

“So when we talk about it being dysfunctional, I actually take exception. “This organization was actually functioning exactly as it was designed to function, which is to protect powerful people, not to protect the survivors they abuse or harass,” one person who had worked with Time’s Up said. Though there have been some successes (there is broad consensus-including among those I spoke to-that the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, a set of funds housed and administered by the National Women’s Law Center Fund to finance the legal cases of survivors, is doing concrete, good work), most everyone I spoke with was skeptical that Time’s Up could be redeemed. In the days after Tchen stepped down, I spoke to eight people with various experiences working with the organization, most of whom requested anonymity in order to be able to speak frankly. The news has increased scrutiny of how Time’s Up operates as a workplace and how effective it is as an advocacy nonprofit. 26, after news broke that, along with Kaplan, she had provided feedback to Cuomo’s office on an unpublished opinion piece meant to discredit Boylan.Įveryone I spoke with, even some who’d enjoyed their time working there, described it as peculiarly rudderless. (In a letter announcing her resignation, Kaplan said she had “reluctantly come to the conclusion that an active litigation practice is no longer compatible with serving on the Board at Time’s Up.” She did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Slate.) CEO Tina Tchen, who, according to reporting in the New York Times, told Time’s Up staff to “stand down” when some were contemplating a statement supporting Boylan, stepped down herself on Aug.
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Andrew Cuomo’s enabling aide Melissa DeRosa during the attorney general’s investigation of Cuomo, and defending Goldman Sachs Group against a claim it had covered up complaints of sexual harassment, Kaplan had earlier advised Cuomo’s office on how to handle Lindsey Boylan’s allegations of sexual harassment. 9, then-chairwoman Roberta Kaplan resigned after it was revealed that, in addition to representing then-Gov. The past few weeks have exposed the extent to which this particular theory of change failed.

But it certainly presumed that people who had excelled at acquiring both could transcend those very human temptations in the service of a higher cause. Time’s Up didn’t quite assert that women were immune to the seductions of power and money. One can see, in that formulation, how unlikely it was to work. Send me updates about Slate special offers. The idea was that women would help women: Through Time’s Up, powerful women in different fields would put their networks to work in an effort to transform a society that routinely and without much thought sacrificed people’s careers to the whims of the powerful. The organization was created to support survivors of harassment and assault whose concerns and careers had sometimes been marginalized in workplaces of all kinds across the country. It was founded by a coalition of 300 actresses, writers, directors, and entertainment industry workers and, according to the New York Times, was originally “leaderless, run by volunteers and made up of working groups.” Before the end of its first year, it had adopted a more traditional leadership structure, hiring a president, and eventually building out a staff of about 25 employees. Time’s Up first came into being in 2018 as an idealistic response to the abuses exposed by the #MeToo movement. I learned about the slide incident when, in the wake of a major, public controversy that resulted in two high-profile, top women resigning from the organization, I started looking into what it was like to work at Time’s Up, on the ground, since its inception.
