Felice Yeskel (April 6, 1953[1] – January 11, 2011)[2] was an American activist who advocated for LGBT rights, class issues, and economic equality.
[4] While in Philadelphia, Yeskel was involved with Movement for a New Society, which employed non-violent action to fight racism, sexism, classism, and more.
[6] Yeskel approached campus administration, armed with research undertaken or her dissertation, and convinced higher ups that the university did not adequately address the needs of its LGBTQ students.
[4] In 1985, Yeskel founded the Program for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Concerns was created, with her as its director, a position she would hold for the next 14 years.
[7] During the 1990s, she was also part of the Diversity Works Project which ran workshops in area high schools aimed at fighting homophobia, sexism, racism, and classism.
Yeskel and Ladd founded Class Action in 2004 in order to further expand this work and to "raise consciousness about the taboo topic of class and to address classism, both locally and nationally"[9] Yeskel also served as a faculty member in the Social Justice Education Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
[1] In 2012, her spouse Felicia Mednick donated Yeskel's papers to the Smith College Special Collections.