Estelle Freedman moderates a discussion on how institutions can respond productively to challenges and promote individual and community flourishing with panelists Jennifer Freyd, Jennifer Gómez, and Carolyn Warner.
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Social Science for a World in Crisis
Narrator: From the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, this is Human Centered. The institutions we're all a part of play a large role in shaping how we address violence and inequity. And when they fail to protect or deal with these issues, we're left to suffer not just the initial injury, but feelings of betrayal and the sense that the social contracts we adhere to are eroding. But what prevents institutions from adequately addressing or redressing these issues? And how do we set them on the right course? Today on Human Centered, another episode in the CASBS series, Social Science for a World in Crisis. This episode, which originally webcast on February 3rd, 2021, is titled "What Institutional Courage Looks Like," and it features panelists Jennifer Fried, founder and president of the Center for Institutional Courage, professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, and a CASBS fellow in 1989-90 and again in 2018-19; Jennifer Gomez, assistant professor of psychology at Wayne State University; and Carolyn Warner, the Vail Pittman Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a CASBS Fellow in 2017-18. Moderating the conversation is Estelle Friedman, the Edgar E. Robinson Professor in U.S. History at Stanford University, a CASBS Fellow in 2009-10 and again in 2018-19, and a current CASBS Faculty Fellow. Friedman engages the panel in discussing examples of institutional failure and betrayal from sexual violence and abuse within the Catholic Church, the military, universities, and corporations, to the persistent prejudice, discrimination, and sometimes lethal violence against minorities. Together, they ask the question, what does institutional courage look like in the face of these transgressions? We'll hear them discuss examples of institutions which have responded to challenges either poorly or productively, and explore the common attributes that either help or hinder reform efforts. Now join Human Centered as we listen in on what institutional courage looks like.
Estelle Freedman: Welcome everyone to the 12th episode of the CASBS webcast series, Social Science for a World in Crisis. I am Estelle Friedman, an historian at Stanford. And I had the pleasure of being CASBS fellow while writing a book about the response to sexual violence in the United States. Before we start today, I want to acknowledge the co-sponsors in this webcast episode: the Center for Institutional Courage, the Gendered Violence Research Network based at Arizona State University, the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute at Wayne State University, and the Metro Detroit Association of Black Psychologists. I'll introduce the panelists very briefly. The event promo provides links to their bios, and then we're going to jump right into the discussion. Jennifer Freyd is founder and president of the Center for Institutional Courage, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, and a two-time CASBS fellow. Jennifer Gomez is assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and the Merrill Park Palmer-Skillman Institute at Wayne State University. And Carolyn Warner is the Vail Pittman Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Nevada, Reno, and she was a CASBS Fellow in 2017-2018. I would like to acknowledge at the outset that some of our topics, including sexual violence and racism, are painful ones for many of us. And know that we offer our comments with that in mind and with care. Here is how we're going to proceed. I'm going to ask each panelist to give us a very brief sense of how their research relates to our topic of institutional betrayal and institutional courage. And then we're going to talk first about how institutions respond to sexual violence. But we're going to also leave time to expand the conversation to a range of of intersecting problems, including the response to COVID. And I hope to try to incorporate some of your questions along the way, but we will certainly leave time to bring your questions to the panelists towards the end. And even if we can't answer all of your questions, we will all read them after the event. So, we're going to begin in the order in which I introduced you. Could you each say just a few words about what you study related to institutional betrayal and institutional courage? Jennifer Freyd.
Jennifer Freyd: So, it's really an honor to be here with all of you today. I've been studying interpersonal betrayal, what I call betrayal trauma, for many decades with a focus on sexual violence. And within the last 10 or 12 years have really addressed primarily institutional betrayal, which is when institutions harm individuals dependent on those institutions. And that can include the failure to protect. More recently, my attention has gone to institutional courage, which in some ways In some ways, it's like the antidote to institutional betrayal, and it involves an institution's commitment to seek the truth and engage in moral action despite unpleasantness, risk, and short-term cost.
Estelle Freedman: Thanks.
Carolyn Warner: Yeah.
Estelle Freedman: Jen Gomez.
Jennifer Gómez: I'm Jennifer Gomez. They'll call me Jen. Don't have dueling Jennifers. I'm a trauma psychologist. With cultural betrayal trauma theory, I research how, especially in sexual violence, how violence impacts marginalized youth, young adults, and elders because of this context of inequality, including racism. And so, the link to institutional courage then is how can our institutions be less racist, less inequitable, and less violent. And so, we promote then anti-violence and anti-racism and anti-bigotry of all kinds.
Estelle Freedman: Thank you. Carolyn Warner.
Carolyn Warner: I'm Carolyn Warner, a political scientist, and I have been looking at how hierarchical institutions, particularly the military and the Catholic Church, uh, handle cases of abuse, sexual abuse within their institutions, why they handle them as they do, and the conditions under which those external to the institutions—public officials, politicians, uh, the general public—hold these institutions accountable. Thank you all.
Estelle Freedman: Well, the common theme that unites all of our research, of course, is sexual violence. So, we're going to start there. And I would really like to hear from you as social scientists, how do you define or measure or parse the way that institutions either fail or succeed in redressing sexual assault and harassment? And I'll ask Jennifer Frye to start us off.
Jennifer Freyd: Well, one way one would maybe want to do that is look externally at the institution's behavior and its impact on individuals in that institution. But it's really hard to study sexual violence just by looking at an institution externally because it's so hidden. It's so, so stigmatized. And people Perpetrators hide it, institutions hide it. So, it's actually a really difficult thing to study. One way we've approached it is by developing a measurement instrument we call the Institutional Betrayal Questionnaire. And we also have the Institutional Courage Questionnaire. And these are instruments designed to be answered by individuals in the institution. And we've learned over many decades when trying to measure just sexual violence that if people feel that they are safe in answering questions through anonymity, we can get quite a bit of information about what's really going on and uncover things that have never been revealed. So, so many people who respond to surveys indicating that they've had sexual violence or that they've experienced what we would call institutional betrayal will also tell us they've never told anyone before indicating on our survey that that has occurred to them.
Estelle Freedman: Thank you. Either of you want to say anything else about how do you measure either the problem or the redress? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Carolyn Warner: Yeah, they, uh, I agree with Jennifer that this is an extremely difficult area to measure instances of and, and even to see, to see the extent of the problem, particularly in a very closed institution like the Catholic Church where it is very difficult to get data on, uh, on the number of cases, uh, at For reasons that Jennifer mentioned, victims have a difficult time coming forward. When they come forward, it often has not been reported externally, which is where it would be kept track of. The church has not wanted to release information on this. The contrast has been with the US military, which because it is accountable to Congress, and this also goes for some militaries in other countries, they have been compelled by Congress to set up surveys, anonymous surveys, that are done biannually, and then to collect data on all reported cases of sexual assault. The trouble— the difficulty, of course, with reported cases, when you see a spike in them, you don't know, as there has been in the military the last year, you don't know if that's because victims are feeling more confident now because of procedures the military has put in to help victims when they report and to be more responsive in addressing cases, or if it's that there really are more cases.
