Interview with Ruth M. Silverman

Interview with Ruth M. Silverman

Silverman, Ruth ; Gashurov, Irene

Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni in Womens’ Studies; Harpur College – Alumni from New York City; Harpur College – Alumni at Nassau Community College; Harpur College – Alumni in the New York City area

Ruth Silverman, PhD, is a sociology professor at Nassau Community College, where she created the Women’s Studies Program. She is the sister of Dr. Amy Weintraub.

2018-05-18

In Copyright

Ruth Silverman.mp3

2018-05-18

Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni

102:37 minutes

Alumni Interviews
Interview with: Ruth M. Silverman
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 15 May 2018
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(Start of Interview)

IG: 00:01
Testing, testing, 1,2,3, it is working. Okay. So, we are here with Ruth Silverman. Ruth,

RS: 00:08
My name is Ruth Silverman. I graduated in 1964 with a BA in sociology. I am being interviewed today, May 18, 2018 in my sister's apartment, who also graduated in 1964, my birth date is 11/24/(19)42.

IG: 00:31
Perfect. Okay, so wh- where did you grow up?

RS: 00:40
Do not worry about your back.

IG: 00:42
Okay, all right, and I am going to actually move this up closer, if you do not mind, sorry, because I am hard of hearing, right. So, Amy, where did you grow up?

IG: 00:56
Albany, New York.

IG: 00:58
And tell me a little bit about your parents, what they did and-

RS: 01:06
Well, my father had a PhD in sociology from Columbia University, and he headed up the Bureau of Statistics, the Department of Mental Hygiene in Albany. And my mother, my father retired and got a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. My mother became his assistant, his office assistant, under grant.

IG: 01:35
Okay, so you are the only two siblings in your family. You are the two daughters. Were there other siblings?

RS: 01:42
We have an older sister?

IG: 01:44
Yes, so were the- were the expectations of for you similar? Do you think that all girls were expected to go on with their higher education?

RS: 02:00
It was definitely an expectation. It was a- my mother came from a family. We were six children, and my grandparents, of course, were immigrants, and all six children went to college. I mean, that was just an expectation. And my mother's family and of course, my father was, well, let me put it this way, his brother did not go to college. My father went all the way through, but there was an expectation that you were going to go to college, of course.

IG: 02:33
One thing that we did not say, I think that, you know, at the beginning we say, what you what you currently do what your profession is.

RS: 02:43
I have been teaching at Nassau Community College since 1986 in sociology department. My appointments in the sociology department, but I have also taught courses in it was the Women's Studies project. There was no Women's Studies Department. Some people come from other departments. So, I was active in creating the Women's Studies program courses, the intro course, the first course. My doctoral work was in sociology of health, especially women's health. So, um-

IG: 03:19
And where did you do your doctorate?

RS: 03:22
I did my master's work University Wisconsin, Madison, and the PhD work at NYU.

IG: 03:30
So, you know to backtrack, we will touch upon this a little bit later, but tell us a little bit about your growing up, what was that like, and where did you go to high school? What you know, what the preparation for Harpur College, what you know, predisposed you to-

RS: 03:53
Albany was very small when we were growing up there. It has changed considerably. The State University of New York in Albany was originally State Teachers College at Albany, and it was a local teacher’s college. There were no dormitories. But of course, the State University has expanded tremendously. The State Government has expanded. I mean, it has got this downtown campus called the mall, and they traded the Avril Harriman campus out by the university. So, you know, it was, um, it was a different city. It was much, much smaller and more what insular, less cosmopolitan, I guess you would say, when we were growing up, but we did not go to the public school. My parents sent us to the middle school, which was the training school for the teacher. We were right next door to the Teacher's College.

IG: 04:51
I see, I see.

RS: 04:52
And so, we were- our teachers kept moving. As you know, we worked in semesters. And they had to do their student teaching, but the supervisors were the same.

IG: 05:05
I see. So, do you think that you got over? Did you get your grounding for your future studies at the high school?

RS: 05:17
I think we got a very good grounding. Because we were neither completely public. Of course, the state, the college was a public institution, but and we were already completely private. [laughs] We were- so it was a funny coming so we did not have to take, we want to- we did not take regents. They only recommended that for applying to colleges, you should take a few regions so they could have some basis to compare you with students in the in the public school system. And the preparation must have been very good, because we did very well. I did very well in the ones in the regent’s exam said I chose to take so they could see that that the middle school was teaching at a level to take the New York State Regents.

IG: 06:17
So, I take it that you got the regents scholarship for college.

RS: 06:24
No, and I do not know why we did not get it.

IG: 06:32
Many-many-many people did get a regent scholarship, you know, but nonetheless, um, so-so, why did you decide on Harpur College? Did you apply to other schools? And what kind of-

RS: 06:49
We applied to other schools, but Harpur, Harpur was just beginning then, and if I remember correctly, it was um Dr. House, the guidance counselor who recommended to my parents that it would be a good place for us to go. And four of us- we went. It was a small school. I think that there were 60 people in the graduating class. It was not and four of us applied to Harpur and got in. Yeah, four of us in the middle school applied to Harpur and got and we all got in so we were not competing against each other. So, the middle school must have had a good reputation.

IG: 07:30
Right. And what you know, what- why did you decide on Harpur rather than, you know, buffalo, or any other school in the SUNY system, or anywhere else. Why?

RS: 07:46
I guess my parents thought that that is they put us in instead of tending us to the big high school in Albany. I guess they figured that a smaller school would be good for us. And they were right. They were absolutely right. I think Amy and I both. I mean, we just blossomed.

IG: 08:04
Well, so tell me about this experience. You know what- how when you arrived, you know what were, just tell us a little bit about that arc of what you were like when you first arrived at Harpur College and how you blossomed? Can you-

RS: 08:25
I think I blossomed intellectually, definitely. I blossomed in the way I felt about myself being a competent person, one of our professors, or we both had the favorite, our favorite professor, Dr. Peter Dodge, who we had just because the fact that when we were freshmen, and we had to take World History two semesters of it, and we both ended up in his class. And we-we just connected. And actually, he was Amy's honors advisor, but he also mentioned the fact that to us how, and I think it is a tribute to the kind of school Harpur was that you could have a relationship with a professor for four years, and he could say to you at the end, how he saw us grow from when he had us as freshman in the history course to when we graduated.

IG: 09:28
But any sense of the girl that you were when you first arrived in Binghamton and well, you mentioned that you became more self-possessed and more sure of yourself, but you know what-what-what were some of the big world view changes or internal changes?

RS: 09:52
Oh, because Harpur was small and it took students from all over New York State, but there definitely was a cultural difference between the students who came from New York City and those who came from upstate. And I have a call. I am going to get a glass of water so I can hear my voice beginning to-

IG: 10:25
Okay, we are back on so we continue with Ruth Silverman.

RS: 10:33
There was a cultural difference between the students who came from New York City and political cultural and political difference between those who came from New York City and those who came from upstate. And it was the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, the protest against the war in Vietnam and most of the people who were politically active. And it was also the beginning of a student the student uprising against in loco parentis. And the students who were leading the movement were all the students from New York City.

IG: 11:14
So, and how did you look upon these rebelling-

RS: 11:19
Well, the big rebellions had not started when I got, when I got to the University of Wisconsin, you know, there it is, but the beginning of, you know, it was beginning- was beginning at Harpur, and it was my introduction to politics. I would have to say. Yeah.

IG: 11:44
Because you had not thought of the world before in terms of politics.

RS: 11:50
I do not think that if the student, if Harpur, had not attracted such a large contingent of students, I do not know whether or not the campus would have been the same, and I would have been the same because I teach at a local community college, and you do not, you do not get what at my at the local community college. What you got, and at Harpur, these were bright students. Sophisticated, used to traveling the subways, you know, traveling subways and busses by themselves. When they were younger, they just bought a different vibration, a different view of the world, a different politics as they had a different culture.

IG: 12:38
And you found that exciting.

RS: 12:40
Yes, yeah, the ones, the ones from upstate New York, were more laid back, placid, I guess, looking back upon it now, I would say they were more conservative. They were certainly not [inaudible] and forth on the moon. In fact, I remember there being some kind of a friction between a young woman, I think she was in our dormitory, who was Republican or something.

Amy 13:09
Oh yes. And I had never been a Republican in my life.

RS: 13:14
And there was some friction there between her and the ones who were beginning to leave, leave the upcoming movement [inaudible] are from upstate. [laughs]

IG: 13:25
So, did you get involved in any of the student protests? Yourself?

