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Fairly or not, HR is seen as the division of the company that slows things down, generates endless memos, meddles in employees’ personal business, holds compulsory “trainings,” and ruins any fun and spirit-lifting thing employees come up with

the real reason many workers don’t love human resources is that while the department often presents itself as functioning like a union—the open door for worker complaints, the updates on valuable new benefits—it is not a union

should the economy change, or should management decide to go in another direction, HR can just as quickly become assassin as friend

Most of the time, if the man is truly important to the company, the case is quickly whisked out of HR’s hands, the investigation delivered to lawyers and the final decision rendered by executives. These executives are under no legal imperative to terminate an alleged offender or even to enforce a particular sanction, only to ensure that the woman who made the report is safe in the future.

The task force had been charged with determining how much progress the country had made since that historic decision. Its finding: very little. “Much of the training done over the last 30 years has not worked as a prevention tool,” the task force found. That’s an incredible statement—three decades of failure.

It reveals that sexual harassment is “widespread” and “persistent,” and that 85 percent of workers who are harassed never report it. It found that employees are much more likely to come up with their own solution—such as avoiding the harasser, downplaying the harassment, or simply enduring it—than to seek help from HR. They are far more likely to ask a family member or co-worker for advice than to file a complaint, because they fear that they will face repercussions if they do.

This is why all of that training—the videos and online courses and worksheets—seems so useless: because it’s designed to serve as a defense against an employment lawsuit. The task force cited a study that found “no evidence that the training affected the frequency of sexual harassment experienced by the women in the workplace.” The task force also said that HR trainings and procedures are “too focused on protecting the employer from liability,” and not focused enough on ending the problem.

What HR is actually responsible for—one of the central ways the department “adds value” to a company—is serving as the first line of defense against a sexual-harassment lawsuit

there is only one way to eradicate harassment from a workplace: by creating a climate and culture that starts at the very top of the company and establishes that harassment is not tolerated and will be punished severely. Middle managers can’t change the culture of a company;

The government has also recently emphasized its dedication to women’s employment rights, especially as it urges women to have more children amid a looming demographic crisis.

Pickup artistry — a practice that arrived in China from the United States — commonly refers to the use of manipulative techniques, including gaslighting, to demean women and lure them into having sex. It became a booming industry in China, with thousands of companies and websites promising to teach techniques, and it has been widely condemned by both the government and social media users.

Women have also been increasingly pushed out of the workplace and into traditional gender roles since China’s leader, Xi Jinping, assumed power. Some fear that the campaign to encourage childbirth could turn coercive.

The gesture, at least, is extensive. As revised, the law would offer the most comprehensive legal definition yet of sexual harassment, to include behaviors such as sending unwanted sexually explicit images or pressuring someone into a relationship in exchange for benefits. It also instructs schools and employers to introduce anti-harassment training and channels for complaints.

The law would also codify women’s right to ask for compensation for housework during divorce proceedings — following the first-of-its-kind decision by a Chinese divorce court last year to award a woman more than $7,700 for her labor during her marriage.

When Peng Shuai, a star tennis player, recently said on social media that a top Chinese leader had pressured her into sex, she was censored within minutes, and many worry that she is under surveillance.

“The priority should be on bottom-up enforcement, where you empower individuals who have been harassed to use the law to protect their rights,” he said.

It is rare for victims of harassment to go to court. An analysis by Mr. Longarino and others found that 93 percent of sexual harassment cases decided in China between 2018 and 2020 were brought not by the alleged victim but by the alleged harasser, claiming defamation or wrongful termination. Women who have made public harassment claims have been forced to pay those they accused.

Nonlegal complaints can bring heavy consequences, too. In December, Alibaba, the e-commerce giant, fired a woman who had accused a superior of raping her. The company said that she had “spread falsehoods,” even though it had earlier fired the man she accused.

