NCJ Number
163242
Journal
Violence Against Women Volume: 1 Issue: 3 Dated: (September 1995) Pages: 228-240
Date Published
1995
Length
13 pages
Annotation
On November 18 or 19, 1994, more than 100 bound volumes of gender and gay studies journals were taken from five shelves at the University of New Mexico's Zimmerman Library. In their place, library workers found library copies of Nazi publications and some feminist journals defaced with swastikas and scrawled messages; a feminist scholar at the University of New Mexico combines official and unofficial, first-hand and secondary observations of the incident and its aftermath to determine what it can teach about gender-based hate crime and what strategies might be developed to best address this type of hate crime.
Abstract
This first-person account of the events surrounding the Zimmerman Library heist addresses the atmosphere created by the incident and campus, national, and international responses to the incident. Data are derived from notes the author took during the incident; the author's e-mail correspondence with feminist and gay scholars around the Nation and the world after the incident; clippings from local newspapers; an account of the incident prepared by the associate dean of Zimmerman Library; and a videotape of a campus rally held to protest the hate crime. This report also includes the observations of Barbara Korbal, an American Studies graduate student who first reported the missing journals to both the police and the press as well as quotes from an article published in the "Lesbian Review of Books." Although the missing journals were eventually found concealed behind other journals on a high shelf, the significance of and the motivation reflected in these acts of hate are discussed. 9 references