Peggy McIntosh

Senior Research Scientist and Former Associate Director

• Ph.D., Harvard University
• mmcintos@wellesley[dot]edu
• CV

Founder of the National SEED Project; writes and lectures extensively on issues of equity and privilege as they relate to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, especially in school curricula

Peggy McIntosh, Ph.D., former associate director of the Wellesley Centers for Women, is the founder of the National SEED Project (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity). SEED helps teachers and community members to create their own local, year-long, peer-led seminars. The participants in these seminars use their own experiences and those of their students, children, and colleagues in important conversations that in turn create communities and workplaces that are more inclusive.

As a senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women, McIntosh directs the Gender, Race, and Inclusive Education Project, which provides workshops on privilege systems, feelings of fraudulence, and diversifying workplaces, curricula, and teaching methods.

McIntosh is widely known for her 1988 and 1989 papers on privilege -- White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work on Women’s Studies and White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. Although the term ‘White Privilege’ was used well before McIntosh’s work, it gained widespread use following the publication of these papers. Her four-part paper series on Feeling Like A Fraud, written over thirty years, also continues to empower readers to draw wisdom from their own life experiences.

See Peggy McIntosh's Projects