The endowed chair will help to fund research and teaching in feminist studies, as well as provide support for graduate fellowships.
Bettina Aptheker, distinguished professor of feminist studies at UC Santa Cruz, was honored as the inaugural appointee to the Presidential Chair at an investiture ceremony that took place yesterday at the Stevenson Event Center.
A scholar of history with a national reputation for her talents as an instructor, Aptheker taught one of the country’s largest and most influential introductory feminist studies courses for nearly three decades at UC Santa Cruz.
She received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz and went on to become the first ladder-rank faculty member of the Feminist Studies Department (then known as Women’s Studies) in 1987.
“It is a great honor to be named as the inaugural chair of the Peggy and Jack Baskin Foundation Presidential Chair for Feminist Studies,” said Aptheker. "It's a wonderful moment for the Feminist Studies department as it continues to grow faculty, and its graduate program. The field has expanded intellectually in new and innovative directions--influencing knowledge in everything from art to physics, from literature to anthropology, to critical race and ethnic studies.”
“Feminist Studies constantly interrogates and transforms itself,” Aptheker added. “And it continues to inform a teaching and social justice practice that we hope empowers our students and engages deeply with the larger community. This endowment is particularly vital in allowing us to fund our graduate students, and to bring distinguished visiting scholars and activists to UCSC to enrich both our program and the campus as a whole. We are so grateful to the foundation for this singular honor.”
The Peggy and Jack Baskin Foundation was founded in 2007 to provide opportunities for social change and justice. It currently focuses on improving the lives of women and girls, and equal access to education.
UC Santa Cruz and the Peggy and Jack Baskin Foundation have been partnering on advancing innovative and impactful scholarship for a number of years. The foundation has funded the Baskin Feminist Scholars Program and the Baskin Scholars Program in Engineering that enable community college students to transfer to UC Santa Cruz; underwritten fellowships to female doctoral students in engineering; and funded the summer Girls in Engineering program for middle-school girls since its inception.
“Bettina Aptheker and her colleagues, with the support of UC Santa Cruz, have developed a world-renowned department in Feminist Studies,” noted the foundation’s executive director, Nicole Baran. “The Peggy and Jack Baskin Foundation made this endowment because the UCSC Feminist Studies Department, and its leading example, should exist in perpetuity.”
“There is no economic justice without reproductive rights,” said Baran. “There is no gender justice without racial justice. There is no justice if humans suffer around you. These concepts are born out of intersectional feminism. Feminist analytical thought must exist until all of us are equal, until all of us are equally valued in the world.”
“Our foundation wants to make the statement that intersectional feminism is the foundation of all social change,” Baran added. “We believe this endowment is a step towards this goal.”
The Campaign for UC Santa Cruz supports excellence across the university through increased private investment in the people and ideas shaping the future. It is bringing critical new resources to the student experience, excellence in research, and the campus commitment to environmental and social justice.
