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1 | There were rumors (unsubstantiated, just gossip) that my advisor had an affair with one of his female graduate students before I was a student here. An older grad student who supposedly knew of the affair told me I was a “typical _____ student” because I was a woman, conventionally somewhat attractive, and young (22 when I came into my PhD program). | 22 | Senior grad student, someone who was about to graduate | Other R1 | History | None; I didn’t realize how insulting it was until later | None | Just self doubt (yay for impostor syndrome!) | See above | Makes me more aware of my status and position in power relationships | Male | ||||
2 | 12/1/2017 15:01:54 | When I was in grad school a male faculty member "joked" to a group of three female PhD students (myself included) who had just mentioned how stressed we were about comps, that "all [we] had to do was wear tight, low-cut dresses and [we'd be fine." Several years later a male faculty member stared at my breasts repeatedly, whenever I passed him in the hallway, etc, to the point where I had to sit on the same side of the table as him during meetings so as to not keep catching him doing it when I was on the opposite side | PhD student/Assistant Professor | At least Associate, if not Full at that point | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | York University in Toronto and University of Lethbridge in Lethbridge | History | None | None | As a PhD student I learned that when senior men want to harass you and make disgusting "jokes" there was nothing I could do about it, and was reminded of that lesson when the U of L faculty association said it could do nothing about the man who was harassing me. It was a powerful lesson about not really belonging in the academy. | It is one more thing I have to think about, worry about, feel unwelcome about, as a woman in the academy. | Male | |||
3 | 12/1/2017 15:02:01 | A senior colleague made overt sexual comments to me, including describing himself naked and having sex | Assistant Professor | Full Professor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | History | None | None | The harasser also later plagiarized my work. | Male | |||||
4 | 12/1/2017 15:04:24 | Kissed on the mouth in front of entire board of a prize committee at dinner following conference (I was the one receiving the prize) | Visiting Assistant Professor | They were a tenured prof at another university | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | History | None | None | No longer wished to be part of that professional association; it happened in front of the most important person in my field of study who laughed as the incident occurred so I no longer sought his mentorship | I was mostly annoyed, not scarred, but it made me feel like the professors in my male-dominated area of study mainly saw me as a piece of ass, not an emerging scholar | I left academia, not because of this incident alone | I actually do not know the name of the person who did this to me - he just walked up in the middle of me taking my leave from a dinner and grabbed me | Male | ||
5 | 12/1/2017 15:16:35 | Stalked, harassed, threatened by a colleague who also threatened the safety of my toddler daughter. | Adjunct instructor with half time appointment in program administration | same. He was a colleague with identical appointment | Other R1 | University of Nebraska | rhetoric and composition | after I filed an EEOC claim I was placed under the direct supervision of the harasser. Informed that if I complained I would be fired. Wound up fired anyway (as I assumed would happen) | None. | I was subsequently RIF'd and did not work for 18 months. Ultimately settled for another adjunct position at a different institution. Based on my salary at the time of dismissal,lost income after fifteen years is ~$500,000 | Impossible to assess. Worst thing that has ever happened to me ( worse than divorce, worse than breast cancer). I went down fighting for respect and ideals. | Again, inestimable. Entirely undid my career to the extent that it took five years to regain my footing, restart research, restore faith in the professoriate and myself. | Male | ||
6 | 12/1/2017 15:18:58 | An email detailing sadomasochistic acts being done to me. | Undergrad TA | Random student | R2 | UM-St. Louis | Physics | “You don’t want to spoil this nice young man’s life do you? It was just a joke” | He was told to go back to his home institution, an R1. | NA | Random emails make me nervous. | Male | |||
7 | 12/1/2017 15:20:08 | Professor of graduate course made sexual jokes about students in class; forced students to answer questions about sexual experiences as “fun ice-breakers.” | Graduate student | Professor | Other R1 | Told I could pursue sexual harassment charges formally through the university but the professor would know my identity. Chose not to for fear of career. | None | Male | |||||||
8 | 12/1/2017 15:21:54 | It did not happen to me, but was passed Down by femal grad students | Grad student | Tenured Professor and on degree committee | Other R1 | Iowa State University | Physics | NA | NA | I did not go to him for help when I struggled and as a consequence failed the qualifier | Impacted my ability to get help and be successful | *** was “grabby” and inappropriate | Male | ||
9 | 12/1/2017 15:24:07 | Sexual harassment (unwanted touching and comments about pregnancy and pregnant body) | ABD | Department Chair | Other R1 | Sociology | Dean told me to "grow a thicker skin" | None | None of job outcomes; shaped my view of academia | Made pregnancy and degree completion very difficult | Male | ||||
10 | 12/1/2017 15:24:28 | Male students locked me in a supply closet. | Instructor | Students | Other Type of School | Western Iowa Tech CC | Science | Never told | I passed them all. | I quit teaching and went back to grad school. | I have PTSD from it. | I am never teaching again. | Male | ||
11 | 12/1/2017 15:28:00 | Lied about title iX. Sent inappropriate/emotional texts | Research Assistant | Boss | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Writing | None | None | None, but lots of fear that it will later | I was afraid to walk on campus | I don't know yet | Male | |||
12 | 12/1/2017 15:29:12 | Several women masters students (I'm male) told me about a senior tenured male professor who made mild to utterly obscene sexual comments to them. I looked up university policies and procedures around this and identified courses of action, but none wished to pursue anything and did not want me to act on their behalf. The university required them to lodge a complaint as anything I said would be hearsay, so no action was taken. The professor is now head of department. | Graduate (masters) student. | Professor, unconnected to my research, but pals with my former supervisor and most of the senior male staff. They hang out together, and some say used to use the department email list to trade in vile sexist jokes. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Alberta | Social sciences | None. | None. | None. | Some. It still is, years afterward, distressing to hold information that I am unable to act on. I find myself angry and frustrated when I think about it. | Picked my PhD carefully. | I have heard of other incidents. A colleague is staff in an institution where a serial abuser has recently been fired under police investigation. Allegations go back years and involve numerous male-on-male sexual assaults by a well known professor who groomed and assaulted his graduate students. Staff had reported numerous times over the years to the university administration that something awful was happening, but the institution failed to act, and thus did not remove the abuser from access to the people he was abusing. In a separate instance, someone relayed to me observing a sexuality studies professor expose himself to students at a conference. | Male | |
13 | 12/1/2017 15:39:58 | Gender based harassment | TT | TT | Regional Teaching College | Male | |||||||||
14 | 12/1/2017 15:40:49 | Conference - male PI put his hand down my pants | Postdoc | Random PI from another lab | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Plant Biology | Male | ||||||||
15 | 12/1/2017 15:43:04 | A professor I wanted to work with met with me in his office and told me he was no longer having sex with his wife, suggesting he was looking for that role to be filled. When I nervously and unbelievingly laughed, he dismissed me and wouldn’t work with me. | First-semester grad student | Professor in the grad program I was working in | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Comparative Literature | None | None | Left that grad program | Doubt of my academic abilities | Significant — got a Ph.D. years later at a much less prestigious school. Cannot get a job with this Ph.D. | Male | |||
16 | 12/1/2017 15:49:12 | At the beginning of my Ph.D. program, I would stop by the office of a professor whose work I admired. It was my second semester in the program and I was enrolled in his course. As we were talking, he asked me who I was TA-ing for. I told him and he then asked if "the freshmen boys thought she was attractive?" I felt blindsided by this question and uncomfortable. I responded with "Why would I know that?" I found it creepy, but shook it off as an older man trying to be funny. On another occasion, he lamented to me how the undergraduates now were all too busy on their phones between class instead of "going back to their dorm rooms to get to know each other better." He would always pepper our conversations with comments like these which made interacting with him uncomfortable. I was hoping to get some kind of guidance and mentorship as I went through the program since he is recognized name in the field. I never felt like I was taken seriously because of his inappropriate comments. Another time, I was dressed up to give a lecture in a tasteful outfit which included a knee-length pencil skirt and knee-high boots--holdovers from a previous job in an non-profit office setting. He came up to me in a hallway and stood much too close to tell me how "sexy" he thought my outfit was and how I should dress like that more often. That was the last time I ever wore a skirt. The rest of the time in the program, I dressed androgynously in jeans and over-sized t-shirts. I also stopped going by his office. Whatever contacts or advice he could have given me was not worth having to listen to his creepy comments about his loneliness or how he'd love to have his female students to his apartment, but "the bed is much too small." I felt that he was testing the waters to see if he could get away with more than just saying something questionable. I decided I never wanted to be alone with him, ever. Comparing notes with other females students, I found out he did it to almost every women he encountered, but since he was a decades-long member of the faculty, nothing was ever done about his behavior.He may have received a slap on the wrist about 15 years ago, but that's about all. I changed the direction of my study so I would not have to take his courses, or include him on my dissertation committee. It caused me stress and made me doubt myself and my worth as an academic. | Ph.D student | Full professor | Other R1 | History | Never reported it. | None. | It made me question why I was in academia in the first place. | Overall stress. | Moved into another subfield so as to avoid him at the university and at conferences. | The worst part of all this is that I am a 1st gen graduate student and a WOC and this person makes a big show of being a friend to women and underrepresented groups in academia. I can see how he can be manipulative, especially with younger women who may not know how the professor/student relationship is supposed to work. He is retired now and has since moved out of the area. | Male | ||
17 | 12/1/2017 15:59:07 | Verbal sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour. Lewd comments, lewd questions, disclosure of their personal sex history, life, questions, desires, quandaries. Inappropriate commentary on female students. Womanizing comments. Questioned me about my own sex life, practices. Commented on my appearance every time they saw me, one way or another. Told stories of past inappropriate behaviour with students and provided justifications. Sexualized comments about my students. Ranking other departmental members by their looks and intelligence, in addition to ranking students in similar ways. Good looks = intelligence. Some of my students were better looking than me, according to him, and therefore more intelligent than me as well. It's a real ego boost to know that your colleague thinks that your 19 year old students out shine you in the realm of intellectual achievements. One day we were walking down a hallway in a classroom building and a young female student walked by. He turned his head, looked her up and down, and said - Damn, why do they have to be so cute? Couldn't they tone it down to make life easier for us? Spoke regularly of the influence he had on my eventual tenure application. | 1st Year Tenure Track Assistant Professor | Tenured Professor, Senior Professor in Subject Area within department, Designated Departmental "Mentor" | Other Type of School | Psychology | After I had been in the department for many months, someone else in the department came to 'check in on me' to let me know that it was generally known that my harasser was a harasser and they wanted to make sure I was okay. They didn't want to make sure he was reported, or that anything was done to stop it, they just wanted me to know they knew that he was an issue and that he had been an issue in the past as well. ?!?!?!? Taking the perspective of an objective outsider, this is horrific. It is institutional support, knowledge and protection of someone who is a serial offender. As the person experiencing the harassment and trying to make sense of it, I actually felt better after the person spoke with me and I learned that "I wasn't the only one." At least this let me know that 'it wasn't in my head' and it also made me feel somewhat 'off the hook' about whether or not I had a responsibility to report the behaviour. My main concern before had been whether this person was treating other people this way as well or potentially treating the students in the same way. I was worried that somehow I was the only one with this information and that if I didn't tell anyone I would be complicit in whatever other 'bad deeds' he was committing on campus. It sounds ridiculous to actually type this out, but knowing that the department and the administration already knew that this person was a predator took the weight off of me, and therefore made me feel better. It also made me angry. Why did they leave me be for so many months? Why wasn't I warned immediately? And really, why is this person employed at the university? This last question though, seems almost silly. We all know the reasons why. Instead of making a fuss or trying to prove a case, they just sit back and hope that he will retire. The women in the department take on additional students in order to avoid the potential situation of having a known predator serve as a student's primary supervisor. The women in the department teach overloads, have classes filled past the cap because one of the senior, tenured professors is a known predator and therefore cannot be trusted with upper level courses. Honestly, if you cannot trust someone with a room of 20 young girls, why can you trust them with a room of 90 young girls? | None. He is biding his time, pulling in a full professor salary at the top of the grid waiting until it is absolutely necessary to retire. He doesn't have to do research, he doesn't have to supervise students (because they're worried about how he'll interact with them if he does), he doesn't have to teach new courses. He has a great job. | Too soon to tell. I haven't quit yet. I tend to not go to my office very much. I work mostly from home whenever possible. I began doing this so as to avoid his visits to my office. Eventually, it seemed to work. When I do go to my office now, he doesn't seem to come knocking. However, I continue to go rather irregularly, so for all I know, he does still come knocking and I am just not there to answer. In the long run, this could have a negative impact on my career if it has created the impression that I am not around. I know that they tell tenure track people to "look busy" and to "be seen." I've basically done the opposite in an attempt to avoid him as much as possible. Luckily, I think that my track record on paper will make up for this, as there's very little else to find fault with me on other than the amount of time I spend in my office vs. working from other locations. | Starting a new tenure track position is known to be stressful, but honestly, it was this harassment that made the beginning of my position as a professor the most stressful and the most upsetting. I wrote 3 grants in my first year, taught an overload, and published 5 manuscripts. I did not find any of that stressful - I enjoyed my work. What kept me up at nights, what brought me to tears, and what made me hide from my office was the stress and discomfort of wondering what to do about the sexual harassment I was experiencing. Teaching 3 new courses, teaching for the first time ever, writing grants, continuing my research - none of that brought me to tears in my first year. The only thing that brought me to tears was my experiences with this one individual - who was supposedly doing all that he could to 'help' me. | The experience really burst my bubble. I honestly believed that the trope of the 'old creepy male professor' was a thing of the past. I never in my life expected that I would come face to face with the cold reality that this still takes place. It has tarnished what should have been the most exciting part of my career up to this point. | Good idea. the Chronicle of HE seems to be collecting similar info, but you have better questions - so I filled yours out but not theirs. | Male | ||
18 | 12/1/2017 16:01:40 | A much older professor had a lot of graduate students over to his house. He proceeded to drink to much and request over and over that I massage his shoulders. This was in front of all the other graduate students. I relented and massaged his shoulders a little. He loudly and playfully moaned. Everyone laughed. I was really embarrassed. | Masters studebt | My professor | Regional Teaching College | Biology | I never said anything about it to anyone. But another graduate student told a different professor who jokingly referenced the incident to me later. | Male | |||||||
19 | 12/1/2017 16:07:28 | I was invited to coffee by a senior faculty member that ended up as drinks at a restaurant. The course of the evening became progressively worse as this man twice my age promised to advance my career while he suggested other perks. He went on to explain how his marriage was stale and how cute I was and how he had to get to know me the monent he saw me. I was a visiting faculty member at an R1 public university who had just finished my dissertation. I trued to steer the conversation away from sexual inuendos but the senior faculty member would not let up. I had to state that my fiance was picking me uop and that I had to leave. He said he would live to see me again. I smiled politely and walked away. I told a permanent faculty member who expressed shock but that's it. I was only there for a yar and avoided this maan for the rest of my time there. No one else ever sought me out. | Visiting Lecturer | Tenured favulty | Other R1 | University of Michigan | Religious Studies but this was a Near eastern Studies program | Shock. This was just a minor offender. There was a worse offender in the department who also still had his job. | None | None | Self doubt and general suspicion of senior men | None | Male | ||
20 | 12/1/2017 16:10:04 | Professor sexually harassed another professor | graduate student | professor in department | Small Liberal Arts College | Women's and Gender Studies | None | None | N/A | N/A | N/A | woman professor harassed another woman professor in the department but faced zero consequences. | Female | ||
21 | 12/1/2017 16:20:29 | Senior colleague hit on me, made overt sexual advances on several occasions—including in his own home with his wife & child in rooms down the hall. | Untenured | Tenured—In affiliate department (But on my review & reappointment committee) | Small Liberal Arts College | Religious Studies | Did not report | N/a | He left within a year or so & I did a few years later. No lasting professional consequences. | Has made me question my place in the academy | N/a (thankfully) | Male | |||
22 | 12/1/2017 16:33:11 | a young gay graduate student often touched the bodies of female graduate students because he believed he could have access | grad student | younger grad student in an MA program | Other R1 | indiana | communication studies | he is a darling of the field | Male | ||||||
23 | 12/1/2017 16:34:50 | Cohortmate became fixated on the idea that I "hated men" and had forced his last OKCupid date, coincidentally a friend of mine, to decide she didn't want a second date. Screamed at me in our office. | MFA student | We were both students but he had a very close friendship with the program director. | Other R1 | creative writing--master's | Program director told all my classmates to stop speaking to me, and many of them did. She also waited until a night when I was sick to tell everybody how much I earned for my fellowship. I attempted to use a medical excuse (I was seeing a therapist to deal with the fallout) to miss a class, but then she told everybody I was in therapy. | none | I cannot get letters of rec from any of my former professors and will never be a professor of creative writing. My program director warned all new hires about me during a time of high turnover so I could not have good relationships with most faculty. | I became suicidal thinking that the years of my life I had put into academia would now mean nothing, and that I had no friends in my program. I had to start therapy. | I got into a different academic field in which I have yet to be harassed, took my last year of the degree to study that field on another campus (while writing my novel at the same time), and am trying to get into PhDs in my new field. Maybe this sort of derailing harassment will take place again, but I'm mostly just not speaking to male colleagues now in hopes of avoiding their attention. I also don't trust women faculty members who seem to get along with men too well, to be honest. | MFAs are so rife with this shit. It might be the false notion that artists are all progressive liberal feminists (admins who believe this assume I'm lying about my professors' and classmates' not-at-all-feminist behavior), the fact that a person can be pretty stupid and reactionary and still write good enough poems to get into one of the many programs that exist, the notion that as artists we don't have to conform to the same rules as everybody else. Someone at a campus across the country refused to write me a recommendation letter to Sewanee two years ago because she didn't "think it was safe for young women." She was talking about ***. Famous writers with tenure track positions at many different universities knew about *** for many, many years, and didn't do shit. I mean, sometimes they said vague stuff to their own students about not thinking Sewanee was safe, but mostly they didn't do shit. | Male | ||
24 | 12/1/2017 16:47:54 | As an undergrad music major I had to take private lessons with the piano teacher. He sexually assaulted my best friend, also a piano major who was very very homesick and had no way to get home. He was from her hometown. He got her when she was drunk and high. She wouldn’t report but I left the piano studio. He kept touching my arm. I would wear my hair down on the side he sat in to hide my face. He would try to brush it back or told me to pin it up. I couldn’t take it anymore and left. | Undergraduate student | Professor of piano, which was my major instrument then. | Regional Teaching College | English | None. I was too afraid to tell. They were all men and all friends. | None. | Changed to another instrument I wasn’t as good at and then left the school. | I don’t like to play piano anymore. | Not sure | Male | |||
25 | 12/1/2017 16:53:38 | Senior white male colleague from another department (we share a building) came into my office & closed the door. He wanted to talk to me about my reappointment file (pretenure 3rd year review). He told me he was shocked it took so long to achieve 3rd yr review (it wasn’t: I was on time), looked at my pregnant body & said “well it’s because of all your pregnancies, no doubt.” (I’d been pregnant once.) told me I was “brave” to be so far behind (again: I was not) & “knocked up.” | Assistant professor | Full professor, on tenure & promotion committee | Other R1 | Male | |||||||||
26 | 12/1/2017 16:55:49 | Touched without consent repeatedly in a social situation. | Assistant Professor | Emeritus professor. Had been part of search committee. | R2 | Cultural Studies | I distanced completely from a person I thought was invested in my success. I don’t have any other real mentors in my department, and I’m less interested in asking for support from male colleagues. | It’s made me paranoid of interaction with male colleagues, and men in general. | Male | ||||||
27 | 12/1/2017 16:56:40 | Senior white male colleague knocks on door, brings female undergraduate with him. Announces that he is going to hug her, needs “any woman to witness,” before I can say anything has full-bear-hugged this undergrad. I protest, saying this is inappropriate and, in a joking tone to diffuse the sfuddnt’s Obvious discomfort, I can’t undo harassment for him by virtue of being a woman. He, still touching the student, said: “But it sure makes this look friendly, doesn’t it.” | Assistant professor | Full prof, endowed chair | Other R1 | Humanities | None | None | None | Male | |||||
28 | 12/1/2017 17:12:49 | Sexually harassed, assaulted and raped by a professor when I was an undergrad. This was in the 70's. | Undergrad student. | Chair of the department I majored | Regional Teaching College | Theatre | PTSD | I was young. This experience early in my life was a real bloc to my success for many years. | Male | ||||||
29 | 12/1/2017 17:14:23 | In my first tenure track job, my colleague (same rank, hired at same time) repeatedly posted highly innappropriate and offensive misogynist materials and comments on social media— where he was linked to all of our senior colleagues. No one else said anything. | Assistant professor | Same rank | Other R1 | I left the institution the following year. His presence (and the lack of response from senior colleagues) made my work environment feel toxic. | I spent too many days worrying about what he had done, what he’d do next and how I should respond. I lost many writing days to this anxiety and anger. | Left my R1 TT position for a TT at a smaller institution. | Male | ||||||
30 | 12/1/2017 17:20:01 | I started a new job as a visiting assistant professor and within the first month I got an email to my faculty email account from a source I couldn't trace back to that told me the sender had been watching me since I started working there ,found me very attractive and knew I was married but was interested in pursuing an affair with me. I wrote back to say I had no plans to cheat on my marriage. | First month of a three year visiting assistant professor line | I got the impression it was a fellow faculty member | Small Liberal Arts College | Math | I never told anyone but my husband | None | I will never know. I had been told on my hiring that my three year visiting position had a 99% chance of converting to tenure track but in fact, it did not and there was never a reason it didn't. | It's been 18 years since this anonymous email and I still remember it and feel affected by it. For the next three years after receiving this email, I never knew who had sent it and felt that they had some right to suggest that I violate my marriage vows. I felt guarded around colleagues wondering if they sent it. I felt concerned about my interactions with colleagues lest they think I was flirting or being too friendly. | Other than still wondering to this day who it was, it hasn't affected my life choices. I was happy once the position ended and I found a tenure track job and could get away from whoever had made his unwelcomed advance and uncomfortable working environment. | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | |||
31 | 12/1/2017 17:36:42 | I have never personally been harassed or assaulted by anyone in my department. However, I would definitely say that my department and my graduate student colleagues have certainly contributed to a hostile work environment within the department. When I entered, the graduate cohort definitely felt like a "boys club" where the students with the most power were men, and their behavior fueled socializing and hierarchies in the department. Most of their socializing consisted of drinking and taking drugs until losing all control of themselves. It was not uncommon for them to exposing themselves at parties and even public places like bars. | Ph.D. | Most of them were graduate students, although at least one professor contributed to this environment by making out with a Ph.D. student in a departmental party at a conference. | Other R1 | Indiana University | Communication and Culture | None | Little | I've been scarred by the behavior of these people. I don't want to relate to my colleagues like this but it's been very difficult to forge connections with this toxic group. I avoid attending social or even professional departmental events because of this. I also feel that my own career as a student has suffered because I haven't been given the same level of recognition as the department. | I have anxiety and depression that have been exacerbated by these experiences. | This experience within the department has definitely hampered my completion and my comfort moving ahead in the field. | Please do not ignore hostile work environment. It's very common and often overlooked as a problem. | Male | |
32 | 12/1/2017 17:38:46 | My male boss (mid-50's) described his sexual attraction to a celebrity. On another occasion, he commented that it would be less expensive to hire women to do the job his wife did (cook, maid, prostitute..) He would constantly commend a female graduate student on what a good job she did "taking care of her body". This happened in a STEM lab in the last 5 years. | graduate student and undergraduate student | tenured full professor | Other R1 | Chemistry | did not turn him in | Avoided discussing topics outside of research | I felt judged for my appearance and that I had gained weight in graduate school due to stress and having kids. My boss also favored the graduate student he found attractive, which made the other lab members resentful. | None, but I am more aware of the harassment that occurs. At the time, I thought this was normal and did not realize that it was very inappropriate for a male PI to discuss his sexual preferences with his students. | Male | ||||
33 | 12/1/2017 17:39:01 | It was my first national conference that I would be presenting at. Being a grad student, I didn’t have a lot of money so I volunteered to help run the conference in exchange for my entry fee being waved. One of the coordinators of the conference, after setting up, suggested we all go eat. So we did and the conference’s organization paid for the dinner and the very expensive wine. The second bottle of wine wasn’t finished by the group and so the organizer took it back with him saying he didn't want to waste good wine. That night, the conference organizer in question sent me a text (he had all the volunteer numbers) suggesting that “this bottle of wine wasn’t going to drink itself.” I remember feeling immense fear but I ignored the text, locked my door, and said the next day that I had put my phone on “do not disturb.” The next day, I was invited to dinner by a prominent scholar that I wanted to talk to about her work. To my surprise, several people, including the conference organizer were invited also. As long as I am with the group, I thought, it should be fine, and it was, until it was time to go back and four of the group entered a taxi and I found myself alone, in a city I had never been to before, with this man. We wandered around the Harvard campus and my brain was close to panic. I was creeped out, trying to keep the conversation casual, and wondering how to get away. This was before the time of Uber and Lyft. It was hard to think and I belatedly realized how much my wine glass kept being refilled. He eventually proposed sex which I refused… again, and again. Somehow, I was grabbed and his lips were on mine. I pushed him away and strongly said “no.” We eventually made it back to the hotel where I went to my room, alone, and sobbed. My presentation at the conference was well received. I was hailed as “impressive” and “brilliant.” Yet, all I could think of was avoiding the conference organizer. | Grad Student (Masters) | Conference Coordinator | Other R1 | Music | none | I became depressed and withdrawn. | Male | ||||||
34 | 12/1/2017 17:43:12 | In grad school, I was paid $7500 for 9 months. After bills and rent, I didn’t always have money left over to eat. So, when a PhD student at the same grad school who had also gone to my undergrad years before me offered to get dinner after one of his classes, I was relieved. We got dinner and drinks. The conversation was fine and I was thankful for the food. He complimented me on my intelligence and said I was pretty but that was it for that night. When he offered dinner after class again, I was, again, thankful that I would eat that night. This time, however, he kept pressing martinis on me and I kept saying no to more drinks and he then asked if I would fuck him. I said no, and he told me that he wanted some sort of compensation for the amount he was paying in dinner and drinks. I remember his hand on my thigh trying to get higher and him boasting about his, um, speed and that he could be “like a jackhammer.” Somehow, I got back to my apartment and then sobbed. When I would see this man in future years, my stomach would turn every time and when he got a job at a nearby college, I nearly threw up | Grad Student (Masters) | PhD Student | Other R1 | Kent State University | Music | none | none | I became depressed, withdrawn, and fearful whenever I would see him or even just knowing that he is around young students, both high school and college. | I want to be more active in my field but I don't want to interact with him at conferences, and he is reasonably well-known in my field now and continuing to grow in prominence. | Male | |||
