Jodi Kantor, a New York Times and Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist who broke the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal, visited Main Campus on Thursday afternoon.
Kantor spoke to full crowd of students and professors in Mitten Hall about her work, which won the Pulitzer prize for public service in 2018 and pushed the #MeToo Movement back into public attention. The College of Liberal Arts and Feinstein Center for American Jewish History hosted the event.
Many attendees were interested in hearing Kantor’s take on the progress of the movement today.
Aneesa Ishaq, a sophomore communications and media studies major, said she didn’t know much about Kantor, but saw an advertisement for the event in her email.
“I came specifically because of how impactful the #MeToo movement [was] and how it still is and how the momentum just keeps on going. I’m interested in seeing what her thoughts are on how it’s evolved from how it began,” Ishaq said.
David Boardman, dean of Klein College of Media and Communication, interviewed Kantor. Lila Corwin Berman, the Feinstein Center’s director, hosted the event.
Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Jodi Kantor questions about her investigative reporting. | ERIN BLEWETT / THE TEMPLE NEWS
“The work has amplified a movement that was started in 2006 by an activist named Tarana Burke, Corwin Berman said while introducing Kantor. “And once the Weinstein article broke, that movement, which already existed, was galvanized and amplified.”
Kantor spoke about her investigative reporting while uncovering the Weinstein scandal, and her process of getting people who experienced sexual assault to speak with her about their traumas.
“Getting women on the record was very, very, very difficult,” she added. “Probably the hardest part of the whole process and there were a lot of people who said ‘no’ to us…. The thing that we really concentrated on as apart of our investigative design involved getting as many different kinds of evidence as possible.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified the host of the event. Lila Corwin Berman hosted and organized the event.
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