Huntington Times

Marshall University’s Amicus Curiae Lecture Series on Constitutional Democracy will commence the 2024-2025 academic year with a lecture by historian, author, and educator Elisabeth Griffith titled “A Constitutional Quandary: Where Are the Women?” The event, free and open to the public, is scheduled for 7 p.m. on August 29 at the Brad D. Smith Foundation Hall.

Griffith, a graduate of Wellesley College with a doctorate in history from American University, has collaborated with the National Women’s Political Caucus to expand women’s rights, elect female candidates, and ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. She has been teaching women’s history for four decades and served as head of The Madeira School in McLean, Virginia for 22 years. Her tenure earned her the Washington Post’s Distinguished Educational Leadership Award. Griffith is also a member of the Society of American Historians and Veteran Feminists of America and has held fellowships at Harvard and Columbia.

She authored “FORMIDABLE: American Women and the Fight For Equality, 1920-2020,” praised by The New York Times as an “engaging, relevant, sweeping chronicle” that provides an inclusive timeline of struggles and triumphs of both Black and white women. Her biography of suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “In Her Own Right,” was acclaimed by Oprah and the Wall Street Journal as one of the five best books on women’s history and inspired Ken Burns’ documentary “Not For Ourselves Alone.”

Griffith's lecture will address women's rights in America, focusing on voting rights, civil rights, reproductive rights, equal protection under law, slow progress met by setbacks, political resistance, and legal challenges.

“This lecture is incredibly timely as we experience an era where women’s rights are at the center of our political conversation,” said Patricia Proctor, director of Marshall’s Simon Perry Center for Constitutional Democracy. “Dr. Griffith will discuss Constitutional amendments, Supreme Court decisions, acts of Congress impacting women along with social movements and societal context. She is an exciting speaker; I am very excited to welcome her to Marshall.”

The lecture series is sponsored by Marshall’s Simon Perry Center for Constitutional Democracy with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council. This particular lecture is co-sponsored by the Drinko Academy in honor of Women’s Equality Day. For more information contact Patricia Proctor via email at patricia.proctor@marshall.edu.