35 | 12/1/2017 17:49:34 | 1. The Chair of the French Department tried to follow me home, with the intention of initiating sexual relations with me (Fall 1981); 2. I was propositioned repeatedly by a senior colleague (1986-1990); 3. I was groped by one senior colleague (1990) and propositioned by another (1990-1991). | 1. Graduate Student (1981); 2. Assistant Professor (1986-1990); 3. Assistant Professor (1990-1991). | 1. Department Chair and Chair of major awards committee; 2. Senior Colleague; 3. Senior Colleagues. All could decide to end my employment and deny grants or awards. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | 1. Yale; 2. Brandeis; 3. Cornell | French | 1. Did not report (harasser was one of the most powerful people in the profession; had told friends of mine he harassed that he could destroy their careers); 2. Was told that nothing could be done, as the harasser was too powerful; 3. Did not report - there was no mechanism to report harassment at the time, and one of the harassers was protected by administrators at every level of the university. | None. | 1. Was denied a dissertation completion grant; 2. left the second institution; 3. Mentors of harassers (also friends of harasser in incident #1) tried to interfere with the tenure process to block my tenure, but did not succeed. | Stressful. I no longer trust the institution I work for (also because of insistent protection of harassers of students, and willingness to destroy students' careers in order to achieve that protection). | Left first job because of it. | Male | ||
36 | 12/1/2017 17:50:45 | I was stalked for a year | A PhD student | My ex-boyfriend and a fellow grad student in my program | Other R1 | A U Cal campus | Interdisciplinary Humanities | For various reasons I don't have good memories of this, but I know that he eventually left or was asked to leave the program. But it was not an immediate action, even after I received a restraining order. | I don't think he even finished his doctorate. Not sure what he is doing now. | Delayed the completion of my dissertation, I emotionally and physically/geographically distanced myself from my program (including my fellow students, advisor, and committee members), and university. | PTSD, depression | Male | |||
37 | 12/1/2017 18:02:04 | When I was a grad student, a professor tried to make out with me at a party that was pretty well-attended by the people in our department. I told him two or three times that it was a really bad idea, but he didn't let up. When he said "Kiss me!" and grabbed my behind, I pushed him aside, ran away, and hid behind a couch. I later found out that the very next thing he did was to sexually assault another student in a more egregious way. When she filed a complaint, I stepped forward as well. | Graduate Student | Assistant Professor. He wasn't on my committee, and, by that time, I wasn't taking any of his classes. | Other R1 | The administration took the complaint seriously: Within a couple of days, he was banned from campus, and his tenure pack was frozen. He was eventually offered the choice to either resign or to undergo the university's disciplinary process. The department didn't handle it as well. In an effort to protect our privacy, they neglected to tell his students that he wouldn't be returning to campus for the foreseeable future, and didn't say much more to the faculty. I know of two faculty members who weren't aware of the gravity of the situation until some grad students clued them in. | He chose to resign rather than face the disciplinary process. Last I heard, he was working in someone else's lab. | Considering how much professional networking occurs at mixers where alcohol is served, this experience has added another dimension to my networking nervousness. That said, I'm lucky that we're in different subfields, so the direct impacts are very limited. | In the first week afterwards, I spent an afternoon under my desk feeling like I was at the bottom of the ocean and nothing was real. It's the only anxiety attack I've ever had. Paradoxically, it had a lot to do with the swiftness of the university's response. Over the course of 48 hours or so, I went from wondering if the university would take us seriously to knowing that I'd played a part in getting him removed from the university. It was some seriously heavy emotional whiplash. I definitely developed an emotional trigger around workplace/academic sexual harassment. Several years later, I was a real mess for a week after #metoo went viral. | None so far | Even though I stood up for myself, the other student, and who knows how many future students, I don't feel proud or empowered. Even though consequences happened where consequences were due, it isn't a happy situation and it never will be. | Male | |||
38 | 12/1/2017 18:13:17 | In summers 2002 & 2003, my first 2 summers after beginning PhD program, I went into the field to work on a large language documentation project. One of the program directors (and biggest name in the entire field) made it perfectly obvious within the first day of my arrival that he was "available." He hit on me repeatedly, which freaked me out b/c he was much older and had all the power. I did a lot of "laughing it off," and swatting of hands. I played the coquettish thing so he would not be offended by my rebuffs and haaaated myself for it. I was terrified of being alone with him but often had to take meetings with him (in his hotel room-- that's where we were based). He often offered wine. Nothing happened, right? I was just constantly uncomfortable and needing to protect myself and my place in the project. | Early PhD student | He was without question the biggest name in the field. | Other Research Agency | Linguistics | Didn't report | None | I changed entirely the direction of my research, which set me back and stressed me out. I also had to grieve the loss of my dream field of study. I still grieve it even though I've moved well beyond it | I had a mini breakdown during my second summer on the project and left early. Never to return. | I changed what I chose to study and wrote a thesis on something entirely different but which I'm still proud of. I mostly felt ashamed. Ashamed that I had to titter and laugh when I really wanted to yell at him and tell him to knock it the fuck off and that his "flirting" was scary and weird. Ashamed that I couldn't take it anymore and flipped out and left the project (it was embarrassing). | Male | |||
39 | 12/1/2017 18:20:31 | On my very first day as a Teaching Fellow, an older male faculty member told me that the best piece of advice he could give me is to always erase the chalkboard up and down, rather than side to side-- that way "my ass won't shake." Similar comments have continued ever since. Now at adjunct status, I feel relatively powerless and generally just grin and bear it. | Teaching Fellow | Colleague | Small Liberal Arts College | English | Male | ||||||||
40 | 12/1/2017 18:20:48 | 1989 (a long time ago) professor at Harding University (a Christian school associated with Church of Christ denomination) had side hustle of photography and his office was covered in photos of young college women that he had taken. Whenever I went to him with a question in his office, he would say, "ok I'll answer your question but first give me a hug" and, being the obedient Christian girl that I was, I would oblige and he would give me a two-armed full body hug. Happened numerous times but I was socialized to feel like he was just being fatherly. Then one Saturday I was driving next to the science center and saw him in the parking lot and drove over to say hi. Rolled window down and exchanged a few words and then he sticks his head inside the car and kisses my cheek. I was stunned and didn't know quite what to do so just drove away. | Undergrad student, one of his students | My professor | Other Type of School | Harding University in Searcy Arkansas | Don't want to say | None, not reported and I never heard of anyone reporting him although I'm sure he did it to others | None | None | None | None | Male | ||
41 | 12/1/2017 18:24:24 | Soon after starting my graduate program, one of my intended dissertation committee members approached me at a "welcome" party for new graduate students to ask if I had any same sex encounter that I wanted to tell him about as he gave me a very creepy smile and backed me into a corner and grabbed me by the waist. Later I found out he had a reputation for sexually harassing and assaulting female graduate students. | PhD Student | associate professor- dissertation committee member | Other R1 | History | Another committee member suggested that since he was the only professor in one of my intended minor fields, I should consider changing that minor field. I did. | None. | The subfield I initially planned on would have helped me in the job market right now. | I had to take a class with him a year and a half later. I hated every second of it. He stared at me constantly and once told me I shouldn't wear heals if I didn't want "boys" to stare at me. I also ended up switching major professors because my first major professor was friends with the harasser. I feared he would end up being the same way, and again I'd have no recourse. | I changed my subfield and major professor. It's hard to measure what long term impact these changes had. | Male | |||
42 | 12/1/2017 18:25:45 | A senior professor in my partner's department was drunk and he saw me from across the room and stumbled and fell over my child's train set on the floor and landed on my leg. Then when the host introduced me to him, he held onto my hand and wouldn't let go and started talking about a rape case he had heard of on the news in Pakistan. This man was drunk and falling all over me, while my small child was next to me and my partner was nearby. We were at a department party at a another senior faculty member's home. For a while the host just stood there with a grin on his face and then he then alerted my partner that there is a senior faculty who is drunk and talking to me. My partner then rushed to my side and saved me from further conversation with this man. I felt pressured to stay in the conversation because he was a senior faculty member in my partner's new department. | I was an adjunct professor in another department. | He was a tenured, senior professor in my partner's department. My partner was untenured at the time and I was not tenure track yet. | R2 | Dartmouth College (fyi, this faculty member is different from the ones under investigation at the college) | None. He is a lawsuit waiting to happen but it will never happen. | I was scared for a long time. I took an adjunct course in his department for one term and was scared to run into him. I also felt gross and violated after the event. I felt objectified and sexualized, even though my partner and small child were also present at the event. It was disgusting. | I saw him in the hallway after the incident in my partner's department and it felt like he was following me. I ran out of the building and still saw him in my peripheral vision. I no longer visit my parter's building let alone his office. | Male | |||||
43 | 12/1/2017 18:36:59 | I apologized for not immediately recognizing a colleague in the hallway, explaining that he looked different due to a new pair of glasses. I said that I also appreciated unique glasses. He said, "It's kind of the same thing as you wearing fancy lingerie under your clothes." I said, "no, not really the same thing at all" and walked away. The creepiness and inappropriateness only hit me later | an untenured assistant professor | a full professor in another, related department (who has, incidentally, never been able to tell me and another female colleague apart - we came to the university at the same time and are both relatively young, but that's where the similarities stop. And yet he insists on saying we are the same person - something he has said to us multiple times as well as to other colleagues.) | Other R1 | History | None (I did not officially report it) | None (I did not officially report it) | None (this was, in part, why I did not officially report it). | I definitely think twice about being anywhere near this colleague and resist being in the same room with him. It made me second guess the way that all of my male colleagues speak to and look at me. | I refuse to let his offensive comments dictate my life choices or career trajectory. | I feel like there are countless examples of gender bias and discrimination that few people would clearly identify as "sexual harassment" but are none the less troubling. They are even more frustrating to document or prove. I'm irritated at myself and my institution that I didn't feel confident enough to report this person. But it's the daily insults and condescension and gender discrimination and misogyny that really makes my blood boil. And, it seems to me, that is what makes the more blatant examples of sexual harassment and assault permissible - at least at my institution. | Male | ||
44 | 12/1/2017 19:03:35 | I don't even know where to start, so many things happened when I was a graduate student. One professor made wildly inappropriate comments and discussions about his sexual past in class. Every class. He once asked me, when I came to class with a bruise on my face from falling off of my bike, "What? Does your boyfriend beat you or something?" (in front of the entire class). Another professor physically assaulted me by slapping my arm hard and grabbing it to get me off of a wheelchair ramp (I didn't realize it was a wheelchair ramp, and there wasn't a wheelchair user coming). He later screamed at me in front of undergraduate students. I had a male graduate student peer smack me on the backside with his backpack when were were standing in front of an entire lecture hall full of undergraduates. When I was an undergraduate a departmental admin. assistant started a rumor that I was sleeping with a male professor. Oh, I have also faced some awful harassment from some male undergraduates, when I was a graduate student and again as a Visiting Assistant Professor. | graduate student, undergraduate student, VAP | full professor *2, graduate student, assistant professor, undergraduate | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | English | None. I didn't even know who to talk to. I think when I was an undergraduate, I talked to my adviser about the rumor. She said she'd look into it, I think. | None. | I am currently an Assistant Professor, but it has been a long, agonizing road of self-doubt, self-blame, self-hatred, impostor syndrome, etc. | Inestimable. I don't even have words to describe the levels of anxiety, soul-crushing depression, and thoughts of suicide. It's significantly impacted my physical health as well. | Left that field entirely, though that was a majorly positive outcome. | Male | |||
45 | 12/1/2017 19:12:23 | At the time, I was a 27 year old female. On a phone interview for a tenure track position at a top tier liberal arts institution, the older male interviewer (only person on the call with me), talked to me for over an hour (this was supposed to be a 15 minute phone chat) about his personal life, culminating in him telling me a story about how he and my graduate advisor (another older male) wore speedos to seduce women in a hot tub at a conference. I felt incredibly uncomfortable, but did not end the call because it was a tenure-track job interview. I was not invited to an on-campus interview. I was advised to report him to HR, but did not pursue that for obvious reasons. | 6th graduate student on the job market | Interviewer; full professor and big name in the field | Small Liberal Arts College | I prefer not to answer | It made me more likely to target jobs where the majority of the people in the department were female, but given the current market, there really wasn't much that I could change. | Male | |||||||
46 | 12/1/2017 19:19:26 | Was sexually harassed (lewd comments, inappropriate evaluations of my work and person) for years. Reported. Nothing was done. Witnessed a tenured faculty member physically assault a student in his office. Reported. Nothing was done. Had students show me firsthand, irrefutable evidence of multiple faculty members and administrators soliciting them for inappropriate relationships (sexts, etc.). Reported. Nothing was done. Was consistently body shamed, humiliated, and plagiarized by female colleagues who were complicit in (or afraid to challenge) the "boys club." Reported. Nothing was done. Finally left academia after a decade of trying to power through the toxic culture of my institution. Spent a year in therapy. Lost friends, was blamed or told I was overreacting by former colleagues. Feel embarrassed and frightened to maintain friendships with former colleagues who were sympathetic to my plight. Had to completely rebuild my life. I was a good teacher, a good colleague, a good scholar. My former institution, and my discipline, lost a lot when they lost me. | Fulltime faculty, untenured | Professor, Associate Professor, Director, Department Head, Program Director | Regional Teaching College | Humanities | None | None. Most were rewarded with tenure. | I left my career. | Had to go into therapy | Totally changed my life trajectory. | Academics are, by and large, people with poor social skills, little experience in professional/private sector working environments, minimal management training, and an inflated sense of their importance. They also don't recognize that intellect is NOT a substitute for emotional intelligence, and therefore they do a lot of mental gymnastics to justify their abusive and predatory behavior. This includes faculty members who believe they are 'in love' with their victims. Using someone, especially someone who needs your mentorship or supervision, for emotional validation is NOT love. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
47 | 12/1/2017 19:37:28 | One of our "rockstar" faculty members was known to have slept with every single female Asian grad student in our department. | I found out about it at the Christmas party in the first year of my PhD when my practicum leader told us over wine that she'd performed oral sex on this professor in his office. | Tenured full professor | Other R1 | Social Sciences | None to me, but he did end up marrying a (European) student whose dissertation committee he had served on | 🖓 | I was ABD after my 4th year, and have since taken a medical leave of absence for issues related to preserving my mental health. I was not a victim in this incident, but it was a first drop in what would later become an overflowing bucket of ambient departmental toxicity. | Male | |||||
48 | 12/1/2017 19:54:05 | While an undergraduate, I was sexually assaulted by a fellow student and began an adjudication process. Part of this process was having the school's Title IX coordinator email my professors with vague details (i.e. that I was working with the office and might need some extra help and that professors should reach out to me and be flexible). I felt very lonely during this process and the professor in question emailed me offering to be a friend and ally. I desperately needed supportive people in my life and I was more than happy to try and take him up on his offer. He came on very strongly in class and in emails to me, complimenting my work endlessly. Eventually, during my senior year, he became my undergraduate thesis advisor in the department. In our meetings together he would often make strange comments about "not wanting me to get the wrong idea." For instance, he told me that he didn't want to shut the door when we met and that he didn't want to read more suggestive lines of my poetry out loud to me when giving critique "in case someone walking by heard." Also in these meetings, I would catch him looking at my chest, thighs, and other body parts in a sexualized way before averting his eyes. He told me inappropriate things about his childhood and tried to insert topics like incest into our conversations, perhaps because he had read my sexual abuse into my poetry or because he knew I was pursuing a Title IX case. He would constantly try to bring up my father or compare himself to my father (i.e. "I know I'm not your dad, but I'm really proud of you"). He would constantly compare me to his girlfriend, later wife, and set up a meeting between us for unknown reasons. He seemed thrilled that it had gone well. He would ask me deeply personal questions about my case and my life and I would leave these meetings feeling as though I had something taken from me. He would send emails filled with winky and smiley faces. I felt unsettled by his behavior, but it wasn't until I started talking to others in the department that I learned I wasn't alone. One fellow student told me that she had quit the department because of him and that he "loved little girls" like me. I also found out that he had been sleeping with one of his master's students and dumped her as she was graduating. This relationship was initiated after he invited the student to go out for wine. Later, the professor shared with me the unofficial guide to grad school that he gave all hopeful MFAs. One of the pieces of advice was that "some professors may prefer to meet over wine." Also in the guide was a recommendation that students attend a popular writing conference so that they could "have consensual sex with other writers ;)." Almost every female student I knew that had taken his classes seemed to fall into his web, talking about him constantly and despairing if he criticized their work. One of these students sent the professor a very sexual poem that was explicitly about him, and instead of taking appropriate actions he sent her back an email asking not to write about him because he "had to be careful about these things" because he'd "run into trouble before." This professor is very well-connected in his field and seems to know everyone, especially since he runs a printing press. | Undergraduate student | Professor, thesis advisor | Other R1 | University of Arizona | Creative Writing/English | I am sure that the institution knows about the professor's behavior, considering his comments about needing to be careful and to leave his door open. I never reported what happened because I didn't realize the full impact of his actions until after I graduated. I noticed that he no longer seems to teach in-person classes, only online ones, as if he has been relegated to that (instead of being truly sanctioned?) | None that I am aware of, only some that I can speculate about (see above). | I feel wary about going to meetings with male professors alone and find myself overanalyzing everything they say. I feel he has deprived me of access to resources (such as networking) and support that I could have if I did not have these anxieties. He made me doubt my own talents and abilities--are all male professors complimenting me only because they want to sleep with me? This experience along with other institutional betrayals has all but taken away my sense of trust in institutional proceedings, such that I would likely not choose to ever go through them if something else were to happen to me. I lost relationships with other professors in the department and other students who are still in his web because I can't stand to see them enable him and sing his praises as if it's not known that he's a creep and not at all the "ally" he would like us to think he is. | I felt crazy for assuming that he was targeting me because he knows how to do so in a very subtle way (perhaps he's learned that sleeping with his students outright is the fast track to trouble?) His behavior made me feel even more isolated and lonely in a time when I was already struggling. I am angry as hell about his abuses of power and exploitation of those he knows or assumes have already been victimized. I talk about these incidents frequently in therapy and feel stuck--what can I do? how can I fix the situation? who else is he hurting now? I feel an immense burden. I have nightmares in which I try to remedy his behavior, to get back at him, to make him accountable. | I no longer write poetry or have much interest in the field. I chose not to go to one of the prestigious MFA programs I got into because the two faculty members I wanted to be my advisors were both friends of this professor (as are most poets). However, I'm now in the PhD program of my dreams--one he did not write me a letter of rec for. | Male | ||
49 | 12/1/2017 20:09:57 | When I was a grad student, a group of us - older grads and younger faculty, but some 40 and 50somethings too - from various universities went out for drinks and food after a conference reception. It was probably 11pm, we were in an upscale chain place in a major city. The bulk of the group were from a particular university. A married associate prof, male, hot shot in field, had a grad student on his lap (his advisee, not yet ABD), both were pretty drunk, and they started making out. It was pretty uncomfortable for all of the rest of us. We were waiting for food tho and a group of us promptly left. I was with a few other female grads and female committee member of mine and she was mid 40s at that point. We discussed how fucked up that was. I had a co-author who had been a grad student in that program and they told me that this faculty member did hot tub parties regularly with undergrads, slept with grads, etc. A couple years later I brought this up to a good friend who was this guy's advisee. She knew nothing of it and I believe her. I felt weird about telling her about it. Now, fast forward at least 5 years, and the grad student left the program but did publish with him. He's still a big name. I have no idea if he and his wife had an agreement about infidelity. And I'm still not totally sure to what degree this was wrong. But it isn't like he could write her a recommendation letter, right? I feel weird around him. | Grad student | Distant senior faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Male | |||||||||
50 | 12/1/2017 20:10:27 | I was groped at a conference, during an evening off-site event. (specifically, I was standing next to a food truck by the beach, which was across the road from the conference hotel in Gulfport.) The harasser sidled up next to me as I talked to someone else and then tried to grab my butt and then my breasts. I faked a phone call to get away from him. | Graduate student, PhD | Emeritus professor from another university | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Perpetrator was from Ole Miss, the conference was sponsored by U of Southern Miss at an offsite location | English | None; I was told that there was no process in place to take action at an off-site conference. The professional organization who hosts this conference, however, did adopt harassment policies about four years later, directly in response to my experience. (An acquaintance of mine was on the conference committee that year, and she told them [with permission] what had happened to me.) | None that I know of. He may have been blocked from attending that same conference a few years later, but I haven't gotten a clear answer about that. A person who left the field recently "named names" in a Facebook post last year, and he was one of the four ID'd. I have no idea if he suffered any consequences from that, either, seeing as he's now retired. | The "Big Conference" in my specialty was the following March and I was unable to network with anyone because he was trying to interfere with me the entire time. I had to avoid my own diss director's session. I ended up avoiding him by hiding off in a corner with a couple and their toddler during the final reception. | I was already depressed at the time, and this made it much worse. I became even more disillusioned with grad school after my diss director (male) tried to minimize the incident, seemingly viewing the incident from the harasser's perspective and thus panicking. (It's OK now. He and I have had discussions about sexual harassment after that and he gets it now.) | I did finish my degree. I seriously considered quitting grad school, however; for a time I lost my trust for other older, male academics who, up to that point, had been great mentors to me. I have also become very outspoken about sexual harassment's effects on graduate students. My field in English is the one that had the "big public blowup" recently about sexual harassment and misogyny, and that opened conversation encourages me to stay in the field. | I know for a fact that my run-in was pretty darn tame in comparison to others, but what really makes me mad is that I was one in a decades-long string of incidents. The same person who harassed me that night harassed newly-hired TT professor about an hour later. I later found out from a colleague at Ole Miss that he had been a known harasser for years, and that their response to his bad behavior was to only allow him to work with male graduate students. I mean, think about it for a minute: no woman at the main research institution in that state could do dissertation work in his field, but he had male students graduate and go on to get jobs. How is that fair? | Male | |
51 | 12/1/2017 20:14:09 | A faculty member, ***, Department of Anthropology, cornered women at parties, kissed and groped them. | Graduate student | Faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Chicago | Ancient Near East / Anthropology | Irrelevant - This was the 1970s | None. So far asa I know | None, aside from the bitter memory. Not the same for his students. | Male | ||||
52 | 12/1/2017 20:30:47 | A colleague attempted to attack me in his office. I had to physically push him off of me and run out of the room. | Visiting Assistant Professor. | Full Professor, Boss. | Small Liberal Arts College | Philosophy | “He’s just like that. It was harmless. He must have thought you wanted to get together.” | None. | Hard to quantify. | Had to start taking anti-anxiety meds just to be at work. | Still dealing with it. Didn’t change careers. Definitely lost faith. | Male | |||
53 | 12/1/2017 20:48:50 | Professor made inappropriate sexual comments to me in class. Just blurted it out. After that point he graded me extremely harshly. I should have reported him. | Graduate student | Professor | Other R1 | He'd done it to others. That's it - just told me that. He still teaches there, years later. | None | Luckily, just a lower grade than I should have had. | I felt gross- he'd been thinking about sec with me IN CLASS. Then he punished me for it. I've had excellent male professors in my PhD program but it takes me a long time to trust. | I finished my degree but later changed disciplines. My daughter is at that school now and I'll be telling her to stay far away from him. | My experience was so mild compared to what others have endured. But it was still disgusting and it still sticks with me today. I had to decide to reject everything he said and wrote about me. He tried to tear me down for *his* mistake, and because I didn't need him for my degree, I didn't have to let him. Like I said - lucky. | Male | |||
54 | 12/1/2017 21:27:27 | When I was an undergraduate, the head of the department slapped my behind with a rolled up newspaper while I was walking down the hall. Another time, I caught him staring at my chest while we were having a meeting about planning an undergraduate event. | Undergraduate | Department Head | R2 | A Canadian University | Prefer not to say. | n/a | None. In fact, the harasser ended up marrying a graduate student. | Made me extremely uncomfortable as an undergraduate student. | The episodes upset me. As a young student, barely out of her teens, I felt confused, angry, disgusted and ashamed. | One of the many instances that made my resolve to address gender issues in academia even stronger. | Male | ||
55 | 12/1/2017 21:30:03 | (happened to friend, fellow student, late 90s): Clergy at R-1 university crossed boundary with friend who was seeking a conversion process under his counsel; interactions became more uncomfortable as clergy made inappropriate remarks, and violated personal space. Perpetrator leaned in to kiss friend, they ducked. Friend dropped conversion process (of course), university admin discouraged victim from reporting, but friend realized perpetrator had a known history of inappropriate behavior and university did nothing. Perpetrator (white) prided himself in being a race/civil rights advocate, went on to retire comfortably and remain 'beloved' in the public. Revolting. | grad student (friend and confidante of victim) | Nothing | Other R1 | R-I in Massachusetts | History | Discouraged reporting, admin. knew perpetrator had a history of inappropriate behavior. | None. Retired comfortably, 'beloved' in the community (might be dead now, for all I know). | It shook my friend. We were MA students; friend went on to pursue PhD in other university & is now a tenured professor. | On me? Made me further realize what a horror show academia was. | No other comment. | Male | ||
56 | 12/1/2017 21:42:05 | Intimidated by sports coach. I was in the school weight/machine room and watched a school coach get really close and make inappropriate comments to university female students he was training (this was back in the late 90s/early 200s, I don't remember exactly what he said). I mentioned to a young woman working out next to me (she didn't seem to be part of that group the coach was training) that I didn't like the way he spoke to the women. Next time I went to the gym the coach menacingly cornered me saying "I hear you've been saying things about me and I'm not going to have that." I answered, with my pulse racing at unimaginable speed and with the most clueless expression I could muster "I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about." He looked at me hesitatingly for what seemed an eternity (probably just a few seconds) and walked away but warned me to watch what I said. I never reported this incident to anybody for reasons I stated above. | Grad student | I think he was a university coach (but nothing in relation to me). | Other R1 | R-1, Massachusetts | History | Didn't report | Frightened me. I was on an F-1 visa and I was terrified enough as a foreigner and as doctoral student. Didn't need more trouble and fear. | Male | |||||
57 | 12/1/2017 21:59:26 | Did not directly happen to me but to people around me. Lab head regarded male students as future colleagues, female students as sexual object. So no matter the merits, the men were treated to behaviors that would foster their professional careers, while women were objects of use or scorn. Said lab head was banging a student he also supervised. | graduate student | head of lab/holder of grants/professor | Other R1 | public health | none (teachers are explicitly allowed to date students) | none | I left the field | I didn't understand what was happening at the time | I left the field. Far less talented men have had excellent careers fostered by this individual. | Male | |||
58 | 12/1/2017 22:20:45 | I had to meet with a professor after I received a poor grade on a writing assignment. The class was on a topic of great interest to me, but outside my department. He told me it was because I wasn't smart enough. I tried to argue that I'd done the research, and he started laughing and said "you know, you're smarter than you look." At the end of the semester, we had mandatory individual meetings and again the comments about my appearance and how I couldn't be taken seriously because I wasn't attractive to men. | Undergraduate | Professor of my course. Untenured, assistant. | Regional Teaching College | I never told. | I'm now in a fully funded PhD program, but we'll see | I couldn't talk in classes for the rest of the semester. I'm still terrified of meeting professors one on one. My anxiety and disordered eating flared up. | I really admired this professor's work to the point that I had been considering switching disciplines. But I ended up trying to go into a career with as little human contact as possible | Male | |||||
