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Behind the MOOC Harassment Charges That Stunned MIT
An anonymous reader writes: The complainant in a sexual harassment case has come forward and told her story about what happened when she was a student in a MOOC led by a rockstar professor. "It would take almost a year before Harbi, with the help of MIT’s investigators, said she came to understand that Lewin’s interest in her was not motivated by empathy, and that their first conversations included inappropriate language. Shortly after contacting her, Harbi said, Lewin quickly moved their friendship into uncomfortable territory, and she was pushed to participate in online sexual role-playing and send naked pictures and videos of herself."
Woo hoo!
Another ahrassment thread. I'm here with a big bag of popcorn and ready to post.
Wiggle out of this one, harassment denialists!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
But how exactly did he force them to do what they did *Over the internet*
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Tell me more about how women are being oppressed by men and how I, as a man, should be ashamed of myself.
She thought she was sending naked pictures and could maybe win some extra points when grade time came around but it turned out she was just sending naked pictures with no long game payout and that's harassment.
WTF! How a 32 years old private English tutor can naively believe sending naked pictures was not involving her into sexual activities? I would consider this as consent, dot period. Perhaps Lewin was infringing the MIT policies, however I would not qualify this as harassment since she, as an adult, decided to go ahead with this from the beginning.
Achille Talon
Hop!
But how exactly did he force them to do what they did *Over the internet*
Unsurprisingly enough, your comment is directly addressed in the article:
What may be most difficult to understand, Harbi said, is why anyone would respond to Lewin’s requests. Harbi, who is originally from Algiers, Algeria, is open about having been sexually assaulted in the past, and said she struggles with abandonment issues. The more she tried to distance herself from Lewin, she said, the more he attempted to contact her through email and social media. Ultimately, Harbi said, she felt forced to “obey.”
“We all felt trapped,” Harbi said.
Dziech said Harbi’s history as a victim of sexual assault was relevant.
“That stays with you all of your life,” Dziech, who this quarter teaches a seminar on child and adolescent abuse, said. “You never get beyond it no matter how much therapy. It’s terrifying, and it raises another problem for all institutions: They can never know the background of the student -- in what way the student is vulnerable.”
Another top moderated comment by someone who couldn't take five minutes to read the article. How hard is it to RTFA? Do you understand that some women are more vulnerable to psychological control than others?
Rock out with your cock out!
She thought she was sending naked pictures and could maybe win some extra points when grade time came around but it turned out she was just sending naked pictures with no long game payout and that's harassment.
No, wrong wrong wrong wrong. Goddamnit how many illiterate people manage to get this far on Slashdot?! From THE FUCKING ARTICLE:
What may be most difficult to understand, Harbi said, is why anyone would respond to Lewin’s requests. Harbi, who is originally from Algiers, Algeria, is open about having been sexually assaulted in the past, and said she struggles with abandonment issues. The more she tried to distance herself from Lewin, she said, the more he attempted to contact her through email and social media. Ultimately, Harbi said, she felt forced to “obey.”
“We all felt trapped,” Harbi said.
Dziech said Harbi’s history as a victim of sexual assault was relevant.
“That stays with you all of your life,” Dziech, who this quarter teaches a seminar on child and adolescent abuse, said. “You never get beyond it no matter how much therapy. It’s terrifying, and it raises another problem for all institutions: They can never know the background of the student -- in what way the student is vulnerable.”
Slashdot: The place where the most "interesting" and "insightful" comments are completely made up fantasies about what actually happened.
So tired of this BS. We need a new federal law that says you have 90 days to report harassment, sexual or otherwise, or you are SOL. This wait a year crap is nothing but revenge of the ex most of the time. Who is to say she didn't initiate the relationship with a sexual phone call and then the professor responded from there by email. We have had far too many women cry wolf and permanently ruin careers and lives just to punish men when the relationship didn't go their way. I am all for punishing people who use their position of authority to harass others, but we have to have some basic sanity checks, and one of those needs to be the time it takes to be reported. And for all of you ladies out there, this kind of thing goes both ways, I know from personal experience.
I swear... if you're at Harvard you should know better than to allow yourself to be taken advantage of like that. Makes me think this is trumped up remorse retroactive harassment. She has absolutely nothing to lose.
