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How Academia Still Struggles With Sexual Harassment (buzzfeed.com)
New submitter Dr. Scatterplot writes: Richard Feynman is celebrated as a brilliant scientist and idiosyncratic character. He is also someone who today might be accused of sexual harassment. That is, if his students felt empowered to report him. Whether his department would have done anything back then is a different matter. How far should academic communities go to protect their intellectual capital, at the expense of further harm to their students, past and present? UC Berkeley and exoplanet astronomers are walking that line with prominent professor and exoplanet discoverer Geoff Marcy. "Four women alleged that Marcy repeatedly engaged in inappropriate physical behavior with students, including unwanted massages, kisses, and groping. As a result of the findings, the women were informed, Marcy has been given 'clear expectations concerning his future interactions with students,' which he must follow or risk 'sanctions that could include suspension or dismissal.''
It's the conflict between universities wanting to be an open environment of learning, education, and research (i.e. their fucking job) and actually making money. Universities literally make money on the discoveries of their researchers. So unfortunately they get plenty of leeway when it comes to this, because most universities aren't willing to actually fight a tenured professor on this.
Meanwhile, universities adopted extremely stringent rules on campus rape. It's not like they don't believe this is a problem. But they sure as hell do believe that students are expendable but professors aren't.
(Personally, I think university sexual harassment and rape proceedings should have power to fire tenured professors - tenure is supposed to protect professors with unpopular opinions, not professors who sexually harass their students.)
quickly turning into SJWdot
"How far should academic communities go to protect their intellectual capital, at the expense of further harm to their students, past and present?"
As a male university professor, my answer to this is very clear. We should not protect them. For many reasons:
1/ You begin brilliant does not mean you can do whatever you want.
2/ For most of us, we can do our research from a prison cell.
3/ Our students are the main product of academic life. We all love to believe that our research is the most important. But realistically we have the opportunity to touch the mind (the mind I said!) of hundreds of students each year. They will be our legacy, let's make it good one!
As long as there's something for someone to gain, expect the "struggle with sexual harassment" to continue. Here's to the day no one can benefit by dividing people and organizing one side against the other. Maybe someday our society will reach that level of enlightenment.
I'm glad I live in a nice tropical paradise where the women aren't so damn uppity and know how to enjoy their lives. You fuckin' people all need to lock yourselves up in solitary confinement... Ooo, he touched me! Ewww!.. Fuck off!
Oh, right, I forgot. That "doesn't happen," so there's no mention of it anywhere. Only people with a penis can be guilty of sexual misconduct, and only people without one can be victims, especially in academia.
Because sexuality and talent in any given academic discipline are independent variables, academia has to deal with various kinds of harassment in exactly the same way as any other place of work. Unfortunately it is unable to, because campuses are increasingly being colonized by the sort of toxic misandrists who could not find a job anywhere else, and so are making academia their private fiefdom. So long as their definition of harassment is "anything that men like," the Feynmans of the future will have to find homes in private research institutes.
Two of my friends were trapped with a faculty adviser who was incredibly abusive (verbally) toward one, and regularly sexually harassed the other. On a daily basis, for years. They tolerated his abuse for so long because they felt they had no choice. Getting a different adviser would mean abandoning their work (in theoretical mathematics), setting them back a ton of money (in academic loans) and years of work/research. Reporting the adviser's abuse would result in the same penalties for them.
It was a messed up power dynamic of which their adviser was likely fully aware and certainly took full advantage. Even after obtaining their PhD's, my friends can't do much about it. They still need the adviser's support as a reference, for getting published, and they just want to put it all behind them.
How many female students approach their male professors each year, attempting to use sex as a bargaining chip? Those visits during office hours, exhibiting cliched behaviour like dropping a pencil to bend over and retrieve it. Flirting, quick furtive touching, inquiring about "extra credit," occasionally even flatly and outright making a proposition to trade sexual favors in exchange for a passing grade. I'm old, paunchy, balding, unattractive; I know precisely what these misguided young women are up to, as they're certainly not after my good looks or great fortune. Such harassment is common at many campuses and yet I see no prominent feminists standing up to decry this behaviour.
The problem with social justice is not with its primary mission; striving to make the World a fairer place is a lofty goal indeed. It's just that, realistically, the World and life itself are inherently not so fair... and attempting to eradicate unfairness from life is every bit a fool's errand.
