October 2025

Dear Friends of Courage,

Every Courage Brief is an invitation: to see the world as it is, and to act so institutions can become what they ought to be. This issue arrives at a moment when many of us are tempted by two familiar myths—that a few “bad apples” are the problem and that we can be passive because “time will fix it.” Our first featured essay challenges those myths head-on, reminding us that structures, policies, and bystander silence enable harm—and that progress comes from persistent, values-driven effort. Drawing strength from ancestral legacies of “quiet rebellion,” it calls us to imagine boldly and then build practically.

Our second featured essay looks squarely at the relationship between rape culture, institutional betrayal, and democratic backsliding. When denial, retaliation, and impunity become normalized, institutions betray the people they’re meant to serve—and the health of a democracy erodes. Yet the piece does not leave us in despair. It translates institutional courage into concrete steps for leaders and for the public: acknowledge and repair harm; commit to transparency; protect whistleblowers; and reward moral courage—even when it carries real costs. These are not abstract ideals; they are choices available to us today.

Across both essays runs a throughline I’ve seen for decades in research and practice: courage is a choice. When we tell the truth about harm, remove incentives for denial, and design systems that safeguard the vulnerable and empower the principled, institutions change—sometimes slowly, often unevenly, but unmistakably.

As you read, I invite you to do three things:

Notice where myth is masquerading as wisdom in your setting.
Name one procedure you can make more transparent this month.
Identify someone who took a risk for the sake of integrity—and thank them.

Our work has always been about turning moral clarity into institutional muscle. Thank you for doing that work in your classrooms, clinics, agencies, companies, courts, councils, and communities. Your everyday courage, paired with thoughtful design and accountability, adds up.

With gratitude and resolve,

Jennifer Freyd
Founder and President, Center for Institutional Courage

The Time Is Now:
Abolishing Myths By Learning From The Ancestors

By Jennifer M. Gómez
Associate Professor of the School of Social Work
Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health
Boston University
&
Board Member & Chair of the Research Advisory Committee
Center for Institutional Courage

I am often told we are living in unprecedented times.

I do believe this time will find its way into future history books, with our descendants analyzing how we succeeded in promoting equality and peace. Or how we failed and why.

However, I can’t help but disagree that this time is one that humanity has never before experienced. It makes me wonder about the costs of ignoring historical similarities.

In our pursuit of freedom, what other myths should be abolished?

Myth #1: Discrimination and violence come from a few bad apples

As a child of the 90’s, I grew up being told explicitly and implicitly that most people are good, with discrimination and sexual violence coming from just a few individuals.

As we are witnessing in the Epstein case, the rates of discrimination and sexual violence are high, making the claim of a ‘few bad apples’ painfully false.

Fundamentally, however, is another truth. These harms don’t need a bunch of bad actors to flourish. As work on racialized organizations shows us, policies, procedures, and structures promote discrimination. And bystanders allow the violence to thrive.

Myth #2: Time will fix everything

Many of us have been told that we just need to be more patient. After all, equality and peace will fall from the sky if we just give it enough time.

But as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., shared in his 1963 letter from Birmingham jail:

“It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively… We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through…tireless efforts and persistent work…and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.”

Myth #3: There’s Nothing We Can Do

The horrors of our world can lead us to forgetting that human beings have changed the world for the better so many times before. Dreamstorming is a concept of mine that encourages us to imagine a perfectly peaceful and equal world as a starting point for strategizing societal transformation.

The fight isn’t over. We haven’t lost yet.

The Legacy of My Ancestors

As told to me by my grandmother, Mrs. Anna Cook Gómez, my legacy is one of quiet rebellion.

My grandmother’s grandmother was enslaved before being granted freedom. My grandmother’s mother was denied the right to a formal education, so she spent her nights teaching herself reading, math, and science, so she could help her daughter—my future grandmother—with her studies. My grandmother, then Anna Cook, earned valedictorian in her high school, but being a Black girl, was denied the honor in favor of her White classmate.

My ancestors—along with so many who have come before us—had cause time and again to succumb to the longstanding myths of the world. To believe slavery, racist policies, and intersectionally sexist violence and discrimination would be a neverending stronghold in their lives.

Though the world has never been free of these ills, there has been progress we can return to and advance, as we settle into the historically predictable times we are in, taking dreamstormed actions to change the world. Once again.

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Rape Culture, Institutional Betrayal, and the Erosion of our Democracy

By Dr. Sarah Harsey
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Oregon State University – Cascades

It has been nearly one year since the 2024 US presidential election. As we approach this anniversary, I find myself overwhelmed by the current administration's actions. ICE’s mass detention and deportation of community members (including US citizens), the illegal deployments of military troops to US cities, and the wave of executive orders seeking to erase transgender people’s identities and access to gender-affirming care are horrifying. Equally chilling are the continual attacks on higher education, research, and free speech.

Many of these actions are unprecedented and are significant forms of institutional betrayal. Unsurprisingly, discourse about whether the US is hurtling towards autocracy, authoritarianism, or fascism is growing.

How did we get here? While there are many reasons why a majority of American voters opted for the current president and, consequently, a weaker democracy, one explanation stands out to me: rape culture. First identified by second-wave feminists, rape culture describes social environments in which sexual violence is denied, minimized, and implicitly (or even explicitly) permitted to occur. In environments like this, perpetrators successfully employ DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) and rarely face accountability.

For too long, rape culture has permeated our political institutions. When misogyny, exploitation of power, and lack of accountability are normalized through the sociopolitical environment that rape culture creates, a permission structure for impunity becomes standard. Within the realm of politics, allegations are therefore summarily dismissed or downplayed, and attempts to hold sexual offenders accountable are reframed as unjust partisan attacks. As a result, individuals with alleged histories of sexual misconduct are elevated to powerful offices.

The way rape culture has been allowed to shape our political landscape in ways that undermine core democratic principles is a stark institutional betrayal by the US government. But there is a way forward – institutional courage offers a course of action for both elected officials and citizens to follow that addresses the harms caused by institutional betrayal.

Individuals with power in our governmental institutions must do:

Acknowledge and take responsibility for harm. Lawmakers must condemn wrongdoing loudly, persistently, and publicly instead of minimizing or concealing it.
Commit to transparency. Ensuring open records, independent reviews, and clear communication about decision-making processes promotes accountability in governmental processes.
Protect whistleblowers. When individuals in the government speak truth to power, strong non-retaliation policies must be enacted in order to protect those who expose misconduct.
Reward moral courage. A key aspect of institutional courage is taking risks for the sake of doing the right thing. Recognizing and promoting leaders who act ethically, even when it carries political costs, encourages behavior that prioritizes the health of the institution over reputation and personal attainment.

What we, the public, must do:

Demand oversight and transparency. One way to do this is to support journalism, watchdog organizations, and reforms that strengthen institutional accountability.
Listen to survivors. Rape culture and other systems of harm thrive on the negligence of survivors. Listening to and amplifying the voices of survivors takes power away from individuals who benefit from such systems.
Model moral courage in our communities. Much like our lawmakers, we must also speak out against denial, retaliation, and harm—even when doing so is uncomfortable.
Educate our leaders. We can educate our elected officials about institutional betrayal and institutional courage, and urge them to integrate these principles into policy and practice.

These concrete steps, adapted from Jennifer Freyd’s 12 steps of institutional courage, compel us to act with courage and root out both rape culture and anti-democratic processes within our government. By taking action, we can better fight for a society that protects democracy and dismantles the systems of harm that erode it.