Profs and Pints Charlottesville presents: “Legacy of a Whistleblower,” on the life and suspicious death of Karen Silkwood and the crusade for reform she inspired, with Sarah Milov, an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia who researches and teaches about political and social movements.

Just over 50 years ago, would-be whistleblower Karen Silkwood died in a one-car crash on her way to deliver allegedly damning evidence of health, safety, and quality-control violations at the Oklahoma plutonium fuel fabrication plant where she worked. No documents were ever recovered from her car—an absence that many attributed to the fact that her employer, the energy behemoth Kerr-McGee, accessed the wrecked vehicle before it was turned over to her family.

What followed was a trial of the century, with feminists, civil libertarians, and anti-nuclear activists using a civil lawsuit against Kerr-McGee to undermine the safety claims of the entire nuclear industry and win court rulings that sent shockwaves throughout American politics, law, and culture.

In life, Silkwood had been an anonymous union lab tech. In death, she was made into a famous symbol of resistance to corporate greed, government secrecy and patriarchal control over women’s bodies.

How did all of this happen? How did a dead and irradiated woman become a powerful symbol in a culture war over sex, work, and the trustworthiness of American institutions?  Hear such questions explored by Sarah Milov, an award-winning historian of modern US law and politics who is writing a Silkwood biography.  

Drawing from research undertaken for her forthcoming book, Dr. Milov will discuss how the civil case Karen Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee sounded like it concerned the circumstances of her strange death but was really about responsibility for the plutonium exposures that Silkwood sustained during the last nine days of her life. Kerr-McGee argued that Karen Silkwood was a hysterical, conniving woman who accidentally poisoned herself in a failed attempt to make the company look bad. Misogyny wasn’t just a cultural norm for Kerr-McGee: it was an active legal defense. 

The Oklahoma jury trial yielded a record-breaking $11.5 million in judgment for the Silkwood estate. The trial also left its mark on American culture in other lasting ways: the Mike Nichols’ film Silkwood was only made after Kerr-McGee tried and failed to subpoena the filmmakers’ research notes, transforming the filmmaking process itself into a cause célèbres. And in front of the Supreme Court upon appeal, the case became a vehicle that enabled everyday Americans to wrest punitive damages from the nuclear industry.

Dr. Milov’s talk will offer vital context for understanding the fights against wealthy and powerful interests that continue to be waged today. (Tickets must be purchased online at $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees and should be purchased in advance. Doors open to talk attendees at 4:30 pm and the talk itself starts at 6 pm.)