Admission
Alumni Author Highlight
Barbara Ehrenreich '63
Barbara Ehrenreich '63 is a political essayist and social critic who addresses a variety of issues in books and magazine articles. She is the author or co-author of twelve books, including Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War, and Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Ehrenreich has written for many magazines, including Ms., Harper's, The Nation, The Progressive, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine. Sh`m thinking, something she feels Reed helps its students learn to do. Ehrenreich declares that "the great thing about Reed is that Reed so consistently, year after year, produces exceptions to the mainstream of materialism and cynicism . . . Reed's faculty, of course, deserves much of the credit….We learned from Reed's faculty, or somehow imbibed the idea, that knowledge is not a kind of property that one buys in college in order to cash in on it later: it is a trust and responsibility."
Ehrenreich, a native of Montana, majored in chemistry and physics at Reed. She graduated in 1963 and wrote a thesis on electrochemical oscillations of the silicon anode. She has a Ph.D. in biology and has taught at the State University of New York, as well as the College at New Rochelle.
In her book Nickel and Dimed, nominated as a distinguished nonfiction work by the National Book Critics Circle in 1990, Ehrenreich describes her experience working multiple minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. By actually living the life of many poor Americans, Ehrenreich was able to explore the issue of poverty from personal and political standpoints. Academic knowledge coupled with first-hand experience allows Ehrenreich to assert fresh new ideas. She argues: "The 'working poor' as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for: they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else."
For more information about Ehrenreich, read a Times Q&A session with her (her guest columns are listed at the bottom, under "Related Articles") or peruse the Reed Magazine's article on Ehrenreich.
Kerry Skemp '05 wrote about Reed authors while an intern in the admission office this past summer. An English major from Wisconsin, Kerry is also student body treasurer and has enjoyed her own experiences with writing at Reed, in creative writing classes as well as in her contributions to Reed's student-published Creative Review.