Author: Eleanor J. Bader

Eleanor J. Bader is a freelance journalist from Brooklyn, N.Y., who writes for Truthout, Lilith, the LA Review of Books, RainTaxi, The Indypendent, New Pages, and The Progressive. She tweets at @eleanorjbader1 .

Half a Century After Title IX, Universities Are Still Failing Survivors: The Ms. Q&A With Nicole Bedera

Ms. spoke with Bedera about her research for her newly released book, On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence, and how Title IX has fared in the 52 years since its passage.

Her findings are appalling.

“The average college expels just one perpetrator of sexual assault every three years.

“One of the administrators … told me that he hesitated to consider something as rape unless it involved ‘a stranger jumping out of the bushes.’ Survivors’ experiences were consistently misunderstood and minimized.”

Evangelical Power, Spiritual Warfare and the Christian Right: The Ms. Q&A With Talia Lavin, Author of ‘Wild Faith’

Journalist Talia Lavin’s second book, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America, reports that a huge swath of the U.S. body politic—at least 10 million people—subscribe to the Evangelical notion that spiritual warfare is necessary to create God’s kingdom on earth.

A deep distrust of secular authority, she writes, coupled with rigid ideas about gender, sexuality, and power has led many Evangelicals into conservative political activism.

Lavin spoke to Ms. reporter Eleanor J. Bader several weeks before the book’s October 15 release.

What’s It Like to Have a Parent in Prison? The Ms. Q&A With Montrell Carmouche on How Operation Restoration Is Supporting Girls

Operation Restoration (OR) is working to change this for women and girls in the Pelican State. The group was founded in 2016 by formerly incarcerated women to provide peer and social service support, referrals, and counseling to women caught up in the criminal justice system. A related project, Operation Girls (OG), was founded in late 2018 to help female-identified children between the ages of 10 and 17 who have at least one parent in prison.

New York Voters Overwhelmingly Pass ERA Ballot Measure ‘to Protect Abortion and Reproductive Freedom’

A New York ballot measure to create constitutional protections for abortion and create explicit protections for people who experience discrimination, passed overwhelmingly on Tuesday.

Proposal 1, the first U.S. constitutional amendment of its kind, will establish comprehensive safeguards against discrimination and explicitly protect reproductive rights, including the right to abortion for state residents. According to New Yorkers for Equal Rights (NYER), a broad coalition of more than 300 diverse groups that support the initiative, the effort is different from other equal rights amendments because it includes protections for reproductive rights.

NYER campaign director Sasha N. Ahuja spoke to Ms. two months before Election Day: “We have to set the path for other states to pursue equality and provide the strongest possible protections in their constitutions.”

Supporting the Freedom to Read: The Ms. Q&A with Amanda Jones, Author of ‘That Librarian’

When Louisiana middle school librarian Amanda Jones spoke before the Livingston Parish Public Library board in July 2022, she knew some of her neighbors and friends would disagree with her anti-censorship and anti-book-ban testimony.

Nonetheless, Jones reported that she was blindsided by the well-organized campaign that followed her presentation and was shocked by the barrage of hateful comments that she’s received for more than two years. Among other things, Jones has been called a pedophile, pervert, pornographer and groomer, an experience she details in her newly-released memoir, That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America .

‘The Way to Peace Requires Reconciliation’: The Ms. Q&A With Artist Tamara Gayer

Albert Einstein once said, “In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.” This maxim guides Israeli-American visual artist Tamara Gayer in her work to promote peace between Israel and Palestine. Gayer actively works to build U.S. financial support and raise funds for two anti-war organizations, Standing Together and A Land for All.

She spoke to Ms. as the war entered its eighth month: “A thirst for policies and organizations that do not pit the needs of Palestinians against those of Israelis, and vice versa, fills a deep need.”

‘Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America’: The Ms. Q&A with Shefali Luthra

Roe v. Wade was overturned on June 24, 2022. But according to Shefali Luthra, author of Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America, “it had been on the verge of collapse for decades.” After all, most Medicaid recipients had lost insurance coverage for the procedure in 1977 and a plethora of restrictions—from parental consent and notification requirements for minors, to mandated counseling sessions to dissuade people from ending their pregnancies—had long kept procedural abortion out of reach for large segments of the population.

Undue Burden digs into this lack of preparedness by introducing diverse people who have been directly impacted by the decision—people who have had to travel hundreds of miles to have an abortion, people whose highly-anticipated pregnancies became untenable, a trans man who became pregnant shortly after beginning his transition, and a young couple who lacked the emotional and financial resources to welcome a second child, among them. Their stories are juxtaposed with those of overwrought clinicians as well as staff at abortion funds. The result is a poignant and dramatic look at the stakes of losing Roe and a compassionate assessment of the human toll wrought by Dobbs.

Separate Is Never Equal: Authors Margaret Beale Spencer and Nancy E. Dowd on Ensuring Equality for America’s Children

When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine that allowed public schools to segregate students by race in 1954, it opened the possibility of radical change. But 70 years later, the promise of Brown v. Topeka Board of Education has yet to be realized.

Psychologist Margaret Beale Spencer and attorney Nancy E. Dowd, authors of Radical Brown: Keeping the Promise to America’s Children, interrogate why progress has been slow and uneven.

The Ms. Q&A: Dr. Jen Gunter on Combatting Misinformation and Democratizing Knowledge on Women’s Health

Dr. Jen Gunter’s third book, BLOOD: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation, is an accessible look at the multiple ways that the patriarchal control of medicine has allowed misinformation about reproduction, sexuality and anatomy to flourish.

Ms. sat down with Gunter to discuss the book and how she hopes to “democratize knowledge and make a difference in people’s lives.”

A Story of the Unhoused: The Ms. Q&A with Author Roxanne Chester

How should you talk about unhoused people with children? Read them This is My Bag.

The children’s picture book looks at the day-to-day realities of diverse people—children and elderly, able-bodied and disabled and diverse in race—who are forced to carry their valuables with them because they lack a permanent residence.

The author, Roxanne Chester, spoke to Ms. reporter Eleanor J. Bader in late December, several weeks after the book was released.