Jennifer Gómez: We still don't have a good handle on that. And I would add, like, looking then longitudinally, that's an immediate problem, but hopefully as the awareness keeps going higher, then it should level off into, into truer rates. I think another shorthand for me that I use is if an institution, it looks like there's nothing wrong, so some universities say we have zero rates of sexual assault on our campus, it's statistically impossible for that to be true. And so to be operating with transparency with these self-assessments response that Jennifer and Carolyn are talking about and asking in these ways where you ask anonymously to really get true rates. I think another, another thing that I always think about as well in terms of the flip side of if things are working is, is it working for everybody? And so in STEM, we see that things are getting better extremely slowly for white women and not for women of color. And so if we don't measure those different things and notice that disparity, then we're missing some of the barriers.
Estelle Freedman: Well, I'm really glad you brought that up because it goes to my follow-up question really about some of the dimensions and the more fine-tuning of the risks in institutions for different groups, but also the responses of institutions. And I wonder, Jen, can you talk a little bit more about your cultural betrayal trauma theory and how does it apply? Are there implications for institutional courage, that is for, for better practices, let us say, by bringing race into account and understanding cultures generally?
Jennifer Gómez: Yeah, I mean, of course I would say so. I think an example would be if a faculty member is sexually harassing a grad student, let's say. That's not so great, there's a power difference. If now we make the faculty member a Black man and the grad student a Black woman, here's where cultural betrayal trauma theory comes in. So let's say this Dr. Black man is the only Black faculty in that department and the entire college. Why did that happen? Because of racism. And let's say that the Black graduate student is the only Black graduate student out of 100. How did that happen? Because of racism. So, when she's experiencing this and thinking of disclosing, she potentially doesn't want to give this department and the college more reason to not hire Black scholars or to make it seem like Black Black men are all abusers. And so then you have the— what we know from betrayal trauma theory from Jennifer and all these other places of it's going to be hard with the power difference and with the need and the dependence. And then you add like, oh, I have to protect all of Black people in this within an environment that is default not inclusive, given the exclusivity. And so if we're— then we're thinking about sexual harassment with Dr. Blackman and Black graduate students as this cultural betrayal, sexual harassment. And so now we're thinking the potential harm are things that we think about like PTSD and things that we don't like internalized prejudice.
Estelle Freedman: Yeah, right. Well, you know, when Jennifer Freyd was talking about institutional courage, and we'd like to— for one of our audience members has already asked us to talk a little bit more about what do we mean by institutional courage, and I would follow up in terms of what would be the way that institutions could respond, not in a way that lets down those who they're supposed to protect, but that would indeed protect them. And any of you might speak to that, but in a way that gives us a stronger sense of what would be institutional courage in some of the cases that you've been talking about— military, church, university. I'm sort of looking at Jennifer Freyd because she is the person who has really developed this field of institutional courage. Could you elaborate a little bit more, say, what would it look like in these cases?
Jennifer Freyd: Yeah, I mean, I have suggested certain steps for institutional courage that institutions can take. And interestingly, one of them is indeed to collect anonymous, scientifically sound data about what's really going on, both going on interpersonally within the context of the institution, as well as the institutional behavior itself. And it's interesting to me that Carolyn pointed out that the U.S. military actually has been doing this for a long time. For decades, they've been conducting surveys on service members about their experiences. And those surveys are now the primary research measurement tools used for sexual and gender-based harassment, for instance. Louise Fitzgerald, one of the researchers who worked with the military, has played such a role there in developing those. So, that's one of the 10 steps. But obviously, it's a start and not an end. And I won't just start reciting all 10 steps, but I will mention that another step is to what I call cherish the whistleblower, which is the institution Recognizing that anyone who comes forward with a complaint about what's happened, a disclosure, a concern about institutional behavior, is doing the institution a great favor. And they typically, not always, but usually are doing it out of loyalty to the institution, as well as a sense of moral and ethical duty. And what we, as a society, and most of our institutions have a very bad habit of doing is essentially shooting the messenger and tarnishing the person who comes forward. And it's completely inside out. That person should be cherished. And as soon as you start cherishing truth-telling, I think you change the culture dramatically because right now we have a culture of retaliation. But— and it's really hard to just stop retaliation. So, I'm really urging for a much more proactive stance of taking steps to cherish that person.
Estelle Freedman: So you're talking about naming the problem and then reframing the namers, for one thing, as valuable sources. I think that's great. This might really help me get to another question, which is, how have institutions incorporated the lessons of the past— well, let's call them past betrayal even— schools, military, church, businesses, where you've mentioned the military, for example, which had terrible reputation in the '80s and '90s for these scandals and clearly has been mandated to try to investigate. Can you think of other examples where past failures have informed new practices? And I'm looking at you, Carolyn.
Carolyn Warner: Yeah, well, even— I've got two things I'd like to contribute. One is even within, you know, within the military, one of the interesting innovations they came up with is what they call restricted reporting. It's a response to The fact that a lot of victims in the military, even in the early 2000s and still now, are hesitant to report initially. They were also hesitant to even go get treatment at a hospital if they needed it, because prior to restricted reporting, hospital officials on a base had to report that this person had been sexually assaulted. It triggered an investigation. They were swept up into the judicial, you know, the investigatory process before the victim the victim even had a chance to, you know, process what had happened to them. And so, the restricted reporting gives them tremendous power to get the emotional medical treatment that they need without the report immediately going public. And they can keep it restricted for the rest of their lives. It just can stay restricted forever, or they can flip it anytime they want. And the military did this in order to increase reporting. And it does appear to have had an effect. And every year there's a healthy percentage of restricted reports that where the victims flip them of their own volition to unrestricted so the military can investigate. So, that was an important investigation— innovation. But another one with the Catholic Church, they— that's been a very difficult one. But they have the— The Conference of Bishops after the Boston scandals in the early 2001 came to light, 2002, triggered an effort to come up with a charter on how— guidelines on how bishops should handle these cases, because guidelines actually from the Vatican and within canon law, while if you read canon law you could figure it out what they were supposed to do, it didn't mesh well with how to take care of victims. So, they established some policies to help victims. And so, it— but I'll save my comments on why they resorted to doing these sorts of things. I think it takes a lot of outside pressure, but we can get to that later.
Jennifer Gómez: Yeah, I would add in universities for sexual harassment that NASM, gave us a huge gift with their report on sexual harassment in academic sciences, engineering, and medicine. And so, what has happened with that then is we have sitting in Congress, I believe, the Combating Sexual Harassment in Science Act. And so, this is a straight, like, social science document. Jennifer was a part of it, really informing national-level legislation. And then, what that means for me immediately at Wayne State is I have that document. I have shorthand of what it says. And I'm meeting with my upper-level administrators at Wayne State saying, I know we need to follow the law with Title IX, but here's how you can follow the law and be trauma-informed and be equitable all at the same time. And it's coming from NASM, which has the prestige to have people listen, listen more. And so I think there's a lot of really direct examples of us changing and how our institutions behave.
