Assessing the Organizational Culture of Higher Education Institutions in an Era of #MeToo

Sexual harassment was established as a form of sex discrimination in institutions of higher education (IHEs) under Title IX of the Education Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Since then, decades of victimization surveys beginning in the 1980s show that sexual misconduct continues to be a significant problem for IHEs. Estimates suggest that as many as 25 percent of college women experience a sexual assault while in college, while as many as 34 percent experience attempted or completed unwanted kissing, sexual touching using physical force, threat of physical force, and/or verbal coercion during their college career. In this Viewpoint essay, the authors propose the Preventing and Addressing Sexual Misconduct Framework as a tool to assess and cultivate an organizational culture that is responsive to these concerning trends. Pulling from an interdisciplinary body of scholarship and the philosophy of the #MeToo movement, this tool is a starting place for the continued dialogue that is needed to more fully address sexual misconduct on college campuses.