Citing the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Abramson reminds the reader that many battles have been fought in the name of personal freedoms. Both
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson drafted The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in rebuttal to the fourth act of the Alien and Sedition Acts which essentially declared it a federal crime to publish anything considered to be "false, scandalous or malicious" against the American government, Congress, or President. Jefferson and Madison pushed for the rights of the states to nullify that which is unconstitutional – in this case, an act that violated the First Amendment’s assertion of the freedom of speech. Abramson states that what we choose – whether it be speech, religion, or an object of romantic endeavor – is highly personal and that the power to choose it rests solely with the individual. Individual conscience, Abramson explains, is what needs to be trusted.
BookZone: The nature of a faculty-student relationship brings up issues of potential abuse, favoritism and conflict-of-interest not just for the parties involved but for those who are not included. You offer alternatives such as third-party evaluations and “love contracts” that faculty and students could sign to preserve their right to romance each other while protecting the university from any liability. Are you aware of any universities that are using these types of processes?
Abramson: The conflict of interest strategies that universities are using prevail throughout industry as well as in academia. They’re basically designed to resolve issues around favoritism. In many universities, those policies are kind of de facto. They’re not legislated. The “love contract” is something that I invented. If we are going to have surgery, the physician will present us with all of the risks that are possible. They may be low possibilities but it is his or her duty to inform of us of all of the risks that pertain to these procedures. We have to read it carefully and we have to consent. The idea underlying informed consent is that you give the individual enough information for them to make an informed choice. In this entire issue, both sides bring something to the table. I’m sympathetic to universities who get sued all the time because they have very deep pockets.
What I want the university to respect is that these are also fundamental, constitutionally protected rights of the individual to make significant choices in the sphere of personal autonomy, particularly about who to love. So, given that we’re bringing something to the table and the university is bringing something to the table, what’s a reasonable way of protecting the university from this kind of litigation while not prohibiting what I believe is a fundamental right? So, I came up with this idea of a love contract.
BookZone: You make a valid point in saying that “All crimes are illegal, regardless of where they are performed.” Although that is true, there is difficulty in separating romance – in the truest sense of the word – from potential acts of sexual harassment. Because of this inability to separate the two, do you think that faculty-student relationships will ever gain wide acceptance?
Abramson: Well, I have to have two minds to that question, one of which is that they have gained acceptance in universities because they occur. They don’t have tacit approval. At some point in time, there was a “blind eye.” At this point in time, there are prohibitions with the threat of faculty dismissal, so they’ve basically gone underground. If my colleagues are honest, and if the graduate students are honest, we know of faculty-student romances. We know of ones that have survived, ones that have gone on to marriages, ones that have ended, and so forth. They certainly are part of the fabric of academic life. I hope that in time, my book being a small part of it, that the right to romance will be recognized.
BookZone: You raise an interesting conundrum with the concepts of two philosophers: Isaiah Berlin and John Rawls. In reference to Rawls’ “three questions” (Who is free? What are they free from? And what are they free to do?), you wrote that, “Liberty is evident when a person can act without constraints, and when that person is further protected from external interference.” You also wrote, “Berlin indicated that negative liberty was freedom from interference.” So, freedom from interference is true liberty but may also carry negative consequences.
Abramson: We’re certainly not free to do things to harm others. The prevailing linchpin of this is the notion of tangible harm. So, [in regard to] something that could create tangible harm, the government has vested interest in prohibiting [it]. Like seat belt laws. We have to wear them. The government has decided that the prospect for harm in a car accident exceeds the discretion of our choice of wearing a seat belt or not.
BookZone: Doesn’t a university have the responsibility as an institution of learning to set an example for all levels of learning? For example, there have been at least a few incidents in the news this year of high school teachers pursuing relationships with students. If the right to romance is granted openly at the university level, could it not also be used in defense of romances at other school levels?
Abramson: Well, to me, the significance of even the title, “consensual romance,” is that you’re talking about the romantic relationship between consenting adults. The age of consent in California is eighteen. So, if you’re under eighteen, you can’t legally consent to sex. It’s a crime. Sex between a high school teacher and an underage student is a crime. As you go down, it’s an even more egregious crime. Certainly, the way Hollywood presents it, it’s sort of a forty-something male professor and a young, female co-ed. It’s more likely to be people who are comparable ages; same peer group; same interests; all those kinds of things.
James Madison always thought that the biggest threat to democracy was the threat of the majority against the minority. It would be easy to envision circumstances where the majority opinions condemning these things are tolerated and the minority expressions of these things aren’t tolerated and are used in a discriminatory way.
BookZone: You reference the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Abramson: When people talk about the extremes to which a government will go in terms of suppressing individual rights, the Alien and Sedition Acts are always brought up because it basically outlawed our right to criticize the government. Without political debate, we wouldn’t have a democracy. Who we choose to love is critical to our personal identities and obviously essential to our recognition as a couple. It is also the incipient step to marriage and family. In that regard, it seems to me to be the kind of fundamental thing people should be able to make choices about.
Professor Abramson is currently working on a new book called On the Precipice of Porn, based on his experiences as an expert witness in criminal, constitutional, and civil obscenity-related litigation. “It too deals with the interface of ethics, sexuality and the law,” according to Abramson. For fun, he is also reading Room Full of Mirrors, a biography of Jimi Hendrix, by Charles Cross.
