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Yale Law School professor Vicki Schultz, a former lawyer in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, will speak on “Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: What’s Sex Got to Do With It?” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 8, in the auditorium of Lafayette’s Kirby Hall of Civil Rights. Sponsored by the religion department and the Ethics Project, the talk is free and open to the public.
The lecture is the first in a three-part Ethics Project Spring Speaker Series called “Sex and the Law: Three Lectures” in Kirby auditorium. Lori Gruen, assistant professor of philosophy at Wesleyan University and former Lafayette faculty member, will speak on “Feminism, Pornography, and Censorship: Where Are We Now?” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 8. Stephen J. Schulhofer, Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Studies in Criminal Justice at the University of Chicago Law School, will talk about “Rape, Sexual Assault and the Twilight Zone: When Sex is Unwanted but not Unlawful” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 12. Schulhofer’s talk is based on his book Unwanted Sex: The Culture of Intimidation and the Failure of Law, published in 1998 by Harvard University Press.
“Consistent with the overall mission of the Ethics Project, this lecture series is designed to expose members of the Lafayette community to recent thought on the morally complex issues that arise at the intersection of sex and the law,” says director George Panichas, professor and head of the philosophy department. “Each of the speakers is actively involved in research in this important area of normative jurisprudence, and their presentations will be of great interest to students and faculty in a variety of courses taught in the spring term.”
Lafayette’s Ethics Project promotes sound moral analysis and reasoning and their application to a full range of contemporary problems. It involves faculty throughout Lafayette. The program has sponsored talks, seminars, and other activities for more than a decade. Funding is provided by an endowment established by the late Louise M. Olmsted and her husband, Robert Olmsted.
Schultz is a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She teaches courses in employment discrimination law, feminist theory, and gender and work. Schultz has lectured and written widely on workplace sexual harassment, sex segregation on the job, work-family issues, and the meaning of work in people’s lives.
Her 1998 Yale Law Journal article “Reconceptualizing Sexual Harassment,” proposing a new way of understanding harassment as an appropriation of work, not sexuality, was widely discussed in the national news media, including a featured interview with Schultz, “More Than Sex,” in Ms. Magazine (May/June 1998); an article by Jeffrey Toobin, “The Law of Sex,” in the New Yorker (February 2, 1998); and a column by Ellen Goodman, “Taking the Sex Out of Harassment,” in the Boston Globe (February 26, 1998). She also appeared on national news programs, including The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The CBS Evening News, ABC World News Tonight, and Good Morning America, and programs on National Public Radio, WNYC Radio, New York, and KGO Radio, San Francisco.
Her published articles also include “Life’s Work,” Columbia Law Review (2000); “Race, Gender, Work and Choice,” Chicago Law Review (1992); and “Telling Stories About Women and Work,” Harvard Law Review (1990).
Schultz makes her home in Woodbridge, Conn.