Alida Brill

Alida Brill is an author, social critic and advocate for women and girls. Her work and expertise span diverse topics. She has written and spoken about the personal and public issues surrounding women and chronic illness, and questions of medical privacy.She is a passionate advocate for a new and intergenerational 21st century feminist dialogue.Her earlier work on the status of freedom, civil liberties and social justice has taken on new meaning in the era of fear in our post-9-11 world.Her latest book, Dancing at the River's Edge: A Patient and Her Doctor Negotiate a Life With Chronic Illness is a personal dual memoir, written in collaboration with her physician Dr. Michael Lockshin.She is also the author of Nobody's Business: The Paradoxes of Privacy (1990); and co-author of the landmark book, Dimensions of Tolerance: What Americans Believe About Civil Liberties (1983). She is the editor of A Rising Public Voice: Women in Politics Worldwide (1995).Her writing appears in popular and professional periodicals and journals and on webzines. She is a frequent guest on radio interview shows and television programs. She has been a featured speaker at a variety of conferences and a guest lecturer at many universities and colleges in the United States and abroad. For an overview of her work, visit the Articles & Essays section of this site. For more than a decade Alida Brill was the director of a national research program on the lives of women and men entitled, The Changing Role of Gender in American Institutions at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York. She was co-director of the Women's Dialogue US/USSR, which provided an exchange between American and Soviet women on issues relating to women's lives and domestic policies. She has served as a consultant and board member for several non-profit organizations, including The Feminist Press. Prior to moving to New York, Alida Brill was a research director at the Survey Research Center of the University of California, Berkeley, where, with the late Professor Herbert McClosky, she conducted large-scale national surveys on American attitudes and opinions.Alida lives in New York City, but has strong ties to Los Angeles where she was raised.