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<div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><h1 style="border-bottom-width:0px;color:rgb(68,68,68);font-size:22px;line-height:25px;padding-bottom:0px">Sexorship at Northwestern?</h1></div></div></div> </div>
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June 17, 2015 1 <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/users/colleen-flaherty" title="View user profile." class="">Colleen Flaherty</a> <i>Inside Higher Education </i></div></div><div class=""><div class="">
<div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><p>It
was there and then it wasn’t: a controversial issue of a Northwestern
University bioethics journal about sex and disability featuring one
scholar’s account of receiving oral sex from a nurse as part of his
rehabilitative process. Did Northwestern demand the removal of the
journal essay from the university’s website and threaten to review all
forthcoming issues prior to publication? That’s what faculty members
claims happened last year. Northwestern, meanwhile, acknowledges that
the archive issue of the journal was taken down, but isn’t saying why,
or why it was later restored.</p>
<p>The controversy began more than a year ago, upon publication the <a href="http://cts.vresp.com/c/?FIRE/571880e4da/4c4708dc75/9b51cfe083">winter 2014 issue of <em>Atrium</em></a>,
a faculty-produced bioethics journal published by Northwestern’s
Feinberg School of Medicine. The issue, called “Bad Girls,” featured
several scholars’ takes on disability and sexuality. One of the essays,
by William J. Peace, then the Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting
Professor in the Humanities at Syracuse University, offered a frank and
somewhat graphic description of getting fellatio from a nurse after he
became paralyzed at the age of 18, in 1978.</p>
<p>“Head Nurses,” as <a href="http://cts.vresp.com/c/?FIRE/571880e4da/4c4708dc75/5c150bc126">the essay</a>
is called, says that the young, pretty “bad girl” nurses in Peace’s
ward were known by male patients to be part of two distinct groups. The
“dick police” were those who helped disabled men use catheters -- a
somewhat “humiliating” experience -- and otherwise had “no redeeming
value,” Peace wrote. The “head nurses” helped the men reclaim their
sexual identities.</p>
<p>Peace described his first visit from a “head nurse” -- whom he claims to have remained friends with all his life -- like this:</p>
<p>“It was late at night and I had pissed all over myself and the bed. I
hit the call button, upset. I thought I had had a handle on bladder
management at that point. The nurse that came to help was one with whom I
was very close. She changed my sheets and came back as I was washing
myself. I was playing with myself without much luck. She explained I had
to be a bit more vigorous and try non-traditional approaches. Then she
rubbed my leg and pulled the skin on my inner groin, and sure enough I
grew hard. I started to cry in relief. She wiped away my tears and then
went down on me. She brought me to orgasm, and I was taken aback when I
realized no ejaculate had emerged. She explained to me that this is
common for paralyzed men and that it involves a retrograde ejaculation.
She assured me it would not affect my fertility or my sex life in a
major way. My son is living proof she was correct.”</p>
<p>Alice D. Dreger, professor in medical education and medical
humanities and bioethics at Northwestern, guest edited the “Bad Girls”
issue. She says that soon after publication, medical school
administrators asked <em>Atrium</em>’s editorial team to remove parts of
the essay from the web, because the content was considered inflammatory
and too damaging to the new Northwestern Medicine “brand.” Northwestern
Memorial HealthCare recently acquired the Feinberg faculty practice and
merged with Cadence Health to operate under the Northwestern Medicine
brand, she said in an interview, and medical school officials were
particularly sensitive about the hospital’s image.</p>
<p>Peace said his initial reaction to the censorship demand was “confusion.”</p>
<p>“I suspected a small number of people might strenuously object,” he
said via email. “I was prepared to engage potential criticisms -- this
is after all a critical part of academic life.” But never in Peace’s
“wildest imagination” did he think his work would be “censored and
deemed pornographic by some,” he said. “What I unknowingly did was
prompt a knee-jerk reaction that highlights that disability and sex
remain taboo. I was merely writing about a part of medical history circa
1978.”</p>
<p>On his blog, <a href="http://badcripple.blogspot.com/">Bad Cripple</a>,
Peace wrote that he “refused to set aside my sexuality and candidly
acknowledged my sexual desire and pleasure. In so doing, I not only
asserted my humanity, but undermined the myth that people with
disabilities, especially paralyzed men, are asexual or unable to satisfy
their sexual needs.”</p>
<p>The essay was “a forthright step in a decades-long effort to reject
the negative assumptions about disability and sexuality,” he said.</p>
<p>Objecting to the administration’s request, the editorial team not only removed the essay and issue but the entire <em>Atrium </em>archive,
Dreger said. More than a year went by before administrators relented to
claims that the request to remove the essay violated faculty members’
academic freedom. But Dreger said medical school officials still
proposed an editorial review committee for future <em>Atrium</em> content.</p>
<p>Kristi Kirschner, now an adjunct professor of disability and human
development at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said she resigned
her faculty position Northwestern in December 2014 due in part to the
incident. Formerly a clinical professor in medical humanities and
