"What
now gets labeled feminism on [college] campuses," says Northwestern University
Professor Laura Kipnis, "has to do with dialing back a lot the progress women
have made establishing ourselves as consenting adults."
That was the main
argument of an essay Kipnis published this past February in The Chronicle of
Higher Education, titled, "Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe." After the article
appeared, the Northwestern campus erupted in protest. Students demonstrated by
carrying mattresses and pillows and wrote a public letter accusing Kipnis of
"[spitting] in the face of survivors of rape and sexual assault
everywhere.”
Then two students filed complaints with the university, and
Northwestern brought Kipnis up on charges under Title IX of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act, which outlaws discrimination on college campuses that receive
federal support. The charges were later dismissed, but not before Kipnis wrote a
follow up essay in Chronicle, "My Title IX Inquisition."
|