Judith Herman’s “Truth and Repair,” Part I: Trauma survivors’ perspectives on justice and healing

In 1992, psychiatrist Judith L. Herman shared her groundbreaking analysis of psychological trauma, Trauma and Recovery. For years this has been among the “must read” books  on the topic, and Dr. Herman has remained a leading authority in the field. In a 2022 edition, she would add an epilogue that examines new understandings and developments in trauma research and treatment during the ensuing decades.

Throughout this time, I sensed that a lot of folks who are deeply interested in trauma wondered if Dr. Herman might have another major work in her, one that might advance our understanding of this important topic even further. This welcomed volume has arrived in the form of Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice (2023).

In this three-part series of posts, I’m taking a good look at Truth and Repair and applying its precepts to two topics that recur often on this blog, workplace bullying and therapeutic jurisprudence.

The path to Truth and Repair

In her new book, Dr. Herman summarizes that Trauma and Recovery identified three general stages of recovery from trauma, all closely focused on the individual survivor: The first stage is “the complex and demanding task of establishing safety in the present, with the goal of protection from further violence.” The second stage involves “revisit[ing] the past in order to grieve and make meaning of the trauma.” And the third stage involves a “refocus on the present and future, expanding and deepening…relationships with a wider community and…sense of possibility in life.”

It was the contemplation of a “fourth and final stage of recovery,” that of justice, which prompted Herman to work towards a new book. After all, she reasoned, “(i)f trauma is truly a social problem, and indeed it is, then recovery cannot be simply a private, individual matter.” 

With this new focus, Herman interviewed “twenty-six women and four men who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse, sexual assault, sex trafficking, sexual harassment, and/or domestic violence.” The results of these conversations helped her to conceptualize elements of justice and healing from a trauma survivor’s perspective.

Elements of justice and truth

Through her interviews, Dr. Herman identified three precepts of justice and truth, as defined by trauma survivors:

Acknowledgment — “The first precept of survivors’ justice is the desire for community acknowledgment that a wrong has been done,” for public recognition of a “survivor’s claim to justice must be the moral community’s first act of solidarity” with the survivor.

Apology — Perpetrators should provide a genuine apology for their traumatizing offenses, taking responsibility for their actions and offering to make amends. In some instances, an apology may “create the possibility of repairing a relationship.”

Accountability — While trauma survivors interviewed by Herman were ambivalent about punishment for perpetrators and complicit bystanders, many were drawn to the broader precept of accountability for individuals and institutions. Ideas behind restorative justice — a movement that embraces values of “nondomination, empowerment, and respectful listening” — resonated strongly in this context.

Elements of healing and repair

Dr. Herman’s interviews also identified three precepts of healing and repair, again as defined by trauma survivors:

Restitution — Restitution can take the form of money to cover a survivor’s losses and recovery, but it also can be defined in more systemic ways, such as creating more humane justice systems and safer institutional spaces (including workplaces). This broader take on restitution expands on the traditional legal notion of “made whole,” typically defined largely as financial compensation.

Rehabilitation — Because our justice systems, especially those governing criminal behavior, are vested mainly in the objective of punishment, “we know little about what it would actually take to bring perpetrators to relinquish violence and feel genuine remorse for their crimes.” Nevertheless, if we can find ways to “instill empathy or a feeling of common humanity in those who lack it,” we may create moral awakenings that truly safeguard our communities.

Prevention — Prevention, of course, means reducing potential exposure to traumatizing acts and events and help trauma victims in their healing. Educational programs, bystander training, and counseling and support for victims are among the preventive measures that can be implemented.

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Truth and Repair is much richer and more fulsomely detailed on a deeply human level than I can provide in a relatively digestible summary. Indeed, this important book merits a close reading by anyone who is interested in how we, as a society, respond to psychological trauma. 

Brevity aside, I hope this gives you a good sense of Dr. Herman’s essential theme. In the next two blog posts, I will apply these findings to (1) the experience of targets of severe workplace bullying and potential responses by the legal system; and (2) the interdisciplinary field of therapeutic jurisprudence, which examines the therapeutic and anti-therapeutic properties of our laws, legal systems, and legal institutions.

