Dorothy Dinnerstein
Feminist activist and author
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Early life and education
Born on April 4, 1923 in the Bronx, Dinnerstein was raised in a Jewish community and was raised by her parents, Nathan Dinnerstein and Celia Moedboth, both progressive Jews.
Nathan Dinnerstein was an architectural engineer and Celia Moedboth worked in administration at the Bronx Family Court. Unfortunately, Nathan's architectural engineer business did not survive the depression. He found a job keeping the books at Mott Haven Salvage, owned by his brother-in-law Benjamin Moed, until his death at 49.
After completing grade school in The Bronx, Dinnerstein attended Brooklyn College and received her undergraduate degree in 1943, earning a bachelor's in Psychology.
Dinnerstein started her graduate studies at Swarthmore College, and earned a PhD in Psychology from the New School for Social Research in 1951. Dinnerstein did her doctoral research under Solomon Asch, a prominent social psychologist.
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Activism and career
After earning her degree, Dinnerstein was engaged in fighting for progressive causes including women's rights, environmentalism, an end to the Vietnam war, and against nuclear proliferation. As part of her passion about these issues, she participated in a demonstration that briefly shutdown Wall Street.
A resident of Leonia, New Jersey, she taught at Rutgers–Newark as a professor of Psychology from 1959 until 1989. Her early work involved laboratory studies on the influence of overlapping structures on various aspects of sensory perception. Whilst there, Dinnerstein recruited Asch and they co-founded the Institute for Cognitive Studies at Rutgers.
In addition to teaching, research and writing, Dinnerstein had a commitment to feminist politics. She was central to the first federal lawsuit against gender-based pay inequity in academia, and was an active participant in the Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice in the early 1980s.
Before her death in 1992, Dinnerstein was involved in a new project about environmental issues called "Sentience and Survival" which explored the ways in which human cognitive structures interfere with taking appropriate actions to prevent environmental devastation.
Personal life
During her collegiate years, she met and married Sidney Mintz, who later became a well known anthropologist. Their marriage ended shortly after WWII.
Dinnerstein then married Walter James Miller. Miller was a poet and professor at New York University. In the year 1955, the two had their only child, Naomi May. They divorced in 1961.
Dinnerstein married Daniel S. Lehrman, a psychologist, in 1961. Lehrman, who was previously married, had two daughters of his own, Nina and June, who lived with their mother Gertrude Lehrman in Queens, New York. Daniel and Dorothy lived in the Greenwich Village section of New York City and then in Leonia, New Jersey.
Lehrman taught and did research at Rutgers University, as did Dinnerstein. Lehrman died suddenly of a heart attack in 1972, at the age of 53.
Death
On December 17, 1992, at the age of 69, Dinnerstein was killed in a car accident. She was survived by a daughter and two step-daughters.