S6-EP6: Bestselling Author Dale Russakoff on Being a Southern Woman at Harvard, Ambition at 71, and How Family Matters Most

This is Season 6 of my [B]OLD AGE podcast. Thank you for listening! I interview authors, experts, and exceptional individuals to reveal the truths about [b]oldly moving from midlife to old age. You can find over 100 previous episodes on Apple podcasts or on my website. - Debbie

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Show notes for this episode

Debbie interviews veteran reporter and bestselling author Dale Russakoff, her 1974 Harvard/Radcliffe classmate, about her surprising experience at Harvard as a woman from the South, her distinguished career as a journalist, and the importance of family.

Dale Russakoff

Debbie knew that Dale had been a reporter for The Washington Post for almost 30 years. And that she is the author of a best-selling book, THE PRIZE. But in this episode Dale told her something she'd never heard before: what it was like to be a Southern girl at Harvard. Dale, who had a Southern accent at the time, said she was reluctant to open her mouth at first.

She'd grown up in Birmingham, AL and when she arrived in Cambridge she learned that the Radcliffe admissions committee hadn’t admitted a woman from the South in many years (unless she had gone to a northern boarding school). The committee thought girls who grew up and went to school in the South wouldn't have “the values" Radcliffe wanted; i.e. they would be racist.

She and Debbie talk about what it was like, fifty years ago, to be a female student in the man's world of Harvard, how "ambition" fit into her college years and, later, how it related to her career in journalism. They talk about the importance of family, including grandchildren. And how she feels AT. CAPACITY. (i.e. too busy) in semi-retirement, at age 71.

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Don't miss Debbie's Substack essay on the topic of being too busy or AT. CAPACITY. 

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Mentioned in this episode or useful:

• The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools? By Dale Russakoff (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2015)

• New York Times review of THE PRIZE (Aug. 18, 2015)

• Dale’s reporting about the South when she was a college student: The Other Lost Cause (The Harvard Crimson, May 13, 1974)

• Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury by Drew Faust, who was President of Harvard from 2007 - 2018 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023)

• How a girl in the old South grew up to be a civil rights historian and a Harvard president: a review of Drew Faust’s new memoir, (LA Times, Aug. 17, 2023)

• Radcliffe Women Share Their Stories (Harvard Magazine, July/Aug 2021)

• Nathan Pusey  President of Harvard from 1953 to 1971:

• Matina Horner President of Radcliffe College in the 1970s

The first two in a trilogy of podcast episodes

 Conversations with two more of Debbie's classmates from the Harvard/Radcliffe class of 1974:

• A'lelia Bundles on Legacy, Leadership and Growing [B]older at 70

• Winifred White Neisser on Ambition, Embracing 70, and What Comes Next

Connect with Debbie:

• debbieweil.com

• [B]OLD AGE podcast

• [B]OLD AGE newsletter on Substack

• Email: thebolderpodcast@gmail.com

• Debbie and Sam’s blog: Gap Year After Sixty

Our Media Partners:

• CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org)

• MEA and with thanks to Chip Conley

• Next For Me (former media partner and in memory of Jeff Tidwell)