Sexual harassment is rampant in the academy as it is in every other industry. The entrenched hierarchies of the academic world, the small size of most scholarly fields, the male dominance of virtually every field other than women’s studies, the culture of collegiality (read, evasiveness and pretense) that predominates, and junior scholars’ desperate dependency on good references for career advancement, make for conditions in which sexual abuse (and indeed abuse of all kinds) can flourish with impunity.
Because it is so difficult for many victims in the academy to speak out about cases of sexual harassment and sexual abuse, in 2017 I created an anonymous, opensourced Sexual Harassment in the Academy survey. It quickly spiraled to 2500+ entries in the space of about a month. It makes for sickening reading.
[The Survey is now closed to new entries]
As part of the Survey project, I also created the #MeTooPhD hashtag.
My hope is that this survey and hashtag will allow victims to find a safe way to anonymously report their experience of sexual harassment. My goal is for the academy as a whole to begin to grasp the true scope and scale of this problem in academic settings. I hope it provides aggregate information in the form of personal stories of abuse and its career outcomes for victims (which, as a cultural anthropologist I consider the most potent form of data), paving the way for more frank conversations and more effective interventions.
Women are overwhelmingly the victims of sexual harassment, and until this issue is addressed head on, women will continue to be hounded out of academia, as they are from every other career from comedy to politics. I hope that gathering stories will allow women in particular to know they are not alone, and create conditions for women to thrive in their chosen careers.
The stories on the spreadsheet make for brutal but urgent reading. Thank you to all who have participated. And thank you to those who have followed up by email to name their harassers and the administrators who protected them. I have a long list. I promise to keep this entirely confidential, but will use the names to potentially connect victims of the same perpetrator. You may email me at gettenure@gmail.com to add your story.
The sum total of these almost 2500 entries allows everyone to see that sexual predation is endemic to the power hierarchies of the academy in ways that almost perfectly parallel Hollywood: powerful older men are gatekeepers to vulnerable younger women, use their power for sexual predation, and are then protected by other senior men and women invested more in preserving the power structure than in defending victims. Women of color are doubly vulnerable and doubly bullied when they see redress.
This piece by K.A. Amienne, Abusers and Enablers in the Academy, lays out the dynamic of enabling that prevails:
My department chair had all the security that race, class, gender, and tenure at a top-10 university can bestow. And still he was too afraid to do his job properly. I was a woman, a student, crushed under debt, without institutional support, and minus parents or any other safety net back in the working-class world from which I’d come. How was I supposed to confront this professor on my own when people who could have — and should have — would not?
So I did what a lot of women do. After earning my Ph.D., I walked away from a life in which I’d invested time, money, and work. I spent the next several years blaming myself, replaying the scenes, repeating the words of those in power. I had mixed feelings of relief and resentment as I met others who told different versions of “Yes, everyone knows he’s like this.”
Sharing your story, even anonymously, can be transformative for victims. You can see that you’re not alone, that you did nothing wrong, that the structure sets you up for victimization and systematically prevents consequences for the perpetrator. I believe this document removes plausible deniability from academic institutions about the pervasiveness and severity of sexual harassment, and I hope that it can promote greater peace, clarity, and resolve among its many victims, no matter what they choose to do moving forward. Solidarity.
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Please see media coverage of my survey, and #MeTooPhD more generally, here:
On Sexual Harassment in the Academy:
Interview. (Ku’uwehi Hiraishi) #MeTooPhD Creator Chronicles Sexual Harassment in Academia. Hawai’i Public Radio, Honolulu HI. 10/6/18.
Interview. School of Thought radio show. (Shalina Chatlani) WPFW Jazz and Justice Radio, Washington DC. 9/17/18 [Find it archived here–you must scroll/search for School of Thought for the date: 9/17/18]
Anything to Avoid a Scandal: How Colleges Sideline Sexual Abuse. (Eleanor Bader). Truthout.org. 8/5/18
Why Science Breeds A Culture of Sexism. (David Batty and Nicola Davis). The Observer. 7/7/18
In Academia, Professors Coming On To You Is On the Syllabus. (Dan Solomon and Jessica Luther). Splinter. 6/8/18
Sexual Misconduct in Academia: Reassessing the Past. (Var. contributors). Times Higher Education. 5/17/18
Academia’s #MeToo Moment: Women Accuse Professors of Sexual Misconduct. (Nick Anderson). Washington Post 5/10/18
These Women Are Exposing the Scale of Sexual Misconduct in Academia (video interview). (Ben Schamisso). Newsy. 3/27/18
#MeToo: There’s a List Circulating of Sexual Abusers on College Campuses. (Aditi Natasha Kini). AlterNet. 2/9/18
#MeTooPhD Reveals Shocking Examples of Academic Sexism (Keiran Hardy). The Guardian. 2/4/18
The Shitty Media Men List and Other Ways Women Can Report Misconduct (Casey Quinlan). The Guardian. 1/13/18
Like It Or Not, Lists of Shitty Men Are Going to Keep Circulating. (Valentina Zarya). Fortune. 1/12/18
Philly Area Colleges End Up In Large Sexual Harassment Survey. (Daniel Craig). Philly Voice. 1/12/18
Sex Harassment Claims in Viral #MeToo List Target Rutgers, Princeton and Other Campuses (Kelly Heyboer). NJ.com. 1/12/18
Academia’s Shitty Men List Has Around 2000 Entries Detailing Sexual Harassment. (Prachi Gupta). Jezebel. 1/11/18
Allegations of Groping, Lewd Comments, and Rape: Academia’s #MeToo Moment. (Melissa Korn) Wall Street Journal. 1/11/18
The Paradox of Protecting Predators. (). Chronicle of Higher Education. 1/9/18
Universities Have a Sexual Harassment Problem: Can They Fix It? (Anna North). Vox.com. 12/14/17
One Spreadsheet Reveals the Horrifying Ubiquity of Sexual Harassment in the Academy. (Olivia Goldhill and Sarah Slobin) Quartz. 12/12/17
Holding Space for Victims of Harassment. (Colleen Flaherty). Inside Higher Ed. 12/8/17
#MeTooPhD: One Academic’s Effort to Break the Silence Around Sexual Harassment. (May Warren) Toronto Metro News. 12/7/17
Interview on the Sexual Harassment in the Academy Survey, As It Matters (radio program), Canadian Broadcasting. 12/5/17