Ken,
The controversy at the University of Minnesota has taken an ugly turn. As you can see from the clips below, the UM has now ordered an extrenal review of UM Press policies. The review is a clear capitulation to pressure and criticism for publishing Harmful to Minors. The UM Press deserves praise. The UM itself deserves to be condemned for ordering the review under these circumstances. This is just the sort of action that has a chilling effect; editors at that press and elsewhere will be far less likely to publish controversial titles.
-Bill Dobbs
Star Tribune [Minneapolis, MN] April 5, 2002
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/2209184.html
Child sex book scandal triggers review of U of M publishing arm
Terry Collins, Star Tribune
In response to national criticism of a soon-to-be released book about children's sexuality, the University of Minnesota on Thursday announced an external review of its publishing department.
The review will be conducted by a panel of experts from other academic and university presses during a two-month period, said Christine Maziar, a university vice president who oversees the University of Minnesota Press. She said the review will cover policies and procedures for acquiring, reviewing and developing books.
"We're going to turn this into an opportunity instead of a crisis response," said Maziar, who is also dean of the U's Graduate School.
The review is a response to critics of "Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex" by Judith Levine, a New York journalist. The book argues that protecting children and teenagers from knowing about sex does more harm than good, and it contends that not all sexual interaction between adults and children is bad.
The university has received more than 200 responses -- mostly negative. The book is being shipped and is scheduled for release next month.
Maziar said Thursday that university officials "were quite concerned" about criticism of the book and noted the University Press is recognized nationally as one of the best. She said the review committee will look into whether the publishing division has met academic freedom and publishing standards.
Critics of the book include Minnesota House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty, who called the book's content "outrageous," and conservative groups such as Concerned Women for America.
While neither the University Press nor the university endorses the theses of the authors it publishes, including Levine, Maziar said that it is the nature of academic presses to discuss and debate controversial material.
"It takes a lot of courage for an individual or an institution to give voice to opinion and ideas where there is some disagreement," she said. "And the press may have very well done that in this case. And this is what a university press needs to do . . . to allow the entertainment of controversy, but also thoughtful and civil debate around those ideas."
-- Terry Collins is at tcollins at startribune.com .
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StarTribune.com April 4, 2002
http://www.startribune.com/stories/468/2207092.html
University press responds to furor over book on child sexuality
By STEVE KARNOWSKI, Associated Press Writer
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Responding to criticism about an unreleased book on children' s sexuality, the University of Minnesota decided Thursday to set up an external review of its publishing house.
Christina Maziar, a university vice president who oversees the University of Minnesota Press, said the review will cover policies and procedures for acquiring, reviewing and developing books. It will be conducted by people from other university and academic presses and take about two months, she said.
The review is a response to critics of " Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex" by Judith Levine.
The book argues that young Americans, though bombarded with sexual images from the mass media, are often deprived of realistic advice about sex. Levine writes that abstinence-only sex education is misguided, and suggests the threat of pedophilia and molestation by strangers is exaggerated by adults who want to deny young people the opportunity for positive sexual experiences.
Critics -- including Minnesota House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty and conservative groups such as Concerned Women for America -- want the university to cancel the book and punish the people who approved it.
University spokeswoman Amy Phenix said it' s too late to block the book because it' s already been printed.
Maziar said the review is " an opportunity to make sure our practices are within the norms of university presses nationwide." She said the University of Minnesota Press is considered one of the best of its kind and expects the review will be mostly positive, but she added she' s hopeful it will make suggestions for improvements.
" I cannot imagine that an external review, with those leaders from other academic presses, would suggest changes that undermine academic freedom, " said Maziar, who is also dean of the university' s Graduate School.
Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America' s Culture and Family Institute in Washington, said the review is " a good step but it' s not enough. They should suspend publication of the book in the meantime."
He said the value of the review will depend on who does it.
" If this results in a circling of the wagons in the name of academic freedom, then it will serve no one, " he said. " But if it' s an honest assessment of the process and the content, then it' s a good step."
Knight and the president of Concerned Women for America, Sandy Rios, wrote to Gov. Jesse Ventura Thursday to urge him to investigate.
Steve Karnowski can be reached at skarnowski(at)ap.org
On the Net:
University of Minnesota Press site, which includes excepts from the book and a Q & A with the author: http://www.upress.umn.edu
Culture and Family Institute commentary on the book:
http://cultureandfamily.org/report/2002-04-03/n -- levine.shtml
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ April 4, 2002
============================= ACTION ALERT from Queer Watch =============================
BOOK UNDER FIRE
Conservative groups savage new book about childhood sexuality, urge firings at academic press. Key elected official issues call to stop publication.
TAKE ACTION -- Support academic freedom, counter right-wing attacks on new book, HARMFUL TO MINORS
1} Read this alert for information about the controversy 2) Do your own thinking; read the book 3) Defend the University of Minnesota Press
Background
HARMFUL TO MINORS: THE PERILS OF PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM SEX, the new book by author and journalist Judith Levine, has not even been published but it's already the target of a vicious attack by Concerned Women for America (CWA), a group devoted to bringing "Biblical principles into all levels of public policy."
Another major conservative group, the American Family Association (AFA), is gearing up to pounce on the book. "Dr." Laura Schlessinger and other radio talk show hosts are blasting Harmful to Minors. Just today, an influential memnber of the Minnesota legislature joined the attack. Rep. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican candidate for governor, has demanded that the University of Minnesota cancel publication, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Pawlenty told the paper he has not read the book.
