Laura Kipnis: How Colleges Criminalized Sex

Feminist author and Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis wrote the recently released book, Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus, which details the insanity of regulating sex on college campuses with administrative tribunals and sexual conduct codes.

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"The rules and the codes [on campuses] have been rewritten behind closed doors such that almost all sex can be charged as something criminal," says feminist author and Northwestern University film professor Laura Kipnis. "It reinforces a traditional femininity that sees women as needing protection, sees women's sexuality as something that is endangering to them."

Kipnis' new book is Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus, which explores the insanity of sexual conduct codes and attitudes at American universities. It grew out of Kipnis' own experience of being investigated under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act at Northwestern for a 2015 essay she published in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

She sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie to talk about feminism, sex on campus, her personal experience with Title IX, the dismissal hearing of her former Northwestern colleague Peter Ludlow, which Kipnis has characterized as a "witch trial," and her uneasy new alliance with conservative and libertarian groups.

Edited by Paul Detrick. Shot by Jim Epstein and Kevin Alexander.