THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Alice Kessler-Harris
“I attribute a lot of my success to the world that was changing around me.”
Historian, educator, author. One of the most important women’s historians in the United States and a leading advocate for university level women’s studies and feminist labor history. A.B. Goucher College, 1961; M.A. Rutgers University, 1963; Ph.D. Rutgers University, 1968.
Interviewed by Rebecca Lubetkin, VFA Board, December 2021

Photo. Alice Kessler-Harris in 1975.
More About Alice:
- Alice Kessler-Harris body of work including employment history, honors and awards, books, select articles, essays, reviews, papers, presentations and more.
- Women & The American Story, Columbia University MOOC select lectures
- Select interviews
- Gendering Labor History, A Conversation with Alice Kessler-Harris and Thavolia Glymph, February 25, 2021
- An Interview with Alice Kessler-Harris, by Tony Michels, Lara Vapnek and Annie Polland, February 2019
- Emeritus Professors in Columbia, Conversation with Alice Kessler-Harris
- Alice Kessler-Harris interview, Columbia Center for Oral History
- Interview with Alice Kessler-Harris – Women, Education and Leadership at Rutgers, 2015
- Alice Kessler-Harris: What Happened to Second Wave Feminism? American Historical Association, January 4, 2015
- New River Media Interview with Alice Kessler-Harris, Professor of History, Columbia University
- Robin Morgan celebrates For National Equal Pay Day by demystifying economics and speaks with 9to5 founder Karen Nussbaum; Alice Kessler-Harris on the pink collar ghetto; Jewelle Bickford on investing; and Michaela Walsh of Women’s World Banking. April, 2013
- Dr. Alice Kessler-Harris Interview with Stephen McKiernan, March, 2010
- New-York Historical Society Museum & Library website
- Veteran Feminists of America event: Labor & the Women’s Movement, St. Louis, MO, September 27, 2014
- Papers of Alice Kessler-Harris, 1962-2016, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute
- On C-SPAN
- Cited in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975, pages 252 – 253