Hillary Clinton, Burns Strider, and the Fault Lines of #MeToo; The Atlantic, January 26, 2018

Megan Garber, The Atlantic; Hillary Clinton, Burns Strider, and the Fault Lines of #MeToo

"The Times story paints a picture of a Hillary Clinton who is, given her history, both a recipient of harassment and a passive enabler of it. A manager, in other words, like so many of the others who have been revealed in the journalism of the post-Weinstein months: one who learns of an accusation of harassment and addresses it by disrupting the life of the alleged victim, rather than the life of the alleged perpetrator. The boss who found enough evidence of Burns Strider’s wrongdoing to dock his pay and put him in counseling … but who kept him on staff—with all its many other young women—nonetheless. Here is Clinton serving, yet again, as a rich metaphor—this time, though, for complacency and complicity. For powerful people who are concerned, but not concerned enough.

And also: for managers who meet the humanity at the heart of harassment allegations with the clinical language of corporate callousness. It’s unsurprising, perhaps, but notable nonetheless that Clinton responded to the Times’ reporting with a statement that was many steps removed from Clinton, the person: It was written by Utrecht, Kleinfeld, Fiori, Partners, the law firm that had represented the campaign in 2008 (and that, the Times puts it, has “been involved on sexual harassment issues”). The statement was delivered, from there, through an unnamed Clinton spokesman. “To ensure a safe working environment,” it read, “the campaign had a process to address complaints of misconduct or harassment. When matters arose, they were reviewed in accordance with these policies, and appropriate action was taken. This complaint was no exception.”

So while it was Clinton, the manager, the Times report goes, who made the decision to keep Strider on her team, Clinton, the manager, is notably absent from today’s explanation of things. She has outsourced her own decision-making, it seems, to discussions of process and policies—the same anonymous structures that so many other managers have relied on for legal, and moral, insulation. What were the “processes” that kept Strider in his job and his accuser out of hers? You are not supposed to ask. “Processes” are meant to be the answers to their own questions. So are “policies.” Corporations-as-people, if you’d like, but the framework falls apart when organizations are able to deny that humanity as soon as it becomes a liability."