Even when women do sue their harassers, they face steep hurdles. Perhaps the most high-profile #MeToo case to go to court was brought by Zhou Xiaoxuan, a former intern at China’s state broadcaster, who asserted that Zhu Jun, a star anchor, had forcibly kissed and groped her. But the case faced years of delays. In September, a court dismissed the claim and said she had not provided enough evidence, though Ms. Zhou said the judges had rejected her efforts to introduce more.

several male bloggers with large followings on the social media platform Weibo denounced the provisions against degrading or harassing women online, saying they would give “radical” feminists too much power to silence their critics.

A woman in southern Guangdong Province who asked to use only her last name, Han, out of fears for her safety, said that she had endured years of physical and emotional abuse by her ex-husband. Even though she managed to secure a divorce last year, he continues to stalk and threaten her, she said. She obtained a restraining order, viewed by The New York Times, that cited chat logs and recordings.

If the law is revised, she continued, the police will be forced to recognize that she has a right to seek their help.

Congress is now considering amending the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act, the law governing how harassment cases are handled on Capitol Hill, after seven members have either resigned or said they would not seek reelection in the wake of sexual harassment allegations. Attorneys who handle these cases say most staffers take no action because they fear it could hurt their careers.

For nine months, Packer was Hastings’s policy adviser on the commission staff. Then he promoted her to a foreign post in Vienna. Her salary more than doubled, to $165,000 from $80,000, court records show.

In February 2010, Packer said she sought help from the office of Rep. Christopher H. Smith, (R-N.J.), who served with Hastings on the commission, and was referred to the Office of Compliance. The office was established by the Congressional Accountability Act as a place for legislative branch employees to file workplace claims, including sexual harassment allegations. Packer filed a formal complaint against Hastings on Aug. 9, 2010. Under the law, she had to agree to up to 30 days of confidential counseling to get advice on her rights and options for pursuing a complaint. Counselors in the Office of Compliance are forbidden under the law from advocating for the victim in sexual harassment cases, including making lawyer referrals.

Officials say they have worked to make the process easier for employees. “It is not required that the employee attend,” said Barbara Childs Wallace, chair of the Office of Compliance Board of Directors, at a congressional hearing in November. “It is not required that they sit in the same room with the person they are accusing, of sexual harassment, for instance.”

House Employment Counsel attorneys Ann Rogers and Russell Gore did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment. Gloria Lett, the lead attorney in the Office of House Employment Counsel (OHEC), said she was bound by confidentiality and could not discuss the case.

By spring 2014, the discovery phase of the case was ramping up, meaning both sides would be forced to hand over emails and other documents that might be critical in the case. Key witnesses, including Hastings and Packer, would be required to testify under oath.

“I now understand that my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal and that some of my comments, given my position, made others feel in ways I never intended,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “I acknowledge some of the things I have said have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation. To the extent anyone felt that way, I am truly sorry about that.”

“I understood that the governor wanted to sleep with me, and felt horribly uncomfortable and scared,” Ms. Bennett, 25, said. “And was wondering how I was going to get out of it and assumed it was the end of my job.”

The governor’s attempts to control the narrative and the course of the investigations quickly ran aground, as he was forced to retreat from a plan to have Ms. Bennett’s claims investigated by Barbara S. Jones, a former federal judge who has close ties to Mr. Cuomo’s former top aide.

State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, a frequent critic of the governor, called on him to resign. “You are a monster, and it is time for you to go,” she wrote on Twitter. “Now.”

A more likely scenario would involve lawmakers using this recent spate of scandals to reclaim the unilateral emergency powers they had granted the governor at the start of the pandemic. Those efforts had been seemingly slowed last week, as the State Assembly could not reach a consensus on a plan by the State Senate to strip Mr. Cuomo of those powers. Now, however, such a move could be more likely.

“It’s not two separate sets of allegations,” she said. “It is two examples of longstanding abuse, harassment, retaliation and the culture of a hostile work environment.”

The charge of double standards points to a steep learning curve for a party that has struggled to keep pace with shifting public attitudes towards gender roles, power dynamics and sexual boundaries.

Just as the instant deification then instant demonisation of Cuomo has left many crying out for nuance and complexity, so it can be said that no two cases of sexual harassment in politics are quite the same.

