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[Marie Laberge] Good morning. This is Marie Laberge and I'm here with Barbara Hebner on January 31st, 2013 at about 10:30 AM.

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Thank you for having me, Barbara. [Barbara Hebner] I'm so glad to be here. [ML] So to start off, I want to get some sort of

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background information on sort of where you grew up, what you're sort of personal background is, and what your education was?

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[BH] Okay. Well, it's a motley background. I have a Bachelor's in English and Anthropology, a Master's in Divinity,

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and a certificate in Protocol. And my career before that included working for H&R Block, Bank of America,

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the Rockefeller Foundation, Colorado State University. And I never did the same job twice. Among the things that I have

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done is worked with the astronauts at Edwards Air Force Base. I have collected vampire bats for the Rockefeller Foundation.

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Run a research project for the United States government, and then everything except work for newspapers.

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The one theme that ran through the entire thing was writing. [ML] All right. So how did you end up at the University of Delaware?

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[BH] I came down here to work on the first part of a Master's in Divinity before I went to Lancaster Theological Seminary,

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where I eventually graduated and became a Unitarian Universalist minister. And when I was down here, I liked the area and just really

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never left. So... [ML] So you did not grow up here? [BH] No, I grew up in Southern California. Grew up, I'm a Valley girl,

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believe it or not. Before there were Valley girls, I'm a Valley girl. And when my ten years at various forms of

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ministry finally came to an end, I went to work at the University of Delaware because I had children who needed tuition credit,

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not to put too fine a point on it. And I started out in the President's office as an administrative assistant.

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When that came to the end of its run, I moved to Women's Studies because it was coherent with my values and Maxine Colm was

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particularly effective in that regard. She picked, hand-picked me to be in the Women's Studies program. And as a consequence,

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I ended up teaching Women and Religion, which was as an adjunct faculty. And in the meantime, I continued ministry part-time and--

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Oh, I forgot something. In between, I was the administrative staff for the Commission to Promote

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Racial and Cultural Diversity. Which was right up my alley and was considered a community-based social action

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ministry by the Unitarians. But, and I was picked in part because of the universal level glance and it made me a natural

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fit for that particular position. And when that came to an end, that's when I actually moved over to Women's Studies.

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[ML] That was, was that a university position? [BH] Yes, it was. [ML] Oh okay. [BH] It was a university position. They had

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an outside consultant and they had a director who they had hired in from the utility company and who had had

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no academic experience whatsoever. And having taught at Colorado State University, which I did, and was

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an administrative faculty there. I was able to kind of ease him into the process. And so, and from there I

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moved to Women's Studies. [ML] So you moved to, we've established, you moved to Women's Studies in the sort of 1990. And then you were there for how many years?

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[BH] I was there for approximately 3 years. [ML] So what was the status of Women's Studies at that point in terms of where it was located

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and sort of what sorts of resources it had? [BH] Well, we were in the, I can't remember the name of the building. [ML] What does it look like then?

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[ML] Oh, it's the old building that we were on the third floor over the atrium. [ML] Oh, is that Smith Hall? [BH] It might be Smith Hall. [ML] Where we had

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that funky funky rooms? [BJ] Yes, it had the funky rooms. Yes. It was originally designed to be a media center. [ML] That was Smith Hall.

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[BH] That was Smith Hall. Yes. And it was still a program and it was still tenuous. We were still having to justify our existence.

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[ML] So what-- You served as Chair? [BH] I was initially there to replace the only staff they had who was a secretary who was

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there had been there for a number of years. And gradually the responsibilities increased dramatically. And when Barbara Gates came in,

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she had the position upgraded to administrative assistant. And basically I became the office manager. [ML] And so you served with Barbara Gates,

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and then I'm sorry, Sandra Harding, [BH] Yes. [ML] Barbara Gates, and then Kate Conway Turner? [BH] Yes. All three.

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[ML] Okay. And what was your role in the office? [BH] I was where the rubber hit the road. Anything that wasn't academic. Basically, it was my purview.

