Male Prof Says He Won’t Apologize for Lingerie Joke at S.F. Hotel

[Frank Cannon]

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/05/04/male-professor-no-apology-lingerie-joke-sf/

A male political theory professor said Friday he won’t apologize to a female gender studies professor for a joke about “ladies’ lingerie” he made while both were riding in a crowded elevator. The public spat comes amid heightened sensitivity to sexual misconduct propelled by the #MeToo movement.

Professor Ned Lebow, who teaches political theory at King’s College London, told The Associated Press that he has refused to apologize because he did nothing wrong and because a complaint filed by Professor Simona Sharoni against him with the International Studies Association is “frivolous.”

Sharoni, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, said in a complaint she filed last month that she was standing near the elevator at a San Francisco hotel and she offered to press the elevator buttons when Lebow “said with a smile on his face, ‘women’s lingerie’ and all his buddies laughed.”

She said she froze and didn’t confront him. As the men walked out of the elevator, the only other woman in the elevator turned to her and told her maybe they should have spoken up. They said it is no longer acceptable to make such jokes.

“As a survivor of sexual harassment in the academy, I am quite shaken by this incident,” Sharoni wrote.

[The_Reader_David]

I read another account of the "incident", and from it the headline of this article would seem to be inaccurate.  He already apologized in an e-mail to the offended (or faux-offended) woman, but because the apology was not in a sufficiently grovelling form for the "Social Justice Warriors" is being vilified for the apology as well as the lame joke.  What he won't do is grovel before the baying mob of political correctness.

[Sanguine]

This is encouraging.  There have been several examples of academicians refusing to apologize for stupid stuff lately.