This time, although Gillibrand said Cuomo’s alleged conduct was “completely unacceptable”, she stopped short of demanding he resign before the investigation is done

“The vice-president’s view is that she believes all women should be treated with respect. Their voices should be heard. They should tell their story. There’s an independent investigation that is happening now, being overseen by the New York attorney general, and she certainly supports that.”

But this puts Democratic leaders out of step with groups such as Women’s March, which was born out of the January 2017 protests against Donald Trump, who faced numerous allegations of sexual assault and harassment

“We share the view that there should be an independent investigation but Cuomo himself has not even denied many of the harassment allegations and, for us, it’s about behaviour that is disqualifying. It could be illegal, but it also could not be illegal.”

That same year, Gillibrand became the first Democratic senator to call for her Minnesota colleague Al Franken to quit over allegations of sexual misconduct. She was joined by others including Kamala Harris, who tweeted: “Sexual harassment and misconduct should not be allowed by anyone and should not occur anywhere. I believe the best thing for Senator Franken to do is step down.”Franken did just that, but some critics now believe that he was the victim of a rush to judgment and should have been allowed to wait for the results of an investigation.

In 2018 Eric Schneiderman, an attorney general of New York lauded as a liberal advocate of women’s rights, resigned after being accused of physically abusing four women. Cuomo was among those who were quick to call for him to step down.

Trump’s nominee to the supreme court, Brett Kavanaugh, was nearly derailed by allegations from Dr Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her

In 2019 several women accused Biden of making unwanted physical contact.

Last year Tara Reade, a former Senate staffer, alleged that Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993. He vehemently denied the claim, which remained unsubstantiated and faded from the election race. Biden picked a woman – Harris – as his running mate and often highlighted his work as lead sponsor of the Violence Against Women Act.

Larry Jacobs, the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “In hindsight, a number of the Democrats in the Senate who had pushed him to step down later expressed regret. They realised they moved too quickly, they didn’t know enough and the punishment didn’t really fit what they later learnt to be the misbehaviour.”

sexual

“I don’t think the Republican party is in any position to be lecturing anyone about how to handle sexual harassment. They seem to have actually gotten real expertise on how to evade it.”

“Just because we fire Andrew Cuomo and Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, that doesn’t alone solve the problem. The bigger problem is still there, which is that harassment is seen as an acceptable part of our culture. That’s why so many of these people in power are doing it. So yes, we need to respond and uproot harassment wherever it lies but we also need to keep our eye on the ball.”

What seemed for generations the prerogative of powerful men has been fully revealed as a pernicious form of dehumanization. Men such as Bill O’Reilly, Harvey Weinstein and Charlie Rose have been exposed at their moments of maximum cruelty and creepiness — just as their alleged victims (on credible testimony) experienced them. An ethical light switch was flipped. Moral outrage — the appropriate response — now seems obvious.

Over a period of years, this is what happened with the same-sex marriage movement. A type of inclusion that initially appeared radical and frightening became an obvious form of fairness to a majority of Americans.

We are seeing an example of how social change often (and increasingly) takes place. Advocates of a cause can push for a long time with little apparent effect. Then, in a historical blink, what seemed incredible becomes inevitable.

Such rapid shifts in social norms should be encouraging to social reformers of various stripes. Attitudes and beliefs do not move on a linear trajectory. A period of lightning clarity can change the assumptions and direction of a culture.

The movement against capital punishment, for example, may be reaching such a point.

Advocates of gun control, in contrast, seem to have an endless wait. But the record of our times counsels against despair.

how we got here is instructive. Conservatives have sometimes predicted that moral relativism would render Americans broadly incapable of moral judgment. But people, at some deep level, know that rules and norms are needed. They understand that character — rooted in empathy and respect for the rights and dignity of others — is essential in every realm of life, including the workplace.

Conservatives need to be clear and honest in this circumstance. The strong, moral commitment to the dignity of women and children recently asserting itself in our common life has mainly come from feminism, not the “family values” movement. In this case, religious conservatives have largely been bystanders or obstacles. This indicates a group of people for whom the dignity of girls and women has become secondary to other political goals.