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Jessica administered a lot of the academic programs and did some of the work on that. But any of the logistics,

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anything to do with computers, getting all the paperwork in, getting the information to the catalogs and the meeting,

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all the deadlines, dealing with all the students, making sure that faculty met their paperwork deadlines.

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That was me. I think I also coordinated the survey about our role in the community and I developed a lot of

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liaison with other staff in and faculty actually in other offices. And I never treated myself as secretarial or administrative staff,

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in part because I have a professional background and I dealt with the other academics on a level playing field. And it really paid off in being able

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to get additional resources for Women's Studies. And sometimes we had to go hat in hand in order to get space,

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audiovisual equipment, people to volunteer, and sometimes just frankly, money. [ML] So perhaps working in the President's office might have had some previously,

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but-- [BH] Let's put it this way. It didn't hurt. [ML] You knew who to go to? [BH] I knew who to go to. It's my basic

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working assumption that there are five people in any large institution who know how to get things done. And it was my task to find

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those five people, and I did. And so as a consequence, it was relatively easy to get the resources that we

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needed and sometimes there was not enough notice, not the normal lead time on the notice, and I was able to pull rabbits from hats.

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But that wasn't my doing so much as it was their willingness to cooperate with the program. [ML] So what was

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the program going through at that point in terms of any sort of transitions, or sort of struggling with issues that were coming up while you were there? [BH] Well, there were two things.

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One was getting appropriate status for the faculty. This would have been Kathy Turkel and Sue Cherrin,

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who were sort of patched together. And were not actually well, they certainly were not in the tenure-track, and yet they were working as

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hard as any other faculty. Teaching as many classes without the status and without the salary to go

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along with it. So that was al-- [ML] Are you all right? [BH] Sorry. There was always jockeying around. You're going to have to edit out that. Yes, there was always jockeying around trying

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to get that status for them. And then there was always the problem of who of getting additional faculty in

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on a cross-listed basis. So that was one major problem. The other one was moving the program into departmental status.

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And that was a real uphill battle. People said, "Well, you know, they, they know the Asian Studies and Jewish Studies

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and Hispanic Studies were all programs. And we didn't need a Department of Women's Studies." And no matter how many other places

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we pointed to with pride that had full-time, dignified, fully funded Women Studies program-- departments,

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not just programs at tended to fall on deaf ears in large part because there's never enough resources to go around. And when I when Kathy Turkel told me

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Actually, she lives across the street from me. And when she told me one time when we were chatting

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out there that they had achieved departmental status. I cheered because it was something that I had very much wanted to see happen.

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And even though I was not a faculty member of the program, well and then of course, the department, I was never there when it was a department.

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I really identified with the program and it really had my wholehearted support. I mean, I really believed in it. [ML] Yes, two decades later. [BH] Yes.

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I know in the fullness of time. [ML] And so what sort of support did you see from others in the University? And who do you think were

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important in terms of helping the program, at that time, develop? [BH] We had a lot of support from the English department, in part because some of

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the faculty were cross-listed with us. Bonnie Scott, Barbara Gates in Sociology. We also had several people we had Anne Boylan in History. We had,

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and I cannot recall his name at this point, who was in Hispanic Studies. Had a hyphenated name. You're going to have to fill that blank in.

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But in any case, there were a number of number of people and many of them were, how can I say, Minority Studies of one source in one way or another.

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And they appreciated the position that we had. We all felt like we were hanging on by our toenails.

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So we tended to band together. And when Sue Cherrin, for example, would be doing one of the films programs that was

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held in the student center over lunch hour, so it could attract as many students as possible. She was frequently able to get people from

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seven or eight different departments to be commentators for the diff-- for the various films. [ML] And do you think that

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administratively the University was supportive? [BH] Actually, no. We had to continually justify our existence.