Briefing Memo on the Healthy Workplace Bill

After a bit of a quiet period during the heart of the pandemic, various state legislatures are showing renewed interest in the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill. Perhaps it’s the growing attention being accorded to toxic workplaces, or maybe it’s a sign that our elected officials are not as consumed with the challenges posed by the pandemic. (It’s likely both!)

I’ll be discussing more details during the months to come, but for now I wanted to share with you a briefing memo I put together about the Healthy Workplace Bill generally. It’s adapted from written testimonies that I’ve submitted to specific state legislatures. If you’d like to access a copy, please go here for a free download.

In addition, I made a pdf of a Dec. 2021 feature article in the ABA Journal, membership magazine of the American Bar Association, featuring my work on workplace bullying and related contributions to the field of therapeutic jurisprudence. Amanda Robert wrote the piece as part of the ABA Journal‘s “Members Who Inspire” series. Please go here for a free download of that article.

Free resource: “Political Science Internships: Towards Best Practices”

I wanted to re-share a resource that may be useful to those who are offering, arranging, and participating in internship programs in politics, public policy, international relations, and related fields. The book is Renée B. Van Vechten, Bobbi Gentry, and John C. Berg, Political Science Internships: Towards Best Practices (2021), published by the American Political Science Association (APSA).

The good news is that this super helpful resource is available for free from the APSA website (link here). Here’s a general description of the book:

Political Science Internships: Towards Best Practices builds on a robust body of evidence that demonstrates the integrative power of internships to help undergraduate students learn by doing. Targeting faculty, instructors, and administrators who deliver political science curricula, this book examines the state of internships in the discipline, scrutinizing different types of internship programs, their vital components, and the roles of key stakeholders: faculty mentors and instructors, site supervisors, and students.

I contributed a chapter, “Major Legal Considerations Pertaining to Internships” (link here). Here’s a brief description:

The burgeoning intern economy developed largely in the absence of federal guidelines or clarifying legal precedents until recently, creating significant ambiguity around interns’ rights, internship providers’ responsibilities, and institutions’ potential liabilities. During the past decade, litigation has helped clarify the relationship among students, their university or college, and their internship providers under current employment and education laws. This chapter surveys the major legal developments concerning internships, including compensation, harassment, and discrimination issues, with the core question being whether an internship is treated as an employment relationship under the law.

If you read my chapter, you’ll see that I am calling upon internship providers to compensate their interns even if they are not required to under the current, inadequate state of the law. Paying interns helps to ensure wider equality of opportunity, no small priority for internships that can eventually lead to positions of power and influence in public life.

There has been at least one welcomed, concrete change by an important federal government internship provider since the book appeared. Under the Biden Administration, the White House has turned its long-time unpaid internship program into a paid one. Last summer, I was interviewed by KCBS news radio in San Francisco about that important change. You may listen to that brief interview here.

Healthy Workplace Bill reintroduced in Massachusetts legislature

I’m happy to share that here in Massachusetts, the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill (HWB) has been reintroduced in the new, 2023-24 session of the Massachusetts legislature. We are delighted that Sen. Paul Feeney (D-Bristol & Norfolk), a stalwart voice for workers, is again the lead sponsor.

The HWB permits targets of severe workplace bullying to seek damages in court and creates liability-reducing incentives for employers to act preventively and responsively towards bullying behaviors at work.

Currently, the HWB (link here) is designated as Senate Docket No. 712 (SD.712). Later on, it will be given a bill number.

If you would like to see workplace bullying protections become a reality in Massachusetts, then please contact your state representative and state senator and urge them to co-sponsor the bill. If you do not know the name of your representative or senator, then you may click here to find out.

