Journelism

Teri Aronowitz, Sexologist and Researcher at Boston University, Faced Government Blacklisting and Deals with Ongoing Funding Challenges

After she finished her post-doctoral work in sexology at the Kinsey Institute, Teri continued to work a three-pronged career: in research, clinical practice and teaching. But she faced many challenges along the way, such as the government blacklisting her research in the summer of 2002.

Once Teri decided to pursue a career in sexology, her challenges did not stop at writing a lengthy and in-depth dissertation. While she started her five-year run in the doctoral program with a focus on adolescent health, she soon made scientific discoveries that would point her studies elsewhere.

Directing a large-scale study with several thousand teenagers, Teri developed a scientific model to test. Going into the study, she knew that an association existed between adolescents having a positive relationship with an adult and less risk-taking in the adolescent years.

“I did several smaller studies before dissertation that found what the adult was doing was inspiring hope or future perspective—even in kids from impoverished inner-city environments,” she explains, pounding a fist lightly on her desk. “If there was an adult who said, ‘You can do it, you can get a better education, you can have a better life, you can get out of here…’—that made a clear difference in their risk behavior.”

Studying the different types of risk behavior affected by a mentor-adolescent relationship, she noticed that among those with drugs, delinquency, drinking and sex, a mentor had less affect on sexual health and sexual delay than on anything else.

“So my thinking was—looking at the model I had—if I could affect sexual behavior, I knew it was going to help everything else. So that got me going with sexual health.”

Teri attended a summer-long intensive session at the Kinsey Institute at the University of Indiana to get a post-doctoral education. Dr. Alfred Kinsey, a controversial researcher who sought to understand and explain sex in the human race, established the lesser-known Institute in 1947 as a nonprofit organization and part of Indiana University. The school now seeks to educate researchers and scholars in the fields of sexuality, gender and reproduction.

One of 12 students at the Kinsey Institute, Teri laughs as she declares her work the least controversial. “People were investigating things like sex workers and homosexuals who were morbidly obese and how they were able to have anal sex. Increasing mother-daughter communication to delay sexual initiation appeared pretty tame.”

In addition to completing the dissertation and earning her PhD, Teri aspired to conduct research in the field of open communication about sex and its effect on delaying sexual initiation in adolescents. But in the midst of a conservative administration in Washington, her work suffered.

“During the Bush and Regan administrations, it was ‘no’ until marriage. Around 2001, I co-wrote a grant going into the federal government about HIV prevention in young women. It was a summer when Bush was president, and as his staff went through grants, anything that had to do with sexual health—unless it was abstinence only—got blacklisted. They didn’t even review them.”

The loss of funding for Teri’s research was a devastating blow. Just as Dr. Kinsey never received federal funding and how Planned Parenthood has constantly been denied funding, she faced a struggle to finance her career’s work.

With careful work and much deliberation, she finally received money from private sources to fund her research. But with the economic recession affecting all facets of American life, she found it proved difficult to collect endowment for her work.

“There is a way, but in economically difficult times it can be hard.”

However, through her entire experience as a researcher, Teri learned the values of persistence and perfecting her work.

“You have to write four grants to get one. You have to rewrite this paper over and over again until someone will publish it. You have to realize it’s not a personal thing when it gets rejected. Take the criticism, try to fix it and go someplace else. When you’re doing work like this research, you must have a passion for what you’re studying.”