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."

Comments

Popcorn time!

[serviscope_minor]

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!

Re:Popcorn time!

[MightyMartian]

So you see nothing wrong with a professor using his status to obtain sexual favors?

Re:Popcorn time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh get over it. It's just words.

No, it is words from a person in authority whose job it was to help her, not take advantage of her.

It isn't criminal, hence the reason the guy is not in jail. But it is not acceptable behavior from someone representing the school and if the school knew about it, then they've abused the trust of the community.

Re:Popcorn time!

[DaHat]

So you see nothing wrong with a professor using his status to obtain sexual favors?

Even if they are offered?

I've a friend who spent some time as a college level instructor and on quite a few occasions would have rather attractive co-ed here or there who would put on the water works or even make veiled sexual offers if he to try to get him to bump their grade or allow late work to be turned in for full credit.

My friend was at least smart and professional enough to refuse all such advances, not all are so.

I'm not excusing anything, I've just heard plenty from the other side.

Re: Popcorn time!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know it is the modern age when:
If a man talks dirty to a woman it is sexual harrasement
If a woman talks dirty to a man it is 4.99/minute

Re:Popcorn time!

[gizmo2199]

It's a tricky question. I would say that the dividing line is coercion-- is the professor using some form of threat, or promising good grades?

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. Ultimately gender equality means others have the right to hit on her, and she has the right to tell them to fuck-off. That's what you do as an adult.

And it's not as if women don't use their sex-appeal when it suits them.

Re:Popcorn time!

[Rakarra]

Why do you need his physical address? Do you want to step up and do more then mere words?

If you want to show how words hurt you can do that right here, in this thread.

So that maybe he can send some threatening or harassing words to the AC's home address, where his family will also see it.

See, the problem isn't that "he sent her some words." People do that all the time online, I close stupid spam IMs every week. What differentiates just regular words from situations like this is when one person does hold some power over another that makes it difficult for the harassee to avoid the harasser. Say, if your boss starts sexually harassing you, and you can't risk jeopardizing your job. Or your teacher starts to harass you, and you can't afford to fail the class. Sexual harassment isn't something you should have to suffer with, as the fault is always with the harasser, and our various harassment laws handle the cases of workplace harassment.

Re:Popcorn time!

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Nobody's ever said harassment didn't exist. It does, as does rape, murder, fraud, and pickpocketing. Usually perpetrated by psychos and disturbed individuals.

Psychos and seriously disturbed people also exist, of course - unfortunately some of them seem to think that there's an enormous epidemic of rape and harassment.

Re:Popcorn time!

[Ol Olsoc]

It's a tricky question. I would say that the dividing line is coercion-- is the professor using some form of threat, or promising good grades?

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.

I guess you didn't read the story. Let's ay you were married to one of those hot college aged girls, and one of her professors keeps asking her ot send nude photos and videos of herself. Now you might find that hot as hell yourself, most of us would be a little annoyed. I'd certainy expect my wife ot be annoyed.

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. This woman had a few problems of her own - she takes anti-anxiety and anti-depressants. Which some folks do find easy to manipulate. But taking medications is neither a crime, nor an excuse to take advantage of.

And apparently she documented this also after some time when it had progressed too far. This is creepy to most people not just her.

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. There is a difference between dressing nicely, flirting, and being your mythical "harassment bait". I enjoy looking at pretty women. I don't ask them to send me naked videos of themselves on the internet.

Re:Popcorn time!

[Intrepid imaginaut]

I've heard claims that one in four women will be raped at some point in their lives, and have yet to hear any sort of data-based rebuttal.

Look at the actual crime reporting figures, locally rape convictions stand at around 8 per 100,000. Now let's get crazy and say only one in twenty rapes and or sexual assault charges result in a conviction. Let's get even crazier and say one in twenty people who are raped even report the matter. That leaves us with 3200 per 100,000, or about one in thirty. Still almost an order of magnitude smaller than feminist figures and almost certainly still a gigantic exaggeration.

So where do they come up with these moral panic inducing mountains of statistical tripe?

To understand this we have to look at the methods they use to take these surveys. Look at the technical reports. You'll find lots of stuff like:

Drafting the questionnaire, it was important to avoid terms such as ‘rape’, ‘violence’ or ‘stalking’, because different women might have different preconceived ideas on the types of violence usually associated with these terms, and the types of perpetrators involved.

