Alumni News & Notes
Stein and Linn Reunite to Receive 2007 Alumni Award
by Lory Hough
When asked if they were surprised to win the Ed School’s 2007 Alumni Council Award for Outstanding Contribution to Education, which was awarded at this year’s convocation ceremony, Eleanor Linn, M.A.T.’72, and Nan Stein, Ed.D.’81, say in unison, “Completely!” This isn’t the first time they’ve been in sync. Although they live and work more than 750 miles apart — Linn is a former associate director at the University of Michigan’s School of Education in Ann Arbor and Stein is a senior research scientist and project director at Wellesley College’s Center for Research on Women — they have been collaborating on gender issues for several decades, specifically on sexual harassment and gender violence in K–12 schools.
“We created a movement together,” says Stein. During the past few decades, they have copublished papers and book chapters, worked on a literature review of sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools, and shared ideas. Separately they’ve written curriculum about sexual harassment and helped conduct national surveys to see how prevalent the problem is in schools. Through the years, they’ve been outspoken about the issues in the media and in the halls of government and have served as expert witnesses in many court cases. They’ve also developed material for teachers to use, including Tune In to Your Rights, a guide that Linn wrote in 1985 that Stein later used, in part, in a teacher’s guide she created called Flirting and Hurting. Written in a journal format and still widely used, Tune In was the first piece about sexual harassment developed in this country specifically for young people, and it touches on taboo topics like what the harasser may be thinking. It even includes a checklist to see if the student’s school is doing all it could on the issue.
“Eleanor’s and Nan’s work have changed monumentally how people in the United States and many other countries now view issues of sexual harassment in schools,” says Lecturer Kitty Boles, Ed.D.’91, who nominated the pair for the alumni award.
As a result, Linn and Stein say that over the years, there has been some improvement in how schools handle these situations. Unfortunately, many are still reluctant to admit that sexual harassment happens, particularly when it’s not teacherto- student, but peer-to-peer.
“This still goes on,” says Stein. “School districts still say this doesn’t happen here or they were just ‘bullying’ each other. And this isn’t just a big city problem. It’s a big problem all over the country.”
Linn says accused teachers continue to get bumped from one school to another rather than being disciplined, and harassed kids still cry at night because they don’t know what to do. Some things have gotten better, though.
“Now there’s a [term] for it: sexual harassment,” she says. “There are also a lot more materials for people to get information. And I’ve been called many times recently as an expert witness and the cases get settled. I think there’s some fear that it’s professional suicide for an administrator who thinks he or she will fight this to the end.”
For both women, the issue is more than just a professional interest; it’s also personal. “I grew up in a sexist culture,” says Stein. “I remember reading want ads in the late 1960s in the Chicago Tribune, for instance, that were specifically for men and for women. Sexism was pervasive.”
Linn says a male teacher acted inappropriately with her when she was in high school. “It was very frightening for me. People would say that was his style or he did that with lots of the girls,” she says. “When I started working on gender issues, this started ringing a lot of bells.”
Today, Stein is working on a federally funded project focused on precursors to dating and violence with sixth- and seventh-graders in Ohio. She also teaches gender violence courses at Wellesley and, during the summer, at the University of Hawaii. Linn is retired from the University of Michigan and with more time to reflect, is doing a lot of writing.
“I’m interested in gender and power and how someone learns to speak out or not speak out,” she says. “I’m also writing something more personal to figure out how I got into all of this.”
About the Article
A version of this article originally appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
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