{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/v69862c630/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Farley, Margaret, 2009 February 10"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/013/original/yale-blue.png?1678220072","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["Farley, Margaret, 2009 February 10. Oral Histories Documenting Yale University Women (RU 1051). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.\n\n https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/2559."]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/archival_objects/801874"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library."]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["Access to the materials is partially restricted. See Collection Contents for details.\n\nOriginal computer files may not be accessed due to their fragility. Researchers must consult access copies."]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["mssa.ru.1051 (EAD ID)","RU 1051 (Call Number)","ru_1051_2012-a-040_farley_margaret_audiorecording.mp3 (Digital Object ID)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2009 February 10 (Creation)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["The materials are open for research. (Accessrestrict)","Margaret Farley was born in 1935 and brought up in St. Cloud, Minnesota, in a Roman Catholic family. Her father taught at St. John’s University in St. Joseph. Her mother had a college education but was a homemaker until the children were raised, when she took a degree in guidance counseling and became a fulltime counselor at a local high school.   Farley took a B.A. in English at the University of Detroit in 1957, and a M.A. in Philosophy there in 1960.  She entered the order of the Sisters of Mercy at the age of 24, and taught philosophy at the Mercy College in Detroit for five years from 1962-1967.  By this time Farley knew that she wanted to commit to the academic life, so in 1967 she came to Yale to pursue a doctorate in the Religious Studies department.  She graduated in 1973.\n\nMargaret Farley began her teaching career at Yale in 1971, when she became the first woman to serve fulltime on the faculty of Yale Divinity School.  At the same time, she and Henri Nouwen became the first Roman Catholic faculty appointments at the school.  She taught Christian Ethics at Yale for more than 30 years, as a lecturer 1971-1972, Assistant Professor, 1972-1974 and Associate Professor 1974-1984.  In 1986 she was appointed to the Gilbert L. Stark Chair in Christian Ethics, and in 2007 she retired.\n\nHer honors include eleven honorary degrees, the John Courtney Murray Award for Excellence in Theology, and a Luce Fellowship in Theology. Farley is a past president of the Society of Christian Ethics and the Catholic Theological Society of America.  She was a founder of the “Project on Gender, Faith, and Responses to HIV/AIDS.”  In addition to being a co-director of the Yale University Interdisciplinary Bioethics Project, she served on the Bioethics Committee of Yale-New Haven Hospital and the Ethics Committee of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.  \n\nFarley has been a progressive theological voice in many spheres, including feminist theology, ethics and spirituality, medical ethics, women’s ordination, sexuality, and the environment.  She has written more than eighty articles addressing such issues and is also the author and co-author of several books, including: A Metaphysics of Being and God (Prentice-Hall, 1966), Personal Commitments: Beginning, Keeping, Changing (Harper \u0026amp; Row, 1986), Embodiment, Morality, and Medicine (co-edited with L. Cahill;  Kluwer, 1995), Readings in Moral Theology, No. 9: Feminist Ethics and the Catholic Moral Tradition (Paulist Press, 1996), Liberating Eschatology: Essays in Honor of Letty M. Russell (co-edited with Serene Jones; Westminster/John Knox, 1999), Compassionate Respect: A Feminist Approach to Medical Ethics (Paulist Press, 2002), and Just Love: A Framework for a Christian Sexual Ethic (Continuum, 2002).  Just Love won the 2008 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Her work was honored at a Yale Divinity School conference in 2005 entitled “Just Love: feminism, theology and ethics in a global context,” and by a Festschrift entitled A Just and True Love: Feminism, Theology and Ethics in a Global Context  (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). (Bioghist)","Margaret Farley talks about her family background and upbringing, and the role of education in family life. She reflects on her own career expectations and the assumptions she made about her adult life, especially in light of her mother’s experiences.   After talking briefly about her own undergraduate experiences and becoming engaged to be married in her senior year,  Farley then explains how she began to reassess what she wanted to do with her life, and how this culminated in discovering a religious vocation.  She recalls the challenge of finding the order of nuns which suited her best, and why she took her final vows with the Sisters of Mercy.  A lengthy account is given of her work with this order in Detroit during the Civil Rights era, and she pays tribute to the role models of female leadership she found amongst the Sisters. \n\nFarley goes on to explain why she applied to Yale for graduate work, and recalls in detail what it was like to be a female graduate student at Yale in the late 1960s and how this contributed to her growing awareness of gender issues.  She also discusses how being an older, professional woman and a nun affected her life as a graduate student. The circumstances in which she was hired by Yale Divinity School to teach Christian Ethics are then described, along with the culture of the school during the 1970s.  Much of the rest of her interview deals with the specific gender issues she encountered during her tenure at Yale, particularly the challenge of introducing feminist theology into the curriculum, implementing inclusive language, the debate surrounding the question of women’s ordination, and the foundation of the Women’s Center and the role it played in supporting and mentoring women at the Divinity School.   An outline is provided of the ways in which the Women’s Center and the Women Faculty and Administrators Caucus became a forum where women – faculty, administrators and students - learned together to strategize and organize on gender issues and  to identify and implement women friendly policies at the School.  Farley addresses the pressures she experienced when she was, for a considerable time, the only woman on the faculty, and the struggle to get tenure for her colleague, Letty R. Russell.  She also touches on Yale’s response to affirmative action in the early 1970s, and how she challenged salary inequity.  More generally she recalls the battle to save the Divinity School from closure and her involvement in teaching in other parts of the Yale campus, notably the Medical and Law Schools.  Finally, she speaks about the value and rewards of teaching, and the position of women in contemporary academic life, and how feminism and women continue to change and shape higher education. (Scope and Content Note)","https://preservica.library.yale.edu/explorer/explorer.html#prop:4\u0026amp;ae6cef6f-faa8-45ff-b6ee-a08cac4ba95c (Other Finding Aid Note)","This material was originally acquired in 2009 as a direct network transfer from Yale shared network attached storage and artificial logical AD1 forensic images were created. AD1 images were extracted in May 2020 and resulting files processed. Audio files which had been originally recorded in short sequential tracks, were merged together into a single processed master wav file with fre:ac software. (Processinfo)"]}}],"summary":{"en":["The materials are open for research.","Margaret Farley was born in 1935 and brought up in St. Cloud, Minnesota, in a Roman Catholic family. Her father taught at St. John’s University in St. Joseph. Her mother had a college education but was a homemaker until the children were raised, when she took a degree in guidance counseling and became a fulltime counselor at a local high school.   Farley took a B.A. in English at the University of Detroit in 1957, and a M.A. in Philosophy there in 1960.  She entered the order of the Sisters of Mercy at the age of 24, and taught philosophy at the Mercy College in Detroit for five years from 1962-1967.  By this time Farley knew that she wanted to commit to the academic life, so in 1967 she came to Yale to pursue a doctorate in the Religious Studies department.  She graduated in 1973.\n\nMargaret Farley began her teaching career at Yale in 1971, when she became the first woman to serve fulltime on the faculty of Yale Divinity School.  At the same time, she and Henri Nouwen became the first Roman Catholic faculty appointments at the school.  She taught Christian Ethics at Yale for more than 30 years, as a lecturer 1971-1972, Assistant Professor, 1972-1974 and Associate Professor 1974-1984.  In 1986 she was appointed to the Gilbert L. Stark Chair in Christian Ethics, and in 2007 she retired.\n\nHer honors include eleven honorary degrees, the John Courtney Murray Award for Excellence in Theology, and a Luce Fellowship in Theology. Farley is a past president of the Society of Christian Ethics and the Catholic Theological Society of America.  She was a founder of the “Project on Gender, Faith, and Responses to HIV/AIDS.”  In addition to being a co-director of the Yale University Interdisciplinary Bioethics Project, she served on the Bioethics Committee of Yale-New Haven Hospital and the Ethics Committee of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.  \n\nFarley has been a progressive theological voice in many spheres, including feminist theology, ethics and spirituality, medical ethics, women’s ordination, sexuality, and the environment.  She has written more than eighty articles addressing such issues and is also the author and co-author of several books, including: \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eA Metaphysics of Being and God\u003c/title\u003e (Prentice-Hall, 1966), \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003ePersonal Commitments: Beginning, Keeping, Changing\u003c/title\u003e (Harper \u0026 Row, 1986), \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eEmbodiment, Morality, and Medicine\u003c/title\u003e (co-edited with L. Cahill;  Kluwer, 1995), \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eReadings in Moral Theology, No. 9: Feminist Ethics and the Catholic Moral Tradition\u003c/title\u003e (Paulist Press, 1996), \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eLiberating Eschatology: Essays in Honor of Letty M. Russell\u003c/title\u003e (co-edited with Serene Jones; Westminster/John Knox, 1999), \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eCompassionate Respect: A Feminist Approach to Medical Ethics\u003c/title\u003e (Paulist Press, 2002), and \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eJust Love: A Framework for a Christian Sexual Ethic\u003c/title\u003e (Continuum, 2002).  \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eJust Love\u003c/title\u003e won the 2008 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Her work was honored at a Yale Divinity School conference in 2005 entitled “Just Love: feminism, theology and ethics in a global context,” and by a Festschrift entitled \u003ctitle render=\"italic\"\u003eA Just and True Love: Feminism, Theology and Ethics in a Global Context \u003c/title\u003e (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).","Margaret Farley talks about her family background and upbringing, and the role of education in family life. She reflects on her own career expectations and the assumptions she made about her adult life, especially in light of her mother’s experiences.   After talking briefly about her own undergraduate experiences and becoming engaged to be married in her senior year,  Farley then explains how she began to reassess what she wanted to do with her life, and how this culminated in discovering a religious vocation.  She recalls the challenge of finding the order of nuns which suited her best, and why she took her final vows with the Sisters of Mercy.  A lengthy account is given of her work with this order in Detroit during the Civil Rights era, and she pays tribute to the role models of female leadership she found amongst the Sisters. \n\nFarley goes on to explain why she applied to Yale for graduate work, and recalls in detail what it was like to be a female graduate student at Yale in the late 1960s and how this contributed to her growing awareness of gender issues.  She also discusses how being an older, professional woman and a nun affected her life as a graduate student. The circumstances in which she was hired by Yale Divinity School to teach Christian Ethics are then described, along with the culture of the school during the 1970s.  Much of the rest of her interview deals with the specific gender issues she encountered during her tenure at Yale, particularly the challenge of introducing feminist theology into the curriculum, implementing inclusive language, the debate surrounding the question of women’s ordination, and the foundation of the Women’s Center and the role it played in supporting and mentoring women at the Divinity School.   An outline is provided of the ways in which the Women’s Center and the Women Faculty and Administrators Caucus became a forum where women – faculty, administrators and students - learned together to strategize and organize on gender issues and  to identify and implement women friendly policies at the School.  Farley addresses the pressures she experienced when she was, for a considerable time, the only woman on the faculty, and the struggle to get tenure for her colleague, Letty R. Russell.  She also touches on Yale’s response to affirmative action in the early 1970s, and how she challenged salary inequity.  More generally she recalls the battle to save the Divinity School from closure and her involvement in teaching in other parts of the Yale campus, notably the Medical and Law Schools.  Finally, she speaks about the value and rewards of teaching, and the position of women in contemporary academic life, and how feminism and women continue to change and shape higher education.","https://preservica.library.yale.edu/explorer/explorer.html#prop:4\u0026ae6cef6f-faa8-45ff-b6ee-a08cac4ba95c","This material was originally acquired in 2009 as a direct network transfer from Yale shared network attached storage and artificial logical AD1 forensic images were created. AD1 images were extracted in May 2020 and resulting files processed. Audio files which had been originally recorded in short sequential tracks, were merged together into a single processed master wav file with fre:ac software."]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["Access to the materials is partially restricted. See Collection Contents for details.\n\nOriginal computer files may not be accessed due to their fragility. Researchers must consult access copies."]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives Yale University Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Manuscripts and Archives Yale University Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/013/original/yale-blue.png?1678220072","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - open-uri20210827-32762-y0e7o4.mpga"]},"duration":7083.20653,"width":640,"height":40,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-yalemssa.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/122/265/original/open-uri20210827-32762-y0e7o4.mpga?1630069547","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":7083.20653,"width":640,"height":40},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["ru_1051_2012-a-040_farley_margaret_edited_transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=0.0,0.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARGARET FARLEY:\tAll right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIt’s such a tiny little thing and the -- it’s so hard to see the level.  Sometimes you wonder if it’s actually recording.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tSo if I -- if I glance down to it --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThat’s fine.  Just check it when -- when you have to.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- every so often, it -- it’ll be -- I just feel happier.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThat’s fine.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBecause there’s be nothing worse than 20 minutes in and discover...\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tRight, right.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tIt isn’t recording.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  People -- people will not be happy with that, and I’m sure you wouldn’t be either.  I’ll just mark it.  This is Florence Minnis and I’m talking to Margaret Farley for the Yale Oral History -- Yale Women’s Oral History Project.  It’s the 10th of February 2009, and we’re in her office at the Koerner Center at Yale.  I’ve usually started these interviews by asking everyone a little bit about their family background, simple pieces of information like your -- your place and date of birth and your family.  But one of the reasons why I do ask it because I’m curious to know about the kind of social background and attitudes, in particular to the education of women.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tUm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd what encouragement or not you might have received from both home and your high school.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tUm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd whether there was an expectation as a girl for you to succeed academically.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, I was born in 1935, end of -- toward the end of the Depression.  We were very poor, because everybody was very poor.  