Alice Dreger resigned from her tenured position at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine on Aug. 24, 2015, in response to the removal and censorship of the academic journal Atrium. The 2014 Atrium issue themed "Bad Girls" included a controversial essay by William Peace about receiving oral sex from a nurse in the 1970s. Northwestern officials removed Atrium's online issues for 14 months and restored access only after Dreger announced she would go public. Kristi Kirschner had resigned earlier in protest. Northwestern then demanded a new editorial board including a public relations official, which faculty rejected, and Atrium never published again. Dreger expressed disappointment and a measure of regret about the journal's end while attributing responsibility to administrative censorship. The episode received relatively little attention compared with a more publicized Title IX investigation at the same university.
Ten years ago, on Aug. 24, 2015, Alice Dreger submitted her resignation as a tenured professor at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. Dreger was protesting the censorship of an academic journal at Northwestern called Atrium, for which she had served as guest editor of the 2014 issue with the theme "Bad Girls." That edition included a controversial essay by disability rights advocate William Peace, who wrote about receiving oral sex from a nurse in the 1970s.
Dreger wasn't even the first professor to quit in protest over the censorship of Atrium. Kristi Kirschner, a clinical professor of medical humanities and bioethics, resigned in December 2014 because of the repression. But Northwestern demanded a new editorial board (including a public relations official) to oversee the journal in the future, which Dreger called a "censorship committee." The faculty editors of Atrium refused to accept administrative control over its content, and it has never published another issue.
Dreger recently wrote about her "disappointment (and that tablespoon of regret) at having accidentally caused the end of Atrium. For the magazine was such a gem." But, of course, she didn't cause the end of the journal-Northwestern administrators did by making unacceptable demands for control. The blame for censorship always must belong to the censor for suppressing controversy, and not the censored for causing controversy.
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