Dr. Nicole Bedera

How do you go to class when your professor stepped into your Title IX case to say that they don't believe you?

But on top of that, it's also the kind of evidence that shouldn't be admissible at all.

In a lot of other types of crimes, character evidence is not considered to be admissible.

It's considered irrelevant because just because you like somebody and they're a student, you think that you want that student to stay in your program as a professor.

That has no bearing on whether or not they're a violent person.

And so the idea that this could be used as evidence to strengthen the perpetrator side of the case is mind boggling because what does the professor know?

So I did see some cases like that.

I saw certainly cases of workplace harassment and sexual harassment involving faculty in research labs and research settings.

I usually was hearing more from staff than students in those scenarios.

But I was sort of surprised in these cases because in my data, the way those cases were handled felt a little bit different.

It's such a profoundly hurtful thing because what professors have access to is survivors' education and their friends' education.

Often the hostility from faculty in these cases isn't just directed at the survivor.

It's also all of the students that are taking the survivor's sides.

I've gotten a window into this more in my consulting than I have in the book.

But I think the reason that sexual violence is considered illegal under Title IX is not because it's a crime.

It's because it's a form of sex discrimination and it negatively impacts survivors' educations.

And because survivors are overwhelmingly gender marginalized when it comes to victims versus perpetrators.

That means that the impact on women's education and the kinds of opportunities they can have access to on campus are different to the point of being discriminatory in comparison to your average man's experience on a college campus.

One of the places where we've seen that in the historical record is when faculty intervene in these Title IX cases.

to retaliate against victims, against people who are supporting them, especially if they're doing things like submitting evidence into a Title IX case.