Dear Mr. Pawlick:

This firm is counsel to Dr. William Pollack, author of Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood. He has asked us to take up the matter of certain libelous statements contained in two recent articles in Massachusetts News: "Massachusetts Colleges Build `New Version' of `A Boy"' and "Soundbites from Christina Hoff Sommers."

In the first of the two articles cited above, the following statement appears:

Pollack had written a book, Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood, but it did not get too much attention until the tragedy at Columbine High School. After that, he ran from television show to television show, from Oprah to Dateline NBC, to say, "The boys in Littleton are the tip of the iceberg. And the iceberg is all boys." After that his book shot to the top of the bestsellers and he became a rich man.

Both articles show a complete miscomprehension of Dr. Pollack's work, and an indifference to the facts. The libel laws, of course, do not prohibit sloppy thinking but they do prohibit allegations of fact that would tend to damage the standing of the subject in his community. It is such statements--though not necessarily all of them--that I will address here.

The fact is that Real Boys was on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list a year before the tragedy at Columbine High School. It was also, however, well‑received by those in Dr. Pollack's profession. It was favorably reviewed in the New England Journal of Medicine, a rare occurrence for a non‑academic book.

As for Dr. Pollack's media appearances: he appeared on "Oprah" a matter of weeks before the Columbine shooting occurred. (The day after his appearance on Oprah, Real Boys was the #1 bestseller on Amazon.com.) In that appearance, Oprah referred to some earlier school shootings, and asked Dr. Pollack if he thought that such a thing could recur. He responded that it could, for the reasons discussed in the book. Not surprisingly, after the shooting at Columbine, Oprah invited Dr. Pollack to appear on her show again. As for the notion that all this made Dr. Pollack a rich man, it is a pure fabrication.

In the "Soundbites" article, the headline "Pollack of Harvard Medical School Seeks Sensational Press" appears. The headlines, we gather, are your own invention. This one directly accuses Dr. Pollack of something for which there is not the slightest evidence. The next headline is "Pollack: Boys Should Stay in Doll Corner." This deliberately misrepresents Dr. Pollack's position. He does not urge that boys stay in the doll comer, only that they not be prohibited by rigid social enforcement from doing so if they choose. A large part of Dr. Pollack's thesis is that by preventing boys from following their instincts and expressing their natures, social enforcement contributes to aggression and violence. Your misrepresentation of his position is abetted by an improperly truncated quotation from a scholarly treatise co-authored by Dr. Pollack and published in 1995. The full quotation is:

As we raise the next generation, the boys who will become men in the twenty-first century, we look forward to a time when these boys will be able to safely stay in the `doll corner' as long as they wish, without being taunted or called "sissy" or "faggot." Then parents will be able to raise their sons as well as their daughters to be human partners, sharing the varied and diverse capacities for instrumental and expressive ways of being‑no longer bifurcated along rigid lines of gender.

And had you bothered to read the treatise from which Ms. Sommers improperly quotes, you would have discovered that the succeeding paragraph talks about reducing aggression and achieving a more harmonious world for adult men and women. There is no attempt "to force" boys into anything. There is no advocacy of denying boys the right to play tag, or any such stuff. Quite to the contrary, Dr. Pollack's is an academic model of balance, respectfulness, choice and violence reduction --set down, I might add, in a treatise that has been widely and favorably reviewed in the academic literature. Ms. Sommers attempts to paint Dr. Pollack as an ideologue for radical feminism, without citing any statement from his work that supports that.

I do not wish to engage too long in intellectual argument, but I think it should have occurred to you to doubt the reliability of Ms. Sommers' analysis. Her own theories fixate on the problem of sons who grow up without their fathers. This is, undeniably, a very serious problem, but the shootings at Columbine were carried out by boys who lived at home with their own fathers. The pathology of those boys is, of course, exactly what Dr. Pollack has been trying to address.

In the section headlined "Harvard Medical School Released Pollack's Study Based on News Value", you repeat without reflection or investigation Ms. Sommers' account of her dealings with McLean Hospital. Sommers claims to have ordered from McLean Hospital a copy of Dr. Pollack's study "Listening to Boys' Voices." Her description of it matches nothing with which Dr. Pollack is familiar. Reading her description, one would think that Dr. Pollack had violated all the norms of science and scholarship, basing sweeping findings on "vaguely described tests," and that his research had never been subjected to (and, by clear implication, would never survive) the scrutiny of his peers. In fact, Dr. Pollack's work is based not only on his own research but on his review of all the relevant published research. All of this, as well as the tests and methodology used in his own research, are meticulously described in his paper, "The Sacrifice of Isaac: Toward a New Psychology of Boys and Men." This paper, you should know, appeared in the peer‑reviewed Bulletin of the Society for the Psychological Study of Masculinity (Division 51, APA), Volume 4, #1, Winter 1999, pp. 7‑14.

All of Ms. Sommers' badly aimed venom would be bad enough were it published in the scholarly press, where Dr. Pollack could defend himself on level ground. Instead, it has been published in a periodical distributed to schools. The potential damage to Dr. Pollack's standing in the local community, where by necessity he does his research, is devastating. He relies on the trust of children and their parents and teachers in order to conduct his research. You have painted him, falsely, as a charlatan and a publicity hound. This is libelous and it must be corrected.