RS: 13:33
No, we were there because of the fact it was just beginning. Then, I mean, people were talking. And because you were in the sociology department, you know, issues were being discussed. But I think because by the time one year later, two years later, when I was at Wisconsin, I mean, that was the really beginning. You know, the free speech movement. The Free Speech Movement began at the University of California, Berkeley, during the time that I graduated Harpur and was at Wisconsin. And the free speech movement at that point, then just moved out, I-I assumed it also began. It went to Harpur, but it certainly went to University of Wisconsin. And interesting enough, one of the faculty members in the sociology department, William Sewell, circulated a letter around faculty at the University of Wisconsin supporting the free rights, free the free speech movement at Berkeley. So, things were just beginning to happen. I think if I had graduated in (19)66 I would have seen a bit more, but we were just on the cusp of it. I mean, you knew, you could tell it was coming.

IG: 14:56
Right. So-so tell us you know, for those give us. A very quick history lesson. What was the free speech movement? Was it? And see, sort of, you know, the beginnings of it in at Harpur College.

RS: 15:17
The free speech movement emerged as a protest against the war in Vietnam, and the students were, if I remember correctly, the students at Berkeley, Mario [Mario Savio], something about if I remember correctly, was the leader of the free speech movement at Berkeley, and he-he generated the students to come together and openly, you know, in protest-protest on campus, the war in Vietnam. And of course, at that point, college administrators were not we were not used to students protesting like that. In fact, I have a colleague who went to the College of William and Mary in Virginia right at the same time that I was going to Harpur, and she was editor of the newspaper, and she said that even a conservative-conservative-conservative place like the College of William and Mary, protest was beginning to start, even at a place like that, and she was editor of the newspaper, and somebody wanted to come to campus. Was it Aptheker [Herbert Aptheker], the historian, who was also a communist, and the students the college president would not let him come? And the college newspaper got involved, and they were writing articles in the newspaper, you know, free speech. So that was the issue. But you certainly did not have it in the (19)40s and the (19)50s, students organizing on campus, publicly coming out and protesting. And that is where the free speech, free speech movie goes. It is new. It is ever right to the same, you know, free speech that is in the bill of rights as students.

IG: 17:04
Right. I mean, it must have been a very heavy time. Did it spill over into the way, into the dynamics of the classroom? Was there more, you know, challenging intellectually of the positions of your professors, although-

RS: 17:26
Well, we had one professor in sociology.

IG: 17:29
In Harpur or Wisconsin?

RS: 17:31
Well, I will get to Wisconsin later, but now we are talking about Harpur.

IG: 17:34
Yes-yes.

RS: 17:35
Richard Hamilton, who seemed to attract a lot of those students, intellectually and politically. Oh, yes, a new club was formed in I think my junior year, the International Relations Club. And I think Ronald Bayer is one of the founders of the International and they managed to get Eleanor Roosevelt to come and speak, and that was what launched the International Relations Club.

IG: 18:15
I remember speaking about Eleanor Roosevelt's visit.

Amy 18:20
She visited the campus.

Amy 18:21
Yes, it was a fantastic visit. The whole the whole campus, was filled with excitement that Eleanor Roosevelt was coming.

IG: 18:29
Amy, just for the purpose of this interview, just tell us who you are.

AW: 18:35
I am Amy Weintraub. I am Ruth Silverman's twin sister.

IG: 18:38
Very good.

AW: 18:39
Who also went to Harpur?

IG: 18:40
Thank you.

AW: 18:41
Yes, who also went to Harpur?

RS: 18:44
So, yeah, Harpur, it was just beginning to Harpur, but I remember our professor, Dr. Dodge, we were listening there was talk show. So, they were talk shows back then, and I do not remember what the issue was, but it was just like today. And I do not know how I was listening to the radio, to this particular station and to this particular show, but somebody in the community was calling in and complaining about that socialist professor at Harpur College, you know, named Peter Dodge, and I remember being floored. And I remember going over to his office and saying, I just heard somebody on the radio call you a socialist professor.

IG: 19:36
What did you think about that label at the time? Did you think it was ridiculous? Do you want to protect him? What-what-

RS: 19:43
Absolutely it was absolutely ridiculous. Took, you know, to confuse sociology socialists. But he must have been interviewed somewhere, yeah, you know, and he must have said something. And he must have said he was a social- artfully, a sociology professor, and she heard that he was saying and she heard it a socialist. So, you know, it was just beginning at Wisconsin. I mean, at Harpur, two years later, at Wisconsin, I was taking a course on social change, and social change was happening on the campus and the course, I think that is the only time I dropped a course. But this course had no it was so up here, and it had no relation to what was happening outside on the campus. By the time I left, they were teachings all the time. And I was going through the teachings. I was learning so much at those teachings.

IG: 20:46
Tell us about that.

RS: 20:47
I think if I had, if I had entered Harpur two years later, it would have been the same thing. Okay, I do not because, in fact, it was the times, so it had nothing to do, I think, with Harpur versus Wisconsin, just the fact that I was at Wisconsin who graduated just on the cusp of the movie and the change. And one of the things, the changes that were being asked of the college at that time to do away with, it was not just, you know, the war and civil rights was the whole notion of in loco parentis, and we had to be in the dorm at 10 o'clock at night on weekdays, 12 o'clock on weekends. And there was a dorm mother who would lock the doors, and if you came in late, you have to ring the doorbell and explain where you were. But the big thing was, when you got to be a senior, you could stay out, but remember, there was no place to go. Anyhow, we were on the Harpur campus. Where were you going to go if you stayed out at night? The library closed right? Everything, everything closed down, right? So, the movement was to do away with this whole notion that you had to be in by a certain time and co-ed doors. Why were men and women separated.

IG: 22:11
You know, clearly, you know, the movement reached a crescendo at Wisconsin. And you know, just if you could tell us about the teachings, because a lot of these institutions are, maybe have been absorbed by, you know, the culture, but we really do not know what they were at their very beginning. So, what are teachings?

RS: 22:37
What is a teaching?

IG: 22:38
Yes.

RS: 22:38
A teaching is when you announce a public space and that you get some experts, like not-not-not necessarily people from your own university, but people who you have contacted, who are experts, and they come -and it can last for a whole day, and you can choose which one of those talks you want to go to, and it is like rolling, you know. And so, you are learning so much that is not part of a set curriculum. So, I remember, you know, learning so much about the history of Vietnam. And why? You know, why worry in Vietnam. They had never taken any history courses on that part of the world. But by (19)65, (19)66 we were really involved in Vietnam. And so, for that reason, there was more protest that was also, Wisconsin is a larger school, generate more people involved. It was a graduate and, you know, it was a graduate training school. But as I say, it was because you could feel it in the air. You could feel it in the air at Harpur.

IG: 23:56
I am just trying to really see what a teaching is, is it, is it an auditorium filled up with experts, as you know, expounding on their subject?

RS: 24:10
There was a certain sub, there was a certain topic that is going to be discussed, and it is going to be announced. The lectures are announced at a certain time, and who the speaker is, and these teaching because last the whole day. And you just decided which one it is that you wanted to go to. It was not like one little classroom where somebody was coming was a huge arena, and students were going to the teachings, rather than to their classes, as I did. I mean, I learned nothing about social change in the classroom, but boy, did I see social change occurring right before my very eyes, those two years at Wisconsin and-and the point is the fact that was students who were generating it. This was the whole notion of student. I mean, once before that time, administrators said one thing and everybody. The administrators were not used to students saying no.

IG: 25:06
I can see that that is, that is-

RS: 25:08
And at Harpur, we began to see students saying no. And I assume that after we left, that the young, the people who were one year, two years, three years behind us, moved into those positions, and, you know, because they saw what was happening. So, I assumed that after we left, it must have been like not, maybe not, because University of Wisconsin was such a large place, such a major university. But it must have been the same way at Harpur, because it was already beginning when we were there.

IG: 25:42
So-so, for example, you said, you know, saying no to your administrators was one of the, one of the type of, you know, social, social changes that took place during those during those years, (19)64, (19)65 what were some other social changes that you were witness to, you know, during your college and early graduate years? What were some other social changes that were student-student initiative-

RS: 26:18
Between our sophomore year and I am Junior here that summer, Amy and I were counselors at a camp in North Carolina, and we traveled down there by bus to a place called Hendersonville, North Carolina. I mean, train to Hendersonville, North Carolina, right? And it was the beginning of the student, students being involved in the Civil Rights Movement and going down in summertimes. And the last thing my father said to us before we left, he says, "Do not get involved in it."