Estelle Freedman: You know, we're getting a couple of questions that revolve around the relationship of individuals and institutions. And I'm going to give you some of them, and if they resonate with your work, please speak to it, um, or just your thoughts. One question had to do with, even before an institution begins to acknowledge the problem, what about grassroots activity? Are there some ways that there's a relationship between what's going on outside and inside the institution And then a former CASBS fellow, Peter Gorevich, writes, how do you sort out courageous individuals from courageous institutions? Because can you be courageous inside if there isn't support from outside? So there's a kind of a cluster of inside, outside, individual, institution. And is there anyone who'd like to speak to that?
Carolyn Warner: I think, yeah, individuals can be courageous inside an institution in terms of As Jennifer Freyd said earlier, bringing to light that there are issues of trying to take action if they are in a position of authority. What I've seen though, especially in the Catholic Church, is that unless there is— the questioner got it right— internal grassroots activity and external pressure, that internally courageous person is likely to be shot down in the institution. Bishops that brought up awkward issues in the Catholic Church in the 1990s, for instance, instead of getting promoted to a better diocese, landed in some obscure diocese that no one would ever want to, you know, be living in for a long time. You know, there really were consequences for being courageous. So the individual courage needs to be matched by external pressure And, you know, frankly, ideally, transformation of the leadership and reorientation of the institution.
Estelle Freedman: Yeah. Jan, you were going to say something.
Jennifer Gómez: Yeah, I would add in terms of empowering, Jennifer and I were at University of Oregon, of course, at the same time. And there were moments that U of O has a fraught history of handling sexual violence and many other things. And at one point, we looked at each other and said, like, Oh, like we are the institution, right? It's not just the bad stuff is University of Oregon. Like we actually are institutional actors ourselves. And that means that she as a professor can do, make lots of moves. I as a graduate teaching assistant can teach my classes in a different way. I can mobilize in a different way. We protested. And so I think that we can become disempowered when we think the institution is this big bad thing, and then we aren't involved as opposed comes to we are a part of the institution and coalition helps. As Carolyn was saying, being one is not so great. Being all of us can be a lot better. And I think empowering each other to be the all of us inside the institution can help.
Estelle Freedman: Yeah. Folks would like to know something that I've always asked and I'm sure some of you can speak to. Do you have an example that— your go-to example when you're speaking about this idea of institutional courage, of somebody or some event, an example where somebody was courageous or an institution was courageous, or what was the role of the individual who decided to break the pattern. Anybody have a good example? Well, I—
Jennifer Freyd: when I talk about this, I often do give a particular example, um, which I actually don't think I'll give today except to say very briefly because some people have heard it already. It involves a university president who responded very well to an allegation of sexual violence and apologized and hired the victim, did so many of the things that I think constitute institutional courage. I would note it was a university president, so he had the highest structural power possible within a given university. And it's very different when somebody is courageous with that much power. And, you know, he represented the university, so his very actions become then institutional courage. He could have been sabotaged nonetheless. But what I want to mention as well is that I've been collecting examples, and one of the patterns I've seen— you know, it's much easier to collect examples of institutional betrayal than institutional courage. I've tried all sorts of ways, and it's really Unfortunately, much easier, but there are examples and they're very inspiring. And one of the patterns I've seen that I think is important to understand and relates to what we were talking about just a few minutes ago is this, the role of solidarity as well as taking responsibility for the institution from inside. So, an example that some of you may have read about that's not too old involved the charity Mercy Corps, a very large humanitarian charity doing good work all over the globe. Although it was a— and maybe is still, you know, an institution that has done a lot of good, the leader and the figurehead was accused by his own daughter of sexual abuse for many years. And this woman brought this information at different points in her life to the board of directors and others, and it kept getting shoved under the COVID as these things tend be handled. It's a massive institutional betrayal for her. Eventually, however, there was some news coverage because we've got this external thing happening, right, of our culture creating a kind of big, big ecological pressure that leads to things like news coverage. There's a news coverage about her story. And then what I think is really transformative and remarkable is that a group of employees at Mercy got together and decided to take action. So they were not high-placed people, but they were— they started to behave on behalf of the institution, essentially, and they needed the solidarity. It doesn't work for one person to do this. Probably they'll get squished. But there were enough of them that they banded together, and they ended up doing certain things like having a kind of a protest outside and writing in chalk their message to the young woman who had been abused by her father and so on. Eventually led to the board of directors doing what they should have done before, behaving courageously. So it, it was moving from grassroots inside the company with all this pressure from the outside right up to the top, and it produced really fundamental change.
Estelle Freedman: Yeah, thanks. I'm going to hold on some of the other questions right now because I want to bring in some questions that we got in advance that relate to the— what we're talking about, how do you make change, and then we'll get back to some of the incoming questions. Several questions had to do with implementation or proactivity, I would say. For example, how can commitments Once institutions say, you know, you're doing the naming and the reframing, how do you make it binding? How do you make it last? And also a question about whether there are early— if there are patterns of early warning signs of failures in institutional integrity. What do we have to do to make this work? I'll just throw in one other advanced question we had gotten had to do with athletes in particular. How can we encourage institutions surrounding athletes and students, especially men, in the institution to be able to come forward without fear of retaliation. Anything in this cluster of questions about, you know, let's get to the nitty-gritty. What can we do to get to courage, to not backslide, to see what's going wrong in advance, and in particularly getting rid of that culture of retaliation that you spoke of?
Jennifer Gómez: I mean, an immediate thing that comes to my mind is having a strategic plan and one that addresses, if we're talking about sexual violence and sexual harassment, this happens to certain people more often because of other forms of oppression, right? And so, if we have a strategic plan for equity that has, and the UN did a great job of this for mainstreaming gender, of by, you know, by year 2, we're going to have this requirement met, by year 5, we're going to exceed, you know, our expectations. And then you'll be doing self-assessments every year to see where you are and where you need to adjust. And that's coming from leadership down as well as down-up. And in terms of culture change, part of the assessment is where's the resistance? Because if anyone's pushing change and people are like, "We ain't changing," then it's not going to happen. So really assessing where are people at in terms of change around these issues and getting more people on board and then assessing and then following through and holding each other accountable and the institution accountable.