Changes in the newly-filed bill

The newly-filed HWB contains some modest changes that I have made in the template version of the bill, in response to ongoing conversations with employment lawyers and employee advocates. Most significantly, it removes a requirement of showing intent to cause harm or distress to the targeted employee. Instead, a plaintiff must show “intentional acts, omissions, or both, that a reasonable person would find abusive.” This remains consistent with an understanding that targeted, health-harming bullying — the abusive mistreatment that this bill seeks to address — is not due to accidental or unthinking behavior.

In addition, the new bill makes some minor changes to enable recovery of emotional distress damages even when the bullying has not culminated in a tangible employment decision, such as a termination or demotion.

Fair-minded legislation

That said, this version of the HWB still allows us to honestly represent to employers that this carefully-crafted bill does not legally micro-manage the workplace. Equally important, it does not set the bar to recovery so low that it can be easily misused by workplace bullies to sue their targets, or enable lawsuits and threats of lawsuits for lower-level incivilities or disagreements. Alternative proposals that are being touted by others would throw those doors wide open.

Indeed, in an era where voices from the extreme ends of the spectrum are sometimes the loudest, advocating for balanced, fair-minded solutions can be challenging. In this realm, doing nothing is not acceptable. In the U.S., workplace bullying continues to cause enormous harm to employees and employers alike, without any legal check. We need to address this void in our current employment laws. On the other hand, allowing lawsuits for everyday arguments, differences of opinion, and unwanted work assignments would create significant chaos in our workplaces.

It’s time for workplace bullying to become an unlawful employment practice. The Healthy Workplace Bill remains the best option toward that end.

Watch and learn: Video recordings of 2022 programs

 

Hello dear readers, I’m linking below video recordings of several programs in which I participated during 2022. I hope you’ll find something of interest!

• “Bullying and Incivility in the Academic Workplace” (March 2022) (link here) — I gave a presentation about “Bullying and Incivility in the Academic Workplace” to the Northeastern University College of Science in Boston, as part of a series on “Disrupting Academic Bullying.” I first cover bullying, mobbing, and incivility generally, then I examine these behaviors in academic workplaces.
• “Creating Healthy Workplaces Through Legislation” (April 2022) (link here) — At a conference hosted by the U.S. Department of the Navy and Howard University, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on “Fostering Professional Climates and Cultures Through Accountability.” The conference was the 2022 “National Discussion on Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment at America’s Colleges, Universities and Service Academies.” I joined Rear Admiral Rebecca Patterson, Keetah Salazar-Thompson, and Kelley Bonner on this panel. My brief handout for the conference is posted here.
• “The WBI Story: Drs. Ruth & Gary Namie” (July 2022) (link here) — I had the privilege of interviewing Drs. Ruth and Gary Namie, co-founders of the Workplace Bullying Institute and long-time colleagues and friends, about the history of their pioneering work to address workplace bullying. This program was part of Gary’s Workplace Bullying Podcast series.
• “The Hero’s Call: Workplace Bullying” (Sept. 2022) (link here) — Suffolk Law alumnus and trial attorney Marc Diller extended an invitation to appear on his law firm’s video web series, The Hero’s Call. Marc and his colleague, Dr. John Naranja, asked me about my work around workplace bullying, the anti-bullying Healthy Workplace Bill, and associated activities in the field of therapeutic jurisprudence.
• “The Dignity of an Intellectual Life for All” (Oct. 2022) (link here) — I organized and hosted an interactive discussion featuring Zena Hitz (tutor, St. John’s College and author, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (2020)), followed by a responsive panel of distinguished educators, including Joseph Coulson, Hilda Demuth-Lutze, Linda Hartling, and Amy Thomas Elder. Hosted by Suffolk University Law School and co-sponsored by the Basic Program in Liberal Education for Adults at the University of Chicago, Harrison Middleton University, and the World Dignity University initiative of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies.

We need to dig beneath generic references to “toxic workplaces”

(image courtesy of clipart-library.com)

If you’ve been following media coverage of some of the not-so-wonderful aspects of the current American workplace, then you may have encountered the growing cacophony of references to “toxic workplaces,” “toxic work environments,” “toxic jobs,” and the like. (If you doubt me, do a few Google searches and you’ll quickly see what I mean!)

