhoods did they come from?

We taught in about half a dozen different neighborhoods. And when we did
get the women's center we did things in both Spanish and English. And at that
time there was the Congress of Neighborhood Women, which was in
operation. And I was in contact with them and with the women in the trade
union movement who were organizing secretaries. So there was a lot going on
at the same time.

So the center was at Brooklyn College, but all these other things in kitchens?

The center was in Brooklyn College, it hasn’t been founded yet but it was
already reaching out. We were trying to get those women involved and they
did become involved. They became very active even before the center
happened. And there were students who helped interview the people when we
finally did get permission to get the center. But before that we had to get that
permission. So that's that story, am I up there yet?

So we planned to go to the President, Noah, and say that we had done all this
work and all this research and we had the program and we needed a women's
center. So we made an appointment. And we had made sure that there was a
huge crowd in the halls, huge crowd in the main building outside his office.
And I went in and I said, "I'm here for the appointment," and the secretary
said, "Well you can't have the appointment."

It was just you? It was supposed to be just you in the appointment?

I don’t think that was clear, I didn’t think that other people shouldn't come.
No I thought all of us should go, I don't know what they wanted.

You walked in first and said, "I’m here for the appointment."

I walked in first right, and they cancelled the appointment. And I said, "Well
you know I don’t think that will work.. There are a number of us here and we
are counting on this time and place for being able to talk with the
administration about our plans. We've made it in advance, it was confirmed,
and were here.

Sounds reasonable.

And so he came out of his office and he said, "Well I haven’t read it." I said,
"Oh good I'll help you read it." And I walked in with him to his office. And
we sat there together and I turned the page, page, by page, by page, by page,
and I explained what was on each page to him. And it was a toned down

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[00:45:29]

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version I have to say but it was a good one. And he saw that it would be really
good for the college to have something like this, especially because we had so
many women returning to the school, and it would be a good way to serve it.
But he said you have to pay for it. He said, "I'll give you a year, and if you
can't come up with the funds to pay for the women's center then you don’t get
to have your women's center. You can have one year in which to do it. I said,
"Okay."

And all of those women who were out there waiting I think were the factor
that gave him the impetus to sit there and hear about the women's center and
agree to it.

But he didn’t give you’re the financial support?
He gave it to us for a year.
Oh he did. But you had to be self-sufficient after a year?

That's all I needed yeah. And I attribute that victory to the crowd of women
who were out there. There were reporters from the local paper, and lots of
different representatives of his constituency. And meanwhile of course Lilia
was suing him in Albany. So he wanted to point with pride to the women's
studies program, and this would allow him to point with pride to serving this
new population etc. So he was smart about that.

And with these different things going on the Melani case was happening, and
there was a women's program, now women's center. What was the relations
between all these activities, were they very separate, or were you mutually
supportive and in what ways?

The women's center people we sat down and wrote a proposal for a grant for
FIPSY, Funds for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education. And we
said we wanted to serve these returning women and here's how we wanted to
do it. We wanted to have a hotline, we want to have counseling, and we want
to have this and we want to have that. And we went to Washington and we got
the grant. So we came back with a $350,000 grant for three years. It was a
very good grant.

Wow, big grant back then.

Well it was historic, it was historic, another first for Brooklyn College. And
we were able to hire two people at a time when ... I mean it was perhaps the
last of the hiring, because we were now getting into the middle of the '70s
when New York City was going to go practically bankrupt, and we were all
going to have our wages garnished.

Were these faculty or staff positions?
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Staff. No we couldn't hire faculty for a non-academic program, and we didn’t
want to. We wanted people who would be activists and really work to get
good programs going that would supplement what went on in the classrooms.
And that would work in the communities. For example we had health fairs in
the communities, can't do that in a class.

Were there any child care?

There was a child care program that was established before I got there
actually. So there was the child care, Brooklyn Women's Organization, the
SUIT, the women's studies program, the women's center, and the returning
women's project.

So yow’re right, there was a lot going on. | think we had a division of labor.

And from the center you mentioned the hotline, and you had these staff and
you did health fairs.

And we did programs, we taught people co-counseling in the center. So that
we could continue the non-hierarchical ways of helping each other, that sort of
thing.

And around the programming for the returning women was that something
that was housed at the center for support?

Yes support for the returning women, absolutely.
Did that include night classes, or?