The World is not black and white. If a Nazi child molester with leprosy showed up at your door with a cure for the cancer your spouse was dying from... you sir, would likely make a deal with that devil.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Colleges do whatever they can to HIDE the sexual assaults that happen on campus and continually victimize the victim by harassing them until they either drop out of school or retract the allegation. They even go as far as threatening the victim if she (or he) reports the crime to the local authorities.
In the mean time, the abuser (not necessarily a man) is given a free pass and allowed to continue life as usual. He (or she) can walk around like nothing happen while the victim is continually monitored by the school.
Case dismissed. Why does this trash keep getting posted here.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Seriously Slashdot?
It is only BS when you are the abuser. Real men don't need to harass women to get in their pants. Only losers with the personality of a turd need that kind of tactics.
news at 11.
The empowerment reporting sexual offenders by students has turned very much into a witch hunt. It does not really matter any more what male scientists have actually done. It matter what femele students feel. And the indecent mind has a vivid fantasy. You can interpret something indecent into everything you like, report your teacher and put him into trouble. This is very much how witch hunts used to work. What happend with Emma Sulkowicz, the lady who carried the mattress in order to get her ex-boyfriend ejected from university? She has not been charged with false accusations. And she never will, according to feminist double standards. Instead, she is celebrated as performance artist by the feministe SJWs, and she is doing porn movies. Instead, she had just unsuccessfully blackmailed her ex to return to her.
[citation needed]
SocialInjusticeWarrior.com
"when he was a young, boyish looking professor at Cornell, Feynman used to pretend to be a student so he could ask undergraduate women out .. Feynman .. trying to get women in bars to sleep with him .. documented affairs with two married women"
.. that were considered acceptable or amusing in 1950 would quite rightly cause instant outrage in 2014."
Have these fragile flowers ever thought of saying no to sexual advances. What Feynman does/did with his dick - as long as it's between consenting adults - is nobody's business except his.
"It's not surprising to find these anecdotes disturbing and even offensive"
Well then, don't read about them.
"the propensity to lie on the beach and watch girls"
OH, shock horror !
"actions
No they wouldn't, it's just that the political-correctness-feminista dictatorship would try and get you fired if you say any different.
Richard Feynman, sexism and changing perceptions of a scientific icon
Hacker News.
What goes on between the hands, mouth or cock of some guy I've never heard of and the soft bits of some women that aren't named is something I couldn't give a rat's arse about.
GashDot - Vags for Nerds. Dicks that Splatter.
Punish which politically incorrect beliefs? Specifically, because I'm asking. I've never once heard of a man getting in trouble for holding a door open. But I've seen plenty of cases of sexual harassment. People abuse power all the frickin time. This isn't hard. There are culturally acceptable places for sexual advanced (Bars, concerts, etc). There are culturally inappropriate places for them too (the workplace). Wanna ask a cute girl out. Go for it. That's non sexual. After you get her to the bar then you can hit on her all you like. It's that bloody simple.
You're having a knee jerk reaction to something that isn't there. Your doing that because you're being manipulated by a right wing conspiracy that's trying to turn your attention away from economic issues and towards nonsensical social ones (there's a few on the left that benefit too, Jesse Jackson comes to mind, but they're few and far between). The trouble with conspiracies is they're associated with loon balls thanks to the JFK and Moon Landing folks, so when there's an actual one you can't get anyone to believe. Just googling some of the Shit Karl Rove and his think tanks say would prove me right, but I used the 'c' word so you've probably already stopped reading...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
After reading the linked piece about Feynman, it doesn't seem that his alleged sexism (and I'm not claiming it did or did not exist) is at all comparable to what Prof Marcy has been accused of. Feynman may have been a "typical sexist male of the '50s", but Marcy is being accused of criminal acts including sexual assault.
Accusations without strong proofs mean nothing. If there is a single incident that has serious factual credibility then the man should be fired on the first offence. But these situations are rarely filmed or witnessed by several bystanders. At some point we need to have vey severe punishments for people who make complaints with no evidence at all to back up those claims. The sports team at Duke leaps to mind. Those boys spent a fortune on lawyers. Their team was ruined and their school year and future prospects were also damaged. So just why is the crack whore that made the false claims not doing a fifty year prison sentence?
SO MUCH THIS.
It is awful how these toxic people have slowly been taking over and colonizing the education system.
