Introduction

Sexual harassment continues to be a persistent problem in institutions of higher education, despite the creation of new resources, policies, and programs aimed at combatting high rates on campuses (NASEM, 2018). Historically, these institutions have focused sexual harassment¹ prevention and response efforts on complying with the requirements of the law (NASEM, 2018). Specifically, institutions in the United States have focused on responding to formal reports of sexual harassment through complying with Title IX and Title VII²—which prohibit discrimination against employees, students, staff, and/or faculty on the basis of sex—rather than identifying what harm has been caused by the sexual harassment, who has been harmed, and how that harm can be repaired. Even when institutions provide resources to repair the harm caused by sexual harassment, the harm might extend beyond the conclusions of the institutional response process and provision of the required remedial measures and sanctions (when applicable) (e.g., Grossi, 2017; Karp and Frank, 2016; McMahon et al., 2019; NASEM, 2018; Smith and Freyd, 2014). Put simply, there is a lack of attention to remediating (or repairing and limiting) the damage caused by sexual harassment across the timeline of the institutional response process (see Box 1 and Figure 1).

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Research shows that sexual harassment can cause harm to not only the survivor of sexual harassment but also the person accused of the harassing behavior and the community in which the harassment has occurred (see Box 2 and Definitions for a detailed description of the terminology used throughout this paper) (Koss et al., 2014; NASEM, 2018; Williamsen and Wessel, 2023). Given many institutions’ primary focus on compliance processes and relative lack of attention to addressing the harm experienced by different individuals as a result of the harassment, there is a pressing need for work that elucidates the resources that currently exist and the resources that are still needed to address that harm.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s 2018 report Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine highlights the need to go beyond compliance and consider the ripple effects of sexual harassment (including gender harassment; see Footnote 1 above and Box 2). It emphasizes the multitude of negative effects on the survivor’s professional wellbeing (such as decreased job satisfaction, productivity, and performance) and their mental and physical wellbeing (such as increased rates of depression; post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD; and weight loss or gain). The report also details how sexual harassment has similar negative effects on the professional and personal well-being of others, such as individuals who witnessed the harassment (NASEM, 2018). Sexual harassment can also cause damage to an institutional community’s climate, as survivors and witnesses may mistakenly believe that unreported harassment has indeed been reported but that leadership is merely failing to respond (Fink, 2023; Harvard University, 2021). This may increase the perception that sexual harassment is tolerated and make university employees, as well as students and other community members, fearful for their safety (as depicted in one case in the United Kingdom where a student who had been criminally charged with domestic violence was still “under investigation” for the same incident at the institution several years later [Eccles, 2025]). Individuals accused of sexual harassment may also experience harm throughout the institutional response process. While the 2018 report did not examine these individuals’ experiences, the current paper addresses this gap, pointing to research on individuals who experience symptoms of PTSD after causing harm to others (e.g., Lathan et al., 2023). In this way, harm from sexual harassment compounds beyond the survivor and outside the boundaries of formal institutional responses to harassment, creating a need for institutions to go beyond mere compliance, investigation, and adjudication (NASEM, 2018).

Furthermore, if institutions only investigate reports as required by law but fail to address the harm caused, they may incur additional costs to their reputation and business. Sexual harassment is linked to increases in employee turnover and student attrition, decreased graduation rates, and potential legal liability, and it requires the institution to devote employee time and resources to responding to each claim (NASEM, 2018).

Some institutions have research, teaching, and public-service mission statements in their policies that affirm their commitment to broadening participation in higher education beyond mere legal compliance with prohibiting harassment and discrimination, but their lack of resources dedicated to remediating harm often undercuts those aspirations. In short, institutions may have both a business case and a mission-driven impetus to repair the damage caused to all parties affected by sexual harassment. With those discrepancies in mind, this issue paper answers two questions: What types of remediation efforts do higher education institutions already have in place to repair the harms incurred through sexual harassment, and what additional efforts are still needed?

The National Academies’ Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education is a group of more than 50 academic research institutions that are working toward targeted, collective action on addressing and preventing sexual harassment across all disciplines and among all people in higher education. The four working groups (Prevention, Response, Remediation, and Evaluation) identify topics in need of research, gather information, and publish resources for the higher education community. Over the last 6 years, some of the collaborative’s member institutions provided examples of their remediation efforts, shaping the Remediation Working Group’s understanding of what efforts and resources institutions may already be using to remediate harm, and where gaps may exist.

Synthesizing research, case studies, and archival data from the Action Collaborative’s repository of novel work on the topic, this paper (authored by members of the Remediation Working Group) explores the harms that can occur as a result of sexual harassment at institutions of higher education, and the resources that exist to remedy those harms. Importantly, this paper is not a legal document and is not intended to examine all local, state, and federal laws, policies, codes, rulings, and regulations that are involved in responding when someone at an institution of higher education has disclosed or reported an experience of sexual harassment. Instead, the paper reviews how, at a high level, these laws, policies, and regulations may influence what the remediation of sexual harm can entail, including a brief history of how institutions have approached their remediation efforts in the past, followed by a discussion of the current landscape of efforts to assist various individuals harmed directly or indirectly by sexual harassment over the course of the institutional response process. This discussion organizes the review of existing efforts into a Remediation Efforts Matrix to help readers understand the timepoint- and role-based dimensions of this landscape, to support the efficient identification of resources that institutions can use to target specific populations on their campus for support/remediation, and to support institutional self-auditing and decision-making about how to better remediate sexual harassment–based harm. Sections on trends in efforts, remaining gaps, and remaining questions discuss patterns across the matrix as well as gaps in resources for specific populations at different timepoints (e.g., for the broader community after the institutional response process concludes). Throughout, the paper draws on the experiences and expertise that we have as institutional leaders, faculty members, Title IX coordinators, and researchers to inform our examination of remediating harm in higher education.

We hope that this paper serves as a resource for higher education administrators, practitioners, faculty, staff, and student leaders with the decision-making power and resources to help identify ways to remediate harm and thereby contribute to more effectively reducing and addressing sexual harassment. Specifically, the aim

of this paper is to help these individuals reflect on the current resources, policies, and programs that their institutions already have in place to remediate the harm that results from sexual harassment, and to identify areas that may need additional support. Through this self-audit, we hope institutions can begin to fill in those gaps in ways that provide more support and in turn more effectively prevent, respond to, and remedy sexual harassment.

What Is Remediation? A Brief History of Efforts to Address Sexual Harassment

There is no singular definition for the term remediation in the context of sexual harassment. In the context of environmental disasters, remediation can mean cleansing sites of toxic chemicals and dangerous debris after an accident (U.S. EPA, 2024) or returning land that has been contaminated by nuclear radiation to a state in which it can be used safely again (IAEA, n.d.). In the context of sexual harassment, this paper uses remediation to refer to programs, policies, practices, and services that have been designed to stop and repair the damage caused by sexual harassment and restore the harmed parties to an improved state. Based on social science and legal research summarized in the 2018 National Academies’ consensus study report, sexual harassment includes three subtypes: (1) gender harassment, the most common form, which includes verbal and nonverbal behaviors that communicate “insulting, hostile, and degrading attitudes” about a person on the basis of their gender; (2) unwanted sexual attention, which includes any verbal or nonverbal behaviors of a romantic or sexual nature that are unwanted (including sexual assault); and (3) sexual coercion, where a harasser suggests that an individual must accept their sexual advances to avoid negative professional or educational consequences.

Addressing Sexual Harassment Through Legal Compliance

Efforts to legally prohibit and address the effects of sexual harassment arose from a multitude of pressures coming to a head in the 1970s (Siegel, 2003). Feminist advocacy by and for survivors of sexual violence, pressures to increase women’s access to employment and education, as well as an expanding network of student health services for women and non-heterosexual students on college campuses increased attention to the topic of sex-based discrimination and harassment in education (Boschert, 2022). Key state and federal laws, policies, regulations, codes, and judicial rulings from this period addressed sex discrimination—including but not limited to Titles VII and IX—creating a complex tapestry of regulations that detail the legal basis for sexual harassment and what institutions of higher education are required to provide in their protections against and provisions for those who have experienced sexual harassment.

Institutions of higher education in the United States are currently guided by many local, state, and federal regulations, policies, and laws that inform how they must respond to reports of sexual harassment from students, faculty, staff, and/or employees (for a more in-depth review of those relevant to academia, see Chapters 2 and 5 of the 2018 National Academies report on sexual harassment). It is beyond the scope of this paper to address all such regulations, policies, and laws—especially as amendments, letters from federal agencies, and regulations themselves can be implemented and interpreted differently across different administrations (e.g., Title IX regulations of 2020 and 2024). However, understanding the promising

potential of remediation efforts that go beyond a compliance-based focus requires an understanding of what the baseline of compliance itself looks like. As such, we want to remind readers that this paper is not a legal document or complete review of the legal landscape on this topic, but instead we provide a brief discussion of how the tapestry of laws, policies, and regulations can support and sometimes complicate the remediation of sexual harassment-based harm. Below, we briefly highlight what is most relevant in our discussion of remediation that goes beyond compliance.

The federal-level foundations of legal protections against sexual harassment largely rest on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Siegel, 2003; U.S. Department of Justice, n.d.-c; see Box 3 for a summary). Title VII prohibits discrimination against employees based on their “race, color, religion, sex, and national origin” (EEOC, n.d.) and “sexual harassment by interpretation and pregnancy by amendment” (NASEM, 2018). Importantly, this includes sex-based but non-sexual comments (e.g., those that denigrate a group’s intellect based on their gender) that can create a hostile work environment and constitute gender harassment (NASEM, 2018). Title IX, by comparison, prohibits educational programs or activities that receive federal funding from “discriminating against individuals on the basis of sex” (U.S. Department of Justice, n.d.-b).

Supplementing Title IX and Title VII are a host of other federal and regional regulations that affect how institutions may navigate investigating, communicating about, and remediating instances of sexual harassment on their campus. For example, the Clery Act requires institutions that receive federal funding to report crimes such as sexual assault that happen on or near campus (Clery Center, n.d.), increasing transparency around prevalence rates of this subtype of sexual harassment. On the other hand, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA; USED, n.d.) protects the privacy of students and may limit what information can be shared after the conclusion of an institutional response process, along with other privacy-protection laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA; CDC, n.d.). Finally, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) similarly provide privacy protections for individuals making use of leave and accommodations (NASEM, 2018; U.S. Department of Justice, n.d.-a; U.S. Department of Labor, n.d.).

Regional regulations can also complicate the picture. For example, in 2023 the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (a federal court with jurisdiction in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin) upheld a prior 2017 judgment and ruled that Title IX provides protection for transgender students (individuals who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth) (A.C. v. Metro School District of Martinsville; Goodman-Williams et al., 2024). Yet in January 2025, the Department of Education stated that Title IX will enforce that one’s sex is unchangeable (interpreted as meaning Title IX does not provide protection for individuals who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth, or transgender individuals), revealing one instance of contradicting regulations (USED, 2025). Further reflecting the complexity of navigating processes around experiencing and addressing sexual harassment, in 2020 the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII protects transgender individuals from employment discrimination (Bostock v. Clayton County). Finally, beyond discussions about who is protected under Title IX, issues of transparency and communication can be complicated at different levels of governance. State laws about public record-keeping by public institutions may affect transparency about a given case, such as in Tennessee, where

open-access rules require the results of a Title IX investigation to be publicly posted (TN Code § 10-7-504). In short, the combination of federal, state, and local regulations creates “an array of competing and sometimes contradictory obligations that may hamper transparency and effectiveness [of efforts aimed at combatting sexual harassment in institutions of higher education]” (NASEM, 2018).

As stated before, however, Title IX and Title VII may loom largest in an institution’s process for responding to reports of sexual harassment, revealing a primarily compliance-focused (rather than healing-focused) approach. In particular, given that (1) institutions often have a single individual or office serving multiple

relevant roles (such as their Title IX coordinator and the Equal Employment Opportunity officer) (e.g., Siena College, n.d.; University of Kansas, n.d.) and (2) Title IX often has stricter standards and rules for investigating reports, many institutions first examine if reports fall within Title IX and then refer reports to other offices only when necessary (U.S. Department of Justice, n.d.-b). Due to this common deferral, throughout the rest of the paper we will generally focus on the Title IX process, noting where other processes diverge and other legal limitations arise that might affect remediation efforts (such as in releasing the findings of an investigation into an employee’s behavior).

For example, while Title VII does not, Title IX requires institutions to designate an employee to receive reports of sexual harassment and to notify students, faculty, and staff of this report filing process; to investigate these claims through an impartial, “prompt, and equitable” grievance procedure; to notify all parties involved of its conclusions; and to take “remedial” action (used in the legal sense and not in the sense defined at the outset of the What Is Remediation? section) to prevent the harassment from continuing and correct any of its discriminatory effects (USED, 2001). It is important to acknowledge that Title IX is an administrative process that is meant to protect the procedural and substantive due-process rights of the involved individuals, and that it is framed around an institution’s regulatory obligations. Indeed, many related policies are designed around a risk mitigation/legal compliance framework rather than a harm-reduction framework. Put more simply, the primary focus of the Title IX and Title VII processes is not how to support the healing of involved individuals but to determine what the institution’s responsibilities are regarding the reported conduct (which may still include stopping harm and correcting any discriminatory effects if an investigation finds that a policy has been violated). Acknowledging this tension between legal compliance and harm reduction may help explain the need for and gaps in remediation efforts, as we detail throughout the paper.

However, even as Title IX offices in the last 10 years have sought to implement more trauma-informed processes, become more responsive to survivors’ needs, and increase transparency regarding investigations and the adjudication of reports, academic institutions have struggled to address sexual harassment in ways that effectively reduce its prevalence and prevent its recurrence (Ahmed, 2021). Title IX is framed around a two-person dyad (which has been reaffirmed through federal regulations and judicial rulings) of a complainant (the survivor) and respondent (the accused individual). This dyad reflects a quasi-judicial framework that has been criticized by victim advocate organizations, such as Know Your IX and End Rape on Campus (McDaniel and Gomez, 2023), as well as advocates for those accused of sexual harassment (Miltenberg, 2019). Such an approach may reflect institutions’ punitive (rather than restorative or rehabilitative) approach to addressing student misconduct more broadly (Karp and Frank, 2016). In addition, many institutions fail to meet the baseline requirements for compliance with Title IX, posting incomplete policies for how to report sexual harassment or failing to post the policy publicly at all (NASEM, 2018), which may impede individuals’ access to remediation efforts. Further, Title IX has not been completely successful at identifying and addressing gender harassment (as opposed to sexual assault), and doing so in ways that recognize the complex professional and educational dynamics of sexual harassment in all the ways it can harm lesser-studied populations such as faculty, staff, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars (Cipriano et al., 2022; Minnotte and Pedersen, 2023). These individuals may, in turn, also experience challenges in accessing remediation efforts.