We already had night classes at Brooklyn, we had a big night school. Half of
the professional class of employees in New York City went through Brooklyn
College’s night school, and we had Saturday classes. But yes it did. But we
also had classes during the day, we had classes at all times.

I think regarding the center I'm just wondering ... How it's been explained to
me as the center as this branch of community activism which is paired with
the practice of all of all of the feminist theory that is being looked at in the
program. The ways that you saw those two interacting as someone who is
really involved in both of those. You didn’t want just one of these things.

And then for your particular story and I'm not sure about dates, but I know
you talked a little bit about having this work start being one of the hubs of the
convening of the northeastern women’s studies associations and then
becoming this larger body once the program is established?

I did a lot of work going around to other schools. I did a lot of talking. I would

always accept when I could an invitation to speak, and try to help other
schools put their women studies programs together. And finally I decided, I

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think it was in '74 that we needed to have a conference, and east coast regional
conference, and we put on a conference.

It was hosted at Brooklyn College?

It was hosted at Brooklyn College, we did it from Brooklyn. And we went
around to different schools and we talked to women, we said what do you
want to do? We tried to involve them, we did involve them in the planning to
the extent that they would work with us. We did some planning at the
Graduate Center because that was a central place. And we said amongst other
things, we had three tracks there and one of the tracks was about future
association, professional associations. Do you want we said, a regional
professional association, or do you want a national professional association?
Because many of us who were involved in doing women's studies around the
country were talking about this question.

And so I said let's ask the people who come. And people came from Maine, to
Florida, from Chicago to Long Island. It was very successful. And because we
were being battered at the same time we were growing it seemed like
strategies for survival would be a good name for the conference. Even though
we were busting at the seams, growing at the same time. But as we grew we
had to keep from being cut off at the knees, or have our head chopped off, or
something.

It was called Strategies for Survival, and we planned how to work with
women's centers. How to work with women's studies programs, how to
organize professionally. And we had all those three tracks going day and night
at the conference. And out of that came a group that called itself the northeast
regional women's studies association, and Renate was active with that for a
year.

At the same time there were people who were talking about a national
women's studies association and a group of us worked in Philadelphia with
people there who were interested in that. And we participated a year later
1977, in planning a national women's studies association. And Brooklyn
College took five people. We were one of the most active feminist
pedagogical centers in the countries, in the world really, we took five people
to that conference. We were very active in the founding of the National
Women's Studies Association in Kansas at the end of the '70s.

I want to bring you back a little more local, what about other campuses around
CUNY were you working with other places-

Hunter I think was the next campus that followed us.

What about Staten Island, didn’t Richmond College have something?

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I don't know if they had a program, they had faculty there, Joe Gilligan and
others.

There was Hunter, any other places, were there other women in other
campuses that you were -

From CUNY?
- yeah. I guess Hunter-

I think Hunter was the main group that formed a program. But the Manhattan
community- Nan Maglin was there. I don’t know that they formed a program-
I don't remember that.

But there were no other centers or no other ties, or things that you were doing
together within CUNY particularly?

Not at that time, no. Hunter people stayed pretty much to themselves I think.
You were all very busy.

I wanted to ask you some questions around, I know that there was some back
and forth about the curriculum. Particularly about I think maybe first called
"Women's Sexuality" classes that had to be changed to "Human Sexuality,"
where Renate ended up writing this really wonderful letter to the editor in
response to an article in New York Magazine about women's studies programs
across the country teaching lesbianism. And then what sort of structural
climate of homophobia within the schools was around? And how that
impacted your curriculum, how that impacted your career, how it impacted
people who were lesbian or gay teaching in the program, what those
experiences were like? And if there were any gay students that experienced
some of this? And how all of that wove in to either experiences as faculty or
in the classrooms?

At the beginning we worked with different studies programs, the Africana
Studies program, the Puerto Rican Studies program, the Judaic studies
program to try to coordinate liaison that would benefit the students and build
curriculum. And because I was already teaching a lesbianism course at
Barnard the students wanted me to teach a course at Brooklyn College too.
That was contentious, that was a big challenge, that was where we ran into the
most trouble.

Here was Brooklyn College and here was the financial difficulties of the city
... here was CUNY I shouldn't say Brooklyn College. Here was CUNY really
pressed, schools closing, hospitals closing, child care centers closing, freezes
everywhere. And the curriculum planning council I think it was at the School
of Humanities. I don’t remember when the five schools came into one school.
I'll have to check the dates on that to see which group this was. But I'm

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[00:59:51]

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remembering Ethel Woolf who was the Dean of the School of Humanities
chairing these meetings which is why I think it was in the school of
humanities. Where the women's studies programs proposed a lesbianism
course and they took weeks in the midst of this crisis to debate it. It was so
upsetting to them that they went into secret ballot, they didn’t want people to
know how they voted.

