Miers Helped Set Up Lecture Series That Brought Leading Feminists to SMU [View All]

[Rose Siding]

For someone both heralded and feared as a potentially conservative voice on the U.S. Supreme Court, Harriet E. Miers has played a key role in exposing college students to some unmistakably liberal ideas.

In the late 1990s, as a member of the advisory board for Southern Methodist University's law school, Ms. Miers pushed for the creation of an endowed lecture series in women's studies named for Louise B. Raggio, one of the first women to rise to prominence in the Texas legal community. A strong advocate for women, Ms. Raggio helped persuade state lawmakers to revise Texas laws to give women new rights over property and in the event of divorce.
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A feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, delivered the series's first lecture, in 1998. In the following two years, the speakers were Patricia S. Schroeder, the former Democratic congresswoman widely associated with women's causes, and Susan Faludi, the author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991). Ann W. Richards, the Democrat whom George W. Bush unseated as governor of Texas in 1994, delivered the lecture in 2003.
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Despite her involvement with Southern Methodist, Ms. Miers has little experience in dealing with education law....

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