Carolyn Warner: What I see as needing to happen in institutions is that when there is a strategic plan, and I can point to both the military and the Catholic Church, they have developed plans within the different service branches and in the church within different national conferences and dioceses. It needs adherence to it and meeting targets needs to be incorporated into the assessment of the leadership and how the leadership is doing. If it's an institution, an institution that has, as the military does, frequent reviews of commanders for promotions, for new assignments, and so forth, how they are doing on this issue. What's the command climate? What do the enlisted say in anonymous surveys, getting back to Jennifer's initial point, regarding the leadership and holding them accountable that way? Because otherwise, these plans become, well, we have the plan and it's a checkbox. You know, great. We've got it over there, and that's all we need to do. So incorporating it into the institutional evaluation of the leadership. But what I've also seen, and I think Jennifer and Jen both got to this, is that in hierarchical institutions, there needs to be a change in attitude at the top to support and to sustain focus on it. Pope Francis has a— it's taken a lot of external pressure, frankly, but Pope Francis has a more— he's made some real changes in the church. I could talk about later if anyone's interested that have real consequences in beneficial ways. But that, you know, he's at the top of the institution. It really took someone being at the top. Likewise, in the military, General Austin, our new Secretary of Defense, is Having a complete review of sexual assault in the military. Again, Fort Hood had a big scandal, a horrible thing this last year. They fired— well, basically I'll put in quotes, "fired 14 commanders." You've got— and that was a leadership decision. That was actually the Secretary of the Army under the Trump administration. You've got to have that level of commitment very high up.
Jennifer Freyd: I would add or join on to that, that I think one of the really important things that has to happen is education, which is yet another step of institutional courage. But when I say education, I don't mean one-off trainings, which can actually just be counterproductive. I mean real education in which we grapple with these issues in events just like this. And it needs to happen over and over again. It's not a checkbox at all. One of the biggest problems I see is ignorance that is allowing really, really problematic stances and decisions. We see over and over poor reporting policies, for instance, where people's reports are acted on way too soon, which is damaging to the individual and and chills any kind of reporting. That I don't think would happen unless people wanted chill reporting. I don't think these bad reporting policies would occur if people were educated about what the nature of disclosure is like. So I think, you know, this goes all the way back to probably to K-12 and college education and how we teach people to have conversations about difficult topics and how we teach people about autonomy and so on. But, you know, we have to start somewhere. And at this point, educating leaders, I think, could really make a difference in how much institutional courage we see.
Jennifer Gómez: I would just add to that of adding the practical skills. And so what I see in academia is people who maybe do have the knowledge in some cases, but are disempowered or don't know how to speak up if they're going to get kicked back and don't have the rhetorical skills or the practical skills or the institutional knowledge of like if it does go south, I can then go to the dean, I can then go to the provost, just like practically knowing what to do to get through and then sticking with it along with the education that Jennifer is talking about and accountability that Carolyn is talking about.
Estelle Freedman: I'd like to interject something related to accountability. Listening to Carolyn speak about the military and the church and thinking about the distinction between there's hierarchy and there's hierarchy, you know, sort of where there's command chain all the way to the top. And then in one case there is some public accountability, or in another case, godly accountability. I'm not sure how to put it. But universities are different and corporations are different. They're scattered. There's thousands of different policies and different systems of accountability. And I don't expect you to answer this question, but I just want to put that out on the table. That institutional courage is going to look very different when you don't have either the public accountability or a singular hierarchical structure. And I would just throw out in terms of examples of institutional courage, when that university president you talked about, Jennifer, you know, apologized for the past bad practices and then began to really change things. I have seen where leadership at the top in a university can change from, "We don't have a problem," to, "We have a problem. We're going to do better." What effect can that have on other institutions? How can the networks of leadership in universities or corporations make some changes that will influence their cultures? Again, I think that's maybe beyond our ability to answer today, but I just wanted to throw it out there. I'd also want to catch up on a couple of points of information in a way. Jennifer Gomez referred to the National Academy report, and we'd like to spell out what it is and how people can find it, and I'm not sure if there's a way to do that other than just to repeat the title of it, Jen.
Jennifer Gómez: Yeah, so it's from National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Sexual Harassment of Women. Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. If you Google that or go to the NASM Action Collaborative for Sexual Harassment, you'll find it right there. Thanks.
Estelle Freedman: And then this is in another question that has to do with the problem of, as the Paula Brantner wrote, the problem of the fox guarding the henhouse. Like, what about external investigation? And she references particularly the reporting systems like Callisto. And not everybody may be familiar with that, but if someone could just speak to that issue of the internal, external kinds of reporting and accountability.
Jennifer Freyd: Callisto is a software product that allows people to enter into a secure website their unwanted experience of sexual assault or sexual harassment through a set of guided questions. And that information is stored. And like restricted reporting, they're talking to a website, not a person. But like restricted reporting, the survivor has complete control over where that information goes, and they— including goes nowhere. It can be saved for them. The Callisto also offers a matching product where if a different person has reported sexual violence from the same perpetrator, the survivors can opt to find out about that and perhaps at that point will decide to together make a report. And this can be very motivating for people because they know they're not alone and they they feel they're going to have a better chance of being believed. And even maybe more motivating is people— most people who make reports of sexual violence are doing it not for themselves, but to help other people. They want the perpetrator to stop. And if you find out that there's more than one victim, then you have a much higher suspicion that there's going to be future victims. So it can be very motivating. So the— But the other thing about Callisto and programs like it is it offers assurance to people that their data is protected and private and that it's not going to be handled poorly by the institution. And, you know, I think when people say, "How do we encourage people to report?" Well, number one is we make reporting safe. And that, you know, that's what these programs that work do.
Jennifer Gómez: I would add, when it is internal for Title IX, there is a conflict of interest that whoever works for the university works for the university and protects their interests, which isn't always in the interest of the people victimized. So for the Title IX director who's in charge of sexual violence, don't have them housed in the general counsel's office. Don't have them housed with Office of Equal Opportunity. They should have an independent office with independent staff, and then a direct reporting line to the president and the provost. That reduces this conflict of interest, doesn't eliminate it, but reduces it and reduces the appearance of the conflict of interest, which then makes people more likely to disclose.
Estelle Freedman: And I would just add from our audience today, from our attendees, uh, on this point, uh, former CASBS fellow Ramón Gutiérrez has written, Carolyn noted in the circulated essay, that what marked the Catholic Church and the U.S. military was their autonomous judicial bodies. How do we view institutions like universities in terms of governance? And I think you're speaking to that. In your comment, Jennifer Gomez. Before we move away from the focus on sexual violence and expand a little bit, I have a couple questions I'd like to catch up on. And while I'm framing them for you, if anybody would like to say anything that we haven't touched on about where the social science research on these issues might be influencing— influence policy today and in the future. Anybody have any thoughts on policy and social science, particularly what we can contribute?
Jennifer Freyd: I don't know if this is a direct answer to that, but I do think it's something that I— we haven't really said explicitly yet today, is that the research on institutional betrayal, which has now been conducted in a number of different settings, including veterans and in university settings and employee settings, consistently indicates that institutional betrayal is associated with harm. And it, to me, then raises this social responsibility and institutional responsibility. It's not just theoretically bad, it is measurably bad. And while most of the focus has been on it's bad for the individuals who are sort of victims of it, there's also quite a bit of evidence it's bad for the institution. So, and the counter to that is that the the smaller set of studies on institutional courage are suggesting institutional courage is good. It's good for the individuals and good for the institution. So, it seems to me when you have data like that, it puts a responsibility on us on all of these institutions, as well as the government, to act on that data. Because it's like you find out, you know, the water The water is dangerous, you need to fix the water. And this is not— it's hard to stop sexual violence across society. It's a deeply rooted problem involving how we raise our kids and deeply held problematic roles and beliefs. But it is actually not that hard to change institutional behavior. Institutions are composed of adults. A lot of these institutions have resources. We are the institutions. We make up the rules. It's a doable, tractable problem.
