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The Fall, 1997 issue of NewsSmith has a selection of photos from Sophia Smith Award weekend events. |
Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg Receives Award at Smith CollegeMore than 2,300 people attended the ceremony on Friday, September 12, at Smith College at which Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg received the first Sophia Smith Award. The award, which was established by the trustees of Smith College on the occasion of the bicentennial of the birth of the college's founder, honors an individual who, "by virtue of intelligence, energy, vision and courage, has made a significant and lasting contribution to the education of women." Speakers at the ceremony, along with Ginsburg, included Herma Hill Kay, dean of the University of California Berkeley; and Wendy Webster Williams, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. On Saturday, September 13, Ginsburg attended a roundtable in her honor, "In Pursuit of Justice: Women's Equality and the Public Good." Speakers at that event included Smith alumnae Gloria Steinem, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), and law professor Catharine MacKinnon along with NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg. Smith College, the largest privately endowed college for women in the United States, was founded in 1871 in Northampton with a bequest from Sophia Smith, a resident of the nearby town of Hatfield, Mass. When she inherited her family's accumulated fortune and the responsibility for disposing of it, she chose to endow a women's college--a history-making bequest. It was her conviction, explicitly expressed in her will, that providing women with an excellent education would enhance their ability to contribute to the nation's leadership and the public good. |
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