Tolerating Sexual Harassment: A Personal Reckoning

I’m a researcher who studies sex-based harassment, but that doesn’t make me immune to it. To the contrary, my expertise has drawn ire and derision from some of my male colleagues over the years, who have uttered offensive jokes or comments in my presence, as if to get me back for making them feel uncomfortable. Expertise gives you the resources to recognize what is happening and to not take it too personally. But it does not shield you from the entrapping nature of the behavior -- the risk of alienating the harasser and the network of people who rely upon, like, or admire him.

Harassment comes in many shapes and forms: from jokes, comments, materials, or acts that undermine one's sense of dignity and safety in the workplace to unwanted sexual attention, touching, and coercive requests. Throughout my career most of these experiences have been one-off events with men who ceased when asked or could subsequently be avoided. But as many women experience in their professional lives, I had the misfortune to have a colleague who persisted. He first reached out to work with me when I was an assistant professor and he was well established. It didn't take long before he started making disturbing comments that I found offensive -- about women, feminists, blacks, working mothers, and things I cared deeply about. When I’d protest, he’d say he was just “pushing my buttons” because I was “cute” when I got upset.

We eventually collaborated on a publication around the time I went up for tenure. Little did I know that our paper's topic was merely cover for him to feel free to blab about his sexual obsessions. Emails started arriving loaded with his sexually explicit fantasies, misogynist attitudes, and admissions of inappropriate behavior toward other junior women and graduate students. When I'd cautiously warn him about his behavior and tell him it was offensive, he’d say I was too "politically correct." Unlike raving feminists like me, he was a real scientist with no personal agenda (yeah, right).

As I became professionally secure with tenure and promotion, his derision and dismissal of my views grew. His comments turned more personal and more hurtful. He said some extremely degrading things. Finally, after he involved my daughter in his disgusting repertoire, I reported him. Another teaching moment, but why did it take me so long?

I grapple with having gone along with his behavior for years, and why I felt the need to give him chances to improve and to shield him, albeit from his own failings. Our interactions felt precarious and toxic: If not handled carefully, we could each be irreparably wounded. Despite his abhorrent side, he has a sensitive one, a creative one, but also a vulnerable one.

When he first contacted me as a junior faculty member to collaborate, I obliged because I was worried about tenure. Later I worried that if I cut him off it might harm my students and promotion. When I was being recruited to his university where I wanted to be near family, I worried about his capacity to block my hire. When his friend, the associate dean, asked about him during my interview, I made sure to focus on the positive. I will always struggle with the fact that I "managed" him all those years instead of telling him to go to hell.

Well, as we know, reporting harassment can be more treacherous than experiencing the harassment itself. I told our dean, who delegated to our associate dean, who talked to his friend and decided the guy just needed some counseling -- but not without relaying that he had been deeply hurt by me, his “muse.” I shared my dossier of offensive emails and other stories with the dean and associate dean, worried they had not understood the gravity of the situation. But lo and behold, two months later my harasser was appointed to the school’s standing committee for appointments, tenure, and promotion -- given power over all would-be hires and junior colleagues. HR decided the school had handled everything well. To them, what I experienced wasn't "sexual harassment." I bit the bullet and hoped that at least my report would quell his behavior and protect potential victims. With this experience and others informing me of the culture of leadership at the university, a few months later I wrote a blog post, which angered a powerful donor close to my dean and his associate. They rallied to soothe him. Who cares about academic freedom and scholarship? Under the bus I went.

So in the end, as Lorena Barba pointed out this week on Twitter, a fancy professorship doesn't shield a woman from being harassed or empower her to do anything about it. I can add that neither does expertise. Ambition is the enemy of righteousness in poorly led academia. High h-indexes, editorial power, and social networks protect harassers by motivating their targets to remain silent, administrators to do nothing, and otherwise honorable colleagues to duck in the sidelines. You might end up where and what you want to be, but not who or how you wanted to be when you get there.

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I dedicate this post to all the brave women who told their truths despite the consequences, who made me realize I needed to do the same, and to the next generation of women -- may the world be a better place for you.