Claremont Graduate University

Commencement Speech 11 May 2024

Jennifer Joy Freyd

 

Thank you for inviting me to join your community’s celebration of the inspiring achievements of graduating students.  I love your commencement theme:  Having the Courage.

While we often think of courage as an individual quality, today I want to talk to you about the importance, and the joy, of creating institutional courage.

It takes courage to challenge institutions to do better. It takes courage to try to change the world.  There are no guarantees – but when it is successful it can be immensely satisfying. 

I will also need to say something about the pain of institutional betrayal – which is when an institution harms those dependent on it. Institutional betrayal happens when institutions choose not to be courageous. 

Extensive research has revealed that betrayal trauma, such as abuse by someone the victim trusts and depends on, is deeply harmful.  Furthermore, when people experience institutional betrayal, that harm is seriously magnified with lasting psychological and practical consequences.  Research also reveals that when institutions act courageously, they can reduce all that harm.

I have spent decades of my career identifying, naming, and researching these topics, and they have also been recurring themes in my own life.  I’m sure you have also experienced betrayal, and likely institutional betrayal; and perhaps you have already found the courage to confront those betrayals. Certainly, you have demonstrated your ability to persevere and be brave in your quest to earn the advanced degrees you are receiving today. Now, with those advanced degrees in hand, you will have new opportunities to create institutional courage.

I want to describe to you today the events that led me to come up with the concept of institutional courage. The story is not one you likely have heard before, even if you know something about my past encounters with betrayal and courage. 

Ten years ago this month I was called into the office of the then-president of the University of Oregon, where I was a professor. When I walked into his office, he told me that he and several other senior administrators, who were also present, wanted my advice on how to handle a crisis that had erupted on campus two days earlier. 

The crisis was one that may sound familiar as crises like this have erupted on many campuses:  the front page of the newspaper featured an allegation of sexual assault involving 3 men on the basketball team assaulting a woman student athlete -- 2 months earlier. It appeared the university had been aware of the allegations for those two months, enabling the players to go with their team to the NCAA championship tournament.  The newspaper included a link to the police report filed back in March – and it was full of very disturbing details. 

When students found out about this, many felt the university had prioritized reputation and athletics over justice and student safety. The students quickly organized demonstrations advocating for a rape-free campus and institutional accountability. When I was handed a bullhorn by the protesting students and asked to comment, I suggested the university needed to act with institutional courage -- the new phrase just rolled out of my mouth. 

At the meeting in his office, the UO president asked what I thought he should do in the face of the campus protests.  “Be brave” I heard myself tell him – “Get on top of this and take responsibility. Pledge to fix the system and then do it.”  I also suggested that he authorize a campus survey to find out what was going on regarding interpersonal violence and related issues.  Only with accurate information can institutions take care of the people dependent on them. I explained that a White House task force had recently recommended such a survey be administered on every college campus, and that I had coincidentally just compiled a model survey at the request of a US Senator. 

The UO president seemed ready to accept my advice regarding the survey. I said my students and I could take on the job ASAP but would need a small amount of funding to pay survey participants for their time. I left the meeting with assurances we had a plan.

But a few days later, I learned that the project was quashed. A reporter from the local city paper asked the administration to explain. The next morning, while having my first cup of coffee I read that an administrator had told the reporter they canceled the survey because I had “confirmation bias.”  

I was flabbergasted – and hurt and angry. University administrators do not generally publicly discredit their faculty, especially widely published senior professors.

By the time I was on my second cup of coffee, the emails and phone calls from colleagues and students expressing dismay were pouring in. I wondered about why these administrators, who were not experts in this topic would do this. And then it dawned on me: During all this period the press had been eager to get my opinion.  I had been honest in my response, including in a live interview on ESPN.  Was the “confirmation bias” they had in mind actually due to my criticism of the university’s handling of the rape allegation? Or rather was it simply fear about what our survey might reveal?

What my university did in canceling the survey and retaliating against me was institutional betrayal. Their actions were harmful to me, harmful to my graduate students, harmful to survivors of sexual assault, and harmful to the cause of addressing sexual violence and therefore working towards meaningful equity.

Even without the university’s support, my graduate students and I resolved to run the survey. We cared about our campus and knew data would help. That summer we quickly raised the funds needed and worked long days to collect responses from a representative sample of approximately 1000 students.  By the fall we were giving presentations on campus explaining in detail our methodology and presenting our findings of high rates of sexual violence and related problems. 

By then the president of the university had resigned.  Although no one from the administration acknowledged the attack on my credibility, the interim president did tell a reporter that the university was “lucky” to have me.  This was followed by a commitment from his office to fund a second survey administered from my lab -- including funds for my graduate students’ efforts. 

Combined the two surveys had a powerful positive effect at the university. They helped dispel the denial about the rates of victimization on campus, break through entrenched betrayal blindness, and also provide specific information about which students were most vulnerable.  Facts matter.  Truth matters. 

It took courage for the protesting students to get the attention of the university administration and it took courage for my graduate students and for me to do the research in the face of attacks by our employer - but in the end it has been a source of personal satisfaction, meaning, and joy for many of us.  The two surveys ultimately also led to a series of peer-reviewed research articles first-authored by my graduate students.  We showed how speaking truth to power, good solid research, and standing up to attempts to thwart that research can help create a better world.  And that means something.

The university’s cover up of the rape allegations constituted institutional betrayal. The retaliation against me constituted institutional betrayal.  

Institutional courage involves institutions acting with accountability, with transparency, actively seeking justice, and making changes where needed despite unpleasantness, risk, and short-term costs. Funding the second survey and engaging in the campus changes that followed – those were acts of institutional courage. 

I hope you will not be in the same situation in your own life. However, I know that you will have analogous situations where you will meet resistance for doing what is right – but where you, new graduates from the Claremont Graduate School, can decide to be courageous.  

When you see injustice in your institutions, such as your employers or community organizations, you can take action.  When you have a chance to meet with lawmakers, you can speak difficult truths.  Armed with knowledge and your own courage, you have the tools and the power to create a future where institutions act courageously.  

Your efforts will be challenging at times – but not impossible.  On the website for the Center for Institutional Courage we have outlined 11 practical steps to promote institutional courage.  Finding others to collaborate with you is hugely beneficial. In my own life, I have been able to be courageous through solidarity with my students, friends, family, and colleagues. I hope you support your peers when you see them be courageous.

You will have to pick your battles and you will not win every one of them.  But in the long run if you keep at it, you will help make the world better, and doing the right thing will likely bring you meaning, satisfaction, and joy. You are entering a new world with new credentials; you have the ability to shape that world for the better.

Congratulations graduates!