Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who delivered the University of Utah student commencement speech in 1960, believes she epitomized the dilemma facing the women graduates of her day.
It was the choice between the Phi Beta Kappa key and the safety pin, the choice of a life of scholarship and motherhood.Ulrich, who returned Friday to her alma mater as the 1992 commencement speaker and an honorary degree recipient, unfolded her life of the past 32 years for 4,800 graduates gathered at the Jon M. Huntsman Center for the 123rd U. commencement.
Ulrich won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in history for her book, "A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812."
She repeated a portion of her 1960 commencement talk: "This is the night when university graduates look forward with high hopes to the future - that is male university graduates. The popular press won't let us women graduates forget that we face a frustrating struggle ahead, a struggle which a recent Newsweek cover depicted as the choice between a Phi Beta Kappa key and a safety pin."
Ulrich, who earned a Phi Beta Kappa key at the U., chose the safety pin. "In 1960, it simply did not occur to me or to Gael (her husband) or to anyone around us that a mother, even one who had earned her Phi Beta Kappa key, might also think about graduate school," she said.
However, one of her professors, G. Homer Durham, suggested she interview for a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. " `I'm having a baby,' I answered lightly, and that was the end of that. The irony is that I received a Woodrow Wilson grant 17 years later, when I was the mother of five children, including one rather small baby," she recalled.
Ulrich was no different than her contemporaries of 1960, she said. She quoted from that 32-year-old Newsweek article, which was based on the assumption that women had never had it so good. It said, she reported, that women were free from the tyranny of their bodies caused by painful childbirth, the tyranny of ignorance and the tyranny of poverty.
In truth, she pointed out, women drugged by painkillers missed the birth of their children; the voices of women writers were missing from the education of Ulrich and other female students in the U. English department; and women faculty members made salaries only two-thirds of those of male professors of equal rank.
The three freedoms touted in the Newsweek story "represented a particularly insidious kind of bondage, a pampered dependency that denied women the ability to give as well as receive," she said.
The women's movement of the 1970s wasn't an effort to abandon responsibility but to reclaim it, the historian said. "In the university, in the economy, and in the delivery room, women discovered it is better to feel pain than to suffer oblivion."
Ulrich said having a family made her academic life harder but also enriched it. It took five years for her to earn a master's degree and nine years to receive a doctorate. "My scholarship enriched my children's lives, and my work as a wife and mother immensely enriched my scholarship," she said.
Student speaker Andrew J. Cooley, who is a former U. student-body president, said the students of his generation are sufficiently prepared to battle the social and economic injustices in America.
"Armed with tools which our university has provided, we stand ready to assume the challenges that society has placed before us. Our institution has bestowed upon us high ambition. Our professors have imparted both wisdom and integrity. Our friends have exemplified both wisdom and courage," Cooley said.
U. President Arthur K. Smith saluted the graduates and, in keeping with a commencement tradition, recognized the graduating class of 50 years ago - the Class of '42.
"Your search must continue, and I believe you will find that as truth is revealed, it also becomes evident that further enlightenment is necessary," Smith said.
The U. awarded the prestigious $30,000 Rosenblatt Prize to political science professor J.D. Williams, 65, who is retiring after 40 years of teaching at the U. He was founding director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics and also the Bureau of Community Development, now known as the Center for Public Policy and Administration. He has been one of the university's most outspoken and well-known figures in advocating political and intellectual freedom.
Honorary degrees were awarded to Ulrich, doctor of humane letters; Gov. Norm Bangerter, doctor of laws; Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah, doctor of laws; Iver E. Bradley, retired U. business professor, doctor of humane letters; Gordon B. Hinckley, first counselor in the First Presidency, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, doctor of humane letters; Jon M. Huntsman, businessman and philanthropist, doctor of science.
Distinguished teaching awards went to chemistry professor William H. Breckenridge, nursing professor Sue E. Huether and music professor Ardean W. Watts. Distinguished research awards were presented to chemistry professor John A. Gladysz, mathematics professor Janos Kollar and physics professor Yong-Shi Wu.