59 | 12/1/2017 22:52:02 | At two separate conferences a faculty member made unwanted advances, including verbal propositions and groping under the table and in a shared cab. I know from conversation he would do this to more than one student at any one conference. | Graduate student | Tenured faculty - not my institution | Small Liberal Arts College | History | None - not reported | None that I know of | None - but I learned that in general I was expected to just shrug this off as "normal" | I am more wary of talking one on one in conference settings and find myself nervous when isolated with male faculty I don't know... even those who pose no risk. | Male | ||||
60 | 12/1/2017 23:11:55 | A student routinely made sexist remarks in class, creating a toxic environment for me and other students. In spite of several discussions telling him to stop and many complaints to superiors, nothing was done. The semester just ended. | Full time instructor | A student in my course | Regional Teaching College | Social sciences | People ignored, deflected, minimized or denied his behaviour. It just became 'my' problem. | It's hard to know all of them, but I know he never experienced a formal reprimand that removed him from courses. | I had to change my teaching schedule & workload to avoid this student, which negatively impacted my plans. | The harassment increased my stress. It made me irritable and combative and caused hardship on my partner and our relationship. It also created problems with the student in my courses; they became harder to control and deal with because they were always in classes with a chaotic student. I experienced disappointment, mistrust and alienation by the institution's behaviors. My motivation and productivity decreased. | I have looked for work at other institutions. I don't trust certain people. I will never allow problems to be handled informally again. | Women can experience gender-based harassment & violence from subordinates, including students. In some cases, these circumstances can be even more difficult to understand, name and stop. We often think talk about harassment as if it occurs because people have occupational power they can wield. But men in lower positions still have patriarchy, rape culture, sexism, etc. | Male | ||
61 | 12/2/2017 0:13:58 | Two incidents to report. First, I (male, then in late twenties) had a peer make remarks concerning my appearance of a clearly sexual nature. The second incident was one witnessed: another of my peers ranted about our Department giving funding to women "so they could become pregnant". | PhD Student | Rough peers- one PhD student, another PhD candidate. | Other R1 | History | Both incidents were reported to faculty at the time. In the first case, I was advised by the Department chair to let him know if any future incidents occurred, but no direct action was taken in this incident. In the second case, I had to use a different and sympathetic faculty member to submit it for me, as the student who had made the threatening remarks was a favorite student of the Department chair (a different one than the first chair) in question. As far as any of us could tell, nothing was done. | No direct impact for either of these two- the one who harassed me ultimately did not receive his PhD and is now deceased, while the one who made the threatening remarks received his PhD and is currently in the private sector. | None- I obtained my PhD, and the issues I have faced in my career appear to have nothing to do with these incidents. | The event that actually happened to me was one I recovered from quickly (it helped that I never encountered that student again)- however, the item I had told to me has been mentally bothering me for years, as I do not think I did enough and let fear curb me. | No direct impact on either life choices or my trajectory- however, there is a degree of continued paranoia present, as the second Department chair (currently not Department chair, but a prominent figure in his field and a major wheeler-dealer in campus politics) is a powerful man who could ruin me if he found out I was discussing this. | Thank you for offering this- I needed this outlet badly. | Both male | ||
62 | 12/2/2017 2:27:46 | someone put a tip of finger at my back, | student | professor | Other R1 | CMU | engenering | self confidence | poor choices | no impact | Male | ||||
63 | 12/2/2017 3:35:10 | I was at a departmental function -- Christmas drinks or or some such -- during my time as a masters student and witnessed an undergrad crying because a prof had just pinned her against a vending machine and tried to put his hand up her skirt. The prof was verbally reprimanded by a senior faculty member at the event itself, but nothing else was done about his behaviour. | Masters student; the student this guy harassed was an undergrad. | He taught classes that I and the undergrad in question took. | Other R1 | History | No formal response | Absolutely none | Male | ||||||
64 | 12/2/2017 3:42:15 | Found out that one of my colleagues had slept with one of our undergrad students. This was consensual, but still makes me hugely uncomfortable. | tenure track | also TT | Other R1 | History | None; our institutional policy explicitly allows sexual relationships with students. | None. | Male | ||||||
65 | 12/2/2017 3:51:37 | Shortly after I had started my post, I was out for drinks with a few members of the department. The head of department told a story about a professor in the department and a postgraduate student. This prof had touched this student inappropriately, and she had complained. But the HOD then said that this student had previously had a (consensual) relationship with another member of faculty, as if to imply that her complaint about inappropriate touching could therefore not be taken seriously. The whole thing was relayed like a big joke about this prof -- who is, for good reason, the butt of many departmental jokes -- and not like the serious incident it really should have been treated as. | tenure track | head of department | Other R1 | History | None | None | The way this story was told to me made me lose confidence in my HOD. I felt that, if something happened to me, I couldn't trust him to treat it sensitively. I also eventually stopped going to these regular departmental social events, because I felt really uncomfortable with the tone of some of the conversations. | Male | |||||
66 | 12/2/2017 4:07:53 | When I was applying to do my PhD, a senior (female) member of the department to which I was applying, and an ex-PhD student of the adviser with whom I was considering working both invited me for informal meetings to talk about my application. They both warned me that this particular adviser had a history of bullying his female postgraduate students; I later heard that this prof had caused at least one of his female students to leave the academy because of sexual comments and other bullying behaviour. | PhD applicant | Potential adviser | Other R1 | History | None | None | This prof is a senior figure within my field, and I am wary of working with him in any capacity. | Because of the warnings, I got in contact with a potential adviser at a different institution, and went elsewhere. This turned out to be an excellent life choice; she was awesome. I am forever grateful to those two female academics for warning me about that prof. | Male | ||||
67 | 12/2/2017 6:10:13 | Textbook grooming (I know now) while trying to write my undergraduate thesis. It was all about the control -- wanted me to quit all other activities, dictate my schedule, etc. Absolutely used my lack of self-confidence to try to make me think I was dependent on him for any possibility of career advancement, then failed me when I didn't want to agree to his rules. That's without getting into the many inappropriate conversations, comments, and touching. | Undergraduate student. | Tenured professor, thesis advisor. | Small Liberal Arts College | Many years later and I still don't want to say. | I never reported it. | None that I know of. | I don't know. It did take me years to come back to academia, so I absolutely could have been further along at this point, but there are positives to that. I don't like that that choice was essentially made for me, obviously, but I don't regret coming back to grad school with more life experience under my belt. | I ended up traumatized and in therapy. My confidence still sucks. | I don't know. Life never goes how you want it to go and I did interesting things, learned a lot more about myself, and messed up in a lot of ways outside of academia, which is probably for the best. How can you go through life regretting what it was, you know? If anything, I'm probably more independent and more conscious about making decisions for me... | Male | |||
68 | 12/2/2017 6:22:22 | I was assisting my faculty mentor at a conference -as I had many times previous - with his walker/wheelchair, and while I had caught him watching me before, this time he was drunk (I guess he had been drinking that afternoon, because it was only 5:00 pm or so). He leered at me as I bent over to adjust the equipment and said, “You know what I like best when women bend over to help me out? The view...” and he tried to look down my blouse. I moved away, appalled, and his roommate/buddy looked away and said nothing. I excused myself and left. Later I asked some of his former graduate students about the incident (all women), and they confirmed he had said similar things to them while leveraging his disability to ask for their help. | Second year assistant professor. | Full professor, my assigned faculty mentor | Other R1 | English | Did not report | None. He retired six months later due to worsening health. | He was a poor mentor to start with, did not take the time to read my work or advocate for me properly during two annual reviews, and because of the added harassment I avoided him as much as possible and could not advocate for myself. Without the intervention of the department chair who hired me during those review meetings, it is well possible I could have been reprimanded even though I had met all expectations. It has also caused me stress since, as I feel like I’m carrying an awful secret and I’m supposed to respect my elder and help him with his disability but I can’t stand to be anywhere near him now. I feel betrayed. That retirement party was awful to get through. | A lot of extra stress worrying about getting tenure, at least until he retired and I was reassigned to a much better mentor. And feeling the mental pretzel of performing respect while being utterly repulsed when I knew how he was enjoying the situation. | I refused to let him budge me, since my position was so hard-won, but I feared I would not be able to keep it because of his poor advocacy and I feared what would happen if I reported it (because everyone felt sorry for him because of his health problems). I couldn’t trust him. But the only thing that really allowed me to stay, in some ways, was his retirement. | Again, I spoke with other women who had worked with him and they had similar experiences. His health was terrible, but he clearly leveraged the pity and desire to help from young women (grad students, new assistant profs, staff) into something that was sexually satisfying to him. | Male | ||
69 | 12/2/2017 6:26:51 | Postcolonial studies professor in my department (English) introduced me to another student as "the graduate student I would most likely have an affair with." | Ph.D. Candidate | Associate Professor (not in my area--thankfully--so I could avoid coursework with him, etc.) | Other R1 | University of North Texas | English | I reported this week (close to three years later). Department chair took it very seriously. Forwarded to Office if Equal Opportunity. I am waiting to hear from them, although I'm not sure they'll need to contact me. | None. | None, thankfully. | Significant, in that it was triggering and demoralizing, and added to my ongoing anger towards the academy, which doesn't protect women from harassment or emotional labor. This anger is snowballing now that I am in a TT job and seeing the problem from this angle. | At this point, it's adding to the fuel that is compelling me to speak up. | Male | ||
70 | 12/2/2017 6:28:45 | I was asked to coffee by a famous visiting professor who proceeded to put his hand on my leg and asked me to sleep with him. | Graduate student | Senior visiting faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Biblical studies | None | None | Chilling affect on approaching and engaging senior scholars | Was made to feel as though I brought this on myself since no action was taken | My network of more senior scholars is as a result limited | Male | |||
71 | 12/2/2017 6:30:50 | I was a witness. A graduate student contacted me a year after I happened to walk in on her and her department chair. At the time I had a sense I had interrupted some type of physical intimacy. When the student called me a year later, she told me she had been very happy to see me at that moment because I had interrupted something very awkward. She was going to sue the harasser and asked if I would testify to seeing them together within arm's reach. However, I didn't hear from her or her lawyer again. | The victim was a female graduate student. I was a tenured professor in another department. | The perpetrator was the victim's department chair. | Other R1 | University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center | Public Health | I don't know. | I don't know. Ironically, the perpetrator was a member of the campus committee on sexual harassment. Years later he lost his chairmanship but this was attributed to absenteeism. | The victim didn't complete her degree. | As a witness and not the victim, I don't know. | The victim was a promising student who didn't complete her degree. | Male | ||
72 | 12/2/2017 6:31:16 | Inappropriate sexual advances at a work Christmas party at my own institution in the UK. The perpetrator had a reputation for this and approached another member of staff in the same way that night. | Junior member of staff on probation | Senior member of staff. Not head of department but was part of my/all staff annual review | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | Some action after a long campaign of complaint. A note on his record, training, an apology etc. | None. His position has improved since then. | Long term period of stress and a lot of time spent on the complaint which I could have used in much more valuable ways | Lots of stress | Male | ||||
73 | 12/2/2017 6:36:07 | Emailed a lewd photograph | Graduate student | Famous senior professor not at my institution | Other R1 | Biblical studies | Dean collected information anonymously from myself and other victims | None | I cannot ask this person for a recommendation | Anxiety | Limits the interaction with this person and their network | Male | |||
74 | 12/2/2017 6:47:26 | Several white male faculty members that have been participating in the annual summer institute harassed and groped women, me included, but I've heard from several other women since. | Graduate student | Tenured faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Dartmouth | American studies | Not reported | None | I felt uncomfortable attending any further events with the perpetrators which greatly reduced my ability to network and socialize | Added to my depression and feelings of inadequacy | Male | |||
75 | 12/2/2017 7:21:09 | This happened in the 1990s, shortly after I received tenure and shortly after the senior professor in my sub-discipline (who had been a mentor to me) passed away. A male full professor in my department sexually harassed/assaulted several female graduate students in my department. | I was a recently tenured associate professor. | He was a full professor, and with the death of my mentor, he became the senior professor in my sub-discipline. | Other R1 | Social science | Our chair had recently been promoted to a deanship and her hand-picked successor became our department chair. The dean said that she would handle it. It took a long time, and the end result was that the harasser was required to take a year-off without pay. By the time the case was adjudicated, the statute of limitations had run out so the students involved could not initiate a criminal case. | One year without pay. He is still a full professor in our department. | I was collateral damage. Two of the women students involved never finished their PhDs. The other members of my sub-discipline (female) were criticized frequently by the chair--why don't you all get along? It took me a long time to be promoted to full professor, and I still have to work with the harasser. | I am a tough lady, but this annoyed the hell out of me. | I had to work with my colleagues to re-build the sub-discipline. | I trust that you will not identify me in any way. This could cause a lot of trouble for me. | Male | ||
76 | 12/2/2017 7:23:00 | Repeated gender-based harassment | Ph.D. Candidate | Professor | Other R1 | Music | None, although I tried reporting the incident | None | I will no longer be pursuing a career in the academy. I cannot support an institution that thrives on harassment and abuse. | Substantial. PTSD. | I avoid certain buildings and classrooms on campus and am looking into alternative career options due to the emotional damage this has caused me. | Male | |||
77 | 12/2/2017 7:35:36 | 2012. Professor in philosophy course (mostly male students) went on long digressions during lecture about how he liked Springtime because he enjoyed looking at undergraduate women’s legs in skirts. This happened more than once and he would elaborate on how undergrad women shouldn’t cover up too much, which races he prefered, etc. He used the phrase “sexually aroused” more than once. Students around me (all men) seemed to think this was hilarious and laughed. | Undergraduate | My professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Chicago | Anthropology (currently, was undergrad at the time) | None | None | Decided not to major in philosophy | I spent a huge amount of time that year thinking about it, especially when I was getting dressed or saw this professor on campus. | Male | |||
78 | 12/2/2017 7:39:17 | My mentor asked me to go to a hotel with him. I laughed and hoped he was joking. He wasn't. He sabotaged my applications to graduate school. When I complained, he got a slap on the hand and I was counseled by the man who handled the complaint that I was not allowed to talk about the matter to anyone else. Of course, I was slandered at my alma mater by the mentor. It took decades to recover and totally altered my chosen career path. Ten years later I was in graduate school in a totally different field. | Graduating Senior | He was my mentor, a soon-to-be tenured Professor of Art. | Small Liberal Arts College | Austin College | Art | I was silenced and punished. | He got a warning and Tenure. | I lost a lot of time, confidence, and ended up in a different field. | I'm still recovering after years of counseling. Lots of self doubt, despair, depression. | This completely altered my career path. | This sort of thing is still going on - teachers commonly sleep with their students. I only know of one prof who was fired for his behavior. Otherwise, it's well tolerated and excused. | Male | |
79 | 12/2/2017 7:47:33 | 1. a professor stared at my chest while alone in his office as a new graduate student, for like 10 whole minutes 2. a faculty colleague performing my teaching evaluation (he was tenured, i was not yet), stood side up against me in front of my students in my classroom and lectured me on the definition of rape, saying i had it wrong and shouldn't include 'rape' as part of my definition of sexual harassment in my syllabus | 1. grad student 2. untenured tenure-track faculty | 1. professor 2. colleague | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | University of California, community college | social science | none | none | avoidance of the two males involved, when in case 1 the professor could have helped me develop certain areas of my doctoral research and case 2 feeling uncfomortable and becoming a silent shell when required to work with this colleague; feelings of uncertainty, powerlessness, anger | a major obstacle to process; it takes time and a commitment to deciding how to move forward at work (what clothes to wear, what to do if he acts like this again, who to share this with, etc.) and the stress of processing takes a physical toll manifest in eating issue, insomnia, and unhappiness | none | Male | ||
80 | 12/2/2017 7:48:52 | Pregnancy discrimination: I am not sure if this counts as sexual harassment, but it was highly gendered and obviously the result of sexual behaviour. I was asked to resign my postdoctoral position for the entire academic year in which I would give birth. I spent the better part of the fellowship term fighting the Organization’s effort and researching my nearly non-existent legal right to keep the award they were trying to revoke. | Visiting Scholar | Director of the Institution (female), CFO of the institution (male), director of the fellowship program (female). | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Professional Organization | Art History | They fought it every step of the way, finally conceded that I could have time off to give birth, but only if I admitted that it was a favour or special privilege, not a right. | Director was later fired for having faked her academic credentials. press coverage in Boston Globe. | Hard to tell: I left full-time academia, in part because of this episode, but also because I had one, the another kid, and my partner and I decided to prioritize his more family-friendly and better-paying job. | It was stressful; I’m still angry 8 years later. | Female | |||
81 | 12/2/2017 8:08:38 | A professor in our department had a long history of sexually harassing students, usually Master's students. He was initially very friendly with students, wanting to chat with them, learn about them, and offering them opportunities to work with him or share is data. Then it would start getting weird and predatory. He would talk about sexual things (but always have some thin thread of connection to "research", even though he wasn't a sexuality researcher), would randomly touch us (e.g., put his hand on our hands), show us his BDSM character on his computer in Second Life, email inappropriate pictures (again with thin connections to research), would comment on other women's bodies and breasts. Many students who he was supervising ended up filing complaints and then leaving the program because of him. And yet he maintained his position in the department. | Master's student | Professor and department faculty member | Other R1 | University of Toronto | Sociology | First the department moved graduate student offices away from his office. Then they had all women students paired with men officemates to "protect" them from him. Then finally they moved his office to a different building. When he then sexually harassed a faculty member he was asked to retire early. | None (asked to retire early although he was already well past retirement age) | none | Anger thinking about why he was never disciplined; stress trying to avoid him in the department. | I changed my research focus because he worked in the area I was interested in. | Male | ||
82 | 12/2/2017 8:12:39 | Inappropriate comments galore. Example: Head of program, a publicly much esteemed elderly man, joking about how much he liked his new glasses because now he could see how much female students were NOT wearing. Chuckles ensued from the other two male faculty members present. | Adjunct Peon | Head of Program, Boss | Other R1 | UC | Humanities | Stony face | Male | ||||||
83 | 12/2/2017 8:17:07 | (2007) As an undergrad, a Professor I took a class from only stared at my chest when talking to me, gave all the women (50% of the class) in the class low grades (men all received A's) and told the women they could raise them if they met him privately in his office. I went once, but left almost immediately because something was off. (2010) Professor who was/is prominent in my subfield at the time just stared at my chest during the entire conversation; (2015) Professor I worked for continually made lewd and inappropriate comments while teaching, and during TA meetings the comments were worse | Graduate Student | Professor/instructor; Professor in my field (not at my school but a Dean at another university); Professor I worked for as a TA | Other R1 | History | Institution prevented the first harasser from working at the university based on performance reviews. Others nothing was reported | First one did not work at the university again (as far as I know) | The treatment from Harasser 2 made me decide to switch subfields for my dissertation because I did not want to have to pander to him. Harasser 3 hasn't impacted my career, but my immediate surroundings as I feel uncomfortable being with him. He also is in charge of selecting TA's for my program, and I have had to make moves to ensure that I don't TA for him, or have to meet with him privately. | The objectification of my body by male professors really messed with my body-image issues for a while, and made me more insecure about my work (are they talking to me because of interest in my work or because they like staring at my chest?) | Changed subfields in my career; alter my behavior in my immediate university surroundings to avoid contact with one professor | Male | |||
84 | 12/2/2017 8:22:03 | at a regional conference in 2005, I saw one of the professors in my dept and a chair at a neighboring school plop down $20 bills to a very uncomfortable-looking and probably frightened female undergrad, about 19-20 years old, from a 3rd institution in a hotel bar, as if they were propositioning her. That professor has done other creepy/propositioning things to other students in my department since then. | masters student | professor in my department and instructor in my class | Regional Teaching College | Texas State | Geography | None that I'm aware of | None that I'm aware of | shame for not stepping up and doing the right thing | disgust at the old boy network in my school | a dedication to do the right thing, treat people fairly, and speak up when those in power abuse that power | Male | ||
85 | 12/2/2017 8:22:18 | I was sitting in the audience at conference panel; a professor in field sits next to me, and, things felt weird after a few minutes. It seemed he kept inching even closer to me and then he leans in and says: I hadn't seen such an incredibly sexy woman at an academic conference before. | PhD student | Tenured Professor in my field by had absolutely no relation to the institution where I was getting my PhD. | Main conference in the field | Humanities/Ethnic Studies | Male | ||||||||
86 | 12/2/2017 8:33:04 | My interpersonal communication instructor asked me to have sex with him. | I was a sophomore in college, aged 19. | My instructor was a tenured professor. | Regional Teaching College | St. Cloud State University | Speech Communication | EEO Officer indicated it was my fault. | I think a letter went into his personnel file until I graduated. | Male | |||||
87 | 12/2/2017 8:35:35 | Chair of Search Committee for TT job in the department in which I was doing a post-doc | Post-doctoral student in the department/applicant for TT job in that department | Tenured professor | Other R1 | University of Pittsburgh | Rhetorical Theory/Communication | Defame the victim | None | Left R1 institutions for liberal arts colleges and state universities | Depression/anxiety | Male | |||
88 | 12/2/2017 8:40:37 | As a junior faculty member I asked a senior colleague to read my book proposal. He suggested we discuss it at a bar and proceeded to work through 14 drinks as we discussed it (I started counting when it was getting crazy). He tried to kiss me at the end of the evening. Turns out most other colleagues knew about his drinking problem but I was too new to the institution to have known. | Second,-year assistant professor | Tenured member of my department | Other R1 | French | Reported to HR, wasn't pursued | None | I have stayed away from him since but I don't think he remembers the actual incident, given how much he had to drink. I decided it was best to leave it at that to avoid any further tensions since he has a vote on my tenure file | I did not feel safe in the department for a while, but have subsequently made peace with it and avoid contexts with too much drinking | I want to stick around and change it! | Male | |||
89 | 12/2/2017 8:59:59 | I was sitting at my desk and suddenly felt hands on my shoulders. A senior faculty member was running my back and talking to me in a child voice, “is everything okay, are you alright, what can I do to make it better.” Several days later this sane person asked if I was suicidal. | Assistant professor | Full professor | Other R1 | University of oklahoma | City planning | Title 9 officer: trust the system. Other university staff: get a lawyer. | None. | None so far, this is recent. | Not good. | Considering leaving academia. | Male | ||
90 | 12/2/2017 9:02:22 | I was working on an independent summer research project. I needed a database designed to record responses to a survey I administered, and my advisor directed me to the manager of a division of the Center he ran, which employed a technician who was available to do these kind of supplemental technology policy. When I spoke with the manager about my project needs and how to contact the technician, he explained that the previous technician had graduated and the new one wouldn't start until after the summer ended. Ergo, there was no one on staff to help with my project. However, he added, because the new technician has already been hired and was another (male) graduate student who I knew, I "could probably work something out" (said with a wink and grin) to get my project work done. It was disgusting and uncomfortable. | first-year masters student | He was a PhD-holding manager of a program within a Center affiliated with my graduate program. This was a Center where students from my program frequently found employment as graduate assistants either to supplement their teaching work or to continue in funding once their (5-year) teaching assistantships ran out. | Other R1 | Ohio State University | English | none (I didn't report it) | see previous | delayed and limited the scope of my research, as I had to find alternate methods of building the tools I needed for my research. so, the impact is hard to calculate. one effect was that--because the project never really went anywhere--it sort of soured my relationship with this advisor and we stopped working together, meaning that I had a find another advisor. | stress related to tanking project and having to switch advisors | again, hard to say. the project could have been that start of something (and therefore changed the trajectory of my career), if it had gone better... | Male | ||
91 | 12/2/2017 9:05:41 | My PhD advisor phoned my late at night, after he'd been drinking, to tell me he loved me and wanted a romantic relationship with me. | PhD student | He was my PhD advisor. He was a tenured, full professor and very senior in the department. I had admired and trusted him as a mentor for several years. At 60 years old, he was twice my age. I had met his wife and his children (who were my age). I had chosen to work with him as my advisor because I thought he was "safe" to work with (in contrast to other profs in the department who had "reputations"). | Other R1 | -- | Arts | Advocate office suggested that my academic career would be negatively impacted (delayed completion, loss of department supports/jobs, no reference letters) if I launched a complaint. | None | Delayed completion. Loss of confidence. | Anxiety and depression. | I stopped wanting to be a TT prof, because the incident revealed to me how poisonous the academy was. I did not want to be a part of it. | Male | ||
92 | 12/2/2017 9:17:51 | On paleontology fieldwork, BLM rep joined our crew for 1 night. He got very drunk and started making suggestive comments to me. Female Senior PI told me to go stay in my tent the rest of the night and sat outside until he had passed out in a lawn chair. | Undergraduate (19 years old) | Bureau of Land Management official | Small Liberal Arts College | Paleontology | No report filed | None | Only do fieldwork with female-led crews | None | None | It was a gross event, and I'm glad a female PI was there to re-direct the situation so nothing worse happened to me. I learned a lot about how women in positions of power can and should step in and shut down harassment. | Male | ||
93 | 12/2/2017 9:17:54 | Would go around to women in the program and ask them sexual explicit questions for a “survey” such as “When you give a blow job, do you lick the balls?” Would also publicly show off naked pictures of women who allegedly sent these images to him, all while being in a shared office space where other female collugues could see and hear him. Would loudly refer to women as “gutter sluts” and openly mocked women and minority members. Ranked women in the program by “sexual appeal” and let it be know who he would ranked the highest. Would also loudly make claims women and minority students had an easier time getting into PhD programs due to the “sympathy vote.” All this and more place in just out Fall semester of 2015. | 2nd year Masters level graduate student | 1st year masters level graduate student | Other Type of School | Psychology | We made a report to Title IV and they thankfully responded by putting this student on probation. However the process of reporting was traumatizing in iteself. | Was not allowed to be in the same space as other women who reported and had to take sexual harassment classes through Title IV. They were officially charged with sexual harassment and while on probation, if there were other reports of harassment they could have possibly revived harsher sentences. They continued on and graduated. | The process in itself drained me and showed me how even in academia, women are not treated any different than outside of academia. This was my first real experience with such a profound example of sexual harassment and it has made me much more fearful of future incidents as I have advanced in my career. | The process of going through Title IV was traumatizing. We had to read and respond to their reports so I had to read how multiple men in my program perceived me as a “Feminazi” and a “man hater” and had to read blatant lies made by the perpetrator. He brought in our sexuality to his report and basically had to read us victim blame us on an official document. We had to also read how others in the program thought we are making too big of a deal about this and were made to feel as if were crazy for perceiving these actions as sexual harassment. Faculty also knew what was happening so we did not feel as protected as we were promised to be. I and others had sought out therapy during this time to seek help for the psychological impact it was taking on us. I still am not fully recovered from this incident and this took place back in Spring 2016. | I have seriously considered not joining acedemia as a professor and another woman who came forward was even considering to not go on and get her PhD (which was her dream). It also has shaped my area of interest where I now focus a lot on researching aspects of sexual assault as a way to make things better for other women in the future. | Male | |||
