One of the things I did, because I think this support from your colleagues is absolutely critical, we're in a time now where you could raise it. You can say, this guy hassled me. The consequences for the woman are terrible. They're bad for the man, but they're terrible for the woman. And so, it's a dangerous thing to do. But one of the things that I did is I realized that again, the women faculty population is pretty low. I realized that as you walk across campus, you don't know who are your colleagues, who are the other faculty with whom you might share issues, not just gender related, but just any kind of issues. And so every year, this was such an amazing event, there were only 120 or so women on the faculty, so every year I hosted all the women faculty for dinner at the President's house.

And the point of that was simply how you recognize your colleagues. So, when you're walking across campus, you see them, you go, hi, you're my friend, you're my friend. It creates a community of common interest, not common interest, I don't want to say that women and men have shared interests, but it creates a community among people who can help think about how you deal with these problems. That was really powerful. And I have to tell you, I didn't know one of these things, oh this seems like fun, have all the women faculty for dinner. Happily, the president's house is sufficiently capacious. You can have a lot of people for dinner. And since a third of the faculty is always traveling someplace, it becomes a reasonable number. However, I thought, oh, this'll be in fun. And I was, there's a coat room downstairs. There's a beautiful, I mean, it's a gorgeous building, a circular stair that comes up. And when it became time to say, come in, I walked over to the opening of the stairway, I looked at this stairwell full of women and I started to cry. I just started to cry. I mean, the force there was just overwhelming. I mean, we have great faculty, men, women, doesn't make any difference. But the women are particularly awesome because they've been through battles that the men may not have been through.

Susan Hockfield is a neuroscientist whose research focuses on brain development and glioma, pioneering the use of monoclonal antibody technology demonstrating that early experience results in lasting changes in the molecular structure of the brain. She is a Professor of Neuroscience and President Emerita at MIT. She was the first woman and life scientist to serve as MIT’s sixteenth president from 2004-2012.

Hockfield earned her B.A. in biology from the University of Rochester (1973) and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University at the School of Medicine (1979). In 1980, Hockfield completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California at San Francisco. She then joined the scientific staff at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York where she ran her own lab for five years. She also served as director of the Summer Neurobiology Program from 1985 to 1997. In 1985, Hockfield became the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology at Yale University. She went on to serve as the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1998-2002, and Provost from 2003-2004.

In December 2004, Hockfield assumed office as the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She held this role until June 2012 and continues to hold a faculty appointment as professor of neuroscience and as a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

Hockfield has received numerous awards including the Charles Judson Herrick Award from the American Association of Anatomists, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Award from the Yale University Graduate School, the Meliora Citation from the University of Rochester, the Amelia Earhart Award from the Women’s Union, and the Yale Science and Engineering Association 2021 Award for Distinguished Service to Industry, Commerce or Education.

She also holds honorary degrees from Brown University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York University, Northeastern University, Tsinghua University (Beijing), Université Pierre et Marie Curie, University of Edinburgh, University of Massachusetts Medical School, University of Rochester, and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory School of Biological Sciences.