Finally, the limitations of this complainant-respondent dyad, as well as changing standards across different administrations for what constitutes sexual harassment as defined by Title IX, have also shaped the limited attention and resources typically devoted to a wider range of sexually harassing behaviors (including those that might not rise to the level of a policy violation or meet the standards necessary for formal investigation). For example, comparatively fewer resources are focused on addressing comments containing gender stereotypes and how they might rise to the level of a policy violation than on responding to sexual assault or coercion (Huhtanen, 2022). In addition, if an institution takes a purely compliance-focused approach to addressing sexual harassment, then it is only required to provide remedial measures if a Title IX investigation finds that a policy prohibiting sexual harassment has been violated. This is troubling, given that many instances of sexual harassment do not meet the high legal bar for what constitutes sexual harassment (NASEM, 2018). As a result, institutions addressing only the harms that would meet this high bar means that most survivors’ harms would not be remediated at all. Importantly, research shows that instances of harassment that do not rise to the level of a policy violation can accumulate and escalate into more severe forms of harassment or contribute to the development of a hostile environment when left unaddressed (NASEM, 2018). By employing a compliance-focused rather than remediation-focused framework for responding to sexual harassment, institutions of higher education miss out on the opportunity to address harms that occur frequently and intervene before they compound to create larger problems in the future.

Addressing Sexual Harassment Through Restorative Justice

A remediation-based approached to sexual harassment goes beyond the compliance-based approach of addressing harmful behavior that only rises to the level of a policy violation. Instead, it works toward addressing and repairing the damage that was caused by the sexual harassment (including harm incurred during the institutional response process itself), regardless of compliance-based determinations of the severity of the harassment. An important consideration in this approach is that sexual harassment produces multiple negative effects, not only on the survivor but also on the accused and individuals in the broader institutional community. For example, even after a case is resolved, the individuals who are or were in the same laboratory, department, or classroom as the survivor may experience continuing effects of the harassment (sometimes called misconduct) or the institution’s response. Remediating sexual harassment addresses these effects and seeks to restore individuals and communities to a more supportive environment and climate. Further, remediation goes beyond the conclusion of a formal institutional response process to focus on addressing the negative effects that the alleged harassment (and institutional response process itself) may have on both survivors and accused individuals, regardless of the specific findings made by the institution (Koss, 2014).

One primary way that institutions have sought to do this when a report is brought to Title IX is through the provision of alternative resolution processes, including restorative justice. The term alternative resolution refers to any process that does not involve a formal Title IX investigation (note that the 2020 Title IX regulations allow for alternative resolution processes to take place in certain cases). Alternative resolutions may involve shuttle diplomacy, conferencing, mediation, arbitration, restorative justice processes, or any other course of action to which all parties agree (note, however, that restorative justice is prohibited in Title IX cases where the accused individual is an employee and the survivor is a student). While there is some overlap among different approaches, restorative justice processes emphasize repairing harm and holding those who caused harm

accountable in a non-adversarial manner, rather than focusing merely on meeting institutional regulatory obligations.

In contrast to the criminal justice system, which focuses on the accused individual, the laws potentially broken, and the minimization of risk to the institution, alternative resolution processes like restorative justice ask who has been harmed, what the needs of those harmed are, and how the causes of the harm can be addressed (James and Hetzel-Riggin, 2022). Restorative justice has deep historical roots in the practices of indigenous peoples of North America and New Zealand (particularly the practice of community circles). The modern movement first took hold in the 1970s and 1980s in Canadian religious communities and New Zealand family courts; it sought to resolve criminal conflict through circles and conferences that empowered survivors and accused individuals together to determine restorative pathways. It was influenced significantly by innovative programs like the Yukon’s peacemaking circle model that reshaped justice reform across North America (CBC, 2022).

In addition to restorative justice practices spreading in criminal justice, juvenile justice, community service, and educational settings over the last few decades, they have been leveraged as a mechanism for navigating social and political conflict, such as through South Africa’s 1996 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Lin, 2005). Indeed, a majority of U.S. states now have legislation that encourages the use of restorative justice as part of their justice system (Beitsch, 2016). In addition, many universities offer courses in restorative justice, and several have graduate programs in restorative justice (e.g., the University of San Diego’s Master of Arts in Restorative Justice Facilitation and Leadership). Notable in this growing field of various approaches to training and certification in restorative justice have been ongoing ethical concerns about the institutional appropriation of indigenous practices, in which a desire for broader recognition and application of restorative justice principles exists in tension with the dangers of cultural appropriation (e.g., the use of “talking sticks” outside of Native American contexts; Cirioni, 2021).

Although applications of restorative justice theory have been slower to germinate in institutions of higher education, the use of its principles in student conduct procedures has been increasing in recent years, along with an expansion in research into the effectiveness of this approach (Karp, 2023). Such approaches can include those that honor, support, and reintegrate individuals affected by sexual harassment (including accused individuals and the broader institutional community). Honoring people can involve intentionally listening to their experiences and recognizing and acknowledging the sacrifices they made and the harm they experienced, such as from different types of retaliation, character assassination, and stigma and harassment associated with whistleblowing (e.g., Lim et al., 2021). Supporting these individuals can involve providing dedicated resources (e.g., faculty-led services and access to third-party counseling or support) and trained personnel (e.g., organizational ombuds) to address harms in workplaces and learning environments. Reintegration can involve any intervention that supports the needs of individuals affected by sexual harassment following an investigation and/or finding of a policy violation (or even when the investigation finds that no policy was violated), including not only the individuals directly involved in an investigation but also the broader communities to which those individuals may return (such as their labs, social clubs, or departments).

Studies examining the early adoption of restorative justice revealed that alternative sanctions classified as “reintegrative sanctions” (such as apology and community service) produced greater satisfaction and lower recidivism rates among student participants than traditional sanctions (Gallagher Dahl et al., 2014; Karp and Conrad, 2005; Karp and Sacks, 2014). Initial research also shows that survivors find restorative justice to be a beneficial approach, or in the case of community members, believe it could be (Marsh and Wager, 2015; McGlynn et al., 2012; Wager, 2012). The implementation of restorative justice mechanisms in cases of sexual harassment was delayed in part by guidance contained in the Department of Education’s 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter,² which opposed the use of mediation in sexual assault cases (Ali, 2011) and created confusion about whether restorative justice processes were prohibited from use (Orcutt et al., 2020). In 2017, the Department of Education released a letter that explicitly addressed the use of informal resolution processes and stated that they were permitted, provided that all parties voluntarily participated (USED, 2017). However, given that this letter was guidance but not a formal regulation, confusion remained among administrators. As a result, restorative justice has only recently begun to gain traction in higher education settings, and evaluation of the efficacy of restorative justice efforts in higher education is relatively rare (see Karp, 2023; Marsh and Wager, 2015; McGlynn et al., 2012; Wager, 2012). However, prior work by researchers in this area has prompted U.S. universities to consider incorporating restorative justice practices into their procedures, based in part on the advocacy work of the Campus PRISM (Promoting Restorative Initiative for Sexual Misconduct) Project, coordinated by the Skidmore College Project on Restorative Justice (see the discussion in Karp et al., 2016).

As detailed in Karp’s 2019 The Little Book of Restorative Justice for Colleges and Universities, restorative justice practices in circling and restorative conferences can be key to a whole-campus approach that prepares an institution to strengthen its community, respond to conflict, and support reentry of harmed and offending individuals. It is this comprehensive aspect of restorative justice—across affected individuals and communities, as well as across the life of an incident—that makes it an appropriate framework for centering remediation in the institutional response to sexual harassment. However, as this is a burgeoning area of work, there has yet to be a robust evaluation of the effectiveness of using restorative justice practices to address sexual harassment in higher education across different levels of community. For example, there has not yet been an examination of the efficacy of restorative justice when used to address harm in large units (such as colleges) compared to smaller units (such as labs). There is also yet to be an examination of how different remediation approaches might address or be better suited for sexual harassment cases of varying severity, including those that do not rise to the level of a policy violation. For example, shuttle diplomacy may not be well suited to address a widely publicized case of sexual harassment that is well known in the broader community (i.e., across an entire department rather than just within a singular laboratory), while another approach could be more effective (such as a reentry circle). Our analysis reflects the current lack of evaluation and points instead to promising practices and examples.

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With this understanding of how institutions of higher education have traditionally approached responding to sexual harassment (namely, through compliance with regulations), what constitutes remediation, and what burgeoning areas of work such as restorative justice may support institutions’ efforts to prevent and address sexual harassment, we now discuss the harms that a remediation-focused approach can address.

When and for Whom Is Remediation Needed?

Research shows that a compliance-focused response to reports of sexual harassment is not sufficient to repair the harm done to individuals and communities (NASEM, 2018). Specifically, it shows that a compliance-focused response fails to account for harm experienced by the survivor before the harassment is reported to the institution (Griffin et al., 2022), during the institutional response process (Smith and Freyd, 2014), and after the institutional response process has concluded (Bergman et al., 2002). As part of our examination of the gaps that exist in remediation efforts, we first reviewed and synthesized the research that identifies these harms in more detail—in essence, identifying when and for whom remediation is needed.

Definitions

Before detailing the harms that are occurring at specific points in the timeline of the institutional response process, we want to clarify our use of terminology throughout this paper (see Box 2 for our rationale). As a reminder, the term sexual harassment refers to the three subtypes of harassment described in the 2018 National Academies’ consensus study report: gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion. The term survivor refers to the individual who directly experienced sexual harassment. While some may associate that term more closely with individuals who have experienced sexual violence (such as sexual assault), research shows that instances of seemingly minor gender harassment can significantly harm individuals, particularly if such instances are part of a pattern of behaviors that accumulate into hostile levels (NASEM, 2018). In line with this reasoning, it is used in this paper to succinctly refer to an individual who has experienced any of the three subtypes of sexual harassment. Throughout this paper the term accused individual is shorthand to refer to the person that has been accused of sexually harassing the survivor. With this terminology, we do not make any judgments as to whether the survivor experienced and the accused individual did in fact engage in harassing behavior at the level of a policy violation; harms can occur regardless of the conclusion of investigations. Instead, the effects of an accusation are the focus in this paper. Broader institutional community refers to the individuals affiliated with an institution, including faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, administrators, and researchers. Anyone who would receive communications about institutional processes or decision-making, or any individual who could witness and/or intervene in sexual harassment is a community member who could in turn be affected by the harassment even if they were not directly involved in the incident. Importantly, we use the term flexibly, as depending on the context and specific circumstances, it may be more useful to define community at different levels (i.e., at the lab level, at the department level, or at the institution-wide level).

We also want to define our framework for understanding each of these group’s potential harms—specifically, our multi-partiality framework. There are several ways to approach the topic of neutrality in the institutional

response process. One approach involves waiting until the investigation finds whether a policy has been violated or not to determine “who to believe” (although in Title IX investigations, supportive measures should be provided to both the survivor and accused throughout the process, per federal policy). In essence, this approach may suggest that a survivor’s claim of sexual harassment may not be taken as valid until the institutional response process determines a policy has been violated. However, even if the institutional response process has concluded quickly (say, a week), harms can occur for both the survivor and accused during that window, as detailed below, and rumors may spread into the community, creating whisper networks and further offshoots of harm that may not be remediated by compliance-based supportive measures alone.

By contrast, a multi-partiality approach takes everyone at their word and seeks to be responsive to the lived experiences of all involved individuals, concurrent with the institutional response process determining the objective facts that dictate the institution’s responsibility. Under multi-partiality, if the survivor claims they have experienced sexual harassment, then individuals who may provide remediation efforts accept that claim as true up front (while the institutional response process is occurring) and can provide resources to remediate that harassment. Simultaneously, if the accused claims they have not engaged in any sexually harassing behavior but have experienced harm as a result of the accusation against them, then those claims are also accepted as true up front (while the institutional response process is occurring) and they also deserve efforts to remediate the harm stemming from the accusations against them. Accepting both claims as true up front and addressing the perceived harm, rather than waiting until the official finding of an investigation to determine “who to believe” and who the institution must legally provide support to, allows for harms to be addressed earlier and more robustly, even if the institutional response process eventually determines that behavior rising to the level of a policy violation has not occurred. Further, if individuals who are typically outside of the institutional response process (such as the broader institutional community) claim that harm has occurred as a result of the harassing behavior, then those claims of harm are also accepted up front and they also deserve efforts to remediate that harm. This multi-partiality approach focuses on the harms occurring and seeks to address them—some of which may eventually be validated as reaching the level of a policy violation and constituting sexual harassment (in turn requiring mandated remedial measures), and some of which the institution may want to address even without that validation/requirement. In this way, employing a multi-partiality framework provides the opportunity to redress the involved individuals’ experiences subjectively throughout the institutional response process, takes steps to remediate and facilitate access and participation, and allows involved individuals to proceed with what is objectively required in the investigation.

Employing a multi-partiality framework is also complementary to recognizing the range of harms experienced and the range of remediation efforts available to appropriately address that specific harm. For example, one survivor may feel that a one-time, demeaning comment about women made by a classmate caused a level of harm that can be fully remediated by speaking with a counselor at their institution (a comment that likely would not meet the reasonably high standard to constitute sexual harassment under Title IX, and that may not reach the threshold for a formal investigation). A different survivor may feel that being sexually assaulted by a community member caused a level of harm that cannot be fully remediated by counseling alone but that instead may be more appropriately remediated by employing additional efforts such as no-contact orders

(NCOs) or shuttle diplomacy. Such examples reveal how institutions can go beyond compliance and reduce harm overall (rather than just addressing the harms that rise to the level of a policy violation) by using a multi-partiality framework. We invite readers to adopt this multi-partiality approach to remediation and employ it as an underlying framework for our examination of what remediation efforts are needed and available in higher education.

