Not everyone enters college knowing what they want to do after graduation, or even what they want to major in. College is all about trying your hands at what interests you, developing new interests, and building relationships with the people around you.

For Bridget Thompson ’22 of Newtown, Pa., her time at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has been full of discovery, as she found her people, her passions — in the classroom and on the sports field — and her post-grad plan.

“I am always striving to be the best person that I can be,â€� Thompson said. “Whatever I’m involved in or striving towards, I put a hundred percent of my effort into that.â€� 

In the classroom, she’s pouring that effort into her honors thesis in history, about Operation Demetrius, the infamous mass internment of suspected members of the Irish Republican Army by the British Army in 1971.

Inspired to tackle the topic after a semester in Ireland at Trinity College Dublin, Thompson is researching interrogation techniques used by the British Army during Operation Demetrius, and whether those techniques, as later judged by the European Court of Human Rights, were or were not torture.

“What was perpetrated against these suspected radicals was, in my opinion, a violation of their rights as human beings,� Thompson says.

Thompson also majors in art and visual culture, with an emphasis on art history and criticism. Both majors, she says, let her investigate ties between history and modern issues.

“What makes me most enthusiastic [about researching Operation Demetrius] is that you can trace its history to our current time� — including post-9/11 interrogation techniques used by the U.S. as part of the war on terror.

Thompson’s adviser for her thesis is Caroline Shaw, an associate professor of history. They meet regularly, for “an open dialogue, which is really great,� Thompson says.

“I think the professors that I’ve had the pleasure of working with in my time here have been really supportive,â€� Thompson says. “They’ve also pushed me to be a better thinker and to critically engage with the world around me, and then think about how I can place myself in it.â€�

While doing an honors thesis is mostly about individual effort, when it comes to her sport, field hockey, Thompson works on being a good teammate.

“You need to recognize your role in the team, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be the one that’s putting in a million goals, every game,â€� she says. “There are a lot of different ways that you can be a good teammate and a successful player besides what the stats show.â€� 

Off the field, Thompson is involved in a range of activities, serving as president of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Special Olympics Club and co-president of Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. She also has an interest in music, which led her to create a radio show, Rock History with Bridget, last year on WRBC. And she’s a Senior Fellow for the Admission office. 

“Having other things that excite me, besides the sport and besides my identity as a student on campus, has really enriched my time here,� Thompson says.

After exploring many ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ offerings during her first two years, “figuring out exactly what I’m most interested in,” she’s now focusing her energy to those things, whether leading a student program or taking a deep dive into Irish history.

Looking ahead, Thompson hopes to enter the field of law. Describing herself, with a chuckle, as a “rule follower,” she says she’s always been intrigued by rules — “applying rules, interpreting, followed, violating.” Her thesis experience, especially, seeing how courts have evaluating human rights laws, has deepened that interest.

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, she says, “I have figured out what my strengths are. I’ve become more sure and confident in what I love to do, and that has helped me figure out what I think I want to do.”

In 18th-century Great Britain, honor was a big deal no matter your gender or social class. If you gossiped about the sexual improprieties of a woman, you might find yourself in front of an ecclesiastical court. If you impugned the honor of a male aristocrat, you could have a duel on your hands.

Over the past two centuries, Britain’s reputation-bound society has evolved into a landscape of defamation law that struggles to balance the historic importance of reputation with free-speech ideals. The result? A system where it’s much easier to win a libel or slander lawsuit than it is in most other Western democracies.

Associate Professor of History Caroline Shaw works with Ursula Rall ’20 of Kent, Ohio, during Shaw’s course on sex, gender, and modern cities. Shaw received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to research a book on the history and importance of reputation in Britain. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Supported by a $60,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Associate Professor of History Caroline Shaw will tell the story of reputation in Britain over the past 200 years. The book she is planning will pay especially close attention to defamation, the legal charge of harming someone’s reputation — what the damaging language might consist of, who’s being defamed, and what everyday cases can tell us about British society.

“There are big questions in British history about the degree to which the aristocracy retains control long into the 19th or the 20th century,� Shaw says. “It’s about who has control and transparency. There’s also a gendered story, which comes along with class.�

Under the NEH grant, Shaw will take several trips to the U.K. next year for research — looking at everything from newspaper articles and political cartoons to etiquette manuals and legal documents — to better understand how both British law and everyday Brits understood reputation. And, as a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Center for European Studies, she’ll draft parts of her book.

