Ellen Chesler Named Director of Women and Public Policy Initiative at Hunter College

Date: Monday, February 26, 2007
Contact: Meredith Halpern (meredith.Halpern@hunter.cuny.edu)
Phone: (212) 772-4068

New York, NY) Hunter College President Jennifer J. Raab today announced the appointment of Ellen Chesler as Distinguished Lecturer and Director of the new Eleanor Roosevelt Initiative on Women and Public Policy at Hunter’s public policy institute to be located at Roosevelt House.  Dr. Chesler comes to Hunter from the Open Society Institute, the international foundation started by George Soros, where she spent nearly a decade directing a multi-million dollar program in reproductive health and women’s rights and advising on a range of other grant making and policy development concerns.

“Ellen Chesler is the perfect choice to lead our new Eleanor Roosevelt initiative because she advances Mrs. Roosevelt’s activist agenda,” said President Raab.  “She has had an unusual career, alternating between scholarship and activism and she has distinguished herself in both realms – as a serious biographer and as an admired administrator in government and philanthropy, specializing in public policy concerns of women and families.

“In a single generation academic programs on women have transformed entire disciplines and driven a critically important rethinking of curricula in the arts and sciences,” said Dr. Chesler.  “But too often this thinking is not adequately understood or reflected in the public arena, where policies and programs need to better address the needs of families and communities transformed by new assumptions about women's roles.”

Dr. Chesler is the author of Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, a celebrated 1992 biography of the visionary, controversial pioneer in family planning and human sexuality.  The book was runner up for PEN's 1993 Martha Albrand Prize for the year’s best first work of nonfiction.  Chesler is also co-editor with Wendy Chavkin of Where Human Rights Begin: Health, Sexuality and Women in the New Millennium.  She has written essays and articles in many anthologies and in newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, the Nation, the American Prospect and the Women's Review of Books.

She chairs the Advisory Committee of the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch and also serves on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.  Early in her career she served as chief of staff to New York City Council President Carol Bellamy, the first woman elected to citywide office in New York.  A graduate of Vassar College, Chesler earned her master's degree and a doctoral degree with distinction in history at Columbia University.

Hunter College is currently renovating Roosevelt House, the historic family home of the Roosevelt’s on East 65th Street with the aim of establishing it as an internationally prominent institute honoring the public policy commitments of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.  The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College is scheduled to open in early 2008.

About Hunter
With a highly diverse student population of more than 20,000, Hunter is the largest college in the City University of New York (CUNY) system and the first choice among all CUNY applicants. Founded in 1870, the College offers more than 170 undergraduate and graduate programs. Hunter is noted for its professional schools in education, health sciences, nursing and social work, as well as its excellence in the liberal arts. Heralded as the "Crown Jewel of CUNY" by The Princeton Review, Hunter College has a distinguished reputation for nurturing talented minority scientists and meeting the challenge of providing high-quality science education in the 21st century. The College also oversees the Hunter College Campus Schools serving gifted and talented students, preschool through grade 12. For more information about Hunter College, please visit our Web site at http://www.hunter.cuny.edu.

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