STRONG VOICE FOR WOMEN IN POLITICS: Ruth B. Mandel, right, on stage at the Rutgers Athletic Center interviewing Hillary Clinton before an audience of more than 5,000 for the Eagleton Institute’s 2018 Case Professorship. (Photo courtesy of Rutgers University)

By Donald Gilpin

The life of Ruth B. Mandel, who died April 11, at age 81, in her Princeton home after a year-long battle with ovarian cancer, was dedicated to overcoming oppression and exclusion. From her escape from the Holocaust as an infant with her parents to her long distinguished career in promoting democracy and civic engagement as head of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, Mandel was a consistently strong voice for women in politics.

“Everybody who is anybody in politics knew and respected Ruth,” said former Princeton Township Mayor Michele Tuck-Ponder. “They may not have always agreed with her, but they certainly respected and understood her impact on the political landscape in New Jersey and nationwide.”

Emphasizing Mandel’s inclusiveness and influence, Tuck-Ponder continued, “She had this holistic view of the role women could play in political leadership, and from her position at Eagleton she constantly moved that agenda forward. It has made a difference in policies across the state. It’s profound. Her impact was profound.”

Tuck-Ponder, who as an associate director at the Eagleton Institute and faculty member in the NEW Leadership Program worked with Mandel for more than 20 years, added, “What’s most important and what people need to recognize is the national impact she had on women’s involvement in politics at the highest levels of government.”

Mandel, who stepped down in August, 2019 as Eagleton director after 24 years, was a professor of both English and politics at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and a Senior Scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), a unit of Eagleton which she co-founded in 1971 and where she served as director from 1971-1984. She also served as a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, the governing body for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and was the founding chairperson of the Museum’s Committee on Conscience. She was recently appointed to the New Jersey Council for the Humanities by Governor Phil Murphy.

Promising a virtual gathering soon and a future commemoration after the coronavirus crisis “to celebrate Ruth’s presence in all of our lives,” Eagleton Institute Director John J. Farmer wrote, “The loss of Ruth will be felt not just by Eagleton, by Rutgers, and by The National Holocaust Museum, but by the thousands of students and colleagues, and friends whose lives she has touched in her inimitable, deeply caring way.”

Under Mandel’s leadership, the CAWP became what the New York Times termed “the premiere research and education institution in the country for the study of women in politics.” She spoke and wrote extensively on the subject of women in politics, including the first book-length account of women’s experiences as candidates for political office, In the Running: The New Woman Candidate, published in 1983.

Mandel developed many programs at the Eagleton Institute to educate young people about the political process and to encourage them to become political leaders. At CAWP Mandel led in the building of a national center for research, education, and public service programs about women’s political participation. It is a leading source of scholarly research and current data on that subject.

“She’s widely known for convening groups of women and for training programs such as the NEW Leadership program and the Ready to Run program, which she initiated,” said Tuck-Ponder. “She really understood the need to make sure that women had the skills to be able to function effectively in the political arena.”

The Eagleton Institute noted that Mandel’s signature achievements as director of the Institute included developing an outstanding faculty and staff community; bringing together educators, scholars, and practitioners; building specialized research programs and centers; restructuring and expanding Eagleton’s education programs; connecting with and serving the wider New Jersey community through public programs open to all; and her political leadership.

Mandel was born in Vienna, Austria on August 29, 1938. Her parents Mechel and Lea Blumenstock fled Nazi Germany with their infant daughter the following year on the eve of World War II on the SS St Louis, which carried some 900 Jewish refugees.

The journey, known as the Voyage of the Damned and inspiration for a 1974 movie called Voyage of the Damned, took them to Cuba, where they were not allowed to land, then to the United States and Canada, which also denied entry to the refugees.

The St. Louis returned to Europe, where many of its passengers were eventually killed in Nazi death camps, but Mandel’s family was fortunate enough to make it to England, and they moved to the U.S. in 1947. Mandel was too young to have her own memories of the fateful voyage, but she was well aware of its lifelong effects on her parents’ lives. Though for many years she did not speak publicly about her family’s journey, after 1991, when she joined the governing board of the Holocaust Museum, she often told her parents’ story as a means of teaching and communicating the consequences of oppression and the importance of participatory democracy and inclusion.

Mandel attended Brooklyn College, where she earned a B.A. in English, and went on to earn her Ph.D. in English and American Literature in 1969 from the University of Connecticut. While in graduate school she married Barrett John Mandel, and though they divorced in 1974 they remained good friends throughout her life.

She taught at the University of Pittsburgh and Rider College before coming to Rutgers in 1971. In 1991 she married Princeton High School history teacher Jeff Lucker. She is also survived by her daughter Maud Mandel, who is president of Williams College in Massachusetts, and two grandchildren.

In a statement describing Mandel as “a strong and passionate voice for women in elected office,” Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman wrote, “When we count the leaders who helped bring us to a place where it’s not outlandish for a woman to be elected as a mayor, a congresswoman, a governor, or any other office, Ruth will be listed among them, both in New Jersey and nationwide. Her life’s story is one of overcoming — escaping the Holocaust, achieving feats in higher education unlikely for a woman in her time, and helping to found what would become a nationally-recognized institution for understanding the potential and power of women in office, the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.”

Watson Coleman continued, “Ruth was at the forefront of shaping the kind of civic engagement and leadership that would help this nation live up to the ideals we associate with our founding — the principles of freedom, of equity and representation for all. She did so across boundaries of party, religion, race, and background, and we are all better for it.”