case study about harassment

Online Harassment Case Studies

Below you’ll find case studies of people in the U.S. who pursued legal action in an effort to defend themselves from online abuse.

Harassment/Threats

In 2016, Andrew Anglin, publisher of the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer, called on his readers to engage in a “ troll storm ” against a Jewish woman in Montana named Tanya Gersh and her family. Confronted with a barrage of threats and hateful messages, she and her family fled their home. With the assistance of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Gersh filed suit against Anglin for “invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress and violation of the Montana Anti-Intimidation Act.” A federal magistrate judge ruled against Anglin in 2019 after he failed to appear in court, ordering him to pay over $14 million in damages to Gersh.

In the landmark case of Elonis v. United States , a man in the process of divorcing his wife posted seemingly threatening song lyrics on Facebook. Anthony Elonis included disclaimers that the violent lyrics were “fictitious” and “therapeutic.” Elonis was prosecuted under federal law (18 U.S.C. § 875(c)) which prohibits making threats over the internet. The Supreme Court ruled that this provision of federal law required that prosecutors allege and prove that the defendant had the “intent” to commit a crime. The court determined that it did not matter whether a reasonable person would have been threatened by the statement. What mattered is whether the actual defendant had the subjective intent to threaten. In effect, this decision significantly increased the difficulty of prosecuting the posting of threats on social media.

Leonard Pozner, the father of a victim of the Sandy Hook school shooting, was being harassed by Wolfgang Halbig, a far-right conspiracy theorist and Infowars contributor who claimed that the shooting was a government-sponsored hoax. Starting in 2014, Halbig released sensitive personal information on Pozner, including a 100-page background report with Pozner’s home address. Halbig also continually emailed Pozner’s Social Security Number, birthday, and other identifying information to news outlets and police departments. Pozner currently lives in hiding after being subjected to a barrage of threats from Infowars-fueled extremists. In 2020, after Pozner filed a complaint against Halbig for unlawful possession of personal identification information, a crime under Florida law , Halbig was arrested .

In 2018, Jackson Cosko, a former aide to U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan, illegally accessed congressional computers and shared personal information about five Republican senators, including home addresses and phone numbers. Cosko admitted to doing so after being upset by the confirmation proceedings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Cosko was charged with multiple felonies under federal law ( including making public restricted personal information, threats in interstate communications, unauthorized access of a government computer, and identity theft). He pled guilty and was ultimately sentenced to four years in prison. The judge was particularly concerned by the political motivations of the perpetrator, stating, “It was a rather vicious offense. That was totally unjustified… We need to send a message out there. We need to have some deterrent and community understanding.”

Nonconsensual Intimate Imagery

In 2014, a woman (referred to as Jane Doe in court filings) filed a civil suit against her ex-boyfriend (David Elam II) when he shared nude photos and videos of her following their breakup. Elam, however, went further than posting the images online; he also sent links to Doe’s mother and a law school classmate, and impersonated Doe on dating and pornographic websites. This continued even after Doe had secured a restraining order against him. Doe’s lawsuit claims included “copyright infringement, online impersonation with intent to harm, stalking and the intentional infliction of emotional distress.” Because Doe had originally transmitted the photos to Elam consensually, she ultimately had no choice but to copyright her breasts in order to successfully get the images taken down. In 2018, a federal district judge ruled in favor of Doe, ordering Elam to pay $6.45 million in damages and destroy the photos and videos.

In 2019, Representative Katie Hill resigned from Congress after nude photos of her were published by conservative media outlets Red State and The Daily Mail. Hill sued the news sites under California’s civil nonconsensual intimate imagery law . The defendants filed Anti-SLAPP motions to dismiss the lawsuits, claiming that the lawsuit infringed upon their constitutionally protected speech and the case lacked merit because the images were an issue of public interest. In 2021, a judge ruled against Hill, dismissing the case under California’s Anti-SLAPP statute. Because the images showed Hill with a campaign worker and using drugs, the judge opined that the photos reflected on Hill’s “character, judgment and qualifications for her Congressional position,” information which the judge deemed to be of public interest. Carrie Goldberg, Hill’s attorney and a pioneer in online abuse law, stated: “Anybody who dares enter the public eye should now have legitimate concern that old nude and sexual images can be shared widely and published by any person or media purporting to have journalistic intentions.”

Cyberstalking/Violating Restraining Orders

After multiple instances of physical abuse over several years, a woman was granted a protective order (aka, a restraining order) against her abuser, Parris Deshaunte Evitt, in 2017. Evitt then turned his harassment and threats to the virtual realm, using texts, phone calls, emails, and Facebook messages to contact the victim over the course of two years. In 2020, Evitt was found guilty of violating the protective order and sentenced to nearly four years in prison. He was also ordered to pay compensation for the victim’s hotel costs after she fled her home in the face of his threats.

Therese Bottomly, the editor of The Oregonian , repeatedly received calls and emails from a local man denying that mass shootings, including the Sandy Hook massacre, had ever taken place. Bottomly told him to cease these communications; in response, he sent her a message with her home address and symbols of death. At the urging of the police, Bottomly successfully filed for a protective order (aka, a restraining order) against him. Before the order could be served, he was indicted by a grand jury for stalking and harassing Bottomly and promptly arrested.

Cyber Harassment

After a student defames a middle school teacher on social media, the teacher confronts the student in class and posts a video of the confrontation online.

In many ways, social media platforms have created great benefits for our societies by expanding and diversifying the ways people communicate with each other, and yet these platforms also have the power to cause harm. Posting hurtful messages about other people is a form of harassment known as cyberbullying. Some acts of cyberbullying may not only be considered slanderous, but also lead to serious consequences. In 2010, Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi jumped to his death a few days after his roommate used a webcam to observe and tweet about Tyler’s sexual encounter with another man. Jane Clementi, Tyler’s mother, stated:

“In this digital world, we need to teach our youngsters that their actions have consequences, that their words have real power to hurt or to help. They must be encouraged to choose to build people up and not tear them down.”

In 2013, Idalia Hernández Ramos, a middle school teacher in Mexico, was a victim of cyber harassment. After discovering that one of her students tweeted that the teacher was a “bitch” and a “whore,” Hernández confronted the girl during a lesson on social media etiquette. Inquiring why the girl would post such hurtful messages that could harm the teacher’s reputation, the student meekly replied that she was upset at the time. The teacher responded that she was very upset by the student’s actions. Demanding a public apology in front of the class, Hernández stated that she would not allow “young brats” to call her those names. Hernández uploaded a video of this confrontation online, attracting much attention.

While Hernández was subject to cyber harassment, some felt she went too far by confronting the student in the classroom and posting the video for the public to see, raising concerns over the privacy and rights of the student. Sameer Hinduja, who writes for the Cyberbullying Research Center, notes, “We do need to remain gracious and understanding towards teens when they demonstrate immaturity.” Confronting instances of a teenager venting her anger may infringe upon her basic rights to freedom of speech and expression. Yet, as Hinduja explains, teacher and student were both perpetrators and victims of cyber harassment. All the concerns of both parties must be considered and, as Hinduja wrote, “The worth of one’s dignity should not be on a sliding scale depending on how old you are.”

Discussion Questions

1. In trying to teach the student a lesson about taking responsibility for her actions, did the teacher go too far and become a bully? Why or why not? Does she deserve to be fired for her actions?

2. What punishment does the student deserve? Why?

3. Who is the victim in this case? The teacher or the student? Was one victimized more than the other? Explain.

4. Do victims have the right to defend themselves against bullies? What if they go through the proper channels to report bullying and it doesn’t stop?

5. How should compassion play a role in judging other’s actions?

6. How are factors like age and gender used to “excuse” unethical behavior? (ie. “Boys will be boys” or “She’s too young/old to understand that what she did is wrong”) Can you think of any other factors that are sometimes used to excuse unethical behavior?

7. How is cyberbullying similar or different from face-to-face bullying? Is one more harmful than the other? Explain.

8. Do you know anyone who has been the victim of cyber-bullying? What types of harm did this person experience? Why or why not? Does she deserve to be fired for her actions?

Causing Harm

Causing harm explores the types of harm that may be caused to people or groups and the potential reasons we may have for justifying these harms.

Bibliography

Teacher suspended after giving student a twitter lesson http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/world/americas/mexico-teacher-twitter/index.html

Pros and Cons of Social Media in the Classroom http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2012/01/19/Pros-and-Cons-of-Social-Media-in-the-Classroom.aspx?Page=1

How to Use Twitter in the Classroom http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2011/06/23/how-to-use-twitter-in-the-classroom/

Twitter is Turning Into a Cyberbullying Playground http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/08/08/twitter-turning-cyberbullying-playground

Can Social Media and School Policies be “Friends”? http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/policy-priorities/vol17/num04/Can-Social-Media-and-School-Policies-be-%C2%A3Friends%C2%A3%C2%A2.aspx

What Are the Free Expression Rights of Students In Public Schools Under the First Amendment? http://www.firstamendmentschools.org/freedoms/faq.aspx?id=12991

Teacher Shames Student in Classroom After Student Bullies Teacher on Twitter http://cyberbullying.us/teacher-shames-student-in-classroom-after-student-bullies-teacher-on-twitter/

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Discrimination and Harassment Case Study Analysis

Post author: Stevens and McMillan Law Firm
Post published: July 7, 2020
Post category: Attorney Info

Case studies about discrimination in the workplace

In August of 2018, a young woman was hired to become the shipping manager for a small printing company. She is 26 years old, has a boyfriend that she is living with, and has plans to get married and have children, eventually. The general manager of the company was not included in resume selection, interview process, or the training of the young woman, but did do an initial welcome interview when she was hired. After he had met with her and had some time to get to know her a little bit, he was disgruntled at the human resources manager for hiring someone who would need time off for a wedding and for children sometime in the future. He approached the human resources manager and told her “Next time you decide to hire someone, hire a young able-bodied man so we don’t have to worry about him taking time off for personal reasons”. The tricky part in this scenario is that the general manager did not actually say these things to the female employee but to the female human resources manager. The comments that were said, made the female human resource manager uncomfortable because she too, may have a future situation like the one he is ridiculing the shipping manager for.

This young woman was discriminated against since she was planning for her future as a wife and a mother. Regardless of her plans, or any female employed by the company, the discrimination took place because she is a woman, and once she decides to have children, she will need to utilize medical leave in order to give birth to her children. The human resources manager also shares in the same scenario, to which the GM has now openly given his criticism. The general manager in this case has decided that she would not be a good fit for the position because she will have weightlifting limitations and will have to take time off work. His comments and actions are sexist because he has already decided that she is not fit for the position for reasons that have not even happened yet. The comments made by the manager could potentially be a serious liability for the company, and an immediate investigation must be done to determine whether or not legal action should be taken against him. According to a case settlement against the Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. in 2015, The company continued to discriminate between 2006 thru 2014, whereas the company subjected countless women to sexual harassment and/or various forms of sex discrimination . Con Edison was blatantly discriminating against women Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, “This agreement sends a clear message to employers across New York State: All women, including those working in male-dominated workplaces, are entitled to equal justice under the law.” United States EEOC (Press Release 9-2015). Although this case is an extreme example, it gives a clear understanding of how the behavior of the general manager is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. This case is one of the thousands of different scenarios that continue to happen daily.

