Blurred Lines
Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus
Lavin Exclusive Speaker
Questions about power, consent, and assault on college campus have sparked difficult—but necessary—conversations. In this #MeToo moment, how do we engage in practical dialogue and move forward? For three years, the award-winning investigative journalist Vanessa Grigoriadis embedded herself in colleges across America, conducting hundreds of interviews with the survivors, the accused, the parents, the professors, and the administrators—listening with an unbiased ear. In her bestseller, Blurred Lines, and in clear-eyed keynotes, she maps out strategies to create safer, happier, more edifying college experiences—not just for students, but also for those who guide their lives in those crucial four years.
The #MeToo movement is taking the world by storm, but Vanessa Grigoriadis’ ground-breaking research into college assault patterns preceded it by more than three years—the time in which she traveled the country for her book Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus. As Grigoriadis discusses in her incisive keynotes, a cultural revolution is taking place, and college students are leading the charge. As a speaker, Grigoriadis tackles the complex social and political issue of assault on campus with the impartial wisdom drawn from her scores of far-reaching interviews. She asks: How can we help survivors move on? How do we address the accused? How might we involve parents, who are often at a distance? What about school administrators, who are responsible for all these students, while also legally bound by the red tape that holds administrations together?
Grigoriadis’ talks cut through the often sensational media noise that values “hot takes” over constructive, meaningful dialogue. On stage, she offers objective and sensitive accounts of how this new sexual revolution can cue widespread, concrete social change on college campuses and beyond. Administrators, parents, professors, and even architects can innovate in simple ways: From the way dorm rooms are designed, to dealing fairly with both accuser and accused, to navigating the Title IX federal civil rights law, to the significant affects of drinking culture, especially within fraternities—Grigoriadis speaks to all of it.
Vanessa Grigoriadis is a National Magazine Award-winner and contributing editor at The New York Times magazine and Vanity Fair. The New York Times Book Review has praised her “many memorable articles” and New York Times magazine staff writer Jenna Wortham has said she “made me want to be a journalist and uncover the things that give us all pause.”