94 | 12/2/2017 9:22:17 | We have had multiple incidents on our campus, most notably in the Biology department, where sexist jokes were allowed at a University sponsored event with no repercussions for those involved (https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16262722/texas-tech-sexual-misconduct-investigation-sexism-biology). Several weeks after that article was released, the Dean of the college had breakfast with all the departments individually. When he came to our department, he went on a rant about how he doesn't think sexist behavior exists on our campus. My department chair also makes underhanded sexist comments. The one that sticks out was when I was asking to be classified differently in terms of summer teaching was divvied up (I'm non tenure track and therefore not the same classification as everyone else), my chair accused me of asking for favors for being a spousal hire. I also get scolded sometimes for having to leave work and go take care of my dogs but the same things do not happen to my husband, who is in the same department. | Research Assistant Professor | Dean and our Department Chair | Other R1 | Texas Tech University | Psychological Science | None | None | I feel uncomfortable at work sometimes | It is a stressful event, so there is some added stress or anxiety | I have been looking for other places to work but it is hard because I am part of an academic couple | I'm confused as to why what happened in the biology department on our campus was not bigger news. It is especially timely since there is a lot about sexual harassment in the news. Somehow this got swept under the rug largely and I feel the University would have provided a stronger response had their been negative publicity. | Male | |
95 | 12/2/2017 9:24:03 | I don't have a sexual harassment story. I have an "I'm the Hillary Clinton of my department" story. I'm a feminist researcher in a field (urban studies) dominated by engineers and economists, and I just want to write about the constant microaggressions I experience from my colleagues, from interrupting me and and talking down to me in front of graduate students to saying things like I was being "catty" about a younger, prettier colleague when I tried to get her promotion committee to address a criticism raised in her external tenure letter. When I complained to the Dean and Chair of the department, it was treated like "my little problem" with my colleagues rather than a systematic problem with an environment that is toxic for women, especially female graduate students. We have to warn our female PhD students NOT to seem too smart or too accomplished around one of my colleagues or else he will undermine and attempt to destroy them. Come on! My male colleagues NEVER speak up or confront the behavior. | Assistant and Associate. | always senior | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Southern California | Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis | I was referred to the OEO, where I was forced to tell my story a bunch of times. Sympathetic, but very clear they had no intention of trying to get the leadership in my department to change the environment. They are about protecting the institution and wearing out victims, not proactively changing the contexts where harassment occurs. | None. | I have done ok. But it's been more of struggle than it should have been. | That is a hard question. I would say that it's added considerably to stress and depression. | I have thought about leaving the academy more times than I can count. I still think about it. Not because I don't love teaching and researching, but because I hate being in a world where I see female graduate students treated so badly. | Male | ||
96 | 12/2/2017 9:38:17 | I was propositioned via text. It was an individual who is the same sex as me. I am happily married with kids. | Assistant Professor | Vice President | Small Liberal Arts College | Male | |||||||||
97 | 12/2/2017 9:44:56 | After repeatedly asking for my graded midterm, my professor insisted that I must come to his office to retrieve it. Once I got there, he insisted that I sit down and go over what I missed. He sat next to me, touched my arms, and touched my hair. He got closer and closer until I finally jumped up and ran away. I spoke to two male professors who were my friends. They recommended that I tell the professor that I would report him if he didn't return my tests when he gave back others in class. They also suggested I report him. I was too afraid to do that. I just wanted to get away from him. The following semester, he harassed my friend. She got a female faculty member to go with her when the student went to collect her test. All the female faculty in his department knew he did this to undergraduates yet did nothing. | Junior undergraduate | Full professor | Other Type of School | East Carolina University | None - I didn't report. No response (that we could see) when my friend reported. | I could go on and on telling stories about harassment, as could most of your participants, I'm sure. Currently, I'm working in a department where we are constantly bullied by senior faculty. Though I have spoken to our dean, the end result has been that nothing has changed. | Male | ||||||
98 | 12/2/2017 9:47:26 | I've been lucky in my mentors, but my ability to network with fellow academics (mostly grad students) has been really hurt by the number of men who don't want to work with me as a colleague. A typical scenario: I had a research fellowship to do work at a small archive, and there was a male grad student working there as part of the same program. We saw each other every day, and I tried to be collegial because we were working together, he was interesting, and his project was legitimately really good. Eventually we got lunch together, and it came up that I was in a relationship. Immediately the grad student's face fell and he looked ashen. We finished lunch and for the next few weeks, he barely spoke to me. I haven't spoken to the grad student since. I've had other incidents where male grad students suggest doing conference panels together, working together in writing groups, and sharing networking contacts, but they suddenly vanish when my relationship status comes up. Closing off opportunities like that isn't something that you can report, because really all they've done is wasted my time and energy. It makes me suspicious about networking with male academics, and it was a factor in my decision to seek work outside academia. | grad student | colleague | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | History | N/A | N/A | I've limited my networking with male academics, and it derailed some joint projects that I thought were interesting. | Distrust toward male colleagues who don't have partners | It was a factor in my decision to leave academia. If my colleagues behave this way when they're grad students, what will they do when they have more power? | Male | |||
99 | 12/2/2017 9:52:20 | Bizarre comment. Over mid-morning coffee on campus cafeteria, a male lecturer colleague said he was going downtown to buy a bed and would I be interested in coming along. I said no, cringing and feeling really uncomfortable. Moments later, an undergraduate female student came over to chat with same man. He also asked her if she wanted to go bed-shopping with him and, moreover, what type (of bed) did she think he should pick? Student rightfully stammered, went bright red and the whole scene was cringe-worthy. | Adjunct | Colleague | Other R1 | Public R-1 | History | Male | |||||||
100 | 12/2/2017 9:57:08 | got a fellowship to teach for a year abroad, co-worker in same department undressed in front of me and invited me to join him in the shower, also tried to kiss me, call me on the weekends, sent me a 'joke' postcard that had a scantily clad woman on the front that read 'I'm good in bed', would show up to the classes I taught, etc. etc. | visiting teaching fellow | male visiting teaching fellow but had longer contract 2 years vs.1 | Other Type of School | I'm in French but the department was an English dept | none | none | I could never ask that department for a letter of rec | huge | I decided to move back to the U.S. as soon as the fellowship was over | Male | |||
101 | 12/2/2017 9:58:02 | At a last-night party at a major academic conference in 2015, a senior academic, who knew my face but had spoken to me only once before (a day or two previously, when I'd stopped him after his paper to tell him how his work intersected with my master's thesis), came up to me in a crowded ballroom. I was engaged in conversation with friends. He, approximately a foot taller than me and at least twice my weight, put his arm around my waist and leaned down to whisper into my ear. "I'm a happily married man, but that dress [that you're wearing] is killing me." | Grad student, ~6 months from my first master's degree | Tenured faculty at an R1 institution; frequent resident/visitor at my small liberal arts institution. | Small Liberal Arts College | Mary Baldwin College (now University)/American Shakespeare Center | English | None. I never reported. | None, though it's an open secret that he's a misogynist who frequently sleeps with younger coworkers. | None, because I've never reported. | Minimal. Has increased in the wave of 2017's constant deluge of male harassers losing their jobs. | Avoiding taking positions in a place I would very much like to be because it would put me in potential contact with my harasser. | Male | ||
102 | 12/2/2017 9:58:48 | During our dicipline’s annual conference I was staying in small hotel within walking distance of the venue. So was another very famous, older white male professor from my specialization and from my university. After chatting with other hotel guests in the lobby one night (because, yes, it is quite common to meet other conference goers at your same accommodation place), this old white male professor starting chatting with me and hen proceeding to hit on me and try to diss out if he could go further. I immediately shut him down because I was uncomfortable. In the years since I only told one female friend immediately after and one other person since (besides therapists, etc). What was so emotionally traumatic was that he felt he could come on to me, that it would be okay and that he knew I wouldn’t/ couldn’t say anything, and that—overwhelmingly—I felt like I was treated as a sexual object and not a colleague in the field of expertise. My value as a female body was more than the value of my intellectual contributions. The following year, this man apologized to me. I told him that it was not okay but let’s move forward. Then, in the same breath he was suggestive again. I ended up leaving the conference session and, since then, have not renewed my membership with the speciality section because of the good-ol’-boy treatment of women in the field. | Graduate student, not yet ABD | Senior faculty, expert in subfield | Other R1 | Political economy | None. I did not report the incident because I feared not being believed and/or being retailiated against or gaslighted. (I had been gaslighted by our female co-chair previously when she had made me prove to her that another male faculty in the department was being verbally aggressive toward me.) | None. | I avoid this person. I worry for other female identifying graduate students working with this person, hoping they will not be harassed like I was. Professionally, I did not renew my membership with the professional organization. I also tend to avoid writing and producing new knowledge in that specific area for fear of having this person having to evaluate me and my work. | Emotional and psychological trauma that is ongoing. Asking myself, what did I do to deserve this? Why me? | Avoiding professional fields, bodies of work, people, organizations, etc. | Male | |||
103 | 12/2/2017 10:02:55 | This happened in 2013/14. A fellow doctoral student who I occasionally hung out with outside of school began calling me for help with different projects really late at night 11pm, 12am, 1am. If I didn't answer he would call back 2-3 times in a row. One time he called me 7 different times on a Saturday and when confronted he said he had not realized he had called that many times. | doctoral student | doctoral student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Sociology | I stopped working at the library because he was always there and I stopped attending the after-class drink that our advisor hosted following their seminar. | it stressed me out | Male | ||||||
104 | 12/2/2017 10:11:51 | Professor hit on me in his seminar and office hours and invited me to his house the day after the semester ended. He then offered me drugs and booze and talked about his sex life in graphic detail. He asked if I was into Marquis de Sade and BDSM and took it as an excuse to beat me, resulting in bone fractures. We slept together for 2.5 years. | MA/PhD student | undergrad profesor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | Title IX investigation | He was forced to resign | He got me very prestigious internships and contacts | HORRIFIC! PTSD and addiction | Discouraged me against the academy so I produced very little work for years. I no longer care about literary studies because of him. | Male | |||
105 | 12/2/2017 10:17:27 | Prof. paid inordinate attention to me, insisted I go to dinner with him, made comments about my appearance...then got sick of me, or tired of waiting for me to make the move?, and tried to throw me out of the PhD program. this was in the 80s | first -third year graduate student | Full professor, program director | Elite Institution/Ivy League | history | none | none | changed fields so I didn't have to work with him | severe. Lost a year of work and have doubted myself ever since | Every episode of sexism and harassment eats away at you forever | Male | |||
106 | 12/2/2017 10:22:36 | He hit on me and slept with several students, tried to ply us with alcohol (and succeeded in many cases), and married a student. | Ph.D student | Professor and director of graduate studies | Other R1 | English | Title IX investigation | investigation is still ongoing | Stalled my work, discouraged me from anything (travel, scholarships, funding) that went through his office | Male | |||||
107 | 12/2/2017 10:44:56 | I, out of long dyke-y habit and to protect against my forgetfulness, tend to wear my keys on a carabiner on a belt loop. One day, when we were talking in the hallway, an older male faculty member who was also my sponsor at the institution grabbed the keys at my waist and told me it was a weird thing to wear. I don't think this is a big comparative deal at all, and not really his place to comment on it, but why would he need to touch my hips during a conversation? | Post-doctoral Research Fellow | Full time faculty, research mentor | Other Research Agency | History | none, I did not bring it up, had to consider my future letters of rec | none | So, although I tried to prevent this from being the case, a health crisis in another mentor has meant that I have had to rely on this man for letters of recommendation. His behavior meant that I was never thereafter comfortable building a collegial relationship or spending time alone with him, something which other research fellows had an easier time with and I avoided opportunities to strengthen our research relationship after this. There have been jobs I've decided not to apply for because of this. | My first response was to blame myself: That was weird but I shouldn't be wearing keys like that! It's unprofessional. (Not: touching a younger female colleague's hips is unprofessional). Second response was: it's not a big deal. But I have seen him do non-sexual things to make others feel uncomfortable and off-balance. It reminded me of when a male high school teacher did something similar decades ago. I second guessed a lot of my clothing choices thereafter and felt weird but like it wasn't a "big enough deal" to talk about. | I think the biggest thing is that small things build up to limit my options. At a time when I am supposed to build my research profile and develop relationships with scholars outside my PhD program, this shut me down. Especially in a collegial environment that was built around friendly trips to the pub, this happening in the context of an office hallway chat made me VERY cautious about doing the social things with this man that might help him take an interest in my career. I am on the market again, and as mentioned one of my primary advisors unexpectedly cannot write for me, I feel particularly vulnerable and like I need all the established letter writers I can get, my options are so limited. It makes me just very leery of the whole power dynamic of the academy. And, it could be so much worse. | Male | |||
108 | 12/2/2017 10:48:51 | Academic advisor put his hand on my knee and tried to run it up my skirt. One professor took me out to lunch and then grabbed me and kissed me with tongue. Another professor told me he wanted sex. | Undergrad | Academic Advisor and two professors. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | San Diego State University | English | Never reported any of the events. | None. | Nothing. I'm an academic now. | Mainly scared. | When I was an undergraduate, I made sure I was never alone with a male professor. I didn't have any problems in graduate school. Today I always keep the door open when I hold office hours unless the student specifically asks to talk to me privately. | I'm pretty sure all three are dead. It was in the early 1980s. | Male | |
109 | 12/2/2017 10:54:00 | Inappropriate comments. An advisor (former) made a comment to myself and another female likening us to prostitutes when standing outside the building waiting for a ride. Same person made repeated comments about my clothing during my time in their lab, and often commented on my appearance. Other faculty members at this institute have made lewd comments about my body, and refer to me (even to other students!) as 'the busty one' (only in less polite diction). | Student | Advisor, other faculty members | Other R1 | Ecology & Evolutionary Biology | Feel really uncomfortable attending a number of different departmental events. | This environment contributes to a decided uncertainty about pursuing a career in science. | Male | ||||||
110 | 12/2/2017 10:54:55 | I was in an MA program about ten years ago. My thesis advisor made frequent comments about my appearance, calling my shoes sexy, telling me I was the "right" kind of feminist (a hot one), talking about the good old days when professors could have sex with their students with impunity, telling me about his sexual exploits, etc. | MA student | Tenured professor | R2 | Sociology | None | None | None, that I know of | I got pretty depressed and really second guessed myself. I felt like the only reason he praised my work at all was because he wanted to get into my pants. I was unsure of myself for a while, even though when I look back at the work I produced while I was in that program, it was very good. | I continued on to a PhD program, but I had a bad case of "impostor syndrome" for a while that kept me from putting myself out there as much as I should have. | Male | |||
111 | 12/2/2017 11:07:42 | The worst incident was when a powerful chair started commenting on my attractiveness during my job interview in his department. | Postdoc/Scientist level | Full Professor and Chair | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Computational Biology | Didn’t formally report; hiring chair was shocked when I told him. | I made a record of it, told the hiring chair, and then took the job. I wasn’t giving up my best offer over the stupidity of some man. Fortunately, he never did anything beyond what happened at the interview. | It is very stressful to have to consider whether to take a job and put yourself in a vulnerable position to a powerful person. He could have ruined my career. | In the end, I refused to allow him to change my job choice and career trajectory. However, I considered very seriously not taking the job due to his comments in the interview. | Male | ||||
112 | 12/2/2017 11:08:34 | 1. Accused of being a a whore by colleague, behind my back. Did not know until years later. Asked to file a report and was told not too. 2. Raped while conducting fieldwork. I was told not to let it interfere with the research. Told not to write or speakabout it. Given no institutional support/advice. 3.advisor asked me to pose as his s girlfriend when we were traveling abroad. | Graduate student. | Fellow student, informant. Advisor. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Anthropology | None. Silencing. | None. | I've wanted to give up. | Depression, anxiety, want out of this career I loved. | Considering a career change. | Male | |||
113 | 12/2/2017 11:10:53 | My supervisor made phallic jokes to me, pointing to his penis. | I was his research assistant. | He was my supervisor. | Other Research Agency | Physics | Male | ||||||||
114 | 12/2/2017 11:12:28 | Professor I worked for used webcam to spy on my in my office. Same professor constantly talked about how female professors at the university had only been hired to fulfil a female quota and were not qualified. | research associate | professor. my direct supervisor/boss | Other Type of School | bioinformatics | I am working for a different professor now. | I am not aware of any. | I had to put the degree I was getting from the same university I was working for on hold. I had been working on a paper with the harasser, which will not be published as I do not have access to my research data any more. | pretty negative - also see next comment for it. | I am disheartened by the lack of consequences for the harasser, especially as he keeps mistreating students (most of which are too scared to come forward). I will most likely leave academia next year (and am extremely sad about it), but I just cannot deal with this constant feeling of powerlessness any more and trying and failing to help protect students is emotionally exhausting while also taking time away from my research. | the incident happened in Germany, and the institution was a university of applied sciences. | Male | ||
115 | 12/2/2017 11:13:32 | A colleague made several objectifying comments about my "beauty," beginning with our first meeting after my hiring. | Visiting Assistant Professor | He was a senior, tenured professor who had recently retired but still went many events on campus. | Small Liberal Arts College | Foreign Languages | I didn't pursue. | None. | None | This person made me uncomfortable. He was someone I had to make sure to avoid even though he came to all of the events that I organized and always attempted to talk to me. It was mentally exhaustive and embarrassing. | None. | Male | |||
116 | 12/2/2017 11:17:11 | On a field project in Africa, the professor I was traveling with climbed in my bed and groped me in the middle of the night. | Graduate student | Professor | Other R1 | Anthropology | Title XI and Office of Institutional Equity investigation; other accusers came forward. | Professor found guilty of sexual misconduct and was suspended for one year but was not fired. Is resuming his position beginning Spring 2018. | As yet undetermined, but he told a lot of people that I was his accuser and I have had to deal with the embarrassment and frustration of my name being revealed. | Anxiety and depression resulting from the investigation being so long and drawn out, the university not keeping me informed of the progress of the investigation, and finally, after all of that, him being able to keep his job. | Undetermined as yet. | Male | |||
117 | 12/2/2017 11:17:20 | Constant inappropriate touching by advisor; touching was accompanied by or followed reminders by professor that I did not come from the "right background" (racially and economically) to attend such a prestigious Ph.D. program. | Ph.D. student (first-generation, woman, POC, questioning) | Tenured Professor (advisor) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | I was too afraid to report the professor | none | left the program with an M.A. | completing Ph.D. program in a different university | Male | |||||
118 | 12/2/2017 11:17:27 | While having lunch with a prof in his office, he laid his legs across my lap. I didn’t respond but got up to leave soon after. He gave me a full body hug. The whole thing felt gross but not dangerous. I also felt like it was my fault, like I should have known better than to be in his office. | Senior undergraduate | Assistant professor (on an LTA maybe?) | Other R1 | Western University (Ontario) | Comparative Literature | I didn’t talk about it | None from that incident, although I know he had affairs with students and at least one complained to the department. I think he’s at one of the Ivy Leagues now. He’s definitely got a better job now than he did then. | None really, just a sort of embarrassment at myself and a general thankfulness that all my other mentors have been really standup people | Just a general disappointment in myself and embarrassment | Nothing noticeable | Male | ||
119 | 12/2/2017 11:18:37 | Writer with an endowed chair harassed grad students (comparatively mildly) and assistant professor (grabbed her by the crotch in front of faculty witnesses). | NA | He was endowed chair, but on year to year contract that got renewed anyway. | R2 | None | None | Made me distrust the system, esp since the chair had formerly been the director of women’s studies | Male | ||||||
120 | 12/2/2017 11:23:18 | I went to a graduate student conference in a nearby university. I was sick on the second day of the conference, and really wanted to go home, but my bus ticket was for the next afternoon. So when an old male professor at the hosting institution offered to give me a ride to my city ("I'm also heading there," he said) I accepted even though it was a little awkward. He touched me inappropriately while speeding on the highway, and then called me repeatedly for a week after. | It was the summer between my MA and PhD. I had just moved to my PhD city, but didn't know anyone at my PhD institution yet. | Full professor. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Harasser is in a discipline closely related to mine. That same year, I attended my own disciplinary conference and the Adjacent Discipline's conference. Harasser was there, and wanted to talk. I fled the scene and never went to Adjacent Discipline conference ever again. I don't know the impact of that decision yet; I know all the ambitious grad students in my discipline go to both, but I just don't want to. | I told the grad student conference organizer about the incident a while later-- we had became good friends. My understanding is that they reported the Harasser, but nothing came of it, mainly because I wasn't a student at that institution (and wasn't really a student, technically, anywhere). My PhD institution is an R1. Harasser's institution is a regional R2. | Male | |||||||
121 | 12/2/2017 11:27:32 | Someone anonymously posted a rape fantasy essay in the department mailroom, with the caption "Enjoy!" It was supposed to be a joke because the tale was "cleverly" told in disciplinary jargon. An untenured female faculty member (an assistant professor) saw it posted and confiscated it. She showed it to me to ask what we should do about it. The key thing here is that it was anonymous, but because of the way it was type set, it was obvious to us which man in the department posted it. I took it to our dean, along with a cartoon the same man gave me a few weeks before - this cartoon had a similar type of humor: sexual overtones couched in disciplinary terms. I brushed it off at the time because it *was* kind of funny and I have known this man for a long time. I did not feel harassed but I should have been wiser about what more junior women in the department might have been experiencing. | Full tenured professor | Full tenured professor, the department chair. | Regional Teaching College | Mathematics | The dean gave the perpetrator (who denied posting it) a good talking to. I'm serious, that was it. I think she believed his denial, but was uncomfortable just dismissing the complaint because this department chair had had several previous conflicts with the female faculty member who had found the essay. His interactions with her earlier were unprofessional and paternalistic not but sexual harassment per se. | Nothing much, although we did organize to get him voted out as the department chair the following year, which was unprecedented in our department. | Nothing, I am close to retirement. The young woman who found the essay left the university the following year. I don't think this incident was the reason, but the lack of support she received from this department chair definitely weighed on her and sapped her motivation to continue in academia. | As I mentioned above, I was angry at myself for not paying closer attention to what younger women faculty were experiencing. I don't think the department chair was intentionally harassing, it was more thoughtless than anything. But his career was marked with several incidents where he showed poor judgement and made unprofessional comments. I should have been more proactive, knowing this. | I'm more aware of my responsibility as a senior female faculty member to be proactive. And it has heightened my awareness of the different forms that harassment can take. | I think this is a great idea - thank you! | Male | ||
122 | 12/2/2017 11:28:02 | I was an undergraduate and a professor casually asked if I had a boyfriend, then asked what his ethnicity was. I was dating a non-Latinx white man at the time. The professor joked that I was a race-traitor and put his hand on my thigh. | Sophomore undergraduate | Potential mentor/advisor for a summer research project | Small Liberal Arts College | Literature | Male | ||||||||
123 | 12/2/2017 11:35:09 | Fall 2006, during finals week. I took violin lessons as part of my major. I made a lot of progress and was interested in a career in teaching, so my violin professor asked me to give struggling students "ghost lessons." One of them, after a few weeks of one-on-one lessons with me, called me late one night saying that he was "having a hard time," and that he was wondering if we could just talk. He sounded like he was sobbing. I thought he was depressed and just encouraged him, he asked me to keep talking, and then said he needed tissue and more lotion. I hung up. He called repeatedly for the next couple of days. This was before called ID, and I *was waiting for calls about study groups and so forth, so I kept picking up, hearing his voice, and hang up. | 3rd year undergrad | 1st year undergrad | Other R1 | music | The institution did not formally do anything. They recommended that I file a campus equivalent of restraining order against this person, which I did. | No real consequences, really. The violin professor (who is also a woman) took it extremely hard and blamed herself for putting me in that situation, and gave him the lowest grade possible without failing, and kicked him out of the studio. | 1) I am no longer pursuing a one-on-one teaching career, 2) when I do teach I keep extremely clearly boundary and distance. | I don't know if all of my mental health issues comes down to this one. I've had so many. | Male | ||||
124 | 12/2/2017 11:38:38 | A married colleague said he wanted to kiss me at a graduate student happy hour in Spring 2015. An officemate, a graduate student in the department showed me a dic pic (not his own) without my consent. That incident didn't bother me so much as it was just annoying, particularly as that student claims to be a feminist and an activist, but I wouldn't say I've lost any sleep over it. | Ph.D. student completing course work (for the second one I was a Ph.D. student preparing for comprehensive exams). | Another graduate student, one year ahead, A.B.D. This particular graduate student was one of the first I worked with as a TA and as such I respected and trusted him. He was also married, had children, and was serving as a graduate representative for our program. I was referred to him several times over the years by professors as someone who could offer feedback on my research. The second incident was a graduate student who in the cohort that came in two years later, we had known each other in undergrad as well, he was just embarking on coursework. | Other R1 | Stony Brook University | Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies | I never reported it, having heard stories from other women in the department about the stress of reporting to the graduate school, the burden of proof placed on the victim, and the refusal by the institution to deal with the situation. | None (but to be fair, I never reported the incident). | None so far other than some feelings of no longer feeling comfortable in my workplace. | It definitely increased my stress. For a while I was angry, I hated that graduate candidate. I was surprised to find that those closest to me in my personal life (my family and significant other) were quick to blame me. "What were you doing in a bar with this guy?" Well, obviously I was at a graduate student happy hour, but unfortunately circumstances that evening left an opening when one student (who later said he had made her uncomfortable as well) suddenly rushed out of the event, the other remaining graduate student went to check on her, and this left a window of time where my colleague and I were left alone at the table. I think of the people in my support network I told, only two immediately said what had happened to me was wrong, and that this male graduate student had taken advantage of the situation. Everyone else either blamed me, or said "well, he's under a lot of pressure, it's probably just an isolated incident, you should just forgive him." It hurt to feel the lack of support, and probably the biggest thing this student's actions revealed to me were the limitations of my own relationships, THAT was the hardest, for example, to hear my mom say "what were you doing alone in a bar with this graduate student?" I think she realized later that she was victim blaming but, I'll never forget that she never really apologized to me for victim blaming. At least my boyfriend at the time apologized for his initial victim blaming response, but you want your parents to understand. Ultimately, I think I recovered quickly 1. because the incident stopped at verbal harassment and 2. as an underrepresented minority you get used to blocking out the demeaning or upsetting things people say and use that discrimination to fuel your drive rather than letting it become a distraction. I made up my mind after that incident that, since he would likely not be impacted at all, I wasn't going to let him impact my career trajectory, and I wanted to take the time I would spend seeking institutional support, and instead funnel it into my research. I am privileged to be in a field where I did not need to interact with this guy regularly because the humanities aren't as collaborative as some other fields. Nevertheless, I'll probably never enter another department with the level of trust and belief in my colleagues that I came to this institution with, probably a good thing because as the news seems to be proving this is the reality we live in, and sexual harassment is a large part of it. It definitely saddens me to feel the burden of always being suspicious and self-protecting, but I feel like it's up to me to guard my mental health because large institutions like Universities are looking at liability management not the good of its population. | It didn't change much. Like I said, in the humanities our work is done in a more isolated environment, and luckily this graduate student wanted to graduate and leave academia, so I likely won't encounter him again. If anything, it probably increased my empathy towards others to have experienced how powerless one feels in the face of workplace sexual harassment. The harassment made me more determined to succeed in my career because I don't think it was really about sexual desire, I think this graduate student felt threatened by his female colleagues and was acting out (because a number of female graduate students and candidates, and even female students who had graduated with their Ph.D. shared stories with me or friends who told them my story about this guy making them uncomfortable, making unwanted physical contact, stuff like that) and I want to show, you can't frighten off your competitors that way, so I'll keep going, and hopefully one day I'll be in a position to advocate for change in how sexual harassment at the University is handled. The sad part is probably, all of us have given this guy the benefit of the doubt only to discover later just how many of us there were. | Even now, part of me doesn't want to submit this information. I feel ashamed that I just let it pass, and that shame makes me want to continue to bottle up the incident because I didn't step forward. | Male | |
