UC Merced has joined the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine as a founding member of the Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education.
The university is one of more than 40 colleges, universities and research institutions that are part of the collaborative, which aims to bring together academic leaders and key stakeholders to prevent sexual harassment across all disciplines and among all people in higher education. The action collaborative is designed to be an active space where colleges, universities, and research and training organizations can research and develop efforts that move beyond basic legal compliance to evidence-based policies and practices for addressing and preventing all forms of sexual harassment.
The collaborative builds on the National Academies’ 2018 report “Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,” which found that between 20 percent and 50 percent of female students and more than 50 percent of female faculty and staff members experienced sexually harassing behavior while in academia.
The report provides a road map with a range of promising practices for preventing sexual harassment, such as using bystander intervention; producing annual reports to convey that reports of sexual harassment are taken seriously and people are held accountable; and combining anti-harassment efforts with programs to promote civility and respect.
The four main goals of the action collaborative are to:
- raise awareness about sexual harassment and how it occurs, the consequences of sexual harassment, and the organizational characteristics and recommended approaches that can prevent it;
- share and elevate evidence-based institutional policies and strategies to reduce and prevent sexual harassment;
- contribute to setting the research agenda, and gather and apply research results across institutions; and
- develop a standard for measuring progress toward reducing and preventing sexual harassment in higher education.
The action collaborative will also deal with the issue of sexual harassment in the context of other damaging behavior, including incivility, bullying and other forms of harassment such as racial harassment.