Investigating Discriminatory Actions

A case like the example shown is a lot easier to investigate because it was extreme discrimination and most of the circumstances were well documented. However, as shown by the amount of time that these women were given disparate treatment, it took many years to finally determine that Con Edison was engaging in illegal actions. The situation that is occurring with the new female shipping manager, as well as the human resources manager, will continually be more difficult to prove sexual discrimination, and senior management will have a difficult time trying to prove the blatant abuse of power by the general manager. According to a recent study, “researchers surveyed about 6,000 U.S. military employees, and in their findings, they showed that reporting incidents of harassment often triggered retaliation. Under such conditions, it’s no wonder that for many of these employees, the most “reasonable” thing to do was to avoid reporting.” (Dessler, G., 2016). At this point, the shipping manager is not aware of the statements made by the GM, but the comments made by him have put the human resources manager in an uncomfortable position, as the comments that were made could potentially be directed at her in the near future as well.

In situations such as this, employers are legally obligated to investigate complaints (harassment, discrimination, retaliation , safety, and ethics) in a timely manner. In addition, any appropriate corrective action is required to be taken by the employer to ensure illegal actions and behaviors cease immediately. (SHRM, 2018). One major problem with this case is that it has yet to happen. The comments made by the general manager have not come into play yet, but if and or when it does, he will have violated the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. This law was put in place in order to protect women’s rights in the workforce. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits sex discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, therefore, “Women affected by a pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes, including receipt of benefits under fringe benefit programs, as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work”. (EEOC, 1978).

The human resources department has been put in place to ensure that all employees are treated fairly and equally, and to make sure that equal opportunity employment always occurs. The role of human resources management involves documentation of employee grievances, terminations, absences, performance reports, timekeeping of vacation and sick time, and compensation and benefits information. When any type of sexual discrimination or harassment happens, it is typically reported to the HR administration. In this case, however, the HR manager has been indirectly discriminated against, so an outside investigator should be.

Author: Sarah Hendriksen from West Valley City

5 Things You Didn’t Know About Being Forced to Quit

3 Ways You are Being Sexually Harassed and Didn’t Know

History Of Workplace Discrimination

This post has 2 comments.

What is the difference between discrimination and harassment?

Discrimination is when someone treats you differently because of certain characteristics. These characteristics could include race, color and national origin as well as religion.

Harassment is unwelcome behavior and can sometimes be illegal. Harassment can include something said, written, or physical contact. They create a hostile atmosphere and are deliberate in their acts.

Comments are closed.

Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2018)

Chapter: 7 findings, conclusions, and recommendations, 7 findings, conclusions, and recommendations.

Preventing and effectively addressing sexual harassment of women in colleges and universities is a significant challenge, but we are optimistic that academic institutions can meet that challenge—if they demonstrate the will to do so. This is because the research shows what will work to prevent sexual harassment and why it will work. A systemwide change to the culture and climate in our nation’s colleges and universities can stop the pattern of harassing behavior from impacting the next generation of women entering science, engineering, and medicine.

Changing the current culture and climate requires addressing all forms of sexual harassment, not just the most egregious cases; moving beyond legal compliance; supporting targets when they come forward; improving transparency and accountability; diffusing the power structure between faculty and trainees; and revising organizational systems and structures to value diversity, inclusion, and respect. Leaders at every level within academia will be needed to initiate these changes and to establish and maintain the culture and norms. However, to succeed in making these changes, all members of our nation’s college campuses—students, faculty, staff, and administrators—will need to assume responsibility for promoting a civil and respectful environment. It is everyone’s responsibility to stop sexual harassment.

In this spirit of optimism, we offer the following compilation of the report’s findings, conclusions, and recommendations.

FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS

Chapter 2: sexual harassment research.

Sexual harassment is a form of discrimination that consists of three types of harassing behavior: (1) gender harassment (verbal and nonverbal behaviors that convey hostility, objectification, exclusion, or second-class status about members of one gender); (2) unwanted sexual attention (unwelcome verbal or physical sexual advances, which can include assault); and (3) sexual coercion (when favorable professional or educational treatment is conditioned on sexual activity). The distinctions between the types of harassment are important, particularly because many people do not realize that gender harassment is a form of sexual harassment.
Sexually harassing behavior can be either direct (targeted at an individual) or ambient (a general level of sexual harassment in an environment) and is harmful in both cases. It is considered illegal when it creates a hostile environment (gender harassment or unwanted sexual attention that is “severe or pervasive” enough to alter the conditions of employment, interfere with one’s work performance, or impede one’s ability to get an education) or when it is quid pro quo sexual harassment (when favorable professional or educational treatment is conditioned on sexual activity).
There are reliable scientific methods for determining the prevalence of sexual harassment. To measure the incidence of sexual harassment, surveys should follow the best practices that have emerged from the science of sexual harassment. This includes use of the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire, the most widely used and well-validated instrument available for measuring sexual harassment; assessment of specific behaviors without requiring the respondent to label the behaviors “sexual harassment”; focus on first-hand experience or observation of behavior (rather than rumor or hearsay); and focus on the recent past (1–2 years, to avoid problems of memory decay). Relying on the number of official reports of sexual harassment made to an organization is not an accurate method for determining the prevalence.
Some surveys underreport the incidence of sexual harassment because they have not followed standard and valid practices for survey research and sexual harassment research.
While properly conducted surveys are the best methods for estimating the prevalence of sexual harassment, other salient aspects of sexual harassment and its consequences can be examined using other research methods , such as behavioral laboratory experiments, interviews, case studies, ethnographies, and legal research. Such studies can provide information about the presence and nature of sexually harassing behavior in an organization, how it develops and continues (and influences the organizational climate), and how it attenuates or amplifies outcomes from sexual harassment.
Women experience sexual harassment more often than men do.
Gender harassment (e.g., behaviors that communicate that women do not belong or do not merit respect) is by far the most common type of sexual harassment. When an environment is pervaded by gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion become more likely to occur—in part because unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion are almost never experienced by women without simultaneously experiencing gender harassment.
Men are more likely than women to commit sexual harassment.
Coworkers and peers more often commit sexual harassment than do superiors.
Sexually harassing behaviors are not typically isolated incidents; rather, they are a series or pattern of sometimes escalating incidents and behaviors.
Women of color experience more harassment (sexual, racial/ethnic, or combination of the two) than white women, white men, and men of color do. Women of color often experience sexual harassment that includes racial harassment.
Sexual- and gender-minority people experience more sexual harassment than heterosexual women do.
The two characteristics of environments most associated with higher rates of sexual harassment are (a) male-dominated gender ratios and leadership and (b) an organizational climate that communicates tolerance of sexual harassment (e.g., leadership that fails to take complaints seriously, fails to sanction perpetrators, or fails to protect complainants from retaliation).
Organizational climate is, by far, the greatest predictor of the occurrence of sexual harassment, and ameliorating it can prevent people from sexually harassing others. A person more likely to engage in harassing behaviors is significantly less likely to do so in an environment that does not support harassing behaviors and/or has strong, clear, transparent consequences for these behaviors.

Chapter 3: Sexual Harassment in Academic Science, Engineering, and Medicine

Male-dominated environment , with men in positions of power and authority.
Organizational tolerance for sexually harassing behavior (e.g., failing to take complaints seriously, failing to sanction perpetrators, or failing to protect complainants from retaliation).
Hierarchical and dependent relationships between faculty and their trainees (e.g., students, postdoctoral fellows, residents).
Isolating environments (e.g., labs, field sites, and hospitals) in which faculty and trainees spend considerable time.
Greater than 50 percent of women faculty and staff and 20–50 percent of women students encounter or experience sexually harassing conduct in academia.
Women students in academic medicine experience more frequent gender harassment perpetrated by faculty/staff than women students in science and engineering.
Women students/trainees encounter or experience sexual harassment perpetrated by faculty/staff and also by other students/trainees.
Women faculty encounter or experience sexual harassment perpetrated by other faculty/staff and also by students/trainees.
Women students, trainees, and faculty in academic medical centers experience sexual harassment by patients and patients’ families in addition to the harassment they experience from colleagues and those in leadership positions.

Chapter 4: Outcomes of Sexual Harassment

When women experience sexual harassment in the workplace, the professional outcomes include declines in job satisfaction; withdrawal from their organization (i.e., distancing themselves from the work either physically or mentally without actually quitting, having thoughts or

intentions of leaving their job, and actually leaving their job); declines in organizational commitment (i.e., feeling disillusioned or angry with the organization); increases in job stress; and declines in productivity or performance.

When students experience sexual harassment, the educational outcomes include declines in motivation to attend class, greater truancy, dropping classes, paying less attention in class, receiving lower grades, changing advisors, changing majors, and transferring to another educational institution, or dropping out.
Gender harassment has adverse effects. Gender harassment that is severe or occurs frequently over a period of time can result in the same level of negative professional and psychological outcomes as isolated instances of sexual coercion. Gender harassment, often considered a “lesser,” more inconsequential form of sexual harassment, cannot be dismissed when present in an organization.
The greater the frequency, intensity, and duration of sexually harassing behaviors, the more women report symptoms of depression, stress, and anxiety, and generally negative effects on psychological well-being.
The more women are sexually harassed in an environment, the more they think about leaving, and end up leaving as a result of the sexual harassment.
The more power a perpetrator has over the target, the greater the impacts and negative consequences experienced by the target.
For women of color, preliminary research shows that when the sexual harassment occurs simultaneously with other types of harassment (i.e., racial harassment), the experiences can have more severe consequences for them.
Sexual harassment has adverse effects that affect not only the targets of harassment but also bystanders, coworkers, workgroups, and entire organizations.
Women cope with sexual harassment in a variety of ways, most often by ignoring or appeasing the harasser and seeking social support.
The least common response for women is to formally report the sexually harassing experience. For many, this is due to an accurate perception that they may experience retaliation or other negative outcomes associated with their personal and professional lives.
The dependence on advisors and mentors for career advancement.
The system of meritocracy that does not account for the declines in productivity and morale as a result of sexual harassment.
The “macho” culture in some fields.
The informal communication network , in which rumors and accusations are spread within and across specialized programs and fields.
The cumulative effect of sexual harassment is significant damage to research integrity and a costly loss of talent in academic science, engineering, and medicine. Women faculty in science, engineering, and medicine who experience sexual harassment report three common professional outcomes: stepping down from leadership opportunities to avoid the perpetrator, leaving their institution, and leaving their field altogether.