AW: 26:58
I am going to tell that story.

RS: 27:00
What?

AW: 27:01
I was going to tell that story.

RS: 27:02
Do not get involved. You were going down there for the summer. I do not know what he thought we was doing. We were going to do. We were going to go. So, we take the train from New York to Washington, DC. This is, this is a fascinating story. We take the train and at Washington, DC, we have had to switch to another train. So, we walk into the first car, and it is really an old, old train, an old car, and it is completely black-black. So, Amy and I walk we made no what to do, so we walk out into the next car. It is the same thing. What we realized later on was that further up there were the nice, white coaches. We looked at each other, and when you are twins, you do not have to speak. But we knew being nice Jewish girls, that we could not move. We could not we would have to go in. And so, we traveled from Washington to Hendersonville

AW: 28:13
In a black car.

RS: 28:14
Completely black.

AW: 28:15
Only whites in the car.

RS: 28:17
And it was not years later until my husband could not take his class one day, and he said, I am showing a film called Eyes on the Prize, a very famous film about the Civil Rights Movement. And this particular one that I was showing was how interstate commerce, how Robert Kennedy had declared that anything that was going between states had to be desegregated, and it had recently been issued okay, that you had to- we did not know that. We just sat on the car, on the train, on the car, because we felt that we could not turn our backs people on the car, that particular car. Must have thought that Amy and I were two civil rights workers, and my father's words came back to me as I am sitting in this class, watching Eyes on the Prize and saying to myself, "Oh my gosh, my father's last words." And here we were. It had just been promulgated, and we were sitting on this train, the only two whites, what else could they think of us? That we were two young civil rights workers, right? Not that we were going to a Jewish camp to be councils for the summer. We were civil rights workers Testing, testing the new law.

AW: 29:37
We got to know we got the house to go. They still had the black and white bathrooms. This was 1964.

RS: 29:46
So now we go after in (19)64 This was (19)62, so of course, it would still be,

AW: 29:51
You were right, we did not go in (19)64 we went in (19)62 years between [crosstalk] at a junior camp north and [crosstalk] [inaudible] to North Carolina.

RS: 30:04
[crosstalk] When I went to Wisconsin and met my husband. [AW is offering tea: milk and the sugar and tea} and met my husband see between (19)64 he was two years ahead of me, so he arrived. When I arrived in (19)64, he arrived in (19)62 and between in January, I think between (19)63 and (19)64 He and three other white friends rented a car and drove down to the south. And they went to the trial, the Medgar Evers trial, and again, had just been the court said rumors had just been desegregated. But of course, they go to the trial, and there are these four white kids sitting in the with the blacks, even though it was desegregated, and I did not think anything of it when he first told me a story, but years later, I said, you drove down to the south with a car, four of you white with a Wisconsin license plate, and then you drop in on the trial, and you sit in that part of the courtroom that had been reserved for the Blacks. I said, "Where was your head?" But, of course, I did not purposely integrate the train, but in our own naive way.

IG: 31:39
Yeah. But it is, it is, it is a wonderful story and a wonderful act, because we are too, either polite or-or-

RS: 31:50
-to living. Yeah, Jewish-Jewish liberal.

IG: 31:58
That you did not leave and you did. You know, it is, it is a wonderful thing. It is, you know-

RS: 32:06
But anybody, could have come and looked at us and thought we were civil rights workers. Never told the story to my father. But of course, it was years like not that was not that long after, maybe, what 10 years later, when I saw that film and learned that they had just integrated the interstate, the trains and the busses going interstate. I mean, they had just done it like it was not a year before.

IG: 32:39
But I am just interested, what were the feelings that sort of, you know, compelled you that no, we were going to stay here? Was it because of your liberality, of your, you know, ethics, of your politeness, or a combination?

RS: 32:58
You know, it was both, because the year later, we broke that was the first time. Then we split up. Amy went back to the camp, and I was working at what was called the major camp, the head camp, and it was part of a new movement called Young Judea. And at the end of the summer, there will be a national meeting of everybody at the camp. Okay? So, Amy came up, and then there was this march on Washington. It was August 1963 and we had a debate whether or not young Judea, a delegation from Barryville, New York and [inaudible], would go to the March on Washington under the Young Judea banner. And there was pro and con. It was one of the most it was an epiphany for me, and we voted the vote Benjamin that we were going to send a group down and marching with a Young Judea banner. But what won the day was when people were talking about the prophetic tradition, that we must live that prophetic tradition as Jews of Isaiah, Amos, and that we had to go, and that was the first time in my life I had ever really seen religion used to justify, maybe not justify. So not a good word, but to use, just talk about,

IG: 34:43
-to legitimize or-

RS: 34:46
-maybe legitimize, also to back up a moral movement.

IG: 34:51
Yeah, that is tremendous. It is tremendous.

RS: 34:55
And, yeah. So, there was a lot happening. And Harpur being in Binghamton and being a small college, it was even happening there. But of course, it takes a while. I you know I was going to say earlier that this is the 50th anniversary of the sit ins at Columbia University.

IG: 35:24
That is right.

RS: 35:24
So, when we graduated in 19, when we were graduated in 1964 it was about two, three or four years before the-the real movement started.

IG: 35:41
The only thing, the only you know, comparable thing that I could think of, was the when a religious movement actually legitimized a political one. Remember liberation theology in Latin America?

IG: 35:57
Oh, yeah, yes, [inaudible]

RS: 36:00
Yes, yeah. And we had, we belonged to a conservative synagogue. In addition to going to the middle school, we went to Hebrew high school three nights a week, from six to eight. But we had never really learned about talked about that prophetic tradition. That was the first time in my life, anybody brought up that prophetic tradition, but in Judaism, now, that whole profession, prophetic tradition is the thing that is behind what we call Tikkun Olam.

AW: 36:29
Yes, it is called tikkun olam letak, a means to fix so the Reform Movement is very dominant. In the Reform Movement Tikkun Olam to fix the world, which means no to better the world.

RS: 36:43
Actually, it comes from the Cesar Terek book. David has more of a mystical meaning, but it has taken over to have a social justice meeting that when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, something was broken, and the sparks went out in-

AW: 37:03
The Kabbalah.

RS: 37:05
What?

AW: 37:05
Kabbalah.

RS: 37:05
Kabbalah, yeah, Kabbalah. Madonna said, the Kabbalah. But so, it had a mystical thing to bring together, those-those sparks as one. But then it became tied to, not mysticism, black social action.

IG: 37:20
And there is a magazine Tikkun [crosstalk]

RS: 37:27
So, Lerner, what is his name? Michael Lerner.

IG: 37:33
So that, do you think that this prophetic movement was kind of a, not a driving force, but an accompaniment-accompaniment.

RS: 37:44
It was a driving force for me because of the fact that I was not into Marxism. That was the time, basically, when Marxism came to college campuses. And a lot of the students from New York were into but they were political science majors, history majors, sociology majors, and they were into reading Marx.

RS: 37:46
So, and you decided against that.

RS: 37:46
Yeah, it did not. It did not speak to me. But when I discovered that I could be active and stand for certain things, and I could find it in my own tradition, I could find and I felt more I felt more comfortable coming to it from that tradition.

IG: 37:46
So, tell us about sort of the formation of Ruth Silverman, the scholar, the-

RS: 37:46
Yeah, and a lot of that was due to-to Dr. Peter Dodge, as I said, when we graduated, he said to us that we had grown so and when he first met us as freshman in his history class, and actually he became Amy's honors thesis advisor. And as a matter of fact, it was Amy, this is how close we were when we were sophomores. She said to me, “You know what?" When we are a senior, we are going to do an honors thesis, and we are going to graduate with honors." And I said, "Okay, sounds good to me," but she was determined to do it, and Dr. Dodge, which he could not, he could not be both of our thesis advisors, so Amy-Amy took him and I took somebody else. But Dr. Dodge was much more supportive of her, much more interested in what she was doing than the one that the one that I chose, what was exhilarating when at the end there was an honors thesis presentation, and all the faculty who had honor students and maybe some who did not, were invited to hear our presentations, and I had to get up in front of all of these professors and talk about my honors thesis, that changes you a lot.

IG: 37:46
Susan, what did you talk about?