Everything is racist, sexist, homophobic, nationalist.
Oh, well, unless you are not a white male, in which case you are always the victim of those white males. Damn dirty white devils they are.
The worst part is these people that actually sound like that don't realize their horrific double standard and hypocrisy. You try explain it to them and they will maliciously attack your character, even lie about you. (and in some cases, even fabricate evidence against you to get others to attack you!)
But the worst part, the worst part of all of this is those naive sheltered people that have NO IDEA what actual harassment is, so they call any simple levels of contact as being abusive. These sheltered people that have had zero contact with people outside close friends and family, usually overly religious families.
Or worse, those people who didn't like the sex they had, RAAAAPE. FUCK. People that scream rape due to disliking sex need to be imprisoned for perverting the law. You can bet 90% of these people would cave at the mention of a lie detector (even though they don't work, but most people think they do, which is what matters)
This sort of stuff is causing so much bullshit on campuses and dorms right now.
People go on about "ohhhh, think of the children!", think of the poor sheltered adults that have had zero experience with actual life so think everyone is out to get them and end up coerced in to lying by others. There are millions of adults abused and lied about every year by people abusing the law. Children don't have shit on the problems that adults face with harassment. Those little squits have it easy.
Children can't think for themselves? What about the millions of adults that get abused by insurance companies in to buying things they don't need? What about the millions abused by salesmen in general?
You do not gain a sudden level of experience when you reach, say, 18. It is the most retarded concept ever. But let's not get in to that matter, lest we start a discussion war on pedophilia as well! That's all we need.
But seriously, those sorts of people can have stupidly childish mentalities well in to their 40s. It is a damn shame. More needs to be done about combating it. It just leads to so many problems for them as well as everyone they come in to contact with.
"Four women alleged that Marcy repeatedly engaged in inappropriate physical behavior with students, including unwanted massages, kisses, and groping. As a result of the findings, the women were informed, Marcy has been given 'clear expectations concerning his future interactions with students,' which he must follow or risk 'sanctions that could include suspension or dismissal.''"
.. in her capacity as student representative to the Berkeley astronomy faculty, she says, she spoke with him several times in December 2004, directly confronting him with complaints from undergrads and graduate students." ref
And once upon a time, a) that wouldn't be an issue for the facilty, b) the women would have been expected to deal with it themselves like mature adults, c) instead of trashing his reputation in public, threatening his livehood and bringing controversy to UC Berkeley. If I could hazard a guess, this was a put-up job by the resident feministas.
"Ruth Murray-Clay
Didn't you get the memo? Turd personality is a huge turn-on for lots of women.
Not so. If I find my workplace intolerable, and I quit, I risk not having a good reference. If I'm in the fourth year of a degree program, and I quit, I throw away a lot of time and money that I can't get back. Professors have more power over students than a boss does over an employee (even in the US, where the employees are basically neutered).
"Hacker" News is full of SJWs and idiots who think literally everything is hacking.
Eliminate tenured positions. Problem solved!
That will be $24.95, Check, Cash or Money Order?
For a minor example of the kind of problem from a few decades ago "Should a man hold a door open for a woman?". For awhile you would receive abuse no matter HOW you answered that. (From different groups, but still abuse.) For that matter just last week I heard a woman saying (as a compliment) to a man that it had been years since the last time a man held a door open for her. She still saw that the the proper polite behavior.
Door opening is initiated by the female, and so cannot be harassment. She slows down, and the man gets to the door first. If she doesn't slow down, then the man has to run ahead, which makes him look silly. If she doesn't slow down, then she isn't a lady, and he shouldn't run for her. We don't have a shortage of polite men, we have women instead of ladies.
As soon as I saw the Richard Feynman article was on SciAm, I knew it was a POS.
Around the early 1970's SciAm's staff underwent a radical change in an effort to
become "politically correct". Instead of drilling down on the science, their articles
watered down any results that might be offensive to the politically motivated segment
of its readership. Since that time it has gone to hell.
If you think SciAm is good. find a library with archives going back to the 50's and 60's.
The difference between then and now is astounding. I really used to look forward to
every new issue, but by the mid 70's, I let my subscription lapse. Every month had
become a disappointment.
Richard Feynman lived in a very different world with different norms and standards.
Too bad the muck suckers at SciAm aren't interested in anything except their bottom line.