Chapter 5: Existing Legal and Policy Mechanisms for Addressing Sexual Harassment

An overly legalistic approach to the problem of sexual harassment is likely to misjudge the true nature and scope of the problem. Sexual harassment law and policy development has focused narrowly on the sexualized and coercive forms of sexual harassment, not on the gender harassment type that research has identified as much more prevalent and at times equally harmful.
Much of the sexual harassment that women experience and that damages women and their careers in science, engineering, and medicine does not meet the legal criteria of illegal discrimination under current law.
Private entities, such as companies and private universities, are legally allowed to keep their internal policies and procedures—and their research on those policies and procedures—confidential, thereby limiting the research that can be done on effective policies for preventing and handling sexual harassment.
Various legal policies, and the interpretation of such policies, enable academic institutions to maintain secrecy and/or confidentiality regarding outcomes of sexual harassment investigations, arbitration, and settlement agreements. Colleagues may also hesitate to warn one another about sexual harassment concerns in the hiring or promotion context out of fear of legal repercussions (i.e., being sued for defamation and/or discrimination). This lack of transparency in the adjudication process within organizations can cover up sexual harassment perpetrated by repeat or serial harassers. This creates additional barriers to researchers

and others studying harassment claims and outcomes, and is also a barrier to determining the effectiveness of policies and procedures.

Title IX, Title VII, and case law reflect the inaccurate assumption that a target of sexual harassment will promptly report the harassment without worrying about retaliation. Effectively addressing sexual harassment through the law, institutional policies or procedures, or cultural change requires taking into account that targets of sexual harassment are unlikely to report harassment and often face retaliation for reporting (despite this being illegal).
Fears of legal liability may prevent institutions from being willing to effectively evaluate training for its measurable impact on reducing harassment. Educating employees via sexual harassment training is commonly implemented as a central component of demonstrating to courts that institutions have “exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior.” However, research has not demonstrated that such training prevents sexual harassment. Thus, if institutions evaluated their training programs, they would likely find them to be ineffective, which, in turn, could raise fears within institutions of their risk for liability because they would then knowingly not be exercising reasonable care.
Holding individuals and institutions responsible for sexual harassment and demonstrating that sexual harassment is a serious issue requires U.S. federal funding agencies to be aware when principal investigators, co-principal investigators, and grant personnel have violated sexual harassment policies. It is unclear whether and how federal agencies will take action beyond the requirements of Title IX and Title VII to ensure that federal grants, composed of taxpayers’ dollars, are not supporting research, academic institutions, or programs in which sexual harassment is ongoing and not being addressed. Federal science agencies usually indicate (e.g., in requests for proposals or other announcements) that they have a “no-tolerance” policy for sexual harassment. In general, federal agencies rely on the grantee institutions to investigate and follow through on Title IX violations. By not assessing and addressing the role of institutions and professional organizations in enabling individual sexual harassers, federal agencies may be perpetuating the problem of sexual harassment.
To address the effect sexual harassment has on the integrity of research, parts of the federal government and several professional societies are beginning to focus more broadly on policies about research integrity and on codes of ethics rather than on the narrow definition of research misconduct. A powerful incentive for change may be missed if sexual harassment is not considered equally important as research misconduct, in terms of its effect on the integrity of research.

Chapter 6: Changing the Culture and Climate in Higher Education

A systemwide change to the culture and climate in higher education is required to prevent and effectively address all three forms of sexual harassment. Despite significant attention in recent years, there is no evidence to suggest that current policies, procedures, and approaches have resulted in a significant reduction in sexual harassment. It is time to consider approaches that address the systems, cultures, and climates that enable sexual harassment to perpetuate.
Strong and effective leaders at all levels in the organization are required to make the systemwide changes to climate and culture in higher education. The leadership of the organization—at every level—plays a significant role in establishing and maintaining an organization’s culture and norms. However, leaders in academic institutions rarely have leadership training to thoughtfully address culture and climate issues, and the leadership training that exists is often of poor quality.
Evidence-based, effective intervention strategies are available for enhancing gender diversity in hiring practices.
Focusing evaluation and reward structures on cooperation and collegiality rather than solely on individual-level teaching and research performance metrics could have a significant impact on improving the environment in academia.
Evidence-based, effective intervention strategies are available for raising levels of interpersonal civility and respect in workgroups and teams.
An organization that is committed to improving organizational climate must address issues of bias in academia. Training to reduce personal bias can cause larger-scale changes in departmental behaviors in an academic setting.
Skills-based training that centers on bystander intervention promotes a culture of support, not one of silence. By calling out negative behaviors on the spot, all members of an academic community are helping to create a culture where abusive behavior is seen as an aberration, not as the norm.
Reducing hierarchical power structures and diffusing power more broadly among faculty and trainees can reduce the risk of sexual ha

rassment. Departments and institutions could take the following approaches for diffusing power:

Make use of egalitarian leadership styles that recognize that people at all levels of experience and expertise have important insights to offer.
Adopt mentoring networks or committee-based advising that allows for a diversity of potential pathways for advice, funding, support, and informal reporting of harassment.
Develop ways the research funding can be provided to the trainee rather than just the principal investigator.
Take on the responsibility for preserving the potential work of the research team and trainees by redistributing the funding if a principal investigator cannot continue the work because he/she has created a climate that fosters sexual harassment and guaranteeing funding to trainees if the institution or a funder pulls funding from the principal investigator because of sexual harassment.
Orienting students, trainees, faculty, and staff, at all levels, to the academic institution’s culture and its policies and procedures for handling sexual harassment can be an important piece of establishing a climate that demonstrates sexual harassment is not tolerated and targets will be supported.
Institutions could build systems of response that empower targets by providing alternative and less formal means of accessing support services, recording information, and reporting incidents without fear of retaliation.
Supporting student targets also includes helping them to manage their education and training over the long term.
Confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements isolate sexual harassment targets by limiting their ability to speak with others about their experiences and can serve to shield perpetrators who have harassed people repeatedly.
Key components of clear anti-harassment policies are that they are quickly and easily digested (i.e., using one-page flyers or infographics and not in legally dense language) and that they clearly state that people will be held accountable for violating the policy.
A range of progressive/escalating disciplinary consequences (such as counseling, changes in work responsibilities, reductions in pay/benefits, and suspension or dismissal) that corresponds to the severity and frequency of the misconduct has the potential of correcting behavior before it escalates and without significantly disrupting an academic program.
In an effort to change behavior and improve the climate, it may also be appropriate for institutions to undertake some rehabilitation-focused measures, even though these may not be sanctions per se.
For the people in an institution to understand that the institution does not tolerate sexual harassment, it must show that it does investigate and then hold perpetrators accountable in a reasonable timeframe. Institutions can anonymize the basic information and provide regular reports that convey how many reports are being investigated and what the outcomes are from the investigation.
An approach for improving transparency and demonstrating that the institution takes sexual harassment seriously is to encourage internal review of its policies, procedures, and interventions for addressing sexual harassment, and to have interactive dialogues with members of their campus community (especially expert researchers on these topics) around ways to improve the culture and climate and change behavior.
Cater training to specific populations; in academia this would include students, postdoctoral fellows, staff, faculty, and those in leadership.
Attend to the institutional motivation for training , which can impact the effectiveness of the training; for instance, compliance-based approaches have limited positive impact.
Conduct training using live qualified trainers and offer trainees specific examples of inappropriate conduct. We note that a great deal of sexual harassment training today is offered via an online mini-course or the viewing of a short video.
Describe standards of behavior clearly and accessibly (e.g., avoiding legal and technical terms).
To the extent that the training literature provides broad guidelines for creating impactful training that can change climate and behavior, they include the following:
Establish standards of behavior rather than solely seek to influence attitudes and beliefs. Clear communication of behavioral expectations, and teaching of behavioral skills, is essential.
Conduct training in adherence to best standards , including appropriate pre-training needs assessment and evaluation of its effectiveness.
Creating a climate that prevents sexual harassment requires measuring the climate in relation to sexual harassment, diversity, and respect, and assessing progress in reducing sexual harassment.
Efforts to incentivize systemwide changes, such as Athena SWAN, 1 are crucial to motivating organizations and departments within organizations to make the necessary changes.
Enacting new codes of conduct and new rules related specifically to conference attendance.
Including sexual harassment in codes of ethics and investigating reports of sexual harassment. (This is a new responsibility for professional societies, and these organizations are considering how to take into consideration the law, home institutions, due process, and careful reporting when dealing with reports of sexual harassment.)
Requiring members to acknowledge, in writing, the professional society’s rules and codes of conduct relating to sexual harassment during conference registration and during membership sign-up and renewal.
Supporting and designing programs that prevent harassment and provide skills to intervene when someone is being harassed.
Strengthening statements on sexual harassment, bullying, and discrimination in professional societies’ codes of conduct, with a few defining it as research misconduct.
Factoring in harassment-related professional misconduct into scientific award decisions.
Professional societies have the potential to be powerful drivers of change through their capacity to help educate, train, codify, and reinforce cultural expectations for their respective scientific, engineering, and medical communities. Some professional societies have taken action to prevent and respond to sexual harassment among their membership. Although each professional society has taken a slightly different approach to addressing sexual harassment, there are some shared approaches, including the following:

___________________

1 Athena SWAN (Scientific Women’s Academic Network). See https://www.ecu.ac.uk/equalitycharters/athena-swan/ .

There are many promising approaches to changing the culture and climate in academia; however, further research assessing the effects and values of the following approaches is needed to identify best practices:
Policies, procedures, trainings, and interventions, specifically how they prevent and stop sexually harassing behavior, alter perception of organizational tolerance for sexually harassing behavior, and reduce the negative consequences from reporting the incidents. This includes informal and formal reporting mechanisms, bystander intervention training, academic leadership training, sexual harassment training, interventions to improve civility, mandatory reporting requirements, and approaches to supporting and improving communication with the target.
Mechanisms for target-led resolution options and mechanisms by which the target has a role in deciding what happens to the perpetrator, including restorative justice practices.
Mechanisms for protecting targets from retaliation.
Rehabilitation-focused measures for disciplining perpetrators.
Incentive systems for encouraging leaders in higher education to address the issues of sexual harassment on campus.

RECOMMENDATIONS

RECOMMENDATION 1: Create diverse, inclusive, and respectful environments.

Academic institutions and their leaders should take explicit steps to achieve greater gender and racial equity in hiring and promotions, and thus improve the representation of women at every level.
Academic institutions and their leaders should take steps to foster greater cooperation, respectful work behavior, and professionalism at the faculty, staff, and student/trainee levels, and should evaluate faculty and staff on these criteria in hiring and promotion.
Academic institutions should combine anti-harassment efforts with civility-promotion programs.
Academic institutions should cater their training to specific populations (in academia these should include students/trainees, staff, faculty, and those in leadership) and should follow best practices in designing training programs. Training should be viewed as the means of providing the skills needed by all members of the academic community, each of whom has a role to play in building a positive organizational climate focused on safety and respect, and not simply as a method of ensuring compliance with laws.
Academic institutions should utilize training approaches that develop skills among participants to interrupt and intervene when inappropriate behavior occurs. These training programs should be evaluated to deter

mine whether they are effective and what aspects of the training are most important to changing culture.