But my father was an academic.  He was a college -- a university professor -- professor.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWhere were you born?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tRight.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tApril 15, 1935.  And he was a professor at the -- at Saint John’s University near -- it’s in St. Joseph, Minnesota.  I was born -- did I say I was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  We lived in St. Cloud but was born in St. Joseph.  And let’s see.  You know, I don’t think there was an expectation that I would be an academic, because in 1935 that isn’t what the expectation was for women.  I thought I’d probably grow up, get married, have children.  On the other hand, I was a good student and I loved going to school.  I can remember even in grade school being glad when the summer was over, because I could go back to school.  And, you know, you like things that you’re successful at.  I mean, I did a lot of other things.  I’ve always been extremely active about -- in sports, in drama, in debate, in music.  But I don’t think I -- and I did well in -- in high school.  But people were more inclined to recommend that I be an actor rather than an academic.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWhat were your parent -- what did -- what sense did you get from your parents?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, again --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tMother and father.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  Well, both -- I -- at that time and at that place in this country, Midwest, simple... My -- my mother was rather unique among the mothers of my same age group because she had a college education.  She and my father had met at the University of Minnesota.  He was in graduate school.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t(inaudible).\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tHe was in graduate school at the time and my mother was an undergraduate.  Unfortunately, she had a major in French, for which there was little use.  On the other hand -- so she married and had children.  But she should have been born a generation later, because she clearly -- being a mother and a wife was not enough for her, so there’d be times when we’d be growing up that she’d take a part-time job or a job helping out a politician or something.  She had clerical skills.  And I think she was happier then.  And then when -- there were four of us.  The three of us are quite a bit older than my youngest sister.  She’s 15 years younger than I.  But when the four of us were pretty much out of the home, my mother went back to graduate school and took a degree in guidance counseling and then worked full-time after that.  I -- \r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=0.0,301.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"[phone ringing]\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIt’s OK.  You can answer it.  Yes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tHello?  I keep getting... Whoever had this phone number before --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- beforehand keeps getting calls about some mortgage or something.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAll right.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tSo I’m just going to leave it off the hook --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tOK.  Yes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- unless it starts making noise.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tDoing the funny noises.  That’s OK.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  You said your mother trained -- retrained as a guidance counselor?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tGuidance counselor, yes.  And she worked in a high school near us after that for 17 years.  My father... Well, my mother came from a more wealthy family than my father.  Her father came right off the farm, but had started out as a mail courier at a business college in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  But he worked his way up to become president of that business college.  So they did quite well, even though they lost a lot in the Crash -- in the Depression.  She was used -- she came from a family that had two cars.  They were all educated.  Well, actually, I don’t know if my grandfather had a full college education.  He had business school education, anyway, and my grandmother went to normal school, which was, at that time, a two year teaching college.  My father, however, came directly from a farm.  He also was very, very bright and was encouraged to go to school, even though he had to move away from the farm to live with other people to be near a high school.  But he did well enough that he was obviously encouraged to go on to college.  And in college did well enough that he did graduate work.  And he worked as a teacher while he was doing his graduate work.  So I remember the first ten years of -- first ten... It took him ten years to write his dissertation.  So we grew up with him working on his dissertation and my mother typing it for him.  \r\nSo, I mean, there was always a high value given to education.  But I still... I didn’t even plan to go to graduate school, really.  I got a teaching certificate.  I thought, “Well, I’ll get married,” thought I could teach.  However, when I was a senior in college, I took a course in ethics, as it happened.  I took a lot of philosophy courses, a lot of theology courses, although I had a major in English literature.  And -- and at the time, I had been -- I was engaged to be married.  I met my fiancé in college, etcetera.  I took this course, which had nothing to do really with how you were going to live your life.  It was just a good, interesting ethics course, and I suddenly said to myself, “What am I doing with my life?”  So...\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWere you -- were you born and brought up a Catholic?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, I was.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tOh, right.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBecause that wasn’t apparent to me.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, yes.  No, no.  Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tMy parents and grandparents, they were all Catholics.  Yes.  And I grew up in a part -- Minnesota is highly Lutheran, or was at the time -- still is.  But where we lived, there were a lot of -- fair amount of Catholics, anyway, and my father taught at a Catholic university, although they had -- they got their degrees at a state university, University of Minnesota.  But in any case, so that’s when I started rethinking things.  And it took me a couple of years to extricate myself from my previous plans.  And I would make up my mind and then I would change my mind and so on.  But finally --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWhat do you -- was it -- was it literally just doing the course that kind of had this epiph-- \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- epiphanic moment?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.  Yes.  But it didn’t tell me exactly what I wanted to do.  It just said, “Wait a minute.  Let’s look at these things.”  So... But it was a religious kind of epiphany, as well as an intellectual one.  Or let’s say the two were not separate.  So that was the first time I ever thought of entering a religious order.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tSo that -- you would have been, what, 20?  \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI would have been --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYou would have been --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- 20 -- 21, 22.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t21, um-hmm.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  And so, you know, it’s not an easy decision.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tThat must have been -- must have been a very, very difficult decision to make.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tIt was terrible, yes.  So that’s what I mean.  I made it and then I didn’t make it.  And once I made the decision, I still didn’t know where would I go, you know, because I had gone to school to nuns in grade school, high school, but not in university.  And... But anyway, through a long process of figuring out the orders and so on... I actually entered one order and lasted only four months.\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=301.0,600.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER:\tWhich order was that?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThat was the order of the Religious of the Sacred Heart.  And -- so I left in four months.  I was just apostolate, even.  I wasn’t even a novitiate.  But I thought, “This life is not for me.”  But they were relatively cloistered at the time, which I was -- had no knowledge of.  And I came home, actually, to get married again.  You know, to re -- re -- revive that --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tSo your -- your fiancé hadn’t given up on you?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNo.  In fact, through his whole life, he never married anybody else, although I used to say to him, “You know, you’re fortunate.  I probably would have made a terrible wife for you.”  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t[laughter]\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tSo anyway...\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tHow did your parents respond to your decision --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- to go into an order?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- I didn’t tell them about the process at all.  Once I had the decision made, I told them.  They were pleased.  You know, they weren’t thralled -- you know, enthralled.  But they -- they were pleased.  They didn’t oppose it.  Everybody was surprised.  Nobody thought -- everybody thought maybe my older sister might someday do that.  But by that time, she was already happily married, you know, so everybody was surprised.  But... Anyway, one month later, after I had left the religious... One month later I said, “I made a big mistake,” and so I entered the Sisters of Mercy.  May -- in some respects by default, because most orders wouldn’t take someone who had just left another one.  Not in those days anyways.  So...\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWas there anything in particular that attracted you to the -- to the Mercy Sisters?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, I had taught --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAt that point?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI had taught one year for them in their high school, so I knew some of them.  And -- and frankly, they would take me.  Others wouldn’t.  Because they knew me, they trusted me.  I was fairly well known in the Detroit -- we were living in Detroit at that point.  We moved from Minnesota to Michigan when I graduated from high school because my father changed jobs from Saint John’s in Minnesota to -- to the University of Detroit, which was a Jesuit university.  So anyway... I also... However, I was attracted to the notion of the works of Mercy.  And particularly, the four months I was in the oth -- the other order, I spent most of my time, to retain my sanity, reading the Bible from start to finish.  And I kept being struck by all of the revelations of God’s mercy and their calls to -- for people to be merciful.  So -- so it was a good fit.  So I never turned back after that.  I mean... Not that I didn’t come to some junctures in my life where decisions were raised again.  But it’s not seriously.  I’ve been...\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tSo you -- you joined the Sisters, then you -- Sisters of Mercy when you were, what, about 22?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tTwenty-four.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tTwenty-four, yes.  Yes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAnd in the meantime, I had also gotten a master’s degree in philosophy.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tRight.  And that was at the University of Detroit?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, it was.  Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAnd so then I started teaching after the original period of time, and I taught -- we had a college, Mercy College of Detroit it was called, and I taught there for five years teaching the undergraduates.  But then it was very clear that if I was going to continue in higher education -- which everybody thought I should -- I had to get my doctorate.  I had already published a book, and so on.  But -- so...\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd your order would have been very supportive of you doing that?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, they were.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tUm-hmm.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  In fact, they encouraged it --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tRight.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- because they thought I could do it and should do it and I would come back and teach at the college.  And I had been teaching in the philosophy department, so I taught all kinds of philosophy courses.  But I really liked teaching ethics courses.  But at that point -- then I had to decide would I go into a religious studies department or a theology department on the one hand, or a philosophy department for my doctoral work.  And I decided that I could do part of what I wanted to do professionally, teaching and writing and so on, in a philosophy department, but I could probably do all of what I wanted to do in a theology or religious studies department.  And, in fact... So I ended up coming to Yale.  I applied to two places.  I was rather naïve as to how hard it was to get into places, but I got into both of them, and I came to Yale.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWhat tipped it in favor of Yale?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, some of my mentors in undergraduate work and so on.  Also, James Gustafson was at Yale, and he looked like someone I would really like to work with.  And also, it was... The program at Yale was such that I could specialize in ethics, but I could take courses in -- I took almost as many courses in the philosophy department as I did in religious studies.  \r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=600.0,909.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So I worked on my degree.  In the meantime, Gustafson left and went to the University of Chicago, but he did direct my dissertation.  And I was not quite finished with my dissertation when I was offered the position at Yale.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tRight.  Can we just backtrack a bit?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tSure.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBecause you were -- you were making this decision to join -- join a religious order and presumably working and living in Detroit during a period that was, you know, just in uproar.  I mean, the church was in uproar.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBecause of that --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tGood things were happening.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t[laughter].  Yes, yes.  There was this...\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tCivil -- civil rights issues.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  Yes, I mean... Was it -- was it Pope John the XXIII -- \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tJohn the XXIII.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  He called it -- it was a spiritual springtime.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  Open the windows.  Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  And I also wonder -- thinking about the -- what was happening in the Catholic Church at that time, and you as a -- as a young religious at that point.  How important was the -- were the books being written?  I’m thinking of the -- of the Suenens.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tSuenens.  Suenens.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIs that how it’s pronounced?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tSuenens.  I think it’s Suenens.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tSuenens.  Is it Suenens?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tCardinal Suenens.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tNo, you’re the... Yes, yes.  The Nun in the World, which seemed to be -- when I read it, was -- it was trying to find a different way for the religious to live in the world.  \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tUm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd I just wondered if -- if a book like that and those kinds of things that were going in the church in some ways were -- you know, how important were they to you?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, I think they were very important.  I can’t actually remember reading that book, or books about religious life so much.  But I was reading the great theologians who were writing at the time, and it was exciting.  And also, my community was very receptive to what was going on in the church.  I mean, we were founded in Ireland in the nine -- late 19th century, and our founders, Catherine McAuley, envisioned -- she -- she actually didn’t intend to found a religious order, she just... It was terri -- people were terribly poor in Ireland at that time.  The British were, you know, oppressing them in tremendous ways.  And the poor were all around where she lived in Dublin.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  She was on Baggot Street, I think.