We are a nation with vast resources of moral renewal. It is a shame and a scandal that so many religious conservatives have made themselves irrelevant to that task.

The volunteer effort can sometimes feel like a full-time job, even though Ms. Phillips is already a high school teacher. “There are many moments where we’re like, ‘You know we’re just regular people, right?’” Ms. Phillips said.

But the governor was not budging, telling reporters he would not quit after reportedly telling the state senate leader she would have to impeach him.

Cuomo said he would not resign because he was elected by people not politicians and the system depended on due process.“I’m not going to resign because of allegations,” the governor said. “The premise of resigning because of allegations is actually anti-democratic.”

the governor told Stewart-Cousins he would have to be impeached if his opponents wanted him out of office.

Five women have accused Cuomo of sexual harassment, accusations he denies

On Sunday prominent national Democrats including the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, who is from New York, and the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, expressed support for the women who allege harassment and for an investigation run by the New York attorney general, Letitita James.

“Every day there is another account that is drawing away from the business of government,” she said. “We have allegations about sexual harassment, a toxic work environment, the loss of credibility surrounding the Covid-19 nursing home data and questions about the construction of a major infrastructure project.

The Michigan governor said: “I think that there are a lot of American women who have felt how she felt. And I think that’s something that resonates and why we need to take this seriously, and why there needs to be a full investigation, and whatever is appropriate in terms of accountability should follow.

“I think the allegations here are very serious,” she said, “and I do think that an impartial thorough independent investigation is merited and appropriate. And if [the allegations are] accurate and true, I think we have to take action.”Last year, Whitmer was one of many prominent Democrats to back Joe Biden when he denied an accusation, telling CNN: “Just because you’re a survivor doesn’t mean that every claim is equal. It means we give them the ability to make their case. And then to make a judgment that is informed.”

“This did not happen. Karen Hinton is a known antagonist of the governor’s who is attempting to take advantage of this moment to score cheap points with made-up allegations from 21 years ago.”

“I understand sensitivities have changed,” Cuomo said. “Behavior has changed. I get it and I’m going to learn from it.”

As three women stepped forward with claims of sexual harassment and other unwanted advances by Mr. Cuomo, the most visible governor in America effectively went dark.

Now he is at the whims of often-fickle public opinion, fuming legislators and investigations.

As the allegations unfolded, Mr. Cuomo’s team denied wrongdoing and issued statements, but a number of leading lawmakers in Albany and Washington did not hear from the governor on the matter.

Indeed, the public outcry and the dearth of vocal defenders illustrate both the complexities of the problems Mr. Cuomo faces and how little he has invested in building mutually respectful relationships in politics. As with other New York politicians in times of extreme crisis, it is a dynamic that is haunting him now.

“When the investigation concludes, Democrats, I believe, will coalesce around doing the right thing,” Mr. Jacobs said. “We have to let the chips fall where they may, but I don’t see the value in a rush to judgment. I only see the potential cost.”

I said what these women have said must be treated with respect. They are credible and serious charges, and then I called for an investigation. I have confidence in the Attorney General of New York,

While Cuomo has apologized for "making anyone feel uncomfortable," the Democrat has maintained that he "never touched anyone inappropriately."

Pushed by ABC's George Stephanopoulos about whether she was calling for Cuomo to resign, the California Democrat responded: "I think we should see the results (of the investigation), but he may decide -- and hopefully this result will be soon -- and what I'm saying is the governor should look inside his heart, he loves New York, to see if he can govern effectively."

A majority of New York's congressional Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, have called on Cuomo to resign in the wake of the sexual harassment allegations and his handling of Covid-19 deaths at nursing homes.

"I salute the brave women who came forward," Schumer said Sunday morning. "There are multiple, serious, credible allegations of abuse so that Gov. Cuomo has lost the confidence of his governing partners and so many New Yorkers, so for the good of the state, he should resign." When asked whom Cuomo would listen to within the New York delegation, Schumer responded: "Look, I'm not going to speculate on the future, he should resign, he should resign."

