"The pluses and minuses of saying what’s not supposed to be said."

This event occurred on:  After being brought up twice on Title IX complaints for writing about sexual paranoia on campus, then getting sued for writing a book on the subject, feminist-ironist Laura Kipnis finds herself an unlikely free speech proponent. Here she talks about truth-telling, offense, and provocation versus playing it safe.

Bio: Laura Kipnis’ latest book, Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus, about being the subject of a Title IX investigation for writing an essay (and her investigation into the convoluted factors that led to this turn of events), was published in April by HarperCollins. When not battling would-be censors, Kipnis is a cultural critic and former video artist whose work focuses on sexual politics, aesthetics, emotion, acting out, bad behavior, and various other crevices of the American psyche. Her seven books—which include Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation; How to Become A Scandal; and Against Love: A Polemic—have been translated into fifteen languages. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Michigan Society of Fellows, the NEA and Yaddo. The essay that started all the trouble, “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe” was included in The Best American Essays 2016, edited by Jonathan Franzen, who praised its professional risktaking. Kipnis is a professor in the Department of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University, where she teaches filmmaking.

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