Time’s Up Organization to Cease Operations

Time’s Up — the anti-harassment organization that formed five years ago in the midst of the #MeToo movement — is ceasing operations at the end of January, the Associated Press reports.

The organization has been under scrutiny since a New York Attorney General’s report found in late 2021 that Time’s Up leaders advised then-Governor Andrew Cuomo after he was accused of sexual harassment. In the wake of the scandal, CEO Tina Tchen and Board Chair Roberta Kaplan resigned.

“We’re going to rebuild and reset and come back in a way that honors our mandate, incorporates the voices of our critics, learns from our findings… and holds ourselves accountable but also lives up to our potential,” Ashley Judd, a Time’s Up board member and Harvey Weinstein accuser, said at the time.

Judd and remaining board members — board chair Gabrielle Sulzberger and Colleen DeCourcy — will all step down.

The organization raised more than $22 million in its first 10 months, thanks to its high profile debut at the Golden Globes in 2018, with major backers that included Oprah Winfrey, Meryl Streep, and Shonda Rhimes. The organization raised $24 million after that year’s Globes for Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund (TULDF), and Time’s Up will direct its remaining $1.7 million funds to TULDF.

“Very simply, the Legal Defense Fund really reflects who we were not only at our inception but really at our core,” Sulzberger told AP. “We really just decided that at the end of the day, we needed to go back to our roots. (The fund) was the first initiative that we formed and funded, and remains at the heart of everything we stood for.”

The fund is administered by the National Women’s Law Center, which provides legal and administrative help to workers, many of whom identify as low-income and people of color.