In this conversation, Jewish LGBTQ rights activist and writer Abby Stein and WGS professor Caroline Light will address issues around LGBTQ rights, religion, citizenship, and gender identity. This event is free and open to all who would like to attend. Please register here.

Abby Stein is a Jewish educator, writer, speaker, and activist. She was born and raised in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn, New York, where she also attended rabbinical school. At age twenty, she left the Hasidic community, and since coming out as a woman of trans experience, she has been working to raise support and awareness for trans rights and those leaving Ultra-Orthodoxy. In 2016, Ms. Stein was named by The Jewish Week as one of the “36 Under 26” young Jews who are affecting change in the world. She is currently a second year student at Columbia University, studying gender studies and political science.

Dr. Caroline Light is the Director of Undergraduate Studies and senior lecturer in the Program in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Her research explores the ways in which race, gender, and region have shaped collective (mis)memory and archival silence. She is the author of That Pride of Race and Character: The Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South (NYU Press, 2014) and Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense (Beacon Press, 2017).

Co-sponsored by Academic Ventures at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and Harvard Hillel.