Monday, September 22, 2008

Open Letter to Board of Trustees, et al.

With yet another civil liberties scandal embroiling SIU, I wrote the following "Open Letter" for members of the Working Group on Sexual Harassment, the Board of Trustees, and President Glenn Poshard. Again, I call for SIU to offer clear, precise, narrow guidelines for determining what is and is not sexual harassment. The following two links offer my Open Letter and the NAS Statement on Sexual Harassment and Academic Freedom:

Open Letter

NAS Statement

4 comments:

callmeishmael said...

Well done with specific and balanced tone: keep going with the good work--

testing05401 said...

We aim to please. . .

Stay tuned for several guest bloggers, including an essay from Daphne Patai, feminist author of _Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism_. She is critical of current sexual harassment codes--and uses SIU as an example. She wrote that in the 1990s! Here we are ten years later. . .

FreeAlaskan said...

Great opportunity for students and staff alike to debate/discuss differing worldviews without being tagged a liberal extremist or a right-winger. If we can't question worldview assumptions, what is the point of academia? I hope there is a lot of even toned participation, which will allow for good discussion on important issues.

testing05401 said...

Dear freealaskan,

Welcome aboard. There are few media outlets for a campus this size. The Daily Egyptian is an excellent newspaper but it can't do it all.

Feel free to comment on any or all of the upcoming blogs -- and, no, they won't be all by Bean -- we have a half dozen bloggers ready to contribute. God knows I need the help! :-)