Marilyn Salzman Webb

Marilyn Salzman Webb is an American author, activist, professor and journalist. She holds a PhD in educational psychology from the University of Chicago.[1][2]

Webb pursued her undergraduate education at Brandeis University, graduating with a BA in 1964. Later she studied journalism at Columbia University and completed her MS degree in 1981.[3] She had begun studies for her PhD in educational psychology at the University of Chicago in 1964, but abandoned her studies there with a master's degree in 1967 after allegedly being the victim of sexual harassment and assault by professors she had asked to serve on her dissertation committee.[1] Fifty years later, she contacted administrators and re-enrolled as a doctoral candidate, graduating with her PhD in 2019.[2]

After departing Chicago in 1967, she became an activist in the New Left, joining the Students for a Democratic Society. Facing harassment and chauvinism from the men within the leftist movement, notably including an incident where she and other women were booed off a protest stage, her activist focus shifted to second-wave feminism. In this period she also co-founded the DC Women’s Liberation group’s governing structure, called a Magic Quilt.[4][5][6][7] In 1970 she co-founded off our backs, a radical feminist periodical that continued publishing until 2008.[8]

Years of research as an investigative journalist culminated in her book The Good Death, published in 1997, on medical and legal controversies surrounding end-of-life care in the US.[9]

In 2001, she founded the journalism program at Knox College; she holds the title Distinguished Professor Emerita of Journalism.[10][3]

She previously founded the women's studies program at Goddard College and taught in the journalism program at Columbia University.[2]

In 2009, Webb ran for mayor of Galesburg, Illinois.[11]

Webb is featured in the documentary She's Beautiful When She's Angry.[12][6][13]