It appears that a mix of the following has given rise to generic references about toxic work settings:

• The MeToo movement;
• The pandemic and overwork of workers in essential job categories;
• The Great Resignation;
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion;
• Political and social discord;
• Bullying and incivility;
• Attention to bad bosses;
• Wage stagnation and benefit cuts;
• The recent dramatic uptick in union organizing.

Organizational behavior research from years ago taught me that different forms of workplace mistreatment tend to run together in packs. Thus, if you encounter a workplace rife with sexual harassment, then you’re quite likely to see other forms of interpersonal mistreatment flourishing as well. Contemporary news accounts often confirm this. For example, I’ve noticed that investigative pieces focusing on sexual misconduct in a given workplace often then segue into describing behaviors that might be labeled as bullying and/or incivility.

In any event, if we wish to create healthier, happier, and more productive workplaces, then we need to dig beneath the generic tag of toxicity and ask specifically what’s going on. The results may yield different problem areas and different fixes. Some bad behaviors may be intentional. Others will fall under the categories of negligence or dysfunction. Some may implicate employment and labor law violations. Certain concerns may be organizational in nature; others may be limited to a department or working group.

It’s also true that, on occasion, frequent complainers will invoke the language of toxicity to avoid supplying specific allegations that won’t hold up. Some will do so as attempted shields against accountability for their own inadequate work performances.

That said, I feel confident in saying that there is a fair amount of genuine unhappiness and undue stress in our workplaces during this snapshot moment in time. Some of the causes may be beyond the means of even well-intentioned organizations to remedy. But good employers will address worker concerns with attention to detail and an innate sense of fairness and dignity, while bad ones will dismiss reports of workplace toxicity and sometimes pay the consequences.

The Amy Wax situation: On academic freedom, diversity & inclusion, workplace mobbing, and cancel culture

Screenshot from Inside Higher Education

Applying just about any conventional measure, law professor Amy Wax has built a spectacularly successful career. She holds a chaired professorship at an Ivy League law school (University of Pennsylvania). She has assembled a ferocious c.v. (link here), loaded with sterling academic and professional achievements, publications, and awards. Her degrees include a J.D. from Columbia and an M.D. from Harvard.

And yet she is under heavy fire for an ongoing, alleged series of polarizing, critical statements and negative characterizations about people of color, women, and gays. For that she faces potential discipline and loss of tenure protections. The Dean of her law school has asked the university’s faculty senate to impose sanctions on her, a possible prelude towards eventual termination proceedings.

Scott Jaschik, writing for Inside Higher Education (link here), provides a lot of details about this situation, which has received national attention. Here’s his lede:

Some students and faculty at the University of Pennsylvania have been clamoring for years for the ouster of Amy Wax, the polarizing law professor who courted scandal with incendiary and racist remarks and writings and seemed to relish the resulting controversies. Despite the repeated calls for her removal from her tenured position, and the criticisms of her actions—including by university leaders—that followed each controversy, Wax remained in the position and seemed firmly protected by free speech and academic freedom rights.

That pattern may be about to change: the dean of the Penn law school has started a process that could lead to Wax’s termination.

To be clear, we’re not talking about an isolated instance or two of questionable speech. From Penn Law dean Theodore Ruger’s memorandum to the Chair of the Faculty Senate (link here), here are some of Prof. Wax’s alleged statements, made to individual students, her classes, and public audiences:

