Open Secrets, Power and Professors:
A study on Rape Culture and Accountability at Canadian Post-Secondary Institutions
Over the last decade, students on Canadian campuses have fought to improve post-secondary policies and practices around sexual violence. As universities and colleges begin to acknowledge the existence of rape culture in their communities, the focus of both research and policy change has remained on violence between students. This has left the parallel problem of faculty violence and harassment relatively untouched in the Canadian context.
What is the Open Secrets Project?
Initiated in 2019 by a small volunteer research team at Students for Consent Culture Canada (SFCC), the Open Secrets project offers the first national investigation into sexual violence and harassment perpetrated by post-secondary faculty against students in Canada. During the first half of 2020, the SFCC team heard from hundreds of students and faculty members about their experiences with gender-based and sexualized violence by faculty. Since then we have been thoughtfully analyzing the stories and perspectives shared with us, while also trying to care for our team during a global pandemic and ongoing injustice in our communities. Inspired by the pathbreaking work of the 1752 group on staff sexual misconduct in higher education in the UK, and also by the incredible labours of disability justice, anti-racist, anti-colonial, Queer and feminist activists, we have worked to do justice to survivors’ experiences and analyses.
What were our goals?
Drawing on anonymous surveys, interviews, policy analysis, literature review and more, we have explored the scope and impact of this issue, and highlighted the institutional betrayal experienced by those who have spoken out against faculty violence and institutional pushback.
We did this work with both caution and urgency, with several main goals:
To bear witness to and validate the experiences and expertise of student survivors;
to establish baseline data documenting professor-perpetrated violence across Canada;
to counter denial, get the issue on the national agenda, and encourage more research;
to build capacity and community between different groups fighting similar struggles;
to provide tools to collectively push for accountability from PSIs; and
to disrupt the cultures and structures that support and perpetuate sexualized and gender-based violence by faculty.
At postsecondary institutions (PSIs), these forms of violence rely on a culture-structure dynamic made up of many behaviours, relationships, and oppressions. Generations of activists have called this “rape culture,” which we take as a starting point here. We believe that to look at this or any form of sexual violence in isolation too often leaves the structures that allow it to happen untouched.
Power structures and cultural norms that promote violence have thrived openly on our campuses, while survivors and others who push back and organise against these powers have been marginalised and silenced. Eliminating violence on our campuses requires both a documentation of harms, and a critical understanding of how these power structures and cultural norms operate and replicate.
What did we find?
In our efforts to address this as a cultural and structural issue, we focused on documenting and analysing patterns of harm, drawing on detailed information about:
Common conditions that appear to make sexual violence by faculty more possible and make accountability less likely/impossible;
Faculty behaviours and how they are fostered through social and institutional structures;
Individual and institutional pushback strategies, ranging from negligence to active intimidation; and
How knowledge about these patterns circulates, and how it informs resistance.
Where to find out more:
Our work is now in its final stages, with a full report and toolkit forthcoming later in 2025. These materials will be available on our website. Watch for announcements about launch activities!
During the consultations for the National Action Plan to End Gender-based Violence, we were able to bring together a preliminary summary of what was shared with the Open Secrets team, including some early analysis and recommendations. Link to the Preliminary Summary (2021)
When using the Preliminary Summary, please cite as follows:
Students for Consent Culture Canada. 2021. The Open Secrets Project: A study on rape culture and accountability at Canadian postsecondary institutions. Preliminary summary and recommendations.
Here are some other places where we discuss this project:
“Prof-perpetrated sexual violence and our way forward: an Open Secrets Report update.” Originally part of the SFCC Beyond Consent speaker series. Yours in Solidarity Podcast. Students for Consent Culture. First aired 24 November 2022. Available on Spotify.
“What we did with institutional betrayal: The Open Secrets Project on faculty sexual violence in Canada.” In ‘Betrayal U: Institutional Betrayal in Higher Education.' Eds. Monica J. Casper and Rebecca Martinez. The Feminist Wire Series: Feminisms, Race, and Social Justice. University of Arizona Press, 2024.
A Note on Anonymity and SFCC Core Values:
The research questions for this project adhere to SFCC’s guiding principles, most importantly that this work be survivor and student driven, feminist, anti-colonial, and intersectional. Survivor-centered work draws directly from survivors’ words and analyses. We are a group led by student survivors and consent is something we value and prioritize in all of our work. For that reason, we want to explicitly state that in this report we will not be publishing anyone’s names in order to maintain the same level of anonymity and protection for everyone who participates in this project.
If you have any questions about the Open Secrets project, please contact chair@sfcccanada.org.
Call for funds:
All of SFCC’s projects are funded by community groups, student groups, and individuals from across the country! We aim to keep ourselves solely accountable to the communities we work with, namely students and anti-sexual violence community groups. If you would like to make a donation so we can keep doing this work, you can donate here!
Our most pressing need for funding in 2025 is for translation of the full Open Secrets report into French.