They made up special rules for one of those courses that get taught once
maybe later you get to teach it again because it's on the books but that’s it, it's
not a regular course, special topics that's it, rubric. They went nuts over this
course, it was too broad, it was too narrow, it was too historical, it was too
specific, it was too everything all at the same time. And I remember some of
my colleagues came out to defend this course and they had been having nice
respectable careers for years at CUNY and they came out to defend this
course. And one of the women, Freddie Wachsberger from the Art
Department was addressed by the Dean of the School of Humanities, Freddie
with the boots, you want to talk Freddie with the boots?

It was a time when people's nerves were jangled that such a thing should be
discussed. We went through that before other colleges did. I think at the time
that your ... and that took weeks to do, and finally they gave us permission to
teach one course.

And that was to be taught by you?
Oh yes.

That's all having to do with the classes. In terms of center and the students,
and the community women what was the feeling like then? Was that a period
when women were coming out? How were others, aside from the academics
and the official classes, how was the issue of gender, and identity, and
sexuality playing out as the '70s progressed and people were more open about
their identity?

Well I was going to trace it to the trouble spot that you referred to earlier. But
I think people felt that they could be open in the center. I don’t think that the
same things was true as easily in your average class. Although that was one of
the things that we stipulated if you want to be part of the women studies
program you had to be inclusive and you had to be open to people of different
sexual identities, and gender identities.

Not everybody who taught wanted to do that, or was equipped to do that very
well. And so we developed a program called, "Dyke for a Day." If a teacher
who taught a course didn’t want to deal with the issue, we would supply
people from the women's center and the women's studies program who would
deal with the issue, mainly from the women's center.

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And there were students who walked in and taught the class perfectly at ease
and happy and be Dyke for the Day. And then the students could ask them any
questions that they wanted. And it was one way of dealing with it at the time.
So that was I think a stop gap measure was successful and the students liked
it. And it was an out for the faculty who were shy on the topic, or not
equipped to do it, or didn’t want to do it, which happened.

And did you end up getting to teach the class?

I did teach the lesbianism class. Yes I remember Gloria Naylor who was
writing her first book at the time coming and sitting in the front row. And she
was there from the student government to see whether this was a legitimate
class. [laughter] Yeah it was great, it was a good course, it was very exciting.

The issue I think came later to a head because Sarah Lawrence was accused of
encouraging lesbians, and parents began thinking about taking students out of
their classes. And by that time we had already formed the National Women's
Studies Association and the New York Women's Studies Association. And the
campus that the Brooklyn College campus involvement became about because
I was coming up for tenure and having a lot of really weird activities going on
around my progress through the various hoops that you jump through
sometimes some of the women on the curriculum planning council had
difficulty just even keeping an appointment with me. And I would have to
write a little note, "It's okay to keep an appointment with me. It's about a
professional matter, and it's both of our responsibilities to deal with X." I
would leave the note for the person and then the person would make another
appointment with me.

People were freaked out, I will say that. Not so much the students I think,
more the faculty. It was a very difficult issue for them. And there was a star
chamber actually held in the English Department when I came up for tenure, a
hearing that was actually against the union contract. I remember meeting one
of my union buddies in the hall one day and he said, "Why did you do all
those things?" I said, "How's it going?" He said, "Why did you do all these
things?" I said, "What things?" He said, "Oh you know keeping the men out of
your class and refusing to teach literature with marriage in it, and giving all
the women As." I said, "What?!" He said, "Yes that's what we heard!"

And then it came about that the person on the budget committee in the English
Department had met with two senior faculty members from the English
Department who had testified apparently that I carried a lesbian around to
light cigarettes for me. That I wore leather pants. That I wouldn't let men in
my classes. That it gave all As to women. That I wouldn't teach any literature
that had marriage in it. That I talked too much at conferences, I gave too many
papers at conferences. Those are the tough ones that I remember I was
accused of doing. I said, "You believe that stuff?"

And get back to the union please, and so?
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So then I asked the union guy to come down the hall with me to the women's
studies office. I opened the door I said, "Would you please show this
gentleman anything that he wants to see in any of our files." Closed the door
he went in. He came out and went to the Dean and said, "We've been lied to.
And our procedure has not been proper." And so the Dean required the
English Department to redo the English Department meeting about whether
they were going to recommend me for tenure.