Carolyn Warner: I think we need to do some real focus on how institutions are held accountable and how different kinds of institutions may evade accountability or have been held to be, oh, we can't touch them because they are sacred, quasi-sacred. Frankly, that's what drew me to looking at the military. Quasi-sacred in the United States, and the Catholic Church, by definition, a sacred institution. They have had a lot of political power. And we see that how, in a way, sadly, it's when politicians, prosecutors start to realize that, oh, they're actually vulnerable because people are angry at them. Now I can prosecute. Now we can let the lawsuits go forward. Now we can threaten the military with removing commander's authority in prosecuting sexual assault cases. These institutions don't like their autonomy threatened, so they react. They try to improve. And we see that they have. But it really took a lot of threat. And I think part of the social science research that we could look at is the role of the media in getting public attention on these institutions. And also, getting back to an earlier question— comment from an audience member, the role of internal interest groups, you might say, activist groups. It might be a group of enraged parents. It might be, as in the church, the survivor network of those abused by priests. You know, there's Protect Our Defenders. There are a variety of organizations that, you know, internally it takes a lot of pressure. And understanding where that tipping point is, when is it that an attorney general, as in Pennsylvania in 2018, When is it they feel confident to actually do that? You know, what's the political tipping point that enables them to go after the Church with a big grand jury investigation and then start actually prosecuting not just the priests, but trying to go after the bishops, you know, the higher-ups in the hierarchy? When is it that universities, that the Department of Education threatens their funding if they don't implement certain better procedures on how to handle sexual assault cases? So I think there's some things things we can look at there.
Estelle Freedman: Yeah, well, you know, Carolyn, there's a very timely comment from the audience, really, I think, to your point, and it is, "To what extent do you think institutional courage is hindered by schools or other institutions' fear of lawsuits by individuals accused of sexual harassment? And how can we encourage institutional courage despite this fear/concern?" I don't know if you can answer that, but I just point out when you say what's the balance, what's the tipping point, where do we need that, the legal enforcement, and what do you— does anyone want to speak to this, the ways the universities, for example, have reacted to this fear of lawsuits?
Jennifer Freyd: You know, that's one of the reasons that a core part of institutional courage, or how we conceptualize it, is being willing to take take some risk and manage and accept some risks, because the risk management mindset that has come to dominate universities, I believe, is part of the problem we're grappling with. Sometimes I think about that university president who wrote an apology letter. I don't know for sure, but I would imagine it made some people in the general counsel office cringe. And yet it was— did so much good for the institution. And there's just no way we attain excellence, whatever kind of excellence it is, without taking risk. Good leaders are going to be having to look at what their mission of the organization is, what the morality is, and accept a certain amount of risk. I think one thing that in universities, we can be doing a better job at is attending to this risk management mindset that is in the— is really in the way of good leadership.
Jennifer Gómez: I would add that doing nothing isn't actually riskless. There is risk in doing nothing and burying it, and then it all explodes, you know. And so, there is risk in that side in doing nothing. And I would add that we don't need to wait to get to the legal point. At MIPSSE, at Wayne State, we have an anti-racism group for developmental science, and we read up on the literature and we say, how can we change NIH grant reviews? How can we change the journal editorial boards we're a part of? How can we change this? How do they do it in feminist scholarship? They're better at this. Let's read that. And then let's come back here. Like, we can be doing these things all the time and not wait until it's the massive extreme, we have lawsuits about racism.
Estelle Freedman: And I think that a couple of comments that come in, have come in, really speak to the point that we've been making. People are hungry in our audience to know, what do I do? What's the best way to leverage the tools that are there? And how can people who are within institutions and not in leadership, but perhaps even at the lower levels within an institution. And I think you're speaking, Jen, to the need to organize, to find a group, a larger group within your level or across institutions so that it is not just the lonely individual. But I loved what you said about, you know, you study, you read, you find other people, and you share what's working for advocacy.
Jennifer Freyd: Or you found a nonprofit, which is, you know, one of the reasons for creating an organization is in fact to, to do this work on a societal level. And among other things that we need to do on to make institutional courage dominate more than it has is to continue to do research, because the organizations in our society that are responsible for nurturing research, universities, universities, primarily our government agencies that should be funding research, have done an extremely poor job in the domains that generally are social justice domains, feminist research, anti-racism research. And to the extent that there's support for institutional behavior, it's not been of the sort we're talking about today. So I think we need to also take the matters into our own hands to some extent and, you know, figure out ways to not be hampered by the failures of these other big institutions to do the research we need to do and do the education we need to do.
Carolyn Warner: Yeah, I think we also need to encourage, in a way, grassroots conversations about what do we mean when an institution says it has zero tolerance zero tolerance for clergy child sex abuse or for sexual assault or sexual harassment, because there's a real tension between saying zero tolerance and procedural justice, due process, proportionality of offense. Do we forgive and rehabilitate? With a milder punishment? Is this person— can we rehabilitate? I think these are things that I think people need a better understanding of the tensions there and what the options are for an institution like mine now, you know, to have zero tolerance of sexual assault. Well, does that mean anyone who's accused and then found a preponderance of evidence says that, yes, it's more likely to happen than not, be thrown out of the institution? You know, is that what we want? What do we mean? You know, or what do we mean? Do we mean just that the institution processes this? The other thing that we need to look at is the funding for these sorts of things. Title IX offices tend to be poorly funded. In the military, the investigators for sexual assault, they tend to just be the, you know, They're the regular JAG officers who've been, you know, they're in an assignment for 2 years and then they're whipped out to yet another assignment. They don't develop expertise in sexual assault, for instance. There aren't enough of them. They have a huge caseload. So we need a conversation about where are our priorities in terms of funding. You know, is this a big priority? And in terms of understanding how do we deal with this issue? This issue for— in institutions.
Estelle Freedman: I'm going to try to just wrap up this part of our conversation with a comment that I think brings together institutional courage, cultural betrayal, and the kinds of institutions that Carolyn has been talking about. And this comment happens to come from someone named Margaret Levi. And it is that— goes back to Carolyn's answer earlier about the church, it suggests that the cultural betrayal that Jennifer Gomez talks about is not only about race, but about gender also. So in the military, gender may have the effect, given how women are trying to gain a foothold in the military and convey their strength. But in the church, kids and parents are conflicted about giving the church bad press. Yes. So, Margaret's question for Jennifer Gomez is, are these instances of cultural betrayal? I don't know if that's a rhetorical question or you want to speak to it, but I think that it's a very expansive notion that fits many of the things that we've been talking about. Yeah.
