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Work Friends: A Commentary On Laura Rosenbury's Working Relationships, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

Knowing that work is a site of intimacy between coworkers does not tell us--as lawyers and public policy designers--what should change to accommodate this new knowledge. Rosenbury rightly emphasizes that this deeper understanding of intimate networks at work should enrich and modify our pursuit of antidiscrimination norms in the workplace. On the one hand, we might wish to allow friends to prefer one another at work in order to reinforce the social institution of friendship that does so much to sustain us. On the other hand, the dangers of homophily--the robust sociological finding that we tend to sort ourselves into …