Journalism professor, activist dies at 64 http://www.nyunews.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/11/10/45541b82efbdb
by Josh Burd and Nick Brennan Staff Writers
November 10, 2006 Ellen Willis, an NYU journalism professor, writer and cultural critic whose four-decade career was driven by feminist politics and activism, died yesterday morning at her home in Manhattan. She was 64.
Willis was diagnosed with lung cancer in February 2005, her family said. Though she underwent various treatments, including surgery and chemotherapy, the cancer spread to other parts of her body this past October.
Willis was most recently the director and founder of the cultural reporting and criticism concentration in the graduate journalism program. She had an extensive writing career, working as a columnist and senior editor for The Village Voice, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and as the first pop music critic for The New Yorker.
Her husband, CUNY Graduate Center professor Stanley Aronowitz, called her "one of the founders of contemporary feminism" and said she was "influential to thousands of people."
During her writing career, Willis criticized social conservatism and what she called moral authoritarianism and was one of the founding members of Redstockings Women's Liberation Movement, a radical feminist group of the 1970s.
"As a teacher, as an editor and as a writer, she was unsurpassed," Aronowitz said. "One of the reasons she was unsurpassed was she was brave, she was courageous and not one to shrink behind controversy."
Robert Boynton, the director of NYU's magazine journalism program, said Willis was a warm person receptive to all views, despite her staunch beliefs.
"She was very special," he said. "She had very radical politics on feminism and culture, yet she was so welcoming of intelligent opposition to her ideas."
Willis, a faculty member in the journalism department for 15 years, founded the cultural reporting and criticism concentration in 1995.
"[Willis was a] very beloved and respected member of the faculty," journalism department chair Brooke Kroeger said, adding that Willis was still teaching classes and "soldiering on to the end."
Willis is survived by her husband, Stanley Aronowitz, her daughter, Nona Willis-Aronowitz, and her stepchildren and grandchildren. Her family will hold a memorial service on Sunday at the Riverside Chapel on 76th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. She will be buried in Montefiore Cemetery in St. Alban's, Queens.
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