Asked if her decision to call for Cuomo's resignation is "reminiscent" of her move to call for then-Sen. Al Franken to step down in 2017, when the Minnesota Democrat faced sexual harassment allegations, the New York senator pointed to the pandemic. "The thing that is very different about this moment in time is we are in the middle of the worst crisis of our lifetimes... and focused leadership is needed, and you need the support of your governing partners."

"I am not going to resign. I was not elected by the politicians, I was elected by the people," he said, insisting that "New Yorkers know me."

Is this all sounding rather familiar now? Does it remind you of something?

The similarities between Gamergate and the far-right online movement, the “alt-right”, are huge, startling and in no way a coincidence

fter all, the culture war that began in games now has a senior representative in The White House. As a founder member and former executive chair of Brietbart News, Steve Bannon had a hand in creating media monster Milo Yiannopoulos, who built his fame and Twitter following by supporting and cheerleading Gamergate. This hashtag was the canary in the coalmine, and we ignored it.

Gamergate was an online movement that effectively began because a man wanted to punish his ex girlfriend. Its most notable achievement was harassing a large number of progressive figures - mostly women – to the point where they felt unsafe or considered leaving the industry

The same voices moved into other geek communities, especially comics, where Marvel and DC were criticised for progressive storylines and decisions. They moved into science fiction with the controversy over the Hugo awards. They moved into cinema with the revolting kickback against the all-female Ghostbusters reboot.

no one in the movement was willing to be associated with the abuse being carried out in its name. Prominent supporters on Twitter, in subreddits and on forums like 8Chan, developed a range of pernicious rhetorical devices and defences to distance themselves from threats to women and minorities in the industry: the targets were lying or exaggerating, they were too precious; a language of dismissal and belittlement was formed against them. Safe spaces, snowflakes, unicorns, cry bullies. Even when abuse was proven, the usual response was that people on their side were being abused too. These techniques, forged in Gamergate, have become the standard toolset of far-right voices online

In 2016, new wave conservative media outlets like Breitbart have gained trust with their audience by painting traditional news sources as snooty and aloof. In 2014, video game YouTube stars, seeking to appear in touch with online gaming communities, unscrupulously proclaimed that traditional old-media sources were corrupt. Everything we’re seeing now, had its precedent two years ago.

With 2014’s Gamergate, Breitbart seized the opportunity to harness the pre-existing ignorance and anger among disaffected young white dudes. With Trump’s movement in 2016, the outlet was effectively running his campaign: Steve Bannon took leave of his role at the company in August 2016 when he was hired as chief executive of Trump’s presidential campaign

young men converted via 2014’s Gamergate, are being more widely courted now. By leveraging distrust and resentment towards women, minorities and progressives, many of Gamergate’s most prominent voices – characters like Mike Cernovich, Adam Baldwin, and Milo Yiannopoulos – drew power and influence from its chaos

These figures gave Gamergate a new sense of direction – generalising the rhetoric: this was now a wider war between “Social Justice Warriors” (SJWs) and everyday, normal, decent people. Games were simply the tip of the iceberg – progressive values, went the argument, were destroying everything

it quickly became clear that the GamerGate movement was a mess – an undefined mission to Make Video Games Great Again via undecided means.

Using 4chan (and then the more sympathetic offshoot 8Chan) to plan their subversions and attacks made Gamergate a terribly sloppy operation, leaving a trail of evidence that made it quite clear the whole thing was purposefully, plainly nasty. But the video game industry didn’t have the spine to react, and allowed the movement to coagulate – forming a mass of spiteful disappointment that Breitbart was only more than happy to coddle

Historically, that seems to be Breitbart’s trick - strongly represent a single issue in order to earn trust, and then gradually indoctrinate to suit wider purposes. With Gamergate, they purposefully went fishing for anti-feminists. 2016’s batch of fresh converts – the white extremists – came from enticing conspiracy theories about the global neoliberal elite secretly controlling the world.