Finally, we want to define the scope of this paper regarding the range of ways an institution can be informed about individual cases of sexual harassment. This paper focuses solely on instances when an institution has received formal notification that an individual has experienced sexual harassment, which we will refer to as reporting to the institution (see Box 1 for more information). A survivor may also choose not to tell anyone about the harassment or may choose to tell someone who, according to their institution’s policy, is not required to share the report with the institution (i.e., a confidential resource such as an organizational ombuds; see IOA, 2023, for exceptions to confidentiality). We chose to focus solely on disclosures and reports that involve the institutional response process as described in the definitions provided above (see Box 2). However, we want to acknowledge that the effects of sexual harassment can extend beyond what occurs before, during, and after the institutional response process, as many individuals choose to never informally disclose or formally report the harassment.³

Harms to the Survivor

The harms that survivors experience as a result of sexual harassment are well documented in research. For example, the National Academies’ 2018 report on sexual harassment summarized 30 years of research on the harms survivors often experience to their professional and personal well-being (see Chapter 4). For survivors employed in higher education, sexual harassment can result in increased work absenteeism, intent and desire to resign, decreased job satisfaction, decreased work performance and productivity, and missed work opportunities (e.g., Barling et al., 1996; Holland and Cortina, 2016). Survivors who are students also tend to have lower grade point averages; are less motivated to regularly attend their courses; are more likely to change classes, advisors, and majors; and are more likely to drop out of school overall, negatively affecting their professional trajectories (e.g., Huerta et al., 2006). Significantly, survivors also experience a host of negative personal outcomes as a result of sexual harassment. Individuals who report experiencing higher levels of sexual harassment also report experiencing elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and symptoms of PTSD, as well as disordered eating, sleep problems, respiratory distress, substance abuse, decreased self-esteem, increased self-blame, and an increased sense of stigmatization (e.g., Ho et al., 2012). Stress resulting from damage to a survivor’s educational progress

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or professional career can compound the stress of the damage to their personal outcomes, and vice versa, creating a feedback loop of post-harassment harm that necessitates remediation.

Each of these negative effects may be experienced by the survivor before they report the sexual harassment to the institution (and many survivors choose never to report to the institution; see Footnote 4 above), during the institutional response process, and after the institutional response process has determined whether a policy prohibiting sexual harassment has been violated. For example, poor reactions from individuals to whom survivors initially disclose can make them hesitant to make a formal report or initiate an investigation process, fearing that officials might also cast doubt on their experience of sexual harassment and exacerbate the damage to their professional, mental, and physical well-being (Smith and Freyd, 2014). During the institutional response process (which may lead to their engagement with legal, medical, and judicial systems if those services are sought out), survivors may experience victim blaming, minimization or even dismissal of their claims, and further traumatization (Griffin et al., 2022; SAMHSA, 2014). Being subjected to medical practitioners and legal staff who are not trained to conduct their work in trauma-informed ways can retraumatize the survivor. For example, survivors’ trauma can be exacerbated during cross-examination in hearing processes (Elsesser, 2020), or in cases of sexual violence where survivors may experience medical procedures such as pelvic exams (Farid, 2019).

Survivors can also experience negative professional outcomes due to conflicts of interest and/or the stress of navigating the institutional response process, such as retaliation for reporting a professor for sexual harassment (Boyd et al., 2023) or a desire to drop classes or abstain from work activities to avoid interacting with the individual they accused (Feldblum and Lipnic, 2016). Students, employees, and non-tenured or junior faculty whose professional standing is significantly affected by faculty with the authority to evaluate their school or job performance are more vulnerable and may fear or experience retaliation in the form of formal and informal negative appraisals (Boyd et al., 2023). The survivor may also experience feelings of being betrayed by their university—termed institutional betrayal (Smith and Freyd, 2014)—in how it is conducting the investigation process and perceive that their institution is failing to live up to its stated values—that is, to thoroughly investigate harms the survivor experienced, to support the survivor, and to pursue justice on behalf of the survivor. These perceptions can be tied to decreased trust in an institution and exacerbate the harm caused by the inciting trauma (Bergman et al., 2002; Hart, 2019; Smith and Freyd, 2014).

Even after the institutional response process has concluded, survivors may continue to experience worsened mental and physical health due to post-traumatic stress, the accused still being in the community, and the stigma of being labeled a “troublemaker” in their discipline, which can result in their leaving the field altogether (NASEM, 2018). At this stage too, the survivor may experience feelings of institutional betrayal. For example, when an institutional response process concludes that the accused did not violate any institutional policies prohibiting sexual harassment, and therefore they will not be subject to any discipline, survivors may experience this outcome as a form of institutional betrayal. Lastly, the survivor may experience difficulty reintegrating into the broader institutional community. Accusing a community member of sexual harassment and having that harassment and/or accusation openly known (through gossip or whisper networks, for example) can be a stigmatizing experience, reflecting complexity around the issues of transparency and communications. The survivor may also be wary of rejoining a community where they experienced harm, particularly if they feel that the community allowed one of its members to sexually harass them, the institution failed to support them,

and/or it appeared to condone the behavior by not holding the accused individual accountable, at least from the survivor’s perspective.

Harms to the Accused Individual

We do not equate the harm that survivors of sexual harassment experience with that of others affected by the incident. However, given the attention paid to survivors’ experiences, and employing our multi-partiality framework, we note that harms can occur to the accused individual as well as to the broader community’s sense of safety and justice, necessitating resources that are specific to the various affected groups (Koss et al., 2014; Williamsen and Wessel, 2023). For example, accused individuals and bystanders to the sexual harassment may experience moral injury, defined as “severe psychological distress and functional impairments that may occur after experiencing, witnessing, perpetrating, or failing to prevent stressful events that transgress core values and moral beliefs” (Lathan et al., 2023, pp. 5136-5137; note that under this definition, survivors would also experience moral injury after experiencing a stressful event such as sexual harassment). A driver who causes a car accident and hurts another driver (even unintentionally) may feel moral injury because this contradicts their view of themself as a safe and considerate person. Similarly, individuals accused of sexual harassment may feel moral injury because being accused of engaging in sexually harassing behavior violates their view of themselves as benevolent people. Research shows that experiencing moral injury can be related to dysfunction in the injured party’s parasympathetic nervous system (e.g., cardiovascular disorders) (Lathan et al., 2023) and severe anger, depression, and PTSD symptoms in some circumstances (Hoffman et al., 2018).

Indeed, the limited research on the effects of sexual harassment on accused individuals, in combination with media coverage, interviews, and research on organizational climate, suggests that harm for these individuals can occur before, during, and after the institutional response process. In addition to moral injury, it is possible that the accused individual may feel angry, confused, ashamed, surprised, and/or scared about what the survivor is claiming and how it could affect their future (Penn State Student Affiars, n.d.; Stanford University, n.d.; Washington University in St. Louis, n.d.). For example, if the survivor tells others in their shared network, those individuals may ostracize the accused (LCW, 2024). If the accusation is leaked on social media, the accused individual may experience online bullying or doxing (in which an individual’s private information, such as their residential address, is shared publicly to promote harassment or violence toward them; NYCLU, 2024). They may also experience general “cancellation” or “calling out” (which involves “public criticism and withdrawal of support for those who are assessed to have said or done something problematic, which could easily progress into online harassment”; Kim et al., 2022). During the institutional response process, the accused individual may experience harms through the same mechanisms as the survivor, as investigative processes that are not trauma-informed can be invasive and stressful (Koss et al., 2014; Smith and Freyd, 2014). The accused individual may be subjected to repeated inquiries into the details of their personal life and like the survivor may also experience institutional betrayal if they perceive the institution has taken or failed to take action on their behalf. Moreover, just as they may fear becoming the target of personal and professional retaliation, as described above, they can also be accused of retaliating against whoever reported them for sexual harassment, including the survivor, particularly if they hold a position of authority (such as a work supervisor or instructor).

Finally, after the institutional response process has concluded, the accused individual may experience difficulty reintegrating into the community (such as returning from a leave of absence taken while an investigation was being conducted). For example, the accused individual may have difficulty making social connections, finding employment, or participating in community social events (Grossi, 2017). The stigma of being accused may also be compounded if the investigation concludes that the individual did violate a policy prohibiting harassment (Karp and Frank, 2016). This process can be further complicated if the survivor reintegrates into the same spaces as the accused, requiring that the two individuals navigate how they will interact (or not interact) with one another moving forward.

Harms to the Broader Institutional Community

Individual cases as well as more comprehensive research of sexual harassment reveal that members of the broader community also experience harm. Witnesses of sexual harassment who are employees of an institution experience similar levels of job dissatisfaction, work absenteeism, psychological distress, and desire to resign as individuals who directly experienced sexual harassment (NASEM, 2018). As mentioned in the prior section, they might also experience facets of moral injury, particularly if they were bystanders to the incident and perceive themselves as “failing to prevent stressful events that transgress core values and moral beliefs” (Lathan et al., 2023, pp. 5136-5137). Members of the community are also affected when their sense of safety is compromised or when they lose trust in the fairness of the system that is supposed to prevent harm and address it if it has happened (Nix et al., 2015; Umphress and Thomas, 2022). Overhearing that someone has experienced an organizational process as procedurally unjust (i.e., one in which the process is perceived to be unfair to an involved individual or group) is associated with willingness to retaliate against the person responsible for the injustice (in this context, the institution; Skarlicki and Kulik, 2005).

Part of what informs perceptions of an institution’s procedural justice is its level of transparency, which can be very difficult to balance with protections and restrictions around privacy. As stated previously, members of the broader community may observe apparent harassing behavior before anything is disclosed to the institution and interpret the absence of a public acknowledgment of the incident as a lack of response on the part of leadership and the institution (Fink, 2023; Harvard University, 2021), which might increase students’, employees’, and other community members’ feelings of being in an unsupportive climate or environment. Even after the harassment is disclosed, privacy laws (such as FERPA, HIPAA, and FMLA) and risk mitigation approaches may keep the institution from sharing updates and information with the community members on how it is responding, which may make community members feel uninformed and distrustful even if the institution is in fact responding in an appropriate manner. In line with this, community members may also experience organizational cynicism, or “an attitude of pessimism and hopelessness towards future organizational change induced by repeated exposure to mismanaged change attempts” (Andersson and Bateman, 1997, p.450), which has been tied to employee resistance to organizational change and decreased trust in an organization (as described in Cheung et al., 2018).

Finally, as individuals accused of sexual harassment are reintegrated into the community, the members of this community may experience a decreased sense of safety and increased sense of injustice and betrayal by the institution (McMahon et al., 2019). For example, in a highly publicized series of cases, a well-known biologist

was found responsible for sexual harassment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and was then offered a position in New York University’s (NYU’s) medical school. Faculty, students, and postdoctoral scholars across NYU protested this potential employment, citing fear for their trainees’ and their own safety, describing an impending sense of betrayal if the institution followed through with the offer, and suggesting that they would boycott events by the medical institute if NYU continued to pursue the biologist’s employment there (Wadman, 2022). Eventually, both NYU and the biologist dropped the offer, but in November 2023 the biologist was offered a position at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (IOCB) Prague amidst concerns that hiring the biologist would send a message to “all women and men in Czech academia” that sexually harassing behavior is tolerated (Wadman, 2023). As the discussions about this individual’s termination and employment reflect, broader institutional communities can be deeply affected by sexual harassment–related harm that occurs not just at their own institution but across institutions globally.

Factors that Might Cause Additional Harms to Survivors, Accused Individuals, and Community Members

Beyond the three roles of survivor, accused individual, and community member, there are certain factors that might cause additional risk of experiencing sexual harassment, or harm resulting from the institutional response process. People with certain demographic identities, those who are subject to power differences/hierarchies, and individuals who hold a professional role in the institutional response process all are more likely to experience sexual harassment or institutional response process-related harm. When an individual holds multiple of these additional risk factors, the resulting harms can intersect to simultaneously compound the damage and marginalize their experiences. Given this, it is important to consider how remediation efforts may need to be tailored to fully address the harms created by these additional factors. In this final section, we examine how individual context and identity relate to (1) the likelihood of experiencing additional harm and (2) the importance of considering these factors in remediation efforts in higher education.

Research demonstrates that some individuals are more likely to experience sexual harassment or harm resulting from participating in the institutional response process based on their demographic identities, their professional roles at their institution, and/or the hierarchical power dynamics of the contexts in which they work and study. For example, women are more likely to experience sexual harassment than men, and transgender individuals and non-heterosexual (e.g., lesbian and gay) individuals are more likely to experience sexual harassment than cisgender and heterosexual individuals, respectively (NASEM, 2018). Similarly, power differentials and the hierarchical systems for graduate training, hiring, and tenure and promotion in higher education can also make certain individuals more vulnerable to sexual harassment and can compound the harm.⁴ Power differentials occur when one person (or group) has “more or less influence or control over a situation and valued resources based on their position, title, gender, race, level of authority, etc.” (Umphress and Thomas, 2022). Power differentials may come into play under various circumstances, such as between advisors and advisees, individuals overseeing visa processes for non-U.S. citizen students or employees, or those later in their career mentoring individuals earlier in their career. In these cases, the individual with less power (the advisee, non-U.S. citizen, and early career scholar) can face an elevated risk of harassment and fear of retaliation from

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the individual with more power (the advisor, U.S. citizen, and later-career scholar) (Kleinman and Thomas, 2023). For example, an individual who is not a U.S. citizen may be afraid to report their advisor (a U.S. citizen) for sexual harassment if they fear the advisor could take action that results in their visa being rescinded. Similarly, an early-career individual (e.g., a postdoctoral scholar) may be at greater risk of experiencing sexual harassment from a late-career individual (e.g., a tenured faculty member) and also more hesitant to report the harassment because they rely upon the senior colleague for letters of support to acquire a full-time position or professional awards. Furthermore, even those individuals holding positions of power remain vulnerable to experiencing sexual harassment from individuals with less positional power, also known as contrapower harassment (Viveiros et al., 2024).

