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It is both true that men should stop harassing women and that women cannot wait on men to stop harassing them.
It comes as a sense of some relief to know that none of the male students I have invested with my love have been named thus far as engaging in harassment. But one is always aware that one cannot rest easy.
As a professor with authority within the classroom and also invested with the privileges and limitations of a patriarchal context—which is frankly every context to various degrees—I take the following steps to establish trust and safety:
I almost always hire women as TAs, to offset any discomfort students may feel in coming to me with issues relating gender discrimination, both on my part and on the part of their peers. Only once have I hired a male TA, and it was someone I knew I could trust.
In office hours, I keep the door to my office open. No closed doors, unless the student wants to discuss a sensitive issue. In that case, they choose whether or not to have the door closed.
Within the office space, there must always be a desk between myself and the student. This is not because I do not trust myself but because I want the student to feel physically safe. Distance is necessary.
Gender is a central part of the syllabus. This was not always the case but I have learned to make it so. It is not discussed as an added module. Women’s rights and feminist jurisprudence is a foundational part of thinking about law.
In classroom discussion, I try to be conscious of the space that is being occupied by men and by myself. I try to distribute that space by requesting specific women to talk, to not call on men at times even if they have their hands raised.
Except only in emergency circumstances, I never ever schedule a meeting with a female student after it is dark out. Even if I am in the office working late.
This is extended to male students. Male students should not get treated differently from female students. The privileges not extended to one cannot be extended to the other.
I attempt to have at least a parity in gender representation on the syllabus. Or if it is not possible because more texts by men have to be assigned to teach a particular corpus, to actively insert in discussions how women are being left out.
Given our cultural norms, which provide unequal opportunities for physical salutations, I do not shake hands with either women or men, in so far as it can be helped. Again, what intimacy one doesn’t get the other doesn’t either.
I try to create, by other means during classroom discussion, a sense of trust, where opinions can be discussed freely and without fear of having them dismissed because of gender bias.
I try to create a sense of trust during office hours, probe only carefully into offerings of pain. And try and make the student feel supported in such difficult circumstances.
I practice an ethic of listening and not interrupting. I understand men are prone to shut down any voicing of emotions by women and to prematurely seek solutions. I try to keep this impulse in check if it arises.
Lastly, I continue to work on myself. In a course two years ago, I pushed too hard on the sensitive topic of gender violence, and students rightly pushed back. I have spent time seeing and excavating why I made that mistake.
I write all this not to pay my self on the back or anything so disgustingly narcissistic but because I want to think through—at this moment—whether all this is enough. Whether I could be doing more to lessen the probability of harm.
So far all these measures seem to have worked fairly well. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. And my classes are almost always majority-women. I take a lot of pride in this.
I have been fortunate to mentor many absolutely exceptional women. That has been the great joy in teaching. To help bring people up. That, not to put to fine a point on it, changes the world.
But I consider all of this and think: just look how much time and effort and constant awareness goes in to making these spaces safe for women. To give them just about as much room to breathe as the men have.
I mean, it’s absolutely outrageous. And yet this is the task. It is nothing compared to what women nevertheless have to navigate. And therefore it is dishonest for professors to not take up the very difficult task of making room.
