25 CommentsMartha Peterson, the 7th president of Barnard, died at her home in Wisconsin on Friday. She was 90 years old. Back in the 60’s, she worked to compromise with students who were protesting the war in Vietnam.
From the New York Times:
“In Miss Peterson’s estimation, she once told a reporter, her most
significant achievement was working out an arrangement between
Barnard and Columbia that allowed students at both colleges to take
an unlimited number of courses at the other school while retaining
Barnard’s autonomy.”
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25 Comments
@Anonymous I knew Martha Peterson when I was at Barnard. She was an extraordinary person. It was revolution time. I marched into her office with a couple of friends and announced that Barnard wasn’t “relevant” enough. We needed an “experimental college” to explore the meaning of life, live communaly and utterly change the world. Instead of throwing us out of her office, Martha Peterson said yes. And, we made it happen. The next year a mix of Barnard and Columbia students lived communally in the Paris Hotel as the Barnard-Columbia Experimental College. Kate Millet was hired as our faculty. The second year the EC expanded and moved to “the children’s mansion”. Did we change the world? I don’t know. I know we changed the lives of Experimental College participants. Many of us are still in touch.
Thank you, Martha Peterson. Rest in Peace. (and, love!)
blue
@Sara Did they lock her in her office during the ’68 riots?
@only harry coleman had that honor I believe
@Here: A good obit from the alumni mag, with more stories about that:
http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/mar_apr06/obituaries3.php
@she was 90 it’s not like her death was tragic or unexpected.
@peterson maybe not unexpected.
but definitely tragic.
the value of every life is priceless and the loss there of is absolutely tragic.
@RIP i don’t think that people purposely are trying to be insensitive..it’s just that individual deaths of people who don’t have a connection to you usually don’t strike people in a such a manner that they even think that way..the desensitivisation is kind of sad
and as a little extra added news..that former fed editor is now a court of appeals judge http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_4075990 one step away from the highest court in the land..where its time to start getting columbia’s tally equal to the other schools…http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/gaynor/060628 as for the other columbia prof who’s been nominated (in the link above)..its nice to see we can still get right wing nuts panties in a bunch
@Interesting but no longer news, though:
http://bwog.net/index.php?page=post&article_id=1722
@woops sorry wasn’t clear..i picked up on this fed guy from that post..there they were talking about him being nominated though..he just got confirmed to the seat (there was a small chance that if he was a real nut he might have been stopped)
@I'm gonna assume …that you meant “desensitization”
But seriously, RIP Martha Petersen. I’d like to live that long and accomplish…things.
@yea Yeah I aspire to do… things too. I’d also like to accomplish shit but that might be too much to ask.
@someone with a -sen name wow, it is good to see someone misspelling peterson as petersen rather than the other (and obnoxious) way around
@what is... …a peterSEN? we al know the name peterSON evolved from someone who was the “son of peter”. is “sen” the same thing in some scandinavian language or something?
@-sen exactly. each scandinavian language has a slightly different suffix.. so you might have peterson, petersen, petersson, peterssen even but i’ve never seen that. most americans are ignorant of this and automatically change it to peterson, to the enormous chagrin of those who would appreciate their names spelled correctly. actually, i’m not sure if any scandinavian country actually uses -son or if that has always been the americanized -sen.
@mimi Linda Leclair, if I’m not mistaken, was the Barnard student who was kicked out of the college for moving off campus to live with her boyfriend. Apparently back in ’68, you had to have permission to move off campus, as well as a damn good reason. Fornication outside of marriage? Not a good reason. Caused quite the hullabaloo, protests and such. But then again, that was the order of the day.
@Elle Wow, this woman died, and people are still cracking jokes.
It seems as though she was a truly exemplary woman. RIP.
@haha obviously a barnard student…haha jk
@Hannah I love that in true Barnard fashion she is “survived by her companion, Dr. Maxine Bennett.”
@who is linda leclair. and i guess since i’m asking this, poster number five must be tao tan or raza.
@ttan It’s neither. This is the first time I’ve been on Bwog all day. And Raza is anal about capitalization and punctuation. There *are* other people obsessed with 1968.
@Interesting '68 note she was inaugurated during the building occupations of the ’68 riots. protesters showed up at her inauguration over the ‘Linda LeClair Affair.’
@correction 3rd president, 6th head. The first three heads of BC held the title of ‘dean.’ The 4th stylized herself as president to put herself on equal footing with the president of columbia and subtly underscore and assert barnards ‘independence’ from the university.
@way to go peterson for helping create the stupid school ambiguity.
also whats up with barnard and people named martha?
@peterson baruch dayan emes
@ok...barnard vs. columbia tots…flame away.