Counsellor Wendy Stollberg, central contact person for cases of sexualized harassment, discrimination, and violence at Freie Universität Berlin, shares her insights into the challenges doctoral researchers may face in this context. In this interview, she explains her role, the confidential support she offers, and how affected individuals can seek help — whether they’re unsure about what happened, want to address structural problems, or simply need someone to talk to.
Contact via email: no-means-no@fu-berlin.de or phone: +49 30 838 54970
Audio
Highlights
„We must stop looking only at the legal definitions, because not everything is written in law. And we must understand where sexual harassment, discrimination and violence comes from, what conditions are important that it exists or that makes it difficult for people to speak up. And as I said again, we must take every report seriously and do something. And this would be a very new approach, where the focus is really on the affected people“
Wendy Stollberg, Central Contact person for cases of sexualized harassment, discrimination, and violance at Freie Universität Berlin
Links
Useful links on this subject and other situations that might arise during your doctorate can be found here.
Transcript
Intro
Welcome to the DRS Podcast, the podcast for doctoral researchers at Freie Universität Berlin. I’m Dr. Marlies Klamt and I’ll be your host for today’s episode. Sexual harassment, discrimination and violence are difficult topics, but also essential ones to address, especially in academic environments shaped by hierarchies, power imbalances, and international diversity.
My guest today is Wendy Stollberg, the university’s official contact person for cases of sexual harassment, discrimination, and violence. In our conversation, Wendy explains what her role entails and how affected individuals can seek confidential support whether they are unsure about what happened, looking for structural change, or simply need someone to talk to. We talk about the specific challenges that doctoral researchers, especially international female or non-binary researchers, often face, and how universities can do more to prevent such incidents in the first place. Wendy Stollberg also gives clear guidance on how to distinguish inappropriate behaviour from acceptable interactions, and why it’s so important to speak up, even if you’re unsure or a bystander.
Whether you’ve experienced something yourself, want to support a colleague, or simply want to be part of a safer academic culture, this episode will give you both insights and practical advice.
Interview
Welcome to the DRS podcast, Wendy Stollberg. To begin with, could you briefly introduce yourself and explain your role at the university?
Hello and thank you very much for having me at this podcast. My name is Wendy Stollberg, as you just said, and I’m the contact person in cases of sexual harassment, discrimination and violence at Freie Universität Berlin. What does it mean? It means that people who have experienced sexual harassment, discrimination or violence, any form of it, can come to me for an appointment for confidential counselling.
And that’s very important. It is confidential. So it is just between me and the person who comes to me and nothing will necessarily follow from our consultation that we have. So I’m listening, I’m trying to understand what has happened, I help the person who comes to me to assess the situation, and we try to figure out what could possibly follow from that.
So, are there any interventions wanted by the person that helps this person to cope with what has happened, to prevent further harassment situations, and possibly also to change things on a structural level. But very important, the focus is really on the person who comes to me. So it is always according to their wishes, what will follow, if there’s anything that needs to follow up, that is wanted to follow.
What the consultation includes from my side is also empowering. Empowering the person, reassuring that it was a very brave and good move to come to me, to speak to someone and to empower with everything that I can, because every person who speaks about sexual harassment that he or she has experienced is really very brave, as it is very hard after such incidents to really believe themselves and to talk to other people.
Thank you for this introduction. I will ask you further on in this interview how exactly people can contact you. But for now, I would like to know, maybe you can state the most common issues people approach you about. Is this something you can narrow down to, I don’t know, a few topics or is it really broad and very individual?
It is both actually. It is broad, and general and it’s also individual. And what I mean by this is that there are some incidents or some forms of sexual harassment that happen again and again because of structural issues. And then on the other hand, it is always individual, because people are different.
People are different in what they want, how much energy they have, and who is involved in the end, how dependencies are, and so on. And if you ask me about examples maybe of cases, I’d say what has come to my attention several times are harassment situations, of a verbal nature and also of a physical nature between supervisors, PhD supervisors and doctoral students. And so far, for example, that the supervisor has shared a lot of private information, intimate information about his relationship, about wife or whatever, and asked on the other side in turn. What is the situation with the PhD student?