And as I understand it one of the men in the department who had supported
me, a very sweet guy, older guy whose wife is about to go in the hospital and
have an operation, and who wanted to teach a course in the summer to help
pay for it had his course taken away from him by the department chair. People
began looking and saying what is happening here, this is not right. So all that
trouble that I was having ended up working I think in my favor because
people began saying, "That's not right, you can't take Charles' summer course
away from him because he voted for her. That's not proper. And why are they
having to meet again?"

And so then they met again and at the next level the university committee
interviewed me and one of the people didn’t show up, one of the faculty
members. Because it was a foregone conclusion apparently for this person that
I wasn’t going to be recommended so why should she bother to come. But the
others decided to record the interview. It would be very interesting to listen to
that recording if we can find it. But the first question was, "Professor Farley,
how can you, as a lesbian, claim to do research?" I'm telling the truth, that's
truth.

What did you say?

I was very happy to answer that, I was glad that the question was out on the
floor, and I could speak to it openly. And I talked for half an hour. It was
great. I was very pleased with that.

How could you do any kind of research?

It's no accident that the end of my career I ended up teaching in the
interdisciplinary studies program in the honors department. And one of my
courses, one of my favorite seminars was the construction of objectivity in
five scientific disciplines.[/aughter] Pretty interesting to look at the
destruction of objectivity.

How come the union was involved already before that meeting? Before you
had been denied tenure?

I don’t think the union per se was involved, but one of the union guys whom I

knew from the union was part of the P&B committee. And he said to me,
"Why did you do that stuff?" I was very grateful that he did.

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Just speaking of the union was there a union presence, were you at all
involved around with the union around any issues?

Yes I was but later.
Not till later?

Not till later. That's a difficult question ... that's much later. So this doesn’t
fall within the women's studies program, the women center. It is women's
issues.

Well you were not involved with Lilia Melani case?

No in fact I was kind of stupid about that. I thought well they're doing that I'll
do this other stuff, which I did and I'm glad I did. But I did get a call about
10:35 one night from a person who said that they were one of the lawyers for
the Lilia Melani case. I didn’t know why somebody would be calling at that
hour if this was a legitimate call. It seemed strange to me. Although certainly
I've been at meetings that lasted until all hours, so I listened. And he said that
the people in the case wanted to take my case because I looked better on paper
than some of the men who were full professors in my department and could
they please represent me and make me a full professor.

You were an associate professor at this point?

No I was an assistant professor. But I did go to a lot of conferences and didn’t
give a lot of papers. I was very active.

So they were basically building the case with finding who -

I don't know where they were, because I didn’t have anything to do with the
case.

So you said no?

I did. I foolishly, stupidly said, "No I'm doing this over here and you are doing
that over there." I thought that if they won, or since they won maybe they had
already won and they wanted to give me a full professorship. How could you
be so stupid as to say no. But I guess I thought I'll fight for everything, and I'll
make a case out of it and | it will be part of the education of Brooklyn College
and CUNY, be part of my job here.

When I got hired I thought if I did my job right I'd probably be fired, I'll be
frank about that. But I did wake up at some point and decide to fight for my
job. And after I had this business that I just talked to you about then the school
had to make up its mind what it was going to do about me. And the New York
Women's Studies Association with whom I'd been very active, as with the
National Women's Studies Association, the New York Women's studies
Association decided that it would make its first project to giving a symposium
21


[01:15:09]

at Brooklyn College. And I think it was Renate that made up the topic,
"Frontier or back water, can women's studies survive in the university?"

And we invited various different kinds of positionalities, women who
represented different positionalities to speak at a symposium and Brooklyn
College at the student union building. And the woman who had put on the first
art exhibit at a major museum, Brooklyn Museum and been fired for it came
and spoke. And her position was you can't do anything before you get tenure.
You just have to toe the line and get tenure, and then you can do what you
want.

And we invited a historian from SUNY Buffalo, and she said well you know
women studies isn’t really an academic subject. And we invited a dean from
SUNY Oswego, and she said, "This is fabulous. This is what we have needed
for so long." And she gave chapter and verse of what we were doing in
SUNY, and CUNY, and NWSA and the New York Women's Studies
Association and how this was really a benefit to the university. And I think
she probably said good things about me, I don’t remember but I'm pretty sure
she might have.

