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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.''
Unfortunately, accusations of sexual harassment are often easy to create to punish politically incorrect beliefs or actions.
It's a real problem, and I don't see any easy solution. There is a strong cultural tradition that says that women are supposed to protest against pursuit, even when that's what they really want, and there's no easy way to tell.
Clearly the only safe procedure is to immediately desist upon request, but there's also a strong cultural tradition that says this is "unmanly". Whoops!
We seem to be groping towards a tradition where honesty is demanded on both sides, but getting there is causing a lot of people a lot of problems. 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.
Now note that the question of holding a door open never had the degree of seriousness attached to it that "inappropriate advances" had. OTOH, under the old standard the professor would be forbidden to approach the female student no matter how provocative she was. So (as reported) he was following neither the old standard nor the developing standard.
In this case the only answer I see is "life logs". If either was wearing a life log, then the situation would not be in doubt, and in *THAT* case I think that there should be the ability to remove tenure. But there should also be a right of appeal, though to who? The administration or the faculty? Whichever of those two groups wasn't running the prior proceedings would be my first cut at an answer, but one might also consider whether the students should have a say in this.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I offered to pay for a recording device for my friend, who was regularly sexually harassed by her faculty adviser. She decided against it, mainly because she felt trapped in her situation. Getting another adviser (either by seeking one or reporting the abuse of hers) would mean abandoning years of work (and racking up more debt), which could not simply be resumed with another adviser.
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.
A lot depends on the woman, the culture, her personal attitudes and experiences, and how she actually feels about the man in question. For myself I've found Eastern European women to be quite forthright about what they want or don't, while American women run the gamut. In some places and for some women immediately responding in the positive to an approach, even a welcome one, is considered somewhat slutty. And it must be said, by far the most ferocious criticism of women for so-called "slutty" behaviour comes from other women in my experience.
Just to be clear, I'm not talking about unwanted kisses, groping and massages - that's not acceptable in a professional environment or indeed any environment (and let's not kid ourselves that men are the sole perpetrators either), but rather approaching a woman with the aim of perhaps beginning a romantic relationship.
Again personally I take rebuffs at face value but I recognise there are other nuances which aren't as cut and dried as they may seem at first glance.
Oh and never, ever date a feminist.
Sure, I stop. I also see other men that don't stop, and end up with her on top riding him screaming in ecstasy.
Maybe you would have better luck with women if you didn't stalk them home during their one-night stands?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I sympathize with you, but as a male, I don't personally consider that to be harassment because there's no threat, either explicit or implicit involved. When a professor treats a student like that, there's always the implication that the student's grade depends to some extent on what happens, but unless the student tries to blackmail the professor with false claims of impropriety, it's hard to see how it can be called harassment. ICBW, of course, but as of right now, that's how I see it.
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