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, yes.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tExactly.  So -- so her idea was... She had a small inheritance and her idea was to help out the children, women in particular, who lived in dire straits.  And she gathered other women around her to do that, and then -- but then the bishops order said, “Well, if you’re going to do that, that’s kind of strange.  You’d better make a religious order.”  So eventually she did.  But the vision for the community was the same for a number of women’s communities founded at that time in France, in Andean, Ireland, probably other places as well.  That the sisters would not be cloistered, that their ministry would be out on the streets.  The Sisters of Mercy were referred to as the walking sisters because they went out to find the people who were in need, or they started schools that were -- on one hand poor schools, and then some for rich, wealthy girls, because that could help fund the poor schools.  And -- so the notion of -- of living a tight, monastic life was not in the original (inaudible), I would say.  So I think we responded -- well, we didn’t necessarily do things differently, although of course we did.  You know, I mean, the freedom to -- to dress like I’m dressing, or to come -- even to come to Yale on my own, etcetera... It allowed things to happen that probably couldn’t have happened if I had entered 20 years earlier, or even ten years earlier.  I was -- it was just on the cusp of so much change in religious communities, as well as in the church as a whole.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWhat about working and living in Detroit itself at that time?  \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tUm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBecause, I mean, the city was pretty well inflamed in the mid-60s, wasn’t it?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tIn the six -- in ’67 it blew up, which was the year --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- that summer I was at our mother house, because I made final vows at the end of the summer.  So yes, we were in the midst of that.  It hadn’t been like that all along up until the end.  This all kind of crescendoed in ’66, ’67.  But I wasn’t so much part of it, except living in the midst of it in a sense because -- because I taught at our college and it was a -- it was a di -- diverse population in the college.\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=909.0,1216.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But there was a lot of enthusiasm for all the kinds of things that were going on.  Now, the tremendous blow ups in the city... As I say, they -- they developed really... Not even necessarily as part of the Civil Rights Movement, although that allowed people to name the problems.  But it was the economic situation, the continuing racism, all that sort of thing.  It just blew up.  It blew up in the middle of the summer of ’67.  I came here in the fall, and then New Haven blew up.  Same thing.  So yes, that was all part of it and all part of our concern for justice, racial justice.  Beginning notions of gender justice.  But when I came to Yale, there were only two women who came into the doctoral program, myself and one other women.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIn religious studies?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  That was it.  There were no women on the faculty, neither at -- in religious studies, nor -- nor at the divinity school, nor in the philosophy department.  So that was an awakening.  The two -- the other women and I, who was Carol Christ -- you may know of her writing.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tOh, yes.  I know of her.  Yes.  Yeah.  In fact, she’s on -- on my list.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAh, yes.  Well, we discovered as first year students -- there was a tea for all the first year students in religious studies, and we were expected to pour tea and we just decided -- “Well, why would we pour the tea?  We’re no better at pouring tea than anybody else.”  So we didn’t do it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t[chuckles]\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tSo that was the beginning of my development as a feminist, probably.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd yet... Of course, you -- you’re for -- for quite a number of years, you’d been living in a community where women were naturally leaders.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  Had leading roles -- including in the church and ministry.  Very strong women.  And I had come... This probably didn’t come from what I said about my -- I came from a family of strong women, meaning, in particular, my mother and my grandmother.  We still have a copy of a talk my grandmother gave as -- she was the valedictorian from her normal school and it was on the role of women, you know, and so on.  So... But I found that although I was still... When I entered the community, I was as sexist as most women.  I mean, there were issues like that.  In a way, I wouldn’t be.  I thought women should be able to do whatever they wanted to do, but I -- I remember saying to people, “The one thing I was worrying about entering an order of women was spending my whole life just with women,” because most of the things I had done, the fields I were in -- was in, the friends I had in college, high school, were men.  But I really came to appreciate women by entering the community.  I really for the first time real -- was in a community of women who were marvelous human beings.  So -- so all that helped.  I mean, I was ripe for that.  And communities were ripe for that.  They were... That’s why, still today in the Catholic Church, with diminishing numbers, yes.  But the strongest groups are orders of religious women.  They’re the most progressive of any in the Catholic church.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tEven despite so many women leaving the orders?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, yes.  Because the ones that stayed aren’t necessarily the timid ones.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tReally?  [laughter]\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNo.  In some -- some sense they’re the stronger ones, you know.  No, there was no reason to leave just because you were with women.  In fact, that’s where you had a constituency that could make changes.  So now where am I in the story?  I pointed to --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tSo you -- you -- you came to Yale and -- and talked about the -- the first tea.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tRight.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tThe graduate students’ tea.  What -- it immediately makes me ask -- want to ask the question... Throwing your mind back to those -- those first couple of months at Yale, how did you -- how did you feel the culture of Yale at that point?  I mean, it was still not a co-ed institution.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNo, undergraduate.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAlthough it -- it had had graduate women --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tIn the graduate school.  Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- for a real -- really -- since 18 -- \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThey weren’t very visible.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- I think 1894 was the --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI was -- it was second in the country to take in graduate women.  But I don’t know even if --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThey were invisible.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tEven in the ‘60s, they can’t have been very visible.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNo.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNot in ’67.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes, yes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNot at all.  Now, a few years --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd concentrated, I think, probably in one or two departments like English?\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=1216.0,1503.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, yes.  A few years after that, they started to come in.  I mean, by the early ‘70s, they were coming in in somewhat larger numbers into the doctoral programs, in much larger numbers in the divinity school.  And before I was finished being a student, there were some strong women in the religious studies department with whom I became friends.  We’re still -- we’re lifelong friends, yes.  And that was wonderful.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  So how -- how were you and your -- and Carol treated by your male peers?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, I don’t know. She might say something different.  And, you know, the other odd thing is that she was in New Testament at the time, I was in ethics.  And to some extent, ne’er the twain shall meet between these specialties.  So I didn’t have a lot of contact with her even.  But I think the tone was set by James Gustafson in the ethics field.  An I -- and also in the philosophy department.  The peop -- courses I took, I didn’t... There were some women in the courses that I took.  Both in the philosophy and in some of the religious studies department, there were divinity school women in them.  But I -- I was used to studying among men and so on, and -- and used to not even thinking about holding my own.  I mean... And also, I was older than most of them.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  I was wondering --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYou must have been literally -- certainly --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI was in my early 30s.  What would I have been?  I was 32, I think.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tThirty-one -- 31, 32 years?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOr 31, 32 when I started at Yale.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  And that must have helped? \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI’m sure it did.  I was already a professional.  I had taught for five years in college, etcetera.  And you learn an articulateness, I think, and so on.  So it was easier for me, I think.  But it also means that I ended up being a mentor for women --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tReally.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- even -- who were my peers in a sense, but I think age made a difference.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tDid being religious make a difference?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tIt might have, although, you know, they were mostly Protestant and... I don’t know quite -- quite what to make of them or not.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWell, I’m just wondering were you rather an oddity?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI was an oddity.  Absolutely.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tA curiosity.  \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI never saw another nun at -- at Yale for years.  Then, occasionally, there would be one, a student and so on.  And I wore -- I never -- we were out of the flowing habits when I came here, but we were in a modified habit, and I wore that through my first year teaching, and then even that went, you know.  But yes.  It was an oddity.  Most Protestants were -- had no idea what a nun was.  And it wasn’t up to me to tell them that I thought, “well, they get to know me,” and then they can say, “Well, there’s an example of (inaudible) and that’s pretty much the way it’s gone. \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t[chuckles]\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tIt’s also why -- part of why, I think, I don’t use RSM professionally.  I don’t use sister professionally.  I don’t use it on my publications, and I think part of the reason is people have a stereotype and then they see you, or hear you, or read you.  Now, I don’t know if that’s actually true or not.  But somehow I -- I’m proud of being a Sister of Mercy, etcetera.  I don’t hide it.  And from the early years, a lot of people do still call me sister.  But we don’t use it ourselves much anymore.  So... But I say, “This is what a sister looks like.”  I mean -- although we’re very diverse.  You can’t tell what a sister is just like -- by looking at me or one other person.  But -- but on the other hand, we all pretty have in common strong commitments to social justice, including racial justice, gender justice, economic justice.  So -- so I ended up in right field.  And I... You know, saying this, it sounds like you’re a Pollyanna, that I didn’t feel discriminated against as a student.  But I’m sure there were... Well, I don’t know.  I think even the male -- my male co-students, they were more... Shall I say more interested to observe my presence among them than to compete.  And I helped a lot of them out, too, in many ways.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWhat sort of things were you called upon to do?\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=1503.0,1800.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, I think just to -- as someone they could talk to.  I mean, it’s tough, especially the first year in a doctorate program.  It was tough for me, too, and I remember thinking to myself, “If there were even one woman around that I could to,” and there wasn’t.  I mean, I could -- I was at that time living with some Sisters of Mercy, but they didn’t understand the situation I was in either.  So...\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI im -- they must have been living a very different kind of life, even though --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThey were --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- you were living in --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThey were staffing what was then a residential treatment center for emotionally disturbed children.  So they were professional women.  But they were working with children, either as social workers or as teachers or as administrators.  But I got along great with them and they -- they were happy.  It was a great place to be.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tDid you -- did you find living off campus and in a -- in a very different community, did that -- did that help mitigate some of the loneliness and stress which I think goes with graduate work?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI think it did, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tOr did it make you feel --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI had a life.  Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  You had a life outside.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWas -- I think it’s true to say most graduate students don’t.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  Although these days, a lot of them are married.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNot -- not all, but... \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBut I also wonder if it also meant that there were certain aspects of Yale social life that you just simply didn’t take part in.  \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThat’s right, that’s right.  There were.  I didn’t need them.  Well, also... And I -- I made a conscious decision not to live on campus.  I could -- when I -- I came here like the spring ahead of time to find a place to live.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBecause Helen Hadley Hall would have been an obvious place.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  I looked at it and I said, “Not really.”  [chuckles]\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWhy not?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, it was... Because it was like a prison.  It was like a real institution.  I mean, they’ve fixed it up since then, but... And they had dorms at the divinity school.  And I looked at those, too, and I said, “Our college students at the college where I was teaching would never live in those conditions.”  Because Yale was -- already had deferred maintenance everywhere.  But my main reason for not doing it was that I decided that my whole life could not be Yale, because I’m the kind of person... I mean, I had taught at a college.  I know -- I know how much people like to talk to me or... You know, I end up taking care of everybody and I said, “I can’t do that and be a doctoral student,” which is also why I nev -- didn’t even go to Thomas Moore -- Saint Thomas Moore as my place of worship.  Because I thought, again, you know, it’ll be... I love people.  That’s not the point.  But I knew I had to change my lifestyle from what I had been doing, which was totally overwhelmed with -- with ministries.  Which nobody made me do, but which came naturally, in a way.  So -- so I still -- I think I still became great friends with the students I was with and so on.  I didn’t... But there were certain kinds of things I did I wasn’t interested in doing, really, and I didn’t have to worry about getting dates to go to movies and things like that.  You know, it was... I had a life, and I do think that helped a lot.  Yes.  So the age difference and the fact that I was living in community at the time made a difference.  Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  Did you -- when you get -- got toward the end of the doctoral program and the next kind of hurdle in the graduate student’s life, where are you going to be --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- were you... How did you -- how did you approach that?  Was that something that you felt, “Well, the order is going to take care of that.”