And we had somebody else ... I don’t remember who the other person was but
we should look it up. And then Ellie Belken who was working in the women's
center at that time, stood up and said, "Well you know you really can't do
anything that’s really progressive if you are hired in the system. You have to
be outside the system in order to do really great work." And my dean is sitting
there right in front of me. I'm trying to get a job here now, I'm having learned
from my own working with the unions to fight for my job [/aughter]. So it
was a very exciting ...

And I talked at that time. And I talked about how as a woman who loved and
cared about women, I had to include them in my work in the best way that I
could that would really help women become a part of the curriculum, part of
the student body, part of whatever works they wanted to do afterwards. And
part of the university itself.

And I talked about the barriers to this. And I said look at the language. You
have men over here women over here. You have civilization over here, you
have nature over here. You have intelligence over here, you have hysteria over
here. And I went through and I looked at the kinds of dichotomies in our
language. And this was long before anybody was doing continental
philosophy or deconstruction. And I was scared to say all this because it just
seemed so far out. Of course everybody knows it now but it did seem far out
then. And I said, "How is it that this group always ends up being separate
from that group and ruling over this group," and “we should challenge this.”
And white and black, and it was all in there and other things.

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And I talked about the rat in the cage who was conditioned to get its food by
pressing a bar, and then they would electrocute the bar and the rat would end
up trembling. I think I was using this as an illustration for what might happen
if you identified with the rat in the cage, being educated against your own
interest. And I talked about how for a long time I had been taking medicine
but I had a stomach ache so I would take more medicine, and my stomach
would hurt worse and I would take more medicine and would get really sick.
And finally I realized I should have looked at the medicine. And that was my
image for looking at the curriculum in the university. I had been denied the
right to do a dissertation on a woman author.

Who was it that you wanted to do?

I didn’t even get to the point of picking one, but I had to do men writing about
women if it was going to be scholarly. So identified with taking the medicine
and getting sick, and finally looking at the medicine, and that’s how I got to
women's studies. We need to do something about all of this.

And then all this was written up in the newspapers, I didn’t know what the
impact was going to be. It was not actually ... It would be interesting to read
the newspapers and find those articles, because they weren’t exactly accurate,
because people get rattled. You were asking me about the lesbian problem, the
lesbian question and the repercussions so this ties into that. And the next day
after this symposium, and a whole group of SUNY Buffalo sent this huge
group of people down to the symposium and they all testified from the floor.
So it was really good, we had an active debate. It was wonderful.

And I saw a friend- a dear friend of mine who I had worked with on women's
studies in the hall. And she said, "How was the symposium?" I said, "Well it
was wonderful but I really missed you there. Sorry you weren’t there." And
she said, "Well I [unintelligible 01:17:48]." And this was my sister who said
this. There were very painful times. I was accused of being an imperialist in
the women's studies program. I was accused of being an imperialist because
the curriculum planning council was taking so long to talk about the
lesbianism course. And it hadn’t taken so long to talk about the such and such
a course in a regular department. So therefore I was an imperialist and the
lesbians were imperialists. So those issues came up.

It was hard to find ways to deal with them, not sure we actually did deal with
them. I think actually if you look back at the records the lesbians at Brooklyn
College took early retirement except me.

How long were you there?
I was there from 1970 to 2005.

I was going to talk to you before you started talking about that, about the
change as the fiscal crisis, sort of in the '70s. I guess I was curious about how

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the college was changing and even the women's center and women's program.
How did they change over those first five to ten years?

I remember sitting in the faculty lounge when I first came grading freshman
composition papers. And I sat in the faculty lounge to do it because I didn’t
have an office. In fact I was told at that time when I didn’t have an office that
I should go up to the top floor of the library because that's where they kept old
desks that weren’t being used anymore and there might even be a filing
cabinet or two up there, and I could meet students up there. I said, "Where am
I going to meet students?" and they said, "You could tell them to come up
there and meet them.

But it was dusty up there and it wasn’t well lighted, and I didn’t want to be up
there so I was in the faculty lounge grading papers. And I remember a fellow
faculty member reading the newspaper at the table across from me and a cop I
think had just killed a black student, a black person, a black child, a young
person. And the faculty member was saying, "Oh God it's so awful. I surely
wouldn't want to be him." And I looked at him and said, "You are much older
than this student and you are a white man you wouldn't be shot." And he said,
"Oh no I meant the cop. I wouldn't want to be the cop." And he identified with
the cop. I was just astonished again that my colleague would identify with the
man who shot the kid.