Anti–sexual harassment training programs should focus on changing behavior, not on changing beliefs. Programs should focus on clearly communicating behavioral expectations, specifying consequences for failing to meet these expectations, and identifying the mechanisms to be utilized when these expectations are not met. Training programs should not be based on the avoidance of legal liability.

RECOMMENDATION 2: Address the most common form of sexual harassment: gender harassment.

Leaders in academic institutions and research and training sites should pay increased attention to and enact policies that cover gender harassment as a means of addressing the most common form of sexual harassment and of preventing other types of sexually harassing behavior.

RECOMMENDATION 3: Move beyond legal compliance to address culture and climate.

Academic institutions, research and training sites, and federal agencies should move beyond interventions or policies that represent basic legal compliance and that rely solely on formal reports made by targets. Sexual harassment needs to be addressed as a significant culture and climate issue that requires institutional leaders to engage with and listen to students and other campus community members.

RECOMMENDATION 4: Improve transparency and accountability.

Academic institutions need to develop—and readily share—clear, accessible, and consistent policies on sexual harassment and standards of behavior. They should include a range of clearly stated, appropriate, and escalating disciplinary consequences for perpetrators found to have violated sexual harassment policy and/or law. The disciplinary actions taken should correspond to the severity and frequency of the harassment. The disciplinary actions should not be something that is often considered a benefit for faculty, such as a reduction in teaching load or time away from campus service responsibilities. Decisions regarding disciplinary actions, if indicated or required, should be made in a fair and timely way following an investigative process that is fair to all sides. 2
Academic institutions should be as transparent as possible about how they are handling reports of sexual harassment. This requires balancing issues of confidentiality with issues of transparency. Annual reports,

2 Further detail on processes and guidance for how to fairly and appropriately investigate and adjudicate these issues are not provided because they are complex issues that were beyond the scope of this study.

that provide information on (1) how many and what type of policy violations have been reported (both informally and formally), (2) how many reports are currently under investigation, and (3) how many have been adjudicated, along with general descriptions of any disciplinary actions taken, should be shared with the entire academic community: students, trainees, faculty, administrators, staff, alumni, and funders. At the very least, the results of the investigation and any disciplinary action should be shared with the target(s) and/or the person(s) who reported the behavior.

Academic institutions should be accountable for the climate within their organization. In particular, they should utilize climate surveys to further investigate and address systemic sexual harassment, particularly when surveys indicate specific schools or facilities have high rates of harassment or chronically fail to reduce rates of sexual harassment.
Academic institutions should consider sexual harassment equally important as research misconduct in terms of its effect on the integrity of research. They should increase collaboration among offices that oversee the integrity of research (i.e., those that cover ethics, research misconduct, diversity, and harassment issues); centralize resources, information, and expertise; provide more resources for handling complaints and working with targets; and implement sanctions on researchers found guilty of sexual harassment.

RECOMMENDATION 5: Diffuse the hierarchical and dependent relationship between trainees and faculty.

Academic institutions should consider power-diffusion mechanisms (i.e., mentoring networks or committee-based advising and departmental funding rather than funding only from a principal investigator) to reduce the risk of sexual harassment.

RECOMMENDATION 6: Provide support for the target.

Academic institutions should convey that reporting sexual harassment is an honorable and courageous action. Regardless of a target filing a formal report, academic institutions should provide means of accessing support services (social services, health care, legal, career/professional). They should provide alternative and less formal means of recording information about the experience and reporting the experience if the target is not comfortable filing a formal report. Academic institutions should develop approaches to prevent the target from experiencing or fearing retaliation in academic settings.

RECOMMENDATION 7: Strive for strong and diverse leadership.

College and university presidents, provosts, deans, department chairs, and program directors must make the reduction and prevention of sexual

harassment an explicit goal of their tenure. They should publicly state that the reduction and prevention of sexual harassment will be among their highest priorities, and they should engage students, faculty, and staff (and, where appropriate, the local community) in their efforts.

Academic institutions should support and facilitate leaders at every level (university, school/college, department, lab) in developing skills in leadership, conflict resolution, mediation, negotiation, and de-escalation, and should ensure a clear understanding of policies and procedures for handling sexual harassment issues. Additionally, these skills development programs should be customized to each level of leadership.
Leadership training programs for those in academia should include training on how to recognize and handle sexual harassment issues, and how to take explicit steps to create a culture and climate to reduce and prevent sexual harassment—and not just protect the institution against liability.

RECOMMENDATION 8: Measure progress.

Academic institutions should work with researchers to evaluate and assess their efforts to create a more diverse, inclusive, and respectful environment, and to create effective policies, procedures, and training programs. They should not rely on formal reports by targets for an understanding of sexual harassment on their campus.

When organizations study sexual harassment, they should follow the valid methodologies established by social science research on sexual harassment and should consult subject-matter experts. Surveys that attempt to ascertain the prevalence and types of harassment experienced by individuals should adopt the following practices: ensure confidentiality, use validated behavioral instruments such as the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire, and avoid specifically using the term “sexual harassment” in any survey or questionnaire.
Academic institutions should also conduct more wide-ranging assessments using measures in addition to campus climate surveys, for example, ethnography, focus groups, and exit interviews. These methods are especially important in smaller organizational units where surveys, which require more participants to yield meaningful data, might not be useful.
Organizations studying sexual harassment in their environments should take into consideration the particular experiences of people of color and sexual- and gender-minority people, and they should utilize methods that allow them to disaggregate their data by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity to reveal the different experiences across populations.
The results of climate surveys should be shared publicly to encourage transparency and accountability and to demonstrate to the campus community that the institution takes the issue seriously. One option would be for academic institutions to collaborate in developing a central repository for reporting their climate data, which could also improve the ability for research to be conducted on the effectiveness of institutional approaches.
Federal agencies and foundations should commit resources to develop a tool similar to ARC3, the Administrator-Researcher Campus Climate Collaborative, to understand and track the climate for faculty, staff, and postdoctoral fellows.

RECOMMENDATION 9: Incentivize change.

Academic institutions should work to apply for awards from the emerging STEM Equity Achievement (SEA Change) program. 3 Federal agencies and private foundations should encourage and support academic institutions working to achieve SEA Change awards.
Accreditation bodies should consider efforts to create diverse, inclusive, and respectful environments when evaluating institutions or departments.
Federal agencies should incentivize efforts to reduce sexual harassment in academia by requiring evaluations of the research environment, funding research and evaluation of training for students and faculty (including bystander intervention), supporting the development and evaluation of leadership training for faculty, and funding research on effective policies and procedures.

RECOMMENDATION 10: Encourage involvement of professional societies and other organizations.

Professional societies should accelerate their efforts to be viewed as organizations that are helping to create culture changes that reduce or prevent the occurrence of sexual harassment. They should provide support and guidance for members who have been targets of sexual harassment. They should use their influence to address sexual harassment in the scientific, medical, and engineering communities they represent and promote a professional culture of civility and respect. The efforts of the American Geophysical Union are especially exemplary and should be considered as a model for other professional societies to follow.
Other organizations that facilitate the research and training of people in science, engineering, and medicine, such as collaborative field sites (i.e., national labs and observatories), should establish standards of behavior

3 See https://www.aaas.org/news/sea-change-program-aims-transform-diversity-efforts-stem .

and set policies, procedures, and practices similar to those recommended for academic institutions and following the examples of professional societies. They should hold people accountable for their behaviors while at their facility regardless of the person’s institutional affiliation (just as some professional societies are doing).

RECOMMENDATION 11: Initiate legislative action.

State legislatures and Congress should consider new and additional legislation with the following goals:

Better protecting sexual harassment claimants from retaliation.
Prohibiting confidentiality in settlement agreements that currently enable harassers to move to another institution and conceal past adjudications.
Banning mandatory arbitration clauses for discrimination claims.
Allowing lawsuits to be filed against alleged harassers directly (instead of or in addition to their academic employers).
Requiring institutions receiving federal funds to publicly disclose results from campus climate surveys and/or the number of sexual harassment reports made to campuses.
Requesting the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health devote research funds to doing a follow-up analysis on the topic of sexual harassment in science, engineering, and medicine in 3 to 5 years to determine (1) whether research has shown that the prevalence of sexual harassment has decreased, (2) whether progress has been made on implementing these recommendations, and (3) where to focus future efforts.

RECOMMENDATION 12: Address the failures to meaningfully enforce Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination.

Judges, academic institutions (including faculty, staff, and leaders in academia), and administrative agencies should rely on scientific evidence about the behavior of targets and perpetrators of sexual harassment when assessing both institutional compliance with the law and the merits of individual claims.
Federal judges should take into account demonstrated effectiveness of anti-harassment policies and practices such as trainings, and not just their existence , for use of an affirmative defense against a sexual harassment claim under Title VII.

RECOMMENDATION 13: Increase federal agency action and collaboration.

Federal agencies should do the following:

Increase support for research and evaluation of the effectiveness of policies, procedures, and training on sexual harassment.
Attend to sexual harassment with at least the same level of attention and resources as devoted to research misconduct. They should increase collaboration among offices that oversee the integrity of research (i.e., those that cover ethics, research misconduct, diversity, and harassment issues); centralize resources, information, and expertise; provide more resources for handling complaints and working with targets; and implement sanctions on researchers found guilty of sexual harassment.
Require institutions to report to federal agencies when individuals on grants have been found to have violated sexual harassment policies or have been put on administrative leave related to sexual harassment, as the National Science Foundation has proposed doing. Agencies should also hold accountable the perpetrator and the institution by using a range of disciplinary actions that limit the negative effects on other grant personnel who were either the target of the harassing behavior or innocent bystanders.
Reward and incentivize colleges and universities for implementing policies, programs, and strategies that research shows are most likely to and are succeeding in reducing and preventing sexual harassment.

RECOMMENDATION 14: Conduct necessary research.

Funders should support the following research:

The sexual harassment experiences of women in underrepresented and/or vulnerable groups, including women of color, disabled women, immigrant women, sexual- and gender-minority women, postdoctoral trainees, and others.
Policies, procedures, trainings, and interventions, specifically their ability to prevent and stop sexually harassing behavior, to alter perception of organizational tolerance for sexually harassing behavior, and to reduce the negative consequences from reporting the incidents. This should include research on informal and formal reporting mechanisms, bystander intervention training, academic leadership training, sexual harassment and diversity training, interventions to improve civility, mandatory reporting requirements, and approaches to supporting and improving communication with the target.
Approaches for mitigating the negative impacts and outcomes that targets experience.
The prevalence and nature of sexual harassment within specific fields in

science, engineering, and medicine and that follows good practices for sexual harassment surveys.

The prevalence and nature of sexual harassment perpetrated by students on faculty.
The amount of sexual harassment that serial harassers are responsible for.
The prevalence and effect of ambient harassment in the academic setting.
The connections between consensual relationships and sexual harassment.
Psychological characteristics that increase the risk of perpetrating different forms of sexually harassing behaviors.

