![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The goal of this article is to provide a practical guidance for anyone who has experienced sexual harassment or assault in academia and is considering the possibility of pursuing disciplinary measures by means of filing a Title IX complaint. Sexual harassment is an abuse of power by those who possess it against those who do not; the Title IX process does not remedy this power imbalance. And, academic institutions often have interests that compete with the welfare of their students, and which may enable harassers. We address some of the risks that the Title IX process may create for those who are already vulnerable, and suggest that some of the responsibility for enacting reforms should be taken up by professional associations. Because they often control professional journals and conferences, they could be effective advocates for a more fair and equitable educational environment if they choose to take a more active role in discouraging misconduct in their disciplines.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. See, for example, #MeTooPhd, a forum for female academics to discuss gender-related harassment and abuse, and Karen Kelsky’s crowd-sourced, anonymous survey of gender harassment incidents in academia, which has documented over 2,400 abuse claims and is publicly available at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S9KShDLvU7C-KkgEevYTHXr3F6InTenrBsS9yk-8C5M/edit#gid=1530077352.
2. Universities may enable harassers to go unpunished for years. For example, the University of California at Berkeley permitted astronomer Geoffrey Marcy to remain in his job for a decade as numerous charges of sexual harassment were made against him; negative media coverage following a Buzzfeed story led to his resignation. In the aftermath of the Marcy story, the institution investigated 26 allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault by faculty, administrators, and university staff (Wong Citation2016). Subsequent analysis of 19 of those cases showed that of those who were fired, all were staff members, while tenured faculty members faced minor or no discipline (Levin Citation2016). Around this same time, Berkeley law school dean Sujit Choudhry resigned from his administrative role after his employer initially failed to discipline him for sexually harassing a female employee; he remained a tenured faculty member and was permitted to resign on his own terms (Levin Citation2017). In a more tragic case, in 2011, University of Idaho assistant professor Ernesto Bustamente murdered a graduate student who had ended a relationship with him after she filed a complaint with his institution, illustrating the danger that students face when universities fail to heed repeated warning signs about potentially abusive faculty members (Murphy Citation2011).
3. For details, see Aldhous (Citation2018); Gluckman (Citation2018); Flaherty (Citation2018); Retraction Watch (Citation2018); Cunningham (Citation2018).
4. For additional clarification, we are accusing a white, senior, cismale faculty member at a prestigious university of sexual harassment, inappropriate sexual conduct, and professional retaliation as a direct result of the harassment. We have also accused him of retaliation in response to filing these complaints. We are both white, ciswomen who have tenured positions at public institutions.
5. The authors have archived all PSR posts on this topic weekly from mid-January through April 2018.
6. This is documented in the witness statements that were provided by the University of Michigan and Michigan State University that summarized the content of the complaints.
7. You are also eligible to file a complaint against another student enrolled at your institution. However, here our focus is on the asymmetric power relationship between senior faculty and those who lack tenure or who are graduate students.
8. One of us waited a decade and a half before speaking up. The other waited two and a half decades.
9. These differences are also seen in the American Association of University Professors’ (Citation1994) position on sexual harassment in academia when compared to the position of the American Association of University Women (AAUW Citation2018). The former places more emphasis on protecting faculty from complaints, while the latter focuses more on protecting women from harassment and assault.
10. See postscript.
11. This is a similar strategy to the letter addressed to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the wake of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings from 65 women who were not assaulted by him in high school (Golshan Citation2018).
12. See chapter 6 in Johnson, Widnall, and Benya (Citation2018) for a more detailed discussion of the role of professional organizations in combatting sexual harassment in academia.
13. APSA has a Committee on Professional Ethics, Rights, and Freedoms, as well as an ombudsman. One of us communicated extensively with a representative from this committee throughout the spring of 2018 and requested that some of the reforms discussed at the end of this essay be considered. Those efforts were rebuffed. Their policy has a two-year window. This limits the ability of graduate students and untenured faculty members to report harassment by senior members of the profession, because it requires that they incur unreasonable risks to do so.
14. The association was finally forced to act after our harasser posted a shocking message on the W ebsite of the prestigious journal. The reaction of the rest of the discipline was swift, described by a representative of the organization as a “firestorm” (Gluckman Citation2018). Our accuser was then “pressured to resign” in the wake of the controversy (Cunningham Citation2018).
15. See the postscript for an important exception to this “silence.”
16. Rate My Professor permits anyone to submit comments about an instructor or course. As a result, such ratings are riddled with pranks but also with harassment. One of us received numerous odd comments from people unlikely to be her students, which were then used to berate her elsewhere.
17. There were many such threads on Political Science Rumors in the spring of 2018.