And during those years we did end up founding a multicultural action center.
Because over those years there were a number of racial incidents and
violence, incidents of violence in Brooklyn, and we felt we needed to have a
campus presence to deal with that. I'm not sure that's the question you asked
me however.

Well no I think the center as I understand the center for example it exists
today it actually went last week. The PSC some members there called a little
meeting in the women's center. It was so exciting to see the center today.

Oh you are talking about the women's center today?

So I know that it lasted.

I didn’t realize what you, I didn’t hear the question right.

I was wondering in those earlier years how it changed, it was growing?

You mean how the center changed?

Yeah or even the mood at the college, your experience at the college?

I think I was talking about the mood at the college with open admissions.

Okay yes definitely. It sound like you responded to the events of the day
broader than the college, the community police shootings and things like that.
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So would you generally say that the center broadened its reach even in those
years, in those early years? Would you start mostly with the local women's
issues, and the community issues? I'm just curious how you ... obviously the
program became permanent and you got this good funding also for the center
that was, right?

Yes it was.

I'm just wondering how it felt to become more solidified, legitimate, I guess
you grew?

It grew and it got its own identity. The center really made its own decisions.
At the beginning it was designed to be tied to the women's studies program so
that both would survive and feed each other. But it did begin to get its own
identity, and make its own decisions, and have its own staff. There was a
period of time when I think both the center and the program floundered, and
we lost space, we lost funding, we barely existed actually for a period of time.
But we all survived and came back.

I associated it with becoming more dutiful daughters as [Advian Rich] would
say and not fighting for what we needed.

You mentioned that many of the lesbian faculty retired early? What accounts
for that do you think?

I would say homophobia.
So that persisted for decades because presumably they didn’t retire that early?

They retired early for their career, yes they did retire early and they did persist
both. And the less they were there the easier it was for it to flourish yeah.

Can you talk about, I don't know if there's any, about hiring in terms of if a lot
of the student body is both black and Latino, in terms of hiring people to staff
the center? And also the schools hiring? I know different departments are
hiring people that come in and feed, the disciplinary women's studies, but they
way that race of the faculty members who are hired, and the race of the staff
that were hired in terms of what the student demographic were like? Or how
race played out? Maybe it's not in hiring, and maybe it's in syllabus the kinds
of things that students are reading. But what was that like?

And you mentioned you're also working with the Black Studies and Puerto
Rican Studies programs as well, as the Judaic Studies and all these. But if you
could talk a little bit about race specifically as it played out as either the center
program whatever you remember?

The second person that we hired for the women's center was a black women.
But the main area, we didn’t have a lot to do with hiring, the departments

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Yana:

Tucker:

Andrea:

Tucker:

hired. We weren’t a department, we were a program. The only place that we
could hire was in the center.

This was a period of time when Black Studies had just been formed, Puerto
Rican Studies was fighting at Brooklyn College for its existence. I remember
going down and playing the role of a faculty member who was interviewing
the members of the department of Puerto Rican Studies to see whether the met
the criteria to be faculty members because there was such a threat to the
Puerto Rican Studies program, and a number of us supported the Puerto Rican
Studies program and would do things like this at the risk of our own jobs.
Well me I didn’t have any protection so I'll speak for myself.

The person who ask me how can you claim to do research was from Judaic
Studies, so having a great deal of sympathy with Judaic Studies was able to
use the necessity for Judaic Studies to talk about the necessity for women
studies. But I have a feeling that you have something that you want me to
address?

Not specifically, I guess I'm just wondering the way that you remember race
playing out in terms of the faculty who were teaching classes if they were
mostly white? If black feminisms are being addressed, if they're not, if that’s a
huge part of the founding of the program?

We said that we should always include that material. I invited Tony Cade
Bambara for example to come to my class the very first one that I offered. I
always had somebody coming in if there wasn’t somebody in Africana Studies
or Puerto Rican Studies who wanted to share teaching this material. Because it
was really important to do that and to make those presences known and
support them, I thought. And I fought very hard for there to be in the core
curriculum courses when those were introduced for there to be texts that
would include people of color and world literature, hello, things like that.

