she raised money for vassar college in poughkeepsie new york and wound up raising enough money to establish the college and she also raised money for the mount vernon ladies association so that washington's home could be renovated. it was in great disrepair but a women's advocate but also very much a part of american history. she was born one of the five i was talking about who was born in the 1700s. she was born after washington took office so she had perhaps a little bit of an older version of what was appropriate in the way of women's rights.what i'd like to do now is read some sections of the book that might give you a flavor of these women and then follow that at the end with my listing of characteristics or qualities of these women that i think allowed them to do the things they do and did. so first we will start with harriet tubman . harriet tubman crossed the mason-dixon line into pennsylvania after an arduous journey alone. accomplished with courage and skill. once in pennsylvania, tubman later admitted to her biography sarah bradford, when i found i had crossed that line i looked

the grews invited over for dinner, sir robert craigie, the british and vassar to japan, and his wife lady craigie, the grews like sir robert, the grews did not like the lady, they thought she was a nasty woman. in any event, at the social occasions at the american embassy in tokyo, the grews would often show a movie after dinner. the problem was, the projector they used to show the movie was often breaking down. on this particular occasion, as they were watching a movie, the projector again broke down. when it did, lady craigie turned to alice and said isn't it unfortunate, my dear, that that machine of yours is always breaking down. without skipping a beat alice turned to lady craigie and said yes, but isn't it great that we have no important guests tonight. [laughter] i tried to provide that same intimacy in describing the other characters in this drama both american and japanese and if you read the book, you will see that the attack at pearl harbor, was not merely a clash of governments, it was a product of the personalities, the perspectives, and the prejudices of people like you

joining our guest on stage tonight is vassar hillary -- of tisch college senior fellow and the founding director of f persn initiative at tisch college. i mentioned earlier that tisch college has expanded scope of its educational programs and it's one of our newer initiatives that we are especially proud of. hillary manages the college degree program at the massachusetts correctional institute in concord which is a partnership between -- university and bunker hill community college to award an associate degree to group of incarcerated men in the program. as part of the prison initiative hillary runs an inside outside course at the maximum-security prison in shirley, massachusetts through which topped students and incarcerated individuals take a course together. hillary's current research is in the field of higher education and incarceration and she is a senior lecturer at toft for the phd in english and also directs the program in women's gender and sexuality studies. hillary is a strong advocates for the importance of bringing higher education to prison and we are grateful that she joi