In 1996, Oregon’s 3rd District Representative Earl Blumenauer voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act. Later signed into law by President Bill Clinton, the act federally defined marriage as a union exclusively between a man and a woman. It also allowed states to refuse to recognize same sex marriages from other states. Representing [...]

Back in the spring, Joanne Rendell contacted us about the possibility of reviewing her new book, Crossing Washington Square . As it turns out, Caroline’s mom had just recommended Joanne’s first book, The Professors’ Wives’ Club to us, and so we were primed to read her popular novels about the personal lives of academics. After reading her books, we decided we wanted to know more about Rendell’s background and how a writer who was born and educated in the UK came to know so much about higher education in the United States.

In a post on the Huffington Post blog yesterday, Fonda said she had signed the letter, which has been fiercely criticised by Hollywood luminaries such as Jerry Seinfeld, Natalie Portman and Sacha Baron Cohen, “without reading it carefully enough, without asking myself if some of the wording wouldn’t exacerbate the situation rather than bring about constructive dialogue”. (more…)