For immediate release
Contact: David Nathan
781-736-4203, dnathan1@brandeis.edu
Acclaimed journalist E.J. Graff joins Brandeis Institute for Investigative Journalism
Waltham, Mass. – The Brandeis Institute for Investigative Journalism has hired acclaimed journalist and author E.J. Graff as a full-time senior researcher. Graff will develop the Institute’s Gender and Justice Project, which will investigate inequities and human rights issues confronting women.
Graff’s work for the Institute will build in part on the extensive research she did during her collaboration with former Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Evelyn Murphy on a just-released book, Getting Even: Why Women Still Don't Get Paid Like Men – And What To Do About It. The publication of Getting Even (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone) launched Murphy’s national campaign (under the auspices of the WAGE Project) to close the wage gap.
“The focus, passion, and commitment of determined people who care deeply about exposing social injustice can make an enormous difference,” said Florence Graves, the Institute’s founding director. “E.J. Graff is such a journalist, passionate about both facts and truth.”
Graff’s work for the Institute’s Gender and Justice Project includes an article published on Nov. 16, 2005, in The Washington Post. “Too Pretty a Picture” used the movie “North Country” to reveal how gross sexual harassment still affects women throughout the United States. Graff showed that sexual harassment functions to keep women out of “men’s” jobs and, thus, helps hold women’s wages down. As an Institute senior researcher, Graff will publish -- both in the national media and on the Institute’s soon-to-be-launched website and web magazine – about a wide range of gender bias issues.
“Reading or watching U.S. news today, you might think that sex discrimination and gender bias have been all but wiped out – except in a few underdeveloped countries like Afghanistan and Iran,” Graff said. But as a number of important studies have shown, that’s just not so, according to the Institute. Unfortunately, the American media tend to ignore or downplay stories about issues related to women, Graff said.
Graves launched the Brandeis Institute for Investigative Journalism in September 2004 to help fill the void in high-quality public interest and investigative journalism -- and to counter the increasing corporate control of what we read, see, and hear.
“I’m honored to be joining Florence Graves at the Institute,” Graff said. “So many serious stories about women are simply left undone, or downgraded to the style pages or entertainment features. The Institute offers an opportunity to dig deeply into questions that affect us all: women, men, and children.”
“Brandeis University’s mission is to pursue social justice by pursuing truth wherever it may lead,” said Shulamit Reinharz, founding director of the Women’s Studies Research Center (WSRC) at Brandeis, where Graff and Graves are resident scholars. “As a result Brandeis is an especially fitting home for this Institute. We’re proud that E.J. Graff will partner with Florence Graves and work with Brandeis students and faculty.”
Over the past 15 years Graff has written primarily about social justice, especially issues of marriage and family, women’s lives, and the lives of lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgendered people. Her first book, What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution (Beacon Press, 1999, 2004), was widely praised, and is now used as a courtroom exhibit and women’s studies text. Ms. Graff is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, a contributing writer for Out magazine, and a contributor to TPMCafe.com. Her work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Columbia Journalism Review, Ms., The Nation, The New Republic, The Village Voice, Salon.com, The Women’s Review of Books, and in more than a dozen anthologies.