Great Women Live from the Great Hall 

As part of a free public program honoring Women’s History Month, women's and civil rights icon Gloria Steinem will be joined by scholar and Pulitzer Prize winner, Salamishah Tillet, for a conversation reflecting on the state of women's rights and empowerment in America today. Drawing on historical moments in The Cooper Union’s Great Hall that have shaped the women's rights movement, the pair will reflect on the progress realized and explore the contemporary issues that put that progress at risk. Laura Sparks, the first woman president of The Cooper Union, will moderate a Q&A as part of the program. The event is part of The Gardiner Foundation Great Hall Forum series and a day of Cooper Union programming, including an exhibition on view in the Foundation Building's colonnade windows, dedicated to lifting up and celebrating Great Women Live from the Great Hall. The exhibition runs March 6 through March 19, 2023. The programs are also sponsored by The Ciafone and Argento Family and Debby & Scott Rechler / Rechler Philanthropy.

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Gloria Steinem has spent decades traveling the U.S. and internationally as an organizer and lecturer and is a frequent spokeswoman on issues of equality. She is particularly interested in the shared origins of sex and race caste systems, gender roles, and child abuse as roots of violence, non-violent conflict resolution, the cultures of indigenous peoples, and organizing across boundaries for peace and justice. She co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Ms. Foundation for Women, the Free to Be Foundation, and the Women’s Media Center in the United States. She has previously addressed Cooper Union audiences in 1992 and 2020.

Salamishah Tillet is the Henry Rutgers professor of Africana Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University–Newark and a contributing critic-at-large for The New York Times. She is also the executive director of Express Newark, a center for socially engaged art and design at Rutgers; cofounder, along with her sister Scheherazade Tillet, of A Long Walk Home, a nonprofit that empowers young people to use art to end violence against all girls and women; and founding member of the Black Girl Freedom Fund. In 2021, she and Cindi Leive hosted the Webby award-winning podcast “Because of Anita,” a 30-year retrospective of the impact of Anita Hill’s testimony.

And join us in the evening...

We continue the celebration of Women's History Month with an evening of outstanding performances by headliners in music, dance, and theater: Tiler Peck, Melissa Manchester, Dormeshia, Melissa Errico, Urban Bush Women, Lisa Fischer, and Alice Wetterlund A'03. $15 ticket.

Evening performance tickets $15

Visitors must show security proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test by a third party (not home test) within three days of their visit to campus or a negative rapid test result taken by a third party (not home test) on the day of the visit to campus.