\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  Well --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWas ever -- or -- or did you have to -- or were you subject to the same anxieties that most of the graduate students are?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNo.  No.  Fortunately, I wasn’t, because... Well, after I was here three years, I did get a -- sort of an official letter from -- from the president of the college saying, “We can’t hold your position for you after this.”\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tThis was Mercy College?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tSo I thought, “Well, that’s too bad.”  But I -- you know, I didn’t think too much about it.  And, you know, I was working so hard and doing a lot of -- I was still traveling around giving -- I was doing a lot of things.  I -- as an ethicist, I was on national ethics committees already and so I didn’t have a lot of time except to keep going.  But when I got to a point where my dissertation should be almost -- should have been almost done... I actually had about a chapter and a half to complete.  I started getting job offers.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tRight.\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=1800.0,2099.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARGARET FARLEY:\tI wasn’t looking for them.  And one of them happened to be here.  Another one was... I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Kennedy Center for Bioethics.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes, I do.  Yeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThey were looking for a -- they were just starting and they were looking for their first director, and I got offered that job.  So I was happy to recommend one of my fellow students, who got that job.  And between the two, I had decided to stay here.  I hadn’t...\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWhy did you decide to stay here?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, because I liked the idea of teaching in a divinity school.  I was familiar with Yale, and like everybody else, you know, it’s hard to beat Yale as a place to be.  I’m sure that was part of it.  And my community said, “OK.”  And it saved me having to go hunt for a job.  I’ve never had to look for a job, which -- but I’m very sympathetic with what my students go through, and I work very hard to try to get them a place.  And I have gone through job interviews, because several times along the way, I’ve been offered other very good jobs.  And if I took them seriously enough, then it meant I had to go and be interviewed.  So I’ve done all that.  But at each juncture, I’ve always decided to stay.  And there was one in particular where I thought I really was going to move.  And it wasn’t because I had job offers.  But as soon as I said to anybody, “I think I’m moving,” then I suddenly got job offers and because -- we had a dean at the divinity school.  I just finally said, “Things are going downhill fast.  I’m not staying here.”\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tOh. \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWhen was that?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThat was in... I’m not good at years.  That was two deans ago, I think.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tTwo deans ago.  So that be in the ‘90s sometime, or it would have been in the ‘80s?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, no, not that far back.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIn the ‘90s.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tBecause he only was here five years.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAll right.  \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAnd then the next dean we had was only here one year, and now we have Harry Attridge.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tOh, yes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tSo it was the one before that.  (inaudible).  Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tSo it was towards the end of the ‘90s, then?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  Well, what -- what way was... (inaudible) school, maybe, but I’m really curious how -- how you would define going downhill fast.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, the morale of the school was terrible.  Student morale, faculty morale.  It was at the same time that Yale was trying to downsize the divinity school, and this dean became a company person in that regard and was going to facilitate that.  It was the same time they did -- Yale did the view of Yale.  I was on the review committee, etcetera, and I -- I was part of the big struggle to save Yale Divinity School, and we won, which is the way -- the only way to put it.  And -- but in the midst of this struggle... It wasn’t just that there was the struggle with Yale, the central administration, which I think was a great struggle, because it ended up converting them, so to speak, as -- as President Levin said to the current dean -- or said of the current dean at one point, you know.  So... But this dean -- this might be why I won’t have this open for a while, though, because he’s -- he’s a fine man.  He was a good man and I’d always got along with him well.  But I saw what he was doing to people.  He lost his temper from time to time and he would... I don’t know.  I just... I -- you know, the situation -- the milieu became sufficiently toxic that I was ready to move.  So then I had three job officer -- offers right off the bat, two that I really took seriously, and I was... They allowed me to take several months.  And I didn’t even make the decision to just stay -- well, lots of people, of course, weighed in as to why I should stay at Yale, including my former advisor, Jim Gustafson, who said this kind of university... He knew that... Through the years, I -- I worked more in the wider university than most divinity school faculty.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  That was a question, actually, that farther on I was going to ask you.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  So, I mean, the whole context of Yale was great -- I had medical school, law school, forestry, etcetera, as well as the divinity school and the doctoral program in religious studies.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tDo you -- were your contacts through the -- and contact with the rest of the university, was that through the kind of work that you were doing --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- in -- in ethics?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=2099.0,2398.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARGARET FARLEY:\tSo, for example, I was working in medical ethics, so I ended up co-teaching a class at the medical school with a physician there.  And there was a growing interest in environmental studies.  We had students who were interested in it.  I became interested.  So I co-taught a class with someone from forestry and environmental study.  Law school, there were just various things, conferences they have that -- had that I was involved in and so on.  And I used to get some of the students from these places coming to my classes at the divinity school, as well.  But, I mean, ethics... Every area needs ethics.  [chuckles]\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWell, you’re -- I mean, you’re a very good advert for a divinity school.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIf -- if you were involved in the --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tRight, right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- right across the campus in that way.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  No, it was great.  Because then my students could also -- I mean, they’re free to take courses around and they did.  So a lot of interdisciplinary work happened, which I enjoy a lot.  It’s hard to do it.  It’s great and needs to be done.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIt also makes the divinity school much more integral to the --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- the life of the university.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAbsolutely.  And --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd therefore -- practically, it protects it somewhat.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  And more and more -- more and more faculty are doing interdisciplinary work than they were through all of those years.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOnly a few of us did it then.  But -- but a lot of them are doing it now.  Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tLet’s go back to where you were -- you got the job offers from -- from the divinity school and decided to take it.  Why do you think they wanted you?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI don’t know.  Well, some people think -- well, I think they were open to having a woman.  I don’t for a minute believe that they hired me only because I was a woman, because Yale doesn’t do that even today.  I can tell you that.  But I think I was respected by a lot of the faculty already and Gustafson was on the faculty then.  They had -- and the dean.  The dean was very open to expanding or diversifying the faculty.  So there weren’t blockages like there might have been.  But I had worked with a lot of faculty, either taking courses from them or... I don’t know who I TA’d for.  But they knew me and...\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBecause it’s interested that you were appointed to the divinity school in ’71, which actually was a year in advance of affirmative action.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tThe Hugh (sp?) regulations and...\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, yes, they didn’t have to do anything.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd it was ’70 -- ’73, ’74 before --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- Yale’s affirmative action plan was actually put together.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tRight.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tSo it’s -- I’m just interested that --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- here was a -- as you were something -- somebody clearly looking for a woman, however way...\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, maybe.  I don’t know.  But the other thing is Yale had -- has a tradition of hiring its own, too.  And among -- and I had wonderful peers as students.  I mean, they’re all winners, you know, in the doctoral programs at Yale.  But I was more mature as a scholar than they were, etcetera, so I think whatever their motives for arg -- arguing for it has to have been somehow in those terms.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tCould it have been it was much more radical to hire a Catholic than a woman?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, that was radical, too.  In fact, I and Henri Nouwen were hired the same year and we were the first Roman Catholics hired full-time -- in full-time positions, regular positions.  They had a few visiting professors from time to time.  And the first woman.  Now, they had had a part-time woman teaching Christian education before I came.  So both were milestones for the institution, yes.  So why they did it, I don’t know.  But when I took the job, I always said, “I’ll never spend the rest of my career here, but somehow I have.”\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI’ve heard that many times.  [laughter]\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI’ll bet, I’ll bet.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes, yes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIn 1971 when you -- you first came on the faculty, how far had (inaudible) feminism, the secular form --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- as opposed to any kind of Catholic feminism.  How far had that impinged on your thinking and intellectual development by ’71?\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=2398.0,2690.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARGARET FARLEY:\tIt was... I think only -- it was really starting.  In ’71 it took quantum leaps, though, because -- because theologians were doing theological feminism and that... And feminist theologians have always read all the other feminist writers.  It’s not true vice versa.  So that we read everything, you know.  So I think -- and I think theological feminists burgeoned after that.  I mean, some of us were considered early -- although I’m not even first gen -- I’m more like Mary Daly, Rosemary Ruther.  They were already in full stride.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI mean, I just wondered -- it’s interesting that you mentioned Daly and Ruther because they were both Catho -- they are both Catholic.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, they were.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWell -- well, yeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, Rosemary still is.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNot Mary Daly.  She’s not Christian anymore.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  Yeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tBut also Letty Russell, who’s not Catholic.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  Letty, of course, had -- well, had a number of things published by that time, hadn’t she?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, yes.  Yes. \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  Yeah.  I just wondered if maybe there was... I’m trying to see if there was another kind of Catholic strand in there that...\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, I mean, the fact that a lot of the leaders -- Elizabeth Schűssler Fiorenza were Catholic.  And I actually myself thought, from the start, as I got into that, that Roman Catholicism at its best -- I’m not talking about institutional polity, I’m talking about the theology and the spirituality, is extremely amenable to it.  For one thing, Catholic theology has never stressed the sovereignty of a male god in the way that many Protestant traditions have.  We always believed that God had no gender.  But, of course --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd also, of course, the role model of Mary, however way you framed her.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, that’s true, too.  Right.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAlthough had to do a feminist critique --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes, yes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- of the way that she had been disserved, you know, etcetera.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tBut no, that’s right.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd, of course, you go back to middle ages.  I mean, there are just hundreds and hundreds of holy women.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  And some of them wrote.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAnd composed music.  Yeah.  No.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  Yeah.  So yes, that’s -- yeah, it’s an interesting way of looking at it.  \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAnd also, Roman Catholicism had not -- had never -- in fact, had gone too far the other way.  But had never insisted that all women had to be wives and mothers.  I think you’d have to do a huge corrective, which I’ve tried to be part of in that regard, to value marriage and family more than it had.  But that left options open for women, even when there weren’t so many options for others.  At least in the church it did.  You know, roles that were recognized for the church by the church.  Although still, when I was growing up, there were those two options.  You know, the convent or marriage.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tPrimary.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThere were women who did other things.  And I was used to professional women who were married, my mother being among them ultimately.  But...\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tDo you think in any way opting to become a -- to become a woman religious was nevertheless still going against the grain somewhat of -- of American society --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, absolutely.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- in the -- in the ‘50s and ‘60s where...\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAbsolutely.  And the college/university ethos of which I was a part.  That’s why I never thought of it until something made me think of it.  Yeah.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWhen you... I suppose you -- you said you had TA’d as a graduate student.  Did you -- I wonder how you found the students in the divinity school, because... Was it -- by ’71 did the ten percent rule still apply?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tUn-unh.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tNo?  When -- when is that --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tIt lifted.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- when did that...\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI don’t know when it was lifted --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah, yeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- but it wasn’t there when I came.  Because by ’75, we had almost 50% women. \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tRight, yeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tIt just grew by leaps and bound -- and ’71 was a key year for Catholic students and for women students.  It was in the wake of all the enthusiasm of Vatican II.  Women really believed they were going to even get ordained in the Catholic Church and so on.  And also for women generally.  