Cooper, Sandi E.

Sandi E. Cooper, PhD, is a professor of history at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York (CUNY). In 2000, CUNY issued "The City University of New York Master Plan 2000-2004," the controversial product of several year's work principally concerned with raising academic standards at the University. Many, including Cooper, opposed the plan, seeing it as harmful to the working class and people of color students who comprise the majority of CUNY's student body, and held that it would lessen their access to CUNY, especially to its four year colleges (as opposed to its two year community colleges) and failing to provide for them adequate academic and remedial support, in effect, undermining CUNY's policy of open admission. A notable critical report, "The Future of CUNY" (2000), was produced by the Commission on the Future of CUNY of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

From the guide to the Sandi Cooper Papers on the Future of the City University of New York, 1998-2000, (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)

A professor of history at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, Sandi E. Cooper collected these papers because of her interest in the case brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against Sears, Roebuck and Company.

The plaintiff charged Sears with discrimination in two main categories of employment, claiming that women were underrepresented in high-paying commission sales jobs, and that there were disparate salary rates for men and women in certain managerial and administrative positions (so-called "checklist" employees). Sears maintained that the government's statistics did not prove discrimination, and disputed the EEOC assumption that male and female applicants were equally qualified for and interested in commission sales positions. To bolster their respective arguments, the litigants brought in two prominent feminist historians: Rosalind Rosenberg testified for Sears and Alice Kessler-Harris for the EEOC. They presented conflicting interpretations of women's attitudes toward work and the relative importance of workers' and employers' roles in shaping patterns of employment by sex. The case was tried in 1984 and 1985 in U.S. District Court in Chicago, and in early 1986 Judge John A. Nordberg ruled in favor of Sears.

For further information on the case, see "Women's History Goes to Trial: EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck and Company," with an introduction by SEC, in Signs 11 (summer 1986); and Ruth Milkman, "Women's History and the Sears Case," in Feminist Studies 12 (summer 1986).

From the guide to the Papers, 1979-1986, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)