Universities face #MeToo movement reaction
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 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 the number of reported complaints has risen by about 10 percent 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 they were skewed in favor 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. And besides damaging the women’s mental health and well-being, sexual harassment can chase some of them out of academia altogether.
“Often professors who are advising graduate students are the students’ gateway to their degree attainment and their career prospects,” said Anne Hedgepeth with the American Association of University Women. “That’s an immense amount of power that professors hold. It’s also an immense amount of risk that students take when coming forward when future prospects are on the line.”