Mount Holyoke College alumna Frances Perkins pushed a social justice agenda as secretary of labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mount Holyoke is furthering her mission.

In 1933, trailblazer Frances Perkins, Mount Holyoke College class of 1902, became the first woman to serve in a U.S. presidential cabinet as secretary of labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Perkins didn’t just make history; she changed the course of it.

She helped create Social Security, child labor laws and the 40-hour work week. As reported by Rebecca Brenner Graham, Mount Holyoke College class of 2015, in the recent biography “Dear Miss Perkins,” she also founded the Immigration and Naturalization Service and used that platform to defend immigrants, rather than restrict access. She refused to sign deportation orders, laid off the federally funded mob that sought to raid immigrant communities and deport them, insisted on warrants for INS arrests instead of rogue authority, and she believed that an inclusive nation was a strong one.

I am president of Mount Holyoke College, located in South Hadley, Mass., where Perkins’s values were shaped. The issues that preoccupied Perkins remain urgent today as attacks on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility are escalating under President Donald Trump.

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Some examples: An executive order issued in March called

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