So very, very intimate questions that really have nothing to do at the workplace or in this kind of situations. And where doctoral students then feel a lot of pressure on how to react as they have supervisors that grade them, that are responsible to write recommendations and things like that. So this is something that has, as I said, come to my attention several times. There has been also incidents of sexual harassment with groups, for example, in situations on travels, in seminar situations at other places, for example, that have to do with the university context, but somehow seem to be also of a private nature.
And these are really tricky situations. And I would mention a third situation, and that is stalking. That is situations where doctoral students have been stalked either by other students, for example, or places that took place within the university, but also sometimes situations of stalking outside of the university on the way to the university at the U-Bahn or something like that. So situations that really are very scary and that come with a lot of insecurity.
When I say the stalking situation, sometimes also included situations of sexist behaviour. And this has been, at least in my statistics, in my personal statistics, has happened more in surroundings that are male dominated.
I can imagine. Thanks a lot for sharing those examples. I would like to talk a bit more about the supervisor-doctoral researchers‘ relationship and how sexual harassment, discrimination and violence play a role in this relationship because obviously, as you already mentioned, it’s a hierarchical relationship and there are power issues going on here. You already mentioned a few examples. Are there any other types of issues that come up frequently among doctoral researchers in particular?
In my observation, there is a group of doctoral students or researchers that are most at risk again, according to my counselling statistics. And those are usually female or non-binary people coming from other countries than from Germany, so internationals. And for them, the situation is very tough because additional to this power asymmetry and hierarchical situation that you already also mentioned in your question, there is isolation. Very often, these people do not have friends or family that they can turn to that can support them.
There is also a lack of knowledge about the culture in Germany, but also at the university, how are things handled? What can I do? What is expected of me? There’s also a factor of dependency very often, as other students also have from grades, from recommendations, but also from visa, for example.
Financing plays a role. Also, the fact that sometimes their research is funded or approved of by their family, their parents, and now they feel the pressure to perform even if they have been sexually harassed. So there’s a lot of pressure and a lot of dependencies. And one more fact I would say that is even more severe with internationals is that they do not know where to turn to. They do not know whether they would receive support and if so, where would they turn to? What would happen? So a lot of things that are not known.
So hopefully a lot of people from the international community are listening to this podcast today to get an idea where to turn to. And I can imagine, as you already mentioned, like cultural norms might be also more difficult to understand. But even for Germans who grew up in the German culture, I can imagine that it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between something is like a harmless flirt or maybe a compliment. And when does it actually cross the line to something that is harassment?
I’m still talking about the supervisor-doctoral researcher-relationship. How can I actually distinguish between those two? Are there any criteria that can help making that distinction? Is it something more personal that I have to decide how I interpret the situation or are there criteria out there?
I think the most important criteria is when you do not feel good with what happens to you or what has happened to you. If you feel somehow ashamed or have a bit of a stomach ache or you think about it all the time, you’re unsure, you think you’re overreacting, then I think it’s a good indicator that something was wrong. That it was behaviour that was not a flirt, but behaviour that falls in the category of harassment. Sexual harassment, discrimination, violence is one-sided and unwanted by the person who is experiencing it.
There is no consent by the person who is experiencing it and the person really doesn’t feel good in the situation. And I think that’s a very crucial factor if you think about whether it was sexual harassment or not in the situation. In general, I would like to add that sexual harassment, discrimination and violence means that someone, can be also several people, are demonstrating abusing their power. It is very much about power relations.
Someone is maybe trying to get control over you, or sometimes it might not be the aim because some harassed perpetrators might not aim at this. However, it will be the result that if you experience it, that you might feel degraded, that you might feel ashamed, devaluated, humiliated, at least not respected by the other person. And that’s why sexual harassment, discrimination and violence is a form of gender-based discrimination.
What would you say to someone who’s listening to this podcast right now, but unsure whether to reach out or not, maybe because they worry things could get worse?
I would say, I can understand that. And I can understand how difficult it might be for you in this situation. And at the same time, I would encourage this person to speak to someone, to not stay alone with what has happened and what is still working in this person. This can be a person that is trusted a lot, a friend, for example, or a fellow PhD researcher, when there’s trust.
And it can also be me, or it can be also gender equality officers at the different institutes and faculties that we have. It is always good not to stay alone with that. And when you come to me and you’re not sure, that’s perfectly fine, because we will look at what has happened, how you feel about it, and what can you do in order to make you feel better. So it’s really not a must.
