Professor Emerita Carol Clover (left) and Chancellor Carol Christ first met at UC Berkeley in 1970. (UC Berkeley photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)
Read a transcript of Fiat Vox episode #80: “Chancellor Carol Christ: ‘I always felt like a pioneer’.”
Intro: This is Fiat Vox, a Berkeley News podcast. I’m Anne Brice. While Fiat Vox is on summer break, we have been revisiting some of our favorite episodes. Today’s episode, originally released in April 2019, is a conversation between UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ and Professor Emerita Carol Clover. OK, here’s the episode.
Narration: I recently sat down with UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ and her longtime friend and colleague Carol Clover, a professor emerita in the Departments of Scandinavian Studies and Film Studies. They first met at UC Berkeley in 1970.
In this conversation, they discuss what it was like for women in the academy 50 years ago and how it’s changed, what makes a strong leader — and offer advice to the next generation of Berkeley women.
Anne Brice: Chancellor Christ, why did you want to have a conversation with professor Clover?
Carol Christ in 1994. Christ served as UC Berkeley’s executive vice chancellor and provost from 1994 until 2000. When Christ joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in 1970 as an assistant professor in the English department, she was the fourth woman to join the department, which had 84 faculty members at the time. (UC Berkeley photo by Jane Scherr)
Carol Christ: Carol and I have known each other for almost as long as I’ve been at Berkeley. So it’s almost 50 years that we’ve known each other. We have careers where there are many parallels, but also some different paths that we took.
I first came to campus as an assistant professor in 1970 in the English department. So I guess I met Carol shortly after I came to campus. With the exception of the time I spent as president of Smith College from 2002 to 2013, I’ve been here for my whole career.
Carol Clover: I first came to campus as an undergraduate in 1960. I got my B.A., M.A. and then my Ph.D. here. Then, my first job was at Harvard. So I went there in 1971 and came back as soon as possible in 1977. Then I had to go back and finish up a year at Harvard, but then I came back to Berkeley for good in 1979.
Anne Brice: When you both first got to Berkeley, what was it like for women on campus?
Carol Clover: I came as an undergraduate. And there were other women undergraduate students. What was hard was actually having two children by the time I was a junior and also being a single mother at the age of 25. So I did all of my work with children. That was really hard.
Carol Clover sits in a library at a graduate seminar at UC Berkeley in 1967. She earned her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. (Photo courtesy of Carol Clover)
But, again, there were certainly other women students. What there weren’t, what I never had, was a female professor. There were no women above that I ever saw, above the level of students.
Carol Christ: When I joined the faculty, only 3% of the faculty were women. When I joined the English department, there were 84 faculty in the English department — it was much bigger then than it is now — and there were four women. I was the fourth woman. And I remember whenever I went to an office, people didn’t believe I was a faculty member.
Carol Clover: Or, when I went to Harvard, people always thought that I was a secretary in my office. They would just walk in and say, “Would you please type this for me and have it for tomorrow?”
Anne Brice: What would you say?
Carol Clover: Oh, I don’t remember. It would be a nice conversation. They were usually apologetic. It was just the way things were.
At the Faculty Club at Harvard, the dining room was for men only. And the women, wives and so forth, had to eat in the hallway, where there were tables lined up along the wall. Even female faculty did not eat in the main dining room. But I remember going in one day for lunch with a woman professor friend visiting from Texas. It just crossed our minds that we would ask to sit in the main dining room. So at the front desk we asked, “Is there any chance we could sit in the main dining room?” And the little woman in charge of seating said, “Certainly.” And she very strongly walked in and put us right at the best table in the room.
I believe we integrated the Faculty Club then — without intention and without any fanfare. We were stared at, but nobody gave us any grief about it. So it happened.
