Jane Eisner ’77 is a woman of firsts. This past June, she was named the first female editor of The Forward, one of the country’s most prominent independent Jewish newspapers. Eisner was also the first female editor-in-chief of The Argus.

The year she came to Wesleyan—1973—was also a landmark in the history of women at the University: the graduating senior women were the first to complete a four-year cycle at Wesleyan.

“There were still many fewer women than men, but it wasn’t as hostile an environment as high school,” Eisner said. “There were times when I was treated a little differently, but for the most part it was just the way it was.”

Eisner was always drawn to journalism and joined her high school paper upon entering ninth grade in Mount Vernon, New York. Working under an advisor who seemed to favor men, however, Eisner soon became discouraged, quit the paper, and moved on to explore other interests.

Despite being dissuaded by her high school advisor, Eisner decided to give journalism another chance in college. She began writing stories for The Argus, and was then promoted to managing editor and finally editor-in-chief in the second semester of her junior year. As one of the few female writers and the first female editor-in-chief, Eisner demonstrated that gender, at least in The Argus office, was no longer an impediment to journalistic success.

“One of the things I love about journalism is that to the degree that anything is possible it is a meritocracy,” she said. “The difference may be there at first, but it’s such a production oriented profession, it’s just a matter of doing the work.”

As managing editor and editor-in-chief, Eisner remembers the stress and strain that went into putting out a paper twice a week. The editors would stay up to all hours on production nights, making sure the paper came out the next day.

“On nights that we would put the paper together we would all go out to O’Rourke’s at 3 a.m.,” she said. “The guys would be eating all this disgusting food, and I couldn’t do that. It was a lot of work and a lot of pressure, but frankly, it was also fun.”

Eisner, who dabbled in history, religion and government before majoring in English, graduated the University a semester early to work for The Hartford Courant at a Middletown-based bureau. That fall she moved to New York for a year to receive her master’s degree from the Colombia University School of Journalism. After a two-year interim period at The Virginian Pilot, Eisner got married and moved to Philadelphia where she spent the next 25 years as a reporter, foreign correspondent, editor and columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

In 2002 she began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania as an adjunct professor in the Political Science Department and as a senior fellow for the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program.

Between 2003 and 2004 Eisner also took a partial leave to write a book, “Taking Back the Vote,” on youth voting—a topic that she says might have been four years ahead of its time. In 2005 she left The Inquirer for good to work at the National Constitution Center, a museum and education center in historic Philadelphia. As vice president at the Constitution Center, Eisner thought her career in journalism was over.

“I felt like journalism was changing so much, and The Inquirer was becoming very narrow,” she said. “Not to say that local news isn’t important, but the whole focus was changing to restrict spending. I felt I wasn’t at home anymore.”

When The Forward offered her a position as editor, however, it was a job opening she couldn’t refuse. Established in 1897 as a daily Yiddish-language newspaper, The Forward is a renowned defender of social justice, democracy and Jewish immigrants. According to the newspaper’s website, forward.com, the paper’s nationwide readership peaked in the 1930s (at 275,000) and declined substantially after World War II. First begun as an English-language supplement, the English-language Forward became an independently owned weekly Jewish newspaper in 1990.

Eisner first heard of The Forward while she was a senior at Wesleyan. The English Forward publishes news, arts and culture relating to all things Jewish around the world—from investigative reporting on President-elect Barack Obama’s relationship to the Middle East to what the election tells us about Jewish voters (they voted for Obama more than any other demographic) to commentary about Jewish books, poetry, music and film.

“The Forward always occupied a very special place in my heart,” Eisner said. “We believe we can be a watchdog for the American Jewish community. We have a very sophisticated readership—they read the [New York] Times and watch CNN, but they want news and opinion that they can’t get anywhere else.”

Eisner said her prominent position at The Forward is indicative of how far society has come towards eliminating gender bias as well as other forms of discrimination.

“We’re happily at a stage in our society where I trust I was hired because of my capabilities, not my gender,” she said. “Everyone [at the Forward] lives in the real world, and in the real world you look at people for who they are, not their gender or the color of their skin.”

Since graduating from Wesleyan, Eisner has remained involved in the school, serving on the Board of Trustees, as well as sending two daughters to the University. Her oldest daughter, Rachel, graduated in 2006 and her youngest, Miriam, is currently a freshman as well as a reporter for The Argus.

Eisner attributes much of her success to Wesleyan’s challenging but nurturing liberal arts education and the values the school instilled in her—intellectual honesty, debate and a willingness to try new things.

“I felt there wasn’t anything I couldn’t try,” she said. “It’s why I’m such a believer that a liberal arts education is essential to be able to write, communicate, and take responsibility for your ideas. All that has been a part of every job I’ve had, and of course, it’s a part of your life.”