A symposium on sexual violence and power in higher education.

We foreground collective resistance as a vehicle for radical change, refusing concessions and mere reform.

Contextualizing these dynamics within academia demonstrates how complaint policies and procedures reproduce the power disparities that make complaints necessary, and the very societal hierarchies that make abuse possible. When discussing these dynamics, our symposium addresses everyone whose labour contributes to academia – from students and support staff to administrators and full professors – and engages them in thinking about how the university works and for whom it works. 

Drawing from Audre Lorde’s essay “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” (1977), we use silence as a motif to structure our program. We acknowledge that every metaphor has its limits and problematic discursive implications. However, they can also clarify and elucidate aspects of lived experiences that often go unstated.