In her essay for The Chronicle of Higher Education on “Sexual Paranoia” (6 March 2015), Laura Kipnis takes codes of sexual conduct to task for creating paranoia among college students toward what she sees as natural sexuality.  As part of her evidence for her thesis, Kipnis invokes an ongoing case at her home institution, Northwestern University, where two students have filed separate complaints of sexual assault against the same philosophy professor.  But, as I discussed in a letter to the editor, published in The Chronicle a month later (6 April 2015), Kipnis got the facts about those complaints so wrong as to undermine her thesis. [Read more…]

In her recent opinion piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Laura Kipnis complains that codes governing professor-student relationships on college and university campuses have created paranoia among students.  She cites a specific case on her own campus, Northwestern University, in which an undergraduate filed a complaint against a philosophy professor for sexual assault.  When Northwestern officials didn’t discipline the professor as seriously as they might have, the student sued the university under Title IX and the professor for violation of the Gender Violence Act.  In discussing this case, Kipnis adopts a tone of demeaning superiority toward this student that echoes the abuse of professorial power in instances of professor-on-student sexual harassment.  In both cases, a professor with more stature and power wields it so as to humiliate and intimidate a student. [Read more…]

As an earlier post mentioned (see Nov. 26, 2014), a student may be dissuaded from reporting an instance of harassment or sexual abuse through active intimidation or by means of a threat.  Another tactic is a retaliatory lawsuit lodged against a complainant.  An ongoing case at Northwestern University involves multiple instances of such suits.  Peter Ludlow, a philosophy professor whom the university has disciplined in response to two students’ complaints of sexual harassment, has filed a complaint in federal court against the university—for violation of Title IX—and against several individuals, including the university’s president and an unnamed graduate student complainant, for defamation and false light invasion of privacy (referring to holding up someone in a highly offensive and untrue light). [Read more…]

In the case of a professor who’s sexually involved with a student whom he’s not supervising or teaching at the time, is the relationship nobody else’s business?  A “yes” to that question would be neat and clean, but the actual answer isn’t that clear-cut.  A college or university campus is a community, as well as, in some ways that vary from campus to campus, a relatively tight community.  A relationship between a professor and a student, although perhaps private in the abstract, can have tangible effects on the academic community where it occurs.  In this regard, it’s not entirely private. [Read more…]