Jennifer Gómez: I actually can't answer it. I'm working with a phenomenal undergrad, Rachel Zelenak, and together we're coming up with religious betrayal within the Catholic Church for sexual abuse and what's what that construct means. So it's— and how it interfaces with cultural betrayal, because different parishes might have different ethnic groups and histories. So it could be some cultural betrayal, but a very distinct religious betrayal within the Catholic Church. And then the kind of interreligious pressure that would come in. Are you betraying God if you disclose? Does it mean you can't be Catholic if you think the priest did it? All of these kind of extra layers, right? These betrayals give us extra layers of harm. So, that's being led by Rachel Zelenak, who's brilliant, and we're gearing up for data collection. And so, stay tuned with what we find about that and about outcomes like soul murder and things like that. Thank you.
Estelle Freedman: Now, I want to build on our discussion of sexual violence, but expand to some intersections with different kinds of vulnerabilities, different kinds of responses to violence. I'm thinking particularly about anti-Black racism and violence, about the overlapping race and gender dynamics with risks related to COVID as well. So first, would anybody like to speak to some of these overlapping risks that have to do with gender, race, and COVID? I can start.
Jennifer Gómez: I have to highlight the greats. Lama Hassouna Youb is taking a critical race perspective perspective to mass incarceration and children and families. And what this means is that— and I promise I'm coming back to it, Estelle— is that the criminal justice system is designed to oppress Black and brown people. That's the critical race perspective. And so now if we take it to, okay, we have a critical race perspective of the U.S., which means our systems are designed to oppress. Okay. So what does that mean? Well, racism racism as well as violence impacts lots of outcomes, including like asthma, cardiovascular disease, things like this. Wouldn't you know it, those are the same things that make you more susceptible to harm when you contract COVID-19. And so now you have this overlapping violence predicts these negative things, so does racism. And then you have people who are more vulnerable on average, and then you have a healthcare system that from a critical race perspective is designed to not operate in a way that benefits Black and brown people. And so when you go in for help, you're not treated well, you're touched or pushed or prodded. Phenomenal book called Medical Apartheid detailing this by Washington. And so I think if we think about it from this way, it's then no longer a surprise, right, that it's magical that Black people are 30% of the COVID cases but 13% of our population. It makes sense if we understand that these systems are designed to oppress, as well as sexism, as well as homophobia, and that violence percentages then increase because of that as well. And those things are linked with health, and the systems hold it up. And so, what I'm always thinking about, and with the Center for Institutional Courage as well, is whatever our focus is, if it's sexual violence, we can't just talk about sexual violence without talking about everything because the people who are being victimized are getting the everything else at the same time, which means the solution is to fix the everything else, which is a lot, but it's hopeful. If you get movement on racism and movement on sexism and movement on systems, then it can have this snowball effect that's much greater because the problems are coming from so many different directions.
Jennifer Freyd: Yeah, I would add that we've been collecting some data this year in my lab at the University of Oregon looking at some possible relationships between COVID experience and risk and aspects of sexual violence and have been seeing some interesting things emerge. One is that from a student perspective, when we measure their experience of institutional betrayal, specifically in how the institution is handling COVID matters. So how protected are they from exposure? Do they, you know, feel that if they report a safety violation, they get retaliated against, or that report goes well? Very similar, actually, to structurally to responding to sexual violence. And we're seeing very similar amounts of institutional betrayal in this COVID context, as well as a similar pattern of association with negative outcomes. So students who are exposed to more institutional betrayal around COVID, institutional response to COVID, are having more difficulty with their mental health and physical health. The other thing that I think is potentially even— that was kind of expected, but something else that we see in this this set of data that's emerging has to do with who, in some sense, you could say is at risk of perpetrating the transmission of COVID and comparing that to who is at risk of perpetrating sexual harassment and violence. And the hunch I started with on this was that there is going to be a relationship because there's There's a certain amount of willingness to break other people's personal boundaries, a certain kind of entitlement, and so on. What is striking about our findings is, yes, there is a relationship between the propensity to commit sexual harassment and the propensity to behave in high-risk— high-risk-for-COVID behaviors. But an even more striking relationship is between what you might call hostile sexism and those high-risk COVID behaviors. And to me, part of the lesson here is we ignore— we ignore prejudice at our peril, not just to the traditional victims of prejudice, but now, you know, men are at even greater risk of dying from COVID than women. And they are at greater risk because it appears that we've tolerated a certain kind of acceptable entitlement and willingness of people to violate the rights of other people that are essentially one and the same as hostile sexism. So, I think, you know, we— these problems are deeply, deeply interlaced. And if we're going to fix our world, we can't to take racism and sexism and put it over as some little exotic topic that a few people are going to work, work on. It's right at the heart of who we are and what we need to do to fix ourselves.
Estelle Freedman: Well, that really leads right to the question of how and precisely what kind of steps would we need to address all of these problems. In other words, Jennifer Gomez was speaking of the structural the underpinnings of all of them. How would addressing sexism, racism, how would that affect public health? How does— what are we learning from COVID that might influence future policy? And again, if there's any research on this, let us know about it. Do any of you have any? Or your opinions will be welcome too.
Jennifer Gómez: I mean, there's definitely research on the impact of structural racism with health outcomes and health disparities. It's quite vast across lots of disciplines. And I think an important piece coming from Maggie Hickman at University of Michigan and others is that when we ignore this piece, when we're in public health and we say we want to have a big public health population health impact and we ignore the racism piece and we tell people, well, you need to start— stop smoking, we're missing the point. And so when we were talking about education with violence before, I would bring it in here as well. We need to have a shared understanding around structural inequality. And I would argue we don't actually have that. We have lots of conversations of, "But I'm a very nice person, and I'm very happy that you're here, and I'm not mean at all." And we're missing the point that the structures are already leaning in the racism direction. And so, when you do nothing, it's still going in that direction. And we don't have, in my experience at all, a shared understanding, like outside of race scholars, that this is a structural problem and then take structural solutions. Without that, we're talking across each other.
Carolyn Warner: I, I don't have a research specialty in this area, but it seems like some of these issues are so embedded in the K-12 education, uh, that's— or in pre-kindergarten, that's where it needs to start. The military, uh, has gotten itself into hot water sometimes when the leadership has said, we— in trying to respond to congressional criticisms over sexual— high rates of sexual assault, that we have to take what society gives us. And then we've got them in boot camp for 8 weeks, and we have to transform them. Not to mention the military has a certain mission, which may emphasize certain things that might have a predilection towards sexual assault, but— or more aggressive behavior. But it's clear that the K-12 piece, the pre-kindergarten, and I don't know how to address it, but it just seems to me we need to. And likewise, even with the priesthood, the Catholic Church identified that it was the pre-seminarians, how they're educated, not, and I don't mean, you know, formal education. I mean, interpersonal interactions, awareness. It is critical.