It seems like it only counts if the victim is female - especially in cases like Amherst where they prosecuted the victim (male) and defended the perpetrator (female).
Do something when the rules are consistently applied to everyone.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
As a male university professor, my answer to this is very clear. We should not protect them.
I completely agree...but we need to be careful that these accusations have evidence to back them up. If you just rely on a handful of students to make accusations then you risk scenarios where students can threaten false accusations for better grades. I think the real dilemma is when is the evidence strong enough to act on so that the guilty do not go free and the innocent do not get punished? Set the the threshold too high and you protect the guilty, set it too low and you can't effectively teach and do research.
I don't see any proof that Feynman was sexist.
The only thing I see is a a bunch of stories of how he tried to get laid in his off hours by women he had no professional relationship with.
Is it trying to get laid? That's called being a man. ( Well at least wanting to get laid is. Trying is also a function of courage and moral values. )
Is it telling stories about it? That's just being honest.
Is it trying to pick up women at bars? Ever been in a bar?
Academia should follow the same rules as everyone else. If allegations are found to be with merit, then the professor should lose his job. Period. I don't care if the guy is the next Albert Einstein, no one person is so important to the advancement of science that we should be willing to sacrifice our ethics.
Who knows, maybe the next Albert Einstein is thrown out for sexual harrassment, emboldening the next Alberta Einstein.
I am a male working in academia, and first rule of academia (they teach you this, even in TA training),
do not have a relationship or encourage such things with students. There are plenty of other places to meet people,
but it is inexcusable to show such interests in a student who you are teaching.
First of all, I’m happily married and would not want to violate what my wife and I have agreed to, whether she knew about it or not.
But the university I work for (along with most others) take inappropriate behavior very seriously. I have had to pass certifications on this, so I have put some thought into the issue. When you are in a position of power relative to someone else, there is just way too much potential for abuse of that power. If you understand that underlying principle, then you can safely date without causing any harm.
Unless your university has very specific fules, I would suggest perhaps a few rules of thumb that should keep you out of trouble:
- Don’t ever date a student in your own department.
- Staff in your own department, maybe, but have to be handled carefully — avoid any you might have some authority over.
- Faculty in your own department are pretty much free game, especially if they’re tenured.
- Faculty and staff at any level in any other department are free game.
- Graduate students in other departments, maybe, but have to be handled carefully — prefer older ones.
- Never date an undergraduate student, even if they’re nontraditional.
- Any student who has graduated and is no longer a student is okay, but you have to be careful about others suspecting that the relationship might have started before they graduated, which could get you into trouble.
Also, just because you first meet someone off campus (at a bar, say) doesn’t mean that these rules don’t apply. If you find out that someone you’re talking to at a bar is an undergrad at your school, you really need to break it off immediately. I don’t care how turned on you are by each other at that moment, the risk of that biting you in the ass later is just too great.
And remember, this isn’t all about you protecting yourself from getting into trouble. It’s about protecting your students from psychological harm. I’m in Computer Science, and we just don’t have enough women in STEM fields. We have to make sure women (and men for that matter) feel that they’re going into a safe educational environment where people in authority are not going to prey on them. Students should earn their education and their grades, not buy them with favors, and they need to be able to be awarded the education and grades they’ve worked for without predators interfering.
Having been inside some female pants before, and not being super macho myself, I've found that women do find ways to let you know they like you if they really want to get to know you better.
#1 They will talk to you for long periods of time without trying to politely get rid of you.
#2 If they can, they will get close to you and even make physical contact with you. There will be plausible deniability, but it will be pretty clear that suddenly a girl is pressed up against you or are touching you when most women have very specific personal space requirements.
#3 They smile a lot when they're talking to you.
and #4 occasionally they will just start making out with you.
Now, I admit, I am not someone who gets laid on demand, but I no longer have much concern about my ability to get laid. Just be an actual nice guy (ie. not the type who says what a "nice guy" they are) and observe what is going on. If she's doing any of the above, especially #2 or a lot of #1, when you have to go, you can ask if she'd like to hang out sometime. Nothing is 100%, but that's the zone of opportunity.
In the case of #4, you really don't need a date, you need a bed... or a patch of comfortable grass. And don't worry about figuring out what to do. She already knows.
I love #4.
Male professor / teacher sleeping with an adult, consenting student = rape.
