It’s come to this:
[Ned Lebow] 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.
Have all feminists turned into Nurse Ratched these days?
She said she offered to press the floor buttons for people in the elevator, whom she described as mostly conference attendees and all, except one other woman, white middle-aged men. Instead of saying a floor, Lebow smiled and asked for the women’s lingerie department “and all his buddies laughed,” Sharoni wrote in a complaint, the details of which he disputed, to the association later that day.
“After they walked out, the woman standing next to me turned to me and said, ”˜I wonder if we should have told them that it is no longer acceptable to make these jokes!” she said in her complaint.
Sharoni, who wrote in her complaint that she has experienced sexual harassment in academe in the past and was shaken by the incident, said it took her a while to figure out that Lebow thought it was funny “to make a reference to men shopping for lingerie while attending an academic conference. I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that we froze and didn’t confront him,” she wrote.
Maybe if you’re so fragile, you shouldn’t be out in the world entering elevators where “white middle-aged men” make silly jokes and laugh at them. And maybe, just maybe, before you get on your high horse and complain to the International Studies Association, you should get a little perspective and sense of proportion, and maybe even the courage to say something to the person himself first:
After glancing at Lebow’s name tag, Sharoni says she went back to her hotel room to check out the association’s code of conduct. She then wrote to Mark A. Boyer, the association’s executive director. He forwarded the complaint to the group’s Committee on Professional Rights and Responsibilities, which determined that Lebow had violated the conduct code.
Lebow insists it never should have gotten to that point because he tried to resolve the problem informally, as the association’s conduct code recommends. After being informed that his conduct was under investigation, Lebow wrote Sharoni an email assuring her that “I certainly had no desire to insult women or to make you feel uncomfortable.”…
Boyer informed Lebow that his remarks had been deemed “offensive and inappropriate.” An even “more serious violation,” than the elevator remarks, Boyer wrote, was “that you chose to reach out to Prof. Sharoni, and termed her complaint ”˜frivolous.’”
Lebow was told to write an “unequivocal apology” to Sharoni and submit a written copy by May 15 to the association’s executive committee. The apology should focus on Lebow’s actions, rather than Sharoni’s perceptions of them, it said, adding that if he failed to comply, the executive committee would consider appropriate sanctions.
Lebow has refused.
He also sent an email to colleagues calling his treatment “a horrifying and chilling example of political correctness” that “encourages others to censor their remarks for fear of retribution.”…
He said it was a man, not a woman, who asked for the floors and that the other men in the elevator were not his “buddies” as she had described them. He wasn’t smiling, he said, and she wouldn’t have known if he was because he was standing in the back and she was in front of him.
Doesn’t matter, Ned. She sees you when you’re sleeping, she knows when you’re awake, she knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake.
So you better watch out. No public place is safe, especially if you’re wearing a name tag.
Oh, and “Lebow added that he felt he was the ‘aggrieved party,’ as someone who has supported, mentored, and coauthored with women in the profession for 53 years.” Doesn’t matter; won’t protect you.
I suggest that Lebow have a talk with Jordan Peterson on this. It might be helpful.
For Sharoni’s complaint to reach this level, the cooperation of an organization like the International Studies Association is required. It’s no accident this occurred in the context of academia, the epicenter of political correctness and the campaign against free speech.
[NOTE: I also want to call your attention to this news of the passage of a law attempting to protect free speech at Arizona universities (public state-supported ones, I’m assuming).]