RECOMMENDATION 15: Make the entire academic community responsible for reducing and preventing sexual harassment.

All members of our nation’s college campuses—students, trainees, faculty, staff, and administrators—as well as members of research and training sites should assume responsibility for promoting civil and respectful education, training, and work environments, and stepping up and confronting those whose behaviors and actions create sexually harassing environments.

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Over the last few decades, research, activity, and funding has been devoted to improving the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women in the fields of science, engineering, and medicine. In recent years the diversity of those participating in these fields, particularly the participation of women, has improved and there are significantly more women entering careers and studying science, engineering, and medicine than ever before. However, as women increasingly enter these fields they face biases and barriers and it is not surprising that sexual harassment is one of these barriers.

Over thirty years the incidence of sexual harassment in different industries has held steady, yet now more women are in the workforce and in academia, and in the fields of science, engineering, and medicine (as students and faculty) and so more women are experiencing sexual harassment as they work and learn. Over the last several years, revelations of the sexual harassment experienced by women in the workplace and in academic settings have raised urgent questions about the specific impact of this discriminatory behavior on women and the extent to which it is limiting their careers.

Sexual Harassment of Women explores the influence of sexual harassment in academia on the career advancement of women in the scientific, technical, and medical workforce. This report reviews the research on the extent to which women in the fields of science, engineering, and medicine are victimized by sexual harassment and examines the existing information on the extent to which sexual harassment in academia negatively impacts the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women pursuing scientific, engineering, technical, and medical careers. It also identifies and analyzes the policies, strategies and practices that have been the most successful in preventing and addressing sexual harassment in these settings.

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Racial harassment in the workplace: five key cases

Ex-England and Spurs footballer Paul Gascoigne has pleaded guilty to racially-aggravated abuse over a “joke” he made to a black security guard who was working at his show billed as “an evening with Gazza”. The court fined Gascoigne and ordered him to pay £1,000 in compensation to the guard. Fiona Cuming rounds up five employment law cases involving racism in the workplace.

What is racial harassment?

Behaviour could potentially amount to racial harassment if it is unwanted conduct of a racial nature that is offensive or degrading to the recipient.

It is up to the recipient of the alleged harassment to decide whether or not the treatment is offensive.

Racial harassment can include: abusive language; racist jokes; racially offensive material; exclusion from workplace conversations or activities; and violence or the threat of violence.

1. Subconscious association

In Brown v Young & Co’s Brewery , the employment tribunal had the unusual task of considering whether or not a manager harassed a black pub worker when he told him that he “looked like a pimp” when he was wearing a promotional St Patrick’s Day hat.

The employment tribunal accepted that the manager had used the word “pimp” because the claimant was black and that the word was insulting and undermined him.

The tribunal acknowledged that the manager may have made the association subconsciously.

However, the tribunal found that the single comment had the effect of violating the claimant’s dignity and it was reasonable for the claimant to be offended.

2. “Banter” may not succeed as a defence

Employers investigating allegations of discriminatory comments should never brush off the complaint solely on the basis that the remarks were “banter”, as the employer in Harper v Housing 21 discovered to its cost.

The employment tribunal found that comments likening the claimant to “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” characters amounted to race discrimination.

The comments were found to be racial harassment as they were made only because the claimant was Irish.

3. Race-related comments not directed at claimant may amount to harassment

Tackling racial harassment in the workplace.

How to deal with bullying and harassment in the workplace

Equal opportunities and dignity at work policy

In Morgan v Halls of Gloucester , the tribunal held that a series of inappropriate comments about race by blue-collar workers, not necessarily directed at the claimant, amounted to harassment.

The tribunal found that the comments could reasonably be considered to have the effect of violating the claimant’s dignity.

The claimant was entitled to be compensated for the upset that he had suffered.

4. Dismissal may be fair where claimant used a racist term heard by white colleagues only

In Mann v NSL Ltd , the tribunal held that an employer fairly dismissed an employee for using a racist term in the presence of white colleagues.

The tribunal found that the employee’s use of the racist term was highly offensive and it did not matter that the employee had not realised that someone else was listening nor that he did not mean to offend anyone.

Equally, it made no difference to the tribunal that the comments were made in the presence of white people only.

5. Allegations of racism should always be investigated

Employer liability for harassment.

Can an employer be liable for a third party’s actions?

Can employers be liable for harassment at a work-related social event?

Is it lawful to dismiss a harassment complaint from an “over-sensitive” employee?

McCammon v Gillingham Football Club is an example for all employers of how not to deal with a complaint of discrimination in the workplace.

The tribunal held that the footballer’s dismissal was unfair and also amounted to an act of victimisation.

The club’s dismissal letter clearly stated that one of the reasons for the dismissal was that the player had made “very serious accusations of racism”.

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The tribunal rejected the club’s argument that the accusations had been made in bad faith as the club had taken no steps to investigate the allegations and had simply discounted them as being without merit.

The tribunal was also critical of the club for failing to produce the equal opportunities policy that it said existed.

Fiona Cuming

What the great british bake off teaches us about retaining talent, employing students: six tips for the new term, leave a comment cancel reply.

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Deputy provost outlines plans to implement its recommendations

In an email to the University community, President Larry Bacow today announced publication of the report from the External Review Committee to Review Sexual Harassment at Harvard University , which was convened in response to the case of Jorge Domínguez, a Government Department professor and onetime vice provost for international affairs who engaged in decades of sexual harassment during his time at Harvard.

The Gazette spoke with Deputy Provost Peggy Newell to learn about the review’s findings, as well as resources and policies that Harvard now has in place, and plans to create, to address the report’s recommendations made.

Peggy Newell

GAZETTE: Would you begin by reminding us of the context for why this review was conducted?

NEWELL: In early 2018, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a series of articles stating that Jorge Domínguez, at the time a professor in Harvard’s Government Department, had sexually harassed at least 18 women during his time at Harvard. Shortly after the publication of these articles, the University’s Office for Dispute Resolution (ODR) began an investigation into the harassment allegations. The revelations in the Chronicle also prompted the Department of Government to form a Committee on Climate Change, tasked with examining the climate within the department. Among the recommendations in the Committee on Climate Change’s final report was a call for an external review to examine how procedures, practices, and norms at all levels of the University may have contributed to our collective failure to provide a safe and productive work environment for all members of our community.

In May 2019 Dean Claudine Gay announced both the findings of the ODR investigation — that Domínguez had “engaged in unwelcome sexual conduct toward several individuals, on multiple occasions over a period spanning nearly four decades” — and the sanctions that the University would be imposing on Domínguez as a result. Later that day, President Bacow confirmed that he would form a committee to conduct an external review.

GAZETTE: What was the charge of the external review?

NEWELL: President Bacow asked the review committee to explore three central questions that had emerged from the report of the Government Department Committee on Climate Change:

What characteristics of organization or culture might have inhibited those who had suffered (or were aware of) misconduct from reporting it?
When misconduct was reported, were there characteristics of our organization or culture that inhibited an effective response? And,
How do we vet candidates for leadership positions to assure that we are aware of any allegations of misconduct, including sexual harassment, and how might we do this?

The members of the review committee — Susan Hockfield , professor of neuroscience and president emerita at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Vicki Magley , professor of psychological sciences at the University of Connecticut; and Kenji Yoshino , professor of law at New York University — were asked to take a forward-looking stance in their work, using the Domínguez case to identify factors that might continue to undermine Harvard’s ability to prevent and address sexual harassment.

GAZETTE: What were the main findings of their report?

NEWELL: The committee’s report is incredibly thorough, and I would encourage community members to read it in its entirety. It clearly outlines several cultural and organizational factors that allowed Domínguez to escape accountability for so long, and suggests concrete, actionable steps that Harvard can take to create an environment free from harassment and discrimination. These recommendations include: fostering greater “psychological safety” across our Schools and units, better communicating processes for reporting misconduct, achieving greater faculty gender balance, establishing standardized processes for vetting candidates, improving transparency around investigations and sanctions, monitoring employees with past infractions, and accelerating progress toward a culture that is intolerant of sexual and gender-based harassment, broadly. Some of these things we have been working on already. Other recommendations will be the foundation for new initiatives.

The report emphasizes that we can accomplish these changes without compromising our commitment to academic freedom or the due process rights of our community members. It is a forward-looking document that encourages community engagement in advancing its recommendations. President Bacow has said in the past that each of us shares responsibility for confronting and stopping sexual harassment, sexual assault, and discrimination, here at Harvard and beyond our campus walls, and I think the report really underscores this statement.

GAZETTE: As you mentioned, Harvard has already been at work at addressing some of the recommendations made in the report toward creating an environment free from harassment and discrimination. Would you tell us about some of the resources to this end that are currently in place for community members?

NEWELL: To begin with, it’s important to note, as the report does, that we have made significant progress in our Title IX initiatives since the office was created in 2013 and moved to the Provost’s Office in 2015. Annually, more than 27,000 students, faculty, and staff participate in in-person training sessions and/or our online Title IX training module — everyone who studies and works at Harvard is now required to complete mandatory online training on how to support a harassment-free community. These have continued online during the pandemic. There are now more than 50 trained Title IX Resource Coordinators supporting Harvard’s students, faculty, and staff community-wide. Title IX and Gender Equity Education Student and Staff Advisory Committees meet regularly to ensure that each School and unit is represented in discussions about how the Title IX Office can improve its prevention initiatives, educational materials, and informational resources across the University. In 2019, the Title IX Office launched bystander intervention trainings, and the Resource for Online Anonymous Disclosure (ROAD), an online tool for anonymously disclosing concerns of sexual harassment and other sexual misconduct. All of this work has gone a long way in improving our policies and procedures around Title IX, and in beginning to change our culture.

Harvard’s commitment to addressing sexual and gender-based harassment stretches outside of campus. In collaboration with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education, we are working to identify and develop innovative and evidence-based solutions to address sexual harassment. With more than 60 colleges, universities, and research institutions, Harvard is leading conversations around identifying the most effective ways to measure and monitor the climate within an organization. Through these conversations, institutions have been able to share best practices in developing climate surveys and measuring sexual harassment prevalence.

And we continue to move forward with new initiatives that address sexual harassment and discrimination here at Harvard. Just this past week, Provost [Alan] Garber announced that we are embarking upon a community-driven effort to examine how we address discrimination and harassment . We have invited faculty, students, and staff from across the University’s Schools and units to help us evaluate existing, and in some cases develop new, University-wide policies and procedures related to sexual misconduct, discrimination, and bullying.

GAZETTE: You also said that specific recommendations within the report will provide the foundation for upcoming initiatives. Has the planning begun on what some of these might look like?

NEWELL: Yes. Thanks in large part to University Title IX Coordinator Nicole Merhill and her office, we are already working to put new resources in place that correspond directly to the recommendations made by the external review. Some examples of what we will do moving forward include incorporating the concept of “psychological safety” into future learning initiatives implemented by the University Title IX Office, and exploring how we can revamp the Title IX Office website so that it provides clear pathways for disclosing incidents to Title IX Resource Coordinators and for filing a formal complaint with the University Title IX Coordinator. The updated Title IX website will also include a “Gender Equity Data Hub,” which will provide greater transparency on information pertaining to disclosures, formal complaints, and outcomes.

