Barnard College

So Grace Chin Lee was born in 1915 in Providence, Rhode Island, to a pair of Chinese immigrants who had opened a restaurant there.

And her family eventually moved to New York City, where she graduated from Barnard College with a degree in philosophy, before going on to earn a PhD in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College.

in 1940.

Fed out of academia as a young Chinese-American woman, Grace moved to Chicago and took a part-time job at the University of Chicago's Philosophy Library.

2012, and she got that from no less than President Barack Obama.

And this quote, the source, is from a commencement speech that she held at Barnard College in New York.

where she was reminding a generation of women at that college about what gaining freedom and gaining power means.

And in that speech, she was stressing that the function of freedom is to free somebody else, which is the quote of today, that gaining freedom and gaining power means means very little if this freedom is used to hold other people back.

Apparently, my grandmother got to travel to the World's Fair in Queens, New York, with her folk dancing troupe, but took ill so she landed in St. Luke's Hospital.

When her case was no longer acute, she was moved to the Barnard College dorms to convalesce.

the same dorms that I spent four years in, thinking I was the first person in my family to ever stay in New York City, much less sleep in those little wooden beds.

As a girl, my world had always emphatically been in Colorado.

Yeah.

So I was taking classes at Barnard College through the dance program there.

And at the time, Mary Cochran, who's a Taylor alumna, was the dean of the dance program.

And we were seeing a show.

So Grace Chin Lee was born in 1915 in Providence, Rhode Island, to a pair of Chinese immigrants who had opened a restaurant there.

And her family eventually moved to New York City, where she graduated from Barnard College with a degree in philosophy, before going on to earn a PhD in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College.

in 1940.

Fed out of academia as a young Chinese-American woman, Grace moved to Chicago and took a part-time job at the University of Chicago's Philosophy Library.

So Grace Chin Lee was born in 1915 in Providence, Rhode Island, to a pair of Chinese immigrants who had opened a restaurant there.

And her family eventually moved to New York City, where she graduated from Barnard College with a degree in philosophy, before going on to earn a PhD in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College.

in 1940.

Fed out of academia as a young Chinese-American woman, Grace moved to Chicago and took a part-time job at the University of Chicago's Philosophy Library.

So Grace Chin Lee was born in 1915 in Providence, Rhode Island, to a pair of Chinese immigrants who had opened a restaurant there.

And her family eventually moved to New York City, where she graduated from Barnard College with a degree in philosophy, before going on to earn a PhD in philosophy from Bryn Mawr College.

in 1940.

Fed out of academia as a young Chinese-American woman, Grace moved to Chicago and took a part-time job at the University of Chicago's Philosophy Library.

She served as special advisor to the mayor for governance and strategic planning under New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg from 2001 to 2005.

Professor Fuchs was chair of the Urban Studies Program at Barnard and Columbia Colleges and founding director of Columbia University Center for Urban Research and Policy.

Professor Fuchs recently received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Queens College and Columbia University School of International Public Affairs Award for Outstanding Teaching.

Professor Fuchs is an expert in urban politics and policy, American politics, civic engagement, and American parties and elections.