The greatest strength of Gamergate, though, was that it actually appeared to represent many left-leaning ideals: stamping out corruption in the press, pushing for better ethical practices, battling for openness.

There are similarities here with many who support Trump because of his promises to put an end to broken neo-liberalism, to “drain the swamp” of establishment corruption. Many left-leaning supporters of Gamergate sought to intellectualise their alignment with the hashtag, adopting familiar and acceptable labels of dissent – identifying as libertarian, egalitarian, humanist.

At best they unknowingly facilitated abuse, defending their own freedom of expression while those who actually needed support were threatened and attacked.

Genuine discussions over criticism, identity and censorship were paralysed and waylaid by Twitter voices obsessed with rhetorical fallacies and pedantic debating practices. While the core of these movements make people’s lives hell, the outer shell – knowingly or otherwise – protect abusers by insisting that the real problem is that you don’t want to talk, or won’t provide the ever-shifting evidence they politely require.

In 2017, the tactics used to discredit progressive game critics and developers will be used to discredit Trump and Bannon’s critics. There will be gaslighting, there will be attempts to make victims look as though they are losing their grip on reality, to the point that they gradually even start to believe it. The “post-truth” reality is not simply an accident – it is a concerted assault on the rational psyche.

The strangest aspect of Gamergate is that it consistently didn’t make any sense: people chose to align with it, and yet refused responsibility. It was constantly demanded that we debate the issues, but explanations and facts were treated with scorn. Attempts to find common ground saw the specifics of the demands being shifted: we want you to listen to us; we want you to change your ways; we want you to close your publication down. This movement that ostensibly wanted to protect free speech from cry bully SJWs simultaneously did what it could to endanger sites it disagreed with, encouraging advertisers to abandon support for media outlets that published stories critical of the hashtag. The petulance of that movement is disturbingly echoed in Trump’s own Twitter feed.

Looking back, Gamergate really only made sense in one way: as an exemplar of what Umberto Eco called “eternal fascism”, a form of extremism he believed could flourish at any point in, in any place – a fascism that would extol traditional values, rally against diversity and cultural critics, believe in the value of action above thought and encourage a distrust of intellectuals or experts – a fascism built on frustration and machismo. The requirement of this formless fascism would – above all else – be to remain in an endless state of conflict, a fight against a foe who must always be portrayed as impossibly strong and laughably weak

2016 has presented us with a world in which our reality is being wilfully manipulated. Fake news, divisive algorithms, misleading social media campaigns.

The majority of people who voted for Trump will never take responsibility for his racist, totalitarian policies, but they’ll provide useful cover and legitimacy for those who demand the very worst from the President Elect. Trump himself may have disavowed the “alt-right”, but his rhetoric has led to them feeling legitimised. As with Gamergate, the press risks being manipulated into a position where it has to tread a respectful middle ground that doesn’t really exist.

Perhaps the true lesson of Gamergate was that the media is culturally unequipped to deal with the forces actively driving these online movements. The situation was horrifying enough two years ago, it is many times more dangerous now.

“How does it feel,” Tchiya Amet wrote to Tyson, and she was addressing not just what she claimed he had taken from her, but also what she claimed he had taken from the world: her gifts, her skills, her potential for a particular kind of contribution.

the term sexual harassment has become too unwieldy, too imprecise, too commercialized. As the writer Rebecca Traister put it, “We must regularly remind everyone paying attention that sexual harassment is a crime not simply on the grounds that it is a sexual violation, but because it is a form of discrimination.”

what gets lost in the easy binaries? What of the lives and careers and ambitions of the people doing the accusing—people who, in coming forward with their allegations, will have their names permanently entangled with the man they say did them harm? The stories of those who have lived in Tyson’s orbit have served as reminders that, here on Earth, we remain biased toward the stars

Both senators are men and still currently in office.

One woman said years after leaving her job in Congress, she still feels anxious about being alone in elevators with men.

Some members of Congress forgo a Washington-area apartment and sleep in their offices, a practice several sources highlighted as problematic.

