Ross E. Cheit, J.D., Ph.D.

Board Director, Center for Institutional Courage
Professor of International & Public Affairs and Political Science, Brown University 
About Ross E. Cheit

I oversee the Education Committee for the Center for Institutional Courage, which works to bridge the gap between research and practice. My own academic focus is known as Law and Society, and I’m broadly interested in issues concerning governance and ethics. I have deeply researched the social and legal responses to highly contested child sexual abuse cases in America (circa late 1980s-early 1990s). This research culminated in a major book, The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children (Oxford University Press). It evolved out of my own experience with recovered memory, an experience that placed me in the middle of a “war” among psychologists in the early 1990s. My highly corroborated case was met with institutional denial on the part of the San Francisco Boys Chorus. They eventually issued an apology, but not before I felt the pain of what Jennifer Freyd later conceptualized as institutional betrayal. Notably, the MeToo Movement has yet to lift up the voices of children. In my free time, I ride my bicycle on the awesome coastal roads of the Ocean State.