There’s a case of sexual harassment in your department
By now, you should have heard about Geoffrey Marcy, a UC Berkeley astronomy professor who has accumulated a depressing collection of sexual harassment complaints over the last 9 years. He confessed and issued a rather puzzling apology, defending his reputation as a nice guy claiming that he didn’t realize the harm he was causing. What’s even more disturbing however is how the department has handled the case. They had no meaningful consequences for Marcy. He was issued a few vague conditions to respect, but remained safely tenured until he decided to resign. @AstroKatie published on Twitter a letter from the interim chair of the department that reveals precisely how off-guard the department has been caught.
I know I come late discussing this story, but there’s more to be said. I have witnessed a similar response to sexual harassment a little over a year ago. A friend of mine at Yale University has been the victim of sexual harassment by another student. The actions taken by the department upon learning the situation were at first thoroughly insufficient, and the harassment continued. My friend, my fiancée and I fought an entire summer for there to be real consequences. It was never about punishing the perpetrator. It was about making sure my friend was safe, and that she could have what she had been denied: a chance to focus on her studies and realize her full potential. Yet, getting people to understand how large an impact harassment of this kind can have on your professional development and general well-being has been infuriating to the point of madness.
The letter published by @AstroKatie perfectly exemplify the kind of attitude we faced. I’ll take it apart piece by piece, cause that’s what it literally deserves. Let’s begin.
Dear Colleagues — this has been a day of drama and difficulty for many of us, each in our own way and with our own context.
First of all, just don’t call this drama. It’s extremely condescending to the victims and whoever brought the issue to light. Calling it drama implies that the victims aren’t justified in being upset, and that they are making a scene to get what they want. They’re not. They are reaching out, despite an all-too-common fear of not being taken seriously. It probably took a lot of time and support for the victims to even realize how Marcy’s behavior was detrimental to them. A sense of injustice and distress grows when you realize how skewed the playing field actually is. You see that other students (i.e. the guys) never receive unwanted attention: the professor is always focused on the subject matter when interacting with them, and they don’t have to fear for their testicles to be fondled.
Second, don’t compare what the victims are going through to what everyone else is going through. It’s a refusal to distinguish between the abuser the abused and the bystanders. You may be having a hard time believing what’s going on, but you need to calm down yourself and come to your senses before telling everyone to do so.
It is hard to process for those who know Geoff well.
I sure hope so. But it serves no purpose to point that out other than revealing how little attention you have been paying to what really goes on in the department that’s under your responsibility.
It is hard to process in relation to our colleagues here and elsewhere.
Whatever that means. It’s not reassuring.
And it is difficult for the department as a community.
Let’s all get together and sing Kumbaya, and maybe this will all go away. After all, we’re a community! We must stick together and get over our differences right? …right?
For those for whom these issues are triggering or raise strong passions, please seek support. This is very strong and emotional stuff, and it would not be surprising if more is yet to come, given its very public nature.
More condescension. More insinuations that the victims are overreacting. As the interim chair of the department, you should be providing support. You’re in one of the best position to do so. Victims want to know that they have allies. Instead, you feel the need to express your own distress at the public nature of the case which is under your responsibility. After all, the internet mob has descended with the pitchforks and they’re coming after you and your friend Geoff right?
I have called a faculty meeting for next Monday at 1pm, and am willing to work to have some representatives of students and postdocs present for part of it (I know that some of you are talking to them). There is a need for our community to process this in a number of ways and forums over time. Clearly, folks are organizing some of these already and I’ll try to help when such help is welcome. Mostly, everyone will need support from others and should offer support to others.
Hey, there’s probably nothing else you could do. I mean, time fixes everything in the end. It’ll all blow over at some point if there’s enough community bonding happening. Seriously though, when is everything getting back to normal? You can’t handle this, this wasn’t part of your job description. Do we ever do astronomy anymore? This whole situation has nothing to do with exoplanets…
Of course, this is the hardest for Geoff in this moment. For those who are willing and able, he certainly can use any understanding or support they can offer (this wouldn’t include endorsement of the mistakes he acknowledges in an open letter on his website). I ask that those who have the room for it (now or later), hear him out and judge whether there is room for redemption in all that will transpire.
The poor little Geoffrey. He had a good career while getting away with touching young women for over a decade. The young women went on to question their own actions, wondering what they did to trigger the unwanted attention. They started spending so much time thinking about how to avoid incidents with Marcy that their academic performance suffered. Some of the women left the field. Some of them started to believe that this kind of thing was going to be the norm in academia, that such problems were swept under the rug all the time and that you just had to put up with it if you wanted to have the career of your dreams. Some of them lost sleep, appetite, enthusiasm, and hope. While the male students ran away with all the time in the world to foster their knowledge and skills, the affected women fell behind. But Geoffrey still had it worst. He’s never gonna get hired anywhere ever again (until he does). He’s a really nice guy who just got confused about social conventions. You young women should get over your trauma and friend him again, right?
I say Marcy will probably get a job again. The student who was harassing my friend ended up being suspended from Yale University for two years. Recently, we found him as a listed speaker at a data science conference. Once again, he gets away with no negative consequences on his career: he lands a 6-figure data science job, which is probably for him a more desirable outcome than being an academic. That causes even further distress for my friend and us. The time we spent struggling with a department that just wouldn’t get it: we’ll never get it back. That’s time that my friend could have used to study for her qualifying exam, which she predictably ended up failing the first time around.
I don’t trust officials to be helpful with sexual harassment cases. A lack of understanding on their part makes things infinitely worse. I get it why so many instances never get reported. It’s an uphill battle that consumes so much time and energy that it handicaps your education. It can easily alienate you from your colleagues. Workplaces in general have to do a much better job at taking sexual harassment seriously. It’s a major problem that exacerbates (or even create) gender gaps everywhere you look. A single harasser can ruin the lives of all the women in a workplace. Listen to your female co-workers, and stamp out the harassers early. Oh, and Buzzfeed, keep on the good work.
