Patricia Hill Collins, Pioneer of Black Feminist Thought, Delivers Eleanor Roosevelt Lecture at Brandeis

Brandeis Stories

Patricia Hill Collins, Pioneer of Black Feminist Thought, Delivers Eleanor Roosevelt Lecture at Brandeis

By David Levin
October 13, 2026 • Humanities and Social Sciences

Renowned sociologist Patricia Hill Collins '69, PhD '84, returned to Brandeis to deliver this year's Eleanor Roosevelt Lecture, which launched the 50th anniversary of the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She also joined students and faculty for a community discussion hosted by the sociology and African and African American studies departments.

Hill Collins, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, has had a broad and influential career. In addition to being a past president of the American Sociological Association-the first Black woman elected to lead the organization in its 104-year history-she literally wrote the book on Black feminist thought. Her award-winning 1990 publication, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, has since become required reading in hundreds of undergraduate classrooms, including many here at Brandeis.

Her visit comes at a time of national division, violence, and uncertainty. For this reason, Hill Collins said, she centered her speeches and interactions with students around a common theme: how do people keep going when the moment feels discouraging?

""Do the work you think needs to be done, even if there's no reward in the here and now." "

"The solution isn't to try and change everybody around you and then get discouraged because they don't want to listen," Hill Collins told students. "It's to find the other people who are engaged in similar projects and to be open to the idea that they may look very different than you, they may be in very different places. You do the work you think needs to be done, even if there's no reward in the here and now."

Hill Collins calls this sentiment "radical hope," the ability to push for deep change while accepting that it may not arrive in one's lifetime. With that in mind, she encouraged students who are focused on social justice to reframe setbacks as opportunities for growth, and to stay the course while adopting new strategies.

"I see a room full of people with possibility who have inherited a difficult situation," she said, "but I also know that there are many, many generations just like you… where the challenges were the same, and they figured it out. So why wouldn't you be able to figure it out?"