The Department of Government has continued to make progress on implementing the recommendations of its own Committee on Climate Change, including the creation of a Title IX liaison position within the department to serve as a point of contact for all Title IX-related concerns, and the creation of a standing committee on equity, diversity, and inclusion, made up of faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduates, to assist the department in creating and maintaining a climate that allows its members to do their best possible work. The department has also committed to conducting a biennial climate survey of its community to measure progress toward the goals laid out by the Committee on Climate Change.

In spite of all that we have done in the area of creating policies and launching new initiatives, we still have work to do until we have a culture in academia and at Harvard that does not tolerate harassment. Changing an organizational culture cannot be done by an office in central administration or by people in the dean’s office alone. Having policies against harassment is necessary but not sufficient. If we want a better environment, it will require that we all take responsibility for the community in which we would like to live and work and that we all participate in the work necessary to build that community. The recommendations in this report give us a place to start.

GAZETTE: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

NEWELL: I would like to reiterate President Bacow’s words in saying that we are deeply sorry not only for the harassment that Terry Karl experienced at Harvard but for the harassment by Domínguez of other women at Harvard that might have been avoided. We are grateful to Professor Karl for having the courage back in 1983 to bring her complaint and for continuing, now nearly 40 years later, to raise concerns when she believed that Harvard had not done all that it could to assure that others were not similarly harassed. We also apologize and express our gratitude to the other women who were later harassed by Domínguez and who have shared their stories, and especially to those who brought formal complaints that ultimately resulted in Dean Gay’s sanctioning of Domínguez. We are grateful for all of your efforts to make Harvard a better place.

We are grateful for the work of the members of the External Review Committee, who have spent significant time on this important process since it began in September 2019. Harvard provided the committee with full access to all of the relevant materials that it requested, including confidential files and reports, as well as access to all personnel it sought to interview. This was no small undertaking for the committee. We appreciate their diligence in making sure that their review was thorough and responsive to their charge. We learned a lot from their work and will assure that their efforts and advice are translated into action.

We are also grateful to those Harvard community members who gave of their time to the process, including: students and faculty in the Government Department; the members of the Government Department’s Committee on Climate Change; current and former University administrators; representatives from the Harvard Title IX Office and Office for Dispute Resolution; and to individual members of Harvard’s faculty who have done significant work in areas relating to Title IX and organizational culture.

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Eeoc’s final enforcement guidance on workplace harassment is here.

Updated: Jul 23, 2024

Guidance Provides Many Examples

Mimicking a person’s disability;
Mocking a person’s accent;
Asking intrusive questions about a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, gender transition, or intimate body parts;
Outing or repeatedly misgendering a coworker;
Denying employees access to a bathroom, a locker room, or another facility that’s consistent with their gender identity;
Racist imagery being visible in an employee’s remote workspace during a video meeting;
Making sexual comments during a video meeting about a bed being near the employee in the meeting;
Ridiculing a male employee who is recovering from a vasectomy with name-calling like “gelding” and “eunuch”;
Engaging in intersectional harassment (harassment based on the combination of at least two protected characteristics), such as comments made to a woman who is fanning herself that refer to her being menopausal and mocking that status; and
Engaging in intraclass harassment (misconduct occurring when a harasser targets another because of a shared protected class), such as an older worker making ageist remarks at a colleague roughly the same age or older or a female employee making insensitive comments to another female coworker because she doesn’t want children.
Sexual assault;
Sexual touching of an intimate body part;
Physical violence or the threat of physical violence;
Display of symbols of violence or hatred (swastika, KKK hood, noose);
Use of denigrating animal imagery (e.g., monkey);
A threat to deny job benefits for rejecting sexual advances; and
A supervisor’s use of the “n word” in the presence of a black subordinate.

Sexual harassment

Business and society
Diversity and inclusion
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Business law and ethics
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Why We Fail to Report Sexual Harassment

Jessica Kirk
Stefanie K Johnson
Jessica F Kirk
Ksenia Keplinger
October 04, 2016

Have Our Attitudes About Sexual Harassment Really Changed?

Sarah Green Carmichael
April 20, 2017

When Male Unemployment Rates Rise, So Do Sexual Harassment Claims

Dan Cassino
August 14, 2017

Most People Are Supportive of #MeToo. But Will Workplaces Actually Change?

Candace Bertotti
David Maxfield
July 10, 2018

Sexual Harassment Claims Have Fallen Among Young White Women, but Not Older Women or Black Women

February 21, 2018

It's Not Always Clear What Constitutes Sexual Harassment. Use This Tool to Navigate the Gray Areas.

Kathleen Kelley Reardon
June 19, 2018

Training Programs and Reporting Systems Won’t End Sexual Harassment. Promoting More Women Will

Frank Dobbin
Alexandra Kalev
November 15, 2017

Dealing with Sexual Harassment When Your Company Is Too Small to Have HR

Karen Firestone
February 02, 2018

Why Sexual Harassment Is More of a Problem in Venture Capital

Joan C. Williams
July 12, 2017

Stop Protecting “Good Guys”

Resa E. Lewiss
W. Brad Johnson
David G. Smith
Robin Naples
August 01, 2022

To Reduce Sexual Misconduct, Help People Understand How Their Advances Might Be Received

Vanessa Bohns
Vanessa K Bohns
Lauren DeVincent
April 26, 2018

Using the Power of Supply Chains to End Sexual Harassment

Alieza Durana
Haley Swenson
October 16, 2018

Understanding Your Legal Options If You’ve Been Sexually Harassed

Joanna L. Grossman
Deborah L. Rhode
June 22, 2017

Too Many Men Are Silent Bystanders to Sexual Harassment

March 13, 2017

Study: When Leaders Take Sexual Harassment Seriously, So Do Employees

Alison Dahl Crossley
Shelley Correll
Shelley J Correll
December 14, 2018

Case Study: Was That Harassment?

J. Neil Bearden
From the May–June 2019 Issue

How to Talk About Sexual Harassment with Your Coworkers

December 11, 2017

Work After #MeToo, Your Questions Answered

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Harvard Business Review Staff
February 22, 2018

Do Your Employees Feel Safe Reporting Abuse and Discrimination?

October 08, 2020

If You Fire Someone for Sexual Harassment, What Do You Say If You're Called for a Reference?

Jessica A Clarke
March 27, 2018

Bumble: Taking on Tinder, One Woman at a Time

Daniel Clark
Imge Kaya-Sabanci
July 07, 2022

Employee Advocate or Company Custodian: Choosing Sides in a Sexual Harassment Case

Rajita Singh
Romina Mathew
Anjali Bhole Desai
Sudhanshu Bhatt
March 13, 2023

Darden Investment Sales

Bidhan L Parmar
Matt Morales
October 02, 2019

Julia Miller (C): An Unexpected Turn of Events

Stacey R. Fitzsimmons
Megan Preik
February 21, 2023

Coley Andrews

H. Irving Grousbeck
Sara Rosenthal
January 01, 2016

Julia Miller (A): Managing Sexual Misconduct

Bias Interrupted: Creating Inclusion for Real and for Good

November 16, 2021

Thriving in a Male-Dominated Workplace (HBR Women at Work Series)

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Stacey Abrams
Lara Hodgson
Joseph Grenny
Michelle P. King
December 13, 2022

HBR Women at Work Boxed Set (6 Books)

April 25, 2023

McDonald's Board of Directors (A)

Lynn Sharp Paine
Will Hurwitz
October 18, 2023

An Uncomfortable Encounter: Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

Katherine E Breward
Colleen Sharen
September 01, 2016

Be.artsy: A Social Entrepreneur's Dilemma in Scaling Women Empowerment

Dolly Kovvali
Sanjana Gorti
D.V.R. Seshadri
July 17, 2023

Organizational Behavior Reading: Managing Differences

Robin J. Ely
Colleen Ammerman
April 22, 2022

Thriving in a Male-Dominated Workplace: Women at Work Discussion Group Toolkit

February 28, 2023

Illustrative Transformations (B)

Mary Gentile
February 28, 2021

McDonald's Board of Directors (D)

Vcayr: managing sexual harassment.

Yasser Rahrovani
July 07, 2021

Uber: The Turbulent Rise of "Everyone's Private Driver"

Jared D. Harris
Andrew Sell
October 03, 2022

Susan Taylor at Exeter Group

Joerg Dietz
April 05, 2022

Karin Vinik at South Lake Hospital (A)

Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.
Kim B. Clark
December 11, 2019

Sexual harassment case studies

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Self-Representation Toolkit: Making a Sexual Harassment Complaint to Equal Opportunity SA

Self-Representation Toolkit: Making a Sexual Harassment Complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission

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Case Summaries

Sexual harassment in the workplace is an ongoing and increasingly publicised topic. More and more women contact our centre daily to seek advice in relation to the legal avenues that may be available to them to seek a remedy for the unacceptable and intolerable behaviour they have experienced in the workplace.

Once a victim has gained the courage to seek advice on their legal options, the next question that usually follows is how does someone quantify a monetary settlement for the behaviours and conduct that person has been subject to?

The following case studies are based on leading sexual harassment cases. They give a brief summary of the facts by looking at the conduct and behaviours a complainant has experienced, the findings of the court in relation to the said conduct and lastly the rulings and compensation awarded by the courts.

Hill v Hughes

Ms Hill was awarded $170,000 in compensation for loss and damages.

Ms Hill was admitted to legal practice in April 2015 and in May 2015 began working with Mr Hughes (Principal Solicitor) of a small legal firm.
Mr Hughes was physically and emotionally attracted to Ms Hill.
Ms Hill was involved in an ongoing mediation with her ex-husband. Mr Hughes offered to represent her and she agreed.
Ms Hill disclosed a lot of personal information to Mr Hughes so he could represent her including details of her relationship with her former husband, her children, past relationships with men and her dealings with an apprehended violence order.
The night before the mediation, Mr Hughes called Ms Hill and expressed his growing feelings towards her. This made her feel apprehensive and uncomfortable. She said nothing and ignored his comments.
Mr Hughes had a matter he needed to attend in Sydney for work and asked Hill if she would like to be of assistance and go to Sydney with him on 24 July 2015.
On 17 July 2015 an email was sent to Ms Hill regarding accommodation in Sydney. Additionally, the email contained several personal comments about his feelings for her. A further three emails were sent that day.
Ms Hill spoke to Mr Hughes and made it clear the Sydney trip was for work only and did not want a relationship with him.
Whilst in Sydney Ms Hill went to bed and found Mr Hughes laying on her bed in his underwear and a singlet. She asked him to “please leave” and felt upset and compromised both professionally and personally.
The next morning when Ms Hill had a shower, she returned to find Mr Hughes again in her room, laying on the mattress in her bedroom and asked him to “get out”.
Mr Hughes had on several occasions asked to hug her.
Ms Hill explained she was upset and told Hughes he had acted inappropriately.
Mr Hughes continued to send several persistent emails through July, August, September and October proclaiming his love for her and expressing that he wanted a future with her.
In June 2016, Mr Hughes sent an email bringing up Ms Hill’s inability to do her job, used the personal information he obtained when he was acting as a legal representative for her against her and said he could only afford to pay her two days a week.
Ms Hughes resigned.
Respondent was dishonest and had been told not to send emails.
He took grave exploitation of the legal relationship as an advantage over her.
Mr Hughes saw the trip as an opportunity to begin a sexual relationship, by trying his luck.
The respondent on several occasions had tried to coerce the applicant to give him a hug. He did this by blocking the exit and making her feel as though she could not decline
His motivation for being in her room was entirely sexual (see her naked/watch her get dressed).
He only started to criticise her work and professionalism after he was rejected.
His emails/conduct were unwelcomed, offensive, humiliating, intimidating and distressing.
The spoken words, physical conduct and email communications were sexual harassment.
Conduct was relentless, he took advantage of her vulnerability.
Threats he made were extremely distressing.
Harassment was unwanted, persistent and threatening.
General damages $120,000.