RS: 37:46
What was my thesis in sociology? We had in sociology religion; we have read this book called Oligarchy. Well, the original book was by the Italian sociologist [Robert Michels] The iron law of oligarchy, and which he says, "Whoever says democracy", I think the famous quote was, "Whoever says democracy, it is actually me in the end, it is oligarchy." And he- Michelle's and he was, he had studied how the labor unions in Italy started out as being democratic, and then eventually they become less and less democratic as a small group of people tend to take over and run it. Okay? And so, a lot of people started taking that idea and applying it to other kinds of organizations. So, it was applied to the American Baptist. I know what you call the American Baptist Convention, or something like that. Somebody had written a book how they were supposed to be very lay oriented and very democratic. And he said, even in there, you tended towards this oligarchy. And then Seymour Martin Lipset did a study of the book was called Union Democracy. And he said, it is very interesting that when you have some people on top who form the organization or the union or whatever you want to call it, it is not going to be democratic. It tends to be more democratic when the groups exist already and then they coalesce together and forming a national organization. And then you tend to get more democracy, because they were autonomous to begin with. They were not so. So, I started the conservative movement in Judaism, which had three, three parts. There was the rabbinical training school. There was the organization for graduates of the rabbinical school. And then there was the organ, the organizational arm, which was called-

AW: 37:46
Not son of America. United Synagogue of-

RS: 37:46
United synagogue of America. And so, I did, you know, I went to conventions, I went did a lot of interviewing, and it was obvious that the one arm of the seminary had the- was, you know, the major controlling element, and that the congregational arm of it was not also autonomous, you know. And so that was my that was my honors thesis, and I had to get up and did not talk about my thesis. The fact that I still remember it.

IG: 37:46
I was about to say, it is remarkable, but it really must have been a formative experience writing this.

RS: 37:46
I see I see this today. I am on the board of the Long Island Progressive Coalition, which is the Long Island chapter of citizen action of New York. There are there is another called Metro Rochester, something like that. Both of us existed before citizen action of New York existed, but with they formed chapters in many places there were top down. It is actually top down because every chapter other than Rochester and Long Island were formed through Albany. So, because that we existed, we existed because we existed. You know, it is nice to have a statewide affiliation, but because of the fact that we existed before they existed, we have much. We have made it clear to them and certain issues, we are part of you, but we existed before you. But I can see that Seymour Martin Lipset was correct. It depends upon how the union was formed, or the organization was formed. And if you had [crosstalk] if you had individual chapters that people, come together, saying the strength in numbers, it is less likely to get oligarchy.

IG: 37:46
D-o you think that that was a work that determined the future of your, you know, interests or, I mean, this is it must, you know. I mean, it must have propelled you on to-

RS: 37:46
It must have, in some way. I mean-

IG: 37:46
In some way, in some way.

RS: 37:46
-because of the fact that I know every time there is some kind of a little friction between says an action in New York and us, I always say "I have said it before, I am going to say it again," that this is, this is what we learn in sociology, okay? And it is our history. That makes for that friction, because we existed before they did.

IG: 45:24
By the time you got to your PhD studies-

RS: 45:28
I was- I had changed my area. Well, when I got to Wisconsin, I became interested in sociology of health and illness, because that was my father's area.

IG: 45:38
The sociology, excuse me, of-

RS: 45:39
Health and illness.

AW: 45:40
There is a thing here for you. Keep it.

RS: 45:43
Became interested in sociology of health and illness, and my husband had done a master's thesis in that area, so actually, I built upon his master's thesis, and then when I went back to graduate school, there was a space between my masters and my doctoral work.

IG: 46:03
How many years would you say I went back in (19)76 Yeah. So, what happened? You mentioned a husband. So where did you meet?

RS: 46:19
At Wisconsin.

IG: 46:20
At Wisconsin.

RS: 46:21
Two years he was there, two years before me. So, there was, there was no sociology of health program major or anything like that. I am soon there is now. But being a small college, the course offerings were courses that you had to take if you were a sociology major, but Wisconsin, that was one of the major areas. My husband had a fellowship in national from the National Institute of Mental Health. So, but when I went back to NYU, I had given birth to my first child, and I became interested in studying the history of childbirth in the United States. And that got me-

IG: 47:13
That is fascinating.

RS: 47:14
What?

IG: 47:14
Fascinating.

RS: 47:15
And that got me involved. When I went back to NYU, I majored in women's health in the sociology department.

IG: 47:24
Why did you decide to come to New York City rather than is that-

RS: 47:28
Amy, I stayed in Madison the summer between my first and second years. Amy had a fellowship to New York City, and she stayed in New York City with three friends of ours. They rented the apartment of the wife of Hal Holbrook. Hal Holbrook, the actor Hal Holbrook, he would call up every once in a while, to find out how they were doing after his one of his performances as Abraham Lee, that is Mark Twain. He invited them to come.

AW: 48:01
It was, um, it was a classroom, naturally.

RS: 48:05
He, no, he was playing Tom Sawyer, not Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain, Mark Twain. He was the famous performer of Mark Twain.

IG: 48:12
I have seen him on television, yeah.

RS: 48:14
So, he, they met him afterwards, right? And I had spent the summer, and Madison had a job with one of the State Departments doing something, and I came to New York before going back from my second year. And I said, "I have to, when I get my masters, I have to take a break between Albany Binghamton and Madison." I said, "I need to go to New York," right? I have had enough, you know what, these little places. So, it was fascinating that actually my husband came from Philadelphia during that semester, the Winter Break in (19)65 or going on (19)66. We met in New York, and we had a great time together. And then we get back to Madison, and the first Saturday back, he says to me, he proposes. And I remember saying to him, I will never forget it. Of course, I will never forget anything. Well, I want to tell you something. "My sister and I have both decided that after we get our masters, we want to go in. We want to live in New York." I said, "So if you want to join me in New York. [laughs]

IG: 49:33
You must have, he must have been very much in love with you.

RS: 49:41
So, it was not the yes, it was not the No, it was a kind of a strange proposal. And it was not until, like two weeks later, that we finally came to realize that that was a proposal. [laughs]

IG: 49:55
That is very sweet.

RS: 49:56
So, I just wanted to be able to be in New York. And of course, the minute we moved to New York was it, I cannot say it was the very minute, but by the time (19)68 rolled around, we involved. We got involved in the McCarthy the whole "Stay Clean for Gene." We got involved in the McCarthy campaign.

IG: 50:22
So, tell us about that.

RS: 50:28
57th Street. Amy saw a notice somewhere that there was an office, and Amy can open the door if you are hot--your apartment, as usual, it is hot.

AW: 50:44
Huh that the Parker's village. When you leave, before you leave. No, I have all my flowers. We bought those chairs. So, my husband managed to assemble all those four chairs, and I think he did a great job. But the bathroom looks so pretty with the new chairs and my flowers. So, I thought we could sit out there today. But given the weather, we cannot do that.

IG: 51:21
I think another time, but it is a lovely view.

AW: 51:24
It is.

RS: 51:26
So, Amy went and someone said to me, if you were from the Bronx, you do not want to work out of here. So, they sent me to a place in the Bronx on 161st Street. And I told them where I lived, and they said, oh, there is a lovely reform Democratic Club up right where you live. That is organizing for McCarthy, Gene McCarthy. So, it was right near me. And not only did I work for Gene McCarthy, um I became- my husband, and I became members of the club, it drew in a lot of young people, even up in the Bronx, because he was teaching at Fordham, they were young people who were protesting the war in Vietnam. And this little reformed Democratic Club attracted lots of young people who revitalized it. And I stayed with the fact. As a matter of fact, I ran for state office from my assembly district, and I won. I was taken the democratic state committee woman from the 83rd assembly district for several years.

IG: 52:38
You have a very storied career.

RS: 52:43
And the funny story is, the second they did not expect me to win the machine Democrats. So, the second time I ran, they put the assemblyman's mother ran against me, because this was a inter Democratic Party, intra Democratic Party primary, general election. So, I would go, you talk about how I changed. I went as a quiet little girl entering Harpur and a few years later, in 1968 in the morning, time I am doing subway stops, handing out my literature. And then I said, you know, I can do a lot, get to a lot more people. I cannot keep running up and down the platform. You know, a lot of people coming in on this end, and I cannot get to the people coming in on this end. So, I recruited Amy. I took one end of the platform, [laughter] I took my literature, and then about eight o'clock, it starts thinning out, because at eight o'clock I am going to work, and I see Amy heading towards somebody at the other end of the subway, and I look, oh my gosh, it is my assemblyman. She was heading over to him with my piece of literature, asking I made a [inaudible] something. [laughs] I got there just as she got [inaudible] [laughs]

IG: 54:17
And does Amy realize what-what=

RS: 54:21
She did not know who he was. I said, you know he was- I said, "Good morning, Assemblyman, taking the subway, the subway station." [laughter]

IG: 54:22
It is a good story. So, you are in your work as a politician, what do you think are your main achievements? What did you aspire to do? What did you accomplish?

