Julie Cruse is the author of the new memoir The Burn List: A Memoir of Abuse from Home to Higher Education.
Q: What inspired you to write this memoir?
A: There was never any grandiose plan for a book. One night, I dashed off about 20 pages. And the next night, I wrote 10 more. My counterpart (himself a writer) was like, “if you get to a hundred, you have a book.” Six weeks later, I had written 180,000 words.
That’s a big block of text to stare at.
But very quickly, the chapters on abuse in higher education urged me forward as a matter of public concern.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Ah. That’s a secret. If you want to know, you’ll have to read the book! The clues are in there. And you’re going to love it.
Q: How long did it take to write the book?
A: I wrote the initial draft in a six-week fever dream. Seven months later, I had a final version and a publishing contract. I think, people tell me at least, that’s fast?
Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: For so long, I felt like I had been put in this tiny cage, where I couldn’t move. As I wrote, the cage got a little bigger. Big enough to walk around in, and inspect the bars. Each page loosened the bolts. And eventually, I took the whole thing apart.
All the people who built that cage are in it now, and I’m standing outside of it.
It’s pretty cool to hear from readers. Whether it's because they loved it, or they relate to it, or (my personal favorite) they couldn’t put it down, I get a jolt of camaraderie every time. I even heard from someone in Canada a couple days after the book launch. And I’m like, wow. Here I thought I’d be lucky if an old friend from my hometown picked it up.
I hope The Burn List raises awareness about coercive control in higher education.
Right now, academia functions like a dysfunctional family. Everyone tolerates “Uncle Bob” or “Aunt Betty” at dinner, even though it’s an open secret that they abuse students and staff. But that’s because everyone knows that it’s the squeaky wheel that gets greased.
So it goes on, unchecked. People get hurt. Careers get derailed. Lives get ruined. And everyone shuffles back to class like it’s just another Tuesday.
The Burn List is a check against that. It’s like saying, “Well, if she did it, who else might leak the truth?”
If this book kicks the door down for other survivors to tell their stories, that’s one mission accomplished.
If it leads to Title IX reform, that’s an epic win.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: My next book, Ivory Cuffs: Human Trafficking in Higher Education, is well underway. I'm also finishing a recovery workbook for people rebuilding their sense of self after institutional abuse.
At academicabuse.com, a hub of data and resources I created to help individuals identify and defend against the problem, I keep very busy. I run a data dashboard that tracks global allegations of misconduct in higher education, and I send weekly reports on it to subscribers.
The first annual report is also live. Which was really interesting. There were nearly 6,000 stories tracked, and most of them were on discrimination, harassment, or Title IX. Which, there can be a lot of overlap between.
For anyone who wants a copy of that, head over to academicabuse.com to sign up and download. You’ll get the recovery workbook there too, when it’s up.
I’m also building a podcast, The Academic Verdict, where survivors of misconduct in higher ed can anonymously share what happened to them and how they navigated it. The goal is to create a sort of survivor-driven blueprint for what works and what doesn’t. I’m anticipating a May launch of that.
Most recently, I created a petition calling for anonymous complaint pathways under Title IX. If there’s anything that readers of The Burn List now know, it’s that victims need ways to be able to safely report what happened to them. And I have a whole model in mind for that. We have the technology to do it. We just need a commitment.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: We need to start talking about what I call student trafficking, the subject of my next book and the lived account in The Burn List.
Labor or sex obtained through force, fraud, or coercion is, by definition, human trafficking. In higher education, force is controlling a student's housing, funding, degree progress, and professional future (simultaneously, I might add) — or threatening to retract it all. Fraud can be false promises of career opportunities or scholarships that never materialize. Coercion is often using grades or funding to obtain sex or labor.
College systems are built for student trafficking. Yet no one is talking about that. Which is why it persists. Instead, these human rights violations are called "sexual misconduct," or "unpaid research.” Those terms neuter what’s actually happening.
Then there's debt bondage: using debt to control a person's behavior or extract their labor. Debt bondage is a recognized form of trafficking. Students go six figures into debt to attend these institutions, and that debt becomes its own trap. You need the degree to escape it. So you tolerate whatever it takes to get there.
In no other industry would that be acceptable. I've worked over 60 blue-collar jobs. I always got paid to train.
And prestige is the con that holds it together. The brand of a university is powerful enough to make people accept conditions they'd never tolerate anywhere else. It's why survivors stay silent. It's why faculty look away. It's why parents keep writing checks. The name on the diploma launders everything that happened to get it there.
The Burn List puts all that on blast. But my forthcoming book, Ivory Cuffs: Human Trafficking in Higher Education, drives it home.
In a hundred years, I believe people will look back at this era of college like it’s the dark ages.
But if it takes someone ripping off the ivory muzzle to make that happen, then watch me.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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