Jackson Katz, Ph.D, co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention, an organization recognized for their gender violence prevention programs, will visit Oregon State University to promote gender equality and discuss how to prevent gender violence.

Kimberly Hack and other members of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women invited Dr. Katz to make his presentation on Oct. 22, 2019 at 6:30 p.m. at the LaSells Stewart Center as part of a speaker series to promote gender equity. The event is free and open to the public.

Hack said she participated in Dr. Katz’s presentation in the past, describing him as a prominent speaker. Hack believes it is important for students to join in the conversation about gender violence and how to prevent it.

“We can all play a role in violence prevention,” Hack said.

Katz’s TED Talk about gender violence has been viewed nearly four million times. In the viral video, Katz talks about bystander intervention and how men can become allies in the fight against gender violence.

“Gender violence and interpersonal violence is an issue of men because most perpetrators are often men,” said Ian Kellems, Ph.D executive director of Counseling and Psychological Services. “There are a lot of privileges that come with being male-identified, and there are responsibilities that should come with that as well.”

According to the Mentors in Violence Prevention website, Katz’s work with MVP is “one of the longest-running and most widely influential gender violence, sexual harassment and bullying prevention programs in the world.” Katz also participated in the award-winning documentary “Miss Representation,” a film that exposes reasons for the underrepresentation of women in positions of power.

“Students, especially freshmen, are about to experience many things they have never experienced before. One of those might be the mistreatment of women,” said Todd Cross, trades maintenance coordinator and member of the PCOSW. “If this talk gives just one student the confidence to stand up to an abuser, then

we have succeeded.” 

This speaker series is a collaborative work of OSU Office of Institutional

Diversity and PCOSW. Their goal is to promote gender equity and

prevent gender violence.

“Men have stayed pretty quiet about these issues historically. There is a macho component to why this is, and a fear component of what other men might say if you intervene. If all of us men intervened, whenever and wherever we see a woman being treated poorly by other men, I think a lot of it would go away,” Cross said. “The men who take advantage of women have been made to feel ostracized from other men. If they take advantage of women and then feel like they are a part of the club, we will never conquer this evil.”