125 | 12/2/2017 11:45:14 | Older male professor (who's long been rumoured to have harassed young women students) made repeated jokes about my surname. My surname is ***. It is pronounced ***. He insisted to pronounce it as "*** and asked me how I felt. | grad student | full proessor | Other R1 | University of Western Ontario | music | Male | |||||||
126 | 12/2/2017 11:47:42 | I went to pick up my graded paper from my instructor. There was a sticky note on it , a message between my instructor and someone else. They were talking about my “boobs”. My instructor wrote, “she must wear a push-up bra, because they can’t be that big.” I could tell it was him because it was the same writing as the feedback on my paper. I was mortified. | Second year of grad school | Post doc | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Education | Male | ||||||||
127 | 12/2/2017 11:47:44 | An senior academic ran my specialist humanities unit comprised of three hand-selected graduate students and two post-docs. He sexually harassed one of my male peers who was also his research assistant - propositioning him and touching him intimately on at least one occasion. As for me, he said in the first weeks of our scheduled supervision that women's literary history could only ever be revisionist, not original. When, three months later, I shifted the focus of my research, he accused me of plagiarising a male graduate student's ideas and insisted that I stick with my original 'revisionist' research plan. At that point the working relationship became impossible, and I finished, defended and passed my M.Litt with distinction entirely without institutional help. | Graduate student | My supervisor | Other R1 | University of Aberdeen | English | The department was aware of the problematic nature of the professor, but ignored it | Unclear. The research unit was shut down four years after I left | I dropped out of academia for the next two years instead of progressing to PhD student status | The situation left me angry, isolated and powerless. | It pushed me off the career path that I was on. | Male | ||
128 | 12/2/2017 11:50:23 | I interviewed for a graduate school program while obviously pregnant and was told that if the interviewer had known I was pregnant, I would not have gotten the interview and I was definitely not getting into the program. | Graduate school applicant | Head of the graduate school program | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale | Arts Administration | I did not pursue it. | None. | I went to a different school for my master's, so minimal. | Minimal but it still bothers me some. | Minimal. | If my experience does not fit into your definition of sexual harassment, feel free to leave it out of your data. | Male | |
129 | 12/2/2017 11:51:02 | In a required class for new/early grad students, we were told that our dissertations should be "like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the important parts, but short enough to be interesting" | 1st year grad student | tenured/senior professor/course instructor | Other R1 | Sociology | None | None | None, but made it difficult to get help in a notoriously difficult course, required for the degree | stress related to passing the class (a B- was "failing"); made me realize the department was not going to be a safe place for the rest of my time as a student | considered leaving the program; made a conscious effort to avoid certain classes, including with other senior profs who "warned" me about this person, and said the comment was typical | Male | |||
130 | 12/2/2017 11:53:39 | In my second year as junior faculty, students came to me to report that the department chair made inappropriate comments during a conference that were sexual in nature. The chair had already had to attend "training" on sexual harassment prior in his career. Upon requesting assistance from another colleague, I was told "this is how he is. Nothing will happen. Protect yourself since you don't have tenure." I reported it anonymously and urged the students to report. Nothing happened. | 2nd year tenure- track | Tenured associate professor and department chair | R2 | None | None | None | I constantly worried about being alone with him. | None | Male | ||||
131 | 12/2/2017 11:56:11 | I was showering in the women’s locker room on campus, 9 weeks pregnant, when my chair walked in, looked me up and down, and began commenting on how good my pregnant body looked. This was shortly after I had told her I was pregnant but that because of previous miscarriages it needed to be kept top secret (we live in a small small village) until out of the first trimester. She spoke loudly about my naked body and my pregnancy in a busy locker room echoing against the tile while I showered. | Assistant professor, in my second year on tenure track, 9 weeks pregnant | Associate professor, my department chair | Small Liberal Arts College | Education | N/A | N/A | I spent my pregnancy hiding in my office avoiding her at all costs terrified at what she might say in front of students. Created a toxic work environment for me. We got into many screaming matches after that as I spelled out clear boundaries for her. | Stress, anxiety, doubt/gaslighting, avoidance, seclusion | Unclear | She was well intentioned, just clueless about social boundaries and appropriate professional behavior. | Female | ||
132 | 12/2/2017 11:56:33 | Intermittent inappropriate comments, whether on outfit or marital status combined with total disengagement with me as an intellectual. Public hostility and criticism without even pretending to read my work; patronizing and insulting in front of graduate students. | Junior | Senior colleague in field; current head of promotion case | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | N/A; confidential at this time | None | He's heading my tenure case, so we will see... | What one might imagine. | Could be the end of my job - we'll see. | Male | |||
133 | 12/2/2017 12:01:16 | Raped by a graduate student in my department. | Graduate student | Graduate student in a different lab in the same building | Other R1 | Microbiology | Without speaking to me a staff member I disclosed this to told the department head who told my PI and the PI of the student who assaulted me. They then broke university protocol to punish that student without even consulting me. I was so embarrassed and felt so out of control I become suicidal and couldn’t come to campus for at least 6 months without panic attacks. | He was pushed to graduate early. There was no investigation, and after what my department did I was to distraught to push for one. | I graduated a year late, and delayed all my publications by a year. It made it harder to find employment. | I became depressed and suicidal. | I am leaving academia. I hated being silenced about how horrible their response for fear of retaliation. | Male | |||
134 | 12/2/2017 12:02:38 | A male colleague targeted my female colleage who he knew to be depressed, anxious and isolated. He made her feel like he understood her mental illness, and made repeated points to her that he was a feminist and a nice guy. He ended up soliciting her for a threesome with his girlfriend. She became upset with him and asked that he stop contacting her. He tried different ways to manipulate her into talking to him again - including guilting her about abuse he had suffered in the past and his own struggle with mental illness. She felt tormented about forgiving him and moving on. He noticed that her and I had become closer friends after his solicitation. He went so far as to ask me to get coffee with him so him and I could “talk things out” about my friend - I had no friendship or any other relationship with this man besides being in the same department. I told him to leave me alone. My friend became extremely depressed after this incident and dropped out. She was my best friend in the program. | Grad student | Grad student | Other R1 | Male | |||||||||
135 | 12/2/2017 12:04:34 | My professor made sexual comments in front of my partnes about how good I must be in bed since I am a single mom | Student | Associate Professor (He was my Semiotics teacher) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Literature | I think I'll never be taken seriously and I do not deserve to find love | Male | |||||||
136 | 12/2/2017 12:05:42 | The incident occurred at a lab social event - karaoke session. The perpetrator put his hand down my pants (under my underwear) as we were sitting side by side. | Graduate student | Professor from another institution, but colleague and collaborator of my advisor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | See comments | Education | None, because I didn't report the incident. I didn't tell my advisor because I thought he wouldn't take it seriously. He was a "pal" with the perpetrator, drinking buddy, etc. If I told my advisor, and he didn't do anything about it, then I felt I wouldn't be able to continue to work with my advisor, which could put my graduate studies in jeopardy. If the perpetrator had been from my own institution, I could have reported it directly to the institution. But because the perpetrator was from Europe, I didn't know how to register a complaint. | None | None | Stress and anxiety, particularly at events where I knew the perpetrator would be present. | None, although I avoided conference sessions where the perpetrator was presenting and social events where I knew he would be present | I was a grad student at the University of Toronto and the individual was an associate professor from the University of Oslo | Male | |
137 | 12/2/2017 12:06:20 | Propositioned for sex by my current professor in undergraduate writing course. Propositioned for sex by my MA thesis advisor after the defense. Propositioned and harassed by emeritus professor while I worked alone in his home during PhD study. Sexually harassed by supervisor while working as a technology fellow during PhD study. Discovered that my sexual activities in my home had been shared with the rest of the faculty by a neighbor faculty member. In all cases, I spoke directly to the person myself and asked them to stop. In the case of the emeritus professor, I had to also ask my graduate department chair to intervene. Incidents occurred 2000-2014. | Undergrad, MA, PhD student, professor | My professor, former professor, emeritus professor, supervisor, colleague | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | English literature | Usually wasn't against any rule at those institutions. In the case of the emeritus professor, he was asked to stop calling me. | None | Lost mentorships, lost collegial relationships | Hard to tell. Developed a severe anxiety disorder, was in therapy for about 10 years. Other non-institutional traumas were concurrent. | Definitely less interested in pursuing top-level competitive jobs, perfectly happy not to spend my life around the sort of men who see themselves as "elite." | Male | |||
138 | 12/2/2017 12:08:09 | My former senior assoc. dean spent a year building up to a final propositioning of me. He kissed me, told me he was "tormented" by this feelings for me, etc. He's 20 years older than me. | Assistant professor | Senior professor in another dept. When I was on my campus visit, I met with him. He was then my boss's boss, basically. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Stanford | English | They acknowledged that he had made "an unwanted sexual advance" but said it wasn't harassment and denied retaliation. | None that I know of. | After I filed a complaint, my husband (a lecturer) was fired, so we both left and now have positions at Notre Dame. | I'd never dealt with depression before, but for a good year I was depressed and a little shell-shocked. | I'm at a different university, no longer living near my family (my siblings and mother are in CA). I'm at a less highly-ranked (though still highly-ranked) university. Over the next few years, my salary will start to be lower than it would have been. Various former friends at Stanford no longer talk to me, and I know that some have spoken badly about me to colleagues at other universities. How much damage that sort of thing does is hard to define. | My story's in the Guardian. If you search *** and Stanford, you'll find it. | Male | |
139 | 12/2/2017 12:15:07 | I was a a public lecture given by ***. I was introduced to him by one of his grad students. As we were standing around in a circle talking, he put him arm around my back, slid his arm down and chipped my ass. | I was a masters student at Harvard divinity school. | He was a full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Harvard University | Religious Studies | I didn’t report it - I was scared. | None | Made me stay away from him. | It was negative. I felt dirty and objectified. And every time I see him on tv acting high and lightly, I feel sick. | Not much - j just stayed away from him. | Male | ||
140 | 12/2/2017 12:19:13 | What occurred for me was relatively minor - I was typically told sexist or possibly sexual comments. For example, that I "always dress very nicely" that "I would have an easy time getting a job due to being a woman." He would also ask me to do tasks unrelated to my actual job. At the time, I did not think of these requests as sexual harassment but in retrospect I suspect they may have been a way to have me come to his house alone, call him on the phone more often, etc. For example, he would often have me order, pick up, and deliver food to his house for student meetings he would hold there. He was later accused of a much more serious incidence of sexual harassment by another TA. Although I was not the victim of this final incident, I feel it is the one that has actually had the most impact on my career. | Teaching/Research Assistant | Distinguished Professor, chair of my dissertation committee | Other R1 | Political Science | I did not report my incidents because they were minor or I did not recognize them for what they were at the time. After being accused of sexual harassment, the university put him on leave until his ultimate resignation. The university paid a settlement to the victim. | He was able to resign from the position. He later was hired at another institution. However, the nature of the accusation later became known to this other institution and he was fired. | Right at the stage when I was beginning my dissertation, he was placed on leave. I had to change the chair of my dissertation committee as well as add a new member who was less familiar with my research. I was away from campus teaching online at the time, so I did not know the victim well and therefore did not know what had occurred. After he resigned and I found out exactly what occurred, I felt uncomfortable reaching out to him and have not spoken to him in years. I am therefore unable to use him as a reference for jobs, which is harmful as I spent years as his TA and RA and do not have him to speak for this experience. I also can no longer take direct advantage of his large network in the field. I will say that clearly all of this was much worse for his direct victim, but the fallout still had negative impacts on other graduate students who worked for him like myself. | N/A | Nothing has directly happened, although I expect I would have a better career trajectory if I had him as a reference and networking resource. | Male | |||
141 | 12/2/2017 12:21:25 | A male colleague repeatedly made comments about how my body looked in my clothing. Among other statement, he commented on how a shirt complemented my shape and a skirt showed off my legs. These comments were sometimes made in front of other colleagues, who said nothing. He sometimes sent comments over social media, and although I blocked him to prevent the messages, the constant contact made me quite upset. He even showed up at my house once and made a very uncomfortable comment. | Adjunct instructor | an instructor who has taught at the university 5 years longer than I have. It was often suggested I work with him on course revisions and service projects. | Other R1 | English | None | None | I felt ashamed. I would sometimes avoid departmental events and meetings so I wouldn't encounter the harasser. It has meant building a name and reputation within the department and institution has taken longer. | Anger, shame, highly uncomfortable. I have not sought treatment, but I have been very upset at times by his treatment. | I have purposefully changed my career focus to specialize in teaching lower division courses because I can avoid this individual more easily as he teaches upper division courses. | Comments may seem innocuous, but the consistency and lack of concern from others made me feel completely alienated. The situation felt very dangerous and disturbing. I was afraid to be caught alone with the individual in an office or the elevator. | Male | ||
142 | 12/2/2017 12:23:03 | Nothing. Ever. No one has ever sexually harassed me during my graduate career. A few professors and fellow students have told me off-color jokes, which is not the same as being harassed. And yes, I am a woman. | I am in the final year of a PhD. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | |||||||||||
143 | 12/2/2017 12:26:57 | In 1992-1993 an Instructor forced me to have sex with her about 40 times during the academic year under threat of failing class and derailing my career trajectory in archaeology. Instructor eventually got pregnant (she lied about birth control) and tried to force me into a domectic type relationship. It only ended when I left the institution. | 2nd year undergraduate | Instructor | Regional Teaching College | A SW US community college | Anthropology | None. It was never reported. | None. It was never reported. | None | Minor | None...I went on and became a professor at a R1 and she still teaches at community colleges. | Female | ||
144 | 12/2/2017 12:27:57 | Unwanted touch in 2016 | Instructor | Affiliate professor | R2 | Psychology | Interviewed me about the incidents | None | Unknown | Caused anxiety | Not sure | N/A | Male | ||
145 | 12/2/2017 12:34:32 | My graduate program director, who was married to someone else in the department, made a sexual pass at me. | Master's student | Professor, Graduate Program Director | Other R1 | Sociology | I filed a report after the statue of limitations was up. It is now on file. He has since retired. | He was my mentor, as well as graduate program director. This did not make it any easier for me to trust men. | I still entered academia but now find myself very weary of men, particularly older men, who seem to take interest in me. This could be entirely professional but I now view it through the lens of skepticism. | Male | |||||
146 | 12/2/2017 12:41:41 | A male student in my grad program regularly sexualized the rest of our cohort, referring regularly to the other male students as his "competition" and making sexualized comments about women. In this context, he became irate at me for disagreeing with him during a group project, and literally stopped speaking to me, despite the fact that we had the project to finish. When I talked to him about it, he became physically threatening with me, and I became genuinely worried that he knew where I lived. Shortly thereafter, he made unwanted sexual advances and kissed another student without her consent. Afterwards, while still in the classroom after class, he exploded at her, stood threateningly over her, called her a fucking bitch and left the classroom in a rage. He went to rant about the two of us in vulgar and explicit terms in front of many of our classmates on campus. This was the point at which I filed the formal complaint. I later learned he had also harassed at least four other students (which amounted to almost half of the women in our program). After four of us reported him, he continued to behave threateningly, to the point that when I talked to my female advisor about him, she said that the faculty was concerned too, but they didn't know how to handle it because they feared that if they upset him, they could have a "Virginia Tech" situation on their hands. She literally was scared that he would carry out a mass shooting if the faculty stood up for us. | MA Student | Another MA student in my cohort | Other Type of School | Education | Four women (including myself) in my cohort reported the same male student for sexual/gender based harassment. We each met with the head of student affairs. He did not initiate a hearing, even though we asked for one directly. No consequences of any kind befell the harasser. Two of us who reported him asked for the accommodation of not being placed in small groups in our shared mandatory class with him. The (female) professor of this class refused to comply and repeatedly grouped us together. The other two women chose not to tell that they had also filed complaint when they saw how badly we were treated. The dean got involved, and while he was sympathetic to what we were going to, and intervened on our behalf with the professor, she continued to defy direct orders from the dean and place us in groups with him. This professor publicly took the side of the male student and told others in our program that we were "bullying" him by reporting the harassment. At one point, I had to call step out of class and call him (the dean) about what was happening in the session. After this, I filed for a no contact order (the student equivalent of a restraining order). | As far as I know, none. | The professor who sided with the harasser is reasonably prominent in one of the professional organizations in our field (luckily, not the most prominent, but still relatively major), and whenever I see her at conferences, she shoots death glares at me. This had led to me avoiding collaboration with this organization. I was also for a time very concerned that this would impact my ability to get letters of recommendation, since this situation created a very toxic environment for my entire cohort, which lasted all year and spread throughout the entire program. Luckily, two of the faculty members became quiet allies, who supported us, but didn't intervene on our behalf with their colleagues (at least not in an impactful way). So I got what I needed from the program (a degree and strong recommendations) and am in good shape careerwise. | This was really traumatic. In many ways, trying to get the administration and faculty to behave appropriately was more traumatic than the actual harassment itself. Sometimes I wonder if I should have not said anything, but when I think about the fact that he was clearly moving through the whole program finding new targets, I really couldn't have in good conscience not said anything. I spent a lot of time crying in the campus counsellor's office because of it though. | If anything, this has made me more determined to succeed. I sometimes use the pure injustice of the situation and how it was handled to motivate me to be the absolute best, because this shit is not going to stop me. I am more invested in social responsibility within my field, which led to me finding my niche and my people and building a really strong professional network, separate from my graduate school. | Male | |||
147 | 12/2/2017 12:43:15 | ||||||||||||||
148 | 12/2/2017 12:44:21 | An assistant professor repeatedly came to my office to talk to me in front of my officemates. He tried to create daily conversation but it made me really uncomfortable. He then asked me out for events. Because we were both single, I was not sure how to respond. I am not sure if this is considered sexual haressment. | Graduate student | Assistant professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Psychology | He switched to another institution eventually - not because of this specific incident though | Minimal | Minimal but I was overall confused about how to respond | Minimal | Male | ||||
149 | 12/2/2017 12:47:04 | In the middle of a class discussion on early 20th century sociology, the professor proclaimed to the entire class that I was sexy, despite my being "older than the rest" of the students. This prof revels in his "academic rebel" persona and enjoys making outrageous/heavy-handed and un-PC remarks, often calling out students and engaging them in silly/ridiculous conversation related to some personal characteristic (name, state or country of origin, family status, religion, hobbies, etc.). Usually it's all in good fun, but slightly uncomfortable/awkward. This was the first time (in this class), however, he made a comment toward anyone that was sexual in nature. I was so shocked that I gasped and laughed in surprise, but after the shock passed, really resented that he verbalized the idea that I'm some hottie Latina MILF. I believe the professor actually thought he was complimenting me, however, now I always wonder what other students/faculty think of me, and whether my intellectual credibility is overshadowed by my appearance/ethnicity. I feel I constantly have to overcompensate intellectually while repressing personal expression to counteract any stereotypes that were raised/reinforced by that comment. It's exhausting. | PhD student. Mid-30s, latina, female. | Professor. Retirement-age, white, male. | Other R1 | Major R1 in mid-Atlantic region | Management and Sociology | N/A - not reported. Classmates said/did nothing during or after incident, clearly indicating they did not feel empowered to reject such sentiments and/or this sentiment was either normalized in the department culture or around this professor. | None, except perhaps reinforcing his sense that it's ok to make outrageous comments related to students' personal characteristics. | I question to what extent expressing my ethnic persona will affect my career opportunities, and to what extent I should "androgynize" myself to keep the spotlight on my work and not on male fantasies about who I might be. The doubt and uncertainty this creates is exhausting. Do men have to use mental energy and engage in emotional labor around these issues? If so, certainly to a much lesser degree. | Frequent self-doubt about how seriously I am taken by faculty, and how peers/faculty perceive my intellectual capability. Self-doubt is exhausting. | Keep my head down, work harder, try to keep any personal expression of my self/culture under wraps. What else is there to do? It's not worth getting branded as a complainer/troublemaker. After killing myself for 5 years earning this degree, I want to get a decent job in the academy. | Male | ||
150 | 12/2/2017 12:49:28 | ||||||||||||||
151 | 12/2/2017 12:51:11 | Jan 20, 2008 I was in a shared graduate student office late at night, I asked a fellow grad student if he would be staying late and, if so, if he could walk me to my bike otherwise I would leave early. He said he was planning to stay late and agreed to walk me to my bike. These are my notes from the incident: I finished reading a little after 10pm and as I started packing up * sparked up a conversation about his loneliness and his relationship status. He confessed that he was reading a self-help book about relationships because he felt really lonely and couldn’t figure out how to meet someone. He mentioned that in the book he was reading the author said that women immediately knew whether or not they would sleep with a man upon meeting him. He then proceeded to ask me about my relationships. He asked me if I had ever had a one night stand and I said no. He said he couldn’t believe it and said that he had slept with a lot of virgins—that these young women would pick him out, in a club, for example, and ask to sleep with him. I told him I found it odd and unbelievable. I can’t recall the exact details of the conversation at this point, but I do know that as he continued to ask me about my relationships and the role that sex played in my relationships. At one point * suddenly asked me “Do you want to fuck?” I said “No, I would never sleep with you.” He said “Well, when I look at you I want to fuck you. When you look at me do you want to fuck me?” I repeated myself, “No, I would never sleep with you.” He acted shocked. He told me something along the lines of “I can fuck for hours.” He also told me that his room was nearby. I told him “You’re being really creepy ***,” because by this point the entire tone of the conversation had changed dramatically, and I was startled and afraid. Although he denied that he was acting creepy, I repeated myself. I called his behavior creepy at least 4 times and he asked me to stop saying it. He said something like “That’s the kind of thing you say about criminals” (he might have said “…about a molester” I can’t remember exactly). He was visibly upset by my comment. As I was sitting down printing, *** positioned himself standing behind me and asked me “What kind of panties are you wearing?” I told him to stop, and that he was really creeping me out. I was really afraid that I was alone with him and I would have to walk outside to get my bike and that he might hurt me. In an effort to direct the conversation, once again, toward his inappropriate behavior, I started a conversation about how he related to woman in the history department. I told him that I thought he had problems communicating with women and that other women in the department had mentioned as much. I told him that a couple of women had complained to me that he didn’t acknowledge them or say hello, and that in this instance, when he was actually talking to one of his female colleagues, his behavior had become inappropriate very quickly. He got defensive again and told me that he always tried to be very objective and that he wanted people to think of him as such, and that perhaps he was misunderstood. I told him that, on the contrary, he wasn’t objective at all; that he was one of the most dogmatic people I knew and that other people in the department might agree with me. At this point we were walking outside and I had already picked up my bike. He told me that the reason he didn’t acknowledge women or even say hello to them was because his aunt had told him that, as a man, any little thing you do—even looking at a woman the wrong way—might be misinterpreted as sexual harassment. I discovered that another female graduate student had also been sexually harassed by *** who had been assigned as her mentor in the department. We met with our mutual adviser and with the head of the department to report our experiences. | graduate student | graduate student | Other R1 | University of Arizona | history | The head of the history department said the university had invested so much in him that they would not jeopardize his career based on what would appear to university lawyers as hearsay at best and defamation of character at worst. Because the incident occurred in our share graduate student office they moved him into his own office. My adviser fought to include in his file something about the fact that he had been accused of sexual harassment by two female graduate students. (It turned out that an undergraduate student had also complained about him but due to privacy issues no one shared the details.) | None that I can see, according to his online profile he's currently an Assistant Professor of History at the American University in Dubai | I don't know, it took me a long time finish my MA, which might have been a function of many things that had nothing to do with the harasser. One striking aspect of the whole thing is that when he and I took historiography together, the male professor of the course I asked me to take it easy on him because I routinely challenged his interpretation of the readings. I developed an understanding that he was in a profession invested in protecting him and his career. I did go on to complete my PhD a different institution and currently have a post-doc. I hope to land a tenure track job but I will not be surprised if I don't and if he continues to succeed. | Male | ||||
152 | 12/2/2017 12:51:33 | ||||||||||||||
153 | 12/2/2017 12:53:10 | 2015 at a conference, a tenured professor in my field cornered me on an escalator to tell me my body looked good. Later he sat next to me on a bench in the hotel lobby, put his hand on my leg and shoulder and looked down my shirt and said "your body looks good." I left feeling dirty. | Assistant professor | Associate professor at another university | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | It was at a conference | Criminology | None | None. I've seen him hitting on grad students at later conferences. | I avoid networking at conferences more and more | I felt ashamed and vulnerable, and anxious in conference settings | I won't work with anyone who works with this man. I network less at conferences. | Male | ||
154 | 12/2/2017 12:53:31 | I strongly suspect that a colleague placed some kind of "date rape" drug in my drink during a social gathering. While I am now in recovery, I am a long-time substance abuser and alcoholic. I could tell from the effects of the drink that I did not only have alcohol in my system. I went home immediately. This colleague had constantly subjected me to crude, sexual, and degrading comments, as well as multiple sexual propositions. | Lecturer (1 year contract) | Same status. | R2 | University of Tennessee-Knoxville | History | None. I did not report it, as I knew they would do nothing, and I had already decided I wanted to leave the academy. | None | It was the final straw that led me to leave academia. | My alcoholism escalated. | Very strong--I entered a black market trade. | Male | ||