Female professor / teacher sleeping with an adult, consent student = wonderful.
Thanks, feminism!
Try to do it covertly, get the qualification you are after and a new job, and then sue the individual and the institution on the basis of the evidence you've got. Should pay off the debts nicely. Ultimately hitting institutions in the wallet is the way that will make a real difference, and the technology now exists to ensure that decent evidence can be obtained.
You sound like you're going to be taken for most of your assets in divorce courts in the future.
Aside from the appallingly tone deaf support for Geoff Marcy while simultaneously none for the unfortunate recipients of his actions, I post this to point out that the UC system has an amazingly hard to admit / change institutional desire for certain symbols of diversity, regardless of how dubious a goal they actually achieve, while at the same time overlooking real issues in their midst.
The UC reflected by Vice Chancellor Basri (who took the job at $202,500 / year thank you very much, and leads a bloated "diversity"-driven bureaucracy), routinely flouts the law in terms of admissions based on merit, and is in constant search of symbolic diversity for its own end. Yet they're so busy funding symbolic "diversity" that they don't have time to fix or acknowledge what's right under their nose.
They claim all of Academia is struggling with sexual harassment, while managing to list a single person accused of it.
One of the foundations of science is LOOKING FOR EVIDENCE AND FOLLOWING THE EVIDENCE. One guy being a dick != all of academia.
Hacker news is already sucking on the SJW bottle.
Om, nomnomnom...
Colleges do whatever they can to HIDE the sexual assaults that happen on campus and continually victimize the victim by harassing them until they either drop out of school or retract the allegation.
Quite the opposite, colleges are happy to support idiots like Emma Sulkowicz who continuously re-victimize innocent men by portraying them as rapists even when no rape occurred. And the media eats up stories like "Jackie" that are complete fabrications, with supposed attackers who were invented out of thin air and don't even exist.
If there's one thing today's feminists have demonstrated they're good at, it's making shit up for attention.
I've seen several cases of sexual harassment filed in various companies I worked for over the years, and not once was the guilty party fired. They were required to attend "sensitivity" courses. They lost their bonuses for the year. They were passed over for promotions. Sometimes they were reassigned to lesser roles in the business.
But they were not fired.
Why should academics be held to higher standards than those in industry?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"Four women alleged that Marcy repeatedly engaged in inappropriate physical behavior with students, including unwanted massages, kisses, and groping.”
If that had happened in Yakima, WA, the female cops with the local po-po would have removed Marcy’s manhood, limbs, & head with a machete. They then would have taken his remains to the local NAWBO temple, and offered them as a sacrifice to The Grand Matriarch.
All schooling, up to, and including, university must be single-sex education systems with no mix of gender. We must also not have any lesbians or gays in school since they'd happily cop off with each other if they were segregated or not, so they must be taught in isolation.
This includes teachers. No rug munchers or fudge packers, only heterosexuals segregated into their same sex school.
That is the only way to stop sexual harrassment.
But please remember, a woman molesting a child (11 years old) is seen as "Rather unwelcome" but even the boy's dad gainsays what the boy says about his feelings of the rape, AND THE JUDGE AGREES WITH THEM.
It's just not possible for a woman to rape a man. Because the man ALWAYS wants sex.
Pick any "yes means yes" campaign. Ask the proponents of such measures how long women who initiate sex should be sentenced to jail, if they failed to first obtain explicit affirmative consent from their would-be partners.
For every ONE fake report there are HUNDREDS of REAL ones.
The fact that you think that they are all fake shows that you are nothing but a moron.
That's not a citation, that's a personal anecdote. It's also putting the burden of proof on me, when you're the one who made the claim.
My school isn't struggling with it at all, they are doing it extremely well.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Thanks to feminists and their constant cries of rape for looking at a woman wrong, and their propensity to withdraw consent after coitus and being proud of such inanity, I don't believe a word of this article. It's also buzzfeed, which is garbage clickbait no better than kotaku.
He probably patted somebody on the shoulder or hugged them, and the delicate flowers felt their crotches explode from his masculinity.
Well done feminism for poisoning things. Ten years ago I'd have believed you.
Certainly English law accepts covert recordings as valid evidence.
Then you need to Google the definition of the word "anecdote". Asking for evidence that affirmative consent will be equally applied to women is as banal as asking for evidence that 70's feminists left the draft out of their demands for "equality."