There’s no criteria to say, okay, only if this and this happens, you can come to me and talk to other people. No, definitely if you’re unsure, that’s perfect to talk to someone else.
And if I want to reach out to you, how exactly can I do that? Do I need to call? Can I write an email? Is it also possible to contact you anonymously at first or how does it work?
You can contact me via email, and you can also book an appointment. We have this website, no means no, at Freie Universität Berlin. And if you look at this website, you find information on sexual harassment, discrimination, and violence in general. And you also find my contact details and you find also the possibility where to book appointments.
And for this appointment or for making an appointment, you just need an email address. That doesn’t need to include your name, just an email address. And then we make an appointment either via Webex or in person. Or if you tell me you prefer something else via telephone or that we go for a stroll somewhere, we can also do that.
And for me, it is not important to have the name. It is only helpful for later, if it comes to later, when the person, for example, decides to file a formal complaint, then it will be necessary to give the name, but not when talking to me. That’s absolutely not necessary at this point.
So I understand what happens is you get an appointment, you talk to you online or in person. You already said before that this conversation is 100% confidential. And let’s say I want to file a formal complaint. What kind of support can I expect from you, especially if the person involved is my supervisor or my PI?
Very difficult situation. And we would in our consultations figure out together if a formal complaint would be a good option or if there are any other options where we could involve maybe other supervisors or the supervisor of your supervisor. And this we would discuss and find out. And for this, it would be helpful if the person who comes to me has some kind of idea who to trust within their faculty or the place where the research is done, so that we can find a person who can be supportive.
When a formal complaint is wanted, I would try to assess based on my knowledge, not because I’m a lawyer, but based on my experiences and knowledge so far, whether a complaint would be something helpful and something that could work. Or whether I’d say it’s a lot of energy that would be taken and the outcome would probably not be as expected by the person affected. So I would, as I said, I would try to counsel on the options and I would also, if wanted, gather information from what is needed, if there are any deadlines. Yeah, I would gather all the information.
What is possible, apart from a formal complaint, is also that we might agree that I talk to a supervisor with the consent of the person who’s come to me and to discuss with him or her options. But only in this case, and that was not the case you constructed, that it’s not the supervisor who is the person who is harassing, but who could be a person with authority and also responsibility to do something about it.
So you wouldn’t talk to the aggressor directly?
Me, no. I would not do this. However, it could be possible that I approach a supervisor – again, only if there’s trust and only if we talked about it –, and ask the supervisor or recommend that he or she approaches and invites the aggressor for a conversation.
And I could be within this conversation, I could support the supervisor in how to do this conversation. But I wouldn’t approach the aggressor myself because I’m not in this role. My role is the confidential counselling and I’m with the person who came to me and I don’t see my role in approaching the aggressor. That would be difficult.
And I think that this should be also coming from people at the institution with, as I said, responsibility and authority, and these are the deans, for example, or the leaders of research groups, something like that.
Now, not everyone listening may be directly affected, but many may find themselves in situations where they notice something or feel that something isn’t quite right. What if I’m a bystander or colleague? Can I also turn to you for advice? Can I also report incidents directly, anonymously, or not?
Yes, you could do that. It hasn’t happened so much, but the role of the bystanders is a very, very important role. The bystanders as people who observe something, who have heard something while not being affected themselves, but who can support and do something in the situation and help to change the situation. So yes, please also feel invited to come to me and we could also figure out something that could also help you as a bystander in what could be done, what could be options for the future, for example, or also if the situation is still ongoing.
And it would also be very important information that would influence my other part of the work, which we haven’t talked about yet, which is also in changing structures and in preventing sexual harassment, discrimination and violence in the first place. That would be the goal anyway, to not have it. So if we know of situations or also of places or structural deficits where things happen, we can use it to change things in a customized way.
And that’s definitely something I want to talk with you about in a minute. I just have one quick follow-up question to the topic of the bystanders. If I find myself in a situation where I see something is going on, where definitely one person is not happy anymore, would you recommend stepping in right at the spot if I feel comfortable doing so? Or would you say that’s something maybe you have to really think well about and you shouldn’t do it without reflecting maybe what it can lead to?