Terms such as rape are left out of questionnaires and it's left to the researchers (all of whom happen to be feminist trained) to decide whether or not rape took place. So if someone answered that they were verbally abused using a sexual slur or had sex while drunk, it's the researcher who decides if the women was sexually attacked.

And take a look at California's shiny new feminist inspired affirmative consent laws if you want to know whether having sex after a drink is rape or not.

This gets further distorted by the public mouthpieces, who translate these numbers into 25% of all women were raped. No, they weren't. That one in four women in modern western democracies, one in forty was raped is not a prospect that the rational mind can entertain.

This is a technique that was pioneered by Mary Koss, a feminist researcher who decided that the official unbiased government reports weren't giving her the answers she wanted, so she set up her own surveys in order to amend the statistics accordingly.

Post survey examination of the outcomes however revealed that around three quarters of the women she identified as having been raped did not consider themselves victims of rape, and almost half of them had sex with their supposed attackers after the event identified as a rape had occurred, and continued dating them.

So, having internalised that, now you'll have to start asking questions like "how did these flim flam artists manage to pull the wool over everyone's eyes for 40 years" and "why are people in power listening to them" and so on. These are good questions to ponder. While you're pondering them some light reading for you:

http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/...

Not trying to excuse what he did

[OverlordQ]

But how exactly did he force them to do what they did *Over the internet*

Re:Not trying to excuse what he did

[Anonymous Coward]

that's harassment.

... and it took her a year to realize that it was harassment. But once she finally figured out what happened, MIT was stunned!

Re:Not trying to excuse what he did

[OzPeter]

But how exactly did he force them to do what they did *Over the internet*

If you read the full article, towards the end it talks about this particular woman having various emotion issues including abandonment. It would seem that the prof in question exploited theses weaknesses in order to groom the woman into sending the naked pics etc.

In addition the article talks about various victims being from cultures where speaking out is not the done thing.

So while no-one was physically compelled to send anything, it sure sounds as if they were psychologically compelled.

Re:Not trying to excuse what he did

[AchilleTalon]

First of all, Lewin is guilty of violation of the MIT code of conduct, no doubt. However, we are talking here about adult women. Are they responsible for what they engage into? Shouldn't be assumed, whatever their past and culture? Or do you have to asssume each time you engage a conversation with someone he/she is not responsible for what he/she says? And if it eventually turn into flirt, it will become sexual harassment because the other party can plea it is not her/his culture, etc. Is it she/he responsible for reading these f... email and answering them? And what about her culture when time came to take and send naked pictures of herself? Is it a normal conduct in Algeria? Lewin was an idiot and was framed.

Re:Not trying to excuse what he did

[OzPeter]

And they could have stopped it immediately by blocking him on FB and/or just stopped the course they paid a whole $0 for.

In the whole history of people being psychologically manipulated and abused, they *all* could have stopped it simply by saying no, and walking away. Yet they don't. Kinda suggests that doing so is very difficult to do, and that there are things in play that you are not crediting.

Re:Not trying to excuse what he did

[Anonymous Coward]

I actively groomed my wife to marry me through Charm and Seduction. If we had not married would it then be harassment a year later if she had decided she didn't like me for whatever reason?

Re:Not trying to excuse what he did

[OzPeter]

Yes, maybe in the real world, face to face interaction where you can't click block and they're gone.

And that comes across as a "True Scotsman" logical fallacy, by suggesting that psychological manipulation is erased by distance.

Re:Not trying to excuse what he did

[XXongo]

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.

More like she was told she would not get good grades if she didn't and she really needed this. Fear can do weird things to people.

From the article, it was apparently an open course online, with no grades and no credit. (And she was in another country, so there was no personal contact, either.)

Re:Not trying to excuse what he did

[Anonymous Coward]

I actively groomed my wife to marry me through Charm and Seduction. If we had not married would it then be harassment a year later if she had decided she didn't like me for whatever reason?

Sadly, after the point in time a woman decides she doesn't like you, a single flirt could cause all previous grooming to be used against you as evidence of a history of harassment. Happened to a person I know. Sad, but true.

Re:Not trying to excuse what he did

[stephanruby]

So while no-one was physically compelled to send anything, it sure sounds as if they were psychologically compelled.