I think it was a turning point, and I was part of that, which is... The odd thing is that first few years when I was on the faculty, James Gustafson left to go to Chicago, so he wasn’t on the faculty at the same time I was on the faculty.  And there were -- and there was another faculty member who left, I think, so basically there were two junior faculty, myself and Charles Powers, who carried the ethics programs, both in the divinity school and in the doctoral program.\t\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=2690.0,3013.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Which was quite unusual.  So that I ended up directing doctoral dissertations almost right away.  I think I did have to finish my dissertation, get my degree first.  But right after -- and it took -- it took me longer to finish my dissertation because we -- I remember teaching four courses a semester.  Well, the requirement was to teach three and two, I believe, at the time.  Or even -- it might have been three and three for junior faculty.  They did not take care of their junior faculty in those days, I’m telling you.  Now, it’s so much better.  But those oldies like myself have to bite our tongues saying, “You don’t complain.”  But anyway, I worked -- I worked hard my whole life because I’m interested in a lot of things, concerned about a lot of things, getting -- I’ve been overextended since I was a freshman in high school, I would say.  But those few years were really some -- they were wonderful, though.  You know, we were young and strong and we -- we did with the program what we wanted and we had large classes and... But how we survived it, I don’t know.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd -- and the pressures on you, particularly, must have been great because you were the only woman.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tRight.  Exactly.  So I was on every committee and I had all the women students to counsel, and men students, too, who liked to talk to women.  But the one thing that probably saved me -- I didn’t worry one minute about whether I was going to get renewed or promoted or... It was unthinkable I’d ultimately get ten -- I didn’t care because I would always have a job, I was sure, you know, so I was freed of the -- I didn’t have to support a family and I didn’t have time to worry about that.  I just did what was at hand and it all worked out very -- and being at a place like Yale, you almost inevitably publish, not because you have to, but because you get asked to.  You don’t have to write articles and send them out and have vet -- you know, I was constantly asked to write for this or that or the other.  And even though it practically killed me to get these things done, I did it.  But it took me longer to finish my dissertation, of course.  But anyway...\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tOf course, the other thing that happened in ’71 was that the woman’s center was set up, wasn’t it?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAt the divinity school.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAt the divinity school.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, it -- that’s right.  Exactly.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI just -- it’d be really nice to hear from you a little bit about that, because obviously not everybody will have -- will have known about that.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd again, it’s in advance of all the other things that were beginning to --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tRight.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- that started a couple of years later. \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd why there was the need perceived in the divinity school when it wasn’t elsewhere.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell... Well, I think because... First of all, it was clear we were getting women students now.  The cap was off and so on -- and categorization was off.  These were strong women students.  Secondly, Joan Forsberg (sp?), who you may have talked to, or you should if you haven’t.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tOh, I -- I honestly didn’t know whether she was still around or not.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tShe’s not around here.  She lives in -- she’s retired.  She lives in a retirement place in Southern California.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  Because I did try to track her down without success --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- so that’s great if -- if you’ve got a contact for her, that would be great.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  I could get her current phone number or e-mail address.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  That would be wonderful.  Thank you.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.  But she was... What position did she have when I came?  I think she had become registrar.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI think it was registrar, yes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.  And then she was that for a number of years.  And she was a very pastoral type.  And I’m sure -- and we had this dean who was open to change, and I’m sure that it was between her and him that they decided that they were going to do this.  And -- and also, they knew enough -- they had some visiting professors come in.  It was -- Mary Ruther taught one semester just one class.  Letty Russell started by teaching one class a semester, and George Lindback’s wife --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tViolet.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- Vi -- Violet Lindback taught a course.  These were just stop gap things, but I think it was very clear to them that they really better get some women -- women faculty.  And it was work --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd were -- were -- were all of the visitors teaching specifically --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tFeministic courses.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- feminist -- feminist courses?  Yeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.  Right.  So they weren’t in standard tracks, you know.  So... Anyway, so they founded the Women’s Center, and I can’t remember who the very first ones were, and if -- what come to mind are some that were there in those early years, like Joy Busser (sp?), like Gilmary-Bower (sp?).  Like -- they were wonderful, wonderful leaders.  And the Women’s Center did more for the school than almost any other organization, you know.  So -- and -- and it -- and it rallied the women.  I mean, it was great.\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=3013.0,3330.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER:\tBecause didn’t Yale have the first pan-women ordination conference?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  Seminary -- seminary -- women seminaries.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tThat’s -- yes, yes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.  Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tSo was that the sort of thing that the Women’s Center was generating?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI think so, yes.  And I don’t know when -- do you know the date of that, by any chance?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI may have it here in my notes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tIt was after -- it was after Letty Russell came.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tHang on.  Yes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tShe would have been a major --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  She did it -- I feel -- I have a feeling it was ’75.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah. \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI have a feeling it was ’75.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.  She would have been here.  So she would have been a maj --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- major player in that.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI mean, it does make -- make me think... I wonder, amongst the student population at the divinity school, was women’s ordination a very diverse -- di -- was it a diverse -- can’t even say it -- divisive subject?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNo, I think it wasn’t.  I mean, it might have been.  But in the ‘70s, early -- Yale Divinity School was extremely progressive.  It would be the extraordinary student who wasn’t.  I mean, in the ‘80s, we began to balance out again some -- more conservative -- on the poles, you know.  But it was extremely progressive in those years.  So all you heard about was the -- the big fanfare when the Episcopalian women were -- we had on our faculty part-time... It’ll come to me.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWe -- you can fit it in later --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tHer name...\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- when you see your transcript.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.  She came on the faculty as a counselor, teaching pastoral counseling and she was one of the seven or eight or whatever there were of the Episcopalian women who went through an irregular ordination.  That was celebrated at Yale Divinity School.  And I think -- I think she wasn’t on the faculty when she did that, but soon after she was, at least part-time.  And, of course, women were struggling in the other traditions, too.  Methodists weren’t ordained women at the time.  I doubt the Lutherans were.  They had deaconesses.  So it was going strong.  And the -- and the Catholics were.  Catholics in -- it was in ’75 that the Catholics, 2,000 strong, met in Detroit at what was called a women’s ordination conference.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tDid you -- you --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI was one of the primary speakers for that.  I mean, that’s -- everything was alive at that time.  Yeah.  Was a little harder to push it through the Catholic Church.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t[laughter]  I think you’re still pushing.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWe are.  Which makes it a kind of paradigmatic struggle.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  Looking back at -- in your early days at Yale as a -- as a faculty member, you some -- some women have reported to be not -- I have to say from the divinity school, because you’re the first person that I’ve talked to in any detail about the divinity school... But in other parts of Yale, you know, a number of women have reported to me their -- their perceptions and actual kinds of sexism.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tUm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd -- and --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI think that’s true.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBut more maybe an atmosphere of patronizing patriarchy, whatever.  You know, that’s -- that has all been reported to me and I just wondered whether that was your experience, or was the divinity school maybe different because of the things that was really energizing it later?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  Yes, we’re having it in the churches, yes.  I think that the divinity school was ahead of the curve.  Now -- now that all ebbed in the late ‘70s and ‘80s because... First of all, we had different deans and they were always some faculty who certainly didn’t want to give any preference to women and who, I think, did have sexist lenses.  They wouldn’t articulate it that way (inaudible).  So we struggled with the few... I mean, how many years was it that the first -- myself and then Letty and I were the only women, and then how many years before there were any women on the board of permanent officers.\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=3330.0,3601.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And we had... We had one woman who was in old testament.  She got cancer and died.  We got another one but she... She was in sociology of religion and I think she didn’t get tenure.  She left.  There was -- there were several who didn’t get tenure.  And it was -- it was a struggle to get tenure for Letty Russell.  Now, it was harder for people to get ten -- well, actually, this would only have been true for her, I think, because the others were in standard fields.  She was hired to do feminist and liberation theology.  And there were some people -- some men on the faculty who thought that was all lightweight stuff.  And I was spared the -- I did feminist stuff all the time, but I was in this very difficult program of ethics, you know, and I didn’t only do feminist things.  So I think probably I didn’t get some of that.  I don’t know.  But... And you’re not privy to the decisions made about yourself, so who knows.  I don’t -- I know I was supported by the people in the field very much.  But...\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBut it was much more difficult for Letty because of her interests?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI think so.  I mean, she had published like ten times more than any of the faculty, but they talked about her stuff as Le -- I chaired her committee and -- so I know.  And they -- you know, they looked -- they didn’t say it in so many words, but they thought it was light.  It wasn’t serious theology, you know.  So that was the struggle.  That -- those were the grounds on which the struggle was made.  But she’s so well -- was, by then, even, so well known and respected worldwide that they -- they pretty much had to give her tenure.  And -- and she’s also a very strong political woman.  And I will say this.  Here’s something else that made the divinity school different from I imagine most other departments early on, at least.  And different from other divinity schools.  We had a women’s caucus for faculty and administrators from the word go.  Or let me say from the time Letty came.   And they were all -- very few of us.  So it was the administrators who were set -- (inaudible) Joan Forsberg as registrar.  There was someone in charge of admissions.  There was Deirdre, who be -- Deirdre Dougall (sp?), who became reg -- she was assistant registrar, associate registrar, and then became registrar, and -- I think Joan became dean of admissions and... And along the way, there were different women faculty.  We always had a women’s caucus, and what that meant is that we supported one another instead of competing with one another.  And -- and that’s what we told our doctoral students, you know, or students we were preparing for the profession.  “Take this as a model because sociologically everybody’s vulnerable in subordinate groups to compete with one another.  It just isn’t going to work that way.  It self destructs.”  So we tried to model -- to teach our students that, too.  But we would do things -- we wouldn’t just come together and support one another and have fun together and so on.  But we strategized.  We would meet before every faculty meeting.  We would find out what was on the agenda through our various contacts.  We would prepare for what we wanted to address as it came up before the faculty.  And so -- so we were quite political through all that time.  More so than they are now, but they don’t need to be now so much, I guess, although I think it probably would be good for them personally if they did more.  I mean, they do get together, but maybe once a semester or something that is mainly social.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tThat’s odd -- I mean, that’s a real revelation to me.  I knew nothing at all about --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  Oh, absolutely.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- that.  But that’s amazing.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWe called it the WAFS.  Women Faculty and Administrator.  The -- the -- to make the -- make it pronounable, it’s Women Administrators and Faculty.  But it’s women faculty and administrators.  The WAFS.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBecause it is very, very difficult in academic life, where you are -- especially in a meritocratic institution --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tRight.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- like an Ivy League University --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tRight.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- where you are, almost by its very nature, set against each other in competition.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tRight.  Right, right.  And of course they were suspicion of us, those who knew we were meeting and so on.  But, you know, we were good at making friends with the right people and strategizing in ways that -- that a lot of the times worked.  Not all of the time, but a lot of the time worked.\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=3601.0,4500.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"INTERVIEWER:\tWhat would you say was your major success in that?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, I -- it’s hard for me to say.  Can’t remember specific decisions.  You know, there were policies in the divinity school and so on.  I -- we worked hard to get better policies for commuter students, who were then mainly women.  We -- at that -- early on, the divinity school had become much more democratic than most parts of the university and -- and then they are now.  That is to say, junior faculty and students were on search committees, were on faculty review committees.  So -- so we helped some of the women that were on those committees in terms of how to work for a decision that made sense and whatever.  We -- I can’t remember specific ones.  But I think... This wasn’t specifically part of this, but it was an outgrowth of it.  