In the emotionally charged dialogue about bullying that has grabbed headlines and changed laws in recent years, Emily Bazelon has emerged as a rare voice of reason. And so, of course, she’s often accused of victim blaming — the inevitable cost of studying a complex problem to find it’s not the tidy narrative we all crave. Last spring, the Slate.com editor and contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine criticized the makers of popular documentary Bully for failing to paint a true picture of what drives bullied teens to suicide. She also drew fire for saying it was misguided for prosecutors to criminally charge six teenagers who bullied Phoebe Prince before the Massachussetts student took her own life in 2010. In her new book Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy, Ms. Bazelon unearths the nuances of bullying through…
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