Aggravated Damages:

Threats of job loss were made to stop the applicant from making a complaint.
Respondents used privileged information he got while acting as her legal representative.
Mr Hughes said Hill was flirty and encouraged him.
Aggravated Damages $50,000.

Link to Decision:

http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/FCCA/2019/1267.html?context=1;query=[2019]%20FCCA%201267;mask_path=

Evans v Pasadena Foodland and Crugnale

Ms Evans was awarded $30,000 in damages.

Ms Evans was working in the supermarket and Mr Crugnale also performed work there. The sexual harassment involved a pattern of inappropriate touching which eventually escalated to sexual assault.
Mr Crugnale deliberately brushed past behind Ms Evans on three occasions in one day.
Ms Evans said Mr Crugnale pushed his body up against hers and glided the palm of his hand between her buttocks as he walked past.
The third time he did this, she said she could feel something hard press up against her, which she thought could have been a belt buckle, or his erection.
Ms Evans reported the incidents and management reviewed the CCTV footage. They decided they saw “nothing of concern”. The security footage was destroyed two weeks later.
Mr Crugnale had engaged in the conduct complained of and it was unwelcomed by Ms Evans.
A reasonable person having regard to all the circumstances would have been offended, humiliated or intimidated.
His evidence that the touching was accidental was not accepted and his conduct was found to be deliberate and of a sexual nature.

Vicarious Liability:

Ms Evans also claimed that Pasadena Foodland had breached its duty of vicarious liability and was responsible for Mr Crugnale’s behaviour because they had failed to appropriately implement/enforce their own sexual harassment policy.

Facts in relation to vicarious liability:

Ms Evans had asked an assistant store manager to check the security footage because she had been touched inappropriately, in addition to complaining to the HR Manager.
Neither the HR Manager or Assistant Store Manager took the complaint seriously and neither obtained a statement or record from her.
When the HR Manager viewed the CCTV footage, he did not observe a clear-cut instance of sexual assault so allowed the footage to be automatically deleted after fourteen days.
A couple of months after the last incident had occurred, Ms Evans spoke with the café manager who made a further complaint to the duty manager on her behalf.
The café manager then took it upon herself to investigate the complaint and recorded what was said by both parties.
It was recommended to the HR Manager that the issue be escalated to a formal investigation and the incident was raised with Mr Crugnale who volunteered to apologize.
The lack of action and insufficient investigation by Pasadena Foodland resulted in Ms Evans making a complaint to the police.

Pasadena Foodland was found to be vicariously liable for Mr Crugnale’s conduct as they did not take reasonable steps to prevent Mr Cugnale’s behaviour. In was also found that Foodland failed to implement their own sexual harassment policy.

Compensation:

Ms Evans was entitled to compensation as she had suffered a psychological disorder, harm, suffering and hurt as a result of the sexual harassment.
Pasadena Foodland and Mr Crugnale were found to be jointly liable.
Ms Evans made a claim for workers compensation and received money for some of her medical expenses as well as lost earnings.

http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/sa/SAET/2019/222.html

Yelda v Sydney Water Corporation

MS YELDA RECEIVED $200,000 IN COMPENSATION.

Ms Yelda was employed by Sydney Water and worked with field staff, which consisted of male workers.
Sydney Water had engaged Vitality Works to create a Safespine campaign for Sydney Water staff.
Ms Yelda agreed to have her photo taken for the campaign. A male colleague also had his photo taken for the campaign.
Vitality Works produced a poster of Ms Yelda smiling with her right arm outstretched above her head. She was pointing to the words “Feel great” and “lubricate”.
Sydney Water printed the posters and displayed them in the Sydney Water Ryde Depot, where it was placed just outside the men’s toilet and the civil delivery lunchroom.
Ms Yelda saw the poster and sent a complaint via email shortly after.
The Tribunal found that the words “Feel Great-Lubricate” were big relative to the other words and that as a whole did not immediately suggest the intended meaning of spine safety. Colloquially the poster carried a sexualised connotation and had her image on it.
The conduct of displaying the poster was conduct of a sexual nature within the meaning of sexual harassment under the relevant legislation.
Because they chose Ms Yelda and not her male colleague, the court also found that Sydney water had discriminated against Ms Yelda on the ground of her sex.
Upheld on appeal.

Compensation :

$100,000 from Sydney Water
$100,000 from Vitality Works

http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/nsw/NSWCATAD/2021/107.html?context=1;query=Yelda%20v%20Sydney%20Water%20Corporation;%20Yelda%20v

Lee v Smith & Ors

Ms Lee was awarded $100,000 in damages

Please note that this case summary contains content referring to sexual harassment & rape, that survivors and victims of sexual assault may find upsetting.

Ms Leewas employed by the Department of Defence, which is an entity of the Commonwealth. Two of the perpetrators had more senior positions than Ms Lee.
Calendars of topless women and computer images containing pornography were readily visible to Ms Leein the workplace.
Mr Smith typed ‘ Austin is a champion in the sack ’ on a computer shared by him and Ms Lee.
Mr Smith wrote his phone number on Ms Lee’s writing pad and when asked why he had done that, Mr Smith replied that if Ms Lee ever wanted to go out with him she should call him.
Mr Smith told Ms Lee he would like to have sex with her. When Ms Lee rejected, Mr Smith said ‘you will be sorry’ in a threatening voice.
Ms Lee told Mr Smith that he wanted him to stop making advances towards her as she would continue to reject those advances, and this would cause tension in the workplace.
Mr Smith said he would continue to “perve” at Ms Lee’s “ass” when she walked past.
Mr Smith Left a note in Ms Lee’s drawer that said: “ .. I think I want Austin sandwiches for lunch. .. (Happy face symbol) his meat between my two lovely thighs ”.
Mr Smith wrote ‘ I just ripped a hole in my jeans … I don’t have underwear on ’ and ‘ I can touch my penis through the hole ’ on Ms Lee’s course notes. Miss Lee also observed that his penis was partly poking out of the hole in his jeans.
Mr Smith approached Ms Lee from behind, lifted the Applicant’s skirt, pushed himself against her and squeezed her buttock.
Mr Smith also obtained Ms Lee’s number from her personal file in the Resource management section and called her.
Ms Lee became intoxicated at the dinner and passed out. When she woke up the next day, she was in Mr Smith’s house and he was raping her.
Mr Smith was found liable for l the sexual harassment leading up to the rape – the rape itself and the harassment following the rape. The employer was also found to be vicariously liable

Links to decision :

http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/FMCA/2007/59.html?context=1;query=Lee%20v%20Smith%20&%20Ors;mask_path=

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More From Forbes

New study reveals the toll ndas impose on harassment and discrimination victims.

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A new study highlights the burden NDAs put on victims of harassment and discrimination.

Organizations regularly use non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to conceal toxic workplace issues such as sexual harassment and discrimination. Despite their widespread use, the psychological and career impacts on workers bound by these contracts remained largely unexplored. Now, a new study reveals the hidden toll on employees compelled to sign NDAs.

Over one-third of the U.S. workforce are bound by NDAs. Initially, companies used these agreements to protect trade secrets and intellectual property. More recently, NDAs have been used to silence harassment and discrimination victims and help employers hide misconduct at work. The NDAs are often included as part of the mandatory forms that new hires must sign, and they are also included in settlement agreements.

Since NDAs impose strict confidentiality on employees, little information was available prior to this study on how they impacted signers. Since the employees were unable to share their stories, the toxic effect of the NDAs went undocumented. However, a new study by the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University and advocacy group Lift Our Voices includes accounts of 23 employees who shared their experiences with NDAs and workplace harassment or discrimination.

One of the study's most striking findings is the emotional burden on employees who couldn’t share or discuss what happened to them. “There's a huge psychological component to having to sit on something that is so obviously devastating to you and not being able to talk about it with anybody,” Julie Roginsky, cofounder of Lift Our Voices, describes. She adds, “I think that's the part of this whole horrible process that the study captures.”

One participant described the burden of keeping her feelings to herself and dwelling on them at home, saying the thoughts were consuming her mind. Another explained, “I wanted to speak out. And I was reminded—I signed an NDA and not to speak, not to disclose what happened.… I was already down. I was already devastated.”

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Employees also described how the NDAs allowed their companies to hide problems instead of addressing them. If nobody is aware of the toxic behavior, the company has less incentive to fix it. The secrecy enforced by NDAs facilitates this process.

Not only do companies ignore problems, but they also retaliate against the whistleblower. “It’s the age-old story of the person reporting becomes the target. And the HR department is there to protect the company, not to protect the employee,” one NDA signer explained. Several of the interviewees stated they were “bullied” and “mobbed” after coming forward. To make the situation worse, due to the NDA, those who are bullied can’t share their side of the story.

Often, non-compete clauses are embedded in NDAs, and these can have a lasting impact on the employee’s career. “When they sign these [NDAs], they don't always realize that it's not just going to impact the next job they get, but it could impact their career for five years, seven years or a decade. And in a couple of cases, we had people who were pushed out of their industries altogether,” explains Bethany Nichols, a research associate at the Clayman Institute at Stanford and one of the investigators involved with the study.

For Gretchen Carlson, cofounder of Lift Our Voices, the most heartrending stories were those of minimum wage workers impacted by NDAs. “Those are the people who legitimately can't afford to come forward. Not only can they not afford legal representation, but they can't risk being unemployed,” she says. Carlson explains that minimum wage workers are also more likely to have signed NDAs than other employees. “It's almost like the more disenfranchised you are in society, the more likely you are to be silenced at work. …They lose their voice, and they lose their jobs,” she says.

Further exacerbating the problem, the language in NDAs is often so complex that the average employee cannot understand—yet they are still required to sign. “There’s just a bunch of legal stuff that I don’t think the average server or bartender or even a restaurant manager truly understands,” one participant explained regarding her NDA.

