#MeToo crusade confronts world of academia, research
Reports of sexual harassment rise by estimated 10 per cent since Weinstein allegations
WASHINGTON— When Celeste Kidd was a graduate student of neuroscience at the University of Rochester, she says, a professor supervising her made her life unbearable by stalking her, making demeaning comments about her weight and talking about sex.
Ten years on and now a professor of neuroscience at the university, Kidd is taking legal action. She has filed a federal lawsuit against the school alleging that it mishandled its sexual harassment investigation into the professor’s actions and then retaliated against her and her colleagues for reporting the misconduct.
“We are trying to bring transparency to a system that is corrupt,” Kidd told The Associated Press.
Academia — like Hollywood, the media and Congress — is facing its own #MeToo movement over allegations of sexual misconduct.
Brett Sokolow, who heads an association of sexual harassment investigators on campuses, estimates that the number of reported complaints has risen by about 10 per cent since the accusations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein surfaced in early October, spurring more women to speak out against harassment in various fields. The increase is mostly from women complaining of harassment by faculty members who are their superiors.
But the Trump administration has viewed the issue of sexual harassment on campus in a different light. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has scrapped Obama-era regulations on investigating sexual assault, arguing that they were skewed in favour of the accuser. New instructions allow universities to require higher standards of evidence when handling such complaints.
A forthcoming study of nearly 300 such cases in the Utah Law Review found that one in 10 female graduate students at major research universities reports being sexually harassed by a faculty member. And in more than half of those cases, the alleged perpetrator is a repeat offender, according to the study.
“Often, schools might turn a blind eye toward sexual harassment that they know about or have heard about because a professor is bringing in a big grant or is adding to the stature of the university,” said Neena Chaudhry, senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center.
The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Activists say young women pursuing graduate studies are especially vulnerable to sexual misconduct because they depend heavily on their academic adviser to complete their degrees, pursue research in their field of study and get recommendations for future jobs. Reporting misconduct could endanger an academic career. Besides damaging the women’s mental health, sexual harassment can chase some of them out of academia altogether.
Kidd says Florian Jaeger, a distinguished linguistics professor at the New York university’s cognitive sci- ences department who was one of her academic advisers in 2007, pressured her to rent a room in his apartment for a year. She says he then constantly intruded in her private life, demoralized her and talked to her about oral sex and other sexually explicit topics.
“He had a lot of control over my work life, he had the ears of everybody in the field,” Kidd recalled. “He reminded me constantly that they know him, that he was a big shot and that I was no one.”
In the end, Kidd moved out of Jaeger’s apartment and abandoned language research so she wouldn’t be supervised by Jaeger. She now studies attention and general learning.
Last year, two professors at the department, in whom Kidd eventually confided, filed a sexual harassment complaint. The university investigated but found the allegations unsubstantiated. The professors say the university then began a retaliation campaign against them. In December, Kidd and her colleagues filed a federal lawsuit.
The university responded by placing Jaeger, now a tenured professor, on administrative leave and commissioning an independent investigation. Results are expected next month.