Can we please not use cryptic, unexplained acronyms in posts? If you are going to write a story with a cryptic acronym like "MOOC" please explain what it means at least in the body of the post.
When I see a post title like "Behind the MOOC Harassment Charge" I have no idea what that means.
Tell me more about how women are being oppressed by men and how I, as a man, should be ashamed of myself.
Nowhere in the article did it say anything even remotely close to this. This article was about a specific incidence, not about statistics or the rate of these incidences or which sex is more guilty of it.
Shame on you, Slashdot, for moderating this shit up. Your role reversal of who the victim is in this story is disgusting. We should be talking about how a professor used their position as teacher of a MOOC to prey on a vulnerable student living a society where talking about harassment brings shame to your family.
The real shame is how the top moderated comments fail to understand psychological vulnerability and a knee jerk reaction to defend chauvinism. That's not what this is about and whoever moderated the parent up should feel ashamed for not taking five minutes to read the story at hand.
But it happened on the Internet!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Look ladies, yea I'm a middle aged white male, but why do some of you let these things happen to you?
Now I'm not saying this guy doesn't deserve to be castigated for demeaning women, but shesh ladies, you need to have some self respect. I'm not saying this wasn't harassment, but don't let some scumbag do this kind of thing to you. Where is the outcry for the way this woman was raised? Where is the outcry for the mentalities that lead to a woman who cannot or will not stand up for herself? Who thinks that this kind of behavior is OK? That asking for and expecting racy pictures over the internet is something you can do? Why do we see situations where women are OBVIOUSLY bullied into doing things they wouldn't or didn't really want to do?
I raised my daughter to not be afraid to say no and mean it. To tell these abusers to take a hike, don't be manipulated into doing things you don't want to. If they don't respect you, they are not worth dealing with. Don't suffer fools who disrespect you and above all, respect yourself enough to say "NO WAY scumbag!" and mean it regardless who's asking or what position they hold.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Whether or not there was a promise of quid quo, to trade dirty pictures with someone who is presently one's student is unacceptable. But you know what? I'm so numb from the constant barrage of social justice stories that I just don't give a shit anymore. Enough already.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Slashdot has been my home page for more than 15 years, but now i'm seriously considering throwing it away in favor of a real tech site that's actually "news for nerds" and not "why you nerds should feel ashamed of your kind", I care about science and tech, not about the hurt feelings of random people I've never heard about before.
I am with you there, welcome aboard the starship USS Sick of Slashdot's shit..
anyone else coming?
i think the argument is that she couldn't refuse since the professor was in a position of power.
I didn't think the grades from these courses counted for anything (if they even were grades) so where exactly did the power come from? She was under no obligation to keep up with the course and if someone started asking me fore nudes I'd just learn physics some other way.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
it's one thing to bash the stupid articles complaining about how their aren't enough white chicks in programming or whatever, but this shit is straight up sexual harassment. Of course, this shit happens just as often if not more with "liberal arts" professors, so no this isn't why "there are so few women in STEM" but it's just creepy and unprofessional bullshit. I work in education, I know there are a lot of, pardon the frankness, "slutty" women who come on to you, but dude, have some fucking professionalism, especially as some MIT bigshot....again, disgusting.
If you ask me it's the hysterical MRAs and islamophobes who are the ones that have been getting out of hand recently. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
anyone else coming?
Nope, not even breathing heavy.
I grant that I wouldn't want endless stories about this sort of thing, but Walter Lewin is a special case. He's possibly the most celebrated (relatively) current physics lecturer there is - if you have any interest at all you should seek out some of the videos of his lectures, they are terrific. And that's reasonably nerdy. It's also MOOC (massive open online course) related, and that's a new thing and internet-centric.
I appreciate this update to the previous story about his removal, the lack of any sort of real explanation left me with a rather bitter taste in my mouth. It still... the new story says that all of the evidence of his transgression came from his accuser, which... well. It would have been nice if they had thrown in a line about confirming the chat logs with Facebook, and an additional something about confirming that it was indeed him who said / sent these things and not just someone who had access to his account (when I worked at a distance learning program, I had access to all of the faculties' account pages - this is what the article says he used as proof of his identity to the student). But I'm able to make the assumption that the people investigating this are not completely incompetent. I had come away from the previous story unclear on just how this harassment had taken place, so the new story gives me a bit of satisfaction in that this was indeed unacceptable behavior.