• “Stating in class that Mexican men are more likely to assault women and remarking such a stereotype was accurate in the same way as ‘Germans are punctual.'”
• “Commenting in class that gay couples are not fit to raise children and making other references to LGBTQ people that a student reported evinced a ‘pattern of homophobia.'”
• “Commenting after a series of students with foreign-sounding names introduced themselves that one student was ‘finally, an American’ adding, ‘it’s a good thing, trust me.'”
• Telling a Black student…”who asked whether Wax agreed with [a panelist’s] statements that Black people are inherently inferior to white people, that ‘you can have two plants that grow under the same conditions, and one will just grow higher than the other.'”
• Telling a Black student “that Black students don’t perform as well as white students because they are less well prepared, and that they are less well prepared because of affirmative action.”
• “Stating, based on misleading citation of other sources, that ‘women, on average, are less knowledgeable than men,’ women are ‘less intellectual than men’ and there is ‘some evidence’ for the proposition that ‘men and women differ in cognitive ability.'”
• “Stating that ‘our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.'”
• “Stating that Asians have an ‘indifference to liberty,’ lack ‘thoughtful and audacious individualism’ and that ‘the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.’”
• “Stating that ‘there were some very smart Jews’ among her past students but that Ashkenazi Jews are ‘diluting [their] brand like crazy because [they are] intermarrying.'”
• “Stating that low-income students may cause ‘reverse contagion,’ infecting more ‘capable and sophisticated’ students with their ‘delinquency and rule-breaking.'”
• “Stating that ‘if you go into medical schools, you’ll see that Indians, South Asians are now rising stars. . . . [T]hese diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are poisoning the scientific establishment and the medical establishment now.'”

In her recently posted GoFundMe appeal to create the “Amy Wax Legal Defense Fund” (link here), Prof. Wax states that Dean Ruger’s charges of inappropriate conduct are an attack on her conservative principles and are “littered with indignant invective and unsubstantiated and distorted claims.” She adds:

Penn Law Dean Ruger’s latest steps are part of a longstanding campaign at Penn Law School against me based on my stated positions, opinions, and speech, and despite my stellar performance as an award-winning teacher and academic during my decades-long career as a law professor. Penn’s actions represent an unprecedented and deeply destructive threat to the practice and traditions of free expression on campus and the tenure protections afforded to professors who express unpopular views. They are further evidence of the “woke” takeover of our university system, which seeks to stifle and punish dissent and purge our campuses of any deviation from a narrow set of progressive dogmas.

Academic freedom and tenure

While academic tenure may not be the lifetime job guarantee that some claim it is, it’s true that tenured professors at stable institutions who perform their work satisfactorily can expect continued employment. (For more about this topic, see my blog article, “What is academic tenure?,” link here.) And as a tenured professor at a prestigious university, Prof. Wax enjoys some of the strongest job protections available to any American employee.

One of the main purposes of tenure is to safeguard academic freedom in teaching, scholarship, and service activities. This includes freedom of expression, written or spoken. I regard academic freedom and tenure as carrying both rights and responsibilities. They include earned protections and accompanying obligations to perform one’s job with integrity. Tenure revocation is possible in cases of serious misconduct.

For controversial speech in such a context, I suggest that we establish a spectrum between being a thought-provoking scholar and being a simple provocateur.

The thought-provoking scholar pushes the boundaries of our assumptions and perceptions, using facts, analysis, interpretation, and sometimes creative expression. At times, this may include voicing or supporting unpopular viewpoints. The simple provocateur is more akin to a keyboard warrior, playing to the crowd in the comments section. This is the stuff of the internet troll and has very little to do with reasoned thought.

Where Amy Wax places on that spectrum may help us understand how her situation should be resolved. If her statements are considered so outlandish, irresponsible, and hurtful as to constitute misconduct, then sanctions may be in offing.

One of the most challenging considerations here is that we don’t have a bevy of comparable situations to give us guidance on how this should be handled. Assuming that Prof. Wax said or wrote most of the statements attributed to her, then this is a far cry from more typical scenarios that involve isolated instances or a small cluster of utterances deemed problematic.

It’s fair to point out that if Wax had been employed in a standard-brand, private-sector job setting (like a law firm or medical center), then it’s likely that she would’ve been terminated for cause already, perhaps following disciplinary warnings or a suspension. But academic freedom and tenure provide both substantive and procedural protections that most jobs do not offer.