Finally, some individuals occupy specific roles that increase their likelihood of experiencing harm due to their responsibility for facilitating the institutional response process. For example, some members of the community have roles in the institutional response process where they are expected to respond to disclosures of sexual harassment. This could include faculty and staff with responsible employee or mandatory reporter status, directors of undergraduate and graduate studies, and department heads, deans, and other administrators. Because of their roles, these individuals may struggle with burnout, frustration, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatization stress (defined as the stress that results from hearing directly from someone about their traumatic experience and helping that individual learn about and navigate institutional resources) (Figley, 2002; Miller, 2018).

While these examples provide simple ways to understand how context and identity shape experiences of sexual harassment and institutional responses to that harassment, reality is typically more complex than examples looking at a single identity or circumstance. In reality, we all hold multiple identities and these identities interact in ways that can further increase the likelihood and harm of harassment as well as harm resulting from the institutional response process. For instance, research has shown that women of color, as people who hold multiple marginalized (i.e., historically marginalized, disadvantaged, or excluded from study) identities, experience higher rates of sexual harassment than individuals with a single marginalized identity (such as white women or men of color; NASEM, 2018). In keeping with this, one study found that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduate students with multiple marginalized identities more frequently reported ceasing or limiting their amount of professional engagement, experiencing greater delays in their degree progress, and having a greater desire to leave academia as a result of experiencing sexual harassment than students in the same programs without marginalized identities (Wilkins et al., 2023). Moreover, students of color in this study who reported the sexual harassment to their institution, also reported greater dissatisfaction with the outcomes of the institutional process than their white peers. Such effects could further reduce the willingness of these survivors to disclose sexual harassment to the institution and participate in and remain in their fields.

An important facet of this line of research is that it shows that individuals with multiple marginalized identities are experiencing sexual harassment not only more frequently but also in unique ways that reflect how our institutions (e.g., laws, practices, systems of organizing) create disadvantages or advantages based on important social categories (e.g., NASEM, 2018, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025). This reflects what legal scholar Kimberlé

Crenshaw termed intersectionality (1989, 1991). Intersectionality theory posits that society’s institutions and systems overlap and interact with one another to “produce distinctive social arrangements of power and inequality based on structural constraints and differential access to power and resources” (Hefner, 2013, pp. 15-24). More specifically, intersectionality theory posits that when an individual holds multiple marginalized identities (such as being a person of color and a woman), they experience disadvantage at the intersection of both systems that is greater than the sum of the two individually (Hill Collins, 2015; Combahee River Collective, 1977; Crenshaw, 1991). For example, women of color often have a unique experience of sexual harassment as entangled race- and gender-based discrimination, which can compound the harm and negatively affect their experiences with institutional response processes (Bowleg, 2012, 2013; Crenshaw, 1989; NASEM, 2018). In another example, research examining how ageism and sexism intersect in medical contexts has shown that older women receive less frequent and thorough medical care, less aggressive treatment of their conditions, and more infantilizing or oversimplified communication from their doctors than men of a similar age and younger women (Chrisler et al., 2016; NASEM, 2024). It can become difficult for older women to tell if the poor way they are being treated by doctors is due to their gender, age, or both.

Applying intersectionality theory to sexual harassment and remediation efforts not only reveals the complex ways in which individuals experience harassment but additionally sheds light on the limitations of the available structures for pursuing remediation of the resulting harms. To draw from Crenshaw’s work, she detailed how Black women facing discrimination in hiring found barriers to receiving justice because the employment of Black men was deemed evidence there was no racial bias and the employment of white women seen as evidence there was no gender bias. There was no way within existing structures to account for the hiring bias against Black women uniquely (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991). Considering this in the context of harassment in higher education, if a Black female professor experiences harassment involving aspects of both gender and race, she might not know whether she should contact the Title IX or the Title VII office, or both, and how these offices may work together or separately. A lack of structures that acknowledge how individuals with multiple marginalized identities (such as women of color) experience sexual harassment might introduce additional harms to these individuals, because it may make navigating an institution’s response process more unclear and difficult.

Structures that do not account for intersectionality harm individuals with multiple marginalized identities because they render them invisible (Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach, 2008). For example, structures that fail to account for the needs and experiences of individuals with disabilities (such as those who have limited mobility and cannot walk on their own unassisted), and that fail to account for the needs and experiences of individuals living in poverty, fail to acknowledge how these individuals might not be able to purchase medically necessary mobility aids, such as walkers or wheelchairs (Karpman et al., 2024). Indeed, there is evidence of the invisibility of individuals with multiple marginalized identities in the legal landscape, in mental healthcare, in policy development, in organizations, and in cultural discussions and representations (e.g., Akbari and Vogler, 2021; Areán et al., 2010; Coles and Pasek, 2020; Crenshaw, 1989; Smith et al., 2019; Sternberg et al., 2024; Yeo and Moore, 2003).

Researchers have argued that this invisibility contributes to the lack of interventions designed with these individuals’ specific needs and experiences in mind (e.g., Wong et al., 2022). As Crenshaw states, failing

to consider the role of intersectionality in institutional processes, and its effects on multiply marginalized individuals, “shapes and ultimately limits the opportunities for meaningful interventions on their behalf” (1991, p. 1251). This invisibility may explain why in our review we also found relatively fewer remediation efforts designed to address the specific harms that individuals with multiple marginalized identities might experience due to sexual harassment and the institutional response process (see the Landscape section for more detail throughout each timepoint).

Ultimately, all of this together means both that certain individuals are more likely to face sexual harassment and institutional response process-related harm, and that they may not find the support and resources they need to tackle the unique intersections of harm that they are experiencing. Throughout the Landscape section and the Remaining Gaps and Questions section, we highlight where resources are available and where additional efforts are needed in this space. As a full discussion of this important and complex topic is beyond the scope of this paper, we encourage individuals who are interested in learning more about intersectionality theory to seek out additional work from scholars and researchers, including reports from the National Academies (see Grzanka, 2019; Hill Collins, 2000; NASEM, 2018, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025).

Given the evidence of harms occurring for different groups and at different timepoints, it is important to identify who receives remedial services and when they receive them. Figure 2 presents a two-dimensional matrix that organizes remediation efforts by Timeline and Role. This Remediation Efforts Matrix provides a visual display of our review of the existing resources and who they serve at each timepoint, facilitating the identification of gaps where there are fewer resources available to remediate harm. Importantly, we want to note that while we separated the Timeline axis into before, during, and after the institutional response process, and the Role axis into the survivor, accused individual, and broader institutional community, the reality is that reports overlap and interact over time. This two-dimensional matrix does not attempt to capture that complexity but instead was developed as a tool that may help institutional leaders organize the vast range of remediation efforts implemented in higher education and make it easier to recognize unaddressed needs. When the

International Ombuds Association used an early draft of the matrix, it added another role to its matrix to capture organizational ombuds’ regular support to supervisors and other administrators charged with addressing misconduct in their sphere of authority. This reflects the matrix’s utility in revealing and organizing institution-specific resources and mechanisms for remediating harm across various contexts.

The roles of different individuals affected by sexual harassment include those who have experienced harm (survivors), those who have been accused of causing or have caused harm (accused individuals), and members of the community in which the harm occurred (the broader institutional community). The timeline includes the period before the sexual harassment is disclosed or reported to the institution, during an institutional response process, and after the conclusion of an institutional response. The “after” period includes two branches: when an investigation and hearing have resulted in a finding of a policy violation, and when an investigation and hearing have resulted in a finding of no policy violation. Ultimately, the goal is for higher education institutions to have resources, tools, programs, and practices to provide remediation measures for all groups of individuals and all periods included in the Remediation Efforts Matrix. Using the matrix to conduct a self-audit may help individual institutions better understand what services they already have available and where there are gaps in those services. Finally, the matrix encourages an appreciation of the enormous complexity of intervening effectively in cycles of sexual harassment, as well as in communities that are constantly in flux and constantly shaped by internal and external developments. As a result, when individuals at institutions fill in the matrix, there will be some repetition of resources across descriptions of each cell, and likewise there are repetitions in the corresponding sections in this paper.

With this two-dimensional structure in mind, we now turn to a description of current efforts that may remediate harm for individuals who have these three roles, across these three spans of time.

Landscape of Remediation Efforts in Higher Education

The information-gathering portion of this project was conducted February 2022-March 2024 by the Remediation Working Group. Then, in late 2024, the gathered resources were analyzed, summarized, and written up by four key members (the authors, hereafter referred to as “we”). Specifically, in February 2022, the Remediation Working Group issued a public call to higher education institutions in the Action Collaborative for descriptions of remediation efforts (see Appendix C) and reported the results at the Action Collaborative’s Members Meeting in spring 2022. The goal of this session was to discuss how the Remediation Efforts Matrix might serve as a tool for developing a more comprehensive approach to institutional remediation efforts, provide an opportunity for individuals from member institutions to share their institutions’ efforts, and hear about their successes and frustrations in trying to increase and improve those efforts.

While the collection of efforts from the call for information and discussions with member organizations skewed toward prevention and education (likely due to the emphasis on this area in the public call for information), many other efforts that the collaborative members reported were novel remediation initiatives relevant

to multiple specific groups as described in the Remediation Efforts Matrix or to the remediation of harm experienced during and after the institutional response process had concluded. The information gathering also revealed a general lack of interventions designed to reintegrate involved groups and individuals, whether or not a report resulted in a finding of policy violation. This is very concerning, in particular because only a few violations warrant termination or expulsion, and comparatively more will require reintegration of the individual at the institution where the harm occurred. Given the scarcity of examples for reintegration interventions from member organizations, we also conducted a review of the scholarly literature and public press to supplement our research of remediation efforts across all stages of the institutional response process.

Since the working group’s information gathering in 2022, additional remediation efforts and theories of practice have become a burgeoning part of the landscape. The recent 2023 paper titled “Preventing and Addressing Retaliation Resulting from Sexual Harassment in Academia” highlights a novel practice from Johns Hopkins University, termed individualized anti-retaliation plans, as a way to proactively address potential retaliation against people who report sexual harassment and protect those accused of sexual harassment from charges of retaliation (Boyd et al., 2023). We also noted how practices can be repurposed to address gaps that might otherwise be overlooked (such as remediation efforts for the accused individual). For example, reentry circles that are typically designed for the survivor can also be reformulated to address harm to the broader institutional community (Rutgers University, n.d.; University of Pennsylvania, n.d.-a). Other recent efforts, such as the University of Tennessee’s Office of Title IX 360-Degree Evaluation of Services, seek to reduce and remediate institutional harm by inviting anonymous evaluation of the institutional response process from participants and community members (University of Tennessee Knoxville, 2023). As these examples reflect, new remediation resources and approaches continue to be developed, and institutions may wish to regularly search for new resources and approaches as they are released.

Before the Harassment Is Disclosed or Reported to the Institution

First, we consider how remediation efforts pointed at general populations are distinct from efforts to prevent sexual harassment. Many of the interventions that institutions of higher education implement have been developed primarily to prevent sexual harassment from occurring (e.g., mandatory prevention trainings for employees) or to improve real-time responses to such incidents when they do occur (e.g., bystander intervention trainings). Most of these prevention initiatives seek to educate individuals who could experience, witness, and/or engage in sexual harassment and to provide information about the institutional and community services that are available for those responsible for, experiencing, or witnessing sexual harassment. As a result, these efforts take on new meanings when we consider how they can be used to remediate harm.

Given that resources for preventing sexual harassment often have to be directed at a general audience, they can, through education, also remediate harm before it is reported to the institution. For example, such resources may educate those who have experienced or caused harm in the past (either at the institution or before the education/employment of those individuals began), those who suffer from ongoing harms stemming from existing reports and investigations, and the employees and administrators charged with preventing and responding to sexual harassment, as well as witnesses and bystanders. Unlike interventions that occur during or after the institutional response process, proactive efforts may also remediate harm to

the wider community. They do not, because of privacy and liability concerns, identify or target individual survivors or accused individuals of sexual misconduct. Instead, they prepare community members to handle sexual harassment by educating them about how it occurs in higher education and showing them their options for interrupting, reporting, seeking support for themselves, or protecting themselves from sexual misconduct and its effects. For example, a community member who witnessed sexual harassment in the first year of their program and did not intervene or report that to the institution could learn about support services during a training they take in the second year of their program and then access those services to remediate lingering harm.

RESOURCES FOR SURVIVORS

Sexual harassment can cause harm after the incident has occurred but before it is reported to the institution, either through how individuals react to the survivor sharing their experiences with them or through survivors not knowing of, having access to, or choosing not to access supportive resources to help them (which may reflect their choice not to disclose to anyone). Institutions may work to remediate this harm by widely advertising their campus support services and confidential resources (professional personnel or offices designated “confidential” by the institution who are not required to report such information to the institution). For example, Michigan State University’s (MSU’s) Safe Place Shelter and Culture of Support websites and the University of Pennsylvania’s Special Services team provide various forms of therapy, educational resources, and advocacy services to help survivors understand their options and navigate a multitude of problems, such as finding legal support and addressing housing needs.⁵ The University of California (UC) Office of the President also provides a list of confidential resources available at each branch of the system on their Campus/Location Resources website that survivors can access 24/7 for support before a formal report to the institution. Through MSU’s Crisis Chat, survivors can discuss their feelings about an incident, ask questions about what constitutes intimate partner violence, and learn what resources are available to them to address related trauma (including advocacy programs and formal institutional processes).

Regarding resources available beyond the campus boundaries, the University of Virginia provides a list of on-grounds and off-grounds confidential resources (such as the Shelter for Help in Emergency) that students and employees can access to learn about their reporting options as well as resources that help with housing needs. The UC Berkeley Support for Survivors web page has a section dedicated to on- and off-campus resources for survivors with identities that might put them at risk of further harm (such as survivors who are not citizens of the United States or who do not identify as heterosexual), acknowledging how having one or more marginalized identities may compound the effects of sexual harassment. The University of New Mexico’s Staff and Faculty Wayfinder website provides a local tool for university employees to learn about and make contact with confidential resources on campus and in the community. Widely advertising and encouraging the use of such resources may help to support survivors’ emotional well-being and address the harm resulting from sexual harassment in the period between the incident and the disclosure or report to the institution (if disclosure/reporting does occur).

