National Academies provides new ideas to help address sexual harassment

A National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee has unveiled three new papers designed to help research institutions deal with sexual harassment. The committee, Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education, is a group of research institutions that come together to identify and share the best ways to address and prevent harassment beyond just complying with the law. The first document examines how institutions can use procedural justice practices to help people involved in harassment investigations—including those who have been harassed, the person accused of harassment, and others in the community—perceive the process as fairer. The second two documents are case studies of university hiring practices designed to prevent “pass the harasser” situations, in which a university unknowingly hires a faculty member who has harassed someone at a previous institution. The studies lay out procedures at the University of California, Davis, and University of Wisconsin System designed to alert the institutions if someone they intend to hire has been investigated for sexual harassment.