Archive for September, 2010

by Lori Sokol, Woodhull Alumna

Originally published in The New Agenda on September 3rd, 2010 & in The Huffington Post on September 7th, 2010.

On Tues. Aug. 31, after more than seven years of war, President Obama officially ended the U.S. combat mission in Iraq. It’s something to celebrate, the end of a war, except for the 4,746 deceased American combatants for whom this decision has come too late.

So how do we learn from this experience of the wasted and lost lives of mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, daughters and sons, in a war where questions still remain as to why it was ever launched in the first place? Simple. Ask a woman.

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by Barbara Victor, Woodhull Board Co-President

Originally posted to her blog Mecca: The Heart of the Matter on September 7th, 2010.

Larry Ashmead. Photo by Chrys Ingraham

After a hiatus of several months, this is a bittersweet way to begin my first blog. The promised new design page is not yet visible and all the political, cultural, and social events of the past few months are still on a list next to my computer. Something monumental in my life occurred on 3 September 2010 that I knew deep down I had to recount, even to all the people who did not know the man about whom I am writing.

Larry Ashmead was my first American editor. He bought my first novel when it was in its raw, badly structured form. He saw something in Absence of Pain that countless other editors apparently missed and ultimately passed on the manuscript. Larry’s belief in my book validated the notion that I was or could be a writer whose dreams of reaching people through my experience and words became a reality.

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Successes and Challenges of Women in Leadership Roles in Traditionally Male-Dominated Environments
A Forum on the Empowerment of Women
Wednesday – 15 September 2010
1:00 – 2:45 PM
United Nations Church Center
777 UN Plaza, 8th Floor – Boss Room
(44th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues)

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by Donna Decker, Woodhull Alumna

Originally posted to Ms. Magazine Blog on September 1st, 2010

“Women I admire have gone through hell to get their work out there,” Erica Jong told us this past weekend. “I’d like to change that for you.”

Despite its sale of 20 million copies worldwide, Jong’s 1973 feminist novel Fear of Flying provoked a backlash, the vestiges of which still own a sliver of Jong’s soul. She quotes verbatim the vitriol of critic Paul Theroux, who called Jong’s heroine, Isadora Wing, “a mammoth pudenda.”

Yet here is Jong nearly 40 years later, having gone through hell, trying to set forth a cooler path for women writers. She and Barbara Victor–the first person to interview Moammar Ghadaffi after the American bombing in Libya in 1986–acted as facilitators for the Master Class Writers Retreat at the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership in Ancramdale, New York. The institute is named after Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President of the U.S. in 1872, 48 years before women could vote.

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