Hometown: I was born into a Greek ethnic family of a second-generation Greek American mother and a Greek American father who had birthright citizenship, in Charleston, South Carolina.

When did you join UMRA? In 2023.

What was your very first job? My first job was babysitting. I was about 13 years old when I started.

What was your occupation when you retired from the University of Minnesota Morris? I was a professor of sociology. I’m now professor emerita and co-editor, along with Marcia Texler Segal, professor of sociology and dean emerita at Indiana University Southeast, of the series Advances in Gender Research, published by Emerald Publishing. Our 36th volume, Gender, Power, and Society: Persistence and Change, will be released December 1. In addition, I’m working on a book about Greek women in Greece, Australia, and the United States. As a public sociologist, I’ve been involved with the NAACP in Salisbury, Maryland, where I now live, and I have served as a Sociologists for Women in Society envoy to the United Nations, attending the Commission on the Status of Women’s annual meeting for six years.

What drew you to the University of Minnesota Morris? And what inspired you to devote your 30-plus-year career there to teaching and research on social stratification? In the spring of 1977, I attended the Midwest Sociological Association meeting with the primary purpose of obtaining an interview for a job in sociology. I was selected by the University of Minnesota Morris (UMM) for a preliminary interview at the meeting. I was impressed that the four-member recruitment committee included a student representative, and intrigued by the description of this small undergraduate prairie campus that respected scholarly research. In the fall of 1977, I began teaching at UMM. The 30-plus years I spent teaching there allowed me the freedom to explore with students the issues of gender, race, and class inequality in American society.

How do you see the role of DEI in higher education today? The concept of the melting pot had been used to characterize American assimilation of southern and eastern European immigrants in the early part of the 20th century. That concept was used to convey how those immigrants could feel a sense of belonging to American society; those not covered by the concept—Native, Black, and brown Americans—suffered the exclusion and oppression of the dominant American society. For many white Americans, it was with the civil rights movement of the 1960s that they began to see that not everyone in the society is born equal, [contrary to] the idea many of us learned in our public schools. In that time, too, many of us began to understand that women did not share the same equality as men and, further, that equality was denied to lesbians and gay men, who felt they had to hide their identity.   

In time, we began to use the concept of gender to refer to identifications that include women and all the statuses encompassed by the concept LGBTQIA2S+. Many of us realized that identities cannot and should not be melted. In addition, we learned that identities are intersected, that one is not only a woman, but may be a Black and lesbian, or queer, male, and brown. The idea of equality has been replaced by the concept of human rights, an ideal recognized globally.   

DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion—better encompasses what American society should strive for as an ideal. It is in the classroom, whether that be in higher education or primary and secondary schools, that students learn the ideals of American society and what it means to belong. Out of higher education come the leaders of society, and it is critical that they understand and respect differences among people, no matter what their own status is.

What can older adults do to combat age discrimination? In the volume on Gender Visibility and Erasure, edited by Marcia and me, Barbara H. Chasin and Laura Kramer wrote about the invisibility and erasure of older adults, particularly older women. Older adults experience erasure institutionally and interactionally. In medicine, for example, a doctor may dismiss a particular condition as occurring in old age, without looking further for a cause. An older patient may be told that a particular screening test is no longer needed simply because the patient is old, without giving a medically sound reason. It is only in recent decades that there has been a realization that not all bodies conform to the male ideal, on which medicine has been based until recently. It is important to ask doctors the reason for a diagnosis and a prescription.

Interactionally, in conversations with younger people, they may inadvertently exclude the participation of an older adult. Older adults should insist on contributing to the topic of conversations by resisting the temptation to state that things were better in the past and, in instances where they have no knowledge about the topic, by showing interest in it and asking a question or two. Older adults can also introduce new topics of conversation, such as a book they are reading, a movie they’ve seen, or something interesting that happened in their day. 

Societally, older adults should contact their congressional representatives and interest groups about safeguarding Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, as well as alerting them to age discrimination in other sectors of life. AARP is a valuable resource regarding ageism. I found the organization to be particularly helpful when I ran into a scam.

1968 or 2025? In your mind and life experience, how do they (currently) compare? I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and in 1968 I experienced the tension of the civil unrest that broke out in that city. I had already taken a course [in college] in race and ethnic relations and was familiar with the development of the Black Power movement. Also at that time, students were protesting the military draft and the Vietnam War, and the second wave of the women’s movement was gathering momentum. We, the young baby boomers, felt that we could change the world and make it more equitable. Then in April of that year, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, followed in June with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, which was followed by the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the protests and police action there. It was a tumultuous time, but I believe people still felt they could bring about social change. 

In 2025, we had already experienced the 9/11 attacks on our homeland, and American society had been deeply divided. For those of us who came out of the ’60s, the attacks on DEI, immigration, and the nation’s institutions have been shocking. There is general unease, fear, and anxiety in this deeply divided society. 

You live in Maryland and are an active member of the UMN Morris Retirees Association. How does that work? Zoom has made it possible to socialize with colleagues and work collaboratively with scholars a distance away.

What is a fun fact about you that we might not know? I attended a Beatles concert at the Baltimore Civic Center when they toured the United States in 1964. I saw Elvis in concert a year before he died. I also saw James Brown in concert, as well as B.B. King.