This whole save the quad effort.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tRight.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tBecause the leaders in that effort... I mean, it underwent changes.  In the beginning, Jean Oka (sp?) and myself and David Kelsey (sp?) spearheaded a drive to get letters from famous alums and so on, but then -- then they sort of dropped out when it looked like maybe we could get part of what we wanted, but we were still going to lose at least half the buildings and so on.  So then Letty and I and -- and one of our women students who was a lawyer -- plus others.  We had some male faculty members.  Norman Hind (sp?), James Diddus (sp?) and so on were very supportive.  But the leadership fell to us.  And -- and we had all these networks of women out there among alums.  But men, too.  Men, too.  I think that -- I think it’s the strength of the divinity school women that sustained that effort, finally.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd when was that?  Was that in the mid-70s or was that later?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThat was later.  That was when Richard Wood was the dean.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAll right.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tSo -- and it was just before -- just before he went out of office and -- and we had a dean -- a woman dean for one year only, Rebecca Chopp and then she moved on to become president of Colgate Rochester, and then Harry Attridge.  I mean, that’s all fresh after that.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tOh, it is.  Yes, right.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tGosh.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tBecause he was part of it.  Well, he wasn’t part of the save the quad effort, but he was chair of the building committee when a lot of this was going on.  When the renovations were going on, etcetera.  Anyway... So he was not an opponent.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tOne of the -- since it came up in -- when I was looking through some of the archives was something from very, very early on.  I don’t know whether it was before or after Letty had arrived on -- on the faculty.  But there was a banner, a resurrection banner apparently in the Marquand Chapel that Iris Colley (sp?), I think it was, had taken again as something -- as she -- it’s symbolic.  She clearly felt that it was -- it didn’t speak to her.  It was very masculine.  It may have been even before you came.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tIt might have been.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tBecause she was the part-time woman -- \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes, was she the -- in education?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- who was on the faculty before I came.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tRight, yes.  So maybe it was just before you came.  I just wondered -- I hadn’t -- I hadn’t come across that anywhere else and I just wondered if you had had a take on it.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI don’t (inaudible).  If I was here, I don’t recall.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  Right.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI was too new here.  But I don’t think she was even teaching when I started --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  Yeah.  I think -- yeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- part-time.  But if she was, it was only a year or so overlap.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  But maybe -- maybe (inaudible) it was a little earlier.  And it was -- it was about -- it was about the visual language.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- (inaudible).\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, there have been a lot --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI mean, the fight for inclusive language has been a central part of the struggle for women’s inclusion.  And we -- we -- one of the things that we worked on in the women’s caucus, but then in the faculty as a whole, were policies for inclusive language and so on.  So that would -- that -- mainly that had to do with hymns and words used in worship services.  But it’s certainly -- probably also had to do with banners and whatever.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  Yes.  I -- I just... It was something that I saw in the archives that (inaudible).  I mean, I’ve... I’ve seen several accounts of the famous liberation of the -- of the --\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=4500.0,4809.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARGARET FARLEY:\tThe bathroom.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- the bathroom.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd is it true... I saw one account that... You must have been still a graduate student at that point.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tUm-hmm, um-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIs it true that the dean, either in jest or earnest, actually wove a -- waved a white handkerchief?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNo, it’s true.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIt is true?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.  He was doing it in good humor, you know.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes, yes.  Yes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah, that’s all part of the great lore and it’s true.  \r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIt is true?  Yeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAbsolutely true.  And the other women that were involved were Carol Christ, Judith Plaskow (sp?), Mary Rose D’Angelo, Francine Cardmon (sp?), myself.  There probably were others, too.  They were doctoral students.  One report I read said that Letty was part -- she wasn’t part of that.  She wasn’t there yet.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes, because it was -- it was ’67 or something like that.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWasn’t it?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, might have been ’68.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOr ’69 even.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah, yeah.  So it was certainly in the ‘60s rather than the ‘70s.  But those things take on a tremendous symbolic importance, don’t they?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOf course they do.  The story gets retold every time there’s a reunion.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  Yeah.  Yes.  But what is interesting... I mean, that’s about the six -- so maybe even the seventh bathroom story that I’ve heard from various parts of the -- of the --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, that’s great.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes, yes, the early --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWhy don’t you put those all together?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tOh, well, I have, yes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWonderful.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI have a PowerPoint presentation if you want.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThat’s wonderful.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBut yes, the earliest one that I’ve come across was in the medical school that Elizabeth -- is it Elizabeth Farnam?  Farnam’s her second name.  Wanted to go to medical school but they said that they couldn’t have her because there weren’t any facilities.  And her father said, “Well, if --” he was actually on the faculty.  He was an economist at Yale.  He said, “Well, if -- if that’s the only reason why she can’t go to the medical school, well, here’s the money to build a bathroom.”  And so he did.  And so they did and so she got in and --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWow.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- so she went and...\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tSo was she the first woman?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tShe was the first one in the medical school, yes.  It was in the late ‘20s.  Yes.  Yes.  So yes, these things are important.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tUm-hmm.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tHow is your -- is your time OK?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  I had hoped we’d be done by 4:30 --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tOh, right.  Can you --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI can -- I’d rather finish up than have to do it again.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes, yes.  Yes.  OK.  Because...\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWhat rich -- were you -- something we just said brings to mind something else --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- that got generated by the women’s caucus, which is the -- the women’s reunions, alumni reunions.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tRight.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWe’ve had a number of them over the years, and those have been extremely important for all the women alums out there.  And usually we try to have the speakers at commen -- or at convocation, include at least one woman speaker.  I mean, that was also part of our task, at the visiting lectures, make sure there’s some woman among them.  That kind of thing.  It’s nitty-gritty, but it makes a huge difference to the fabric of the life of the place over time.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  Do you think it’s those sort of things that don’t just change an institution, but actually transform it?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI think so, because then it gets taken for granted.  Somebody has to make it happen at first, but then it becomes part of what everybody takes into account, or tries -- hopes -- sometimes they need a little more nudge again, but...\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tGoing back to the -- to the -- you know, kind of the early seventies, and you were a young faculty member, did you ever have anything to do with any of the one or two -- and I think there were only two in ’71 -- tenured women in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Marie Borrough (sp?) or Mary Wright, who --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNo.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- were the only two.  Mary died very shortly after that -- I think she died in ’72 -- but Marie is still going strong.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, good.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI’d just wondered if you’d --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNo.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBecause they were so -- such an oddity, just the two of them.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.  And they weren’t in my field, so our paths just didn’t cross.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah, yeah, yeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAnd there was no organization to bring us together.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  Do you recall any of the women’s organizations in the ’70s amongst the faculty?  There was a women’s faculty forum.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tIs that when that started?  I mean, that’s the only one that comes to mind.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWell, I’m not sure whether it was continuous from that moment --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tUh-huh.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- up until today, or whether there were gaps when there wasn’t one, but certainly there was a women’s forum early, early on in the ’70s.\r\n\r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=4809.0,4504.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"MARGARET FARLEY:\tI have only vague memories.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tSo outside of the divinity school, you weren’t involved in any women -- specifically women’s organizations within the university?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNot that I recall, which means that if I was, it was barely.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah, yeah.  So right from the get-go, as a faculty member, you were actively engaged in feminist issues and feminist theological issues?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, and ethical issues.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd the ethical issues.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tFeminist and ethical issues, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah, yeah.  And from the -- would you say even before Lettie came, were you involved in teaching with a feminist perspective?  And if your ethics --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI think so.  I don’t think I taught before then a class that had feminist in the title of it, but I think I had started teaching Sexual Ethics, maybe, that soon, and I was very careful to have women writers in it.  But of course, you know, as Lettie and I reflected on it, not too long before her death, we taught -- we co-taught our course, Feminist Theology and Ethics, the spring before she died.  And I remember at the beginning of that class, one of our TAs got a hold of the syllabus we had used the first time around, way back in the early ’80s -- probably it was early ’80s, maybe late ’70s -- and there were very few women’s writings in the first one because women weren’t writing in feminist theology.  Now you have almost all women.  I mean, you have to work hard to put a male feminist in, you know, that is really needed and not just a token.  But back then, the literature was just beginning to be produced.  But there were people coordinated -- I’m trying to think what the first thing that I published was.  It might have been the tops I gave at the Women’s Ordination Conference.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes, I was just wondering if that -- the -- you talked about the moral imperative, the women’s organization --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah, yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI think that might have been the earliest thing that I found when I was doing a bit of background.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah, it might be.  It might very well be the first thing that I actually published.  I may have given talks at the society of Christian ethics or something.  I don’t know.  I could probably figure that out by going back through all my files.  Someday I have to do that, but not yet.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah, not yet.  (laughter) We’ve talked about how you were appointed, and we’ve talked a little bit about the Women’s Center.  Do you think that -- coming -- thinking about the Women’s Center a little bit more, that the women in the divinity school had maybe particular needs that demanded --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI think so, at least the needs that anybody in a professional school would have, which would be different than undergraduates or even doctoral students, because their focus was -- well, substantive -- they had to learn theology and so on -- but also, they were preparing for some kind of ministry.  Not all.  I mean, they’re preparing either for another profession -- law or the academy -- but many of them were preparing for the church.  And those issues were coming alive in the church.  So they had a clear challenge, I guess -- I was going to say a clear enemy, but that would not be accurate -- a clear challenge because they had great hope -- and still do.  But they saw it as part of their task, to help the church change.  I certainly have seen that as part of my task all along.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  Do you think that generally speaking, though, saving the presence of the Women’s Center -- I’ve had all sorts of different views on this -- whether Yale embraced -- as an institution, right across the campus -- embraced affirmative action, or some others have suggested to me that it dragged its heels.  What was your perception?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI think overall, it probably dragged its heels.  It always -- and when you look at the statistics -- was behind lots of other institutions of higher education.  I think it’s only in recent years -- probably with the advent of Alison Richard of provost.  Maybe before that.  Who did we have?  Judith --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tJudith Rodin?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah, maybe there.  But even then, you know, it’s one thing, at the top, \r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=4504.0,4800.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"to say, “This is important and you’ve got to do it.”  I think one of the things that made a difference was they put their money where their mouth was.  They not only said to departments and professional schools, “We need diversity, both racial and gender, but we will give you money for targeted appointments -- real affirmative action appointments.”  I don’t know that they actually made many of those, but that there, and it gave impetus to departments and schools to try harder to find... You know, because they al -- I mean, we used to say quite cynically for many years that Yale -- and in a way, we universalized it around the country because it’s true in a lot of -- was true in a lot of other places, too -- that they said affirmative action, and they always -- what that meant was that they always -- let’s say in a search committee -- they always interviewed somebody -- a woman or a black or whatever -- but always it was a white male who got the job.  