Song and Celebration 
Ann Weaver Hart, President
University of New Hampshire
An address given at the celebration of Utah Women’s Week, University of Utah
February 25, 2005
I am honored to be with you this afternoon as part of the University of Utah’s celebration of women. And it is a pleasure to be back at “the U.” Having been a part of both the University of Utah and the University of New Hampshire, I am struck by the many values and aspirations we share. As flagship institutions, we share a belief in the power of public higher education. We share a deep commitment to our communities and the ideas and knowledge generated on our campuses that benefit all citizens in our respective states, as well as in the new global community of the 21st century.
We also share a notable alumna. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is the noted historian whose book, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, brings to life the struggles and triumphs of ordinary women from centuries ago. It is not surprising to me, that her scholarship on this subject earned her the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1991.
Laurel is the source of one of my favorite quotations. I’m sure that you’ve heard it: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” This sentence holds tremendous meaning…achievement, social action, the right and necessity of saying “no” to conditions in our society we believe are harmful to the common good and “yes” to the actions and values we believe will benefit our lives, our communities, and our future. I admire Laurel for the simplicity of this sentence and the breadth of its meaning as it inspires young women to pursue the things they value and desire
At UNH, we use Dr. Ulrich’s statement on T-shirts and programs when we seek to inspire young women to achieve their potential with pride and confidence, refusing to be hushed by those who admonish them that their behavior is not lady-like or that men will not date them, let alone love them, if they are not “well behaved”.
I want all young women to be inspired by Dr. Ulrich’s statement, not only those who may be seen as extraordinary. I want, this afternoon, to tell all women that their contributions to life, individually lived and communally experienced, will make history. Each woman can come to know herself, confront her weaknesses, respect her strengths, and build on those strengths to “make history” in her own way. Each of us can sing in an eloquent voice, celebrate what is female and, therefore, deeply human. Eloquence, feminism, and heroism are not the property of the few. There is song and celebration in each of us.
Too often, we are told what we can and cannot aspire to – we are influenced, however subtly, to choose between limited options and to follow set paths. Our job, our obligation, is to break out of these limits while demanding the right to preserve the treasured space of women in our biology and our culture. As educators and as women, we must be sure that the young women we nurture know that they can and must design their lives according to their own muses and passions. And we must assure that they have the necessary skills, knowledge, and institutional support to do so .
In the last few weeks, Harvard President Larry Summers’ views on women have been much in the news. Dr. Summers has worked diligently to clarify and sharpen his opinions as the debate about his remarks has raged, and many pundits have editorialized about the existence (or lack of) innate differences between men and women in the sciences.
I am impressed with the analysis of the recently released transcript of Dr. Summers’ comments by Slate Magazine’s political correspondent, William Saletan, who reminded us of the analytical errors to which we are all vulnerable. Saletan notes: There are two possible explanations for the tone [of Dr. Summers’ remarks] in this context. One is that he’s a sexist. The other is that once he offers a hypothesis, he’d rather defend and extend it than listen objectively to the alternatives. He’s got an open mind but not an open heart…. He was so busy being skeptical of the popular explanation that he forgot to be skeptical of the unpopular one.”
I take hope from this debate. As Saletan said: “When we talk about gender or any other controversial topic, we (as Summers said) have to be willing to ask the question in ways that could face any possible answer that came out.’ What brave and wise counsel.” Now we all just need to follow it.
I add that each individual is not bound by the trends of the group—a very important qualification for all between and within group analyses of differences.
In December, 1983 (the
official date on my University of Utah Ph.D. diploma), my husband, Randy,
gave me a book for Christmas. I leafed through this book as I was
thinking about this presentation today and reflecting on the journey that
brought me here to talk with you. The book, Annapurna: A
Woman’s Place by Arlene Blum, is about the 1978 assault on Annapurna
I, the “harvest goddess”, 
by the first all-woman mountaineering team in
the Himalaya. Annapurna has a disquieting history. One of only
15 peaks in the world towering over 8,000 meters, only eight climbers
had reached its summit in 1978—nine others had lost their lives in the attempt—when
these 13 women took on the challenge. The story is thrilling, suspenseful,
grueling, and inspiring. Two team members and two Sherpas reached
the summit, and two women on the team lost their lives on a second ascent
attempt two days later. But the reason I mention this event today,
inspiring to women across the world as it was, is very personal. On
the inside cover of the book, Randy wrote simply, “Go for it.” Tucked
inside the book, at the beginning of the chapter called, “A Woman’s Place,”
chronicling the successful ascent of the mountain, I found an unopened envelope
addressed to “ANN” (with backwards capital letter N’s) that I had never
found. Inside was a note from our then four-year-old daughter, Allyson,
who graduated from medical school at the University of California San Francisco
last year. Allyson had slipped her note of love and encouragement
into my Christmas book. It says: (see image at right)
I am not an 8,000 meter mountaineer; I am not a medical doctor. I have chosen one path; other women have chosen other paths. I took a hiatus to be a full-time mom to four daughters; other women have nurtured and reared children with the support of nannies or day-care or other caregivers. We women must reject the notion that there are predetermined and specific paths set in advance for us all and truly examine our own passions and goals, and we must do so with the support of our families—the women, men, and, yes, the children in our lives—as we are all bound together in our destinies. We also need the support of the institutions in our society.