The dozens of interviews that CNN conducted with both men and women also revealed that there is an unwritten list of male lawmakers

"There is a certain code amongst us, we acknowledge among each other what occurs."

Most offices are staffed by early-career professionals who are trying to make a name for themselves in Washington. They also report directly to members of Congress.

"You can't prove it" and "it'll be a nightmare" to move forward, Manzer said.

"lost the confidence of the people of New York" and House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney said Cuomo's resignation would be in the "best interest of all New Yorkers."

The source said the tipping point for the members had been a combination of the most recent developments, including State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie's announcement on Thursday that Democrats there would begin an impeachment investigation. The decision to go in, nearly all at the same time, was also an acknowledgment that when one made the call, it would up the pressure on all the rest.

the majority of the state's congressional delegation -- said Cuomo must resign, arguing that the allegations have impeded his ability to effectively govern and serve the people of New York.

Several of the Democrats on Friday said New York State A

The clear danger, the paper said, is that such supposed “intelligence” is based on huge data sets that “overrepresent hegemonic viewpoints and encode biases potentially damaging to marginalised populations”. Put more bluntly, AI threatens to deepen the dominance of a way of thinking that is white, male, comparatively affluent and focused on the US and Europe.

What all this told her, she says, is that big tech is consumed by a drive to develop AI and “you don’t want someone like me who’s going to get in your way. I think it made it really clear that unless there is external pressure to do something different, companies are not just going to self-regulate. We need regulation and we need something better than just a profit motive.”

one particularly howling irony: the fact that an industry brimming with people who espouse liberal, self-consciously progressive opinions so often seems to push the world in the opposite direction.

Gebru began to specialise in cutting-edge AI, pioneering a system that showed how data about particular neighbourhoods’ patterns of car ownership highlighted differences bound up with ethnicity, crime figures, voting behaviour and income levels. In retrospect, this kind of work might look like the bedrock of techniques that could blur into automated surveillance and law enforcement, but Gebru admits that “none of those bells went off in my head … that connection of issues of technology with diversity and oppression came later”.

The next year, Gebru made a point of counting other black attenders at the same event. She found that, among 8,500 delegates, there were only six people of colour. In response, she put up a Facebook post that now seems prescient: “I’m not worried about machines taking over the world; I’m worried about groupthink, insularity and arrogance in the AI community.”

When Gebru arrived, Google employees were loudly opposing the company’s role in Project Maven, which used AI to analyse surveillance footage captured by military drones (Google ended its involvement in 2018). Two months later, staff took part in a huge walkout over claims of systemic racism, sexual harassment and gender inequality. Gebru says she was aware of “a lot of tolerance of harassment and all sorts of toxic behaviour”.

She and her colleagues prided themselves on how diverse their small operation was, as well as the things they brought to the company’s attention, which included issues to do with Google’s ownership of YouTube

A colleague from Morocco raised the alarm about a popular YouTube channel in that country called Chouf TV, “which was basically operated by the government’s intelligence arm and they were using it to harass journalists and dissidents. YouTube had done nothing about it.” (Google says that it “would need to review the content to understand whether it violates our policies. But, in general, our harassment policies strictly prohibit content that threatens individuals,

in 2020, Gebru, Mitchell and two colleagues wrote the paper that would lead to Gebru’s departure. It was titled On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots. Its key contention was about AI centred on so-called large language models: the kind of systems – such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s newly launched PaLM 2 – that, crudely speaking, feast on vast amounts of data to perform sophisticated tasks and generate content.

Gebru and her co-authors had an even graver concern: that trawling the online world risks reproducing its worst aspects, from hate speech to points of view that exclude marginalised people and places. “In accepting large amounts of web text as ‘representative’ of ‘all’ of humanity, we risk perpetuating dominant viewpoints, increasing power imbalances and further reifying inequality,” they wrote.

When the paper was submitted for internal review, Gebru was quickly contacted by one of Google’s vice-presidents. At first, she says, non-specific objections were expressed, such as that she and her colleagues had been too “negative” about AI. Then, Google asked Gebru either to withdraw the paper, or remove her and her colleagues’ names from it.