Jennifer Gómez: And I would add really quickly, Estelle, of the family being the first institution, right? So, when Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talked about sexual assault and the insurrection and said this is what abusers do with kind of the response to her, and my first thought was like, ah, families, right? Wouldn't you know it? Child discloses and then parents respond poorly and so on and so and so forth. And I, Jennifer, I have talked a lot about this, like how do we change the world? And it's hard, but families, because these kids don't go into pre-K by themselves, they come, you know, with their families. And so if we can help with parenting, help with the family system, educate everybody, including the parents who have been abused and who have internalized problematic scripts, I think we'll be in a much better place.
Estelle Freedman: Yes, your comment reminds me of just the— going back to Virginia Woolf and sort of the feminist truism about patriarchy begins in the family and spreads to institutions, the military, the university, et cetera. And the more that we can recognize what has been kept private, power relations and abuses of power that have been private and protected within families, they will multiply unless we address them. Address them, they will multiply into other institutions.
Jennifer Freyd: And I would add to that, um, when you've got a, a cycle of violence problem, which we know we have, and that's how violence works, is cyclically, and the family is the most dangerous petri dish here, but they're also the hardest to intervene in right now. We don't have a way in in our society to intervene in American families writ large. We barely can intervene in a small number. But we do have access to young people at the cusp of becoming parents. And that's in both universities and the military. So arguably, it's really actually our greatest intervention point is how we are educating at that level. I mean, if we could get into K-12 or preschool, great. But the institutional power, I think, in our society is much greater right now, probably in the military and universities, to reach those individuals who are, you know, 20, 22 years old and give them the tools to become the better parents than the prior generation had been, you know, than what they've experienced.
Estelle Freedman: Thank you. I want to read a comment, or it's really a question that came in that I think came to my mind when Jennifer Gomez was speaking about some of the public health recognitions that are coming from COVID And this comment is, could COVID actually be a good thing for addressing power differentials and privacy concerns around reporting, at least for those working remotely? For example, some institutions have been emphasizing letting participants turn the camera off. Could that be helpful in some ways, or is that not enough structural change? And I would just kind of open that up more generally to the— could what we're learning from COVID make us more aware of certain risks in the workplace or in the family? We haven't really spoken directly to the issue of partner abuse during COVID and the question of when you don't have as much opportunity for external intervention. But yes, I don't know if anyone would like to speak to this, rather than is it good for, are we learning from COVID ways that will make it easier or ways we can better respond to all of the kinds of institutional betrayals that we were talking about. All this time?
Jennifer Gómez: Yeah, what I would say is the same thing I would say about the increased public profile of anti-Black violence in the summer of 2020, which is marginalized people have been saying this for centuries and people have not been listening. So, that's not a hit to the person who asked the question, but it is a recognition of like this very well might, you know, make— be the tipping point, and we need to examine why that because none of this information has been hidden, but we can see it in terms of, for scholars, where they can get published, where they cannot get published, being talked over in meetings, all the things that we know. And so, it could be the tipping point, but we need to sit back and say, why? Uh-oh. Why is this a tipping point when this information has been known? In terms of jumping as well to violence in the home, my colleague, Ty Partridge, and I have an article under review where we asked Black mothers mothers about their violence exposure and used a measure from Jennifer Freyd and Angela Prince of how distressing was it, how important do you think it is that we ask these questions, and do you think it's a good idea. And 100% of the mothers who had been victimized said, "Yes, it's important to ask these questions." And so, the natural fear is Black mothers are going through a lot and violence in the home and racism. Let's not ask because then we're traumatizing. So, a very clear, like, social science to practice is ask in primary care. Ask people when they go to get a mammogram, ask people about violence, then have the resources ready for people to get. It's not actually a bad thing, and that's what the data is telling us.
Estelle Freedman: Thank you. Thank you. Before we sort of wrap it up, I want to just catch a few questions that came in in advance that we may not have addressed. And if anyone has thoughts about them, fine. If not, we'll move on to some final wrapping it up. Well, so many of you mentioned education, including K-12 education. We had an advanced question: How do we engage students so that they care about, learn about, recognize, and talk about the themes of today's discussion? And the other that we haven't spoken about was a question about about applying the things we've been talking about in the US context outside of the US, if that's in anyone's expertise. So I'll just see if either of those bring a response from anyone on the panel.
Carolyn Warner: I'll speak briefly about the outside the US context. I've been looking a lot at what Australia has done with regard to the military, their military, Catholic Church and other organized religions. And it's very valuable to look at how other countries have handled, you know, governments have handled these situations, as well as how the institutions we're talking about have handled things. Australia's had some very creative responses, both helpful to victims. The institutions have gotten out ahead of ahead of themselves, you might say, in a way that doesn't tend to happen in the United States. I've looked at Britain, Ireland to some degree, and I would say in general terms, it's very fruitful to make these comparisons. It can inform policy, and I'm looking forward to doing something more systematic in that regard. To see what— whether we can, you might say, import some of their ideas that have been helpful, whether they make sense, and whether they can— we can export to them anything that we've— that our institutions have done that have been successful.
Jennifer Freyd: Thank you. I would like to just make a comment about the other part of your other question you asked about K-12, which is that And college students too.
Estelle Freedman: And college students.
Jennifer Freyd: One of the things that we've investigated in my lab is the teachability of listening skills and found them to be very teachable. And that— by that I mean, if somebody comes to you and discloses a difficult matter, how you respond is going to have a huge effect on the person that has disclosed to you. There's research indicating that The nature of social response to a disclosure accounts for more of a person's adjustment down the road than any details about their victimization experience. Often that response, of course, is occurring in an institutional context and, in fact, becomes institutional betrayal when it's a bad response. But what we've found is that with fairly simple educational interventions, we can improve people's ability to respond supportively and well to disclosures. And the kind of education that we've been looking at would— it seems to me be very scalable to younger. We've looked at college students, to younger groups. I'm sure you'd want to adjust this to be developmentally appropriate and appropriate to the context. But people can be taught. And, you know, I've raised 3 kids. They went to good schools. They learned lots of things, mostly academic things. Things, but they learned lots of other things too, including explicit instruction on how to eat well, how to be safe on a bicycle, how to be safe sexually. But they did not get taught how to have conversations about, about difficult and, um, you know, especially traumatizing things. So the message to kids is generally, these are not things you can talk about. And right there, starting right there with that message is, you know, part of our huge problem, and it's very, very fixable. Thank you.
Estelle Freedman: I'm going to read a comment that just came in, a question-comment that I think also speaks to education and self-education, and then we'll ask you for some wrapping-up comments. And this is from a former CASBS visitor visiting scholar, Daniela Kayser. And she wrote, a powerful predictor of individual moral courage as a bystander is injustice sensitivity towards others. Bystanders are more likely to intervene if they're knowledgeable and familiar with the situation, self-efficacy, education, and who are sensitive to injustice towards others as opposed to injustice sensitivity to self. Perhaps research design that's transferable from individual level to group level of the institution and the people inside them would bring more data on institutional courage. I thought that was a comment that is worth reading, whether you have responses to it or not. If anybody wants to respond.