And it was always the reason that, “Well, there aren’t too many out there in the pool.”  And finally, we said, “No, the reason is you’re still hiring those that look like you because they look better.”  I think that’s gotten better, but I don’t know what the current statistics are.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIt’s about thirty -- thirty -- 33%.  It’s about a third of the faculty now is women.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tBut the predominant --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBut predominantly at the lower end, of course.  But I think it’s about 25% amongst the tenured faculty.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWow, that’s amazing.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBut yeah, it’s taken 35 years to get that far.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, I know.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI think the last Women’s Faculty Forum, a report last summer came out, I think they reckoned something like 2050 or 2060, you know, to have parity.  So it is -- it is quickening, but it’s still -- it’s still a ways to go.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.  Well, one of the things that will help is their changed policy in regard to junior faculty.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes, the tenure.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThat’ll make a huge difference.  And also the maternity leave policies, and so that will make a huge difference.  None of those were in play.  I mean, when I was junior, we never got a leave, ever, not even a semester leave, until -- yeah, I think seven years later.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah, but that was male and female.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, it was male and female, but it hurt the women more than the men, because those were the years when men still were the breadwinners, and this was there whole life, whereas women were also doing all kinds of other things -- raising families, in particular.  So even though the law was for both, it was more burdensome for women than for men.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd of course, I have heard it said that now that those things are much better in place, is that often women feel obliged not to take advantage of them, lest they should be seen to be --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI hope not.  I haven’t known that to be true of the women that I’ve known.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWell --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tBut I can imagine that going through women’s minds.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tBut now they -- you know, they have parity.  Even with maternity leave, you get paternity leave, too.  So all of that is pretty... What is difficult about it -- it’s hard for single persons not to feel that as much as they appreciate how time-consuming it is to raise a child and so on, but still to get that clock stopped along the way while you (inaudible), it’s hard.  But you know, we have to just keep struggling.  What is fair, what works, what doesn’t work?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.  And fairness is something that comes up again and again and again in your work.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah, of course.  Yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tDo you think those first years at Yale changed you in any profound way?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, I think coming to Yale in general changed me.  I don’t think it changed who I am.  But it was great to be studying in an ecumenical context, and I think that just broadens your -- not just your knowledge, but it opens your vistas.  I mean, I’m a firm adherent of the principle that you don’t understand your own tradition until you really understand some other traditions.  So that’s why I advocate it for everybody, you know.  And I think ecumenical learning is terrific.  I mean, I do think you need to learn your own tradi -- whether it’s a philosophical one or a theological one.  But I think it’s given me a new \r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=4800.0,5100.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"worldview in a way.  I think I’m as committed -- I don’t think the core of my beliefs and commitments are different, but I think what that includes has expanded tremendously.  And I am different in that regard, so that on any issue that comes up, had I not been at Yale -- well, who knows, if I’d been someplace else, it might have happened, too -- but had I not gone on to graduate school at the time I did, my answer to some questions would have been very different before than after.  So it’s hard to say what caused it or what occasioned it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tOne of the things that has kind of struck me about Yale is that it does seem to have a sort of tradition of turbulent priests and theologians.  (laughter)\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYou know, Richard Neibuhr and Bill Coffin, and I suppose Jonathan Edward, going right back, you could say.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah, that’s true.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd I just wonder, because there is that sort of thing hovering around in the background at Yale, which you know, in many other respects, we have seen a rather conservative place, that it was a kind of sympathetic and supportive place for you as a Christian ethicist.  You had to go out there and to address in the public sphere, in the public forum, you know, those kind of contemporary moral issues that you continue to --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAbsolutely.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- talk and write about.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, when I came -- I mean, Bill Coffin was still here when I came, and at the same time, we had the anti-war movement and so on in the Catholic Church.  And precisely being in the field of ethics.  And in the early years here, people would say, “Well, you’re in ethics.  OK, you can address these questions.”  Well, we’re not going to address them in our courses -- in New Testament or whatever.  Well, they wouldn’t say that now because all of it’s relevant.  But from the beginning, for anybody in ethics, it was relevant, I would say.  And the ethos here was not against it by any means.  You had this kind of call to prophetic -- although I never liked to think of myself -- I mean, I don’t consider myself prophetic [without my task?].  But you can’t not care about how people live and how they relate to one another.  You just can’t not do it.  So.  But it was a place amenable to that.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tDo you think also being an Ivy League institution with its enormous reputation, that it gave you a measure of security and even authority to talk out or to speak out on controversial issues, especially those relating to your own church?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, I think absolutely.  I refer to Yale as an ecclesiastical-free zone.  (laughter)  And I think it is that, yeah.  I mean, it won’t protect you no matter what, and it isn’t anything that Yale does, but people -- first of all, you’re not as vulnerable as if you’re in an institution sponsored by your own denomination.  But secondly, I think its prestige makes a difference, and you have a platform that you wouldn’t have otherwise.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah, yeah.  I’m thinking of people like Hans Küng, you know --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- who had a pretty dreadful time.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd I think he was not the only one.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, absolutely.  Still not the only one.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIt was only when I was -- I’m so used to hearing sort of negative things about the institutions --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, yes.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- that it just suddenly struck me that maybe for somebody in your position, there were distinct advantages.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, absolutely.  I would say that.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tDo you -- I wanted to -- keeping on with these kind of central things -- do you think your experiences at Yale in any way hindered or rendered problematic your sense of vocation?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNo.  Uh-uh.  No, I mean that -- I -- that’s the beauty of being in the university as a whole but also at the divinity school primarily.  I mean, I felt I was living my vocation all the time.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBecause I -- you know, I just wondered, you know, that maybe your religious vocation -- and I know this might be shared by colleagues in the divinity school, is that maybe your vocation is sort of setting obligations and making demands that \r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=5100.0,5400.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"a secular institution might be acting against in any way?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tFor example?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tI can’t think of an example right now.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI mean, secular institutions might make demands that wouldn’t be --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWouldn’t fit easily or sit readily with --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNo, I can’t imagine what that -- I mean, Yale is still a secular university, and even though the divinity school has to -- is like that in a sense.  But I mean, my vocation is to do the works of mercy.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tRight.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tSo I could do them anywhere, probably, but it’s been particularly good to do them in this context.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYou -- I mean, your writings, those that I’ve read, anyway, seem to be really entirely shaped or deeply shaped, at least, by concepts like mutuality and fairness, and autonomy, justice, love, and mercy, that you’ve mentioned a number of times.  How far have you found those concepts to be part of academic life at large?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, that’s a hard question -- or the world at large -- that’s even harder.  I remember one time I was being interviewed by a reporter from a Los Angeles newspaper, and I’d forgotten what the exact subject was, but it was something about do people take serious any of these kinds of values.  And I said, “Of course they do.”  She said, “What kind of world are you living in?”  (laughter)  But I have found at Yale -- I mean, would this be true with everyone in every department?  I don’t know.  Medical school, for example -- there’s a large part of the medical school who could care less about ethics, but there’s lots and lots of faculty and students at the medical school that care deeply about.  The same is true of the law school, the forestry school, philosophy department.  I’ve worked with philosophy students.  So, you know, I don’t -- I haven’t felt alien.  So there have always been enough people who feel urgently about the things I do that I feel at home.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tDo you think -- have you ever in your experience come across an occasion when you feel the institution has acted unjustly, especially in respect with women?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t(pause)  Well, they almost did in certain occasions.  (laughter) I mean, I’m sure they have.  I’m sure women have been denied tenure for less-than-justifiable reasons.  I’m sure that women have not been recruited.  I’m sure that in the beginning, when the undergraduate -- Yale College became coed, I’m sure there -- it has to be.  That’s just the way social life is.  But to point to specific cases, I... \r\n\tWell, here’s one, only came to mind -- comes to mind -- now.  When I say it was tough to get tenure for Lettie, I thought we were going to lose the battle, even though there were a lot of people on my side.  I said I was chairing the committee.  I’m the one who had to convince the board of permanent officers.  And somehow -- I don’t remember the circumstance.  Was that the time I got the offer of the Reinhold Niebuhr chair at Union Theological Seminary?  It might have been.  Or some offer I had that was quite striking.  And I at least said to some people, “You know, if they can’t even appoint a second woman who will be on the board of permanent officers...”  I know how it got -- it got to -- I think it got to my colleague, Gene Out (sp?) -- got to his colleague in theology, in the religious studies department, Hans Fry (sp?), who was a good friend of the then-president, Bart Giamatti.  And I got called to Giamatti’s office; he wanted to talk to me.  So he said, “Well, I hear that you might, you know, be leaving.”  And the impression was, “And we can’t let that happen.  What is the problem?”  So I said, “Well, I” -- or “What are they doing that is alienating you?” (laughter) So I said -- I told him about that.  He said, “Well.”  He didn’t exactly say, “We’ll see about that.”  \r\n\tBut on the head of that, I got my chair, and the board of permanent officers voted -- not unani -- I mean couldn’t [direct?] it, but the atmosphere changed.  Now, he \r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=5400.0,5700.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"couldn’t have forced them to do it one way or the other, but he must have said something.  Something must have happened that the thing turned around.  So had she not gotten it, I think that would have been a terrible injustice.  And somehow, the institution, in some parts of it, responded.  But what if someone like myself hadn’t been there to articulate, “This is what’s going on”?  I don’t know.  And whether that did it or not, or whether they finally saw the light, I don’t know.  I’m sure those things happen.  But I doubt that it’s any less just than most institutions.  And in general, at least in the last 20 years, it has seemed more just than many.  Not -- you know, that business about downsizing the divinity school would have seemed to me a terrible mistake, and not just because the divinity school; I think the university would have suffered, and the churches and society would have suffered, frankly, because I think we have the best divinity school probably in the world.  \r\n\tBut, you know, so you have to struggle.  It’s not an institution that immediately sees the light (inaudible).  No, institutions aren’t like that.  So it has come through on some things, at least, that seem to me a bit important and symbolic.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tA number of women that I have interviewed have said -- have given me chapter and verse of personal injustices -- and I’m not saying that Yale has been worse or better than any other institution, but I’m just saying, they have pointed out in their own eyes.  And one of the things that has come up a number of times is that when they discovered they were being paid a good deal less.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh, that happened to me.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tDid it?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes.  I was on the faculty maybe, I don’t know, six or seven years, and I discovered that a new faculty that we had hired, who got his degree after I did -- in fact, I had to help him through to get his dissertation done -- and he was being paid more.  And I marched right into the dean, and I immediately got -- maybe this is why I have the number seven in my mind.  I don’t know how many years in it was, but it was fairly early on.  And I got a $7,000 raise that year.  And other times -- well, it was my experience -- but this is true of males and females, to tell you the truth.  The way you get significant raises at Yale is when they think you might leave, (laughter) and they don’t want you to leave.  So.  But I’m sure those disparities are there.  And if I hadn’t found out about it -- because Yale is an insti-- it doesn’t publish people’s salaries.  It’s very hard to even get the categories, you know, where you think you should be.  You have to find somebody who has access to them because he’s chair of the department or something.  So I’m sure that has happened.  And if someone didn’t find -- there must be people who never found out about it, and it continued.  The other thing is, though, the injustices which accumulate, which I don’t think are gandered, except in terms of the overall history about who’s hired when.  When Yale hires people at the full professor level, in particular -- which means it’s out to get somebody who’s really famous.  To do that, they pay them immensely, and those are the highest-paid people on your faculty, however many years anybody else has been, and however famous anybody else is, or anything.  And that probably could happen more to women than men, although I know for a fact that at least one woman on our faculty was the highest-paid faculty person because she was precisely a target of opportunity in that regard.  So it wasn’t gandered there.  But since more men are hired with that kind of thing than -- that’s what I mean when I say sort of historically, sociologically.  The statistics would probably show that men benefit from that and women suffer from it.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWell, I suppose that’s the academic marketplace, isn’t it?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, it is.  Yeah.  And men, most of them have been around longer, they’ve had a chance to become famous sooner, and so on.  So yeah.  But it’s changing.  