That would make for fascinating reading. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
My D1 who works in higher education consulting made the comment to me that one reason universities protect these profs is because some of them bring in millions in grant money.
@tiger1307 I believe those investigational records relating to students are protected under FERPA. The only way that I have seen disclosure of the hearing records is when there is litigation associated with the matter and the hearing transcripts sometimes find their way into the court record.
When the reports are turned over the names of the students are usually blacked out. Harvest you should read Marken. It is directly on point and involved underage kids . It is also in California
I just googled…and am dumbfounded by how badly Berkeley handled this. It seems the acting chair of the department sent out an email announcing a faculty meeting. In it he says
and asks his colleagues to reach out to Geoff! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/science/geoffrey-marcy-berkeley-astronomy-faculty-letter.html?_r=0 (The full email is available on-line but seems to be on blogs I’m not supposed to link.) Talk about being tone deaf!
@tiger1307 - I just read a quick summary of Marken. In that case it appears that no student witnesses were interviewed and therefore the record would have contained no information protected by FERPA as Marken was a teacher not a student. All that Michael Chwe was seeking was the investigative findings by the District that resulted in the reprimand of Marken. If no students were interviewed then those findings likely would not contain any protected information.
Not saying that there are not ways to get a hold of transcripts in cases like Marcy’s. If all the complainants consent, then the records can find their way into the pubic domain. Buzzfeed seems to have them and my best guess is that the complainants had some hand in that disclosure. They also have internal Berkeley emails linked in some of their articles so you know someone from inside the university is forwarding them.
In any sane organization, you don’t bad-mouth people after they leave, even if they sucked or did something highly morally questionable. It’s best to let bygones be bygones and I see a message like that as a professional courtesy more than any form of endorsement.
Cuz… after all, Marcy IS suffering the most from this. Hogwash. The women who put up with this for the past 15 years are the victims. He is just having the consequences of his behavior come home to roost.
It’s best to pay attention to the story before posting uninformed messages.
Sequence of events:
- Berkeley investigates allegations, determines Marcy harassed four women, tells him he better not do it again.
- (Months later) Buzzfeed publishes article about how Marcy harassed four women and remained unpunished.
- Berkeley Astronomy professors, postdocs and grad students find out, by reading Buzzfeed, about Marcy harassment.
- Department chair sends out message announcing staff meeting, includes part about “Of course, this is hardest for Geoff in this moment.”
- Astronomy professors, postdocs and grad students are sizzling mad that Marcy was unpunished and that department chair thinks that harassment is harder on harassers than on victims.
- Story has gone viral
- Astronomy professors, postdocs and grad students write letters saying Marcy has to go
- Marcy quits under pressure
When the department head sent out the letter, he wasn’t in a position to let bygones be bygones. Bygones weren’t yet bygone.
Wonder who will be teaching Astronomy 24 now?
http://fss.berkeley.edu/seminar.lasso?sem_ID=SM007204
Let him receive the consequences of his actions. But if you think that it’s a good thing to bad-mouth a coworker who leaves in disgrace, then I will simply have to disagree and say that that’s something you should NOT do. It’s a professional courtesy.
This is precisely why I don’t like public “pursuits of justice” even when the cause is right and the initial decision was unfair: because vigilante justice isn’t really any form of justice and the crowds have to be appeased whether or not the person in question was in the right.
When Basri sent around the appalling message, Marcy wasn’t leaving in disgrace. He was staying, not in disgrace, and his colleagues were invited to sympathize with him at having to deal with the horror of not being punished in any way for preying on undergraduates and driving them out of science.
Anyway a crime can in fact be hardest on the perpetrator. A robber might be bitten on the ass by your dog and genuinely suffering, though by his own fault.
And this at a school known for its liberalness. I’ll take a conservative STEM school any day. I never got any such treatment in the 1980’s.
Sorry, my D is at a STEM school that is quite apolitical, and if you read the whole thread there is a problem there. I don’t know why you think this has anything to do with the political leanings of the school, because that is irrelevant. If you think a CMC or Liberty ot Texas A&M or Rose-Hulman doesn’t have any of this going on, you have your head in the sand. And I will stop there, as political discussion is not allowed per the TOS.
Regarding “public pursuit of justice”, without public attention, he would have had only the reprimand, and really paid no price for his behavior. Nor would incoming female students be aware that they were potentially tying their carer aspirations to a serial sexual predator. I’d say publicity was needed, because the university was on their way to doing the minimum they could get away with and hoping no one noticed.
White male faculty members who bring in grant money, publish and are considered “distinguished” can do just about anything. Lord knows I"ve seen them get away with egregious conduct. Part of the protection of Perps is systemic and institutional. Perp faculty members will vote against a productive junior faculty member -for promotion, tenure or contract renewal-who rejects his advances or who acknowledges his wrong doing. Worse, because of the structure of academic departments, the Perp can often exert influence on his colleagues so that they too vote against the junior member. Naturally there will be other “reasons” for voting against the junior member. Reasons could be that the journals that the publications are in aren’t the very best. Or they could say that the studies show that they were influenced by the faculty member’s mentor. Or maybe some of the data used in the studies was generated at a previous university. It is easy to take the same record and make it sound excellent or flawed. The Perp often has enough clout to ensure that the record of those who object to his advances looks bad. This is very common. Think about middle school and bullying or mobbing. That is the mentality of many academic departments where Perps rule.Many victims don’t get the chance to be heard. Then when there are questions about why there are no females or people of color tenured, the department says the geographic area makes attracting them hard or they choose to move on due to… The situation described by the article exists in many universities across the US. And administration does not want to hear about it. The stories I could tell would shock you.
This Perps focus on students is a little less typical these days because it has become less PC to sexually harass students. Many Perps have turned their attention to junior faculty members instead. I probably should have said this at the start of my previous message.
This is the one part of the timeline that has me scratching my head a bit. I think it’s much more likely that they knew about it all along, and it was just the fact that it had gone public–along with the bad press that Berkeley’s non-response was getting–that finally gave them the nerve to band together and demand justice. They couldn’t do that until he was weakened and on the defensive.
I suspect that guys like this exist at many, if not most colleges, and it’s often pretty well known who they are. It takes some determined people to do something about it.
The problem was that the probation by the university was imposed in 2015, and not 10 years earlier when the complaint was first lodged and then buried by the Cal astronomy department. Having the independent investigation was–is!–what made a difference. It would have been better for Marcy as well to have earlier zero tolerance intervention.
The best thing to come out of this entire episode is that universities and departments will be taking concrete action to keep this from happening at their institutions. Clear communication to students about where to report harassment. Town halls about how to report. Obligatory reporting. Remember, Marcy’s actions were sometimes out in the open and witnessed by others who feared the repercussions of reporting. I’ve read of (male) professors who are hoping this starts a domino effect to get rid of the other bad apples.
Just because you didn’t receive this kind of treatment does not mean that it did not happen to others. Perhaps even at your school.