Drs. Amy Paris Langenberg & Ann Gleig: Grassroots Responses to Sexual Violation in American Buddhist Communities

Since the 1980s, American Buddhist convert communities have been the site of recurring sexual misconduct and abuse allegations. In the main, efforts to bring about justice have been hampered by denial and deflection from teachers, community leaders, and board members. In the absence of institutional accountability and a centralizing American Buddhist authority, efforts to respond to sexual violations have fallen largely to individual or collective grassroot efforts. In this presentation, we consider these efforts including community reform through revised grievance procedures and ethics statements, survivor advocacy through in person and online networks, preventative trainings, and legal interventions. We conclude by reflecting on the relationship between such efforts and the sexual ethics found in the classical Buddhist tradition.

Bio:

Ann Gleig is an Associate Professor of Religion and Cultural Studies at the University of Central Florida. She is author of American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019)

Amy Paris 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)

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.