Through the mid-1800s, the Church of England operated ecclesiastical courts for victims of gossip or slander; elite men would often just resort to a duel. As British society became more liberal, and church authority came under scrutiny, secular courts took over.

British society grappled often and publicly with the tension between freedom of speech and the right to reputation. In this 1795 political cartoon, possibly related to a pair of laws restricting public meetings, a man‘s mouth is shut by a padlock reading �No grumbling.� (The British Museum)

Around the same time, growing ideals of freedom of the press protected emerging newspapers, which gave potentially libelous writing greater reach. But concerns for reputation remained high, and jurists, lawmakers, and thinkers had to grapple with whether gossip could still cause substantial harm to an individual.

In some ways, they decided it could. In 1891, Parliament passed the Slander of Women Act, which made it easier for women to win damages in slander cases that involved accusations of unchastity — because, it was assumed, women were more likely to suffer real harm from such accusations than men.

One of Shaw’s favorite cases is Jones v. Jones, a 1916 case that made it to the House of Lords, which functioned as Britain’s highest court. A Welsh woman, Ellen Jones, falsely claimed that David Jones (no relation), the headmaster of a school, had had an affair with a school employee. Mr. Jones lost his job and sued.

“Embedded in all of this is a running concern of, should gossip even really matter?�

Jones couldn’t prove to the justices that ladies’ gossip caused him material harm. He lost his cause, but not before the House of Lords weighed whether a man who found himself in similar predicaments to the maligned woman’s ought to be protected by the law.

“It’s a hinge moment in which this very patriarchal use of the law is met by a more democratic possibility of a law,� Shaw explains. “Embedded in all of this is a running concern of, should gossip even really matter?

“In a liberal society, from the vantage point of the ‘self-regulating, independent male,’ gossip is relegated to the background,� she adds. In that context, authorities assumed that “such a person should be independent of the community.�

As the 20th century wore on, fewer people brought suits under the Slander of Women Act. Still, the damaging power of gossip remained salient, and the law stayed on the books until 2014.

In the meantime, a new set of questions related to reputation emerged. These included the rights of celebrities to privacy when tabloids are flourishing; whether defamation law can be applied to hate speech in an increasingly multicultural Britain; and what protections, for example, the American publisher of an unflattering biography has in Britain, where it’s much easier to win a defamation case than in the U.S.

Rasputin and the Empress, 1932  (Wikimedia Commons)

Such “libel tourism� — when someone sues for defamation under British law because it’s easier to win, even if the plaintiff only has the most tenuous connection to the U.K. — puts the tension between reputation and free speech in clear relief, Shaw says.

In the 1930s, MGM Studios made a movie about the death of Rasputin, a famous figure in Russian history. The film contained a completely made-up scene in which a princess is seduced by Rasputin. The Russian princess, still alive, successfully sued the American company for libel in British court.

“There’s what they call a chilling effect on publication, because of the fear of libel tourism,� Shaw says. “The anxiety of that ticked up by the 1980s.�

More recently, lawmakers have worked to tip the reputation-vs.-speech balance in favor of speech. “The desperate hope was to curtail these cases,� Shaw says.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has announced faculty promotions, including tenure awards and full professorships, effective for the 2017–18 academic year.

“Our newly tenured and promoted faculty are exemplars of the scholar-teacher-mentor ideal,” said Matthew Auer, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty. “They are leaders in their disciplines, deeply engaged in our community, and focused on the success of their students with sincerity and purpose.”

Recommended by the faculty’s Committee on Personnel and approved by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Board of Trustees, the promotions have been awarded to faculty members in the fields of education, French and francophone studies, history, neuroscience, politics, and psychology.

Meet the seven newly promoted professors, learn their research fields, and discover why they teach:

Promotions to associate professor with tenure

+Jason Castro

Jason Castro has been promoted to associate professor of neuroscience at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

+Caroline Shaw

Caroline Shaw has been promoted to associate professor of history at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

+Mara Tieken

Mara Tieken has been promoted to associate professor of education at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Promotions to full professor

+�slaug �sgeirsdóttir

Ã�slaug Ã�sgeirsdóttir has been promoted to professor of politics at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

+Helen Boucher

Helen Boucher has been promoted to professor of psychology at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. (Josh Kuckens/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

+Alex Dauge-Roth

Alex Dauge-Roth has been promoted to professor of French and francophone studies at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

+Karen Melvin

Karen Melvin has been promoted to professor of history at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. (Ryan Donnell for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)