Kathrine Switzer was a few miles into her history-making run at the Boston Marathon on April 19, 1967, when Jock Semple, the co-director of the famous 26-mile race, suddenly appeared behind her and tried to shove her out of the competition.
Semple’s lunge at Switzer was captured by national news photographers. What happened next changed running forever.
Switzer’s boyfriend, Thomas Miller, threw a block that knocked Semple out of her way, allowing the 20-year-old runner from Syracuse University to finish the race in 4:20:02 at a time when women were thought to be too fragile for long-distance running.
Semple later disqualified Switzer for, among other things, running with the men. She’d registered under the name “K.V. Switzer” not with the intention of becoming a women’s pioneer in the sport but to prove to her coach, Syracuse’s Arnie Briggs, that women could run 26.2 miles.
Eyewitness to a Title IX Witch Trial
She did however conclude, splitting hairs with the impunity of a papal inquisitor, that while Ludlow may not have forced Hartley into a relationship, he did manipulate her into one. This was the essence of her case against him, despite the fact that the relationship hadn’t violated any university codes.
.. When I eventually read the two reports, I found them shocking. At every turn, speculation and guesswork became the basis for establishing “a preponderance of evidence,” the standard demanded by the Office for Civil Rights in Title IX cases. The reasoning was frequently ludicrous. Potentially exculpatory evidence from Ludlow was ignored. And the gender bias was incredible — exhausted clichés about predatory males and eternally innocent females were apparently sufficient grounds to convene this massive show trial.
.. Though it was staged as an actual trial, both of Ludlow’s accusers had declined to participate, meaning there was no opportunity for his lawyer to question their stories, meaning the whole thing was, judicially speaking, an elaborate sham.
.. But however rickety their case, I could see why the university needed Ludlow to go away. For one thing, he’d become a public-relations nightmare. When student activists staged a protest about the university’s handling of sexual-misconduct cases (namely Cho’s), they did it, cannily, at the kickoff for a $3.75-billion university fund-raising campaign
.. a feminist philosopher at the University of Toronto named Jessica Wilson, had volunteered to testify as a character witness for Peter Ludlow.
.. But however rickety their case, I could see why the university needed Ludlow to go away. For one thing, he’d become a public-relations nightmare. When student activists staged a protest about the university’s handling of sexual-misconduct cases (namely Cho’s), they did it, cannily, at the kickoff for a $3.75-billion university fund-raising campaign
.. Ludlow told me he was thinking of pulling the plug and resigning. As his faculty adviser, I advised him against it, but he didn’t foresee a positive outcome; also he was bleeding money on lawyers who were no match for the university’s, numerically or otherwise.
.. There had also been an ugly exchange with the faculty panel’s counsel, who could be exceedingly unpleasant, at one point chewing Ludlow out so viciously (over whether he could switch counsel midway through the proceedings) that he was reduced nearly to tears in front of a roomful of people. I’d never seen anything like it in all my years in academe, and it’s not like academic aggression is unknown.
.. Also, she’d had an epiphany: Northwestern hadn’t operated or conducted itself in good faith, and its “inner machinations” had been driven by a singular motive: protection and preservation of the institution at all costs.
.. To call this letter convoluted is an understatement, since if the findings in her case had been faulty, the fault lay in Northwestern’s Title IX officer believing Cho’s story. Besides, I had a hard time grasping what Cho could possibly hold Northwestern responsible for. As far as I could see, the university had merely tried to stay in compliance with the incoherent directives on Title IX issued by the Education Department, even if that meant trying to fire a professor by using as evidence the statements of a student who’d already cast doubt on the reliability of her own statements.
.. It’s an unprecedented behind-the-scenes view of just how haphazard and, frankly, incompetent the kangaroo-court system that reigns on American campuses can be. Reading through it was appalling, and believe me, I’m not unjaded when it comes to institutional power.
.. Personally, I don’t think he abused his power. The problem was that he didn’t share the conception of power in vogue in academic precincts. Yes, Ludlow was guilty — though not of what the university charged him with. His crime was thinking that women over the age of consent have sexual agency, which has lately become a heretical view on campus, despite once being a crucial feminist position. Of course the community had to expel him. That’s what you do with heretics.
Save the Mainline
A large share of well-educated liberal America is post-Protestant — former Methodists, ex-Lutherans, lapsed Presbyterians, the secularized kids of Congregationalists.
.. with the oldest churchgoing population and one of the lowest retention rates of any Christian tradition in the United States.
.. what those congregations offer is already embodied in liberal politics and culture.
.. enjoy a sort of cultural triumph, losing members even as their most distinctive commitments — ecumenical spirituality and a progressive social Gospel — permeate academia, the media, pop culture, the Democratic Party.
.. liberal Protestantism without the Protestantism tends to gradually shed the liberalism as well, transforming into an illiberal cult of victimologies that burns heretics with vigor.
.. as liberalism de-churches it struggles to find a nontransactional organizing principle, a persuasive language of the common good.
.. religious impulses without institutions aren’t enough to bind communities and families, to hold atomization and despair at bay.
.. Mormonism, the most demandingly communitarian of contemporary faiths
.. If pressed, most of you aren’t hard-core atheists: You pursue religious experiences, you have affinities for Unitarianism or Quakerism
.. you associate “religion” with hierarchies and dogmas and strict rules about sex
.. aren’t you being a little ungrateful, a little slothful, a little selfish by leaving these churches empty when they’re trying to be exactly the change you say you wish Christianity would make?
.. Sure, consciousness and free will are illusions, but human rights and gender identities are totally real.
Should Acting Prizes Be Gender-Neutral?
the most newsworthy change for this year’s awards comes in the most routine category: the acting trophies, which will no longer be split up on the basis of gender, but simply given to the “Best Actor in a Movie” and “Best Actor in a Show.”
.. The Grammys long ago dropped this distinction (in 2011), but are helped by the fact that they hand out trophies to performers in 84 different categories. The Oscars only have four acting awards (lead and supporting, male and female), with five nominees for each category. In an industry still rife with institutional sexism, where male stars still dominate the amount of lead roles available, it’s easy to imagine wild gender imbalances from year to year
.. Since then, 15 of the 20 drama awards have gone to men
.. But some might argue that gender-neutral categories could be worth unbalanced nomination lists if they shed more light on Hollywood’s deeper systemic problems—including far fewer speaking roles for actresses and the dearth of female directors.