I'm a physics professor at a mid-sized non-MIT university. I teach introductory physics using a "flipped" classroom, and I have in the past used Lewin's 8.01 lectures on YouTube as one of several online learning references for my students.
They are really good lectures, and I consider them a valuable tool for my students. But I also agree with MIT's decision to remove them from the OCW site: Lewin's alleged behavior is reprehensible and I do not want to promote him in my course.
So my question is, can anyone here suggest a replacement for his set of 8.01 lecture videos? I've found a few online, but nothing so far that is as high-quality as what I've been using from MIT. Suggestions are welcome! (and no, Khan Academy isn't there yet.)
Murphy's law: the semester started this week.
Lewin needs to hook up with Bill Cosby!
They are both natural entertainers.
They could score SRO crowds and probably make millions on the film rights.
Stand up comedy and physics - this is Nobel material.
That's addressed in the article.
The fact you say "The article" makes me wonder if you read either. There are two...
The thing is, I read both articles. Neither of them address the position of power issue. One says "she felt trapped". But how? That makes NO SENSE when you can so easily block or otherwise ignore people communicating solely over social media, which offer many means for blocking annoying people. There is no means of trapping someone.
I would understand how someone might "feel trapped" if they were a student attending a college into which they had put forward substantial tuition. I would understand if they were to gain credit from a course needed to move forward in education. Even just being in physical proximity I could see it. There are a lot of circumstances in which I can image someone feeling trapped in some way, where there was a small amount of power to leverage - but not in this case. The course was free, the grades if any counted for nothing. The moment the contact started getting lewd the person should have broke off contact, and could easily have done so.
I'll leave the RRTFA to the person willing to make an argument/ask a question that takes the entire article into account, as you have utterly failed to do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
anyone else coming?
Nope, not even breathing heavy.
out the airlock with you then, we will see how heavy you breathe then. Remember rule 31 of the internet on your way out along with the late David Carradine.
Ha ha ha!
"she was pushed to participate in online sexual role-playing and send naked pictures and videos of herself."
Are we to believe she could not refuse to participate much less withdraw from the MOOC at her own discretion?
sucks dog balls
There may have been a perception of power which may be enough
How? That does not seem reasonable.
Either way, it's incredibly stupid for someone in his position to get involved at all with a current student.
What he did is INCREDIBLY stupid. I'm not saying he does not bear primary fault in this. He had the most to lose also, it was just idiotic. Although if you were playing devils advocate, couldn't you claim he had a sexual addiction that compelled him to ask? That sounds as reasonable as saying the women had some kind of illness that compelled them to submit; in fact his actions speak even more strongly to there being a mental issue that overrode strong rational and moral reasons not to act as he did. The potential impact to him was proportionality much greater than any one of the women, exactly because of his position and status - and yet he appears to have contacted hundreds of women. How can you look at that and not claim he was mentally ill?
What the women did was stupid also though. They had no reason to send him nude images or video. At any time they could have simply ceased communication, and gotten what they wanted (physics education) from some other source.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
typical predatory behavior, singles out the weak from the pack to dine on it later.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
A 32 year old woman took a year to recognize that the harassment "started day one", and when she was "pushed" by her PHYSICS professor to participate in online sexual roleplay and send naked pictures (which she did?) she didn't comprehend that his interest in her might be more than academic?
At what age is someone expected to be able to deploy the word "no" on their own behalf?
-Styopa
I think that's where you have to draw the line. I mean a college-aged girl has to get over the fact that older men will be attracted to her, and make advances. Just because she's creeped-out by it, doesn't necessarily mean it's inappropriate.
Just a quick note-- she wasn't a "college-aged girl"-- she was 32.
Ultimately gender equality means others have the right to hit on her, and she has the right to tell them to fuck-off.
And if he or she doesn't stop? This really isn't about getting the nerve up to ask for a date. This is an almost classic example of a person in a position of power finding a mark to go after.
But, uh, he wasn't in a position with any power over her. She was a student in a not for credit, no grade course that he taught. He had no power whatsoever.
And it's not as if women don't use their sex-appeal when it suits them.
Well sure. But now you're using the "she asked to be raped" stupidity.
Warning! Warning! Strawman argument! Warning!
