Nancy Lieberman and that icky feeling
I went to the Title IX conference put on by Harvard's Gender and Law Journal yesterday afternoon. It was okay. There were two panels: one on Title IX's application to sexual harassment and assault law and the second on athletics. I did not know all that much about the former so it was a good panel for me. But overall I thought that despite the prestige and experience of all the speakers, the conference organizers could have put together a more diverse group to speak about different aspects of the law or their experience with it. And of course I found the presence of former basketball player, coach and current ESPN analyst Nancy Lieberman a little problematic. She was last to speak and her role was to rev up the crowd to take action. I get it; she was there for star power. But what she preaches isn't exactly the rhetoric I would like to see around Title IX; and she is not the person I really like to hear preaching it. First, she feels the need to mention her 12-year old son ...