RS: 54:52
I think, I think you know who started it, the position of a committee woman. Eleanor Roosevelt, she insisted that there be a position for women. So, from each district, each assembly district, there was a female committee woman and a male committee woman, and it started with her. So, I was not running against a male. I was running against I was running against a female. Um, so what-wat was the question?

IG: 55:31
Accomplishments?

RS: 55:32
Accomplishments. Oh, yeah. So, you know the reform Democrats wanted to reform the way elections and politics are in. They wanted to move away from the back room, okay, where people decided who was, who the candidates were going to be. So, there would be the statewide conventions, and if you got enough votes at the statewide convention, you did not have to go the petition, right? Which, when I learned that, I thought, well, this is not much of a reform. There should not be a convention at all. Why are we having a convention? Anybody who wants to run you get enough signatures and you get on the ballot to run. Why should it be that some people get, you know, the blessing that the convention and they get more than 25 percent and somebody else has to go to the petition route. So, my proudest moment was when Hugh Carey ran for governor. Oh, that year I got so many phone calls from people who wanted me to give them the vote at the state convention in Buffalo, and he calls me, and he asked him for my vote. And I said, well, the time that she placed it, I really do not like this convention system. I said, I would rather there would not be any convention at all, they say. So, I think when I get up to Buffalo, I am just going to pass. I am not going to vote for anybody. And he says, "Ruth Silverman, you could sound just like my kind of person." [laughs] And then the other thing was my Bronx-

IG: 57:27
How old were you at the time?

RS: 57:33
That was not the [inaudible] Well, I was 21 when I graduated in November, (19)64 and this was like (19)74 maybe by now 31 it takes, it takes growing up, but my growing up and becoming who I am started, started at Harpur and my parents were absolutely correct to realize that we needed a small college in order to grow we- I just, you know, I cannot, I cannot, I cannot sing the praises of small colleges enough. I even, I, no matter how large national is, we do not have large lecture classes. I mean, you have a large load of, you know, 4, 3, 5, classes to teach with. each class is top well, in sociology, it is 34 so students Nassau Community College do not sit in a large lecture hall. Well, nobody cares about you and who you are and what your name is.

IG: 58:32
No, I have heard said a number of people I have interviewed from Harpur College, the Harpur College at the time, was equal to an excellent, you know, elite-

RS: 58:48
You know what they call-

IG: 58:50
Private college.

RS: 58:53
You know what

AW: 58:54
[crosstalk] Brown University. And I worked harder at Harpur College, and I did at Brown University.

RS: 58:58
And, you know, they used to call Harpur when we were there, we were called the Swarthmore of the state university system. I do not know whether or not what it is like now. So-so much larger, whether or not students who go there

IG: 59:10
Have the same experience. I do not think so. I do not think so. It is a very different-

AW: 59:15
How many students are there now?

IG: 59:18
At Harpur College?

AW: 59:20
For college?

IG: 59:20
I do not know. I do not know. I mean, it is, it is, I am sure that it is,

RS: 59:25
it was, it was a special place. It was very special. And I felt when I went to University of Wisconsin that I was totally prepared. As a matter of fact, my theory course at Wisconsin was a- what was the exact same course I had to take social science majors. Had to take up what was it called at the end of the there is a word for it, to take-

AW: 59:49
Colloquium.

RS: 59:51
Yeah, it was, and it was based upon the philosopher Nagel. So, I had to go through the if then stuff about theory. I-I cannot tell Wisconsin, it is the same course I have already taken it at Harpur.

IG: 1:00:06
Must have given you a great deal of confidence, right? You know and well, and it is probably an easy pass into a difficult graduate course. What was NYU like? What you know, you-you did a very interesting dissertation. And was kind of, what was, sort of, you know, the climate, what was then, what like in New York City-

RS: 1:00:33
In NYU, I did part time-

IG: 1:00:36
In intellectual circles-

RS: 1:00:38
I did NYU part time, taking two courses in the fall and one course. You would not go to NYU for the high quality of the teaching.

IG: 1:01:03
Really?

RS: 1:01:04
I had Elliot Friedson was one of the top experts in this field of sociology of medicine, sociology and healthcare, whatever you-you know, whatever you want to call it, right? And then he moved from there. He became very much involved in studying professions, not just the medical profession. So, I take a seminar with him. Meets one day a week for an hour and 40 minutes. So you go to NYU, you take a course with one of the leading experts. He was writing a new book. He would come in, start reading us from where he had left off, and at an hour and 40 minutes, he put the book and correct there. And then the next time we would he would read from where he had left off, reading and chewing gum at the same time.

IG: 1:01:59
Did not any of the students complain or about his manner of teaching?

RS: 1:02:08
Not him in particular, but what the students did at one point, they wanted to have a student rep on one of the faculty committees. I do not remember how I got it, but I was the student rep, and by this time, you know, I knew my own mind, and I remember the students, well, it was not formal, but I remembered that some informally, the students were taking one stand, and I was supposed to be the representative, and I sitting in on this meeting, and I am listening and I am listening, and I think it was maybe by hiring somebody. I do not remember what it was, but I decided that their position was not the right one. So, I voted the way I felt the vote should go. And I do not remember what the issue was, whether or not it was courses, the hiring of somebody, I do not remember what it was. They were not faced with me, the students, I said, but I have to, you know, I am sitting there, I am listening to the arguments, and you know, you did not, you know, I was not sent here just to do what you [inaudible]. I was sent here to listen and to, you know, do the best I can, you know, but to raise my hand and to vote on something that you know based upon what every argument that I am hearing. And it just so happened that there was an argument that was, you know, different than I thought, better than yours.

IG: 1:03:44
So-so, you know-

RS: 1:03:46
But all this happened, I have to say this will happen, yeah, from going to Harpur. I do not know whether any of this would have come through if we had gone to a larger, a larger school, but it was the atmosphere of excellence, academic excellence, but also interaction between students and professors, beginning to feel that the times were changing.

IG: 1:04:13
They were changing, but also your own upbringing, because your father was an academic. I think that-

RS: 1:04:21
he was not, um, he was a state employee. He headed up the Department of Statistics. We did not teach, but

AW: 1:04:27
He headed up the department was called epidemiology. I remember statistics or epidemiology; it was one of those.

RS: 1:04:36
It was interesting that my father had done a study through the data from the Department of Mental Hygiene on violence committed by people who were mentally ill, and he did it with at that point, the Commissioner of the Department of Mental Hygiene and. Somebody wrote an article in The New Yorker, which I had never heard of at that point, in which they mentioned the study done by Benjamin Malzberg and Hoke. I think hope was the depart was head of department at that point, and Dr. Dodge got the New Yorker, and he was reading this article, and Malzberg is not a very common name. [laughs] So after class one day, he comes up to us, and he says, "Would you happen to have a father, Benjamin Malzberg, who is a sociologist. So, do you relate to him? " and we said, "Oh, that is our father."

IG: 1:05:36
A proud moment.

RS: 1:05:42
Very proud, very proud. Also in history, American history, when we got to the point about the nativist movement, the nativist movement of the early 1900s and a lot of my farmer, [crosstalk], that led to the passage of the immigration law in 1926 and he had done a lot of work using his data from the department, but that was his dissertation. As a matter of fact, using statistics to show that any tendency to immigrants having more mental illness was due if you control for variables like age, etc., you know,

AW: 1:06:21
Or acculturation.

RS: 1:06:22
You know, was, it was a culturation.

AW: 1:06:23
The second generation, the mental illness among Jews had definitely dropped.

RS: 1:06:27
So, any anyhow, um-

IG: 1:06:29
From the first?

AW: 1:06:30
From the first generation,

RS: 1:06:32
Anyhow, that was-

AW: 1:06:33
On the first generation more mental illness because they were getting, they were culturing a totally different culture. It was, you know, being-

IG: 1:06:40
I have heard that said that they carried kind of the burden of-

AW: 1:06:45
Exactly.

IG: 1:06:45
-of, you know, scrambling, both [crosstalk]

RS: 1:06:50
Alcoholism, anything that it was a matter of migration, and especially-

IG: 1:06:54
That is so fascinating.

