“I came out when I was a freshman at Stanford in 1983, and it wasn’t particularly easy. Around that time there was also an enormous controversy about this statue, George Segal’s Gay Liberation. Gay marriage in 1983? Impossible. Having kids in 1983? Improbable. Fast forward to campus today, and my kid can check a box indicating that she’s particularly LGBTQQ-welcoming as Res Ed sets up roommates for her freshman year.”
“Stanford to me is about making methods, and about learning the art and politics of the possible. We think a lot about Stanford’s reputation with scientific and technological method – rightly so. Also foundational to my experience at Stanford was learning social and political method-making. A Stanford Feminist Studies professor, the poet and critic Adrienne Rich, of blessed memory, told me my senior year, and I saved this note she wrote on one of my papers, “I believe you will invent the methods you need.” As I’ve worked, invested, built businesses, raised kids, wed, and volunteered, I’ve found that Stanford taught me how to craft solutions to social and political challenges, with a degree of chutzpah and creativity. And to believe that anything is possible. Even the impossible.”
Sue Reinhold, ‘87, Feminist Studies
Sue Reinhold, Ph.D. from University of Sussex in England in Social Anthropology, ‘94. Founding Partner, North Berkeley Investment Partners and a founder of The Kitchen SF, a new synagogue. Parent to a Stanford ‘19 frosh, amongst three others, one of whom is a UC Santa Cruz Banana Slug and two TBD. Married–legally!–to Deborah Newbrun.
Photographed on the north side of the Quad on February 27, 2016.