For the Record

From: Wen-Jui Han <wh41@columbia.edu>
Date: April 19, 2011 9:41:25 AM EDT
To: Anu Bhagwati <anu@servicewomen.org>
Cc: fs2114@columbia.edu, mr108@columbia.edu, mmo34@columbia.edu
Subject: Re: Capstone: Eli Painted Crow

Dear Anu-

Thank you for your email and for addressing your concerns about our Capstone Project. We would love to meet with you as soon as possible to discuss and try to rectify these concerns. We are familiar with the work of SWAN through Kalima DeSuze, who has been involved in our discussions of this project. We would welcome your insights, ideas and feedback on the project.

We would like to invite you to come to the school either Wed morning—most of us can be available anytime between 9am and noon-- or Thursday between 11 and 1.

Please let us know if this is possible or if there is a better way for us to connect.

Thank you and we look forward to meeting you,
The Capstone Committee

Wen Jui-Han, Peggy O’Neill, Marion Riedel and Fred Ssewamala

Dear Professors,

I hope this note finds you well.

My name is Anu Bhagwati. I am a former Marine Corps Captain and the Executive Director of Service Women's Action Network (SWAN), an advocacy organization that is spearheading a national movement to end military rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment. Eli Painted Crow is one of our co-founders, and she serves on our Board of Directors.It has come to my attention that "The Lonely Soldier" is being used as the only required reading for the MSW Capstone Project this year, and that the students are evaluating Eli Painted Crow as a subject. It is curious, to say the least, that you neither reached out to Eli for her opinion, feedback or permission before you assembled this project

You should know that this project is offensive and for that matter entirely counterproductive, if your intent is to educate your students about the lives and experiences of military women. How can you know, let alone analyze a human being about whom you know nothing? How can you suggest to your students that they know or can attempt to know a woman's experiences when they have not even met her? How can you deign to be experts about other people's lives based upon reading a non-academic, highly subjective work that has been discredited by the community about which you profess to want to learn something?

Eli has been an inspiration to countless veterans, both women and men. She is a warrior in the truest sense. And she has been grossly exploited by the book's author, and now, by your department. Unfortunately, Eli is not the only veteran who was mistreated or harmed during and after the production of this book, and certainly not the first or last to be exploited by an academic institution. Not only are your students getting a biased and unfair account of these women's lives and the experiences of veterans generally, but Columbia University is now also implicitly condoning the exploitation and appropriation of the lives of veterans, of women of color, and specifically, a Native American woman.To right this wrong, bridge this divide and increase your students' real-world knowledge about the population they may some day come to serve, I am hoping that your school will invite Eli to speak to you, your students and faculty, and to share with them her reaction to this project, her own "story," and her own set of experiences related to the military, in her own words.

I would also like to offer SWAN as a resource for your students and faculty if you are interested in learning more about gender issues in the military. I'd be happy to meet with you in person to discuss these issues in more detail.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Anu Bhagwati