In the wake of the reporting of Al Jazeera’s A.I. unit on the harassment and abuse by Old English scholar Andy Orchard and historian Peter Thompson, IONA deplores their actions as well as the institutional cultures that perpetuate, allow, and support sexual harassment, predation, and abuse, which fall disproportionately on the shoulders of BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ and women scholars. IONA calls on Oxford University, Cambridge University, and the University of Toronto, as well as the field of medieval studies as a whole, to take real action by holding these perpetrators accountable and working to create a safer, better workplace and scholarly future for women and BIPOC students and colleagues.
Please listen to the voices of the brave women who helped bring these gross violations out into the open and take real action against abuse. Institutional safeguards against lawsuits, and other structures of power that protect institutions above individuals, primarily serve to protect abusers, perpetuate abuse against our students and colleagues, and alienate the broader public from our field.
IONA has sent this statement to the English Faculty at Oxford, the Provost of Trinity College at the University of Toronto, and the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge University.
For the reporting, see: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/19/oxford-professors-abused-position-with-sexist-and-drunken-conduct
Matthew T. Hussey, Georgia Henley, and Joshua Davies, pro-tem steering committee