155 | 12/2/2017 12:54:26 | I am a witness to a professor at an Ivy League who had a "consensual" sexual relationship with his biological daughter who was also a student at the said Ivy League a few years ago. This now former professor has been able to bury the case and tell others that he did not know this undergraduate sexual partner was his bio-daughter and/or that it is entirely fabricated. When the case broke it was only picked up by the alt-right press, Rush Limbaugh, etc., but it was not followed up by the New York Times or other legitimate media outlets, perhaps because this professor was well connected, and the few of us who knew what happened did not want to cause more hurt for his relations--the daughter, the mother of the daughter, his wife, his other children, his parents and family. He also enjoyed the lucky break that the bio daughter had a different last name than his--his name is not on her birth certificate. What was the upshot? it took years for his department (different department than mine) to let him go. What happened to the daughter, her bio-mother, and her extended family was devastating. I am reporting this because it was completely totally buried and had a traumatic impact on many who have had to work with this man. This Ivy is notorious for sexual harassment; friends and colleagues have identified their rapists on the faculty, but nothing is done. This professor may have faced more serious ramifications--when the Manhattan DA charged him, he agreed to a misdemeanor plea and eventually was removed from the faculty. The willingness of others to believe that he was an innocent or ignore it is appalling. I am reporting this because this level of sexual impropriety/harassment/assault (whatever you would choose to call it) happens in large part because others are ultimately complicit. | witness | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Eventually forced to leave institution | Male | |||||||||
156 | 12/2/2017 12:54:34 | After my leave of absence I approached a professor and asked him if I could pass his final exam by submitting an essay to a booklet that other people from the course were putting together. That booklet was in fact their final. To what he replied, with other people present, "How about you dance naked on a table for me?" After a pause, he added "You'll have to come and answer questions no essays possible for you." On the day of the exam, he was talking for an hour and a half and told me about a movie that had a blow job reference in it. That happened on a Saturday evening when everyone had already left. I was scared but didn't show it. In the end, he gave me a good grade and I left. | Student | Professor | Other Type of School | A university in Russia | Linguistics | None | None | Not really | Got scared and uncomfortable | I don't know | Male | ||
157 | 12/2/2017 12:54:40 | ||||||||||||||
158 | 12/2/2017 12:55:34 | ||||||||||||||
159 | 12/2/2017 12:56:41 | Dean's "small talk" at the beginning of our lunch meeting included a story about how she'd recently volunteered at a sporting event so she could see female athletes naked. Later offered to give me a massage. Same dean kissed a female colleague on the lips at a dinner party, and has sent another female colleague "thinking of you" emails. | Assistant Professor | Associate Dean of my division | Other R1 | Humanities | None. I haven't reported it and am unlikely to while I'm untenured. | None, so far as I can tell. | It's made me very wary of going to this dean for any kind of help, and I'm dreading the idea of having to negotiate with her over an upcoming financial issue. | I feel somewhat angry at myself, honestly, for what now seems really obviously to be harassment when I sit here typing it out. I dismissed it as her just being socially awkward, and I think it took me longer to recognize it because it was coming from a female colleague. | I'm considering moving departments or to a different institution -- not primarily because of this, but I do feel blocked by having this person at the head of my division. | Female | |||
160 | 12/2/2017 12:56:41 | 2007. A member of my thesis committee, after talking about how the Greeks slept with students frequently, hugged me at the end of our meeting, smelled my hair, would not let go, and said "mmmm that feels good." | Masters student | Full professor | Other R1 | Virginia Tech | Sociology | None. | None. | I did not keep him on my dissertation committee and avoided him. | I became wary of seeking new male mentors. | Not sure. I didn't file a complaint and I know he harassed other students in my program. I feel guilty. | He is retired now. | Male | |
161 | 12/2/2017 12:59:13 | 2015. Male colleague asked how teaching was going and I said my throat hurt from talking so much. He said, "You know how to fix that? Suck more dick." | Assistant professor | Assistant professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Armstrong State University | Sociology | I filed a complaint with HR and nothing happened. | None | I moved to another job | Anxiety | Left a job I otherwise liked | Male | ||
162 | 12/2/2017 13:09:39 | A graduate student peer told me that a faculty member commented to him about my body (and specifically, my ass) | first year graduate student | faculty member in my department | Other R1 | Big 10 school | psychology | none, thankfully (I did not work with or take classes from this faculty member) | none, thankfully | none | Male | ||||
163 | 12/2/2017 13:10:05 | Harassment and hostile work environment. | Graduate student | Peer | Other R1 | Documented with chair after I reported | hostile work environment | Anxiety. Depression. Paranoia | Male | ||||||
164 | 12/2/2017 13:14:38 | Touched repeatedly in a professor's office. He asked if I wanted to go out for a drink that night or any future night. He suggested regular meetings in the evening in his office or out for drinks. When I declined these invitations, he gave me a C on a term paper. The other professor of the class (it was a team-taught class) reversed the grade when I showed him the paper. I did not tell the other professor what had transpired. | Graduate student | Tenured Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | History | Not reported | None | Problems writing papers (writer's block) and a reluctance to meet male professors and colleagues after hours, even in safe settings. | Anxiety and depression. | It slowed my career and made it harder for me to trust male colleagues; I had writer's block for many years. | Male | ||
165 | 12/2/2017 13:19:22 | In moments between class time, another student would make “joking” inappropriate remarks to me. At first I tried to banter back to shut it down . That didn’t work. It eventually escalated to the point I no longer felt emotionally safe going to class. | First year MA student | More advanced PhD student | Other R1 | Ohio University | History | When I told the professor I could no longer attend class, he asked me to come, and then he gave a stern speech about appropriate behavior. The perpetrator didn’t realize it was about him. Other faculty talked to him, but they continued to fund his PhD. | None known. He is a tenured faculty member. | Minimal. | It was very challenging at the time, and it still makes me angry. But I’m ok. | None | Male | ||
166 | 12/2/2017 13:19:48 | I had this professor in one of my classes, and he wanted to mentor me, as I was one of his best students in what was considered a challenging class. Later that semester, we (and other students and faculty) attended a national conference out of state, and one night, we had a conversation at dinner about graduate school. It turns out that I was applying to the same graduate school and program where he had been studying. This is where things started to intensify over the next couple of months. After dinner, there was a reception with an open bar at the conference, and this is when the flirting started. In addition, he would pick on me in class. In the meantime, I had taken a trip to the university in question, he had written letters of recommendation, and I had gotten accepted into their program. After graduation, he invited me out to a local food place, and admitted that he was attracted to me, and gave me a long hug at the end of the lunch. A couple days later (and before I was set to move), he wanted to meet with me one last time, supposedly to give me some books (he did), and he kissed me. I never made any of this known until years later. Later on, he was reported to the university for sexually harassing another student and is no longer employed there. | I was in my final semester of undergraduate studies. | He was an Assistant Professor. | Regional Teaching College | Criminal Justice | It was never reported to the institution. | He is no longer employed there, as he has engaged in similar behavior with other females. | I work in the public sector. | I have experienced stress and depression. | I pursued a career outside of academia. | Male | |||
167 | 12/2/2017 13:21:04 | Repeated harassment of a bullying nature over many years; public humiliation, withholding of data, destruction of my data, falsification of my data, demands that I mis-report and falsify data, threats to destroy my career, threats to humiliate me further, threats to remove funding, incessant small put-downs, it goes on and on (and on). | Graduate student | Associate Professor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Università degli Studi del Salento, Lecce (harasser's instiution) in Italy | Archaeology | I reported this to my supervisor in the United States; he told me to resolve it. | She appeared to benefit from the harassment (e.g. she published some material that I collected data for and initially I was supposed to publish this data). | Delays in completion of PhD, finding a job, and tenure; writer's block. | Severe depression and anxiety (ongoing). | It slowed my career considerably, reduced my confidence, and made me wary of collaboration. | This individual was a senior member of a collaborative project between my home institution (home institution an Ivy League in the USA) and the harasser's institution in Italy. She had enormous power over me when we conducted field research and also when we returned to our home institutions and were analyzing data and preparing publications. To be clear: this person did not sexually harass me. I would call it bullying and harassment. | Female | |
168 | 12/2/2017 13:30:55 | Two separate professors told me they were in love with me in a single semester. One repeatedly told me He wanted to sleep with me. Suggested that my views on relationships/fidelity were prude. I was his TA at the time. I am married as were both professors. | Grad student | One was a full professor & taught the course I TA’d for; the other was a visiting scholar | Other R1 | Linguistics | Didn’t report it for concerns of consequences to career | None | Didn’t want to ask for a letter of recommendation from him even though he is one of the professors who is most familiar with the work I do. Consequently, I have to ask a professor who doesn’t know my work as well (and is less well known in the field). Not sure how much this has affected potential employers’ perceptions of me as a job candidate | Has caused a lot of stress and anxiety | I’ve lost a good deal of hope in society, men and academia | Male | |||
169 | 12/2/2017 13:31:41 | Summer 2015 I was a graduate student and a trench supervisor on an archaeological site and he was the director of the field school students; it was his first year working with our (established) team. He was given the (honorary) title of co-supervisor in my trench, despite contributing nothing to the actual supervisory duties. It began casually enough, with comments about the kinds of women he finds attractive (followed by a string of adjectives that more or less describe me), questions about my dating history, and comments that men must show interest in me often. It developed into specific comments (So-and-So must have hit on you when you were working at X (other) site) and suggestions about exercises I could perform in order to, for example, improve my bust (his word, not mine). All of the comments came when no one else was within hearing distance. He would make "jokes" about being heartbroken and suicidal that I wouldn't follow him home and would hold my writing implements hostage so I would have to talk to him in order to get them back (I avoided him otherwise). He carved my name onto an ancient artifact (HIGHLY inappropriate, regardless of what you carve on there). I spoke with the site director about my discomfort and he spoke with the Offender, but things escalated. He kept asking me for drinks after dinner and, during a social event, pressed his body against mine and only backed off when a (male) colleague entered the scene. Finally I addressed the issue with the Offender myself, at which point he told me that I only said I was uncomfortable because I felt threatened in my authority in MY trench I asked for clarification on this comment three times, to be sure that I didn't misunderstand him. He said that, yes, he did not believe I was actually uncomfortable with his behavior and comments, only that I felt like he was "taking over" in my trench. He assured me repeatedly that he would "let" me retain authority, I could calm down. I was furious and cried on site, but he remained working on site, in my trench, for the remainder of the season. | Graduate Student, Trench Supervisor (Archaeological Excavation) | Field School Director (he was in charge of undergraduate students working on the excavation and was also given an honorary co-supervisor title, working alongside me in my trench) | Other R1 | Archaeology | None | None | None, really? | I avoided an entire area of my trench in order to avoid talking to this man, which meant that I lost a great deal of information about what he was doing. I did not attend social events without a (male) friend to run interference. I cried on site more than once. I continue to think about the six-week period of harassment, two years later. It has affected my relationship with my site directors and advisors. | Male | ||||
170 | 12/2/2017 13:34:37 | A senior member of my department insisted on kissing both of my cheeks and hugging me practically every day. Sometimes the kisses were far too tender (note: he is not European and these were not quick “kiss-kiss”es). Sometimes he would slowly move from cheek to cheek, just an inch or so away from my face and lips. The hugs often were just a tad too long, too tight, too full bodied. When his partner (another senior member of the department) invited me to their home for lunch, I was surprised to find him there. He sat across from me, chin in hands, going on and on about how I “looked just like his cousin.” So many other examples that I cannot even remember. | Assistant Professor | Full professor in an endowed chair | Other R1 | History | I spoke with colleagues who urged me to speak with our department chair who sent me to HR. The person tasked with addressing sexual harassment dismissed everything I said bc a) I am married but do not wear a wedding ring, and b) he is partnered but not legally married. She said I should tell him to stop hugging me and move on. I did. He pouted. Like, actually pouted. And then forever made pouty comments about not being able to hug me from then on. | None known. | Ultimately positive, as I looked for a position elsewhere and moved to a better department and campus. | I still feel nauseous remembering this. He and his partner are senior in my field. I fear naming them or the institution due to mutual professional acquaintances who might gaslight me or hold it against me. | I could not bring myself to name the institution for fear that it would reveal our identities. I do not trust our mutual colleagues, including my feminist mentors and allies, to stick up for me. | Male | |||
171 | 12/2/2017 13:38:39 | Male faculty member had been clearly recruiting and grooming women from overseas for graduate study with him as their advisor (he never recruited a man, oddly enough). He attempted to control all aspects of their research then would make unwanted sexual advances (groping, rubbing against the student, pressing them up against a wall, holding their hand in a public place, etc.). Most of the young women were from cultures where such contact with a man would have been shaming, and so they were reluctant to report and none would charge him in court. With one woman who had left and pursued a PhD at another university, he contacted archivists, historians, and other scholars with whom she needed to work for her dissertation, effectively then controlling (and threatening to cut off) her access to them for her research. | Assistant Professor of Practice (educator faculty--3-year renewable) | Tenure-track Director of upper-level graduate program (effectively one of three directors and a "boss"). | Other R1 | Architecture | Forced him out of the university, but only after a second reported offense. It came out later that there had (of course) been other students, too, who had not initially come forward. But he quickly bounced back and was tenured at another private university. | None. He searched for another post, and faculty must have written him a good letter of recommendation as he not only was hired but given tenure on hire. It is unclear who in the department knew why he was let go. | None. Although the Dean is now a bit wary, as I have approached him several times that he has to contact the new institution where the faculty member works and tell them that he is a serial predator. | Stressful, infuriating, was required to pick up the pieces and teach these women (who he was still contacting despite being told not to and those who he had attacked were devastated). We have also lost the chance of having one of our best young women faculty come back and teach as she refuses to be back here because of his attempts to manipulate her research and his sexual advances. | Have become more direct and focused to upper administration regarding the impact of the incidents. Although he did not ever approach me directly, he still tries to contact me through Linkdin, email, etc. He must assume I know nothing of the women that he groped, assaulted, and manipulated. | Male | |||
172 | 12/2/2017 13:39:44 | Students were sexually harassed. | Professor | Professor | R2 | Criminology | Reported to HR by multiple reporters. HR did nothing of which I am aware. Behavior did not stop. | None known to me. | Offered fewer teaching options/ students “punished” for working with me/ initially advised by chair that I could be sued for reporting this/ my Disillusionment led to my departure | Stress and anxiety | Changed institutions and left the academy. | I like unions but the union largely protects alleged perpetrators. | Male | ||
173 | 12/2/2017 13:41:09 | Why are some answers displayed and some aren't? My institutional type, field/discipline, and institutional response answers were displayed but none of my other responses are displayed. Many responses seem to be listed as "Other". | |||||||||||||
174 | 12/2/2017 13:47:05 | A professor in my department (now at a different institution) refused to call me anything but sweetheart for 2 years. He would comment on my pink accessories escalating until he snapped my light pink bra strap. | Pre-comprehensives phd student | Tenured profesor | Other R1 | STEM | Anxiety about class, the perception among my colleagues that I’m a joke | Anxiety | Male | ||||||
175 | 12/2/2017 13:47:07 | At an alumni conference hosted by the current grad students, I was an invited participant. One of my former classmates (someone I thought was a trusted friend), made inspppropriate comments towards me (ie “Hey, sexy!” as I approached a group of all male alums and grad students). At the hotel, I encountered him at the elevator and had to sort of dance my way out of his grasp. Throughout the weekend I overheard him and other male alums making crude remarks about their female colleagues at their current institutions as well as the female grad students. The female grad students shared all sorts of accounts of how these male alums had mistreated them at the conference. | Assistant Professor | Former grad school classmates | Other R1 | Ohio university | Historyv | A female faculty member heard about it and took a full statement from me. I’ve been told that the department discussed it. | None known | None, except I provided a lot of support to the female grad students. | I no longer feel safe or welcome among my grad cohort. I don’t know if this is real or imagined. | After speaking with a colleague after returning home, I decided to confront this man. He apologized. His wife apologized. He claims it was all meant in good fun. I’m exhausted from being told repeatedly by him and others that I am imagining things or making something out of nothing. It definitely makes me wary about engaging with male colleagues. | Male | ||
176 | 12/2/2017 13:48:49 | I was an undergrad at a community college and I had a meeting with my English professor to talk about a paper. After giving me feedback, once comment including I should use more of my own voice, he "playfully" said to get out of here before he would have to spank me, as he held the paper up over his head about to perform the action. I nervously laughed and left. I was 19. | student | professor | Other R1 | San Antonio College | English | I didn't report it. | none | I never went back to ask him for feedback. | I didn't think about it until #metoo | be weary of male professors. and always know how to quickly get out of a one on one meeting | Male | ||
177 | 12/2/2017 13:55:06 | I was taking a French class and I was totally lost so I would always ask my professor for help. We would joke about pronunciations and grammar I would get wrong, but nothing ever outside the topic of French. After a few times talking to him, I guess he felt comfortable enough to tell me how another female student had reported him for sexual harassment. I listened but thought nothing of it, other than him just venting. Later, I was the last one to finish taking a test and I would always chew gum and blow bubbles when I would take tests; he told me he liked how I "did that thing" with the gum and it made my mouth look good, and how if I kept doing it, I would have no trouble from other male professors giving me good grades. I laughed nervously and left, never asking him for help again. | student | professor | Other R1 | San Antonio College | English | none (wasn't reported) | none | didn't chew gum in class anymore. | didn't think about it until #metoo | Male | |||
178 | 12/2/2017 13:57:13 | When I broke up with him, my ex-boyfriend, a fellow graduate student in my department, broke into my house, hacked my social media, stalked me, threatened me, was physically aggressive towards me, and slut-shamed me. He did virtually all of these things, repeatedly, at work (on campus) in the presence of our colleagues. Many of these people literally looked the other way or ignored his behavior. Some articulated wanting to "stay neutral." Some of the other men actively encouraged him. I was very very scared, and very much alone. He stole my ipad (full of family photos) and verbally assaulted me in the graduate student office used by all the graduate students in my department. The stalking and harassment went on for months. I was in my second year, studying in the US as a foreign student and he was an American citizen in his fourth year. Finally, the psychological toll (not to mention the toll this all took on my work) of being shunned by my only social network (my colleagues) was so severe, I agreed to reconcile with my ex and we dated for another year before he accepted a post-doc and I was able to get away from him. Yes, the harassment was severe and unacceptable, but it was the total non-support of my colleagues that has stayed with me. | PhD Student, and a non-citizen with no family network of support, and not enough money to stay in hotels when I was afraid he might try to get into my house again. I had to borrow money from my mother so I could change my locks. | More senior and better funded graduate student in the same department | Other R1 | UNC Chapel Hill | Communication | None | None | I did almost no work for an entire year and graduated a year late. At least I'm alive. | Lasting trauma, anxiety, cycles of shame and anger... | The academic industry is the worst I've ever worked in for the kind of pervasive "bro" culture that overlooks if not directly encourages rape culture (I've worked in the education sector, the non-profit sector, and the outdoor recreation industry). The attitude seems to be (if, like me) you're a cis gender, heterosexual femme woman who wants to compete for resources and funding with the "boys" in a milieu in which they have a right to be there and you have to prove your worth daily, you'd better be ready to handle *all* that entails. This attitude is *certainly* embodied by the hetero men in my department, but to a surprising extent by many women, also. During my 8 years of grad school in two different universities in two different countries, I've faced too many instances of sexual harassment by my male colleagues to count. I've fielded inappropriate comments, "compliments," and various kinds of non-consensual touches. However the instance I outline above stands apart as the most egregious example of a group of people coming together to condone a VERY obviously not ok pattern of sexual harassment. At the time I was just trying to survive. I now understand that what was happening to me was, in fact, a crime. And I had virtually no support. From anyone. Even though the behavior took place (repeatedly) on campus, in the office, in front of a lot of our colleagues. I now have a PhD and a stellar academic CV with many awards, grants, publications etc. Nevertheless, I will most likely return to the private sector where I feel my rights are at least somewhat protected. This is the first time I've had the opportunity to share my story. Thank you for asking. Thank you for caring. | Male | ||
179 | 12/2/2017 14:02:16 | After 2 years of a master's and 6+ years of a doctorate, I have *never* [yet] experienced sexual harassment in academia. I have always been treated respectfully by the straight men and queer women whom I've worked with. I am a white-ish Latina. I think it's important to represent both people who've had, and people who have not had, negative experiences if that's the reality, so I hope that you'll include my "story" in your statistics. | |||||||||||||
180 | 12/2/2017 14:02:41 | After I passed my exams and then my dissertation proposal defense, my PhD advisor asked me to his house for dinner. I thought that it would be a dinner with several people, but when I got there, he and I were the only guests. We had dinner, and then afterward, he went into a back room and came back out in his bathrobe. I quickly got up, let him know that this could never happen again and walked out the front door. In retrospect, I feel terrible that I didn't actually report this. It was more than twenty-five years ago, and I know he was doing similar things to other people, but I felt that I handled it on my own. I never received any retribution from him, and I was always a very strong person. But I also understand that many others were more vulnerable than I, and in at least one case, I know that he engaged in retribution toward a student with whom he slept. | Graduate student | PhD advisor | Other R1 | UCLA | Art History | None, because I did not report it | None, although he was disciplined for another incident involving a student with whom he slept, but he did not lose either pay or his position after that had been reported. | In the end, I don't think it did have any impact on my career. I kept my distance from him. He signed off on my dissertation and wrote letters for my job search. At one point a colleague warned me not to ask for letters from him any more, not because he said anything bad, but because the letters he did write for me were so sloppy and incomprehensible. | Initially, I was s creeped out. I went immediately over to my boyfriend's (now my husband) house after it happened, because I needed to talk about it with someone close to me. In the end, it just made me keep him at arm's length. I was luckily headed to a fellowship that took me to another country, so I did not have any contact with him at all for a year and a half after that, until I came back. By then he was embroiled in the aftermath of the sexual harassment suit I mentioned above. I had little contact with him other than responding to comments from him on my dissertation. | It did not derail me in any way. But it certainly made me militant about keeping a clear distance between me and my own graduate students. I have a strict code about it, and judge my colleagues pretty harshly if I feel that they have stepped over the line in any way. In one of the institutions where I taught, an assistant professor moved in with an undergraduate student. He had been let go after his third year review, and I did not find out about this relationship until after he had already gone. But after that, I became really wary for the female undergrads in that department, because there was a culture there of masculine privilege. I've been fortunate in that the next two jobs have been in departments that don't have any whiff of that kind of impropriety or exploitation. | Male | ||
181 | 12/2/2017 14:20:28 | Four male colleagues in eight years have engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior (relations with students, sexually harassing a female colleague); one was even granted tenure and promotion during the incident. | Colleague | Colleague | Other R1 | Old Dominion University | English | Three were ignored or flatly denied; one--the non-tenure track--was "let go" only after a signed complaint. The Chair even accused others of lying when she was notified of the behavior. | One was let go. One was promoted and tenured. Two faced no consequences at all. | I was punished for signing the contract with the loss of my administrative duties. I continue to be harassed with impossible schedules. | Devastating | I am hoping to leave academia; I cannot tolerate the hypocrisy. | Male | ||
182 | 12/2/2017 14:28:39 | Gaslighted by Department Chair | untenured faculty | My Chair | Other R1 | Old Dominion University | English | none. I was told I had to file a complaint within 6 months. However, the harasser was my supervisor and had control over my academic future. I was too beaten and broken to file a lawsuit. | None. In fact, she was promoted to Dean. | I've virtually given up. I was an award winning teacher and scholar, and had achieved the rank of tenured full professor at another institution. I am not arrogant; however, I was eager to participate fully in my department and institution. I was severely punished for that desire. I want to leave. I have no confidence. The dream I had lived for nearly 30 years has been crushed by a mean spirited narcissist. | I have panic attacks. I cannot attend faculty events. I've been told that I am too emotional. | I want to leave, desperately, but have no other choices. I am 60 and I am not able to find full time employment anywhere else. I am trapped in daily humiliation. | Female | ||
183 | 12/2/2017 14:31:54 | The departmental manager made frequent comments about my administrative coworker's appearance (university context). She ignored them. Sometimes when she would need something from him (like a signature), he would say "how badly do you want it?" or "what will you give me for it?" Finally, one day he "accidentally" felt her breast when she was trying to get his signature and he was being coy about it. She was humiliated and grossed out. He was in charge of her annual performance review and she felt helpless. She began looking for a lateral transfer and applying for anything in any other department. Finally she was hired in another department and when asked in the interview process to give the reason for leaving her current department she said she wanted to learn new things. Later, an HR person pressed her privately as to whether there was another reason. She confided about the harassment. Nothing came of it and she always regretted mentioning it because she felt it was a mark against her in terms of promotions (which she has never received, in 30 years of employment). The manager still works at the institution, received promotion after promotion (and has even been awarded numerous accolades), and, from what the women in the department report, is still up to all the same behaviours with female staff. | Her status was junior administrator. | His status was middle administrator (middle manager). he has since become senior administrator. | Other R1 | McGill University | She was in Student Life and Learning (athletics/student services/libraries) | H.R. person ignored claim (it happened in a private conversation and was not official) | none | She feels she was deemed a "complainer" for telling some colleagues about the harassment and regrets mentioning it. She feels it has led to her inability to get promotions. | As her coworker, the impact was tangibly obvious to me on a daily basis. Her self worth was low, she was paranoid and cynical, she did not feel loyal to the institution, had poor mental health, but was extremely loyal to students and felt that they were the only thing that mattered and she was there for them alone. | low self-confidence, fear of speaking up | Male | ||
184 | 12/2/2017 14:35:07 | When I was a graduate student, every year, students and professors from another university (same department) come to visit our institution to use our libraries and materials. We always host a dinner for them. One year, I sat next to a newly-hired associate professor from the other institution who had I only met briefly years before. As we chatted, I accidentally dropped my silverware on the floor. I leaned under the table to get it, and as I did, bumped his leg with my arm. I apologized. With a smile, he said "no, that's entirely unacceptable, I'll have to get back at you," and he then proceeded to pinch my buttocks. I was stunned, and so I did not say anything. When my adviser across the table saw me looking uncomfortable, he asked, "what are you all talking about?" The professor said "oh nothing, we're simply molesting each other." I simply turned red, and forced a laugh. My adviser looked confused, but then went back to his conversation. I moved my chair away from him, and quickly found a way to leave the table to socialize elsewhere. Because I almost never see him, and can avoid him when I do, I did not do anything about it. | Graduate student | Associate professor at another institution | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Modern Chinese history | N/A | N/A | None | The presidential election felt particularly traumatizing to me given that this happened. | I now know that if a position opens up at his institution (which it is likely to in the next couple of years) I will not apply. This is a shame; his institution is an excellent one. | Male | |||
185 | 12/2/2017 14:37:09 | I was the only woman in one of my courses. The professor was a man and made inappropriate comments about women all semester that were sexist. He made it clear I wasn’t as good as my fellow students because I was a women and that I wouldn’t succeed like they would. On multiple occasions he made comments about how women had reported him to Title 9 for sexual harassment and that he failed them. He also made comments about how he could say and do whatever he wanted because he was tenured. | Sophomore | My professor | Other R1 | Youngstown State University | Psychology | The chair said I could report it to Title 9. Multiple women had already reported him. Because the university had never previously done anything, I didn’t report it. | None. | I had to get a late withdrawal and now have a W on my transcript. I also had to pay for the class even though I had a late withdrawal and couldn’t get an actual grade. | I was anxious and extremely intimidated. I became depressed and was extremely upset. The thought of going to class made me sick and being in class gave me anxiety. | It made me question my major and career goals. | Male | ||
