News Archive

Professor Jennifer Drobac has talked about the accusations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, and the similar claims emerging against a technology pundit, in stories published by Reuters and the Washington Post.

Professor Drobac has been much in demand for her expertise regarding sexual harassment law in light of the multiple accusations against Weinstein. Professor Drobac is a nationally known scholar in this area of the law.

She was interviewed by Beltway News for a story that was posted October 30.

In the Reuters piece, which has also been published in the New York Times, Professor Drobac talked about the California statute of limitations, which an accuser will have to contend with in order to pursue her case.

In the Washington Post story, Professor Drobac talked about how she utilizes these kinds of incidents as illustrations in her classroom. “I tell my law students, if you have a partnership, you need to be monitoring the behavior of your partners,” she said in the story. “You share liability.”

An interview she conducted with MarketWatch in early October is part of a larger piece on the Weinstein allegations that appears on the website, Movies Cheat Sheet. Professor Drobac also gave an interview that details how this kind of behavior impacts the careers of victims to Investors Hub.

In a story published by ArsTechnica, Professor Drobac calls, "patently false," the claim that tech pundit Robert Scoble didn't sexually harass any of his accusers because they were not his employees. She also points out that Scoble's company may be liable. "If a company knows that Scoble is doing this and they do not correct his behavior to create a safe and hospitable work environment for women, they are liable even if the people they are harassing are clients or professional associates or people on the street," Professor Drobac says in the story. "If he’s doing it on company time on corporate business locales, the company may be held liable under California law and possibly under federal law."

She talked about the Weinstein story with Morning Consult in an interview published October 19. The piece delves into attitudes toward Weinstein, and Professor Drobac discusses the short memory the public often has in terms of wrongdoing.

Professor Drobac spoke with CNN Money for a story published October 16. In the piece, she talked about the strength in numbers that is often necessary in these kinds of situations for victims to come forward.

“When women are going to be isolated and receive death threats by trolls, they aren’t going to want to come forward,” she told CNN.

“I don’t know how many times we’re going to have to learn these lessons with these powerful men, but it does highlight that power can really ruin people’s lives when it’s abused, and this is really more about power than it is about sexual attraction,” Professor Drobac said October 10 on the program, Knowledge@Wharton. The program is available for download through a series of sound files.

Professor Drobac also discussed the case on the National Public Radio program, “On Point,” on October 11. Her comments on the accusations can be heard beginning at the 19:45 mark.

She was also quoted in an article on CNN Money on October 13 titled "How do you report sexual harassment when there's no HR?" by Julia Horowitz and Sara Ashley O'Brien.

Dealing with the imbalance of power in the workplace, talking about the issue of sexual harassment, and women coming forward when they have been harassed will go a long way toward combating the problem, Professor Drobac said on the program.

“But it’s also important for the men in our society to support women in the moment or later on either saying something to the harasser, supporting the woman coming forward. We also need to approach it in the legal system and make some changes,” she said. Some of Weinstein’s accusers settled cases against him, and Professor Drobac recommends changes to this area of the law. “The fact that these settlements are confidential and that women are under gag orders, that needs to change. We need sunshine laws. If you want to keep the settlement amount confidential, fine, but the underlying facts should be public.”

Professor Drobac’s latest book, Sexual Exploitation of Teenagers: Adolescent Development, Discrimination, and Consent Law, was published by University of Chicago Press. She was recently a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall and at the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. She was researching a new book, The Myth of Consent, that she will write with Professor Oliver Goodenough.