During the spring of 1974, a promising young assistant professor named Louise Lamphere was denied tenure by Brown’s Anthropology Department. Believing that she was a victim of sex discrimination, Lamphere boldly challenged the university. In May of 1975, she filed a landmark class action lawsuit against Brown in U.S. District Court, arguing both that she had been discriminated against and that the small number of women on the Brown faculty at the time reflected systemic bias.

This collection contains oral histories and other documents related to the Louise Lamphere case, some of which became part of an exhibit sponsored by the Pembroke Center in 2015: The Lamphere Case: The Sex Discrimination Lawsuit that Changed Brown