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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.
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.
Case dismissed. Why does this trash keep getting posted here.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
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.
You quote : "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"
I have no idea whether this quote is correct or not. But pretending to be a student seems to pretty much rule out sexual harassment. You do not sexually harass by pretending to have less control on the other person than you actually have. Or you are the worse harasser in history...
In the context of this case, I quite agree.
The professor is in a position of power, or at least respect, in an organization like a university. He shouldn't be hitting on the students. Period.
I know there is a long history of professors banging co-eds, and sometimes that's fully consensual between adults, but even so, professors should not be playing cat and mouse intimacy with their peers let alone their students. This is a workplace matter, not a mating dance. If a woman does want to get busy with a professor, and is playing a coy game with him, who cares? It isn't unmanly for him to refuse to play the game, it's professional for him to refuse to become involved. Surely a professor should not be taking a page from the caveman manual on intergender relationships to justify his pursuit.
As a manager, I don't get to give my female employees massages, and I'd demur even if a particularly attractive one straight up asked me to. Why? Because the workplace is the wrong place for that and I have a substantial effect on her career if we were to get involved or if there was even the suggestion that we were involved. So why are professors supposed to be special? Do they have no professional ethics?
All that should be necessary is that there are witnesses to the behavior. The woman herself shouldn't even need to come forward if third parties can vouch for it.
I admit that there is a potential for issues when anonymous claims are made. There does need to be a way of dealing with that fairly and honestly. You should be allowed to face your accuser if accused of such a crime, but at the same time, there has to be understanding that the victims are in a difficult position.