Do not abide by others’ definitions of success and appropriateness—we each must identify what it is that will make us happy, fulfilled, passionate human beings, and then do everything we can to achieve our goals. If we can do these things, we will make history. If we can take the next steps, share what we have learned with women of our own and future generations, and work collectively to assure that our society adopts policies that support families, we will be heroic.
So today, I want to share a few women’s voices in song and celebration. I have a chosen just a few American women who found their own passions, taken their own roads. Each of these women refused to let others define their lives, and their achievements are remarkably varied. But the thing that binds them together is that they decided for themselves what their lives would be, and they were diligent in reaching their goals.
Like many women, I spent time as I wrote this speech thinking about how very important the lives we generate and nurture are. From small children, we learn much. My five grandchildren, all under the age of four, inspired me. My youngest grandson, Seth, was born this morning at 12:50 a.m., and I was privileged to be able to be present at his birth.
I have organized my presentation today using the children’s song about the ABC’s to help me show you how tremendously varied women’s lives can be. Like the ABC’s, the women we celebrate today represent the building blocks upon which each of us can base a lifetime of success and fulfillment, however we choose to define it. I asked my three-year-old grand daughter, Elise Hart Baker, if she would help me with my talk today, and she graciously agreed.
PLAY TAPE OF ELISE SINGING THE ABC’S
Here is my version of the American Women’s ABC’s.
Dr. Maya Angelou, a writer, activist, actress, and mother, has spent her life examining her passions and continually redefining her success. Among the most eloquent voices of our time, Dr. Angelou reminds us: “Some folks think that you have to be very educated to be eloquent, extremely blessed and talented to be eloquent. There’s nothing more eloquent than a parent saying to a child, ‘I love you.’ That’s eloquent. Or a lover saying to a lover, ‘I love you.’ That is pure eloquence.” (2002, Oprah Winfrey interview)
Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to be awarded an M.D. degree in the U.S. She faced many obstacles on the road to achieving her goal. She was rejected by all of the major medical schools in the country, and was only accepted to Geneva Medical School because they thought her application had been submitted as a joke. Nevertheless, she succeeded in completing her education. Barred from practicing in New York City hospitals, she set up her own. She even founded a Women’s Medical College to train other women physicians.
Shirley Chisholm was the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress and in 1972 conducted the first large-scale presidential campaign by a black candidate in either major party.
Elizabeth Hanford Dole has made public service her life’s work. She has held two Cabinet positions, as the first-ever female Secretary of Transportation and as Secretary of Labor, and now serves as U.S. Senator from North Carolina. There are some who might argue that her reputation and her record eclipse those of some very famous men, perhaps even her husband!
Gertrude Belle Elion devoted her career to medical research, creating drugs to combat childhood leukemia, malaria, herpes and autoimmune disorders including AIDS. However, she almost didn’t get to begin her career when at 19, she was denied admission to 15 different graduate schools, and was forced to work as an unpaid lab assistant in order to have the opportunity to further her research in science. She went on to achieve her Ph.D. and, eventually, the Nobel Prize.
Ella Fitzgerald was perhaps the greatest jazz singer the world has ever known. When touring worldwide, she demanded that her pay be equal to that of her white tour-mates, making her one of the first African American artists to successfully demand and receive pay equity.
Katharine Graham became the owner and publisher of the Washington Post in 1963 upon the death of her husband and went on to become one of the most powerful and courageous women in American media.
Dolores Huerta is one of the 20th century’s most respected labor leaders. She, with Cesar Chavez, is the co-founder of the United Farm Workers. Huerta left her successful elementary school teaching career because in her words, "I couldn’t stand seeing kids come to class hungry and needing shoes. I thought I could do more by organizing farm workers than by trying to teach their hungry children."
I – well, I am here. I am here as a representative of so many women of my generation, whose accomplishments are an amalgam of challenges and successes in our personal and professional lives.
Mae Jemison, a medical doctor, Peace Corps volunteer, engineer, astronaut, and business woman was the first African American woman in space. Dr. Jemison has said “I had to learn very early not to limit myself due to others’ limited imaginations. I have learned these days, never to limit anyone else due to my own limited imagination.”
Maggie Kuhn personifies the notion that well-behaved women rarely make history. Forced to retire at 65 after a career of social activism, Kuhn and a group of friends joined together to give voice to the interests of seniors in America, founding the organization that became the Gray Panthers.
Here are four women who pioneered new paths that made American history:
Susette La Flesche, a member of the Omaha Nation and daughter of Chief Joseph, La Flesche was a tireless advocate for Native American rights and the first published Native American author and artist.
As the first woman to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Wilma Mankiller leads the second largest tribe in the United States, with more than 140,000 members.
And, Antonia Novello was the first woman and the first Latina to become Surgeon General of the United States.