Jennifer Gómez: I do. I would take an example from Brenda Tracy and set the expectation where She talks with college athletes, many of whom are Black men, and she makes the parallels with them between anti-Black racism and police brutality. Oh, and then sexual violence. And then you see like the empathy start to grow, like these things actually aren't that different. Like traumas are traumas. And if I can understand myself and my fear of police, I can start to understand women who were sexually assaulted and why they might not want to go to the police. And I think Brenda Tracy, I take a page from her book in teaching to your question, Estelle, about students do want to learn this. I think we're afraid to teach it, but students want to learn it. I teach undergrad stats and I sure do throw in race as a social construction when we're talking about categorical variables. I give them, you know, what do I do when they email me, I want to be a trauma psychologist, what can I do, Dr. Gomez? So I think it's a mistake to think that students are just going to be disinterested. I think when we set the expectation of like, I think you can learn this and this is important, students rise to the occasion. And that's always been my experience for undergrads and grad students.
Estelle Freedman: Yeah, and I will acknowledge one other comment because it's sort of the— what we're talking about is in a way the answer. Someone asked, do you have any advice to someone who struggles to find the vocabulary when trying to address a number of failures within systems? And I think what we're saying is that we haven't been teaching people to give them that vocabulary, to bring across issues, across challenges, across hierarchies. And those of us today here who are teachers or members of families who can begin to have those hard conversations, learning for ourselves and then engaging, I think, with younger people particularly, will help to answer that problem. Person's wonderful question. So we're going to just ask each of you, I'd like to just ask each of you if there's something you would like to leave us with from this conversation. I'm sorry we couldn't get to about a dozen or more questions, but again, we will read all of those questions. But perhaps you could think about, are you optimistic? Are you concerned? Are you troubled about the future of institutional courage. If you have a particular takeaway point you hope that we leave here with from your studies, please let us know. And why don't we just go in the reverse order as we did in the beginning? So I'll start with Carolyn Warner. Yeah, thank you.
Carolyn Warner: I, I think one message would be to keep the external accountability active, you know, as individuals and as members of institutions, but as members in the general public, it sounds corny, but let your elected officials know, you know, get involved in a grassroots group that keeps the issue, keeps the pressure on, meet with, you know, intersect with victims groups, support groups, but also we need to pay attention to the structure of the institutions, what they do, their internal legal systems, and how it might be that the internal legal system, I'll call it, can put an individual in that institution in real tension between what they're supposed to do that's right for the institution according to the institutional rules and what would be right as a human being and, you know, toward say, a victim or a set of victims. I think we need to learn more about that tension going forward. I am semi-optimistic because of changes in the military and changes actually in the Catholic Church led by Pope Francis. But there's a real, you know, the military, it's back and forth, depends on who's president, who's, you know, whose attention span is the shortest on this topic. And in the Catholic Church, the next The next pope, whenever that is, may not have the same interest orientation as the current pope. And so there's— these are fragile changes that have been put in place.
Estelle Freedman: Thank you. Jennifer Gomez.
Jennifer Gómez: I'm extremely optimistic, and I wouldn't be able to do this work if I wasn't. It'd be too depressing. And I think what I'll leave us with, at least my portion before Jennifer and Estelle close, is from Arthur Mitchell, co-founder of Dance Theatre Harlem, who talked about the importance of the opportunity. Give them an opportunity, people can succeed. And I would add into that, when they're in the institution, give them the opportunity to succeed by institutional courage and not having sexual harassment, institutional betrayal, and all these things. And to remind us that we are each part of different institutions, and we do actually have the power to make the rules, to change the rules, to put on the pressure, and to change it structurally. And so, I am hopeful, realistic but hopeful that we actually can do this as we make the institutions. And so, we can change our institutions.
Estelle Freedman: Thank you. Jennifer Freud. Yeah.
Jennifer Freyd: So, I mean, when you ask the question, Estelle, are we concerned, optimistic, troubled? I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes to all of it. And, you know, I see so much progress in certain domains. I do think we've made huge progress in sexual violence awareness in my lifetime. When I started researching in the domain in the early '90s, it really, really wasn't on the radar screen for anyone but a few researchers and activists. It was not a mainstream topic. And it has become a mainstream topic. And I think that— and it hasn't gone away. It's been holding on for quite a while. You can see it building up over the generations, various things coming to light. It didn't start with just start with Me Too. It was building up and building up. But it looks like it's here. And that gives me great hope. I do have concern about— I think we're in a fragile position more generally in how we are globally and as Americans responding to institutions. I think that we have— there's a lot of distrust in institutions, and we cannot function as a society if we— without institutions, and to some extent without trust in institutions. But the trust has to be earned, it has to be deserved, or it's blind trust and it's dangerous. And what gives me hope— so that makes me concerned, it's fragile— but what gives me hope is I feel like there's a hunger just a huge hunger for our institutions to do better. And since, you know, starting the Center for Institutional Courage, one of the primary things I hear from people is their just heartfelt desire to help institutions heal and be courageous and not to reject institutions. Sure, there are some that want to do that, but I think much, much more people want to be able to trust their institutions legitimately because the institutions have earned it. So that gives me hope. Thank you.
Estelle Freedman: I would simply say as a historian, and I share, and just as someone who has lived through the same period as you, Jennifer, looking back, we have changed our practices of naming and framing issues of sexual violence and issues of racism enormously, and in some way that does seem to have sped up in recent years. At the very same time, it's sped up in part because the problems have become so egregious and because it has taken so long to address them, even though we've been naming them for decades and centuries. So I cannot call myself optimistic as much as realistically pleased that we are having this conversation and that each of you is doing research and training graduate students who are doing research to understand our moment better in the hope that we're going to be able to change this next, next historical chapter. And with that, I'd like to say a huge thank you for all the time that you panelists have put into getting ready for this event. It's been a pleasure to have time time to talk with you. And I also want to thank again the co-sponsors for the event: the Center for Institutional Courage, the Gendered Violence Research Network at Arizona State University, the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute at Wayne State University, and the Metro Detroit Association of Black Psychologists. And the discussions will continue. There are details about the next episode in the CASBS series, Social Science for a World in Crisis, and you'll learn more about the series on a slide that will come to your screen in just a few seconds. So thank you again to the panel, to everyone who gave us questions, which we will pore over, and to everyone who joined us today, and of course to the CASBS staff and to CASBS for having encouraged this event to happen. Be well, everyone.
Narrator: That was Jennifer Freyde, Jennifer Gomez, Carolyn Warner, and Estelle Friedman discussing what institutional courage looks like. You can learn more about this event and others in the Social Science for a World in Crisis series by visiting the CASBS website at casbs.stanford.edu. Or you can find us on Twitter, we're @CASBSStanford. We've got more CASBS live events coming to the Human Centered feed, and more original interviews exploring the work of fellows here at the center. So be sure you're subscribed in your podcast app of choice. You don't want to miss those. Until next time, from everyone at CASBS and the Human Centered team, thanks for listening.