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Safe learning spaces for all in higher education: Lessons learned from implementing anti-harassment policy

Wed, March 28, 3:00 to 4:30pm, Hilton Reforma, Floor: 4th Floor, Doña Sol

Proposal

For Afghanistan to realize the full potential of it citizens, everyone should have access to safe and fun learning environment at the university level. Recognizing that women and other groups face discrimination/harassment in educational institutions and taking active measures to address this issue is a positive step in Afghanistan. Lessons learned from the implementation of the new policy in SREU will have far reaching impact on how the policy is received and implemented in other universities in Afghanistan – both public and private.

Since the above efforts are new experiences in educational settings in Afghanistan, the proposed study aims to document the processes of the new policy implementation, challenges, human capacity /willingness to implement a policy in an unfamiliar/often hostile realm (in terms of male/female relations), and the resulting impact of the policy implementation efforts of the university.
Anti-discrimination/harassment procedures and trainings employed by the university in Kabul will be contextualized and couched in the study of relevant literature on harassment prevention on college campuses in some countries in both north and south (please see below). The study will answer the following questions:

1. How do students, teachers and other staff members perceive harassment at the workplace in Afghanistan in general and at their university in Kabul.
2. To what extent students, teachers and other admin staff at the university are familiar with the new anti-harassment policy of the government?
3. What has been the experience of the Complaints Review Committee and Policy Implementation Committee in implementing the new policy on campus?
4. Are students/staff confident that if they file a harassment case that their voice will be heard? This question will be answered as contextualized within the literature reviewed for this study i.e. does training and awareness building lead to improved perceptions/behaviors of people as related to anti-discrimination and anti-harassment.

Preliminary Focus of the Relevant Literature - The courts in the United States while dealing with Faragher v. Boca Raton, 524 U.S. 775 (1998), and Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, 524 U.S. 742 (1998), stated that an institution, while dealing with a sexual harassment case, can show that: (a) the institution exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior, and (b) that the person within the institution who committed harassment failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the institution or to avoid harm otherwise. While courts in the United States have assumed that sexual harassment training is a worthwhile preventive measure that helps institutions meet requirement of preventing harassment, it is less clear what type of sexual harassment training helps eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace or on campuses. Research has shown that sexual harassment training can be used for a variety of purposes, including (1) informing people about the institution’s harassment grievance process; (2) increasing knowledge about sexual or general harassment; (3) eliminating inappropriate behavior; and (4) changing the attitudes of those who are likely to harass others. However, the effectiveness of these measures remains debatable and the focus of recent research in the United States. The literature review for this study will focus on the training and awareness raising efforts against harassment and discrimination that have been implemented in some countries/universities and couch the overall experiences and findings from SREU in the broader literature findings from other experiences.

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