Sex Harassment Training Must Change: The Case for Legal Incentives for Transformative Education and Prevention
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Sex Harassment Training Must Change:
The Case for Legal Incentives for
Transformative Education and Prevention
Susan Bisom-Rapp`
Introduction
Professors who study harassment are in demand by the media. As
allegations unsettle Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Washington, D.C., and various
state capitals, reporters covering the #MeToo movement seek academic
perspectives on the problem. Those who call me often mention two articles I
published over fifteen years ago, which questioned the embrace of sex
harassment and diversity training by the judiciary and the legal profession.' In
those works, I voiced concern about a developing jurisprudence of education
and prevention in employment discrimination law that inoculated against
liability those employers who provided harassment and diversity training. Such
an approach, I argued, promoted a cosmetic rather than a substantive solution
to bias eradication for there was scant evidence that such training actually
curbed harassment and discrimination. In fact, training could backfire,
triggering stereotypes about bias victims and inspiring the resentment of
others.2
Responding to the #MeToo movement, employers, legislators, human
resources professionals, and the training industry are now defaulting to a
* Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Scholarship and Professor of Law, Thomas
Jefferson School of Law; B.S., Cornell University; J.D., U.C. Berkeley; LL.M. and J.S.D.,
Columbia University. Thanks to AndrewJones, Andra Lim, and Jane Kessner for helpful
editorial suggestions, and to the Stanford Law Review Online for publishing an online
symposium on #MeToo and sex harassment law.
1. Susan Bisom-Rapp, An Ounce of Prevention Is a Poor Substitute for a Pound of Cure: Confronting
the Developing Jurisprudence of Education and Prevention in Employment Discrimination Law, 22
BERKELEYJ. EMP. & LAB. L.1 (2001) [hereinafter Bisom-Rapp, An Ounce of Prevention]; Susan
Bisom-Rapp, Fixing Watches with Sledgehammers: The Questionable Embrace of Employee Sexual
Harassment Training by the Legal Profession, 24 U. ARK. LITTLE ROCK L. REV. 147 (2001)
[hereinafter Bisom-Rapp, Fixing Watches].
2. Bisom-Rapp, An Ounce of Prevention, supra note 1, at 4; Bisom-Rapp, Fixing Watches, supra
note 1, at 163.
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Sex Harassment Training Must Change: The Case for Legal Incentives for Transformative Education and Prevention
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