She wasn't raped. She was not raped . She--voluntarily-- send him nude pictures.
Women regularly don't report abuse because they think they're going to be treated badly if they do, including being asked why they didn't do this or that to protect themselves. That kind of insult added to injury is actually another injury.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
... can I download the pictures?
I took 8.02 with Professor Lewin when I was at MIT. Before that class I despised physics in every way but Professor Lewin changed my views. He was one of my most gifted professors at MIT (and that's saying something).
While I understand MIT needs to discipline him, taking his emeritus title and removing all of his courseware from MOOC is a HUGE loss to the world as a whole.
If this girl had come forward when this all began, more than likely this would have been a much smaller issue that would have warranted less of a dramatic result. I'm not blaming the victim in this case, I'm just saying that MIT could have handled this much better.
She then finds out he has other "friends".
At this point she decides it was harassment.
She as a strong empowered womin has no agency and no responsibility for her actions.
He as a man is held responsible.
She goes back to cutting herself, being depressed, responding to 'triggers' basically the whole nine yards of screwed-up-ness.
Alternate hypothesis:
How about someone at MIT was investigating and looking to dig up dirt on the guy and they coerced a simple minded foreign student to claim that the professor was evil.
Though I am not surprised. Assuming everything happened as TFA stated, how was the alleged professor to know that she had psychological problems? He can't, and if her problems were so severe why is her family/medical care worker, etc.. letting her unsupervised on a web page? You are giving her all of the benefit of the doubt, but not the other way around. You are severely lacking in empathy in your post, and if this is your true feelings I'll suggest a mental health exam.
Forget MIT for a moment and take this for what it is, internet web sites providing content and chat. Not very different from what Facebook does, or Google+, or even Twitter for that matter. If you meet someone online and ask for naked pictures and they comply, are you supposed to have done an extensive background check on them? Given that there is anonymity and you don't even know that the person is who they say they are (remember she didn't even know if it was the real guy or not due to the nature of the system). If you want to hold that viewpoint fine, but it had best be unilateral.
A huge issue in this case is that we don't see any evidence, only anecdote and allegation. Given that we have had several Universities falsely accuse people of crimes (see fraudulent sexual assault cases) there is an issue of trust here which the University is not meeting.
Plausible, perhaps, but I still believe that a person should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise. You know, the same way our legal system is supposed to be working but isn't. Without proof, and without trust in the system, I refuse to condemn the guy.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I mean a college-aged girl has to get over the fact that older men will be attracted to her, and make advances. Just because she's creeped-out by it, doesn't necessarily mean it's inappropriate. Ultimately gender equality means others have the right to hit on her...
I read a line like this and all I can think of is the ton of crap dumped on my sisters when they entered graduate schools focused on careers in male-dominant professions.
While that will not be well received here, I do agree that victims requiring the world to be tailored to their needs are a force of destruction.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Lewin's behavior may have been creepy and disgusting if the allegations turn out to be true. MIT is also fully within its rights to sever ties with Lewin for any reason.
But as far as I can tell, Lewin had no power over the student; the course was free and open, and participation was voluntary. There shouldn't be any legal case or any Title IX case here.
I agree that the fact that he was such a good lecturer, and made his lectures freely available to the public, makes this even more of a tragedy. The summary doesn't mention his first name, just Lewin. I was thinking to myself as I clicked the link "Please don't be Walter Lewin, please don't be Walter Lewin." What a disappointment. His lectures are still available on youtube and other sites though, and as bad as this news is, I hope his lectures can be judged on their own merit and continue to be available.
If you're a physics professor and you're not getting enough tail, you can be a rock star physics professor, and maybe you'll get away with all your shenanigans for a while. But if you really want to live a hedonistic exploitative amoral lifestyle without getting punished, you chose the wrong profession. You need to be a genuine rock star. If you can't give up physics, best thing to do is to go on a hiatus with your degree, start an arena rock band, and then finish your degree after you're famous, rich, flabby, and old. That way if you can get a professorship, you can make all those tenured, accomplished lecherous old farts feel really jealous and inadequate when the coeds are around.
Humanity sucks.
See, the thing about "compassion", and the reason that it's in such short supply, is that men don't get any, and you tend to get what you give in life.