After her departure, Gebru founded Dair, the Distributed AI Research Institute, to which she now devotes her working time. “We have people in the US and the EU, and in Africa,” she says. “We have social scientists, computer scientists, engineers, refugee advocates, labour organisers, activists … it’s a mix of people.”

Running alongside this is a quest to push beyond the tendency of the tech industry and the media to focus attention on worries about AI taking over the planet and wiping out humanity while questions about what the technology does, and who it benefits and damages, remain unheard.

“That conversation ascribes agency to a tool rather than the humans building the tool,” she says. “That means you can aggregate responsibility: ‘It’s not me that’s the problem. It’s the tool. It’s super-powerful. We don’t know what it’s going to do.’ Well, no – it’s you that’s the problem. You’re building something with certain characteristics for your profit. That’s extremely distracting, and it takes the attention away from real harms and things that we need to do. Right now.”

But that changes for publicly-funded universities when speech veers into targeted harassment that is “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim’s access to an educational opportunity or benefit.”

The legal commentator David Lat explained further, writing: “If I repeatedly send antisemitic emails and texts to a single Jewish student, that is far more likely to constitute harassment than if I set up an antisemitic website available to the entire world.”

As a result, what we’ve seen on campus is a mixture of protected antisemitic (as well as anti-Islamic) speech and prohibited harassment.

So if the university presidents were largely (though clumsily) correct about the legal balance, why the outrage?

For decades now, we’ve watched as campus administrators from coast to coast have constructed a comprehensive web of policies and practices intended to suppress so-called hate speech and to support students who find themselves distressed by speech they find offensive.

The result has been a network of speech codes, bias response teams, safe spaces and glossaries of microaggressions that are all designed to protect students from alleged emotional harm. But not all students

Moreover, each of the schools represented at the hearing has its own checkered past on free speech. Harvard is the worst-rated school for free expression in America

So even if the presidents’ lawyerly answers were correct, it’s more than fair to ask, where was this commitment to free expression in the past?

That said, some of the responses to campus outrages have been just as distressing as the hypocrisy shown by the school presidents

Universities have censored conservatives? Then censor progressives too. Declare the extreme slogans of pro-Palestinian protesters to be harassment, and pursue them vigorously. Give them the same treatment you’ve given other groups who hold offensive views

But that’s the wrong answer. It’s doubling down on the problem.

At the same time, however, it would be wrong to carry on as if there isn’t a need for fundamental change. The rule cannot be that Jews must endure free speech at its most painful, while favored campus constituencies enjoy the warmth of college administrators and the protection of campus speech codes. The status quo is intolerable.

The best, clearest plan for reform I’ve seen comes from Harvard’s own Steven Pinker, a psychologis

He writes that campuses should enact “clear and coherent” free speech policies. They should adopt a posture of “institutional neutrality” on public controversy. (“Universities are forums, not protagonists.”) They should end “heckler’s vetoes, building takeovers, classroom invasions, intimidations, blockades, assaults.”

But reform can’t be confined to policies. It also has to apply to cultures. As Pinker notes, that means disempowering a diversity, equity and inclusion apparatus that is itself all too often an engine of censorship and extreme political bias

Most importantly, universities need to take affirmative steps to embrace greater viewpoint diversity. Ideological monocultures breed groupthink, intolerance and oppression.

Universities must absorb the fundamental truth that the best answer to bad speech is better speech, not censorship

do not protect students from speech. Let them grow up and engage with even the most vile of ideas. The answer to campus hypocrisy isn’t more censorship. It’s true liberty. Without that liberty, the hypocrisy will reign for decades more.

“A group of men came and told them they should not be there and should be home taking care of their families,” Ms. Helal said. “After that they attacked the women and harassed them.

“I decided to do this story because I don’t feel safe on the streets walking in front of a man,” she said. “There are no other photographers interested in working on these subjects here, and it is important to speak about these issues.”

She interviewed many women who said they had been attacked in Egypt, some of whom were reluctant to speak out, much less be photographed