(serene music)
- My name is so Seo-Young Chu,
my parents and my brother call me Jennie,
which is my middle name, my American name,
but everyone else calls me Seo-Young, my Korean name.
In the year 2000, shortly after my 22nd birthday,
I was sexually assaulted
by a powerful, famous, tenured professor
in the English department
at Stanford University.
He was my advisor.
I was his teaching assistant and his advisee.
I never thought to press charges.
I was raised to have reverence for scholars, for professors.
I honestly thought that he controlled my future.
He told me he controlled my future,
that he was the one who could
(exhales) help me find jobs
in an academic market that, you know,
it's hard to find jobs in humanities and academia.
And I just thought I was trapped.
I felt I couldn't tell anyone what was going on
and, at some point,
someone else in the department found out what was happening
and Stanford had to conduct an investigation.
That investigation was hellish,
but eventually Stanford did punish my abuser.
He was suspended for two years without pay.
I changed my name from Jennie to Seo-Young and I transferred
to Harvard, where I tried to forget
that Stanford ever happened
and it wasn't until
I got tenure at Queens College CUNY in 2016
that I felt brave enough to Google my abuser's name
and that's when I learned
that Stanford had covered up the abuse
and the punishment and that there was a library
at Stanford named after him
and there were mentorship awards named after him.
(sighs) And I spent my sabbatical,
during which I was supposed
to be completing my book on North Korea,
I spent that sabbatical writing and speaking publicly
about rape culture at Stanford and beyond.
I still haven't finished that book on North Korea
and I'm still trying to get Stanford
to acknowledge what happened to me.
I'm trying to get them to engage in some kind
of restorative dialogue with me,
but for the most part, they've been silent.
Some people tell me,
you know, "You should hire a lawyer."
I have never hired a lawyer in my life
and a lot of that is due to the way I was brought up.
My parents are not US citizens.
I'm not sure which generation Korean American I am.
I was born in the United States, so I'm a citizen,
but my parents raised me and my brother
to think of ourselves almost as guests in this country.
I grew up feeling pressured to
show gratitude to everyone around me,
especially people in positions of power,
such as tenured professors at Stanford.
I grew up feeling pressured to show gratitude
to everyone even if it meant tolerating mistreatment,
graciously tolerating mistreatment.
So I never hired a lawyer
because I thought that do so would be sign
that I wasn't grateful to be here in the United States.
I never sued Stanford because my father,
even after my abuser was punished by Stanford,
my father said, "Okay, do the honorable thing,
keep your head down, be dutiful and conscientious
and don't make a fuss, just work hard."
And that's what I tried to do for many years
but my body just kept getting sicker and sicker and sicker
because I kept denying that what happened to me was wrong.
I kept thinking, "I should just be grateful
to be able to study at these schools."
And I am grateful,
but I now know what happened to me was violent.
It was wrong.
And yet I still sometimes question
whether I was (sighs) actually violated
because the model minority in me thinks,
"I should have tolerated what he did to me."
But then another voice in me thinks,
"No, you should have spoken up."
And I'm still trying to resolve that tension.
I did speak up though.
That's the thing I did say no.
I wish I could say
that my family was helpful
to some extent they were
but I don't think
that my parents were equipped
to talk to me about sexual violence.
I think my mother resented the fact
that she and her daughter could never speak fluently
in the same language
and we definitely cannot talk today
about what happened to me at Stanford
about trauma or about consent and abuses of power.
We don't share a language that's supple enough
to accommodate the nuances
and I think a dialogue
on sexual violence requires sensitivity
and I think my mother and I just,
we don't share a language that can accommodate
that kind of dialogue, sadly.
I would love to be able to talk to my mother about Me Too
and maybe that's something that this project can
(sighs) help to bring into existence,
a community where Korean Americans and Koreans,
members of the Korean diaspora can talk
to one another without shame or stigma
about these issues.
I'm not ashamed to be speaking in broken sentences
about sexual violence
because how can anyone really speak
about sexual violence without breaking down a little bit?
It's important, I think,
for future generations
to know that Korean Americans have been part
of the Me Too dialogue and the Me Too movement
from the very outset.
It's important for future generations
to have access to an archive
of Korean American voices,
speaking up and speaking out loud
about sexual violence (serene music)
and justice for survivors.