IMPACT
The legacy of the Lamphere case can be seen in the portraits of a few of the many women hired between 1978 and 1992, the period when the Consent Decree was in force. The case transformed both the face of the Brown Faculty and the way the university handles faculty hiring, evaluation, promotion, and tenure to this day.
Susan Bernstein, hired 1989, Comparative Literature; today Professor of Comparative Literature and German Studies
Janet Blume, hired 1986, Engineering; today Associate Professor of Engineering and Associate Dean of the Faculty
Sheila Bonde, hired 1984, History of Art and Architecture; today Professor of History of Art and Architecture and Archaeology
Lundy Braun, hired 1987, Pathology and Laboratory Science; today Professor of Medical Science and Africana Studies
Linda Cook, hired 1985, Political Science; today Chair and Professor of Political Science
Dorothy Denniston, hired 1988, English; Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies, emerita; d. 2014
Mary Ann Doane, hired 1979, English; today Class of 1937 Film and Media Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Wendy Edwards, hired 1980, Art; today Professor of Art and Chair, Department of Visual Art
Susan Harvey, hired 1987, Religious Studies; today Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of Religious Studies
Christine Janis, hired 1983, Biology; today Professor of Biology
Naomi Lamoreaux, hired 1979, History; today Professor of Economics and History, Yale University
Edith Mathiowitz, hired 1991, Medical Science; today Professor of Medical Science and Engineering
Kimberly Mowry, hired 1992, Biology; today Chair, Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology & Biochemistry and Robin Chemers Neustein Professor of Biomedicine.
Karen Newman, hired 1978, Comparative Literature; today Owen Walker '33 Professor of Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature and English.
Martha Nussbaum, hired 1984, Classics and Philosophy; today Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago.
Carle Pieters, hired 1980, Geological Sciences; today Professor of Geological Sciences.
Jill Pipher, hired 1989, Mathematics; today Elisha Benjamin Andrews Professor of Mathematics and Founding Director, National Science Foundation Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics
Ellen Rooney, hired 1984, English; today Professor of Modern Culture and Media, English, and Gender Studies
Johanna Schmitt, hired 1982, Biology; today Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences, University of California, Davis
Naomi Schor, hired 1978, French Studies; Benjamin Barge Professor of French, Yale University; d. 2001
Joan Scott, hired 1980, Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of History; today Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University
Hilary Silver, hired 1984, Sociology; today Professor of Sociology, Urban Studies, and Public Policy
Susan Smulyan, hired 1988, American Civilization; today Professor of American Studies and Director, John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage
Meera Viswanathan, hired 1985, Comparative Literature; today Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and East Asian Studies
Paula Vogel, hired 1985, Creative Writing (English); today Professor-at-Large, Theatre Arts
C.D. Wright, hired 1983, Creative Writing (English); today Israel J. Kapstein Professor of English and Literary Arts
As part of the settlement, and based on the recommendation of an outside panel, Louise Lamphere was awarded tenure in 1978 (retroactive). She was then on the faculty of the University of New Mexico, but returned to the Brown anthropology department in 1979. She remained there for several years before moving permanently to the University of New Mexico, where she stayed for the rest of her career, eventually holding the title of Distinguished Professor. During her long career Lamphere was also a Visiting Fellow at Princeton and a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley and continued to publish widely. She served as President of the American Anthropological Association and of the American Ethnological Association and in 2013 was awarded the Franz Boas Award for Exemplary Service to Anthropology.
In 2008, Louise Lamphere gave Brown University $1,000,000 to endow a Visiting Professorship in Gender Studies to be jointly administered by the Department of Anthropology and the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. Lamphere's gift was a way of insuring that the study of women and gender, which she had helped to launch, would continue in Brown's anthropology department.
In 2015, Brown University conferred an honorary doctorate to Louise Lamphere.
Citation Text: Renowned anthropologist, professor, and feminist scholar, your actions early in your career paved the way for positive change at Brown University and fairer hiring and tenure practices for Brown faculty. You sacrificed energy and resources to pursue a class action lawsuit against Brown at a time when the University’s women faculty members numbered just 25 in total. Thanks to your perseverance, the University revamped its policies and over the course of the subsequent 15 years increased the number of tenured women professors fivefold. In addition, you made gender issues a permanent aspect of your scholarly work, co-editing one of the first volumes to address the anthropological study of women’s status. As president of the American Anthropological Association, you pushed for more research on poverty, health, and family evolution, in order to have a greater impact on current societal dilemmas. Your contributions to both academia and public service during your time at both Brown and the University of New Mexico have inspired the next generation of anthropologists and ensured that there is greater understanding of the ways in which societal changes affect women, both in the home and in the workplace. For your courage in standing up for equity and fairness for all faculty and your exemplary examinations of urban anthropology, healthcare practices and gender issues, we honor you with the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa. [read the news release here]