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And having been, and this is an interesting perspective because was, because I was in the Commission to Promote

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Racial and Cultural Diversity. I was working with the department heads and we had deans and we really

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had to hold their feet to the floor. This was a Presidential mandate. They basically, because of issues that had come up in the consequence

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of people complaining about this, students being, writing petitions and so forth. They, the President basically got

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this big grant and so hired the outside firm and brought them in. And they wanted to run faculty, not just faculty, but

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the department heads and deans through this. And it, we really sometimes had to nail their feet to the floor.

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And because they didn't see a need for it. They thought they were already enlightened. They couldn't imagine that they

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were discriminating, that they didn't see all of the nuances and so forth. And it took a lot of

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work to get them through the door. Once they got through the door, most of them were appreciative of the effort,

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but because of my experience with them and I was the interface, the director whose name escapes me at this point,

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didn't have much to do with it. He left that portion of gathering the faculty together for their workshops, basically to me.

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So I was able to use some of those contacts. [ML] To then translate over to Women's Studies? [BH] Yes. And but there was, I never sensed that there was

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a strong university commitment to having Women's Studies be a vigorous, robust, viable institution in, within the University.

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It's like if you can do it, we don't have any objections, but there was very little encouragement from the top.

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The sense was, at least from my perspective, was that if we stopped pushing, they would ignore us. [ML] So in some ways this parallels struggles

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for what you saw in the commission was taking place in Women's Studies. [BH] Exactly [ML] In terms of why you need it? We've already done this. [BH] Exactly, yes. Right.

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And this was considered trendy, temporary. "If we wait long enough, it will go away." "It's not as serious." And we got some of this.

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"It's not as serious as discrimination against African Americans or against Hispanics." You know, "There's plenty of

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women in the University. They can get tenure." They, you know, "Look at all the women faculty we have."

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Of course, we would point out that the women faculty were at the bottom of the hierarchy, that they were assistant professors

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as opposed to associate professors or fully tenured professors. In that many of the women that they were counting as faculty were, like me,

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adjunct faculty working in their teaching one or two classes a semester and not a full-time job without the dignity that went

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along with it in addition to that. So it wasn't just a money issue. So there was the necessity. There was a necessity to continuously raise

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consciousness. In some places and other places. Excuse me. (Speaking to someone off-camera) Get the door closed. It's not closed.

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Cat can't go outside. So does that answer your question? [ML] Yes. [BH] Yeah. It was an atmosphere.

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It wasn't overt, but it was something that we dealt with on a daily basis. [ML] So how do you think

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students responded to Women's Studies? [BH] Oh, they loved it. They loved it! The students because I dealt with students.

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I was right there at the front desk. And so I was the first person that students saw when they came through the door before they went to see

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either any of the faculty that were in there, for whatever reason. I was the person that was there. And they really, their enthusiasm

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was one of the things that sustained us all. They, you know, I had students who would come in and say, "You know, I wish you guys were my mother."

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You know, "Thank God you're here." They would come in and just, with I would say tenuous and frail excuses,

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in order just to come into the office because it was a safe and supportive environment. They were treated with respect.

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Their concerns were taken seriously. They liked the faculty members. The faculty members went above and beyond the call of duty in order to make,

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to meet the students' needs. They were accommodating to, well in some cases, to the extreme. And I sometimes, And I can say

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that because frequently the extreme ended up my having to pick up the pieces and make it happen. But it was, it

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was totally coherent with the values. And the one thing that I think is most remarkable about the Women's Studies program is that it

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made a conscious effort to walk its talk. It knew what feminist values were. And it really tried to make that real. And I guess the only other institution

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that I've ever worked with that was self-consciously coherent with its basic fundamental principles. And the other one was a seminary.

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So it puts it in rather unique perspective. And everybody tried to walk the talk, even when it was inconvenient.

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[ML] What do you think that impact had on faculty trying to do that in an institution that wasn't that supportive? [BH] It caused a great deal of,

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oh, how can I say, morale sometimes got low and we had to talk ourselves out of it. [ML] Do you want to stop it there? [BH] Yes. We'll just--