Diversity and inclusion

You can easily see how the Wax situation is tailor-made for America’s tortured and fraught political and civic dialogue about diversity and freedom of expression. Her alleged statements have caused such an uproar because many have found them to be outrageous, hurtful, and wrongheaded. They’ve come at a time when “DEI” (diversity, equity, inclusion) is a deep focus of the day, in academe and corporate America alike.

Wax’s defenders range from those who agree with the substance of her alleged statements to those who place a very high value on academic freedom. 

Workplace mobbing

Folks have every right to criticize or defend Wax. She should be subjected to appropriate discipline if she’s crossed a clear line. From my concededly distanced perch, I believe that she is at that line or has even crossed it. While some of her alleged statements may fall under the cloak of academic freedom, many others appear to be grounded in animus towards difference.

Whether one agrees with Wax or not, there’s always a risk that critical voices can become an unruly mob. I find Wax’s worldview deeply objectionable, but I’m not happy about workplace mobbing scenes either. Prof. Kenneth Westhues’ pathbreaking work on mobbing in academe has repeatedly illustrated how quickly and dramatically such behaviors can escalate.

I imagine that Prof. Wax is feeling quite under siege right now. I don’t envy her. If she does face any disciplinary proceedings, then I hope — for everyone’s sake — that they will be conducted with dignity, fairness, and honesty.

Cancel culture

Especially because there is no legal definition of cancel culture, it’s important that we have some understanding of what it means in the employment context. I suggest that we define cancel culture at work as a response claimed to be disproportionately harsh — typically, either severe discipline or termination — to statements or actions deemed objectionable, hurtful and/or controversial.

At this juncture, it’s hard for anyone to legitimately claim that Amy Wax has been “cancelled.” However, the University’s moves toward possible disciplinary action and/or termination will cause the term to be used. And especially if her tenure is revoked and she is dismissed, then notwithstanding any due process she had been accorded, the cries of cancel culture from certain circles will be loud and sustained.

If Wax does leave Penn under whatever circumstances, then she will very likely land on her feet. She will be accorded martyr status and will no doubt be hired by an institution more compatible with her social and ideological views.

Summing up

While admitting that I’ve waded into this conversation with some trepidation, I feel obliged to share my own sense of this situation. I consider many of Amy Wax’s alleged statements to be hurtful and divisive. They sound like those of a provocateur fueling an ugly, exclusionary worldview, rather than those of a thought-provoking professor who occupies a position of enormous privilege and responsibility.

Yup, issues surrounding diversity and difference are challenging and can yield honest differences of opinion. There is a place in that discussion for strong language. But I don’t think that the heart of Wax’s rhetoric is contributing to our understanding of these issues. Sadly, one thing I’m certain of is that the eventual outcome of this situation — whatever it happens to be — will drive a deeper wedge into our political and social divide. 

Internships (paid and unpaid) are back in the news

A welcomed, if long overdue announcement from the White House and an excellent New York Times article have brought important questions about unpaid internships back into the spotlight.

Last week, the Biden Administration issued a statement (link here) announcing that, starting this fall, its interns no longer will have to work for free. This is the first time in the history of this coveted opportunity that interns will be paid, thus opening the door to highly qualified applicants who come from modest financial means. Said the White House:

Too often, unpaid federal internships have been a barrier to hardworking and talented students and professionals, preventing them from contributing their talents and skills to the country and holding them back from federal career advancement opportunities. This significant milestone of paying White House interns will help remove barriers to equal opportunity for low-income students and first-generation professionals at the beginnings of their careers and help to ensure that those who receive internships at the White House—and who will be a significant part of the leadership pipeline across the entire federal government—reflect the diversity of America.

On the heels of the White House announcement comes “Why We Still Haven’t Solved the Unpaid Internship Problem” (link here), a very informative and wide-ranging piece on the barriers posed by unpaid internships, authored by Times personal finance writer Ron Lieber. He draws upon his own experience back in the 1990s to illustrate the key issue:

Millions of college students work for money each summer because they need it and their financial aid office tells them to go earn some. Then there are those White House interns from previous administrations — often white, sometimes rich and, by summer’s end, presumably very well connected — buffing their résumés.