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As highlighted above, unsupportive reactions to a disclosure of sexual harassment, such as victim blaming or failing to believe the survivor, can also exacerbate a survivor’s trauma. Providing and widely advertising basic educational materials to survivors and community members may help limit the likelihood of individuals responding to disclosures with these kinds of reactions. For example, MSU’s web page How to Help a Survivor, UC Berkeley’s web page on supporting survivors and responding to disclosures, and the University of New Mexico’s Ombuds-led Supportive Listening Workshops describe the range of emotions that survivors (and those who care about survivors) may feel after an incident and discuss trauma-informed ways to react when someone shares that they have experienced sexual harassment. Educational websites like Yale’s Support Q&A page might help survivors by providing them with initial information on how to cope with unsupportive reactions to their disclosures/reports and their own feelings of self-blame and self-doubt, which may be exacerbated by unsupportive reactions. With these introductory references, individuals such as the survivors’ close friends can learn how to respond supportively when someone discloses sexual harassment to them, so that they do not further harm the survivor through an unsupportive reaction.

Finally, survivors may be hesitant to report sexual harassment, as the accused individual is often someone close to them and survivors sometimes fear that a report could “ruin (the accused person’s) life” or see them significantly harmed (Goodman-Williams et al., 2024). Institutions that are transparent about the range of potential sanctions that could be implemented if the accused individual is found responsible for violating a policy may help to address survivor concerns about potential damage to the accused’s personal and educational/professional well-being and reflect disciplinary actions that are proportional to the severity of behavior. For example, Texas A&M University (n.d.) has publicly posted its Title IX student sanctioning matrix, and the University of Minnesota (2023) has published a Responsive Action Guidance document that maps examples of misconduct that range in severity onto potential disciplinary actions that reflect that range for students and faculty, respectively. Having these materials publicly accessible may help survivors in their decision-making on whether or not to make a report, and address concerns about the effects of a report on the accused individual.

RESOURCES FOR INDIVIDUALS ACCUSED OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Individuals who have been accused of sexual harassment, even if the institution does not yet know of that accusation, can experience harms that stem from stressful social dynamics and emotional responses to the accusation. These individuals can make use of confidential resources such as MSU’s Counseling & Psychiatric Services, or CAPS. They can also make use of resources designed specifically for accused individuals, such as North Carolina State University’s website with information on “common reactions after realizing or being accused of interpersonal violence” or NYU’s website titled “I Was Accused of Harming Someone.” Through these resources, the individual may learn what sexual violence is, speak with professionals about how being accused has affected their mental health, and discuss other potential resources. Accused individuals may also experience distress and confusion as a result of the accusation. In those cases, a remediation effort could be to widely advertise the availability of confidential resources for accused individuals (such as an organizational ombuds) who can discuss the institution’s code of conduct and policies for what constitutes appropriate behavior. Having this space may allow an accused individual to gain clarity on the specific policies the survivor might claim have been violated, ask questions about the process, and understand the

expected standards moving forward so as to avoid violation of these policies in the future. Lastly, accused individuals may be concerned, confused, or unknowledgeable about what might happen if the survivor’s claim of sexual harassment is formally investigated and they are found to have violated a policy prohibiting sexual harassment. If an institution posts its sanctioning guidelines publicly (like those linked in the Survivors section above), this could help an accused individual understand the potential range of sanctions that may be applicable if the investigation determines that they are responsible for violating a policy prohibiting sexual harassment.

RESOURCES FOR THE BROADER INSTITUTIONAL COMMUNITY

Prevention and education initiatives that prepare the broader campus community to identify and respond effectively to sexual harassment may also remediate some of the harm to community members who witness or learn about sexual harassment at their institutions. Because they are implemented before an institution receives notice of specific incidents of sexual misconduct, these initiatives are often designed for the general population and do not target specific groups (such as potential survivors, or people who may engage in sexual harassment or be accused of harassment). These programs aim to remediate harm by training faculty, staff, and students to respond appropriately and in trauma-informed ways to disclosures and reports of sexual harassment, to intervene and stop the continuation of sexual harassment, and to help survivors find resources and support after they have experienced sexual harassment.

Emblematic of such efforts are the widespread and various trainings required of university staff, faculty, and graduate students. Broad trainings such as the UC Berkeley (2019) Preventing Sexual Harassment in Your Academic Department: A Toolkit (which provides a roadmap for academic departments to assess and address climate issues) or the Rutgers University (2022) Trauma-Informed Bystander Intervention Workshops for Faculty and Staff are designed to prepare community members to intervene when they witness sexual harassment and to teach them how best to support survivors of sexual harassment. Such trainings seek to remediate harm before sexual harassment occurs (and can be reported to the institution) by building community consensus around acceptable behavior and practicing suitable interventions to interrupt or de-escalate harassing behavior. Other trainings, such as the Virginia Tech (2024) Foundations of Restorative Justice, seek to remediate the harm caused by poor reactions to disclosures/reports and the potentially traumatizing institutional response process. Specifically, attendees are trained to apply the principles of restorative justice and focus on community involvement through practices such as community circles. Importantly, Virginia Tech developed this training to better support survivors who are “more at risk of experiencing sexual harassment and violence,” as they were using formal disclosure mechanisms such as Title IX less frequently than survivors with lesser risk (Virginia Tech, 2024). Some of those initiatives are still in preliminary stages of development, while others have been implemented, yet most still need to be evaluated to determine their effectiveness at preventing and educating individuals about sexual harassment, as well as their efficacy on remediating harm (Lam et al., 2023).

Similar remediation efforts can be further tailored and may help to communicate unit-level norms and policies. For example, labs made up of principal investigators, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars can have their own cultures of tolerating harassment, indicating a potential need for remediation efforts at this level

rather than at the broader departmental level. In response to unit-based harm, MIT (2020) developed a set of Lab-Based Inclusive Culture Workshops to address laboratory cultures that can be unprofessional and exclusive (rather than inclusive), using feedback from focus groups of students and staff from the department. Other efforts, such as the University of Michigan Prevention, Education, Assistance and Resources (PEAR) department, offer customized trainings for staff and faculty in specific groups, units, departments, or schools/colleges, shown on their PEAR website. Similarly, workplace and university civility trainings that are developed through interactive surveys are more targeted to address the specific circumstances and dynamics within a field and/or individuals’ positions and may be likely to remediate harm to the broader community by developing shared behavioral norms through moderated discussions of employees’ identity and values. One example includes the online module called “Workplace Solutions” that Soteria Solutions (2022) created for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as part of its employee training in sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention. These unit-level workshops include cooperative activities that allow laboratory members to create a desired laboratory culture and lists of values/expectations individualized to their specific circumstances and contextual factors. Such an approach may be able to remediate the ambient harm in a unit through greater specificity about norms, unacceptable behaviors, and complex dynamics than more general trainings such as institution-wide bystander trainings.

Other tools for remediating harm to the broader institutional community are the resources, trainings, and communications that promote the practice of “calling in” rather than “calling out” bad behavior, including sexual harassment. Calling in is a practice of addressing harmful behavior in a constructive, private, and often compassionate way by engaging in dialogue to help individuals understand the impact of their behavior while encouraging accountability and change (Kepinski and Nielsen, n.d.; Ross, 2019). Calling out shames and brings public attention to individuals or groups, whereas calling in promotes individual or group reflection on harmful behaviors. Calling-in strategies were developed to help community members address those behaviors without escalating conflict or increasing harm. Such practices not only interrupt harms early on (possibly preventing their recurrence) but also invite those that are being called in to remain open to dialogue, increasing the chances that conflicts can be resolved early and without formal investigations in a manner that recognizes such harms while upholding campus civility. For example, the University of New Mexico’s Health Sciences Learning Environment Office has published a guide to calling in on its website and regularly incorporates such practices in its bystander intervention and other campus trainings.

Finally, in addition to the confidential resources that are available to help individuals navigate these institutional services after an incident has occurred, some institutions have designed online “navigators” to support students’ and employees’ continuous education and access to relevant services. These efforts go beyond the widespread use of university websites as digital repositories of current information about campus policies and services; though legally required as evidence of notice to the campus community, large website repositories may actually have harmful effects on those who have experienced or witnessed sexual misconduct if they are written in confusing ways (Eno et al., 2023). Responding to this research, both the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus’s Help Compass and the University of New Mexico’s Staff and Faculty Wayfinder website deploy trauma-informed web design principles to provide community members with access to information about support and reporting resource options in a private setting. User experience designers’ commitment

to employing trauma-informed design principles (such as error prevention or user control and freedom) has led some designers to increasingly prioritize accessible text, mobile (rather than desktop) applications, site searchability, and visible safety alerts in websites designed for users who have experienced sexual violence (Chen, 2022; Dietkus, 2022; Eggleston and Noel, 2024). Since policies that require individuals to formally share all disclosures of sexual harassment with the institution can have unintended negative consequences for survivors (Eno et al., 2023; Holland et al., 2021), and because faculty, staff, and students often fear retaliation for reporting sexual harassment (Boyd et al., 2023), these website navigators seek to empower users with information and choices without triggering a formal institutional response process, and in turn may be able to remediate the harm that can result from forcing survivors through an institutional response process they do not wish to pursue.

During the Institutional Response Process

In general, this paper classifies remediation efforts that can be employed during the institutional response process—whether directed at those experiencing harm, those accused of causing harm, or the broader community—into four groups. That is, these efforts (1) provide support/advocacy in navigating the institutional response process, (2) triage reports of sexual harassment, (3) provide alternative resolution processes, and (4) communicate effectively with affected groups over the course of a report. These efforts differ widely, providing guidance after an institution has been notified and/or during an investigation and supporting a variety of participants through institutional commitments that are responsive, transparent, and courageous. There are a variety of tools used for this purpose: websites to inform involved individuals of their rights, relevant policies, and available resources, which may also be used to anonymously or non-anonymously voice concerns and file reports; designated offices and individuals to give answers to individual and specific questions, and guide and support individuals as they navigate institutional processes; and finally, triaging toolkits that have been developed to address a wide range of different scenarios and direct individuals to appropriate resources.

RESOURCES FOR SURVIVORS

Survivors of sexual harassment can have their trauma further compounded and can experience additional harm during the institutional response process, such as when university officials fail to investigate their reports, dismiss or blame them, engage in retaliation against them and/or those who report sexual harassment, or uphold processes that are not trauma informed. From our sources, we learned about four types of efforts that are aiming to remediate this kind of harm: (1) plans to address interactions between survivors and the accused during the response process, (2) alternative resolution processes, (3) referrals to or consultations with confidential resources, and (4) coordinated response teams.

The first type of remediation effort in this section revolves around whether and how the survivor and the individual accused of sexual harassment interact during the institutional response process. Many institutions implement No Contact Orders (NCOs) to prevent direct or indirect contact between individuals involved in harassment or misconduct cases, ensuring safety during investigations, with violations potentially leading to disciplinary action (Carnegie Mellon University, n.d.; Georgetown University, n.d.; Princeton University, n.d.). Another approach to addressing interaction was developed by Action Collaborative member institution Johns Hopkins University, which implemented individualized anti-retaliation plans as detailed on its Retaliation

website. The plans are proactively put into place to protect not only the survivor but also the person who reports the sexual harassment (if not the survivor) and/or the accused from experiencing and being accused of retaliation. As such they are not punitive, disciplinary, or an assumption that the accused would retaliate against others; rather, the plans seek to protect all individuals from possible retaliation by other individuals. In individualized anti-retaliation plans, institutional administrators⁶ can work with the person reporting sexual harassment and/or survivor to identify potential areas of retaliation and can proactively reroute responsibilities for those areas to others.

For example, if the accused individual is the survivor’s professor, and the survivor is concerned the professor would unfairly grade them as a result of their accusation, then another professor can grade the survivor’s classwork instead of the accused professor. Similarly, and as another approach to addressing how individuals interact during the institutional response process, changing survivors’ and accused individuals’ work locations may remediate the harm that can be caused by continued contact between them. For example, if the survivor and the accused require access to unique shared facilities such as libraries or highly specialized instrumentation, determining a schedule that outlines when each individual can access the library or instrument might remediate the extenuating harm that can result from having to share a physical space. Of important note is the consideration that while the institutional response process is underway, neither party should be assigned only to inconvenient evening and weekend hours and it should be communicated that these changes are not an assumption that either individual would have retaliated but are intended to protect both individuals while the institution responds to the report.⁷

The second type of remediation effort in this section involves alternative resolution processes and revolves around the harm survivors may experience during the institutional process. This involves alternative ways of stopping and addressing the harm, as illustrated by the University of Michigan’s Adaptable Resolution processes for faculty, staff, and students, which apply restorative justice principles to addressing student misconduct. Directors in the University of Michigan’s Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX office must first approve the use of an Adaptable Resolution process if the conflict falls under Title IX; then, once approved, the involved individuals meet with consultants to determine if they would like to participate and, if both the survivor and accused consent, through which of the processes. For example, in Shuttle Negotiation, the participants meet individually with a facilitator to discuss their experiences and perspective, with the goal of negotiating ways to meet needs and come to agreement without having to directly interact. In the Restorative Circle Process, individuals participate in a structured conversation about their experiences of harm and ways to restore those hurt to an improved state.

A third type of survivor-centered remediation effort includes confidential and supportive services (a running theme that remains applicable throughout the entire timeline). The survivor may still access supportive resources that were helpful before the disclosure/report to the institution, such as therapy and resource counseling (e.g., MSU’s Center for Survivors or the University of Pennsylvania’s Special Services team), which

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may still be needed to remediate trauma and housing displacement. As an additional resource, organizational ombuds provide confidential consultations with individuals about the incident and may serve to address concerns about the institutional response process or alternative resolution options. Although ombuds play no role in reports, investigations, or sanctioning decisions, and cannot engage in shuttle diplomacy or conduct mediation once a formal investigation is underway, an organizational ombuds can continue to provide support and guidance—on procedural and communication matters—for individuals involved in a report. In contrast to the neutral support offered by organizational ombuds, campus-based advocates—often housed on college campuses as confidential resources at women’s resource centers and sexual-violence prevention programs—can provide critical information, referrals, protection, and accompaniment to survivors as they navigate institutional processes (Wood et al., 2021). The victim advocates at Washington State University present one such example. Although the services offered to survivors through campus-based advocacy can vary considerably (Sullivan and Goodman, 2019), confidential advocates for staff, faculty, and students may provide effective remediation to survivors of both sexual harassment and institutional harm (Brubaker, 2019).