bioethics at Feinberg, she also wrote an article in the “Bad Girls”
issue of <em>Atrium</em>.</p>
<p>Kirschner said she’d read Peace’s essay prior to publication and
found it “provocative” but worthy of publication. She said it touched
on themes similar to those of the 2012 film “The Sessions” about sexual
surrogacy, and so hoped it would help further the discussion about “how
the medical profession, and rehabilitation in particular, deals with
sexuality and disability.” Moreover, she said, <em>Atrium </em>had
become “emblematic” of the medical humanities and bioethics program’s
non-traditional and multidisciplinary approach, in that it was
“absolutely unique, edgy, scholarly, artistic and reflective of the
issues of the time.”</p>
<p>Of the censorship, she said via email, “These events had a chilling
effect, antithetical to the idea of the university. Universities thrive
when there is academic freedom and vigorous debate. Hospitals and
clinical care thrive when systems operate as well-oiled machines. One is
about disruption and creativity, the other about conforming. The
branding movement will undoubtedly favor the latter, in service of
fund-raising and reputational scores.”</p>
<p>Dreger said the university only caved on its censorship demand after
she threatened to publicize the incident. The essay is back up on the
web. But the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) still
became involved in the case, sending a letter to Northwestern President
Morton Schapiro asking him to reaffirm his commitment to academic
freedom and abandon all plans to censor future issues of <em>Atrium</em>.</p>
<p>“Northwestern must recognize that when academic freedom becomes
subservient to branding concerns and public relations, it ceases to
exist at all,” FIRE said in its letter. “<em>Atrium</em>’s treatment
raises the concern that it is being held to an indefensible,
content-based double standard. We note that numerous other [medical
school] academic programs and institutes publish a variety of
newsletters, blogs and journals -- all seemingly without administrative
interference.”</p>
<p>FIRE hasn’t yet heard back from Northwestern.</p>
<p>Katie Watson, assistant professor of medical humanities and bioethics and permanent editor of the <em>Atrium</em>, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p>
<p>Alan Cubbage, a Northwestern spokesman, said in an emailed statement
that the university is “strongly committed to the principles of free
expression and academic freedom. The journal, <em>Atrium</em>, is
published by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The
article at issue was printed as edited by its faculty editor, mailed to
subscribers and posted on the web. The website archive of the issue was
later taken down and at that time, the faculty editor of the journal
took down other issues of <em>Atrium</em>. All of the issues are now back online.”</p>
<p>He added, “The magazine now has an editorial board of faculty members
and others, as is customary for academic journals. Subsequent to the
publication of the article, Dr. Peace, the author of the article, was
invited to Feinberg School of Medicine to speak.”</p>
<p>Cubbage did not respond to requests for clarification about why the issues had initially been removed from the web.</p>
<p>The case has remained relatively quiet thus far, save a recent op-ed in the <em>Huffington Post </em>by
Geoffrey Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of
Law at the University of Chicago. He called Northwestern’s action one of
“blatant censorship.”</p>
<p>“Presumably, the university's concern was that the inclusion of such an ‘offensive’ article in <em>Atrium</em>
might put off some of the university's donors and the hospital's
patrons, either because of its acknowledgment of oral sex or because it
might be construed as demeaning to women,” Stone <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/geoffrey-r-stone/academic-freedom-under-si_b_7481620.html">wrote</a>.
“Neither concern is a justification for censorship. The journal, the
issue and the essay were all squarely within the bounds of academic
freedom, and Northwestern University should have stood proudly in
support of that principle.”</p>
<p>Dreger, who has written about academic freedom issues in the sciences, said she thought the <em>Atrium </em>affair
was part of a larger “collapse of academic freedom” across academe. And
the repercussions are grave, she said, since there are fewer and fewer
places left in society where “truth telling” happens.</p>
<p>Kirschner doesn’t see the problem as unique to Northwestern, either,
she said. “There is an inherent tension within academic medical centers
between the missions of the hospital and the university, but recently
the commercial interests of the hospital are dominant. The tipping point
at Northwestern was the 2013 purchase of the university faculty
practice by Northwestern Memorial Healthcare. Northwestern’s medical
school is no longer the institution I was proud to be a part of for a
quarter century.”</p>
</div></div></div> </div></div><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div> <div style="height:auto;width:auto"> <div> <div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-size:10pt"><div><span style="font-size:13.3333330154419px">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. </span><br style="font-size:13.3333330154419px"><br style="font-size:13.3333330154419px"><span style="font-size:13.3333330154419px">-Greek proverb</span></div><div><br>
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not
in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it
without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your
own understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant<br>
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