So the simple answer seems to be that it both can and does
happen in linguistics. The ‘it’ is sexual harassment. An apparently egregious
case of such was brought to my attention via a tweet from David Adger directing
me to this
post. The author is Lauren Hall-Lew (LHL). Her website indicates that she
is a sociophonetician working out of Edinburgh.
The post is in reaction to this
piece in Mother Jones (MJ), a bit
of reporting on the alleged unwanted (and, if true, indefensible) sexual advances
of Florian Jaeger on a (then) grad student Celeste King. The MJ piece goes into
quite a bit of detail concerning the charges and replies by the University of
Rochester (UR) people that looked into this. The most damning bit, IMO, is that
the charges were credible enough for Dick Aslin to resign over UR’s tepid
response (his assessment). It is also noteworthy that he and Elisa Newport,
once chair of the UR cog sci dept (now at Georgeown), were willing to go public
seconding Kidd’s claims. These are very serious senior people with impeccable
professional reputations and if in their view the stories concerning Jaeger are
credible then I take them seriously. I
will not go into the toing and froing that the article reports, but I would
like to make a few comments.
First, Kidd is not alone in making the charges. There are
others (in fact given the seriousness of the charges, many others) reporting
the same thing.
Second, UR’s defense is that they could not prove that what
Jaeger did was illegal and would be willing to defend their decision “in a
court of law.” This is quite a weak reply. There are many things short of legal
culpability that are professionally unacceptable. Moreover, at this moment it
seems that UR’s response to the charges has been to harass those faculty that
brought the Jaeger behavior to the attention of the higher ups. Here are Aslin and
Newport as quoted in MJ:
“The administration has
inexplicably failed to defend its most vulnerable citizens—its students—and put
future students at risk by failing to act appropriately on their behalf; and it
has retaliated against the faculty members whose only motive was to defend
these students,” Aslin and Elissa Newport, the former chair of the brain and
cognitive sciences department, wrote in a letter delivered to members of the UR
Board of Trustees. “The present situation must be viewed as a colossal failure
of UR leadership at all levels.”
It is entirely possible that there was no proof sufficient
for legal proceedings and yet there was quite a bit of bad behavior. In fact, the MJ piece suggests that this is
indeed what happened. Here is MJ:
The investigation into Jaeger’s
behavior took about three months. In her final report, UR investigator
Catherine Nearpass concluded that Jaeger had had a sexual relationship with at
least one graduate student in the department, as well as a prospective Ph.D.
student; that parts of his behavior were inappropriate; and that he “liked to
push boundaries with students,” the EEOC complaint alleges. Still, the university
ultimately found that Jaeger had not violated the university’s policy against
discrimination and harassment, and that there was not enough
evidence to conclude he sexually harassed Kidd or any other student in his
lab. An appeal was unsuccessful.
The EEOC complaint goes into some detail outlining what
Jaeger appears to have done and it ain’t pretty. Might I suggest that it become
a policy that lab retreats not include hot tubs and drugs.
Third, it is possible
that UR is right, namely that Jaeger’s behavior did not rise to the level of
illegality. So what is to be done? This is the topic of LHL’s interesting post.
LHL knew Jaeger in grad school and she is not particularly surprised about the
charges (adding further evidence that Kidd, Aslin and Newport are onto
something). But the real meat of her post, IMO, is a subtle suggestion as to
the roots of this behavior:
In discussing this Mother
Jones article with other women who went to grad school with us, one made the
excellent point that this particular incident has happened because Florian
carried his borderline sketchy behaviors from graduate school into postgraduate
life, without calibrating for his increase in power relative to the grad
students he was interacting with. One grad student flirting with another grad
student is one thing. A professor flirting with a grad student is another thing
entirely. The options for responding are severely constrained in the latter
case in a way they aren’t in the former case. Because power. When
someone gains power without checking themselves and their behavior, this is
what happens.
I think that this gets it exactly right. The problem isn't merely the behavior but also who is engaged
in it. Sexual relations are complicated (as the interlocutor rightly noted).
But exploiting a position of power, either implicitly or explicitly, is a
bright line.
I would like to push this point a bit further. Jaeger’s
alleged bad behavior is rooted in a kind of intellectual dishonesty. The great
peculiarly academic vice is seeking deference beyond our domains of competence.
Academics are prone to trade on expertise in one area for influence and power
in another. What LHL’s interlocutor points out is that when this is coupled
with power, this kind of over-reaching goes from often unobjectionable BS to
downright disgusting behavior. Academics
of all people should be cognizant when they do this, when they start trading
their expertise in one area for generalized power, prestige, kudos, in others. After
all, one important intellectual responsibility is knowing when you are speaking authoritatively and when you are full
of it. Start confusing the two cases (e.g. start believing you deserve shit
because you are smart and know something about one tiny domain of knowledge)
and nobody should be surprised that bad behavior follows when given the
opportunity that hierarchical relations (student-teacher, mentor-post doc,
etc.) offer. So, being blind to power relations is not merely a moral vice
(although it is that too), it is also an intellectual failing, and one all too
tempting to intellectuals.
So, LHL’s colleague
has put her finger on an important root cause. Still, what is to be done? First, kudos again to Newport and
(especially) Aslin for putting themselves publically
on the line for their students. It is rare to see colleagues publically go on
the record regarding the inappropriate behavior of another colleague. Moreover, their action suggests part of a
remedy for the kind of bad behavior Jaeger allegedly engaged in: public
shaming! Here’s a suggestion. Stop inviting people who behave like this to
speak at your colloquia. Stop inviting them to give special addresses at
conferences you are organizing. Stop including them in your workshops. In other
words, start shunning them for their bad behavior.
We don’t generally do this. Why not? Would we ignore other forms of harassment? Do
we really want the people who act this way to become role models for our
students? Do we want to expose our students to potential misbehavior? Isn’t this what we are doing when we pretend
that this doesn’t exist?
What the UR events indicated is that we cannot rely on the
law to enforce decent behavior on colleagues intent on acting badly.[1]
If Aslin’s resignation did nothing, then it is unlikely that this is the most
efficient route to reform. But, we can do something. We can make it clear that
people who act this way are not going to be honored guests in our departments,
conferences, workshops etc. Being invited to these is not someone’s right. Not
being invited is not an infringement of academic freedom. It is an honor. It is
an indication that the invitee is the kind of person we want to interact with personally and want our students and
post-docs to interact with personally.
One ingredient in being so honored, is having things worth listening to. But it
is only one ingredient. The other is being
someone with the right kind of professional integrity and behavior. And in this
day and age, this means understanding that acting like Jaeger allegedly did is
not acceptable. And one way to make this clear institutionally is not to
pretend that it doesn’t exist when we make our decisions about who to honor
professionally by inviting them into our professional homes.
[1]
Nor am I convinced that legal interventions are always the right solution. The
law is a blunt instrument rightly demanding a high level of proof and most
usefully applied in the least ambiguous most egregious cases.