Without prejudice to what we will seek at trial should it become necessary to take legal action, Dr. Pollack is willing to waive his claims if the Massachusetts News promptly publishes an editorial acknowledging that serious factual errors exist in both of the two articles described here, and that these errors were published in reliance on Ms. Sommers' work, with no independent verification by the Massachusetts News.

            Without prejudice to what we will seek at trial should it become necessary to take legal action, Dr. Pollack is willing to waive his claims if the Massachusetts News promptly publishes an editorial acknowledging that serious factual errors exist in both of the two articles described here, and that these errors were published in reliance on Ms. Sommers’ work, with no independent verification by the Massachusetts News.

Finally, we understand that you intend to publish further analysis of Dr. Pollack and his work. In light of what has happened, we must insist that he be given the courtesy of a prior review and the opportunity to correct factual misstatements.

If I do not hear from you promptly and constructively on this mater, my client has instructed me to file for libel. I hope that can be avoided, but the matter is in your hands.

Sincerely,

William S. Strong

Massachusetts News
One Cameron Street
Wellesley, Massachusetts 02184

November 8, 2000
William S. Strong, Esquire
One Bowdoin Square
Boston, MA 02114

            Re: Dr. Willliam Pollack

Dear Attorney Strong:

I am happy that we are both attempting to arrive at the truth in this very important subject - the children of Massachusetts. It has been alleged that Dr. Pollack and others believe that we need to change the very nature of boys. There are many others who disagree strongly with his premise.

You and I agree that we must have a healthy and robust debate about such an issue which is so important to our entire society.

Any such debate is fraught with the peril of hurting someone’s feelings. We have tried very hard in the articles we have written to be accurate and fair. We believe we have been eminently evenhanded. If we have failed to do so, we certainly wish to correct the record.

We will be publishing your letter on our Internet site so that people can make their own judgments.

In addition, we will be happy to submit to you the next analysis we do of Dr. Pollack’s work before it is published. Because of the nature of the newspaper business we will be unable to give you a large amount of time before it is published, but it will be adequate. If there are factual errors in our story, we will correct them. If we disagree on that point, we will print your rebuttal to our article.

In a separate document, I am responding specifically to the allegations in your letter.

                                                            Sincerely,

Massachusetts News Comments on Letter from
Atty. William S. Strong of November 6, 2000

Caveat – It is absolutely true that we relied upon the book, The War Against Boys, by Prof. Sommers. We had, and still have, no reason to doubt her credibility. Our articles were in the nature of book reviews. Prof. Sommers is a well-known academic with a Ph.D. from Brandeis. A former professor at Clark University, she is presently W. H. Brady Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a prestigious institution. We have every reason to rely upon her credibility.

Paragraph #4 - We are unable to agree that our statement is inaccurate. You do not tell us how many books were sold before and after Dr. Pollack appeared on Oprah after the Columbine incident. If you could provide those numbers, we would know whether it was accurate. As to whether or not he became a rich man, it would appear obvious that he did, but we would welcome any information to the contrary.

Paragraph #7 – You state that Dr. Pollack appeared on Oprah “a matter of weeks before the Columbine shooting occurred.” This appears to be disingenuous because you admit that he was on her show two times. Our statement was obviously based upon the second appearance. We made our statement based upon the following in Dr. Sommers’ book: “[Pollack’s book] had been moderately successful before the Columbine High School shootings in April 1999. But it really took off when a startled public, hungry for expert counsel on what was wrong with the nation’s boys, saw in Pollack a confident authority. Pollack appeared on Oprah, 48 Hours, CBS This Morning and Dateline NBC to tell about his research finding that a silent crisis was engulfing American boys.”

            Again, you state that it is “pure fabrication” that this made Dr. Pollack a rich man. We would appreciate proof of your statement.

Paragraph #8 – Our statement that he seeks sensational press is self-evident from the passage that is quoted from Dr. Sommers’ book where she cites many of his statements. If her quote is accurate that he, for example, told Newsweek magazine, “Boys are in silent crisis. The only time we notice is when they pull the trigger,” then there is evidence he is seeking the sensational. You are correct that the next headline would be better if it stated, “Pollack: Boys Should Stay in Doll Corner As Long As They Want,” but headlines can never be totally complete because of the limit on words. If this one is too truncated, the text that follows explains it clearly.

Paragraph #9 – The quotation from Prof. Pollack that you cite is taken from Dr. Sommers’ book. We have no access to Prof. Pollack’s full citation except what you have told us.

Paragraph #10 – Whether or not Prof. Pollack is an “academic model of balance” is what this debate is about.

Paragraph #11 – This is Dr. Sommers’ point. The pathology of these two boys who lived with their parents cannot be extrapolated to a large number of boys in the country, much less to all of them, as Prof. Pollack has done.

Paragraph #12 – This is a serious charge you make against Dr. Sommers. Obviously, we do not know who is telling the truth. We will attempt to discover it.

Paragraph #13 – Why do you write in your letter that the material we used from Dr. Sommers came from a “periodical distributed to schools?” It all came from her book.

Paragraph #14 & #15 – We will be eager to publish any corrections, but we are unaware of any “serious factual errors” at this point. We will forward to you for your comment the next article that we print.