Is the problem evident? It first clicked in for me in the early 1990s when my interview for a summer internship at Chicago magazine was going well until I found out that I’d be working for free.

When I started asking questions — what was a financial aid recipient like me supposed to do to make enough to afford school, and isn’t this all a form of classism? — the tenor of the meeting took a turn. I didn’t get the offer.

Paying tuition to work for free

Lieber asked me to comment on the exploitative practice of colleges and universities offering academic credit for internships in return for paying tuition:

Then there’s the glaring issue of schools that offer course credit for internships.

Schools benefit from this arrangement in two ways, said David C. Yamada, a professor at Suffolk University Law School in Boston and an expert on the rules around internships. First, intern-for-credit programs can allow institutions to collect tuition for that credit, even as students are working out in the world and don’t need classroom space or an instructor standing in front of it for four months.

Then, it allows a school to say it’s providing valuable career preparation. “If I hear another university invoke the phrase ‘Hit the ground running,’ I think I’m going to scream,” he said.

Previous work

I have written often on this blog about the intern economy, especially during a period several years ago, when the issue was getting lots of media attention due to lawsuits invoking minimum wage laws to challenge the widespread practice of unpaid internships. Those legal challenges yielded some disappointing court decisions but kept open the possibility of future lawsuits. They also served a valuable consciousness-raising function that caused some employers to reconsider their internship programs and begin paying their interns.

But the overall topic has faded from public view since then. I hope that the White House pronouncement and Ron Lieber’s article will help to remedy that and prompt a resurgence of attention.

I have written several law review articles examining the legal and policy implications of unpaid internships. You may freely access pdfs of those pieces:

• “‘Mass Exploitation Hidden in Plain Sight’: Unpaid Internships and the Culture of Uncompensated Work,” Idaho Law Review (2016) (link here) — Shorter piece emerging from a symposium of emerging employment law issues held at the University of Idaho College of Law.
• “The Legal and Social Movement Against Unpaid Internships,” Northeastern University Law Journal (2016) (link here) — Comprehensive overview and assessment of many major legal, policy, and advocacy developments concerning unpaid internships during a critical period between 2010 and 2016.
• “The Employment Law Rights of Student Interns,” Connecticut Law Review (2002) (link here) — Foundational article that helped to inform legal challenges to unpaid internships.

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Update: I was interviewed by KCBS news radio in San Francisco about the recent White House announcement that it will begin paying its interns. You may listen to that brief interview here.

 

On expanding our view of global leadership to embrace human dignity

The term “global leadership” is strongly associated with economic, political, and social dominance in a neoliberal context. Degree programs using global leadership or similar monikers tend to be offered through graduate schools of business, and they usually emphasize market command in terms of ideas, information, and products. The latter point also applies to business conferences and workshops invoking the term.

However, at last December’s Annual Workshop on Transforming Humiliation and Violent Conflict, hosted by Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HDHS), I suggested that we should reframe global leadership through lenses of servant leadership and global stewardship. I expounded upon this topic and related it to themes of compassionate justice and therapeutic jurisprudence during my short remarks (under 10 minutes), which you may access here.

Definitions

If you’re wondering where I’m going with this, it may help to define terms, and I’ll simply draw from Wikipedia:

Servant leadership is a…

…leadership philosophy in which the goal of the leader is to serve. This is different from traditional leadership where the leader’s main focus is the thriving of their company or organization. A servant leader shares power, puts the needs of the employees first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible. Instead of the people working to serve the leader, the leader exists to serve the people.

Stewardship is an…

…ethic that embodies the responsible planning and management of resources. The concepts of stewardship can be applied to the environment and nature, economics, health, property, information, theology, cultural resources etc.

With these general definitions as guideposts, I would like us to conceptualize and practice global leadership in a way that emphasizes our roles as stewards of, and servants to, the health of this planet and its inhabitants. 