The fourth type of survivor-centered remediation effort involves a coordinated response team. The University of Southern California employs the Initial Assessment Triage Team (IATT) as part of its Coordinated Care and Response approach to improve the effective, timely, and compassionate initial assessment and response to harassment and retaliation within a decentralized higher education institution. The IATT uses a rubric to document crucial intake assessment details such as the individual’s conduct history and risk factors, as well as preferences for the reporting individual. Through its collection of this information, the IATT potentially addresses the harm that could be created if an institution further traumatized the survivor by failing to take their preferences into account and forcing them to take part in a formal investigation process (which, while it does not occur frequently, can happen if the institution determines it is legally obligated to conduct a Title IX investigation even if the survivor does not wish to pursue one; Equal Rights Advocates, n.d.).

RESOURCES FOR INDIVIDUALS ACCUSED OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT

During the institutional review process, individuals accused of sexual harassment can experience harm through social stigmatization and ostracism as well as invasive investigation processes. They may be denounced in the community as someone who engaged in sexually harassing behavior, or they may be accused of retaliating against those who reported them for sexual harassment. As described in the prior section, individualized anti-retaliation plans can also address potential harm to the accused. For example, shifting the responsibility for grading the survivor’s classwork from the accused to a colleague means that the accused individual cannot be implicated for retaliating through grading, and thus the accused individual is protected from further harm. Similarly, Adaptable Resolution processes (such as the University of Michigan’s) can be used to remediate not only the harm the survivor experiences but also that of the accused because the process is confidential to the individuals and results in no disciplinary action or record for the accused individual.

Several institutions provide resources focused specifically on those accused of harm to support them and help them navigate the institutional response process, termed Respondent Support Services at UC Santa Cruz and Resources for Respondents at UC Berkeley, with similar supportive measures provided at Vanderbilt University (n.d.). For students, this support includes referrals to counseling and psychological services, financial assistance,

and legal services; accompaniments to meetings with administrators; assistance with logistical challenges of hearings, appeals, and sanctioning; as well as support for reentry to campus after an investigation/adjudication process (note that these services are available to survivors as well, as mentioned in the Before the Harassment Is Disclosed or Reported to the Institution, Resources for Survivors section). Analogous services for employees are those that assist with navigation of the investigation and adjudication process, including efforts to clarify their rights as accused individuals.

While such services were widely implemented for accused students because of requirements in the 2020 Title IX regulations, the UC system (as exemplified by UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz) as well as Vanderbilt University are unique in offering these services to students, staff, and faculty alike. These services attempt to remediate the range of emotions and questions that accused individuals might experience during the institutional response process through providing resources, information, and referrals outside of the university’s formal investigation process. Significantly, the Respondent Service coordinator is neither a legal advisor or advocate for accused individuals nor a confidential resource. The same kinds of harm to accused individuals may be addressed through employee assistance programs, which often provide more general counseling services (as exemplified by counseling and mental health services generally available to university employees and students). In a similar fashion, as a neutral player, an ombuds can play an important role in supporting those accused of sexual harassment as they navigate a formal investigation by helping to clarify the steps and possible outcomes in ways that decrease harm to the accused. Finally, a leave of absence while the investigation is underway may also help remediate the harm that accused individuals experience by temporarily removing them from a charged environment, allowing them to seek supportive services such as from mental health professionals, and providing a barrier to accidental or intentional contact between the accused and the survivor.⁸

RESOURCES FOR THE BROADER INSTITUTIONAL COMMUNITY

Finally, from our analysis, we found that many members of the broader community perceive a lack of transparency during confidential sexual harassment investigations and in their findings, which may be interpreted by the community as silence and/or as the institution’s failure to respond to sexual harassment (Fink, 2023; Harvard University, 2021). This may lead to a potential sense of helplessness and/or cynicism in the broader community, as well decreased trust in the institution. If community members perceive that the institution has repeatedly lapsed in communication, has mismanaged cases of sexual harassment, or has not sincerely attempted to address sexual harassment on campus, then a sense of organizational cynicism may also be exacerbated in

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community members, in turn impeding future attempts at organizational change. As mentioned previously,⁹ institutions might improve community members’ perceptions of transparency more generally through efforts such as posting sanctioning guidelines publicly, so that community members can know the range of disciplinary actions that might be taken if the investigation finds a policy has been violated. Unfortunately, full transparency on all aspects of an individual case (which might minimize harm to the community) is difficult to achieve due to restrictions around privacy laws. Further, full transparency can cause harm itself if that transparency shares information that the survivor or accused individual would prefer not to be disclosed widely. For example, a survivor may not wish to have the intimate details of the harmful behavior they experienced known by the public, even if communication about those details might help a community feel more informed. A communication plan with no risks or potential harms regrettably seems elusive.

Due to legal limitations such as privacy laws, there are only a few examples of ways that institutions can keep community members informed during an institutional response process (although more remediation efforts exist for improving transparency after an investigation has concluded¹⁰). Leadership and general counsel differ across institutions for how much risk they are willing to accept by disclosing information about a case to members of the community during and after an investigation. Moreover, in conjunction with state-specific laws on recordkeeping and open access to records, whether an institution is private or public may facilitate or complicate transparency even if an institution wishes to share information with members of the broader community. When the person under investigation is in a public, highly visible position at a public university, the institution may have a greater ability to communicate. For example, the University of Michigan published a press release in 2020 explaining that the provost was under investigation for sexual misconduct, which may have helped community members to understand that the institution was taking the misconduct seriously and demonstrated that it was not ignoring the misconduct (Fitzgerald, 2020). Such a release addressed the community at its widest level—institution-wide. By contrast, at the Action Collaborative’s 2019 Public Summit, the University of Tennessee (UT) Knoxville shared a case in which it had notified witnesses the report was forthcoming so that the witnesses had forewarning and could seek support (Richter, 2019). It also proactively strategized about how the office would respond to inquiries from external press in order to prevent any harm that an unprepared response could cause. This example reflects defining community at a smaller, more local level, based on context and needs.

Similarly, today’s fast pace of communication makes it likely that ad hoc communication planning is not adequate to prevent harm on campus. Even as an institution is initiating its response to a report of sexual harassment, community members may hear about the misconduct from the survivor directly, from colleagues in the same study or research group, from department and institution administrators, or from traditional and social media, and begin to form perceptions that the institution is not responding to the harassment. Developing a proactive plan for sharing information about processes, typical timelines, and possible outcomes (without violating requirements for confidentiality and privacy) may help to increase perceptions of transparency and fairness, rebuild trust, and demonstrate that the institution is responding and is invested in protecting the

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campus climate. For example, during the Action Collaborative’s 2019 Public Summit, UT Knoxville also shared how incidents of harassment created ambient harassment “in the air” that affected its community members, and in response the chancellor communicated with leaders at several levels across the institution, calling out institutional lack of transparency as a facilitator of harassment (Richter, 2019). The chancellor may have remediated some of the perception that the institution was not invested in addressing sexual harassment and would not be transparent about harassment on campus moving forward. However, transparent approaches (such as those taken at UT Knoxville, the University of Michigan, and Texas A&M University) have not yet been evaluated for their efficacy in combatting this type of harm, nor evaluated for any side effects, and require further examination before being widely implemented.

In addition to communication from an institution’s leaders, efforts exist that facilitate communication between two members of an institution that may help them converse about the harms that have occurred and feel efficacious in creating an anti-harassment climate beyond the findings of an investigation. Discussed in detail in a prior Action Collaborative resource titled “Exploring Sanctions and Early Interventions for Faculty Sexual Harassment in Higher Education” (Stubaus and Harton, 2022), the Duke University Health System and Vanderbilt University Medical Center have implemented a program termed the “cup of coffee” program, in which colleagues are trained to have informal conversations with individuals accused of poor behavior without the complicating presence of a supervisor. If the behavior is repeated or escalated, then a second “espresso” peer-to-peer conversation takes place. Any further lack of change or escalation leads to the involvement of higher authorities. Not only do such conversations aim to prevent community members from being harmed in the future by addressing harassing behavior early before it can escalate and spread (and often succeed in doing so; for efficacy data, see Doub et al., 2024; Paulin et al., 2018; Westbrook et al., 2024), but having such a program at an institution might help community members feel involved and invested in building a climate that does not tolerate sexual harassment. It may also communicate that stopping any kind of harassing behavior matters to the institution, even if it is not severe and pervasive enough yet to be deemed a policy violation by an investigation.

In the same vein, the Campus PRISM Project aims to increase transparency and accountability, decrease the rate of reoffense, meet survivors’ and accused individuals’ needs for safety and justice, and importantly, create space for community-level interventions and discussion spaces (Karp et al., 2016). Campus PRISM attempts to remediate the hostile campus climate that sexual harassment can create, especially during the institutional response process. It does so through restorative justice processes such as response conferences that provide space for community members to openly discuss and identify what harm has occurred and what “successful” restoration of their climate and sense of justice would look like. This process attempts to remediate community-level harm and set community-level standards to assist in the identification and repair of future harms. Again, however, this work has not yet been evaluated for its efficacy, requiring careful attention and discussion when considering implementing similar models at other institutions.

Finally, community members may also remediate future harm created during the institutional response process by sharing their feedback with an ombuds or another confidential resource about how the institution did or did not communicate and did or did not involve them. Ombuds can provide de-identified feedback to campus

leaders, based on what they have heard from individuals about perceived limitations or policy and remediation gaps that they experienced as they navigated the institutional response process. Santa Barbara City College has its own version of this remediation effort beyond campus ombuds. It restructured its “report a concern” process to include academic decision-makers, who have a greater ability to spur change and the implementation of resources that can remediate the harms experienced by the community. Similarly, as noted above, the Title IX Office at UTK conducts 360-degree evaluations to improve and enhance its services. In short, having these kinds of resources may remediate harm not just for an individual incident but also for harm the community might experience in the future.

Before we move to a discussion of resources available after the institutional response process has concluded, we want to highlight the paucity of remediation efforts available for individuals with marginalized identities or who study or work in roles that may face elevated risks of experiencing harm during the institutional response process. In our search we did not find any resources designed specifically for individuals who are not white, for example, or efforts that may consider the continual burnout that the individuals who provide the supportive measures or run alternative resolution processes may experience. Some of the efforts from the Before the Harassment Is Disclosed or Reported to the Institution section may still be applicable, such as UC Berkeley’s Support for Survivors, which accounts for the identities of the survivor. However, we failed to find resources designed for these groups that focus solely on the dynamics and risks of this specific timepoint.

After the Institutional Response Process Has Concluded

For individuals who choose to participate in alternative resolution processes (such as shuttle diplomacy), the formal institutional response process often concludes with the completion of that process (although they still may experience lingering harm after the process, and many of the remediation efforts discussed below may still be of use to them). However, for individuals who participate in a formal investigation, the institutional response process concludes with the release of the findings of an investigation. The two outcomes that result from the investigation can result in different needs for or approaches to remediating harm. Specifically, the institution may determine that the accused individual violated a policy prohibiting sexual harassment, and a sanction is put in place (in turn raising questions of how to identify and remediate any harm experienced during a sanction and after a sanction has expired). Alternatively, the institution determines that there was no violation of a policy prohibiting sexual harassment. This section is organized around these two outcomes and the remediation resources that exist for the survivor, the accused individual (hereafter referred to as the individual found responsible for a policy violation when applicable, or simply responsible individual as shorthand to facilitate readability), and the community affected by the case.

FINDING OF A POLICY VIOLATION AND A SANCTION ISSUED: RESOURCES FOR SURVIVORS

Even when an investigation concludes that a policy violation has occurred, and that the accused individual is responsible for that violation and subject to sanctions, the survivor can continue to experience harm. Specifically, the survivor may continue to experience post-traumatic stress and negative consequences to their physical health as they process the stress and trauma of the harassment and institutional response process. They may also experience professional consequences resulting from the stigma of being a survivor and/or claiming that a colleague engaged in sexually harassing behavior. Thus, providing confidential and supportive

resources throughout the timeline of a report, such as mental health services, continues to apply as an important remediation effort. In addition, acknowledgment of the harm that has happened may be critical. Sharing outcome information with survivors about other cases at the institution validates the survivors’ experience, gives them the knowledge that they are not alone or overreacting, and encourages future reporting. However, shared information must be worded carefully to avoid outing survivors and blaming the individuals who brought forward the concern, and as mentioned before is particularly complicated when navigating privacy laws such as FERPA. One such way to navigate this may be through the presentation of information aggregated across several or many cases, in which personal characteristics, organizational details, dates, locations, and other circumstances that could lead to the identification of involved individuals are not to be included. Given the University of Tennessee’s open-access rules on recordkeeping and reflecting Title IX requirements to inform involved individuals of the results of a formal investigation, UT Knoxville provides survivors and accused individuals with a letter detailing the conclusion of the investigation and the sanctions that will be imposed and/or disciplinary action that will be taken (if any), including a letter of termination for the offender if applicable (Richter, 2019).

Institutions may remediate harm to survivors after the response process concludes, exploring how sanctions alone may not repair all the damage incurred by the survivor (or in some cases, such as Title IX cases, remedial efforts are required). Sanctions are typically higher education’s equivalent to punishment in the criminal justice system, with the goals to protect society and punish offenders (as they are called in the criminal justice system). It is well recognized, however, that punishment alone does not rehabilitate these individuals and does not address all the harm they caused (e.g., de Figueiredo, 2015; Skustad, 2020). This has led to significant efforts in restorative justice, which typically does not replace but complements conventional punishment in the judicial and penal system. While the adequateness of restorative justice in the context of sexual violence has been debated in the past, there is substantial evidence to suggest survivors who choose this route gain some measure of justice and satisfaction (Marsh and Wager, 2015; McGlynn et al., 2012; Wager, 2012).