This assault could have a chilling effect far beyond Levine's book. Harmful to Minors opens a discussion of crucial issues -- queer youth, HIV prevention, teenage pregnancy, reproductive rights, gender identity -- that the right wing seeks to dominate or shut down entirely. Young people will pay the price for this enforced sexual ignorance.
CWA's March 28 press release is largely composed of outrageous personal smears of Levine and Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the former U.S. Surgeon General who penned a foreword for the book. According to CWA spokesman Robert Knight, Levine "was molested as a child and now advocates it for other children," while Elders is "not content to advocate for adults teaching children to masturbate, she is giving cover for adults having sex with kids." Dr. Elders was the focus of a similar right-wing attack in 1994 when she suggested to a group of sex educators that masturbation was an appropriate topic for classroom discussion as part of HIV infection prevention efforts; she was then fired by the Clinton Administration.
The CWA release includes an attack on academic freedom and freedom of the press, demanding the firing of officials responsible for publishing the book. Conservatives have responded vigorously, with phone calls and emails to the University of Minnesota Press and the University of Minnesota. Both the press and the university have stood firm in defense of the book. Harmful to Minors is scheduled for publication in May 2002.
Judith Levine is a New York-based journalist, essayist, and author who has written about sex, gender, and families for two decades. Her articles appear regularly in national publications. An activist for free speech and comprehensive sexuality education, Levine is a founder of the feminist group No More Nice Girls and the National Writers Union. She is the author of My Enemy, My Love: Women, Men, and the Dilemmas of Gender (1992).
Levine's book is a discussion of children and sexuality. CWA's suggestion that Levine advocates child abuse is part of their larger attack on sexual freedom in general and homosexuality in particular. The group's website heralds this plea: "Protect Children from Homosexual Adoption."
Levine is not the only author or academic whose work about the sexuality of children and teenagers has come under attack. The article that apparently fueled the campaign against Levine's book also reported on the 1998 Rind study. That study analyzed the psychological impact of various types of sexual encounters between adults and minors. A host of critics, led by Dr. Laura, focused on the motivation of the researchers, claiming their work was designed to provide a defense of child molesters. The anti-science backlash grew so loud that the U.S. House of Representatives took the extraordinary step of condemning the American Psychological Association for publishing the study.
TAKE ACTION
1. READ THE BOOK. If you are concerned about the smear campaign being launched against Levine, we hope you will do your own thinking and read Harmful to Minors. Excerpts are posted at http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/L/levine_harmful.html . Encourage your local library to buy a copy and bookstores to stock it. You can also order the book through any bookseller or the University of Minnesota Press website at http://www.upress.umn.edu/ordering/individuals.html.
2. DEFEND THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS. If your reading of the book or the excerpts convinces you of the seriousness and importance of Levine's work, please send letters of support to the University of Minnesota Press. Urge them to resist the calls to silence Judith Levine. Commend their courage in publishing the book. Amid the rising chorus demanding pre-publication censorship of Harmful to Minors, it is imperative that your voice be heard.
University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401 Phone: 612-627-1970 Fax: 612-627-1980 E-mail: ump at tc.umn.edu
3. REGISTER YOUR VIEWS TO THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE.
Minneapolis Star Tribune Editorial Department 425 Portland Avenue Minneapolis, MN 55488 Phone: 612-673-4823 Fax: 612-673-4359 E-mail: opinion at startribune.com
4. WORK FOR SEXUAL FREEDOM AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION.
=========================================== Queer Watch email: duchamp at mindspring,com =========================================== When George W. Bush was campaigning for President, he and the people around him didn't seem to be proposing a great doctrinal shift, along the lines of the policy of containment of the Soviet Union's sphere of influence which the United States maintained during the Cold War. In his first major foreign-policy speech, delivered in November of 1999, Bush declared that "a President must be a clear-eyed realist," a formulation that seems to connote an absence of world-remaking ambition. "Realism' is exactly the foreign-policy doctrine that Cheney's Pentagon team rejected, partly because it posits the impossibility of any one country's ever dominating world affairs for any length of time.
One gets many reminders in Washington these days of how much the terrorist attacks of September 11th have changed official foreign-policy thinking. Any chief executive, of either party, would probably have done what Bush has done so far - made war on the Taliban and Al Qaeda and enhanced domestic security. It is only now, six months after the attacks, that we are truly entering the realm of Presidential choice, and all indications are that Bush is going to use September 11th as the occasion to launch a new, aggressive American foreign policy that would represent a broad change in direction rather than a specific war on terrorism. All his rhetoric, especially in the two addresses he has given to joint sessions of Congress since September 11th, and all the information about his state of mind which his aides have leaked, indicate that he sees this as the nation's moment of destiny - a perception that the people around him seem to be encouraging, because it enhances Bush's stature and opens the way to more assertive policymaking.
Inside government, the reason September 11th appears to have been "a transformative moment," as the senior official I had lunch with put it, is not so much that it revealed the existence of a threat of which officials had previously been unaware as that it drastically reduced the American public's usual resistance to American military involvement overseas, at least for a while. The Clinton Administration, beginning with the "Black Hawk Down operation in Mogadishu, during its first year, operated on the conviction that Americans were highly averse to casualties; the all-bombing Kosovo operation, in Clinton's next-to-last year, was the ideal foreign military adventure. Now that the United States has been attacked, the options are much broader. The senior official approvingly mentioned a 1999 study of casualty aversion by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies, which argued that the "Mass public" is much less casualty-averse than the military or the civilian elite believes; for example, the study showed that the public would tolerate thirty thousand deaths in a military operation to prevent Iraq from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. (The American death total in the Vietnam War was about fifty-eight thousand.) September 11th presumably reduced casualty aversion even further.