One thing you seem to continue ignoring despite this being pointed out by other commenters is how if one’s goal is to become an academic in a given field…especially one as sub-specialized as this Prof’s field, you as a grad student or even junior faculty are constrained as the senior Profs have the power to make or break your career. This is moreso the case with rock star Profs who are movers and shakers in the field and have the power to determine not only who graduates or gets plum initial tenure-track positions, but also grants to continue one’s research.
One case I personally know of which illustrates this is what happened between an adviser and a college classmate’s father several decades ago. Said adviser was the mover and shaker in his sub-specialization of biology and was the head of the grant committee which determined who got grants to conduct research in the field.
Instead of “killing him off” by failing him during the PhD candidacy stage or even at the dissertation defense, the Prof went for a much more insidious passive-aggressive method. He allowed my friend’s father to graduate with his PhD, but then passed word that no one was to hire him for a tenure-track or any job whatsoever in other academic departments with the implied threat that doing so meant risking future grants to do research in that subfield. Keep in mind this subspecialization was so small that it was an extremely small tight-knit community worldwide. End result. friend’s father never got to use that PhD and was effectively forced out of the subfield and academia altogether.
DrGoogle, I don’t know what you intended by this remark, but the way it comes across is that you are blaming the victims for being harassed because they–unlike you–didn’t have the “right” kind of character. That’s not only untrue and unfair, it’s insulting.
The women who filed the harassment claims to the university are not “enjoying” this at all. It’s not enjoyable for anyone involved in the whole sad, sordid mess. People are trying to fix something that’s broken in academia and in society.
No, I’m not blaming the victim. But if somebody grope me in public, my immediate reaction is to punch the guy on the face, really even if I’m only 60% of the guy. It’s my character. I do things regardless of the career consequences. This even before I was married, I don’t put up with nonsense at work.
Yea but I kept reading people who is afraid because he is a big star. I’m crazy enough to risk my career to take down a big star.
I’m sure they don’t enjoy it but from the article, one of the women who was harassed, apologized for not brought up the thing sooner, she effectively enable this guy to harass more young women.
I’m still wondering if you truly understand what it means to “risk one’s career” in a subspecialization of a field in academia. It’s not losing a job in one corporation where one has the ability to move to another job in another corporation, smaller firm, or start one’s business.
It’s much closer to the situation of someone who is permanently banned from working in a given industry one’s specialized education trained them for such as law, accounting, pharmacy or finance/banking.
If one is banned from a given industry and one’s education was so specialized whether in reality or in the perceptions of those doing hiring, it’s extremely hard to start over considering the high sunk cost of education and training which is now rendered almost completely irrelevant*. That’s much closer to the situation someone who is in grad school for a PhD or a recent Phd graduate trying to establish a tenure-track career.
Incidentally, this was one frequent concern of a former date and HS classmate who went into Pharmacy and found she hated the work, but feels trapped in that career because her education(5-6 year degrree) was so specialized that she feels she'll need to start from zero if she leaves that career.
It is true that bullies look for what they perceive to be easy targets. That’s not blaming the targets. It’s just describing bullying behavior. Most bullies are cowards. If there are many potential victims to pick on, they’ll steer toward the one who seems less likely to fight back. Just because you’re evil doesn’t mean you’re stupid.
“I’m crazy enough to risk my career to take down a big star.”
I believe you. Some people are natural born whistleblowers. They’re standing up to bullies on the playground even if they get the stuffing kicked out of them. It’s a personality type.
I am glad that someone has framed this as bullying. Anyone who feels the victim asked for it, should ask himself how he would feel if he was massaged or groped by a powerful professor, I really don’t see any difference in the offence to propriety. There is no way these were welcome advances, and no, I don’t want your massage.
Bullying is way worse than you think and often includes a large imbalance in power, meaning the bully has the power to hurt your career long-term. Often the bully has some special power due to status in the field or perceived potential as a leader. Look up “workplace bullying”. It is not hard to know if you are being bullying, but the solutions are usually all bad, from leaving a job you like (if you can) to being bullied more or being bullied by a new group of people.
And don’t trust your personality to make you immune to this … just need the right set of circumstances, including being good at your job, to make you the target of typical a group of bullies. They are smarter than playground bullies and have had many more years to hone their skills. And they have friends in high places.
UCB needs to make this right - seems like they are being pillioried by the press, which typically leads to dismissal or resignation (sometimes with pay, but oh, well). They are likely loath to remove a scholar who is bring them fame and research dollars.
@intparent I doubt that Maria Klawe would make light of the situation as she has done a lot to promote women in STEM. The dean should have brought this to her attention and I’m hoping that it’s his failure to report the situation and not her looking the other way. Your daughter and others can report him to her anonymously.
@DrGoogle you typically have great comments, but should be a bit more supportive of people who have worse experiences than you do, including being harassed by someone that should have been the highlight of their career and a potential mentor. Just hope you can escape the workplace without having someone bully or harass you, there are some really strange people out there that do not obey normal rules and seem to also have powerful friends. If you can avoid these people all the time, great, if they somehow end up in your chain of command, good luck…
Not sure the D is at Harvey Mudd, but seems like some contact with the admin needs to be maintained. If there was really an issue that led to his being censored, they should try to limit further contact or his power over your D. I am not sure how he could know it was her, unless someone leaked that info, and I think many men would also feel uncomfortable with blatant inappropriate behavior.
In some ways, that’s why we should all welcome yearly sexual harassment training, so that people who need it get it without someone really having to put themselves in harm’s way. It also means that there is a clear language on what is harassment, how to report it (maybe anonymously in some cases, like a rogue professor talking about hot students in class) and maybe even a clear way to stop it.
Rate my professor would certainly be interesting to see someone mention creepy or worse behavior in a review, but it may just work (not sure it would not be subject to possible libel etc).
This is something we haven’t talked about much, but the age and experience imbalance plays a big role in this. These are men in their 40s or 50s – and women who are 18-26. The power imbalance isn’t just because of tenure or position in their field, they are also far more experienced at this manipulation of younger, less experienced women. Especially undergraduates.
Don’t really want to talk about the specific school, but she isn’t going to do anything until she graduates. But she tells me she WILL be tracking in his class she has to take before graduating, and keeping notes on any incidents so she can follow up. If he behaves – well, then, apparently her previous complaint did some good. So far I have not gotten directly involved, except to advise as she has brought the issue to me (and she did ask my advice). But if I thought he was physically harassing her, I would be on the phone immediately to the college president.
Find it hard to believe one of these guys would pursue a libel suit if the reporting on RateMyProfessor or wherever is truthful.
Probably on the wrong side of the power relationship, or they believed that they were. Bullies in the workplace maintain their position by keeping others in fear that calling them out on the bullying will be detrimental to their careers. Public exposure often severely weakens a bully’s power position.
I have certainly drilled into my kids that if they are assaulted on campus, to call the local police, not just campus security. And certainly would make a call to both in an assault situation.
While I do agree that sexual harassment is a big issue and that he handled it poorly, I really don’t like articles like this which have no pretense of trying to have any form of objectivity. I don’t like public “witch hunts” in general, even if they are for good causes, because they tend to act on speculation (what allegations have been proven?) and assume the worst in people when it is not always so.
It’s not tenure that’s protecting him - it’s the fact that he has a significant and important body of work and that it would be painful to let him go because he brings a lot to Berkeley. I think that in some cases, many years of high-quality service do warrant a bit of forgiveness. I would quickly change my opinion if he did it again.