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Gender Justice Conference Keynote Speakers: Jennifer S. Hirsch & Shamus Khan
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In SEXUAL CITIZENS: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus, Columbia professor Jennifer S. Hirsch and Princeton Professor Shamus Khan lay out an expansive, empirically-grounded vision for campus sexual assault prevention. The book, which was listed as one of NPR's 'best books of 2020', is rich with the testimonies of over 150 Columbia students who participated in the Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation (SHIFT). Startling in their frankness and revelations, these experiences encompass explicit acts of violent rape and more subtle violations of consent that many people may not realize is assault, juxtaposed against consensual sexual experiences that range from sweet and caring to startlingly impersonal and objectifying. Hirsch and Khan's goal, in sharing these stories, is not to make moral judgments or decide what the ideal legal ramifications of assault should be. Rather, with empathy and compassion for the many struggles that young people face, they approach sexual assault as a public health problem and explain it by setting out a broader understanding of how sex is organized and what it means to young people in college.
Sexual Citizens puts forth powerful new concepts to help explain the forces in young people's sexual lives: sexual projects (the various motives college students have for pursuing sex), sexual citizenship (the possession of one's sexual agency, and the respect for another's), and sexual geographies (the landscapes, both physical and social, that shape the power dynamics and contexts of sex). Hirsch and Khan have a remarkable eye for nuance—at every point in their exploration of campus culture they identify the ways race, class, age, and sexuality can intersect with gender to influence who is most at risk and who is most likely to commit offenses. Grounded in the intimate, often painful accounts of the human beings at its center, SEXUAL CITIZENS is a bold and comprehensive analysis of a social ecosystem where sexual assault is a regular feature, concluding with a bracing set of recommendations for what families, teachers, policy makers, and leaders in higher education can do to prevent it.