If you feel strong enough and you have the impulse to stop the situation, to say something, then please do so. You have seen discrimination, you have seen harassment, and this can only be good to say that you noticed it, you observed it, and you think it’s wrong. Even if the person who might have been affected or who it was directed with might not have felt like this or might be uncomfortable with this, it’s good for yourself because somehow, you’ve also been affected. You have seen something, and you think it’s not okay and you show a stop sign.
So if you feel you can do this, yeah, please intervene. If not, if you don’t think it’s possible in this situation, and it can be very difficult and it needs a lot of courage, I think, to step in. We could, for example, discuss then options what could be done afterwards like talking to the person who it was directed at and tell him or her that you’ve seen it and that if the person wants to talk about it and then you could both go and find counselling or develop some ideas of what to do.
Or yeah, there could be also other ways, maybe also the person who has been the aggressor could also be approached. But this really it’s something that also involves courage and should in many cases be thought of well, because especially if you think of a situation where the hierarchy levels, the power levels are very, very different, and you rather think yourself being in a lower power position, then this in general wouldn’t be a good idea. But we could talk about it and think about the situation and figure out what could be helpful for you as a bystander and what could also probably be helpful for the person who has experienced it.
Thanks a lot for clarifying that. Now, back to what we already said. The other part of your work is working on changing structures, preventing incidents in the first place. I know that you’re working on a care and intervention plan with colleagues. Could you tell us a little more about this plan, what’s its purpose and what does it aim to change?
The care and intervention plan, that’s the project which has been initiated by my colleague Katharina Schmidt and me. And that’s something we really would love to see that in reality at Freie Universität Berlin. And this care and intervention plan includes or means that if people will have experienced any form of sexual harassment, discrimination, violence, go to any place at the university and report it. And at this point, it’s not important whether it’s a big formal complaint or if it’s just I want to talk to you about something has happened to me that this has been taken seriously and this report helps the person of course who has been affected and at the same time it helps the university to change structures and to learn from what has happened.
And that would mean that each case would be looked at from a team, we would call it then the intervention team, with people who are trained on the subject and who would coordinate all the actions that would follow. Because right now, people can turn to basically anywhere, and then sometimes a gender equality officer does something, sometimes the person who is taking the complaint, or a colleague, or a supervisor, or the HR department, and it is not coordinated, and it doesn’t really go together. But then it would be taken together, and any report would be taken seriously and something would follow from that, some kind of intervention.
And interventions being on the level of the individual situation. So for example, some kind of interventions where the perpetrator is involved. where he or she can reflect on their behaviour or has to do some kind of balance. And on the level, again, of the faculty or of the place where this happened, and also for the whole university so what measures should be taken that we all learn from that and that the atmosphere, because there’s always a change in the atmosphere in the whole research group, for example, changes and that people know what happens, that also bystanders are taken seriously, and that there is some kind of development process also at the research departments or groups where something happens.
And this involves an attitude of Yes, we take every report seriously and it’s not our intention to investigate. We’re not the police or we are not in court, but we take it seriously and we do something without it. We don’t ignore it because we don’t know what to do or we think it’s not important enough, but we do something with it. And for this, as I said, a specialized group, the intervention team must be installed and will be installed, which works as transparent as possible, as confidential as possible, and also having the care of everyone involved.
It sounds maybe a bit like a fantasy, but I’m pretty sure that it could work and we actually know that it works from other universities, smaller universities though, but universities who have implemented it. That was in very, very brief words what the care and intervention plan includes. And we’ve started a process on developing it. And for this, we work together with the John F. Kennedy Institute. We use it as a pilot institute where we talk about it, where we talk about also terms – in English, very important. We talk about who could be in the intervention team, what would be the necessary conditions, what is all important. And then the idea is actually to develop such a care and intervention plan with a reporting system first at the John F. Kennedy Institute and then later would be the idea to have it for the whole university.
Besides the measures you just mentioned, is there anything else you would say that needs to change in structures or in attitudes maybe for universities to prevent sexual harassment, discrimination, and violence in the first place?
We must do more than just write: we do not accept sexual harassment, discrimination, violence or any other forms of discrimination at Freie Universität. We have the code of conduct. We have guidelines against sexual harassment, discrimination, violence. We have anti-discrimination guidelines. That’s very, very good. And there it’s written down several times. We do not accept it and we do not want it. And we do something about it.