Google hits

Last fall, in preparation for the HDHS workshop, I did a quick Google search to see how many “hits” certain relevant terms would yield. Here is what I found:

• Search “global leadership” = ~1,060,000,000 hits
• Search “global stewardship” = ~93,000,000 hits
• Search “servant leadership” = ~57,000,000 hits

Clearly, among these terms, “global leadership” holds sway. Hence my belief that we should invoke it to advance dignitarian values, while elevating global stewardship and servant leadership in association with the core term.

Legal systems

As I further noted in my HDHS presentation, we have to apply these concepts of servant leadership and stewardship to those served by our legal systems, on a global level. After all:

• Many are ill-served by it right now.
• Our laws & public policies and their applications are not necessarily just.
• The experiences of litigation and dispute resolution can be traumatizing in and of themselves.
• Access to quality legal assistance is far from universal.

One of the answers to this is the field of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ), which examines whether our laws, legal systems, and legal institutions support or undermine individual and societal well-being and psychologically healthy outcomes in legal proceedings. I have discussed TJ often on this blog. In 2017, I helped to create the International Society for Therapeutic Jurisprudence, and last year I published a thorough assessment of the field, “Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Foundations, Expansion, and Assessment,” in the University of Miami Law Review. You may freely access it here.

On disability bullying

We have long known that children who have disabilities are more likely to experience bullying behaviors than their peers who are perceived as being non-disabled. The National Bullying Prevention Center (link here), for example, shares that in 10 U.S. studies examining “the connection between bullying and developmental disabilities, all of these studies found that children with disabilities were two to three times more likely to be bullied than their nondisabled peers.”

Indeed, search the term “disability bullying” and you’ll find the top hits centering almost exclusively around bullying of kids with disabilities. I’m glad that we have established that connection. At the very least, it validates the experiences of those being targeted and helps us to focus on preventive and responsive measures.

What about bullying of adults with disabilities?

We see less attention given to bullying of adults who have disabilities. That’s among the reasons why I welcomed a recent column by disability expert Andrew Pulrang, “The Many Flavors Of Disability Bullying” (Forbes.com, link here):

There are few things as simply and straightforwardly awful as bullying disabled people. But there is so much more to do about ableist bullying than just condemning it.

Ableist bullying is surprisingly difficult to recognize and understand, because it’s more than one thing, and has has many facets and flavors.

Pulrang goes on to identify predominant forms of bullying behaviors directed at adults with disabilities:

• “Simple, superficial mockery,” such as making fun of appearances, physical movements, and mental health conditions;
• “Dismissing complaints” over problems that persons with disabilities might face;
• “Portraying disabled people as privileged and entitled” as they struggle to deal with impairments and seek accommodations;
• Making jokes about someone’s disability in their presence, as if to test their sense of humor; and,
• Gaslighting disabled individuals into questioning their perceptions of reality.

He concludes:

To fight disability bullying, people of all backgrounds and roles need to not only refrain from these bullying behaviors, but also engage with and refute the kinds of thinking and assumptions that prompt them.

The legal angle

At times, those subjected to these forms of mistreatment may have legal recourse via civil rights and anti-discrimination laws. In workplace and public accommodations settings, the Americans with Disabilities Act figures most prominently. Here is where questions of reasonable accommodation come into play.

Furthermore, if someone is being subjected to workplace harassment because of their disability, they may have a hostile work environment claim under the ADA. However, such legal claims are hard to win. Occasional jokes or putdowns about a disability, for example, may not be sufficient to state a harassment claim under the ADA.

Ultimately…

A combination of more enlightened human behaviors and stronger legal enforcement will diminish bullying behaviors directed at people with disabilities. Obviously we have work to do on this front. If you doubt this, then consider that less than six years ago, the U.S. elected a President who cruelly mocked a reporter’s disability while on the campaign trail.

In the past, this one act would’ve been sufficient to self-torpedo any political campaign. I can only surmise that in 2016, some people voted for him in spite of this incident, while others were more inclined to vote for him because of it. Both possibilities teach us sad but important lessons about unfinished business in terms of advancing human dignity.