LECTURE: Broken Silences: Grassroots Efforts in Response to Sexual Abuse in American Buddhist Communities. 

Broken Silences: Grassroots Efforts in Response to Sexual Abuse in American Buddhist Communities. 

Lecture and Discussion by Prof. Amy Langenberg (Eckerd College) and Prof. Ann Gleig (University of Central Florida). Hosted by Prof. Manuel Lopez at New College of Florida.

Date/Time: Monday, October 4, 2021, 5:30 Sainer Auditorium. Also live-streamed.

Since the 1980s, American Buddhist communities have been the site of recurring sexual misconduct and abuse allegations. Efforts to bring about justice have been hampered by denial and deflection from teachers, community leaders, and board members. In the absence of community accountability and a centralizing American Buddhist authority, efforts to respond to sexual abuse have fallen largely to individual or collective grassroot efforts. In this presentation, we consider grassroots efforts to respond to sexual abuse in American Buddhism. These efforts include submitting to outside investigations and trainings, community reform through revised grievance procedures and ethics statements, survivor advocacy through in-person and online networks, and legal interventions.

We consider such efforts from a survivor-centered perspective and reflect on what they suggest about new forms of Buddhist leadership, institutional authority, and community life after the silence about abuse is broken.

Amy Langenberg is an associate professor of Religious Studies at Eckerd College. She is the author of Birth in Buddhism: The Suffering Fetus and Female Freedom (Routledge, 2017). 

Ann Gleig is an associate professor of Religion and Cultural Studies at the University of Central Florida. She is the author of American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019). Drs. Gleig and Langenberg are collaborators on a study of sexual abuse in American Buddhism, titled Abuse, Sex, and the Sangha, which will be published with Yale University Press.

Location: Sainer Auditorium, 5313 Bay Shore Rd, Sarasota, FL 34243

The lecture will be streamed life in New College of Florida Youtube channel: youtube.com/channel/UCG4BrwbkE0kkzNETKOVgRVg/live

Contact Info: 

Prof. Manuel Lopez

Contact Email: 

mlopezzafra@ncf.edu