That’s very important. Now we must do something about it. Now we must support people who say, I have experienced something, or people who say as bystanders, I have seen something. We must take this seriously and act.
And so far, this is not always the case. And it’s not the case also in a structured way. So that would be, I think, a big change. And also a big change would be the approach to say, okay, it’s not just the legal definition that is interesting for us. So we’re not looking at the general act of equal treatment, Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz, for example, or the penal law, the Strafgesetzbuch, and look what is defined there. And only if it’s defined there, a sexual harassment, then it’s valid for us.
So we must stop looking only at the legal definitions, because not everything is written in law. And we must understand where sexual harassment, discrimination and violence comes from, what conditions are important that it exists or that makes it difficult for people to speak up. And as I said again, we must take every report seriously and do something. And this would be a very new approach, where the focus is really on the affected people.
Thank you very much for elaborating. Before we come to an end of this interview, I would like to talk a little bit about the “No Means No”-slogan you’ve also been involved in or your website, part of your website is called like this, your email address. Could you tell us what it is about?
“No Means No” is an international slogan that I think can be recognized in what it stands for. It means if someone says no, then there has to be no. It is a slogan against sexualized discrimination, harassment and violence. As I said, it’s very international and you find it also in other languages and also some theatre plays work with it, so it has its foundation.
However, and yes, you’re right, we’re using it, we’re definitely using it, still we want to go further. Why should someone have to say no? We should focus on what is before. Why does someone else think he or she can harass another person so that he or she must say no? This must stop. So there should be a prevention on this. And in some countries, on some contexts, it’s rather the slogan, yes means yes where you have to give your consent right at the beginning. And that’s why I think we will slowly leave the slogan, no means no, and go for another slogan.
We have around November 25, that’s the International Day Against Violence Against Women. We have activities each year and for that we have used different slogans. And I think the last slogan was for the university and against sexualized discrimination, harassment and violence. So that’s actually the focus, that we want to do everything for the university, for all the members of the university, and we all have responsibility to do something and to act against sexual harassment, discrimination and violence.
Great. If that’s something you can already link to, the event in November, we can definitely do that on the podcast episode website as well. We’re also definitely going to link to your contact so that people who listen to this podcast can get in contact with you if they want to. They can get more information. So we’re going to put a whole list of links on the DRS podcast website so that everybody listening knows they can actually get the information right there as well.
I can tell you already as a little spoiler that this year in November, there will be a workshop with Dr. Gina Sissoko. She is herself a postdoc and a researcher and a psychologist from Yale University, and she will talk about microaggressions, and also how we can identify them and what can we do about it. And a second, I think, very interesting event, and I would really like to invite you all to come to this, will be a theatre play on masculinity because we definitely want to reach everyone and we want to engage males also in our fight against sexual harassment, discrimination, violence. So November 25th and November 27th and I’ll be happy to provide you with the links.
… in 2025, in case people are listening to this podcast later, but I guess that’s something that’s happening every year in November, but this year with two very interesting topics. Wendy Stollberg, thank you so much for sharing all your expertise here, for giving many examples, for explaining to our listeners what sexual harassment, discrimination and violence what is about, and also the university is doing to fight it. Thank you so much for your time.
My pleasure. Thank you.
outro
That was such an eye-opening and thoughtful conversation with Wendy Stollberg. I hope it helped clarify some of the difficult but important questions around sexual harassment, discrimination, and violence at university.
One of my key takeaways: you don’t have to go through anything alone. Whether you’ve experienced something directly or are unsure about a situation, there’s confidential help available. And it’s okay to reach out, even if you don’t know whether something counts. If it doesn’t feel right, it’s worth talking about.
We’ve also touched on the university’s structural efforts, like the care and intervention plan and upcoming workshops and events aimed at prevention and awareness. If you want to learn more, we’ve linked helpful resources, including Wendy Stollberg’s contact information and the “No Means No” website, on the page of this episode. And remember, a safer university culture is something we all help create, by speaking up, by supporting others, and by challenging harmful structures together.
That was Dr. Marlies Klamt. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you’ll tune in again for the next episode of the DRS Podcast.
This interview was conducted by our trainer and co-host of our podcast Dr. Marlies Klamt