For survivors, one-time events such as single reentry circles are beneficial but insufficient as survivors heal on their own time frame; instead, treating reentry as an ongoing process may be critical to remediating harm (McMahon et al., 2019). A reentry circle, as defined by Pranis (2014), is a restorative justice practice that facilitates dialogue among individuals returning to a community after an absence, aiming to address harm, promote accountability, and support reintegration through open and respectful conversation. In this way, restorative justice can supplement a formal investigation process after a sanction has been made. Restorative justice programs at institutions of higher education are not always transparent about whether such practices are still available after sanctions have expired. Making such information widely available may help to remediate survivors’ harm so that they are aware of any time constraints in their ability to access resources. For example, the Campus PRISM Project (Karp et al., 2016) has developed a template for survivor support circles, which is designed to support one or multiple survivors. The focus of these circles is not on sharing details of specific incidents but on creating a supportive community built on shared experience and emotions, helping survivors to recover from trauma and reduce the harm to their personal lives and academic success. Indeed, as it cannot be expected that survivors recover and heal in step with the schedule of a sanctioning plan, remediating harm

may involve providing them this type and other kinds of support, including counseling services, beyond the expiration of sanctions.

The reentry of survivors into the community can also create new harms that require remediation and present numerous professional and personal obstacles. Survivors are often concerned about their safety and the climate they are returning to, frequently suffer from trauma, and wrestle with logistical difficulties of returning to campus. If an individual found responsible for a policy violation was in control of the research or work of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, or staff, then those individuals may not be able to continue working on their projects, and lack of funding can impede the selection of a new advisor or supervisor. Survivors in such situations may benefit from the availability of bridging funds provided by federal funding agencies or their home institution during the transition to a new advisor. For example, the National Institutes of Health’s Reintegration Program assists researchers under existing grants who have experienced unlawful harassment in transitioning “into new research environments that are safe and supportive” (NIH, 2024), and MIT’s Guaranteed Transitional Support Program provides graduate students with one full semester’s stipend to allow time for them to find and transition to a new advisor. By providing clear information on how students can take advantage of these processes, and by training directors of graduate students to discuss possible options for alternate advisors (as well as the consequences that this may have on time to degree and funding), institutions may remediate the harm that stems from the dependence of survivors on funding controlled by individuals found responsible for a policy violation.

Survivors may also experience significant delays to their timely completion of milestones (such as comprehensive examinations for graduate students or tenure review for faculty) due to the time needed to participate in an investigation or alternative resolution process and to recover from the personal and professional disruptions and damage caused by experiencing sexual harassment. For example, the time that a survivor might have dedicated to making progress on their dissertation proposal could be taken up by Title IX or shuttle diplomacy meetings or finding a new advisor and funder. Providing additional time to complete research or work may help to remediate these harms and avoid penalizing survivors for not meeting milestone deadlines when those milestones fail to account for the disruption.

Minimizing the continuing harm to the survivor at this timepoint can be just as important as during the response process and may involve careful consideration of the physical space in which the survivor and the individual found responsible for a policy violation are working, studying, or performing research. For example, consider a student or postdoctoral fellow who is performing scientific experiments that, based on occupational and health standards, should not be performed alone. If the absence of the responsible individual from the spaces previously used by the survivor would force the survivor to work in the absence of a peer, it may be in the best interest of the survivor to be assigned to the laboratory space of a different supervisor where they can continue their research in the presence of others not associated with the responsible individual. The survivor may be provided with alternative work or study spaces, but care must be taken to avoid requiring them to make additional efforts when it would be more appropriate for the individual found responsible for a policy violation to accommodate the needs of the survivor.

Finally, to prevent additional harm to those who have already been harmed and to avoid harm to possible future victims, we highlight the importance of institutions carefully considering how records of the investigation and finding are archived and who can access them. In the “passing the harasser” phenomenon, individuals found to have violated a policy and/or those actively under investigation for sexual misconduct have often left their position and started with a new institution, never having disclosed that they were (or are) under investigation at their prior employer (Serio et al., 2023). Several efforts to remediate this specific form of harm have come out in recent years, with the State of Washington legislature requiring hiring institutions to ask about active investigations and any prior findings of misconduct (2019). Similarly, in 2022 the U.S. Congress passed the Speak Out Act (P.L. 117-224) to address some of the limitations of nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreements that might hinder transparency of sexual misconduct investigations and findings. Furthermore, the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation require that awardees notify them when a principal investigator or other senior/key personnel are found responsible for harassing behavior or are being disciplined for harassing behavior (NIH, 2024; NSF, n.d.). In line with this phenomenon and the potential loss of funding that can result from sexual harassment, clear procedures on how funding is affected if a principal investigator is found responsible may remediate some of these cascading effects.

FINDING OF A POLICY VIOLATION AND A SANCTION ISSUED: RESOURCES FOR INDIVIDUALS FOUND RESPONSIBLE FOR A POLICY VIOLATION

Much of the public discussion relevant to individuals who have been found responsible for a policy violation has focused on two ultimate outcomes: either the bad behavior is ignored, or the responsible individual is fired. To the contrary, some institutions with a zero-tolerance approach have developed guidelines that describe a range of sanctions of varying severity for students, staff, and faculty that reflect the escalating levels of harm caused by various behaviors (Stubaus and Harton, 2022; Texas A&M University, n.d.; University of Minnesota, 2023¹¹). The formulation of such guidelines is more conducive to clarity, transparency, and a general sense of justice than an approach in which sanctions are primarily based on past decisions in similar cases (reminiscent of case law), especially because details of prior cases are not usually known to the public for privacy reasons. Supporting individuals found responsible for a policy violation may be important for their constructive engagement, as reflected in how institutions such as UC Santa Cruz have developed specific respondent services that assist responsible individuals not only during an investigation but also afterward.¹² As with survivors, the latter may also include confidential consultation on the topics of appeals and other ways to express concerns about institutional processes through an organizational ombuds. However, through our information-gathering efforts and conversations with Action Collaborative member institutions, it appears that many other institutions do not yet have such sanctioning guidelines, or that their sanctioning guidelines are not well known in the community.

Individuals found responsible for a policy violation can also experience stigma, ostracism, and logistical difficulties reintegrating into the community after being found responsible for violating a policy prohibiting sexual harassment. While some institutions have more detailed plans for the reintegration of students found responsible for a policy violation using respondent education programs, we did not find any publicly shared examples and tools for how to address reintegration through respondent education programs for staff or faculty

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members who have caused harm. The goal of such education efforts is to give individuals found responsible in the past the competence to avoid harmful behavior in the future and develop an understanding of the harm caused, both of which can be critical for successful reintegration of the survivor and the responsible individual. Topics for this type of training include accountability, respectful communication, boundary setting, and establishing healthy relationships. It has been suggested that survivors propose content for respondent education (Karp et al., 2016), not only to strengthen the education itself but also to help the survivor’s healing process.

The return of responsible individuals to campus can cause considerable concerns, anger, and anxiety in the community, which may make reentry difficult. It has been emphasized that responsible individuals may benefit from a community that helps them avoid risky situations (like socializing with peer groups that exert a negative influence or promote uncontrolled alcohol consumption) (Koss et al., 2014). Recognizing that successful reentry depends not only on the individual found responsible for a policy violation but also on available support systems, the criminal justice system has used Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA; also in use at the University of Michigan as part of their Review and Reintegration program) to support responsible individuals’ reintegration (The Council of State Governments Justice Center, n.d.). Such a circle consists of a group of volunteers who pledge to assist the individual found responsible for a policy violation with reintegration into the community. However, we found little evidence of the use of CoSA’s principles to reintegrate responsible individuals at institutions of higher education. Reentry circles have also been implemented, based on the key concept that a circle is not held to discuss the details of the incident but to address the emotional effects on all individuals involved. However, while restorative justice principles to supplement traditional sanctions are finding increasing use with students found responsible for a policy violation, the number of reported examples to facilitate the reentry of staff and faculty found responsible for a policy violation is still extremely limited.

FINDING OF A POLICY VIOLATION AND A SANCTION ISSUED: RESOURCES FOR THE BROADER INSTITUTIONAL COMMUNITY

Even after the institutional response process finds a policy violation, the community can be harmed through confusion and lack of information about the case and its conclusions, as well as difficulties reintegrating both the survivor and the individual found responsible for a policy violation into the community. First, feelings of institutional betrayal, organizational cynicism, and confusion may be addressed in part by efforts to increase transparency with the broader community. Sharing aggregated outcome information (using depersonalized Title IX and Title VII office data) with the wider community may be likely to send messages about the behaviors that constitute policy violations, may make further harmful conduct more difficult to hide and easier to identify, and has the potential to act as a warning to future potential abusers. However, depersonalization of data may be difficult if there are few cases and if involved individuals might be identified through context. Further, it can be difficult to share information about a specific case even after an investigation concludes, based on continuing laws and policies guiding privacy protections, as well as any agreed-upon confidentiality terms (such as nondisclosure agreements). As such, institutions may need to weigh several factors before sharing information with the broader community so as not to break any privacy laws or agreements, or unintentionally identify the individuals involved in an investigation.

However, if an institution is willing to assume the associated risk, sharing information about the results of an investigation may help to remediate the harm stemming from a lack of transparency in some cases. For example, in 2019 Johns Hopkins University released an email and letter to the campus announcing that it had investigated two professors for separate incidents of sexual harassment. Specifically, the letter shared that both professors had been found responsible for misconduct, with the result that one professor’s employment was terminated by the institution, and the other professor resigned from his position before the recommendation of termination could be fulfilled (Hou, 2019). Transparent communication about the end result of an investigation seemed particularly important for this case, as students had protested in 2018 and called for the first professor’s termination. One student who was a witness and reported the incident to the Title IX office stated that students had “placed an implicit trust in what we had understood to be due process. Over and over again, however, this very Office failed us” (Ome and Parekh, 2018). Communicating about the outcomes of these investigations might have addressed such feelings of institutional betrayal and confusion in the broader community and worked to repair any potential perceptions that there were no consequences for professors harassing others in the community.

Second, as with other timepoints, remediating harms that stem from the community’s incomplete or erroneous information about the case may validate the importance of transparent policies and procedures after the institutional response process has concluded. For example, sharing information with the community about the types and range of possible sanctions and how sanctions are determined might dispel inaccurate perceptions about the institutional response process and potential consequences. Finally, widely advertising the availability of a confidential resource like an ombuds may help to prevent community members from gaining a sense of institutional betrayal and organizational cynicism and may help to instill a sense of agency in developing procedures that support the community over time, rather than responding to a specific case in a time of crisis. A clear communication plan that addresses these various aspects may be part of a comprehensive prevention initiative that focuses not on individual incidents but on effective processes that prevent sexual harassment from continuing at the institution.

In addition to remediating the harm to survivors and individuals found responsible for a policy violation, survivor support circles and reentry circles may remediate the harm the broader community can experience during the reintegration process by providing an avenue for active engagement in the articulation, acknowledgment, and experience of the harm. Members of the broader community have expressed that restorative justice can help in reducing the harm they experience (Marsh and Wager, 2015), and indeed, circles are held sometimes solely for members of the broader community (i.e., without the presence of survivors and responsible individuals). The individuals of the community may experience conflicting emotions in considering not only that they could be indirectly harmed by the sexual harassment but also that they could be responsible for the harassment through contributing to the overall institutional climate that enabled the responsible individual to harm a community member (i.e., the survivor).

Notably, the educational value of learning about restorative justice processes in general and thinking about community responsibility in particular may go beyond the benefits of any particular case (Rinker and Jonason, 2014). When students and other members of the community learn about those practices, they learn

skills in reflection, conflict analysis, and group facilitation that will be available to them well throughout their careers and in their personal lives. Here, remediation seeks to disrupt systemic, cyclical processes and pressures by dovetailing with remediation efforts that address harms occurring before disclosure to the institution. The same resources that can educate community members on how to supportively respond to disclosures of sexual harassment might also be useful even after a policy has been found to be violated and the members of the broader community are considering whether they too share responsibility for the incident. While using restorative justice to proactively build community and help prevent harm is still a burgeoning effort (Sawin et al., 2023), it provides a novel avenue for research on the efficacy of remediation efforts.

FINDING OF NO POLICY VIOLATION

A finding of “no policy violation,” or a “negative finding,” can still have a variety of harmful effects, both on individuals involved in the investigation and the community in which the misconduct occurred. This reflects prior research that behavior that does not rise to the level of a policy violation can accumulate into the level of a hostile environment (NASEM, 2018). In this section, we examine these harms and our inability to find interventions to address them, suggesting that additional attention, resources, and research are urgently needed.

How negative findings are experienced may vary according to the individuals’ role (i.e., survivor vs. accused individual vs. broader institutional community), but what all individuals can often share is a sense that the finding alone does not restore them and their communities from the harm of the incident or the report that followed. This is particularly important because a formal investigation resulting in a finding of no policy violation does not necessarily mean that the reported behavior did not occur, just that it did not meet the evidentiary requirements of the institutional policy to support a finding of a violation. Similarly, other behaviors that do not rise to the level of a policy violation can still cause harm (NASEM, 2018), and early intervention of even seemingly minor harms may prevent them from accumulating into more severe harms later on (Stubaus and Harton, 2022). In other words, no conclusion to an investigation can definitively resolve the very real gap between what individuals have experienced and what institutional investigations can “find,” but it may be advantageous for institutions to address the perceived harm, regardless. To that end, we found that the remediation efforts needed to address the resulting harm after the institutional response process has concluded do not differ greatly from those at other timepoints (such as before disclosure to the institution).

First, from the perspective of survivors and members of the broader community—including those who witnessed or believe they have witnessed misconduct—a negative finding may well be interpreted to mean that the institution deems the harmful conduct acceptable, and that their efforts to hold an accused individual accountable were therefore in vain. In addition, some individuals may view a negative finding as “proof” that a survivor made the claim in bad faith or that the sexual harassment did not actually occur. These interpretations may increase survivors’ feelings of self-doubt and frustration, post-traumatic stress, and lack of trust in institutional procedures and policies (mirroring a sense of institutional betrayal identified for survivors in the prior timepoints). In addition to providing mental health, ombuds, and other supports that survivors and others can access throughout the entire institutional response process (including the resources for harm after a positive finding of a policy violation is made), institutions may be able to remediate this harm by considering

communication strategies that recognize the courage of whistleblowers, the importance of witness testimony, and an institutional commitment to reducing harm, regardless of the positive or negative findings of particular cases. For example, calling attention to the institution’s appreciation of those who report sexual harassment so that it can be investigated may address doubt about whether the institution values reporting. In addition, communication that problematizes harassing behavior even if it does not rise to the level of a policy violation might remediate the harm that results from a climate that appears to tolerate sexual harassment.

