The Graduate Student Workers’ Union to Host Panel on #MeToo and #TimesUp

The panel will tackle issues of sexual assault, workplace bullying, and discriminatory treatment in academia — outlining “directions for both debate and action.”

GSOC-UAW, the union for graduate employees at NYU, will be holding a panel on sexual assault, gendered harassment and workplace environments during a period in which these issues have frequently come to light in the public realm. The event will be take place on Thursday Feb. 20 at 6:15 p.m. in Kimmel, room 802.

Panelists will include Anne Pasek, an organizer with GSOC-UAW, campus organizers and policy experts from other New York City universities.

“Every system has bad actors, but some systems allow them to thrive more than others,” Pasek said in a press release announcing the event. “I think it’s time that we stopped focusing on the spectacle of individual cases of sexual assault and start thinking about the specific policies and norms that make it easy for harassers to avoid consequences for their actions and make it harder for students and workers to rebound from these cases when they happen.”

NYU recently handled such a situation in the dismissal of Bradley Garner, an adjunct professor, for alleged sexual misconduct while he taught at the University of Cincinnati. The university had conducted an investigation into Garner’s behavior in 2016.

“NYU was unaware of allegations surrounding Bradley Garner until we recently received an inquiry from a Cincinnati Enquirer reporter,” Steinhardt Public Affairs officer Jordan Bennett said in a statement to Local last week.

“Providing our students with a safe space to learn is our priority, and sexual misconduct of any kind is not tolerated,” the statement continued.