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My review of: "On The Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence" by Nicole Bedera

https://www.ucpress.edu/books/on-the-wrong-side/hardcover

There are some books that are foundational for me - that I find myself thinking back to, a lot, especially in times of stress, when I need a guide to help me understand what is going wrong and what role I can try to play in helping it go right. These are not pleasant books, many are deeply unpleasant, but they cut through complex problems and explain the moral core of what is wrong.

This book, I am quite sure, will be one of them.

I read it in one sitting. I didn't intend to (especially since that sitting started at 10 PM), but once I started, I knew that this is a book that I needed to read. It was also very uncomfortable to read - once I put it down, it would take quite an act of willpower to come back to it, and I wasn't sure I had the strength. So, I needed to read it right here, right now. Straight through, let's go.

It is uncomfortable and unpleasant to be reminded of injustice in the world, especially if you are someone who is largely shielded from that injustice. It is uncomfortable and unpleasant to see, at the same time, both individual suffering and the systems that perpetuate that suffering. It is uncomfortable and unpleasant to learn that a system that is ostensibly in place to help people when they are at their most vulnerable flips the script and is a major cause of harm itself. It is uncomfortable and unpleasant to learn that these harmful outcomes are the system operating as it was designed, not accidents or individual mistakes.

But as someone operating in a university environment - one that I've spent more than half of my life in - I need to know these things.

Dr. Nicole Berdera spent a year embedded in the Title IX system at a major US University. This is the system - mandated by US federal law - for collecting reports of sexual harassment and violence affecting the university community, (occasionally) investigating them, and (rarely) deciding on sanctions for perpetrators. She interviewed folks in every part of this system - and there are a lot of parts.

What makes this book particularly powerful for me is that it is simultaneously academic (thoroughly researched, impeccably footnoted), deeply human (victims, administrators, and a perpetrator speak for themselves), and filled with a righteous fury. It's one thing to know statistics, it's another to have personal stories, but it's really something else entirely to have this sort of panoramic view of everyone involved coupled with hard numbers.

The book makes it quite clear that everyone in this system is acting in the way that the system is designed to make them act. You can see how the survivors are placed in a system they cannot possibly understand, and how that funnels them into making decisions that are not necessarily in their own best interests. The administrators are presented in such a way - using their own words - that you can see them acting the way the system has asked them to act; as they perpetuate old harms and cause new ones, you can see them clearly thinking they are doing "the right thing," when manifestly, they are not. You can see why the perpetrators are satisfied with this system, since it is designed to protect them. It's clear who is given resources, who is not, where the personal relationships are developed and where they are blocked, and again, that this is all very much by design.

This book ultimately ends on a fairly optimistic tone - that building a system that is both just and healing for survivors of sexual violence, and fair to the accused, is possible. And, frankly, probably easier to build than the system we currently have.

Strongly recommended, especially to anyone in a university system.