Our thanks to Elizabeth Hobson, our Director of Media Relations, who has to work on bank holidays such as today, like the rest of the team (our contracts are clear on this point – holidays and sleep are for wimps), for this. The start of the piece:
He says he was joking when he asked to be let off an elevator at the ladies’ lingerie department. A female scholar who was attending the same annual meeting of the International Studies Association was not amused, and neither was the association when she complained.
Now his refusal to formally apologize has touched off the latest skirmish in the #MeToo battles rocking academe. At issue is whether a comment made in jest rises to the level of a punishable offense, and what happens when a complaint some deem as trivial results in a vicious online backlash against the offended party.
The good (American) professor’s Wiki page is here, the pompous mirthless passive-aggressive “professor” of women’s and gender studies page is here.
I’m about to email Professor Lebow to show our support for him ([email protected]). I urge you to do likewise, if you can spare a minute or two. Thanks.