Well, it does sound like he lied to them (about exclusivity).

Lewin confessed his love for several of them, chat logs show, but often denied those feelings to women who asked about the others.

It's probably just me being cynical, but had the first degree women friends of the Professor on Facebook not replied to that first woman saying that they were also in an online sexual relationship with the Professor, then the first woman wouldn't have considered his behavior sexual harassment, and she would have never retroactively taken back her consent to the online relationship.

She also said she felt trap near the end, but really how trapped could she have been? She started all of this more than a year after the fact. Wasn't she finished with the course by that time? Shouldn't the power relationship be nullified once all the grades are in and the course finished? Also the Professor was already pushing 80 years old and had already retired? How much power did have from across the ocean as an 80 year old?

Did he try to blackmail her with the pictures he already had? From the detailed article, that doesn't seem to be the case. If the detail of him lying about other women is any indication, that seems to be the most relevant part of her grievance, and that's how he "psychologically compelled" her -- by lying to her. And by the time she found out about the online infidelity, she was already emotionally attached to him, that's why she felt trapped (at least, that would be my cynical interpretation of her statements, because I just don't buy the I-felt trapped-because-he-kept-on-contacted-me reason.).

Blah blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me more about how women are being oppressed by men and how I, as a man, should be ashamed of myself.

Re:Blah blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying all men are responsible for all sexual harassment is like saying all Muslims are responsible for all Islamic terrorism.

Not trying to excuse what he did

[Anonymous Coward]

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! She was 32 years old

[AchilleTalon]

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.

Re:WTF! She was 32 years old

[meta-monkey]

She made the mistake of opening up to Lewin about her psychological problems (anxiety, abandonment) and he manipulated her (sweet lies about helping her get her self-esteem back) so she'd cough up the nudes.

Shockingly, despite age, people with psychological problems can be manipulated into doing things contrary to their best interests by sociopaths.

Do You Even Literate, Bro?!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Do You Even Literate, Bro?!

[Mashiki]

Well I've hit the point where "actual evidence is required" after UAV and Dalhousie(both being the most recent). Fuck this noise. Seriously, fuck it right in the neck. I don't "trust the articles" I don't "trust the admins" I expect actual evidence.

Re:Do You Even Literate, Bro?!

[walterbyrd]

So you think accusing somebody automatically makes that person guilty? Like the witch hunts, or the communist hunts?

If I accused you of being a child molester, would that automatically make you guilty?

I think there is may something that can be said for an "innocent until proven guilty" system.

Re:Respect yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

why are you post this question on slashdot? Do you assume women come here to get some sort of advice?

Not a college kid

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Not a college kid

[Ol Olsoc]

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.

You don't understand how these things get started. If I might take na example from a recent pedophile scandal.

Jerry Sandusky was a well known and loved football coach who ran a foundation and housing for "at risk" children.

In his foundation, where he was around a lot of young boys, he could find ones who were vulnerable in one way or another. Long and short of it is that through coercing them over a period of time, he eventually molested them.

He knew how to hunt. Most kids would give him a kick in the nuts or just avoid him, but those with the specific vulnerability ended up molested.

These people know how to find people they can manipulate. Whether she was flattered at first, or a little insecure - I don't know. But a lot of people are, and that doesn't excuse him in the least.

Eventually she found it way beyond the pale, and decided enough was enough. And if you RTFA she is not the only one. He's definitely sleazy. There are places that people can go if they want that sort of thing, either on the internet or in person. Then both parties are willing participants.

Warning! Warning! Strawman argument! Warning!

She wasn't raped.

God, on slashdot any disagreement is called a "straw man" I know straw men,, and that was no straw man

I suspect a degree of obtuseness here. So lets do the long form.

No one deserves getting hauled into a sexual situation against their will. In my response to

And it's not as if women don't use their sex-appeal when it suits them. I was saying, in a time honored fashion, but one that apparently needs dumbed down for you:

Because a woman looks nice, or dresses nicely, or smiles at you, or even gives you a peck on the cheek, it in no way gives you the right to expect sexual favors from her, because her appearance does not give you the right for sexual favors, her clothing does not give you the right to expect sexual favors, and her basic sexuality , get ready for it......here it comes...... does not give you the right to expect sexual favors from her. Just sayin'.