The ABC’s of American women are replete with achievement….
Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Third in her class at Stanford Law School, O’Connor was unable to find a law firm willing to hire her as anything other than a secretary and so turned to public service. After taking time off to raise her children, she established her own successful practice in Arizona and was elected to the Arizona Superior Court. After her ascension to the Arizona Court of Appeals, President Reagan nominated her to the U.S. Supreme Court, where her pragmatic and centrist conservatism has made her a force to be reckoned with.
Denied a bachelor’s degree in 1892 because she was a woman, Mary Engle Pennington eventually went on to earn her Ph.D. in Chemistry. She became chief of the USDA’s Food Research Lab, and led in the development of the safe handling, packaging, and preservation of perishable food.
Anna Quindlen has spent 20 years chronicling the intricacies of modern women’s lives. She left The New York Times in the middle of an extremely successful career to focus on raising her children and writing novels, both of which she has done with success.
Janet Reno was the first female Attorney General of the United States.
A true working mother, 15 year-old Sacagawea was a crucial member of the Lewis and Clark expedition while at the same time caring for her infant son and her husband. Sacagawea was among America’s most intrepid explorers and cultural interpreters.
Ida Tarbell’s 1904 expose of Standard Oil Company, widely recognized as one of the first-ever examples of investigative journalism, led to the break-up of the company under antitrust laws. Soon after, Tarbell founded the American Magazine, writing to great effect about controversial business and political issues of the day and inspiring sweeping reforms.
The women of the University of Utah. The women of this university, past and present, are living heroic lives and making history every day, whether they realize it or not.
Brigadier General Wilma Vaught is one of the most highly decorated military women in U.S. history. As a founder of the Women in Military Service for theAmerica Memorial Foundation, Vaught spearheaded a campaign that raised more than $20 million and created the first major memorial to honor the nearly two million women who have served in the Armed Forces.
Chien-Shiung Wu performed an historic experiment overturning what had been considered a fundamental law of nature. Two male theoretical physicists hypothesized that the fundamental theory of parity was inaccurate, but were unable to develop an experiment to prove it. They consulted with Wu, an expert experimental physicist, who rose to the challenge and conducted a groundbreaking experiment that proved their hypothesis. She did not, however, share in their 1957 Nobel Prize. At the time, the playwright Clare Boothe Luce said, "When Dr. Wu knocked out that principle of parity, she established the principle of parity between men and women."
Xerxes, the king of Persia whom the Greeks thought despotic was—oops, he was a guy.
Rosalyn Yalow, a medical physicist, is the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Medicine and the first woman to win the Lasker Prize, both awarded for her development of the radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body using radioactive-labeled material.
Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias was arguably the most versatile and accomplished athlete of the 20th century, male or female, and the greatest woman athlete of all time. Throughout her career, Zaharias excelled at basketball, track & field, and golf. In the process, she broke down social conventions, struggled against expectations of “femininity,” and fought to be allowed to excel.
“Now I know my ABC’s, next time won’t you sing with me?”
Each of these women aspired to different ideals of success, and they did notaccept barriers that others tried to place in their way as they worked to achieve their goals. Many of them had passions that were not common or accepted for women of their time, be it physics or athletics, politics or space travel. Some of these women balanced their careers with raising families (like Chien-Shiung Wu, who said “There is only one thing worse than coming home from the lab to a sink full of dirty dishes, and that is not going to the lab at all"), and some chose to dedicate their lives to their careers. These were choices made to shape the lives they wanted. These are choices we all are free to make. These are choices we all are obliged to help our sisters make. These are choices that are made powerful and actualized in a supportive and affirming institutional environment.
What we all can learn from these women is that we each have our own song to sing, and that we must celebrate the individuality of these songs. This is an exciting time to be a woman. Unlike many of these women who came before us, the world is wide open to us. We can be and do anything we choose. With this freedom comes a responsibility to make choices wisely, with respect for our individual abilities, goals, and passions. We also have the responsibility to serve as an example, without criticism or judgment, and help the women around us to make their choices and achieve their goals. I do not think women are as conscious as we should be about helping and mentoring others – every senior woman in this room could be a mentor to a freshman woman, every faculty member could be a mentor to a student or a junior faculty member. We owe it to these women who came before us, and to the women who will follow, to help the next generation of women find what they love and to help them achieve their goals based on that commitment. As Katharine Graham once said, “To love what you do and feel that it matters — how could anything be more fun?”
I want to end with a passage from Annick Smith’s Homestead. Her book speaks of the west. It speaks of summer. It speaks of hope:
“The weathered log buildings on a hillside with yellow grass would own me. From my first sight of the place, I was hooked. I started to invent a new life. Some country family lived in the mud-chinked house with sun glinting off its roof, but the ranch seemed abandoned, no sounds except the humming of yellow jackets, dry grass rustling as we passed. A few leghorns pecked at the last grasshoppers of summer. Home. If I lived here, who would I be?” (Annick Smith, Homestead, 1995)
Thank you. It’s been an honor to be with you today.