But I think was going to say the Black Studies programs throughout had just
been formed in the late '60s and early '70s, and for them to take on an alliance
with the women's studies program made them more precarious. So it was not
easy to institutionalize connections other than we would hire faculty who were
adjuncts to teach our women studies courses and that way we could bring in
people like Mirta Quintanales and Bonnie Dill and other people who were
Latino or black to teach the courses, to be teachers. We couldn't force the
departments to hire them, we could include them as faculty but we couldn't
get them permanent jobs. Is that what you're asking. We could fight in the
departments but then we were fighting in departments.

You found a way to serve your students the way you wanted to outside of
the...

It was the way that we could. And then of course as department members we
always we always fought those fights.

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Tucker:
Yana:
[01:29:57]

Tucker:

Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

Tucker:

[After break]

Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

The hiring fronts.
The hiring fights and the curriculum fights. You had to fight for curriculum.

Renate said that also, you said everyone was a battle, every idea, every class
you proposed.

Every, absolutely, yeah.

What were your ideas about what content was the most threatening?

The lesbian content. Not to the students, I don’t mean to say that was to the
students. To the faculty it was the most threating, in my opinion.

I think we've gone through our things we came up with, but is there anything
else that you can think of that you would like to tell us that we didn’t think
about asking you?

Hmmm, I would just say that it was wonderful. The whole experience of
working with students, faculty and staff, people in the community. It was a
dream come true.

That's a beautiful way to end. Thank you so much for this interview it was so
valuable to this collection and just future students, and future researchers, and
the public to hear these stories. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

We're going to have a little follow up discussion with Tucker. We were
talking about anti-war activism and the fact that she knew Bart Meyers in
Brooklyn way before she was at Brooklyn College.

Right, right because we were both active in the anti-war movement the student
movement, the Students for Democratic Society.

Where in SDS?

I was in Pennsylvania at the time. I was working first at the Institute for
Industrial and Labor relations at Penn State. And then I became a graduate
student at Penn State. And one of the first SDS groups was there and I was
very active in that. And then when that folded I was active in the new
university conference. And Bart was a very quiet gentle man who was
completely adorable, I had to say.

So how did you first meet him?

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Tucker:

Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

How did I first meet him? Probably at a meeting.
And SDS meeting of the new university conference?

Probably at a meeting. I don’t remember the first time I met him. But I know
that he was a backbone at Brooklyn when I came, and was part of the union
group that eventually prevailed in becoming the union leadership.

So was he one of the people you saw active in the anti-war movement when
you first arrived? You knew him but you had already known him?

I met him before I had arrived yes, and he was active yes.

And was he or other men who were on the left and so considered themselves
progressive? How did they work with all the women's center, the women's
program work that you did? You knew them from the anti-war movement and
how did they deal with your feminism? Your feminist organizing?

I don’t think that we called upon the men enough to support us actually. It
doesn’t mean they weren’t supportive enough. And I know Bart had great
confidence in us as individuals and as activists. | remember one time when I
was having trouble with my officemate who was using my...the least that he
was doing was using my computer for pornography and leaving the
pornography on the computer, so I had to constantly call someone to have it
cleaned. And I'd walk in on him in delicate moments and things like that. And
finally after we got a sex discrimination policy at the college I said I have a
sex discrimination case, and I was told I did not. And the lawyers at Brooklyn
College told me they would not support me.

And I turned to the union and the union said to me, "Well you can handle this,
can't you just knock before you come in?" [/aughter] And some of the women
said, "You know we only take serious cases." So there was an ongoing
educational curve I would say for both the men and women in the union.

So what else was Bart involved in as the '70s end?

I would say he was the one who was the grand ... I won't call him an old man
because he didn’t appear to be an old man. But he played that role just being
the fountain of wisdom and calmness, and working things through. He was a
true leader I would say. Not because he stood up and thumped and waved his
arms and gave radical speeches and things like that. He was just a good
organizer, he was smart, he was a hard worker, he was somebody you just
relied on and loved. He was great.

And another follow up question about the Melani case, and I think it lasted for
10 years. And when it was resolved how did it play out at Brooklyn College or
anything else you want to say about that case?

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Tucker:

Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

Yana:

Andrea:

Tucker:

Well I thought it was going to have an impact on those of us maybe had not
been involved in filing suit as Renate had on her own behalf. I thought it
would have an impact on the rest of us and it didn’t. And so at one point I
asked Lilia because when I was granted tenure, which I was I did get tenure
after all that big fuss about it. But I wasn’t given a promotion. Just unheard of.
You do not grant tenure and don’t give the promotion. So that was terrible
really. So I was always behind not only in pay but in line.

