Thank you to my wonderful students past and present. I took the awards ceremony as an opportunity to address professorial sexual harassment and the pervasive silence within academia with regards to this issue. I suggested that in addition to the more obvious elements of mentoring, we should add the fight for an educational environment in which all of our students can study without the pressure of sexually harassing professors. That  is mentoring too!

Some friends of mine, Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick, who are a two time Oscar nominated and multiple Emmy winning investigative documentary film team are working on a new film on Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment in the Entertainment Industry.

They are interested in connecting with persons who might have stories to share – either of their own first hand experiences, or, of any knowledge about the experiences or actions, of others.

All conversations would be completely confidential and 100% off the record.

This is the same team who did the film The Invisible War which aired on PBS, broke the story of the epidemic of rape in our military, and led to the passing of 35 pieces of legislation and significant changes in military policy; as well as more recently, the film The Hunting Ground, about campus sexual assaults, which aired on CNN, and led to changes in school policies throughout our country.

They are looking to make another searing exposé – this time about abuse in Hollywood – that chronicles the cultural transformation we are currently fortunate enough to be witnessing and gives a platform to voices that have been too long threatened, silenced, and ignored.

I respect and admire their work tremendously, trust them implicitly, and know this issue will be handled in their film with great sensitivity, compassion, intelligence and rigor.

If you have any type of information that you think might be of interest to them, feel free to write them at: confidential@chaincamera.com

Please feel free as well to help their efforts by forwarding this email or posting it on Facebook.

Thank you.

PS. – Here is some recent press about their project:

Variety: http://variety.com/2017/film/news/hollywood-sexual-assault-documentary-1202597015/
The Hollywood Reporter: http://bit.ly/2zGnq3D
Vanity Fair: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/10/the-hunting-ground-documentary-hollywood-sexual-abuse-weinstein
Indiewire: http://www.indiewire.com/2017/10/sexual-harassment-hollywood-documentary-kirby-dick-amy-ziering-1201890173/
USA Today: https://usat.ly/2zzIR6p

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-ed-why-trump-lies/

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-ed-our-dishonest-president/