186 | 12/2/2017 14:40:36 | I was almost fired when an older, more senior, faculty member constantly harassed me and sat in my office every day to eat his lunch, despite my protests that I was busy and he needed to leave. I was given a reprimand for being a bad colleague. | Part-time lecturer | Senior lecturer | Regional Teaching College | CSU East Bay | English | Again, I was almost fired | None | I left soon afterwords, so minimal | I doubt anyone will believe me when report something inappropriate that is impeding my work. | Male | |||
187 | 12/2/2017 14:49:43 | Groomed for romantic relationship, gas-lit about what was going on, threatened to keep quiet. | Sophomore undergraduate | Tenured professor, academic adviser | Small Liberal Arts College | English | (I never told anyone.) | Had to continue working under him for senior thesis; completed all work by myself to avoid contact. | Depression/anxiety at highest point in my life, trust issues that took years to repair. | Male | |||||
188 | 12/2/2017 15:08:44 | In 1991 a professor hired me to be a research assistant on his book. I was an undergraduate student looking to go to graduate school. I went to Library of Congress with him and did research. I submitted my hours but he always called me on the telephone. He talked to me about imagining me naked often on the phone - often. He never was so forward when we were face-to-face but called and harassed me and consistently said inappropriate things. He offered to drive me to my apartment and he came into using the excuse that he had to use the restroom. He would not leave my apartment and finally my roommate came home and he left. As an undergraduate, I relied on him and others to write letters of reference for me so I could go to graduate school. I did not have a choice but to stay in touch with him which he used to his advantage. Later when his book came out, word came to me that he had been hiring under-graduate assistants and sexually harassing them for a long time. It's a shame no one in the department ever came foward. | Undergraduate student | Professor and employer | Other R1 | George Mason University | History | I never reported the incident. Too embarrassed and shy to talk about sex at that young age. | None | I had to apply to graduate school a second round (without him) and had success. He held letters over my head and never submitted. | Very uncomfortable situation leading to distrust, but not endangering my mental health in ways that prevented me from getting through day-to-day life. | I avoid 1:1 closed door meetings with men. | I'm okay, but I was naive and young and it was wrong. In my senior seminar one of the professors (who studied women's history) accused me of using his research to write my paper. I traveled two hours to a local historical society to get original research because I was a dedicated student. This comment, which came to me through another student, revealed that other faculty suspected him for inappropriate behavior (whether or not it was sexual in nature) and did nothing about it. It was unprofessional that this professor talked to another student about me too. If they suspected something was wrong, I wish someone would have sough to help rather than gossip about it. | Male | |
189 | 12/2/2017 15:23:21 | I was propositioned by my graduate advisor than harassed repeatedly by him when I turned him down, including threats to my career. He also accused me of being a narcissist who couldn't feel feelings because I did not reciprocate his love and/or accept his apology. The department basically did nothing. | graduate student | PhD advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Near Eastern Studies | The Title IX office urged me not to pursue action; eventually a confidential letter was placed in the harasser's file. Nothing happened basically. I was encouraged to meet with a social worker who urged me to consider dropping out. | basically none. A confidential letter was placed in the harasser's file. He was barred from chairing Near Eastern Studies... and then became chair of Jewish Studies a semester later. | Fortunately, I managed to get a new advisor and then a tenure track job. | it was rough for a while. | I am very angry. | Male | ||
190 | 12/2/2017 15:38:23 | pulled aside or in closed office to be told lewd jokes, sent lewd jokes via email | post doc, assistant professor | associate professor | Other R1 | Communication Sciences and Disorders | none | none | unsure; strained relationship when reported to the dept head, who was friends with the harasser | negative overall, but a bit unsure of magnitude; strained/awkward contacts, avoided spending time in certain spaces or events if near harasser | unsure; could have contributed to dept head not going to bat for me (or even showing up) in T&P committee for mid-pro, but maybe not; contributed to my decision to leave | Male | |||
191 | 12/2/2017 15:44:40 | In my first semester of college I had spent some time over the semester chatting with my English professor, who I liked and admired. Immediately following the final exam for the course, he asked me to follow him to his office to discuss my final paper. I mentioned I was enrolled in his course in the summer (beginning in a few weeks). He made a couple brief comments about my paper and then asked if I wanted to go to a film screening the next week. I mentioned that the date was my birthday, and he said, "oh, then I'll have to wear a candle, ah, somewhere." I was flattered by the invitation and thought it was going to be a group of his favorite students or something. Later, my mom explained that it was clearly a date, which made me feel queasy. I was 18, just starting college, and he was 42, with an MFA and tenure. I made an excuse to get out of the date, and didn't make myself available for another invitation, despite eventually taking two more of his classes. Later I volunteered for a program at the college and encountered him a number of times. Once he walked up behind me and massaged/caressed the flesh on back of my arm in order to get my attention before asking a question. Another time I had to call him on the phone in a mini-emergency and he commented that "he had always wanted to wake up naked to the sound of my voice." The worst part is that I didn't really recognize anything overtly wrong with this until recently, other that the obvious fact that he is personally a bit of a sleazeball. | Regional Teaching College | Male | |||||||||||
192 | 12/2/2017 15:46:56 | lewd/sexual comments about young female students | postdoc, assistant professor | associate professor | Other R1 | Communication Sciences and Disorders | did not report | none | unsure - led to avoidance of individual(s) | unsure - uncomfortable, angry | unsure | Male | |||
193 | 12/2/2017 15:47:06 | male colleague stared at my legs, complimented my tights, and said it was too bad I was married. same individual later, on hearing me state on a Monday that I was tired said in a lewd tone, I guess we know why. other individual kissed, hugged, and handled me, later asked me to coffee to tell me I was the only one who really understood him, his wife was an evil bitch, and we should go out for dinner some time. other international colleague kissed me on the mouth while walking home at a conference in front of numerous other colleagues in our field and had previously sat with his hand on my knee in front of others. yet other appointed me as his conference 'date' and trailed me around insinuating himself into my attention despite his being married. three other colleagues tried to start relationships/affairs with me after meeting me at a conference. | grad student through assistant professor | peers or more senior, some much more senior | Other Type of School | state institution in Germany, international conferences in UK and US | religious studies | my head of department ignored the 'you're the only one who understands' incident and in response to the tights and the tired Monday incident told me when I pointed out that I could file a complaint for sexual harassment 'you should be careful about raising that kind of issue'. I was up for review soon afterwards. | zero | I now hate and mistrust men but I also work like a motherfucker and my career is probably stronger than it would have been if I hadn't found out what is up. | Definitely not good. I felt unsafe at work for a long period of time. I still feel betrayed and abandoned by men as a class and am much more leary of male friends than I ever was before. | I do everything I can for other women and with other women, I hire women and teach women how to best get grant money, I raise my son as a hard-core feminist, I teach my students to be feminists, and I write like a motherfucker. | Male | ||
194 | 12/2/2017 15:47:54 | My Dean made inappropriate comments to me, including discussing his penis size. | assistant professor | dean of my faculty. I saw him every single week at least once. | Small Liberal Arts College | religious studies | I didn't report it because I relied on him to give my wife teaching and he was incredibly vindictive. | None. He has a better job now than he did then. | None, besides annoyance and feeling uncomfortable. | A heavy sense of being skeeved out. | None really. I tried to leave the school for different reasons. I was offered another job a couple of years ago finally, but he was already gone. | This dean made inappropriate comments to many people but no one ever leveled a formal complaint because it was easier not to. | Male | ||
195 | 12/2/2017 15:48:14 | lewd comments about young male student athletes volunteering in lab | assistant professor | associate professor | Other R1 | Communication Sciences and Disorders | none | none | don't know - avoid the colleague as much as possible | Female | |||||
196 | 12/2/2017 15:50:54 | inappropriate and uninvited touching to neck, side, wait; kiss to head, etc. | post doc, assistant prof | associate prof | Other R1 | Communication Sciences and Disorders | none | none | unsure; reported to dept head, which led to strained relationship b/c friends w harasser | unsure - led to avoidance of people, situations, dept, etc. | unsure - led to avoidance, see above; reduces confidence, undermines belief in self, etc. | Male | |||
197 | 12/2/2017 15:53:50 | I am a Ph.D. student. Another Ph.D. candidate would come into my office during office hours and talk about sex. I would lie and tell him that I have an appointment with a student soon to get him out of my office. One day, when it was time to go home, he stood in the doorway of my office and blocked the doorway. He kept staring at my chest. I realized that no one was in the hallway and got frightened. He invited me to a party at his house and to my relief left. Later I learned that I was the only grad student invited to that party. Of course I didn't go. I also heard that he was asking other grad students for my address - no one would give it to him though because I was not the only female graduate student that he harassed. Everyone knew that he was trouble for female grad students. Eventually someone turned him in and the school was looking in to the situation. He was not hired as an adjunct instructor after graduation and was told to leave the university. I was very bothered because he had talked about his female students in a sexual way. I should have reported him but was afraid of what this would do for me. In the university, it's common knowledge that reporting these incidents never go well for women. | Ph.D. student (before ABD) | ABD Ph.D. candidate in the same program | R2 | English | Didn't hear if anything happened. The harasser still graduated so you have a guy who is probably a sex addict running around with a Ph.D. possibly teaching undergrads somewhere. | Some grad students become adjuncts at the university after graduation. He had to leave the university after graduation. | I have to leave the office door open for office hours but am wary of doing so. I realized the office is not a safe place and it's very easy to get trapped in there. | I am frightened of being in the building during hours where there are not a lot of people around. | I will still become a professor. The truth is, as a woman in America it doesn't matter what profession I choose. Sexual harassment problems are not something you can get away from by switching careers. It's everywhere and something I have to learn how to deal with. | Male | |||
198 | 12/2/2017 15:58:55 | ||||||||||||||
199 | 12/2/2017 16:00:48 | Senior professor in the department hosted a party for grad students at his house. At the end of the night, my friend was the last to leave and intoxicated. The professor threw himself at my friend, promised to be his sugar daddy, and made exoticizing, racially based comments regarding his appearance. This was during the time in which faculty were assessing our (MA student) applications to continue in the PhD program, allot funding, etc. My friend eventually pushed him off and escaped to his car to sober up. | 2nd year MA student applying for continuation in PhD program | Senior (endowed) professor in the department; on admissions committee | Other R1 | Art History | There is supposedly "a file" on the incident somewhere, but it was never made public within the department. | He is no longer allowed to host parties. The following school year, 2 junior faculty moved to replace him after thirty years teaching our department's "Methods" course, which had given him significant sway over MA students' careers in the department, as he was the only faculty member who had taught all of us. I don't know if the incident with my friend precipitated this. | My friend notified several professors and lodged a complaint with the equity office, but ended up leaving the program for another school (had to repeat some coursework). | In part because of lingering trauma from this incident, it took him longer to complete his MA thesis than anticipated, leading to friction with his advisor and our graduate advisor. | Male | ||||
200 | 12/2/2017 16:16:22 | Approached by a very senior academic at the faculty Christmas party. "You are the most beautiful woman here, but why are you wearing that fucking ugly dress". Proceeded to tell me about his sexual problems with his wife. Told me that if I wanted to be sure to pass my PhD I should just "fuck him" (gestures to my another senior academic). | PhD Student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Copenhagen | Law | Related the incident to senior staff, including PhD supervisor and advised me not to take action as it would "only reflect badly on me and he won't care anyway". | None | As it happened in the final stages of my PhD I had an incredibly hard time dealing with the aftermath. Ended up leaving the institution and finding a postdoc at another faculty | contributed to a low-grade depression | Ended up leaving the institution and finding a postdoc at another faculty | Male | ||
201 | 12/2/2017 16:22:03 | At a small dinner party that took place at a graduate student house (where this tenured professor was living for the summer), the tenured professor and I (a graduate student) got into a discussion about Gramsci. I told the professor I thought he was wrong; he called me a "fucking skank" twice. After the second time I told him not to say it again or I would throw a glass of wine in his face. He called me a "fucking skank" again. I threw the wine in his face. I was asked to leave the party. He remained with the other guests (all men). This was the summer of 2011. This professor has also raped a woman who was an undergraduate at our institution. | Graduate student | Tenured professor | Other R1 | Music | I filed a complaint many years later. | Apparently the professor was summoned to a meeting to discuss his behavior. He still has tenure. | [Removed] | I am FURIOUS that this dipshit still works at my alma mater. And I've lost some male friends over this, because they didn't want to acknowledge that this man is a predator; after all, he's helped them in their careers. (My own story with him is mild. But he is a *rapist.*) These no-longer-friends have gone on to jobs at R1s: It pays to be a part of the boys' club. They are no longer my allies because they've chosen to be his. And thus the cycle perpetuates itself. | I'm more determined than ever to succeed. | Male | |||
202 | 12/2/2017 16:32:14 | Touching repeatedly, hugs, constant comments on my appearance, constant comments about how much he cared about me. Early 2000s. | Undergrad | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Humanities | Didn't report. | None, but I did call him out. | I'd like to say none, but he ruined my undergrad days. | I fell for him and it wrecked my undergrad days. | Male | ||||
203 | 12/2/2017 16:32:23 | A friend would get drunk and send texts that I should go home with him, on a regular basis. I had slept with him once, and decided that I didn't want to again, and told him to stop. He only stopped when I got a boyfriend. This harasser went on to groom one of his undergraduate students. She said that he inspired her to join the grad program and, when she did, at first he sent her explicit and flirtatious messages, then told her that he wasn't interested in her. | Graduate Student; my friend was an undergrad, then grad | Peer graduate student, same class; but my friend was his student, and became a junior grad student | Other R1 | University of Texas at Austin | Classics | I never reported what happened, and neither did the younger student. | I never reported it, and the younger student didn't either | Not a direct result, but my harasser took my first dissertation topic. Also, my friend had entered the department partly because of him, and she's still here, not particularly happy with it. | I thought this harasser person was my closest friend for many years, but he was actually very controlling. Would speak to me intimately and spend a lot of time with me, then blow me off when his girlfriend was around. Also, would say upsetting things to me, and get angry if I repeated them; was constantly correcting me. My then-boyfriend noticed it and was very critical, but I just didn't see the controlling behavior for what it was. As for my friend, she admits that she's still a little in love with him, even though she knows he led her on. | I lost 6 months on the dissertation topic because of my harasser. My friend is stuck in the program, and will most likely have a job afterwards, but I'm not sure that this is what she wants to do. | Male | ||
204 | 12/2/2017 16:32:54 | A TA had me switched into his section because he thought I was "foxy." He treated me differently than the other students all semester. Everyone assumed we were sleeping together and that was why I was doing well in the class. | Undergraduate | Graduate student instructor (of the class that I was taking) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | I honestly didn't realize how messed up this was until much later. Now I'm angry at myself for not recognizing how inappropriate this was. | Male | ||||||||
205 | 12/2/2017 16:35:07 | After returning to campus from a Board Meeting for a reform model run by the university our of my department, the Dean Emeritus and I were in a kitchenette - he preparing coffee and I grabbing milk for my own beverage. We starting talking about the meeting and he described it as being a "circle jerk." I had to stand there listening to him continue to share his thoughts about the board and our meeting because I was in my first year on the faculty and he held a lot of power not only in the university, but within the field more broadly across the nation. A few days later, I was with two other junior faculty - both women, both of whom had previously warned me that the dean tended to stare at chests and make inappropriate remarks to women. I shared what had happened and one of the colleagues asked me why I felt uncomfortable - she clarified that she didn't know what a circle jerk was. When I told her it was something that happens in some porn (rather than actually describing the act), she immediately asked why I even knew what it was. | I was in my first year on the faculty | He was Dean Emeritus of my college within the university, had been dean until the year before I was hired (the year prior to the incident) | Other R1 | Education Policy | While I have never made a formal report of the incident, I have shared it with the then-Department Chair (a man and frequent collaborator of mine) and several colleagues within the university. There has never been any institutional response. | None. | I avoid being alone with the harasser, which has been largely possible to do. | This wasn't the first inappropriate remark I've had leveled at me and it certainly wasn't the last. The impact has been a contribution to the general mistrust of men in positions of power. | Male | ||||
206 | 12/2/2017 16:36:54 | I was stalked and harassed by a faculty member throughout my entire last semester as an undergrad in 2011 as I was preparing to enroll in grad school and pursue an academic career. He figured out what bars I went to, when/where my classes were, what activities I was involved in, and where I lived off campus and followed me around. He would leer at me and brush against me "accidentally" and say inappropriate things to me me, but only when no one else was around (so I just stopped going out of the house alone). He would also send me emails complimenting my work and trying to engage me in conversation/figure out ways to get me alone but never said anything explicitly inappropriate there. | Undergrad | Professor. I never took a class with him but did take classes with his spouse who was a faculty member in my major program. | Small Liberal Arts College | English/Gender Studies | I came forward after I graduated but as he left no firm evidence of any policy violation (and the institution did not really care if a faculty member pursued students they did not supervise/grade the work of), they did nothing. I know I am not the only woman he pursued or the only woman who came forward. | He got promoted to full professor shortly after I came forward. | I went to work on my MA and later my PhD. This incident, combined with later, less serious experiences of harassment in both my grad programs, has really degraded my faith in the quality of my work and has made it basically impossible to trust the straight men I work with. | I have anxiety and PTSD -- the anxiety predates this but obviously being stalked doesn't help the feeling of being on edge at all times. I spend a pretty significant chunk of my grad student salary on therapy co-pays. The past two months of news have amplified my distress pretty significantly. | I am in my final year of my PhD program and a month out from finishing my dissertation. Though I have applied for tenure track jobs, I don't actually think I have it in me to stay in academia even if I am offered a job. It's just too draining on a personal level, and I don't think it's worth it for an industry that seems like a bubble about to burst. It's also made dating (and making new platonic friends) hard due to pretty serious trust issues. | The other two incidents I experienced as a grad student are the following: 1) In the first semester of my MA program at a large public R1, I turned a male second year student down for a date and he threatened to "ruin my career." He did this to several other women, the grad director knew and did noting because "he's about to graduate." 2. During my PhD coursework at a different large public R1, a male professor asked me to come to office hours to discuss my seminar paper. He spent the whole meeting trying to figure out where I lived and if I had a boyfriend; at one point he asked me about my Catholic high school experience and if the uniforms were "sexy." I stopped attending the class but turned in the seminar paper. He gave me an A+ in the course. The feedback on my paper was that he hadn't actually read it but would love to discuss it over drinks sometime. I did not report this incident but later found out I wasn't alone and that he'd never been sanctioned for this behavior. | Male | ||
207 | 12/2/2017 16:43:19 | Involuntary Inappropriate touching in Public place | Graduate Student | Administrator/Lecturer | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Notre Dame | History | None. | None. | None I am aware of. | Not good: humiliation; embarrassment; rage. | Unknown. | Male | ||
208 | 12/2/2017 16:43:50 | During the first semester of my MA program, a second year MA student asked me to go on a date. I turned him down, and he threatened to ruin my career. He didn't succeed but it created an uncomfortable environment for the year we overlapped in the program. | Graduate Student | Graduate Student | Other R1 | Washington State University | English | He did this to almost every woman in the program, no one really seemed to care. | He failed out of his PhD program so *shrug emoji* | Male | |||||
209 | 12/2/2017 16:43:54 | A member of my dissertation committee, while giving me advice on how to conduct oral histories, commented that I probably had an easier time getting people to talk since I was an attractive young woman. I didn't know how to respond. He is still an important person on my committee, and despite his difficult, occasionally bullying personality, I feel I have to keep working with him. | PhD candidate | Advisor/dissertation committee member | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | None | None | I am more careful around him | Male | |||||
210 | 12/2/2017 16:46:20 | In the fall 2014 semester, my TA for my general chemistry lab was...a little handsy. Benign high fives became lingering shoulder pats to resting his hand on the small of my back or on my thigh. I never said anything in protest, even though he was making me incredibly uncomfortable, because he had a hot temper but was helping me a lot in the class. | Undergraduate - first semester freshman | Graduate student teaching assistant | Other Type of School | Southern Illinois University | Zoology | I've always been slightly uncomfortable around men, but this intensified that. | Male | ||||||
211 | 12/2/2017 16:47:25 | During the visit of the prospective graduate students, one of male prospectives, who was not a native English speaker, made lewd comments over drinks in his language about one of our current female graduate students to one of our current male graduate students. However, the current male student reported it to the faculty, and the faculty acted appropriately. | pre-ABD graduate student | prospective graduate student | Other R1 | Classics | The harasser had initially been at the top of the list of students to admit to the department. Upon hearing from the current male student that prospective's remarks about the current female student, however, the department determined not to admit him. | No idea, but he is not a student in our department. He sent an angry email to both the male student who reported him and to another friend of mine, a junior professor from the same country; both emails were forwarded to a senior male faculty member who rebuffed him and told him that his application would be unwelcome in the future. | My friend is fine because her safety was respected. | So far that I know, fine, at least with regard to this incident, because the department chose to respect her safety. | None from this, because her safety was respected. | For once, this is a happy story. I'm not supposed to know it, but I am very proud of my department for putting the safety of a student first, once it was clear that this prospective student was a threat. | Male | ||
212 | 12/2/2017 16:48:11 | As a first year graduate student, an older graduate student in various positions of power sent me several pictures of his genitalia. | 1st year PhD | Advanced graduate student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | None. I did not report. | None. I did not report. | Felt uncomfortable going to academic events organized by perpetrator. | Anxiety over professional event. | Luckily he got a job the following year so he left. I’ve been able to enter these spaces now. | Male | |||
213 | 12/2/2017 16:49:25 | The professor for a doctoral seminar I took asked me to meet in his office hours to discuss my seminar paper. The subject quickly turned to his divorce, what neighborhood I lived in, whether I was single, if I went to a Catholic high school that had "sexy" uniforms, etc. I was totally uncomfortable and did not attend the rest of the semester but did turn in my seminar paper. He gave me an A+ but the comments on the paper were that he hadn't actually read it but wanted to discuss it over drinks sometime. I just ignored it and hoped he wouldn't bother me again or change my grade in retaliation. | PhD Student | Professor | Other R1 | Arizona State University | English | Combined with other incidents, it definitely made me question the quality of my work and doubt whether I'd ever be taken seriously as an academic or just treated like a sex object. | Male | ||||||
214 | 12/2/2017 16:50:26 | Mine happened at an academic conference. I was a grad student hoping to network, I met a colleague of a friend, a recent graduate who had landed a tenure-track job. We chatted, he introduced me to people higher up in my field (funny enough, people I hadn't approached before because I was warned they were sexual predators thus to be careful). All happening at the bar, where people mingle at conferences. I feel safe with this person as a buffer and I assume things won't get weird since we both mentioned our significant others.Things did get weird. At the end of the evening when going to the elevators, after what I thought was a fun platonic evening of chatting with colleagues, he aggressively starts making out with me. I try to disengage but it will take me about 10-15 minutes for me to convince him to go to his room. I woke up confused and with bruises. When the next day I told him he had misunderstood my intent, he got angry and said "well it sounds like you're saying I assaulted you, but you were drunk (I had drank moderately) and were flirting all night (I wasn't)." I'm ashamed to say I believed him rather than face the fact my one successful networking achievement had actually assaulted me. The "flirting" continued periodically for a few years at various conferences, continuing to confuse me. | PhD student | Tenure-track professor working in my field and area of expertise | Other Research Agency | Yearly conference for our discipline | Anthropology/archaeology | I never said anything, I even assumed I was to blame for years after | None. He rose up. There are also rumors floating about him with undergrads now. He went from a teaching college to a R1 institution. | He was a "cool kid," you're either in his circle or you're not. | Huge. He made me believe that I had cheated willingly on my boyfriend. There has been a ton of guilt and shame dragged around. | Led to the breakup of a long-term relationship. | Conferences were not an option of venue, but that's a minefield. Also, fieldwork is one of the main places in my discipline where assault is possible. Archaeology is a group effort, and groups in remote places with hierarchies blurring while all sharing in the discomfort of the field is the perfect setting for sexual predators. I heard so many stories that happened there in my discipline. | Male | |
215 | 12/2/2017 17:00:05 | Inappropriate touching, not sexual, but unwanted touching during a chemistry lab while I had my hands in a fumehood holding something I couldn't let go of so I couldn't shrug him off. About a year later the same professor pulled me outside of a classroom coercing me to leave my lab research group and join his. When I refused he threatened my standing in my lab and future in science (he has a lot of pull in our community), telling me I would regret my decision. I specifically never went to his office hours and never found myself in the building alone when I knew he was there because he had been known to ask female students for blow jobs in his office and touch female students inappropriately. | Undergraduate student (sophomore and Junior) | Professor, during my junior year he was head of the department | Other Type of School | Chemistry | None. I was told by several people he was untouchable in our department. | I never felt safe in the chemistry floors of my building after my sophomore year, and chose not to continue research after my junior year due to his threats. | Impacted my well being by impacting my sense of safety | I chose a different research path which completely changed my career trajectory. I am now in medical school, but at the time thought I wanted to go into chemistry and math teaching | Male | ||||
216 | 12/2/2017 17:02:12 | ||||||||||||||
217 | 12/2/2017 17:03:17 | 2007: PI had a vasectomy, scratched himself unapologetically during our meeting; same PI had a 1 on 1 lecture with me and layed on the table in front of me as he spoke; same PI would answer his phone in the bathroom and not allow me to end the conversation; same PI hired only women, specifically blond undergraduates to work in the lab, despite their lack of abilities 2014: PI asked me if another faculty was menstruating and if that was the reason she was "crazy"; told me I could not work on a project because I was child-bearing age (it involved hazardous chemicals); said that I could handle the kind of talk like guys talk at "the camp"; said that my marriage wouldn't make a long distance career move | Graduate student | Assistant/Associate Prof | R2 | Northern Colorado | Biology | none; not reported | none | Failed the MS program | Depression, anxiety | seriously doubted my abilities, took a much longer route than most to finally achieve my PhD and now tt position | Male | ||
218 | 12/2/2017 17:03:46 | I was the 2nd female professor in my department to get bullied and intimidated by the same male--for me it lasted 8 years, until I quit. Although not sexual in nature, I have no doubts this occurred because we were women. Case is point, this person once told me a female student could not have PTSD because of rape: "It's not war," he said. This male professor clearly has a problem with women. | Tenure track, then tenured | Department Head, then not | Small Liberal Arts College | English | I ended up only voicing my opinion to a tenure board, as this ass wrote an awful and completely bogus letter about me. The result was he was prevented from ever being department head, and I may have been the only one in my department who knew that. The crap continued, though. I wanted to complain further, but chose not to. Once I put in my resignation, a female colleague told me he did the same thing to her years before I was hired, there was a major internal investigation, and she said the experience was the source of all the disfunction and toxicity in the department. She apologized for not stepping up on my behalf. | I quit my job because the environment was so toxic to me and others. | I am in a new career. | Male | |||||