A finding that sexual harassment policies were not violated can also have lingering negative effects for the accused individual, particularly if communication about the status of the case is incomplete or misleading. Accused individuals may have experienced reputational harm that persists despite a finding that no policy violation has occurred, or a work environment in which the accused individual remains subject to informal surveillance by supervisors. While much of the attention in these cases has rightfully focused on how many cases of sexual harassment are never reported and rarely addressed (NASEM, 2018), we must also recognize that requiring institutions to formally respond to reports does not mean that they are required to remediate the aftermath of often long, confusing, and taxing processes that leave most participants unsatisfied with the outcome. Particularly in cases of negative findings, reintegration of those accused—with requisite support to individuals and opportunities for restorative practices to reestablish trust and shared values—may be particularly important. Again, restorative practices such as CoSA may remediate the sense of ostracism and stigmatization that accused individuals experience by providing an avenue to discuss how the harm was experienced and how the individual can reintegrate into the community moving forward.

A running theme in this section is that we found very few resources specifically address the unique harms that result from no finding of a policy violation. While we have attempted to repurpose remediation efforts from other timepoints and decisions here, we have not found any efforts that could directly address a survivor’s feelings of institutional betrayal, for example, even if other forms of harm are addressed through alternative means such as restorative justice. Even if the sexual harassment and the related harm are addressed through other remediation mechanisms, the resulting damage to the survivor’s trust that the institution pursued justice on their behalf may be damaged, and there are few resources designed to address this specific consequence. We also want to highlight the lack of resources available at this timepoint designed for individuals with one or more marginalized identities, working or studying in contexts and roles that may increase the likelihood of their experiencing harm. Community members who have reported incidents of sexual harassment (such as responsible employees/mandatory reporters) and feel institutional betrayal based on the results of the investigation may feel cynical about how the institution will respond to reports they might make in the future. Similarly, prior research shows that groups that more frequently experience sexual harassment (such as women of color) are often more dissatisfied with the outcomes of the institutional response process and are more likely to experience institutional betrayal (Christl et al., 2024; NASEM, 2018; Wilkins et al., 2023). Understanding how these identities and contextual factors may underly harm at this timepoint, and how that harm can be addressed, requires further effort. As a result, we conclude this section with repetition of our earlier assertion that further work, attention, resources, and research are urgently needed in this area.

To conclude this portion of the paper describing the landscape of remediation efforts, we provide the Remediation Efforts Matrix, filled in with a summary of all the remediation efforts detailed above (see Figure 3 in Appendix D).

Using the Remediation Efforts Matrix as a Tool for Institutional Self-Audits

The Remediation Efforts Matrix is only a starting point for generating interest, dialogue, and innovation in an institution’s efforts to more effectively honor and support survivors, and remediate harms caused by sexual harassment. While we describe here one way to use this tool, we hope that institutions continue to adapt it and expand on it in their pursuit of remediating sexual harassment-based harm.

To conduct a self-audit using the matrix, institutions may find it useful to appoint a task force of individuals (reflecting a wide range of positions, tenure statuses, and responsibilities) to review and research the institution’s available remediation efforts. This might include searching the institution’s websites, employee portal, and handbooks, and/or reaching out to offices and individuals who know the resources they have that could apply to each category. As each effort is identified, task force members can sort them into the appropriate cell(s) within the blank matrix. To sort efforts, individuals should ask themselves the following questions:

1. Whose harm does this remediation effort address?
2. At which timepoint(s) is this remediation effort designed to be implemented?
3. Can this remediation effort be repurposed to address other individuals’ harm or harm at another timepoint?

Completing this exercise in this way may help institutions identify where they can retool efforts already in place for remediation purposes. In addition, any blank or comparatively emptier cells may reveal where an institution needs to shore up resources for a particular group and timepoint. Once this exercise is completed, task force members may compare their institutions’ completed matrix to Figure 3 and identify where they might want to adapt the resources described here for their own institution. Applying the matrix tool at an institutional level may also engage leadership in creative thinking about moving beyond compliance in their efforts to prevent and respond to sexual harassment within their institution and in higher education generally, provided this involves representatives from various administrative and practitioner roles.

As depicted by the landscape we have described above, efforts to remediate harm stemming from sexual harassment and institutional response processes are already evident at numerous Action Collaborative member institutions. Our hope is that sustained institutional self-auditing and institutional follow-up will broaden these efforts to further remediate harm within our academic communities. We believe that proposing this tool for such institutional self-reflection is an initial step toward the systemic change still needed across higher education.

Identifying Trends Across Remediation Efforts in Higher Education

The results of our multipronged search do not constitute a comprehensive sample, but they do illustrate several trends in institutions’ efforts to remediate the harm that stems from sexual harassment:

1. The use of trainings and educational interventions to remediate harm to entire campus communities
2. The consideration of thorough communication and triage mechanisms—via specific offices, toolkits, and websites—for guiding participants and members of the broader community throughout the institutional response process
3. The application of single types of remediation efforts across multiple scenarios (e.g., the use of reentry circles not only for survivors but also for members of the broader community)
4. The implementation of alternative resolution options, including ones implemented by trained peers
5. The paucity of remediation efforts designed to follow a finding of no policy violation
6. The paucity of remediation efforts designed to address the additional factors that may put individuals (such as people of color, early-career individuals, or responsible employees/mandatory reporters) at increased risk of experiencing sexual harassment and additional harms throughout the institutional response process
7. The insufficient acknowledgment that survivors and others harmed by sexual harassment heal in their own time frame, not necessarily that of the institutional response process

Finally, we would like to reiterate that while we separated the Timeline axis into before, during, and after the institutional response process, and the Role axis into the survivor, accused individual, and broader institutional community, the reality is that disclosures and reports overlap and interact over time. A community member who witnessed sexual harassment in 2022 may experience sexual harassment in 2025 and become a survivor. Any remediation efforts they benefitted from as a community member in 2022 may be able to address some of the harm they could experience as a survivor in 2025. In this way, viewing institutional remediation efforts not as one-time endeavors but as continuous, applicable, and relevant to community members at any time may help sustain institutions’ efforts to better prevent and address sexual harassment over time. Taking this viewpoint aligns with the National Academies’ 2018 report’s call for systemwide change over a focus on responding to isolated, individual incidents.

Remaining Gaps and Questions

In our attempt to identify and describe the landscape of sexual harassment remediation efforts in use at higher education institutions, we found several important areas that require further support. We also identified a host of questions that higher education still needs to understand to better remediate the ripple effects of sexual harassment.

Gaps Identified

Many institutions of higher education are using restorative justice principles for selected aspects of remediation, but the use of these principles in a comprehensive manner is still lacking. We also identified four areas with significant gaps in resources for addressing remediation:

1. Attention/support to community
2. Reintegration of accused individuals
3. Communication within an institution
4. Communication among institutions

First, we found far fewer resources and examples of remediation for community-level harms, in particular after formal sanctions have expired or after an investigation has concluded and determined that there was no policy violation. The compliance-focused approach to addressing sexual harassment in higher education has for many years rendered invisible the additional harms affecting both the communities where the misconduct occurred as well as the accused individuals. While an increasing emphasis on prevention and education has centered campus communities in standard interventions (such as campus climate surveys and trainings in sexual harassment prevention and bystander intervention), the longer-term consequences to communities affected by sexual misconduct have received considerably less attention. Perceptions of procedural injustice and information passed through whisper networks may exacerbate the harm, compounding feelings of institutional betrayal and a sense that the institution has failed to take action or communicate about the case. Although formal and informal processes, regulations, agreements, and privacy laws stemming from a report may restrict the information that may legally be shared with members of the broader community, the absence of appropriate communication protocols can increase harm to the community and may further limit opportunities for reintegration of the involved individuals after sanctioning. Given the complex legal landscape of these topics, it is understandable that fewer resources are dedicated to remediating this aspect of sexual harassment-based harm, but it is nonetheless important that future work addresses this gap.

Second, the most glaring gap in remedial efforts remains that of resources and services for the reintegration of students, staff, and faculty who have been found to violate university policies, provided that finding did not result in the responsible individual’s separation from the institution. While this gap may be due primarily to the lack of any requirement for reintegration support in extant Title IX regulations, it also reflects the realities of a history of campus activism and service development being most responsive to the needs of survivors of sexual assault (compared to the other two subtypes of sexual harassment that are not unwanted sexual attention). Reintegration of those who have caused harm is important to address because not all instances of sexual harassment warrant firing or expelling someone. As research and interest on alternative resolution and restorative justice approaches addressing harm have increased, so have opportunities for reintegrating responsible individuals into the workplace or educational environment in ways that support behavioral change to prevent future harm, allowing the community to heal and move forward, as well as building back the trust of individuals and the community. Notably, more has been reported about the effective reintegration of students than of staff and faculty individuals found responsible for policy violations, reflecting further needs for work in this area.

Third, we identified a lack of examples of how to consistently communicate within an institution (such as to its broader institutional community). We did find two examples of institutions that communicate their sanctioning guidelines with their community (Texas A&M University, n.d.; University of Minnesota, 2023) However, restrictions around privacy, considerations of who might be harmed by full transparency,

and requests for transparency by community members create conflicting demands and result in tension regarding the details and outcomes of specific cases. We found examples of some institutions that were able to communicate with their broader community regarding specific cases, but these examples either took place in states with open-access regulations (e.g., Tennessee with UT Knoxville’s notification of witnesses) or involved individuals in highly visible public positions (such as with the provost at the University of Michigan), which might not apply to all cases. Further examples are needed to examine how institutions can navigate such a complex landscape of competing considerations and consistently communicate within their institution to remediate the harms resulting from a perceived lack of internal communication and transparency.

Fourth and finally, the last gap we identified mirrors the motivation behind the Action Collaborative: a lack of sufficient communication among institutions about their remediation efforts. Sharing information about the successes and challenges that arise when attempting to remediate harm for survivors, accused individuals, and the broader institutional community could be very useful to other institutions and prevent them from “reinventing the wheel” along the way, particularly as research evaluating the efficacy of remediation efforts is still limited. Sharing may encourage individual institutions to use a more comprehensive approach to restorative justice and alternative resolutions, and it may help identify certain aspects of this work that require more evaluation and research. A lack of sharing can, in turn, increase the workload on individuals responsible for implementing remediation efforts at each institution, contributing to burnout and disillusionment among all involved. This topic requires further exploration because the broader institutional community does not just include individuals who have witnessed sexual harassment and formed opinions about an institution based on its response or lack thereof. It also includes individuals who are responsible for running those processes or helping others navigate remediation efforts. These individuals respond case after case, witnessing how the process is handled on the “ground floor” with harmed individuals, and they may be harmed themselves if their own trust in the system is compromised and feelings of institutional betrayal take hold.

Remaining Questions

Much work still needs to be done to fully remediate the harm that compounds beyond a specific incident of sexual harassment and affects numerous individuals and communities at institutions of higher education. The efforts that do exist are often novel, with little to no data available to speak to how effective they are in remediating the harm they seek to address or important considerations to take into account when implementing efforts on a specific campus. We raise the following questions to aid in the continued, collective pursuit to better prevent and remediate sexual harassment-related harm:

• What do institutional leaders understand as “remediation,” particularly as it relates to patterns of harassment and harm across an institution and the concept of institutional betrayal?
• How can efforts that were designed for the primary prevention of and response to sexual harassment be redesigned and implemented to remediate sexual harassment-related harm?

• How does survivors’, accused individuals’, and community members’ knowledge about the availability of remediation efforts (e.g., restorative justice and other alternative resolution pathways) affect their willingness to disclose or report and seek support after experiencing sexual harassment?
• How does an institutional response process that results in a finding of no policy violation affect survivors, individuals accused of sexual harassment, and the broader institutional community? What harms are occurring after this conclusion, and what kinds of resources are needed to address those specific harms?
• How can remediation efforts work to center and address the harms experienced by individuals who are more likely to be sexually harassed or responsible for responding to disclosure of sexual harassment (e.g., women of color, individuals who are not citizens of the United States, responsible employees/mandatory reporters)? How can remediation efforts address the harm that results from an incident with multiple components of harassment (e.g., sex- and race-based harassment) and which, depending on the circumstances and characteristics of the survivor, could be investigated through multiple offices/policies (e.g., a Black female professor and the Title VII and Title IX offices, respectively?)
• What are important considerations to keep in mind when applying a remediation effort that was developed at one institution to a different institution? For example, how does one account for the history of sexual harassment at each institution, differences in institutional climate and culture, and whether it is public or private)?
• How can institutions evaluate if remediation efforts are effective in repairing harm and restoring individuals to a better state?
• How can institutions effectively communicate with the broader community throughout the institutional response process to remediate the effects of sexual harassment, while balancing legal requirements for privacy?
• How can institutions develop appropriate policy statements expressing their commitment to remediating both the harms of sexual harassment for all groups (i.e., survivors, accused individuals, and the broader institutional community) as well as the unintended consequences of institutional response processes themselves?

While many questions remain in this area, we believe their existence also indicates space for potential work and creativity as institutions begin to consider the costs and effects of sexual harassment beyond the inciting incident. As detailed in the National Academies’ 2018 consensus study report, preventing and addressing sexual harassment requires systemwide change, and considering how to remediate harm can be a crucial step in that change. Our description of the landscape of remediation efforts reflects many institutions’ dedication to this process, and we hope it provides a useful resource for institutions to draw on as they begin to implement remediation efforts on their own campus. Furthermore, we hope that our Remediation Efforts Matrix tool

facilitates this self-reflection, supporting work that begins to address gaps in the landscape of remediation resources.

The remediation of sexual harassment requires institutions to go beyond compliance and consider how harm can extend beyond the inciting incident alone. It takes courage to disclose sexual harassment to an institution, and when the institutional response process does not address what harms may be occurring for multiple parties throughout its response processes, it can risk compounding the harm or spreading harm beyond the survivor. In this way remediation is an investment in better preventing and responding to sexual harassment in the future. We have aspired to provide a springboard for institutions to begin making this investment in their communities, and hope that as remediation efforts continue to be developed, expanded, and evaluated for their efficacy, institutions remain dedicated to employing them—and sharing them—toward the eradication of sexual harassment and related harms for all individuals in higher education.