Goodstein Lecture Cancelled

The Lecture will be rescheduled for a later date.






Ellen Chesler, senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, will present Sewanee’s 17th annual Anita S. Goodstein Lecture in Women’s History at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 5, in Gailor Auditorium on the University of the South campus. Her talk, “Margaret Sanger, the Woman Rebel at 100,” will be followed by a reception. The public is invited.

Ellen Chesler joined the Roosevelt Institute as a senior fellow in 2010 following more than 30 years of experience in government, philanthropy, and academia. She is working on a book about the history of women’s rights as fundamental human rights and is helping the institute develop programs on the broader human rights legacies of the Roosevelts.

From 2007 to 2010, Chesler was distinguished lecturer at Roosevelt House, the public policy institute of Hunter College of the City University of New York. For the decade prior, she served as a senior fellow and program director at the Open Society Institute, where she developed the foundation's global investments in reproductive health and women’s rights, and advised on a range of other program initiatives. Her work with women combined support for policy research and advocacy, public education, and litigation with strategic investments in new birth control products and model service innovations that promise long-term benefits in public health in the United States and in many countries around the world.

Chesler is the author of Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, a finalist for PEN's 1993 Martha Albrand award in nonfiction. She is also co-editor of Where Human Rights Begin: Health, Sexuality and Women in the New Millennium and has written numerous essays and articles for academic anthologies and for newspapers, journals, and periodicals. She is a member and former chair of the Advisory Committee of the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, and formerly chaired the board of the International Women's Health Coalition.

An honors graduate of Vassar College, Chesler earned master’s and doctoral degrees in history at Columbia University.

The Roosevelt Institute is a nonprofit organization devoted to carrying forward the legacy and values of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.