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University of Michigan Near Eastern Studies professor Yaron Eliav is teaching again at the university, eight months after he publicly admitted slapping a Michigan law student whom he had paid for sex.
Eliav met the student, who was then 22 years old, through Craigslist, and paid her $300 for a sexual encounter in April 2008. After their meeting, she filed a complaint with police, saying he had slapped her twice in the face. (He later admitted to slapping her and hitting her with a belt, but claimed the acts were consensual.)
Police refused to charge Eliav with assault, and one officer publicly mocked the student for filing charges, saying that since she had been engaged in illegal sex work at the time, “she should have cracked a legal textbook before coming in to the police station.”
The incident became public last December when Eliav and the student both pled guilty to misdemeanor prostitution-related charges. Each was fined and made to pay court costs. Eliav, who has tenure, was placed on paid leave last semester while the university investigated the incident.
The University of Tennessee has granted a football scholarship to a student who participated in the brutal rape of his cousin at the age of 13.
(I’m putting this story behind a cut, as it contains details of the crime.)
A thousand students from Trisakti University marched on Indonesia’s presidential palace yesterday to demand an investigation of the murder of four student activists ten years ago.
On May 12, 1998, four students at Triskati University were shot and killed by snipers during a demonstration against the country’s Suharto government. The US State Department later concluded that government agents had committed the murders.
The killings sparked a wave of riots that grew in intensity as time went on. Military and political forces are widely believed to have been active in the rioting, in which thousands of people were killed and raped. The riots led to the resignation of President Suharto on May 21.
Tomorrow (Thursday) night at 8 pm SAFER Campus is hosting the New York premiere of University Silence, a documentary on campus sexual assault which SAFER describes as follows:
University Silence is a short documentary film created by Sarah Richardson. It’s a candid narrative by a survivor of a campus assault, describing her struggles with her college administration, and shows how a lack of effective policy and honesty can further compound trauma. If you have any questions about why policy reform is so crucial, this is necessary viewing.
The screening will be held at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center at 208 West 13th Street, with a Q & A to follow. You can find out more info on the screening and RSVP at its Facebook Event page.
I posted earlier about one misconception about Tuesday’s Supreme Court arguments in the case of Safford School District v. Redding, and now I’d like to take on another.
The case stems from a lawsuit brought by Savana Redding, who was strip-searched when she was in the eighth grade by school officials looking for prescription-strength ibuprofen.
In a Slate story on the oral arguments, Dahlia Lithwick quotes ACLU attorney Adam Wolf as saying that school officials required “a 13-year-old girl to take off her pants, her shirt, move around her bra so she reveals her breasts, and the same thing with her underpants to reveal her pelvic area.” Justice Breyer, Lithwick says, responded by wondering whether the strip search Wolf described was “all that different” from requiring a student to “change into a swimming suit or your gym clothes.”
But Breyer’s example was not, as Lithwick claims, offered as parallel to Wolf’s — just the opposite.

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