Situating Knowledge in Silence: Tracing Sexual Harassment Policy at the Freie Universität Berlin
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17169/ogj.2026.415Keywords:
Sexual Harassment, Power, University, Intersectionality, InstitutionalizationAbstract
Using oral history interviews and primary source documents from the late 1980s and early 1990s, this article positions the slow evolution of sexual harassment and assault guidelines at the Freie Universität Berlin (FU) within a global, intersectional feminist debate on power and silencing. Activists from the FU Women’s Representative office, Sexual Harassment Working Group, student body, and faculty were loud in their demands for such guidelines, which had already been codified in the U.S. academic landscape. By tracing the available documentation from this time, this article paints a picture of institutional power, knowledge production, of who benefited and who did not.
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