So I asked Lilia, "Now that you won this part of the suit what how come we
aren’t feeling the impact more in the college?" And she thought for a minute
and she said very circumspectly, "Well you know the same people that we
sued are the people who are still in power."

So it was still up to the administrations to grant the promotions and the faculty
committees to decide?

Yes, yes. And I know that the people in my department had been worn out,
some women had already sued them. And they were so disgusted that they had
to leave their offices and go to appear in court I assumed from how they were
acting. To fight her case and fight against her that they were not in favor of
our efforts. I never knew that woman, but I always felt badly about her. And I
did know a woman in biology who came to me, she saw me as someone to
talk to. And she talked to me about how hard it was to be a scientist at
Brooklyn College and to try to do her work.

She said that the men had carte blanch to develop their projects, to go get
money, to be funded, to get release time, to be scientists, to be working
scientists. But she didn’t and she was always given the lower level courses,
and she was the drudge. I don't know if she used that word but that was clearly
what I understood her to be saying. She was the workhorse in the department.
And how unfair it was but she couldn't say anything because if you said
something then that would just add to your bad reputation. And I was very
moved by her testimony to me in private.

The case had a lot of impact, I mean it did have very big impact. One person I
was hearing from when I told them about this project said, "That case made a
huge difference. She got a huge raise." And then she turned to me and said,
"But I still made 30% lower." She was in technical, computer or something.
And said I still made 30% lower than all the men in the college even though
she got a huge increase out of the Melani case.

As one of the suit filers?
Yeah she joined the suit.

When you joined the suit I think that you did get a benefit, and my mistake
was that I didn’t.

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Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

Tucker:

Yana:

Andrea:

Yana:

Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

Tucker:

Andrea:

I see, I see. If you did join the case you definitely got a benefit, if you didn’t it
was up to your departments etc., etc. Okay anything else?

I was going to ask you anything else?
We talked about Bart, we talked about the follow up on the Melani case.

I said that I turned down Yale to stay at CUNY because the work we were
doing was so exciting and meaningful. And the students like yourselves were
so wonderful, are so wonderful. Despite during the open admissions time,
despite the attitudes of many of my colleagues about teaching the ineducables
they said, that was so terrible.

Did it get better? I know the finances did get better, but in the '80s?
When did open admissions they pulled it back, when did they do that?

They pulled it back in different ways at different times. They stopped
remediation?

Yeah they did?
At City College.

But the persistent underfunding is what was really the problem. We know how
students can succeed, you have small classes, you have attention to what
students needs are, in the same way that the women's center tended to many
different needs, not just the intellectual needs. We know how to help students
succeed.

Like how do you get people to where they can go to.
Drastically underfunded and the priorities are so warped.
That's it, that's exactly it.

But so many people like you stayed at CUNY. What was it exactly that kept
you at CUNY when you could have gone elsewhere?

The students. The tasks, the need to really work in that kind of a setting with
the kind of commitment that the university had or should have had. I would
say for the most part had. Certainly most of the faculty did. And the
opportunity to work with these wonderful students, oh my God did I want to
go to Yale, no I really didn’t. I really didn’t. I loved my CUNY students and
my CUNY students did so well. They were brilliant.

How so, tell me about it?

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Tucker:

Well, first of all I would tell them everything, anything. I would give them
everything that I could. That was a pleasure for me. I think that my students
know me as well as anybody in the world do and we still get together which is
wonderful. And I would push them, I remember times when I had groups of
them lying on the floor with a text in the middle of them. And they'd be
kicking their legs and talking and arguing with each other, but that was fine.
Trying to figure out the different approaches to this text, and how this one
could come from this point of view, and this one can come from that point of
view. And what was the reality, was there a reality. All the questions they
were asking just working together were so wonderful.

They educated themselves, we gave them the context of course, but they asked
the questions, they talked with each other, they brought their lives to bear.
And if they didn’t the other students would goad them. I remember one time a
bunch of doctors-to-be pre-med students came to one of my classes, and after
the first class they said, "Oh we can't stay here because we have to get As and
I'm not sure we're going to get As. We don’t have all the answers." And I
didn’t have to say anything, the other students said to them, "You don’t have
to have all the answers. You need to have the questions that's okay, stay with
it, you'd be glad you did. I felt the same way. Go on back." I didn’t have to do
anything, it was the other students. That’s what mainly the students, the
students, the CUNY students. They're the best.

[End of recorded material 01:44:08]

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