RS: 1:06:55
So, and especially a lot of young men being here by themselves. They did not have any-any families with them?

IG: 1:07:01
What are you calling first generation? Though, is it? Is it? You know people first gen born?

RS: 1:07:07
I know people get confused on that. First generation is with those who are first born in this country.

IG: 1:07:12
Yes, rather than their parents.

RS: 1:07:14
Their parents are not first generation. First generation means those who were young. Yeah. So anyway, he-he asked us whether or not we were related to Benjamin Malzberg.

AW: 1:07:27
The history professor, Oscar Hamlin had written a book.

RS: 1:07:30
Oh, yes, so we got something, yeah, to the section on him when we had this book at that time. I do not know maybe that is the lead from colleges, but was every topic had a pro and a con. I mean two people, you know. I mean not-not opinion pieces, but from the academic literature. And so, the piece that was in there from the academic side. And there, in the body of one of the articles, a name pops up. And of course, the history professor also got it. [crosstalk] But that would not have happened had we gone to a larger university.

IG: 1:07:31
Of course, of course.

RS: 1:07:31
So, you know, our preparation for graduate school was top notch. And I am so happy that we got into Harpur, because while I was fourth in the class and Amy was fifth, math was not our [inaudible]. So, we got through algebra, and we got through geometry, and we decided not to take any more math, which was, I do not know how they allowed us to do that, because these days, in order, they did not call it the advanced Regents diploma, but you really need the third that third math class and that they took. They took the two of us anyway, and they took one other student who did not take the third math class, and the three of us, when we got to Harpur our first semester, had to take a course to make up for it in probability. There I am- we are without my father, the statistician I recently was talking to a friend who was an electrical engineer, and I told him that I had to take probability my first year because I did not take trigonometry in high school. He said, "Ruth, you should have taken trigonometry. It is much easier than probability." So, we made Harpur anyway.

IG: 1:07:35
Yeah, you made Harpur anyway.

RS: 1:07:35
And as a matter of fact, I do not know whether or not I even remember who Kathy Henderson and Stuart Lewis from Harpur also went and the admissions officer at one point. I guess, he, I do not know how my parents knew this, but the admissions over asked Dr. House, who was the guidance counselor at Milton, whether or not there were any more students and more [inaudible] and more students on the level of the four of us.

RS: 1:07:35
Well, but that is, that is, you know, certainly a great, great accolade to Harpur College and the education that you all have gone.

RS: 1:07:36
But I am curious, because people who were at Harpur, this is the (19)60s, yeah, so people who were at Harpur in (19)68 was there ferment there?

IG: 1:10:43
Yes.

RS: 1:10:44
Eventually?

IG: 1:10:45
Eventually-eventually, I think that they were more certainly politically involved. But Ron Bayer, for example, is quite a graduate of (19)64-

RS: 1:10:57
(19)64 and I think he was active in students for democratic [crosstalk]

IG: 1:11:00
He was extremely-extremely active-

RS: 1:11:02
When I think, when I think of the students coming from New York and how politically active they were, the name that always comes to mind is Ronald Bayer.

IG: 1:11:12
I mean, he is tremendous. And so, in my mind, he sorts of, you know, epitomizes the most [crosstalk]

RS: 1:11:19
He is the one who started the International Relations question, I am positive of it, and he must have been the one who contacted Eleanor Roosevelt.

IG: 1:11:27
Right. So-so, yeah, you know, and I have heard from, you know, the majority, I would say, the vast majority, of individuals I interviewed what you know, superlative-superlative education, and they, they got at Harpur and individualized attention and all that. So, you know, just your career trajectory, you graduated from NYU. What-what did you do?

RS: 1:12:01
I teach at Nassau.

IG: 1:12:02
No, I know is that your, was that the job that you got after getting your PhD, and did you just stay there? Or did you, kind of-

RS: 1:12:14
I had a teaching assistantship at NYU.

RS: 1:12:16
I also had a research assistantship one year, and then when I graduated and was trying to work on the dissertation as well, but I had, you know, children, I had to go somewhere. So, I had to pay for-for Ari, and that when I had the second child to go, to go to daycare, so I taught a course at Nassau Community. And then, you know, I eventually just stayed there and I got two National Endowment for the Humanities awards, [inaudible]

IG: 1:12:16
I see.

IG: 1:12:54
In what?

RS: 1:12:55
The first one because my area, that was a fascinating seminar. I spent the summer, spent eight weeks at Cornell. It was called humanities and medicine, but it was, really was a sociology, in many ways, a sociology, of course, but it was interdisciplinary. And was Sandra Gillen was an interdisciplinary and he ran the seminar. We read lots of literature to see the connection between medicine and how people illness is defined and how it is reflected in the humanities and in the literature, etc. It was a fascinating seminar and-

RS: 1:13:37
And what was that?

RS: 1:13:38
My essay to get in-

IG: 1:13:40
Excuse me, what-what year was-

RS: 1:13:44
1986. And then 10 years later, I think it was, I was asked to teach a course on the history of Israel in the history department, because, actually, my husband was approached by the chairperson because of the fact that they had it on the books and it had not been taught in years and years and years, the chairperson happened to know my husband, and my husband said, my wife can teach it. She has got an acknowledge. You have an excellent background. But in her graduate work at NYU, one of the first papers she wrote was a history of the labor movement in Israel. And so, she knows something. So, I taught the course. And then one summer, Michael Stanislavski was one of the leading experts in the history of Zionism, was giving a seminar. The first seminar at Cornell was open to people from community colleges and four-year colleges. No, that was the community college one, the one at the one at-

AW: 1:14:51
Columbia.

RS: 1:14:51
-Columbia. Now I do not remember which one, one of them was only four. For community college people. So, I was only competing against people from community colleges, but the other one was open to anybody, from anyone and yet, I was able to I was able to get in a community college competing against people from four-year colleges, and the college is very proud, because college likes to publicize the people who get these national awards-

IG: 1:15:23
Of course.

RS: 1:15:24
-and I brought two of them.

IG: 1:15:26
So, humanities of medicine and?

RS: 1:15:28
The humanities, it was so interdisciplinary. We were reading Roth [Philip Roth], The Anatomy Lesson and using that as a parttime to understand something about modern medicine. People were doing. There were people there who were art specialists. There were people there who came with a drama background and all bringing a different perspective on-on medicine and illness from their, from their disciplines. They, I mean the famous, but the famous painting, I do not remember. It is in the universe. It is in Philadelphia, at the Philadelphia Art Museum, the famous one, when the-the operation and shows the doctor. [crosstalk]

IG: 1:16:19
I can see it. I can see it. I do not know. I can see it the very it is a surgery. It is an autopsy.

RS: 1:16:29
Autopsy or something.

IG: 1:16:31
I think it is an autopsy. And it is very stark, and so same colors black-

RS: 1:16:35
It was brilliant, and they were the way he-he wove us back and forth between different disciplines and the understanding of-

IG: 1:16:44
That is more commonplace now. You know, places like Columbia, for example, have narrative and medicine program that was started by a doctor who also has a PhD in literature in the early 2000s I forget her name, but it is sort of, you know, but when, when you were looking back at (19)86 I think it was really you were in the vanguard of such a movement.

RS: 1:17:09
Oh, yeah. I remember somebody did a slide presentation on Da Vinci of his drawings. And he had one picture of himself in which he drew himself with a wound. I was taken aback. I raised my hand and I say, you know, psychology, psychiatry, has so much to say about penis envy. He said, "Look at this picture." I said, "Why has anybody ever written up womb envy?"

AW: 1:17:46
Written up what?

RS: 1:17:49
Womb envy, W, O, M, B, and it was actually directed towards Sondra Gilman, silence. But to me, that was an obvious. He was depicted in this drawing, having a womb. That tells us a lot about something.

IG: 1:18:14
So, you got this- you had two awards, and that allowed you to do what?

RS: 1:18:21
Well, when you get into the seminars, first of all, it is, it is prestigious for a community college to have somebody come in and get to get to and then you have to write a paper as part of this. You have to do some research.