It’s changing.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWell, we’re nearly through, so... One of the things that I remember -- it was my husband who actually said this to me, and I thought I’d ask you -- that of course, the medieval Franciscans, you know, all those centuries ago, used to worry about whether going to study at a university was a deviation from the ideals of \r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=5700.0,6000.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"St. Francis, especially -- not just the vow of poverty, but most importantly the vow -- humility.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tOh.  (laughter)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tAnd I just wondered if, as a person of faith, you’ve ever kind of experienced that dilemma?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tNo.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tNo.  (laughter)\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThat’s not my understanding of humility.  Women have huge doses of humility; they don’t need to think it that way, anyway.  No, I mean... And I think in this culture at this time, there’s nothing about having an advanced degree or teaching at Yale that makes you feel proud.  And this characterizes almost every faculty person at Yale.  We tell it to the new ones when they come; we tell it to the new students they come.  And sooner or later they nod, “I understand.”  It’s a strange phenomenon.  Everybody at Yale thinks they probably don’t deserve to be there.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tThey’re going to be found out?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.  So I’ve never worried about being found out, but I don’t think of myself as being one of the big stars at Yale, but... And the one -- and the thing I’ve noticed -- I’m a great observer of human nature, too -- the ones who are the big stars -- now, you can’t universalize, but I know of several examples, at the divinity school and elsewhere -- and they strike you as so pompous, you know, and they know everything.  If you get to know them, they are so insecure.  They are stars, but then they have to -- it’s like -- I was listening to the rad-- NPR on the way in, and they were talking about A-Rod, you know, and “He had the pressure; he had to be the best.”  That’s the way everybody is at Yale.  So you either take that with a sense of humor and say, “Well, I do my job, and if it helps people and it works, that’s fine, but the measure of my worth is not whether I’m a star at Yale.”  But too many people suffer from that.  But I think it’s a place to be humbled because you are working with such wonderful colleagues and wonderful students.  I find it almost impossible to think that you could become arrogant in that regard, but clearly lots of people do.  (laughter) Or some people do.  I don’t know.  When I say I’ve had wonderful colleagues, they’ve been wonderful human beings, by and large, too; they have not been arrogant.  \r\n\tSo -- but in principle, I would never think -- and maybe this is because the spirituality of the Sisters of Mercy is different than the Franciscans, although even today, the Franciscans would not, that seems to me, subscribe to that early spiritual... The world has changed.  You’re not just becoming upwardly mobile.  It’s taken for granted everybody should get a college degree, and if you like what you’re doing and you’re good at it, well then you should go on.  I mean, I tell my students, “The reason you know you should be an academic is not because you’re so smart; it’s because you can’t tolerate any other kind of work.”  \r\n\tMy own experience -- I had to work my way through part of high school, through all of college.  I had many jobs, and they were many -- by and large, they were very interesting jobs -- intrinsically interesting -- but I couldn’t finally stand them, because they were the kind I had to punch -- I had to go at a certain time, finish at a certain time.  Even teaching high school was like that, you know.  I kept thinking, “Oh, well, I have to be here now until such-and-such a time,” and that would be five o’clock, and then I’d say, “But I have to go back at eight o’clock.”  I finally came to the conclusion is what academics like in higher education is that we live under the illusion that we’re self-employed.  (laughter) I really think that’s the case.  I think I work many more hours than I would at any of those other jobs, but it’s I who decide, you know, or at least make the commitments that then I have to do them.  (laughter)\r\n\tThe other thing is, too, I’ve learned -- and maybe this is helped by being a Sister of Mercy -- I have good friends who taught or teach first grade, for example.  I sat in on one of their classrooms many years ago, and she was so good at teaching first grade.  I sat there in awe, and I said, “Well, now I know a real limitation I have.”  I couldn’t do that.  So everybody has limitations.  I couldn’t do that; she couldn’t do what I do.  It’s just a matter of what you’re good at, and none of them matters ","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=6000.0,6300.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"more than the other.  Anyway, so you tell your husband that’s my answer.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  (laughter)\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tThe Sisters of Mercy are good at not claiming prestige, I guess; we just work hard.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYeah.  One of the things that of course has happened, as we said earlier, is that more and more women have come into academic life, not just at Yale but generally speaking.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah.  In fact, there are more -- the percentages are higher for women in college now.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes, yes.  And -- well, absolutely as under -- and even in places like medical school.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYes, that’s right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tMy daughter, she was the first cohort at her medical school where it was just over the edge.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tHow many?\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tThere were 52% women.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWow.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tSo yes, it’s happening everywhere.  It’s happening here, it’s true here, at medical school it’s true, I think more or less in the law school.  So you can’t raise the issue of the pipeline, that was always the big argument against hiring women before, even whether it was true or not --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tRight, right.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- was in a way immaterial; that was the argument that was used.  I’m wondering, now that you can look back on 35 years or so at Yale, whether you think more and more women in the academy has transformed the academy, or is it merely that women have learnt how to be in -- they (inaudible) the rules.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tIn that kind of --\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes, yes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\t-- (inaudible) situation and hierarchical?  Well, I think both.  I do think that more women have transformed the institution.  I really do.  There are just some things you talk about now, that you can do now that are just generally understood; they’re not like radical positions.  And the policies have changed.  I think women have largely been behind those changes in policies.  At the same time, I think women have learned to be part of a big institution like this without, number one, thinking they have -- you know, the old saying, you have to learn to be a man, or act like a man, I think.  And that’s the worst -- why would you want to do that?  You just want to work in a way that makes the system work for your students.  That’s my goal:  make the system work for them.  \r\n\tAnd I think more women are more comfortable now, so first of all, they’re not paranoid -- a little bit, sometimes -- or not overwhelmed by the masculinity of the situation and the... You know, it still happens, if you go to a party -- I’m not talking about Yale, now -- if you go to a party, the women do tend to cluster together, the men cluster together -- not always, but part of the time.  There’s a comfort level with your own gender that remains, even with people who have worked primarily with the other gender -- I don’t know why.  But that comfort level does not determine how one acts in an institution so much anymore, I don’t think.  Women aren’t an oasis for other women.  They’re important for other... I think still women meeting together, strategizing together, interpreting together, is extremely important, but it’s not everything, as it might have been before.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tSo in that way, things really have changed?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI do, yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tDo you think that, you know, a feminist hermeneutic or a feminist theory has transformed the intellectual landscape in a way that’s not going back?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI do.  I do.  I’ll just give you the clearest example for me.  The writings of women feminist ethicists and feminist theologians have finally made a difference to all theology, with rare exception, that theologians have to take it into account now, and have to absorb it.  They don’t have to even label it that.  They begin to think in new ways.  Yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tSo everybody’s doing gender now, one way or another.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, almost.  (laughter) Lots of people are.  I don’t know whether everybody is, but lots of people are.  And they’re being educated that way coming through, so it’s not necessarily a -- although it is still for some a new ah-ha experience.  But I think so.  But I think we can also fall back.  I mean, there are -- conservative movements have been afoot in this country, whether they’re sexist or racist -- they’re still alive and well, and sometimes they emerge stronger than others, so you would have to be vigilant.  \r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=6300.0,6600.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I was a supporter of Hillary Clinton as long as I could.  It was easy for me to support Barack Obama; I mean, that’s not the problem.  But I do think that sexism was alive and well in every judgment that was made of her.  So I say, “Well, we’re not as far as a Margaret Thatcher yet in this country.”  Or that someone like Sarah Palin could be instant success until it began to look foolish, you know.  But those are sexist reactions -- it’s alive and well.  And so it would have to be constantly pressing against any form of oppression or discrimination or what have you.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWhat would you regard as your greatest achievement at Yale?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI don’t know.  I think probably my work with students.  I worked with a lot of students, and they seem to think I’ve helped a lot with what they learned, or helped them get through life, or whatever.  You never know, of course.  You never know.  You never know the fruits of your labors.  Write a book, so nobody might read it.  You teach for years, and every student you had may have forgotten.  You never know.  Every once in a while, you get clues.  I’ve gotten a lot of awards from students, which I don’t take too seriously, but I think, you know, if we help even one other person, something’s worth doing.  And I have had very good responses to my writings.  I haven’t done as much writing as I wanted to because I haven’t had time, because I’m doing everything else.  I’ve been something of an activist as well as whatever.  And now I’m retired, I’m supposed to be writing, so I ought to stay home and do it.  (laughter)\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tBut you keep going off.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI know.  That’s coming to an end.  I’ve said now nothing more that’s not absolutely urgent after this year do I travel.  But I have so many students out there, you see, now in universities.  Well, now, “Don’t you have time?  Couldn’t you come and give a talk here?”  So anyway.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tDo you think the kind of tremendous commitment you’ve had -- central commitment, probably, to teaching -- is a particularly female thing?  Would --?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI don’t know.  I hate to make those kinds of claims, because that -- I hate gender traits because they never turn out to be universal, and they tend always to end up hierarchically evaluated, so.  I could have been a man, and I’d be the same way, maybe.  I don’t know.  I mean, I do think we’re socialized, still, differently.  And I know some men who care as much about their students as I do.  So I’d hesitate to draw that conclusion.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIt’s just especially in an Ivy League university, like Oxford and Cambridge back home, that research is the thing -- \r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah, I know.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\t-- that tends to be privileged.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYeah, I know.  Well, and it is at Yale, too.  You have to do the research -- enough, at least, to make it.  You can’t make it -- I think Yale values teaching, but you can’t make it on your teaching.  But I think it’s worse at Oxford and Cambridge, to tell you the truth.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWell, of course, the research audit means it’s part of the bean-counting process as well.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tRight.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tYes.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tAnd well, they don’t teach that much, to tell you the truth.  We’ve had a lot of British students come into our doctor program in ethics -- well, I shouldn’t say a lot, but a number.  And why did they come here?  They said because they really, really want to learn in the field of ethics.  And the British system is not all it’s cracked up to be.  You know, they work with one tutor, or they go and listen to some lectures, but they don’t systematically learn a field.  And fields are so complex today that you either specialize totally or you have to do a different kind of education.  \r\n\tSo I think teaching is valued, in the U.S. generally.  It’s hard to get good teachers, though.  I mean, not everybody who’s talented for research is talented for teaching, and vice versa, although in higher education, I think someone should be able to do both.  That is -- and if I had to choose -- if I had a faculty member teaching me, I would really want a teacher who knew everything I wanted to know, even if it was a very bad lecturer, frankly, or if he didn’t care about my life.  Frankly, \r\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=6600.0,6900.0"},{"id":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265/transcript/31926/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I would prefer that because I could learn more.  \r\n\tOn the other hand, teaching -- you know, they say someone knows too much, that’s why he’s not a good teacher.  Well, I’ve never believed in that.  That is not what the problem is.  You have to know enough so that you can make it clear, because teaching is making things clear and challenging students to learn how to think for themselves.  That’s what it is.  It’s not mumbling away about something because you know too much about it.  If you know that much about it, you don’t know enough about it to communicate it, and therefore, there’s something about it you don’t know in my view, so stay in your laboratory or whatever.  In that regard, I think research aids teaching.  You’re a better teacher the more you know.  And writing aids teaching because you have to make things clear when you write.  Similarly, teaching aids research because you know where the questions are -- at least in my field.  You know where the questions are.  You don’t get to set your own whole agenda; you need to address the questions of injustice or possibility or what have you in our world today.  So anyway.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tWell, that’s a great advert for teaching.  (laughter)  Is there any --\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, it’s a great profession.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIs there any you would have done differently?\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tWell, you know, I could say I wish I spent more time -- I wish I didn’t live such a pressured life all those years, but I don’t think I could have done it differently.  That’s just who I am.  I’m interested in a lot of things and concerned about a lot of things, and concerned about people -- and ideas. I really -- I love ideas.  I’m concerned -- I think we need the best ideas in order to be able to live on them.  So I always have a kind of sense of intensity about what I do, so there’s no point in regretting that.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tIt’s a gift.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tI guess it is, yeah, which means you’re limited from some other gifts that... Yeah, yeah.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tThank you very much.\r\n\nMARGARET FARLEY:\tYou’re welcome.  It’s been a pleasure talking to you, I must say.\r\n\nINTERVIEWER:\tThank you.\r\nEND OF INTERVIEW","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://yalemssa.aviaryplatform.com/collections/970/collection_resources/48958/file/122265#t=6900.0,7083.20653"}]}]}]}