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Author Is Sued Over Book on Campus Sex

Laura Kipnis.Credit...Pieter M. van Hattem

A graduate student at Northwestern University is suing the author Laura Kipnis and her publisher, HarperCollins, over her new book, “Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus,” which tackles the thorny subject of sexual politics in academia.

The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday under the name Jane Doe in federal court in Illinois, alleges that Ms. Kipnis defamed the student and invaded her privacy by publishing her text messages and other details about her private life. Those details were central to a chapter about the plaintiff’s relationship with Peter Ludlow, a former philosophy professor at Northwestern who resigned following allegations of sexual harassment by two students.

Although Ms. Kipnis used a pseudonym for the plaintiff in the book, the legal complaint argues that her identity was obvious to many at the university and within the insular world of philosophy studies, and that the damage done to her reputation could hurt her job prospects. Jane Doe alleges that the book contains “false and damaging statements about Plaintiff and presented her in a false light as lying, manipulative and litigious, despite having reason to know that this portrayal was false,” the complaint says.

“Unwanted Advances,” which came out last month, explores the potentially harmful side-effects of Title IX, a portion of a 1972 education law that prohibits gender-based discrimination, sexual harassment and assault, and has been broadened to include “sexual misconduct.” Ms. Kipnis, a media studies professor at Northwestern, makes the case that campuses have been overzealous in applying the rule. Jane Doe’s complaint against Mr. Ludlow was used as a central example.

“We seem to be breeding a generation of students, mostly female students, deploying Title IX to remedy sexual ambivalences or awkward sexual experiences,” she writes, adding that students sometimes use the rule “to adjudicate relationship disputes post-breakup — and campus administrators are allowing it.”

Ms. Kipnis has a complicated relationship to the plaintiff. After Ms. Kipnis published an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education in February 2015, titled, “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe,” she was subject to a complaint under Title IX for creating a “hostile environment.” (She was cleared by the university.) The original complaint was brought by two students. One of them was Jane Doe, who argued that Ms. Kipnis misrepresented her complaint against Mr. Ludlow in the article. In her legal complaint, Jane Doe alleges that Ms. Kipnis wrote the book “in part, to retaliate against Plaintiff for her filing of a Title IX complaint against her colleague Ludlow and for her subsequent complaint against Kipnis.”

A HarperCollins spokeswoman declined to comment, noting that the company doesn’t discuss pending litigation. Ms. Kipnis said in an email, “I’d like to comment, but I can’t.”

A lawyer for Jane Doe said that they brought the lawsuit after their request for a retraction went unheeded. In the complaint, Jane Doe’s lawyers seek unspecified financial damages.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Author Is Sued Over Book on Campus Sex. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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