GWS Professor Brier Quoted in Washington Post Article About Nancy Reagan
The Washington Post quoted Jennifer Brier, Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and History and Director of Gender and Women’s Studies in an article entitled “On drugs, Nancy Reagan just said no. On AIDS, she said nothing.” The article covers the late first lady Nancy Reagan’s stand on drug during the 1980s and how it relates to a lack of attention towards the AIDS crisis during that time period.
The article quotes Professor Brier saying, “There’s a way you could equate ‘just say no’ with actually doing nothing,” says Jennifer Brier, an associate professor of history and gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of "Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis
“Abstinence as a way of dealing with drugs was absolutely akin to the policy of the Reagan administration about AIDS: They’re both negative arguments — or calls for abstinence or not doing something — as opposed to acknowledging the reality” — which is that people will have sex or abuse substances, Brier says, and people should figure out how to make that behavior safer.
The full article from the Washington Post can be read here. (The University of North Carolina Press, September 2011.)