For Carlson and Roginsky, both former Fox News employees who filed harassment lawsuits against former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, the NDA issue is personal. The pair were forced to sign NDAs when they joined Fox News and again as part of sexual harassment settlements with the company. One of the primary goals of their organization, Lift Our Voices, is to eliminate the use of NDAs in all toxic workplace issues so others won’t be silenced as they were. They hope this study will advance the dialog on this issue.

Thanks to advocacy from Lift Our Voices, in 2022, the Speak Out Act made NDAs unenforceable in cases of sexual harassment and assault. However, its protections are limited to NDAs signed before the harassment occurred. This leaves significant gaps. Employees are often pressured to sign NDAs as a part of settlement agreements, and these remain enforceable. Additionally, NDAs in discrimination cases are still legally binding, regardless of when they were signed.

In addition to the federal legislation, several states, including New Jersey and California, have enacted laws restricting the use of NDAs. Washington state, in particular, has implemented what Carlson calls the "gold standard" for NDA legislation, rendering all non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses unenforceable in cases of harassment, discrimination and other toxic workplace issues. Lift Our Voices aims to replicate this model in as many states as possible, pushing for comprehensive legislative changes nationwide.

However, getting lawmakers on board with new NDA restrictions hasn’t been easy. According to Carlson and Roginsky, one of the main reasons for this opposition is that politicians themselves frequently use NDAs. This practice is not limited to Democrats or Republicans; "both parties use NDAs," Carlson explains.

The hope is that this study will aid in convincing legislators and employers to end the use of NDAs in all harassment and discrimination cases, by raising awareness of the toll that NDAs impose on victims. Nichols hopes to expand the study by talking to more employees impacted by NDAs and potentially following them to assess the long-term effects of signing these agreements. Although this initial study is small due to the difficulty of finding individuals willing to break their silence, she believes it is still vital for raising awareness. “I think if people just know that it's much more than just someone not being able to share their story, that it's rippling out to all aspects of their life, we will feel as researchers that we've elevated the conversation about this," she explains.

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What a Professor’s Firing Shows About Sexual Harassment in China

A top Chinese university described the conduct of a professor accused of sexual harassment as a moral failing, language feminists say downplays harm to women.

Students wearing red graduation gowns and black caps stand in a room. Several are checking their smartphones.

By Tiffany May and Zixu Wang

Reporting from Hong Kong

In the video, the Chinese graduate student stared straight into the camera as she spoke. She wore a mask, but in a bold move, made clear who she was by holding up her identification card. Then she issued an explosive accusation: A prominent professor at a top Chinese university had been sexually harassing her for two years.

Shortly after the woman posted the video on her Chinese social media pages on Sunday, it drew millions of views and set off an online outcry against the professor she named, Wang Guiyuan, then the vice-dean and Communist Party head of Renmin University’s School of Liberal Arts in Beijing.

The next day, Renmin University fired Mr. Wang, saying that officials had investigated the student’s allegations and found that they were true.

The swift response by the university reflected the growing pressure that Chinese academic institutions have come under to curb sexual harassment on campus. In recent years, several schools have been accused of not doing enough to protect their students from tutors and professors who preyed on them.

At the same time, in denouncing the professor, the university and commentaries in state media that followed studiously avoided describing his conduct as sexual harassment. Instead, they depicted it as a moral failing, using language that feminist activists and scholars say points to a strategy of deflection that turns the attention away from victims.

“If they have to avoid saying ‘sexual harassment,’ it’s very hard to imagine that they take sexual violence seriously,” said Feng Yuan, an academic and the founder of an anti-domestic violence help line in Beijing.

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IMAGES

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COMMENTS

Case Study: Was That Harassment?
Case Study: Was That Harassment? A version of this article appeared in the May-June 2019 issue (pp.160-165) of Harvard Business Review. J. Neil Bearden is an associate professor at INSEAD.
Online Harassment Case Studies
In the landmark case of Elonis v. United States, a man in the process of divorcing his wife posted seemingly threatening song lyrics on Facebook. Anthony Elonis included disclaimers that the violent lyrics were "fictitious" and "therapeutic.". Elonis was prosecuted under federal law (18 U.S.C. § 875 (c)) which prohibits making threats ...
Cyber Harassment
Cyber Harassment. After a student defames a middle school teacher on social media, the teacher confronts the student in class and posts a video of the confrontation online. In many ways, social media platforms have created great benefits for our societies by expanding and diversifying the ways people communicate with each other, and yet these ...
PDF ARTICLE HBR CASE STUDY AND COMMENTARY Was That Harassment?
Under such a policy, well-founded complaints of sexual harassment will lead to the perpetrator's dismissal. Some believe that this is too harsh and will discourage reporting. FOR ARTICLE REPRINTS CALL 800-988-0886 OR 617-783-7500, OR VISIT HBR.ORG. Harvard Business Review.
Workplace Harassment in the Age of Remote Work
The result is a so-called hostile work environment — a workspace that feels unsafe, can feel threatening to someone's identity or inhibit employees from doing their work. "Words can be ...
(PDF) Harassment: Causes, Effects, Solutions
A case study presented in the paper disclosed that one in five women had experiences sexual harassment, so it was deliberated why the majority of the cases went underreported.
Was That Harassment? (HBR Case Study)
Bestseller. Was That Harassment? (HBR Case Study) By: Neil Bearden. After a salesman jokingly asks a female colleague if her appearance is the reason for her inclusion in a leadership program, his friend, the only other person present, reports the incident to HR.…. Length: 6 page (s) Publication Date: May 1, 2019.
(PDF) Psychological Harassment in the Workplace: Case-Study and
Case-Study and Building. of a New Analysis Model. Daniel Faulx, Sophie Delvaux and Jean-Pierre Brun. From a case-study based on an analysis model, which takes into account four. levels of ...
Harassment and Bullying: Two Wrongs that Do Not Make a Right: A Case
The case is then briefly analyzed by examining the human resources issues of religion in the workplace as well as harassment and bullying. Please note that this is a disguised case — the high school in question and the affiliated employees' names have been changed to protect their anonymity. Introduction
Discrimination and Harassment Case Study Analysis
Sexual harassment case study Case studies about discrimination in the workplace. In August of 2018, a young woman was hired to become the shipping manager for a small printing company. She is 26 years old, has a boyfriend that she is living with, and has plans to get married and have children, eventually. The general manager of the company was ...
7 Findings, Conclusions, and Recommendations
FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS Chapter 2: Sexual Harassment Research. Sexual harassment is a form of discrimination that consists of three types of harassing behavior: (1) gender harassment (verbal and nonverbal behaviors that convey hostility, objectification, exclusion, or second-class status about members of one gender); (2) unwanted sexual attention (unwelcome verbal or physical sexual advances ...
Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace
For example, studies have linked sexual harassment to negative effects on a firm's ability to attract employees. [101] A 2008 study of the impact of sexual harassment on a consumer brand found that prospective employees' perceived sexual harassment in a sales workplace was negatively related to their intentions to work for the firm. [102]
Was That Harassment? HBR Case Study
The Case Centre is the independent home of the case method. The Case Centre. Cranfield University, Wharley End, Bedfordshire. MK43 0JR, UK. t +44 (0)1234 750903 or +1 781 236 4510. e [email protected].
Case Study: Is It Teasing or Harassment?
Case Study: Is It Teasing or Harassment? A manager wonders whether to complain about her boss's insensitive comments. by . Dianne Bevelander, Jacqueline Nolan, and ; Michael Page; by .
Research: How Sexual Harassment Affects a Company's Public Image
These studies show that a single sexual harassment claim can dramatically ... have made public conversation about the issue hyper visible and easier to organize — as was the case for the #MeToo ...
Case Study: Three Sexual Harassment Scenarios
This week, I have been talking about what is sexual harassment, so I thought the best way is to discuss a topic that is very fact specific is to discuss some factual scenarios. Scenario 1. A female worker in a small company of 12 employees is asked every 2-3 weeks by a male coworker (not a supervisor) to go out for drinks after work.
Office banter or harassment? Seven case law examples
Heterosexual employee called "gay" won harassment claim. In Austin v Samuel Grant (North East) Ltd, a heterosexual male employee, A, won a sexual orientation and religion or belief harassment claim after repeated inappropriate remarks made verbally and by email. During once incident, colleagues asked A whether or not he liked football.
Analysis: Humor or Harassment? (An HBR Case Study)
Andrew Faas — Analysis: Humor or Harassment? (An HBR Case Study) Letter to the Editor. This is my response to an article in the Harvard Business Review titled " Humour or Harassment", a story about the fine line between workplace bullying and office relations. Having researched workplace bullying and harassment over the last five years, which ...
Psychological Harassment in the Workplace: Case-Study and Building of a
these conclusions, the authors develop a new analysis model, which is process based, integrative and dynamic. keywords: psychological harassment, mobbing, case-study, analysis model, process. Introduction. Psychological harassment in the workplace is a problem that has been studied. tensively for the last fifteen years.
Racial harassment in the workplace: five key cases
Racial harassment can include: abusive language; racist jokes; racially offensive material; exclusion from workplace conversations or activities; and violence or the threat of violence. 1. Subconscious association. In Brown v Young & Co's Brewery, the employment tribunal had the unusual task of considering whether or not a manager harassed a ...
Harvard issues report on sexual harassment
Annually, more than 27,000 students, faculty, and staff participate in in-person training sessions and/or our online Title IX training module — everyone who studies and works at Harvard is now required to complete mandatory online training on how to support a harassment-free community. These have continued online during the pandemic.
A Retrospective, Exploratory Case Study of Food Insecurity During COVID
COVID-19 being referred to as the "Chinese virus" and "Kung Flu" were false accusations that were repeatedly made publicly and stoked public hysteria and racist attacks. This Asian-targeted discrimination and harassment led to an even more dire situation for already economically disadvantaged Asian American who were disproportionately affected strikingly high incident rate of food ...
EEOC's Final Enforcement Guidance on Workplace Harassment Is Here
On April 29, 2024, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued its final version of the Enforcement Guidance on Workplace Harassment to include developments "answering the call" of the #MeToo movement; the landmark Supreme Court decision in Bostock v.
Sexual harassment
Case Study: Was That Harassment? Business communication Magazine Article. J. Neil Bearden; A salesperson wonders how to respond to a colleague's joke. Save; Share; From the May-June 2019 Issue;
Sexual harassment case studies
The following case studies are based on leading sexual harassment cases. They give a brief summary of the facts by looking at the conduct and behaviours a complainant has experienced, the findings of the court in relation to the said conduct and lastly the rulings and compensation awarded by the courts.
New Study Reveals The Toll NDAs Impose On Harassment And ...
The hope is that this study will aid in convincing legislators and employers to end the use of NDAs in all harassment and discrimination cases, by raising awareness of the toll that NDAs impose on ...
What a Professor's Firing Shows About Sexual Harassment in China
The avoidance of the term "sexual harassment" has been a feature in past cases as well. In 2023, Southwest University in Chongqing fired a professor after a doctoral student said he had ...