IG: 1:18:35
Right. Do they give you money to-

RS: 1:18:37
Oh, yes, you get a stipend, of course. And actually, the one that I took, the one at Columbia, that was, that was the summer that my mother had her first heart attack, so I was going up and back to war on a lot. So, I did not do the best piece of research I possibly could, but I did something I was interested in. What since Freud did not consider himself Jewish in the traditional sense, I was always curious about, well, how did he feel about Zionism so? But then they were nine of us. All seminars are 12 people, three women. I was one of them. One of them was a Palestinian woman. It was very-very interesting. So, she was not, you know- Two years later, my colleague in the English department, Sharon leader, who was both a developer of the Jewish Studies project at the college and the Women's Studies project, called me up and said, "Ruth, you know, the National Women's, National Women's Association, the women of studies, whatever it was, she said, you know, has been very cool to having panels, having anything to do with Jewish women." And she says, "I finally worked on them, and they have agreed to have some panels this summer at Skidmore, which where they met. He said, “Would you give a talk on women in Israel?" And I said, "Well, I am not an expert on Israel." I said, "I am not an expert on women in Israel." But as for talking, I said, "What, you know, Sharon, I think I want to do a paper on women and Zionism. And I said, you know, of all the papers in that seminar on Zionism, not a single one of them was about a woman."

AW: 1:20:36
And there is a book. Arthur Hertzberg.

RS: 1:20:37
I am going to get there. I am going to get here. So, they made your book in the field, Arthur Hertzberg, Zionist Idea, came in 1959 published. It was a hit, and it was reissued and reissued and reissued and reissued. There is not a single woman in that compendium, right about of a woman I said, you know, I think I need to do a paper and do some research called Women Written out of History. So, I gave the paper, and I revised the paper so many times, and gave the paper at various places, and I was on to something.

IG: 1:21:20
You were so forward looking.

RS: 1:21:22
I was so for- because did you see this month-

IG: 1:21:28
And when was this? This is-

RS: 1:21:29
1990s.

IG: 1:21:30
That is, that is tremendous. You know-

RS: 1:21:32
-had awesome magazine, which my mother made us like [crosstalk] maintenance life, members of this organization had, also has an article this month. It just came the other day. [crosstalk] let me finish yet. I will get it. You can take a look at okay, go, get go, get it. Has been reissued, not reissued. A new a timely, new book, new people in it. And guess what? This volume now includes women. [inaudible] magazine [inaudible] to do about it that, finally, that women are coming back into the history.

IG: 1:22:14
Well, exactly, [crosstalk]

RS: 1:22:17
Zion is invented now, putting women back in the picture. I- boy, was I on to something?

IG: 1:22:26
Just recently, the New York Times started doing an obituary column of the women were forgotten. [crosstalk]

AW: 1:22:39
Yeah, right. I read some of those. It was absolutely fascinating.

IG: 1:22:45
This was very recent.

RS: 1:22:51
"Female and Zionist then and now, reclaiming the voices of the women who helped shape the Jewish liberation movement." Now, what is really fascinating is, okay. This is the article.

IG: 1:23:02
Yes.

RS: 1:23:04
Yesterday I get the Jewish week, and the Jewish Week has an interview with Gil Troy, the new the one who put he is fighting it. He is quite a scholar.

AW: 1:23:16
if you want to take a look at that.

RS: 1:23:17
Could not believe, I could not believe it was the same book, the person who was interviewing him does not mention there is not one mention that what is new about the new is that, not only that, it has got some new men in it that were not in the original one. Not one mention in this conversation, going back and forth, that the new book now includes women for the first time.

IG: 1:23:43
Right.

AW: 1:23:45
Here it is.

IG: 1:23:47
It is, it is a tremendous-

AW: 1:23:50
Jewish Week, Gil Troy, the most recent one.

RS: 1:23:55
[crosstalk] And I got this earlier in the week, and then this came yesterday, and talking about the new addition, there is only one, there is only one mention of women in this conversation, right? And it is a criticism that Anne Roiphe was included in it, but does not mention any other woman that is included, and there is no addition. 63 women were mentioned. I am glad that it mentions, you know, it has been re-re edited, and includes women. I am not very happy that a major paper that goes out to hundreds, 1000s and 1000s of Jewish people in, you know, in the New York City area has this- is unhappy with the fact that, but Roiphe does not know diaspora Jewish or Zionist history or religion or philosophy, it is hard to place Roiphe seriously in a serious volume on Zionist ideas. Other than that, there is no mention in this-

AW: 1:24:56
This whole review.

RS: 1:24:58
-about all the other women who have been included, but having a problem with Anne Roiphe. [laughter]

IG: 1:25:06
Right-right. So-

RS: 1:25:09
Write that to the answer room. I think it is time to write a letter.

IG: 1:25:11
Yes-yes-yes. So-so you are still kind of charging ahead and-and, you know, challenging the status quo, and you are sort of, you know, true to your value, to your roots, and as a young person, you know-

RS: 1:25:32
Actually, in many ways, we are following me through on my father, not just, but not just the fact that we are sociologists, but he was one of the first immigrant boys, okay, Jewish boys, to go to City College, and then he went. He got a- he went, he got his masters at Columbia. Then he got a friend's fellowship to go to Europe. He was going to study with Emile Durkheim, but by the time he got there, and it was the war of an on Emile Durkheim had died, but he studied with, you know, I think, Amy Durkheim, son in law, who was also an expert in the field. And he went to the London School of Economics. Then he goes back to Columbia and finish up his PhD. And the reason why he did his dissertation on immigrants is it is because of that that when he you think, you think academia has left us today, back then, academia was leading the nativist you look at the literature on nativism is all coming from academia and especially from sociologists. And he is sitting in all of these courses, whether it is at Columbia City College-

IG: 1:26:42
Oh, I remember, I remember-

RS: 1:26:44
English, England, and they are all talking about, you know, these immigrants-

IG: 1:26:50
Right.

RS: 1:26:55
-whose genetics are lesser, and that, you know, what will happen if we cream them into the country. It was not coming from, you know, the- it was coming from academia. I took a seminar once at the American Museum of Natural History with Professor associate of biology, actually from Stony Brook, who became interested in these racist biological ideas. And he pointed out we were sitting in the Museum of Natural History that in the 1930s the guy named Mueller, who was head of the Museum of Natural History here in New York, was one of those nativist racists, and that Hitler thought in many ways that the United States would join the war on his side, because we had all of these academics and the Institute out in Long Island, the scientific Institute.

IG: 1:27:46
Oh, that is [crosstalk] springs-springs. That is where [crosstalk] the people-

RS: 1:28:05
That is what eugenics records were kept.

IG: 1:28:05
Cold springs.

RS: 1:28:06
Cold Spring, that is where the oceanic records were kept. So he is, so here is a young Jewish [crosstalk]. Here is a young Jewish boy, and he is sitting at all these classes, and he is hearing people lecture and talk about immigrants. And so, when he got the job up in Albany, he had a wonderful mentor. He first got the job as the assistant director, and the person who, Dr. Pollock, who was the director, was his mentor and helped him do his dissertation using the statistics from the Department of Mental Hygiene. And from there, he just, he has mentioned in the introduction to Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma [Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944)]. His work is mentioned. So anyway, one of the things I am involved in when I moved to the island is I am on the board of the Central American refugee center. And when people, when people ask me why I joined the Central American refugee center? Well, I joined it for two reasons. I said, I follow this. I am following through on my father's work. I said, he did it academically. I said, I give you I joined the board to do it in a different in a different fashion.

IG: 1:29:19
That is beautiful. I think that you know we are going to, you know, think of wrapping up [crosstalk]

RS: 1:29:29
When I think this, all began, shy, a shy little girl, I have a story to tell we all had to take on our freshman year at Harpur, this broad-based social science course that it was neither sociology political science, okay? And we read books like gold race all of a sudden,

IG: 1:29:51
Not kingdoms of nations.

RS: 1:29:54
No.

IG: 1:29:55
Something of nations.

RS: 1:29:57
No. We were reading. We were reading those books, right? Um, broad, general books, Pirenne. We did not read that in history, Pirenne], [Henri Pirenne], Medieval Cities [Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade], right? I think we read that in that social so, I mean, we were reading really high-level stuff, and the professor, one day, who was not Jewish, decided that he was going to devote the class discussion to the {inaudible] trial.

AW: 1:30:22
I am not going to say that.

IG: 1:30:24
To the what?

AW: 1:30:24
[inaudible] trial.

RS: 1:30:26
[inaudible] Franklin [crosstalk] was on trial. So, you know, instead of discussing this high level, okay, Richard Sawyer, I even remember his name, so he starts talking about it. And one of the first comments that come out, Paul [inaudible], I even remember the kid's name, Jewish from New York. Says, "Oh, well, why are we discussing that now, that was a while ago," and the teacher was not Jewish, literally, the mouth fell down. And from my community, where I grew up, in old New York, nobody, but nobody would ever say that. And what did I do?