This was an old man. This are not the normal actions of an old man. What would compel him to do such things? Dementia? Early-stages of Alzheimers? Some past traumatic event in his life. Even perversion is a sign of potential mental deviance, almost none of which is voluntary.
What if she took advantage of him? Old man, young woman, it's not hard to see how he may have been flattered. And his patterns with other women certainly show he had some weird proclivity toward it all. That he was a sucker for younger women. That they could easily make him think they were attracted to him and this somehow elicited a response in him.
But, there is no compassion. None. Men commit suicide 4x more often than women (yet women get treated more often for depression), and this is a large reason why. Women enjoy very benefit of the doubt, and men are held fully accountable for everything that they do, without any sympathy whatsoever for the things that have effected them in their own life.
And people crow about "compassion".
Compassion does not discriminate, and if you do, you're not truly compassionate. Compassion requires that we hold the un-proven guilty as innocent, because it would be cruel to do otherwise. The mob always favors the popular explanation.
And if this situation is one of "power", I would say it's the weakest example that I've personally ever seen. You can always extrapolate some power imbalance if you look hard enough. Frankly, I don't think I should be held to any of the contracts I've signed. I have ADHD and do not read them all. My weaknesses are being exploited to financially enslave me, yet, who speaks out for me? I've been homeless before, and my fear of being homeless again causes me to do all kinds of shit I don't want to do for my employer. Fucker is totally exploiting my fears.
So, she had issues. Well, guess what, nearly half of American women are on some form of psychiatric medication. That's 50% of women who cannot be held accountable for their actions. Take that, potential employers.
And how is it that this woman is from a culture that discourages speaking out, yet, she's been speaking out for over a year. Kind of contradicts that whole claim, eh?
No, no, let me guess, it was the third Tuesday under a full moon when she sent the pictures, clearly, CLEARLY causing her to be more passive and yada yada yada.
Alright. As long as this same extreme, contorted, heavily-clauses, benefit-of-the-doubt is given to everyone but, oh wait, it's not.
And you're all evil for not going along with the thought-control experiment.
That's my position anyway.
maybe she saw some other online course takers (coeds) in his contact/friend list and became jealous....and so began the victim/entrapment crap? ....jus saying
looks like nobody here wants to discuss this possible angle....why, that's not nice at all!
The economy would stop dead in it's tracks. It is simply an untenable position, and I think that deep-down, everyone knows it. It's a product of affluent-white fantasy-land where every annoyance of a female is equated with the holocaust.
Using such a standard of non-responsibility if one has any issues, leaves 50% of women out of decision-making positions, as this is how many are taking some form of psychiatric medication. It's a misogynists wet-dream.
The professor should not be disciplined, and the creepy women should be held to account for her actions every bit as much as the professor.
It's amazing where people find strength once you stop infantilizing them. Some people want to keep woman infantilized because they are easier to control that way.
Oh, and this woman's culture has not prevented her from speaking out. I would say that argument has been duly rebutted. And her concern for "the other victims" is so laughable, that anyone who believes it is not someone with a high degree of wisdom.
just posting that you will never see 0, these comments just get buried
depends on your definition of is
His misbehaviour is the early signs that he is dying. MIT should be ashamed of how they have handled this.
http://jgp.sagepub.com/content/18/3/155.short
http://journals.lww.com/cogbehavneurol/Abstract/2004/09000/Prevalence_and_Clinical_Correlates_of.4.aspx
etc.
Its becoming clearer and clearer in my mind how the larger media/system/social dynamics are creating a situation where no one can say anything about anyone. If you say something wrong, and someone who -- regardless of their involvement in the conversation, eavesdropping or passer by -- disagrees with your view, is somehow able to demonize and lift you on a platform to be socially mocked for your insensitivity. Leveraging this ability, creates a mob mentality around the issue and then further divides, but then the opposite side deamonizes the other until both sides won't speak, and the issue at large is a taboo that shall not be named.
Somehow this has to go somewhere...people are people, they will have thoughts, they could have things they want to say or people they want to be like minded with and yet they are forced to internalize. Thats fine for some people, for others it creates a serious complex. I feel like this is the larger underlying issue in all of this moreso than the issue at hand. Then again, creating environments for these kind of people would be more than 'just a little tricky'.
"Walter Lewin will make you love physics whether you like it or not."
all agree their are people everywhere of both sexes that will take advantage of others in every day life.