Emma Sulkowicz

Absolutely.

There's a story, I think it's in 2014, a woman called Emma Sulkowicz.

Do you guys remember this? She walked around Colombia with a mattress that she used.

says she was raped on.

Watching the national dialogue unfold, you would think that the public had never seen or heard about anything like this before, even though it was over 40 years ago that the Association of American Colleges released a report documenting over 50 cases of gang rapes on the nation's campuses.

Even though more than a decade ago we had the case of Emma Sulkowicz.

She was also sexually assaulted, and she carried a mattress across Columbia's campus to demonstrate how women are constantly being asked to carry the weight of sexual assault.

Yet somehow the public forgets these women's demands and the history to which they speak.

And as you know, I've been covering the Epstein story for six years.

But this week, Megyn Kelly called me a so-called journalist, and the woman that I interviewed last week, Emma Sulkowicz, known as Mattress Girl on Columbia University's campus, a liar and a hoax.

The funny thing is, is that Megan did the same thing as Emma to report her own abuser.

And I'm gonna get into that in this show.

Like she attacked the Jane Doe in the Cornell seven case saying she wanted it.

She wanted to be loved saying it was because she was not attractive, viciously attacking her body, calling her fat.

Then, She came after me for daring to interview Emma Sulkowicz, who had a very similar story to this Jane Doe in the sense that it happened within a university in a case that the university didn't want to take up in a massive institution.

And in the same way, there was consent to start.

And again, I'm not even going to make this about Jane Doe and the Cornell 7.

I'm looking at the bigger picture of every time I see this happen, where a woman makes an accusation against the man, whether it's Brock Turner, whether it's LaCrosse, the Duke LaCrosse, whether it's Emma Sulkowicz, Mattress Girl, whether it's the Rolling Stone piece that was written, or the Cornell 7, or anything that comes after that, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, all of it is the same shit.

Women give consent, then later they say, you know what? Actually, I think he raped me.

And everyone gets behind her.

And the allegations against him.

And how fake those were.

How people reacted to Emma Sulkowicz.

How people reacted to the Duke Lacrosse.

Because when you actually look at these stories more broadly, they all seem to cluster around similar performances backed by dubious claims.

By carrying this blue mattress around with her, Emma Sulkowicz wants to send a loud message.

Rape can happen anywhere.

The Columbia University senior made the unusual decision to go public with her story, and on Tuesday started carrying the mattress around to bring attention to the rape culture she says exists on campus.

That was newly minted feminist icon Megyn Kelly.

Now, from this week, amidst the ongoing public discussion about the Cornell rape case, pop singer Olivia Rodrigo, herself an outspoken feminist, posted Instagram stories lambasting Cornell, writing, quote, "Shame on every institution who protects rapists." Olivia also shared an image of Emma Sulkowicz, a former Columbia University student and performance artist who famously carried a mattress around campus with her in 2014 to protest the school's inaction against her rapist.

Olivia posting about this infuriated Megyn Kelly, who addressed Olivia on her show.

Trigger warning from here on out is, is all I gotta say about this.

That would've never happened without three truly empathetic men who really believed in this story.

Um, I have convinced men who maybe didn't see the story that mattered, like in the case of Emma Sulkowicz, the Mattress Girl.

I broke that story for the New York Post, and, like, it was a hard...

It's hard to sell it, but, like, I did get people to see it and believe it, um, and to, or just believe in the value of the story if even, regardless of whether you agree with her statements.

And what about the broader relationship between Columbia and Barnard's handling of sexual abuse? You know, former Columbia University gynecologist Robert Haddon, as some of our listeners might remember, was convicted in 2023 of federal sex crimes after abusing hundreds, I think 500 patients.

And before that, in 2014, which many might remember as well, Columbia student Emma Sulkowicz became widely known for carrying a mattress around campus for months as a part of her senior thesis in response to the fact that the university found her alleged rapist, who was a fellow student, not responsible for any abuse.

So, you know, there's obviously a history there and we could dig into it, I'm sure, you know, almost every college or university campus around the country.

But can you just talk about the sort of larger atmosphere there?