RS: 1:31:09
What did you do?

RS: 1:31:10
I kept quiet. I had not yet found my voice, and in many ways, I was too shocked.

IG: 1:31:21
Wonderful example, that is, that is, that is what I was searching for, I think, in the beginning, because that that shows you that huge road [crosstalk]

RS: 1:31:30
In front of him was a small class, but nevertheless, in front of all these people, I was open my mouth. I had never heard a Jew speak like that.

IG: 1:31:43
No.

RS: 1:31:44
-not where I came from.

IG: 1:31:45
No.

RS: 1:31:45
-you would not. You would never say a thing like that.

IG: 1:31:47
But-but you are saying this that you had not found your voice, that you-you were to, you know, we are taking a back. I was embarrassed for him.

RS: 1:31:59
And I tell you, actually, I think the first time I ever found my voice, I used to go to services in Albany. We would go to service Saturday morning Binghamton. So, at Wisconsin, I went to the hill. Now, I went to services every Saturday. And one February, cold February day I walk in, it is quiet, it was so cold, and I walk into the sanctuary. There is eight men. They look at me and the look of disappointment on their face, but you cannot walk [crosstalk]. So, I sit down, and then somebody says, "Well, you know, we only need one other man, because then we can take the Torah out and count the Torah as a male."

AW: 1:32:50
And the Torah is a female word.

RS: 1:32:53
Well, this is the second time in my life I have got this total I had never known this. Heard anybody say that, and I had no control of what came out of my mouth. I was thinking this, and as it was in my head, I hear it coming out of my mouth. I do not believe this. I said, "I am sitting here a living, breathing human being, and you are not going to count me, but you are going to take the Torah out. And not only you and count the Torah, you are going to count the Torah as a male, [inaudible] this." Absolute silence. Nobody said anything, and we never did [inaudible] They got the Torah. It must have been my second year. I must have been engaged already, because the fact when I left to come to New York and get married, the rabbi called my apartment and spoke to my roommates. He-he had been sitting on it my comment for months and months, and he wanted to call and let me know that he wanted me to participate in the high holiday services in the fall. The only problem was, I was gone. [laughs]

IG: 1:34:14
[inaudible] what?

RS: 1:34:14
I was gone.

IG: 1:34:15
You were gone.

RS: 1:34:16
He waited until August, and I had never told him that he knew my husband, but I had never told him that Arnie and I were leaving and that we- I was too busy, you know, finishing up looking for a job, looking for a place where we were going to live, you know, preparing a wedding from Wisconsin that never thought on me to go tell him I should have. I really feel badly. I did. I so he waited until I am gone-

IG: 1:34:43
Yeah, but-but you changed his mind.

RS: 1:34:47
To-to think about it, and to say yes, he wanted me to, and I would have loved to have been there to participate, but I cannot be in two different places at the same time.

IG: 1:34:56
That is a great That is a great story. That is a great story. Let us, let us, if you were, you know, since, since students are going to be listening to these interviews, I always ask my interviewees toward the conclusion, what advice would you give a beginning student about a beginning you know person, either you know about to graduate or how they how they should think about the rest of their career. You know, what are the most important lessons that you have learned from-from your you know, studies and from your life that you would like to impart to these young people.

RS: 1:35:42
As important as the academic part is, one of the things that you should be open to is getting involved in groups and issues that are not tied completely to what you are there should be a connection, but there should be some kind of cause, or some kind of a group, because of the fact that often it is for these kinds of connections that you make, not completely in the academic world, but that can lead you into very, very interesting places. Now, if somebody wants to get a PhD in neuroscience, of course, my advice was, stick closely to your academic career and find yourself a professor who will be a mentor you would give academia but I still think that it is important to try and move outside of academia and try and, you know, there are groups out there that, even with your interest in getting a PhD in neuroscience, that would be love to have you come and join them, and, you know, be on some kind of, let us say, advisory board, and that can lead you often to all kinds of interesting, interesting places, people that you never would have met.

IG: 1:37:15
That is very good advice.

RS: 1:37:22
So it was, it was, you know, moving beyond-beyond, moving into McCarthy campaign. And then, you know, they are being so involved in running for a political office. And then when I moved to Long Island, I felt, I felt like, I need to, I need to join something. I need to become involved. take how to take my time. But it is all these groups that are now involved in that, you know, they make an- in fact, I become the expert on immigration and what is happening in Long Island, in my department, because my involvement with the immigration issue. Fact, in fact, actually, I wrote up a paper. I presented a paper at a Hofstra conference. They have a suburban study of suburbia center, or something like that. And they were having a conference, and they were talking about the changing nature of Long Island. And I actually, I know, because my involvement there, I actually went and did a research paper. We went to the census. I did, you know, I did a number of things, and I present [crosstalk] as a matter of fact-

IG: 1:38:32
So-so about what-what-what- you know, in a nutshell-

RS: 1:38:37
Why-why, why was, why was there so much conflict all of a sudden around immigration on Long Island? And I thought of this because Andrew Beveridge, one of the leading sociologists of immigration at Queens College, I attended a session of his sociological national meeting in New York City, and he said he is talking about the fact that, you know, there were no immigrants on Long Island. That is the guy ever driven around the place. You go to certain communities on Long Island, well, the South doors are, I mean, you are not going to see them. In memory where I live. You go to Hempstead. Yeah, you will see them. You go up to Glen Cove. Glen Cove had such a bitter- they tried to, they tried to pass that that they could not stand out. And you know, I said, so yes, I give him. And I said, the proper the problem is that, in terms of the general numbers, they might be like, but you take a place like Glen Cove and all of a sudden, for some reason or other, you see the numbers of immigrants increasing. And then I did a similar community out on Suffolk County Farmingdale. And he said, it is not so much whether the numbers are 70 percent the point is the fact that if you census after census, you see the numbers increasing. That is the important point, not whether you have a map of the census and you see that, you know, in a large census district that you look at within the census district, and that is why there was conflict on Long Island, because they were moving into suburbia, where they never been. We associate immigrants with New York City, right? But they were moving into suburbia, and maybe your census figures did not pick it up. But you cannot always go by the Census figure, and you got to break it down into smaller units, and that is why we had so much conflict. They were moving. It was the new movement, and there was a woman who came to Carson for a while, got a BA at Harvard. She got her law degree at Harvard. She came involved in a Spanish organization in western so when she came to New York, she started something the clinical the workplace project, because Carson deals with the legal issues. She was dealing with what was happening in Long Island, and she wrote a book called suburban sweatshops. How immigrants are moving to the Long Island, and maybe they are not working in a factory. But one other sweat shops, lawn care. Kitchen, restaurant kitchens, you know, you go through the issues, calling them suburban sweatshops.

IG: 1:41:23
Right. That is very interesting.

RS: 1:41:27
And but you know, if I had not looked out of the confines of academia and become involved with community organizations, would I know this. And as a matter of fact, then, matter of fact. Deborah, not, no, Jennifer-Jennifer, something, she kind of, she got a MacArthur reward for her work in setting up a workplace project and her book.

IG: 1:41:50
Jennifer who?

RS: 1:41:50
Jennifer Gordon, I think. She got it. She got she became a MacArthur scholar. But how would I know about this if I had just, if I had not gotten out of academia and looked around and said, “What else can I do?”

IG: 1:42:04
Yeah, well, you know, there is, there is a tradition, I think in Italy, of that was sort of personified by Umberto Echo where, you know, intellectuals were public, public intellectuals, so they have both the role in their larger community-

RS: 1:42:24
Europe has [crosstalk], the public of the public until at the public intellectual right?

IG: 1:42:28
This has been a tremendous pleasure.

RS: 1:42:32
Well, it was really lots of fun going back and thinking about Harpur and the-

(End of Interview)

2018-05-18

Irene Gashurov

1964

Dr. Ruth Silverman

Ruth Silverman, PhD, is a sociology professor at Nassau Community College, where she created the Women’s Studies Program. She is the sister of Dr. Amy Weintraub.

Audio

Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni in Womens’ Studies; Harpur College – Alumni from New York City; Harpur College – Alumni at Nassau Community College; Harpur College – Alumni in the New York City area

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Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in higher education; Harpur College – Alumni in Women's’ Studies; Harpur College – Alumni from New York City; Harpur College – Alumni at Nassau Community College; Harpur College – Alumni in the New York City area