219 | 12/2/2017 17:05:13 | There's a retired English professor at my church. He's in choir with me. Wanted to talk to me a lot because he heard I was a PhD student. Asked me to go with him to the symphony. I initially assented, but something didn't feel right, so I canceled. Later, upon hearing that it was my birthday, he blocked my way out of the choir loft, so that he could hug me for far too long, and make a very strange comment about my age. I joked about it on facebook. My priest saw and told me that I should report it to her; she said that he had been kicked out of a church across town for similarly inappropriate behavior. After I spoke with her, he didn't grab me, but he would do things like block my way out of the choir loft when we went down for communion. | ABD graduate student | Emeritus, not my department; he had no direct power over me, but I had to deal with him in a place that I thought was safe, and I have no doubt that this is a kind of behavior that he probably got away with when he was a professor at the university. | Other R1 | University of Texas at Austin | English (but mine was not) | My priest asked me to report it to her. She then told the choir director to talk to him. | He was told to stay away from me, so he just started hugging the other soprano in her early 30s. | None, except that this was supposed to be a safe place for me to unwind. I was upset that the priest had asked me to talk to her about it, because I felt like I would rather have dealt with it myself, given that my options were having him warned off by someone else as opposed to being told off by me. | Felt angry and upset that a safe place didn't feel safe. | Spent a lot of energy avoiding this professor in choir. | While this is not strictly within my department, I wanted to mention this in case it corroborated evidence from earlier graduate students from this man's department. | Male | |
220 | 12/2/2017 18:04:26 | I was at an international conference and a famous scholar from an Ivy League seminary greeted me and a (Catholic priest) colleague one morning at the conference with the words, "I see you together at night, I see you together in the morning. People are going to talk." The same famous Ivy League seminary professor used my body to demonstrate his impressive brilliance: he wanted to show a group of us the parallels between two stained-glass windows, so he grabbed my upper arms, turned me bodily against his arm to point me toward one window, then turned me bodily toward his other arm to see the other window. | I was a tenured associate professor and a published author in our shared field. | Senior colleague in a named chair, in my field but not at my institution. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | The senior colleague was from Princeton Theological Seminary | Biblical studies/ancient Judaism | Did not report to the conference director; no action taken. | None whatsoever, beyond confirming the nasty rumors. | None, thank goodness. | Made me angry and frustrated but also cemented my commitment to protecting vulnerable people in the workplace. | Thankfully, none. | Male | ||
221 | 12/2/2017 18:14:42 | After a campus event, we were all standing around and I was looked up and down and asked if I was "wearing a bra" (diffusing giggle) -- it completely caught me off guard. | graduate student | full professor | Other R1 | anthro | not reported | None, although I did fire back with "are YOU wearing a bra?" and "that's pretty inappropriate, you know" (sarcastic giggle) to which he replied something like "ooooh, feminism" to which I replied something like "yeah, down with the patriarchy" -- it was very meta. | None really, but I did consciously avoid him on campus at at subsequent events. | Feeling that a mentor relationship was not possible with this person, because he was toxic and clueless. I was wary of trusting other senior male faculty and being alone with them from then on. | None -- fuck that guy. Now I know how to deal with this sort of stuff since it can be hard to understand what is happening in the moment. I take much less shit these days. | Male | |||
222 | 12/2/2017 18:23:29 | Multiple incidents of professors evaluating female (but not male) professors in class evaluations based on their personality, their level of illness, their period (or lack thereof), and the clothing they wore. I was not in the class, but heard of the evaluations through multiple sources. | Graduate student | Tenured Professor | Other R1 | English Literature | None | None | Avoided taking classes with them | None, except for knowing that there were professors routinely commenting on women's appearances/ personalities in student evaluations rather than their academic performances - which was not particularly pleasant. | Avoided taking classes with them, made up excuses for avoiding classes and workshops (including potentially beneficial ones for my career) with them. | Male | |||
223 | 12/2/2017 18:25:17 | A senior scholar whose work I greatly admired and who was like a grandfather mentor to me and my research team colleagues visited our campus. He was in his early 80's at the time, I was in my late 20's. The head of our research team, my mentor, hosted a dinner party for him with the students, and we enjoyed great food and liquor as we had very very profound theoretical conversation. I was asked by my then mentor to drive him back to his hotel and when we arrived, he invited me up to his room for another drink and to talk about my work (so I thought). We got up there, he indicated I should sit on the two-seat couch and he made me a drink and sat next to me on the couch although there was another chair. He then said, "I want you to kiss me." I was so shocked and I wasn't fully processing what he was really doing. I didn't know what to do and he started moving towards me, so I compromised and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek (like in Latino culture), as I stood up, grabbed my coat, and headed for the door. I got out of there as quickly as I could. I called my mentor and told her what happened. She said, "Damn, we thought because you were [my racial identity] that he wouldn't come on to you. Guess not." She knew he did this. He had done it to all the other women on the research team. I had no idea. | I was a PhD student. | A senior scholar, like a grandfather mentor. | Other R1 | Michigan State University | Sociology | I never reported it. | None. | It was yet another instance where my then mentor inflicted sabotage (It was part of a larger pattern of abuse). Due to this pattern with this faculty member, other institutional processes of upholding white supremacy, and the department's sabotage, I was delayed in my progress. Despite finishing my dissertation two years ago, I've been blocked from re-registering to defend. I am currently preparing to file a lawsuit against them. | Detrimental. | It was one of many instances that lead to a more conscious awareness of my gender and sexual positionality and influenced my feminist consciousness. | Male | ||
224 | 12/2/2017 18:29:37 | Was invited to a professor’s house to spend time on a boat. Was pressured to smoke weed, comments were made about me and a fellow graduate student being gay. | Graduate student | Professor | Other R1 | Sociology | I did not report | Male | |||||||
225 | 12/2/2017 18:35:39 | On the way to a talk at another University, my adviser started acting inappropriately to me, asking for intimate personal details and sharing his own. This behavior continued the entire trip. After that, anytime we were alone on campus he would switch from his professional persona into a deeply intimate one, despite my efforts to keep things professional. At first, I let him share, I was early in my graduate career and knew many students were close with their committee members. However, he continued to share emotional and sexual things about himself unprompted. He became volatile, and I never knew whether I was going to encounter my adviser (who at first only been professionally supportive before the trip) or this emotionally expletive and unstable person. There was no physical harassment ever made, but he would not treat me as a student. This behavior continued until I was forced to bring it up with my chair. I was the only one who'd reported my adviser's behavior (I still don't know if he treated others like this) so at first I was told to simply speak with him myself and set boundaries. This did not work and resulted in an emotional outburst. It was then I went to a female faculty member who was unattached to my project (my entire committee was at that time male), she helped me push for my adviser to withdraw from my committee and mentoring role. This finally worked, but I could tell my committee was unhappy with me as they were close colleagues of his. | Masters Student in my second year of my graduate career at an R2. Now I am a PhD student at a different University (R1). | Tenured Faculty, Committee member | R2 | History/Security Studies | After much effort, he was taken off my committee | None (that I know of) | Had to switch committee, delay in graduation/thesis progress, reputation in department damaged as someone who makes trouble | Wariness around men, unwillingness to be alone with male colleagues, difficulty forging workplace relationships with superiors | Academia does not have the formal methods in place to address soft instances of sexual harassment or emotionally abusive behavior, specifically between advisers and students. It feels like I am at the whim of my superiors. I don't feel protected in this field. | Feel free to publish, but I received enough problems in my department, and the job search is coming up for me, so I do not want to disclose the identity of the professor or the institution. Sorry. | Male | ||
226 | 12/2/2017 18:38:29 | It happened six years ago, when I was a graduate student. A tenured faculty member in my department, who was (and still is) married and around 25 years my senior, put his hand on my thigh, told me he was very attracted to me, and wanted to know if I felt the same way. I firmly said “no,” and that our relationship had to remain professional. He did not pursue me after that. | PhD student, ABD | Tenured faculty | Other R1 | I was terrified of having my name attached to any accusation of sexual harassment, since it’s simply my word against his. My department chair had me write a letter detailing the incident, and he filed it away, only to take it out if I or another student ever had another issue. To my knowledge, that letter hasn’t had to come out. | None | It was nearly a year before I made further progress on my dissertation. I questioned everything. Did he only mentor me and promote my work because he found me attractive? | I was terrified of him, and I severely doubted and questioned myself—did I lead him on? How did I not see this coming? How could I be such a poor judge of character? | None, fortunately. I eventually finished my PhD and am working in my field. I still run into him on occasion and sometimes I wonder if I should come out with my story now. Who knows—maybe it could save another young woman the agony of having a similar experience. But I’m still afraid of being connected to the allegations, and afraid everyone in my field would know. It feels scary even to submit this form—I just went back through it to ensure there’s no way I could be identified! | Male | ||||
227 | 12/2/2017 18:38:58 | When I was a graduate student during my first year, the advisor that the department assigned to me to help me adjust to a new environment (as an international student) would always close his office door whenever we had an “appointment.” On every single occasion, he would tell lewd tales about many of his former female students offering to perform oral sex on him for better grades or “small” favors. Each time he made me feel very uneasy, but I was new and relatively unfamiliar with academia in the U.S. I felt relieved when he retired. | Ph.D student | Tenured senior faculty; advisor | R2 | English | I never told anyone about this. | Male | |||||||
228 | 12/2/2017 18:40:33 | I was in a very competitive program with five other people in my cohort. One person in the group was very aggressive toward the rest of us because he thought it could give him an edge. He tried to systematically discourage all of us in different ways. For some, he pretended to give advice on what this or that professor liked to see in student presentations; it was of course the opposite of what the professor really wanted to see. For others (one woman in particular) it was making constant disparaging comments regarding her intellect; for me it was sexual aggression. He would slap my rear very hard in public and lick my face out of the blue. He also would call me late at night and talk about intimate matters. He asked me to help him set up his internet dating profile (which I actually did--this was before the real aggressive behavior started and I thought I was helping a friend.) | Graduate student | Same, but he was the "golden boy" of the department as far as the professors were concerned. They did not see his secret Machiavellian nature. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Music | None--I did not report it. I didn't feel like it merited institutional attention, nor did I expect to be taken seriously. His reputation was golden in the department. | None | None really. Everyone else dropped out of the program or was delayed by a year or more. Only I graduated on time; my harasser graduated later that summer. | It was very uncomfortable to attend seminars with this person or interact socially in groups when he was present. It cast a cloud over my whole time in graduate school. This person went away for a year to do research in Italy and it was like I could breathe freely again. I didn't realize what an impact his presence had on my day-to-day well-being until he was gone. | None. I was pretty clueless as to what was going on and how I should have responded. I think his actions had quite a serious effect on the life trajectory of others, but once I figured out his MO I did my best to avoid him. I wish I had been more outspoken. It probably would have helped some of the others, as his harassment was not limited to sexual harassment. | Male | |||
229 | 12/2/2017 18:46:40 | Where to start. A professor telling me I looked "sexy"? Another professor ogling me? Yet another professor telling me I was giving him "impure" thoughts? The worst, however, was when a friend of mine was suing the university. She claimed that the university was protecting one of the above professors for sexually harassing and sexually assaulting her. My advisor expressed exasperation. Wanted to know why my friend was pursuing the suit when everyone in the department offered to advise her so she never had to deal with him again. I said, "Well, what about all the female students that come after her? What will happen to them?" My advisor said she hadn't thought about that. Perhaps the solution was that he could just not advise female students. Then I said, "Ok, so no female student can ever come to our university to study his area of expertise? Is that fair?" She said well, she hadn't thought of that either, but still, my friend should not be suing. THis made me realize that no one, not even my own advisor, would have my back if anything happened. | PhD candidate | Professor. In some of the above cases, I TA'd for them, or they were on my committee. | Other R1 | University of California | Philosophy | to protect the harasser. The worst offender still has his job in spite of being sued by two of his graduate students. | None | I left academia. They talk a good game about progressive, liberal values, but the reality is that the majority of these motherfuckers do not care about anyone but themselves. | Upsetting at the time, but I'm over it now. I've moved to a different career. | It contributed to my decision to leave academia, but was not the sole deciding factor. | Male | ||
230 | 12/2/2017 18:47:51 | I was stalked, police involved and my family. Went on for several years. | Grad student | Undergrad at same university | State university | Anthropology | Uh...they felt bad for me. I repeatedly called the police. My brother moved over 1,000 miles to move in with me. University took no official action, didn't ban him from the department but I heard they limited his access to the lab. I don't believe he even needed access to the lab but that was the only action they took. | None | Made me weary of being nice to people. Was afraid for a few years when he persisted even when I moved out of state. | Distressing. My mother died before I started grad school, my grandmother died a few months later and I was displaced by a hurricane in my first three month of grad school. Stalker was an unexpected stressor left over from my field school. Pretty amazing in retrospect that I made I through in two years, pretty motivated to get out of grad school, and wasn't the only creep I came across during my time there. | I don't doubt any word of harassment that I hear from other women. It was rampant, it is rampant. We love science, we love our field, and it's an unbelievable reality and distraction of what we had to do to get through. | As a supervisor now, I still feel like I lack the metal behind me when others come forward. Organizations have strongly worded statements, but honestly anthropology is collaborative across multiple institutions. When it happened to someone I supervised, I didn't know what to do. I researched her options and she decided to not come forward. Archaeologists are often up late and drunk at conferences- creates a very ambiguous environment-. And as a former victim I'm sadly doing what was done for me- providing information and options, but very little action. | Male | ||
231 | 12/2/2017 18:53:35 | Was told by professor I was TAing for "if we were at Yale, we'd be fucking by now." | First year graduate student in History | My direct supervisor and full professor of History | Other R1 | Northeastern University | History | None (did not report) | Male | ||||||
232 | 12/2/2017 19:08:43 | While a graduate student, I (and my peers) frequently had the opportunity to drive visiting writers to and from campus engagements and one night, I was driving a male writer about twice my age back to his hotel. We had an animated conversation about writing while I drove, and I walked him into the hotel to conclude it. I offered him a hug goodbye, and before I knew what was happening, his thick, hot tongue was thrusting into my mouth. I fled, and he apologized by text, and said that he'd leave a gift at the hotel desk--it was his own novel. | I was a PhD student | He was a Full Professor at another university, so not my superior. | Other R1 | The University of Missouri, although I'd also met the same writer at Old Dominion University, perhaps giving him a sense that he "knew" me. | Creative Writing | I did not report it; I didn't even realize I wasn't to blame until the #metoo watershed | None | Few, except that I have to be wary around men, in that this incident indicated to me that when I'm receiving mentorship from an established male writer, it's very likely that a sexual favor will be the price exacted from me for this mentorship. | Very bad. I continue to struggle with severe anxiety and depression because I do not feel safe in a world where my effort to connect intellectually will be retaliated against with unwanted sexual advances, touching, and tongue-thrusting. | None. I'm a professor now. | I'm glad you're doing this. | Male | |
233 | 12/2/2017 19:27:18 | My professor/advisor/thesis chair asked me to kiss him | Undergraduate student | Professor, advisor, and my thesis chair | R2 | Boston university | Sociology | I never reported it / no consequence | I never reported it / no consequence | Thankfully little | Thankfully little though it does occupy space in my mind and require my labor to deal with | Little | I'm quite confident he is still crossing the line with many other female undergraduates and graduate students 10 years later | Male | |
234 | 12/2/2017 19:29:56 | Senior women were completely marginalized | Full professor | Younger associate and just.newly tenured professor | Other R1 | UC | Chemistry | Nothing | Rewarded for bad behavior | Hurts but I have kept rising to top | Terrible...PTSD...really bad. | I kept moving but it stole hundreds of hours or time/energy | Male | ||
235 | 12/2/2017 19:33:18 | I was a lecturer in my second year at a university. My peer colleagues (all male) regularly complained about having to teach one night class every semester. Somehow I was never assigned night classes to teach, which we also discussed. I thought I was just lucky. Then came a standard meeting with our departmental administrator, when I asked him why everyone teaches night classes but me. He answered, calmly and as if this were obvious, “oh, I don’t give night classes to women. It’s not safe for them to be on campus at night.” I stared at him, shocked, and told him that was ridiculous and discriminatory and demanded to be assigned a night class for the following semester. He shrugged and did assign me night classes after that, relieving some pressure on my male colleagues. They were right that night classes are tough to teach, and the admin was wrong that women shouldn’t be on campus at night. | Lecturer | Departmental administrator who organized course schedules | R2 | Science, Technology, and Society | None | None | Shock and insult. | None | I left the university a year later, but not specifically because of this interaction. | Male | |||
236 | 12/2/2017 19:35:55 | Summer 2014 at a two-week workshop for grad students working on [a specific period / subtopic of history], with approx ten grad students (equal numbers of m and f) and multiple faculty presenters / mentors (of which approx 85% male). One day, the students decided to get happy hour beers, we invited the faculty who were around that day. I invited one of them, I just happened to see him. He bought me a beer (like fine, he gets paid at a fancy school, I am a student), after a while and much staring at me he kinda cornered me and suggested we go back to his hotel. I didn't really answer, and kinda walked off, and the someone else came over. The guy them announced he was leaving and left. About fifteen mins later he came back and gave us all his card, and he told me he'd been waiting outside because i was going to follow him. He left again. I didn't leave but told some of the other women, we left all together at some point. He was gone the next day, but then emailed the administrator of the workshop to get my email address, sent me a semi creepy email and then mailed a copy of his book, signed with a personal message to my department. I left the book on my stoop. | 2nd year grad student. | Full professor at fancy university. In the specific circumstances, faculty mentor type person at a grad student training workshop. He was previously somehow a part of the (second, W) Bush administration. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | He was from Princeton, I am not, but the workshop was at George Washington University. | History. But he is Poli sci or IR, not sure. | I told my advisor, who believed me and was sympathetic and asked me if I thought I needed to work with or see the person again. Advisor checked that "nothing really bad happened." I said no to both, so that was the end. | Nope | Luckily not much, he is so peripheral to my work. | It was like, oh yeah, here's a thing I have to be aware of, but really it hasn't been so bad. | Male | |||
237 | 12/2/2017 19:41:03 | A professor made continual sexist and homophobic comments to masters & doctoral students throughout the semester. He noted that he has “a hard time” seeing two men kiss because it’s “like pouring ketchup on cereal. It doesn’t belong.” Made a number of other comments about gender, people who get “sex changes,” and noted that serial killers who target prostituted women are brilliant because “no one cares about prostitutes.” He also said he would rather go to a concentration camp than watch Bravo television with his wife. There were other comments, too. This is just a glympse. | Graduate student | Professor | Other R1 | University at Albany | Psychology | I formally reported it to the diversity affairs office in the administration, using quotations that the professor made from class and submitted a handful of letters from other students in the classroom reflecting the harmful environment he created. Months later, I received a certified letter in the mail stating the claims were unsubstantiated and they could not prove that his behavior created a toxic learning environment. | A conversation with the dean. (None. He’s still there.) | His wife worked at a local college in the area where I served as an adjunct professor. She said, “ah yes, you know my husband” with a smirk when I was introduced to her. | Anxiety, frustration, wanting to call it quits | Unsure | People told me not to take it to the media or make a big fuss about it in order to avoid negative repercussions down the line. I wanted to take it to HR, and was encouraged not to. Was told to consider what people would find if they googled my name, and was told to consider how that would affect my career prospects. | Male | |
238 | 12/2/2017 19:45:05 | I was stalked by a fellow graduate student for two years while in graduate school. | Graduate student | Graduate student | Other R1 | Penn State University | English | He was forced to go to counseling and to refrain from having contact with me. However, he continued to have contact with me and there were no consequences for doing so. | None that I know of | Hard to say | In addition to often being afraid and feeling unsafe, I suffered from serious anxiety for the duration of my program. | I didn't stick with academia, a decision I sometimes now regret. I left after my master's degree. | Male | ||
239 | 12/2/2017 19:56:34 | I was almost raped by a fellow student, but a random person came along at the last minute and interrupted/stopped it. Oct 1979, Rice University, under some trees along the main road through campus. The student who tried to rape me was a walking buddy, the person who had volunteered to walk me safely across campus at night. These walk with a buddy patrols were set up after a young woman was found raped and murdered near campus. | Undergraduate student | He was another undergraduate student whom I knew as an acquaintance, who volunteered to walk me back to my dorm | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Rice University | history | None | None | None | Can’t get over it | I am very cautious and trouble trusting people until I know them well | Male | ||
240 | 12/2/2017 20:00:45 | In my first week of grad school, I was told by other female students/ faculty that the advisor I was assigned to was a white guy who was had slept with and then married his much younger female student (who he was still married to) and to be a creep who harassed femme students. I transferred my advisorship immediately and avoided him throughout the (fairly small) program. He had tenure and was one of the oldest and most secure faculty members in the department. | First year MFA grad student | Seriously tenured full professor. | Small Liberal Arts College | Mills College | MFA Creative Writing | Not a damn thing. He's still there. | None. He married his student and he's still there. | Feeling like, awesome, my supposedly "feminist, women's college" protects a white dude who fucked and married his student, whereas women of color profs can't get tenure, and thus, lack of trust in my program. | Adding a slight dollop to already substantial hypervigilance. | Although my books have won national awards and had a fair amount of success as a writer, I was always an outsider at my program, did not become a favorite and do not have an academic teaching career. I don't blame this just on this one dude, but the program as a whole protected and promoted white guys and white, straight women, as professors and students. | Male | ||
241 | 12/2/2017 20:08:33 | Rockstar professor in cultural studies was known to do drugs with and fuck female students, frequently went out drinking with us after meetings, was know to have abused his ex wife. He was involved in our student/ faculty of color anti-racist campus organizing and the only South Asian, radical male prof. No one that I know of, including feminist of color profs, confronted him- I'm guessing they either didn't know or felt like we "needed the support". He didn't hit on me but he did on other young women of color students I was close to. This was in the late 90s | Undergraduate student. | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Eugen Lang | Cultural Studies | None | None | It'd be nice to have some kind of long-standing supportive relationship with a prof, but this was not possible due to my knowledge that he tried to do coke with and fuck my friends. | Male | ||||
242 | 12/2/2017 20:16:16 | Inappropriate conversation--colleague getting too close and using the metaphor of someone cumming all over his work, multiple times, as a description for this professor being impressed. It was repeated in really uncomfortable ways. | Visiting Instructor | Tenure Track (near getting tenure) Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Small elite liberal arts college in the South | Religion | didn't report it. | N/A | N/A | discomfort, especially as a new employee in my first month on the job. Also, particularly uncomfortable as I am "auditioning" for a tenure track position that will open soon. | Male | |||
243 | 12/2/2017 20:17:25 | Spring 2016 | associate professor | Full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | LIT | None | None | I didn't get promoted | I was made to feel small and insignificant | I question myself ALL THE TIME! | Male | |||
244 | 12/2/2017 20:19:15 | MFA department chair would take out students to get shitfaced, then make out with us one by one. We all knew he was married and had cheated on his wife multiple times. | Grad student | Department chair, professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia | Less trusting, divot ed myself from writing community | Immeasurable | I left writing | Male | |||||
245 | 12/2/2017 20:32:01 | 2009 – 2015 | Colleague | Mentor | Small Liberal Arts College | Stony Brook SUNY | Music | none, didn't report | none because didn't report | Not much in the end | Bad, have had bad dreams, talked to therapists to process feelings. | Deterred me from going further with studies | Male | ||
246 | 12/2/2017 20:35:36 | inappropriate attention and commentary | adjunct | professor | R2 | RIT | Political Science | left position | Male | ||||||
247 | 12/2/2017 20:37:23 | Raped during my PhD program | 2nd year PhD student | Masters student in the same discipline | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Michigan | Social work and psychology | None to me as I did not report; to another female who experienced the same by the same perpetrator, “it’s fine, just let it go, he probably didn’t mean it, get someone to coorborate your story”. She went with the latter and I coorborated, but they intimidated her so she stopped and my story was not heard either. | None; he graduated with an MSW. | Lots of self doubt and mistrust. I think I haven’t persisted in things the way I would have without this on my shoulders. | Have felt terribly since. | Got in relationships quickly to avoid being targeted since. Married with 2 kids, tenure track job, etc.but much feels rushed to avoid being assaulted again. | Male | ||
248 | 12/2/2017 20:39:51 | I was systematically sexually harassed and silenced pretty much consistently from teh time I was undergraduate until now | undergraduate, graduate student, untenured, tenured | PhD advisers, mentors, senior colleagues, dean of school | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | UC Berkeley, Amherst College, Northwestern University | Asian Studies/ Women and Gender Studies | Silencing me, disempowering me | none whatsoever | too long and painful to explain here.I am OK, I guess, I got tenured, but I am not well | devastating | Meaningful in very challenging ways | Male | ||
249 | 12/2/2017 21:21:57 | Bullied by my older male supervisor, mocking me, yelling at me, glaring at me over months-long period | Adjunct | Fulltime faculty and supervisor | Regional Teaching College | Informal critical feedback to harasser from his superior | None | Stress and friction | Felt resentment and stress over many months | Nothing, I’m trapped | Male | ||||
250 | 12/2/2017 21:27:43 | My academic professor and advisor admitted he'd fallen in love with and pursued me romantically and sexually. | Sophomore in college | Senior, as both my advisor and my professor of two courses | Small Liberal Arts College | History | None. | None. | It substantially changed the direction of what courses I took in college, ultimately affecting my career. | Immeasurable. | It's impossible for me to separate what happened from what could have been, after this. | Thanks for doing this. | Male | ||
251 | 12/2/2017 21:31:37 | When I was in my MFA program, my mentor, who I babysat for regularly, made explicit sexual comments about me both to a close male friend of mine and to an entire class of graduate students that I was not present in. I heard about those comments later from multiple sources - both those who came to me directly and told me about the comments and their graphic nature, and in whispered gossip that traveled through my MFA program like wildfire. | graduate student | Professor/Mentor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English/Creative Writing | None. I never reported it. I was 22 years old when it happened, and I was mortified. Until that point, I'd thought of him as a father figure, and I felt completely betrayed. I tried to laugh it off at first, but then I realized how many other students believed the rumors, and so I withdrew from social events and stopped engaging in class. | None. | A number of people in my MFA program were convinced because of the public (and very, very graphic) nature of my mentor's comments that I was sleeping with him, and the gossip spread. It was a particularly bad - and totally false - rumor because he was married at the time (they later divorced, and he subsequently established a pattern of sleeping with very young female graduate students - a new one every year). I was engaged, but my fiancee thankfully trusted me and put no stock in it. I was mortified. It affected my writing for years; for a time, I stopped completely. I felt I had no recourse because it was his word against mine, and he was a very well-known writer. It made me feel completely helpless. I didn't think anyone would believe me. Even now, even given his reputation, there are still people from my MFA program who believe I was having an affair with him, and some who believe that I was the one who broke up his marriage. | Severe anxiety. Severe damage to my faith in my abilities as a writer - I believed, and still believe, that the compliments he gave about my writing were simply because he wanted to sleep with me. I now have faith in my abilities, but I don't believe for a second that he was doing anything but grooming me. | I've mostly recovered. I've made a career as a writer and eventually returned to school to earn my PhD, but I am years behind where I would be if he hadn't embarrassed me, undermined me, and messed with my head. The funny thing is, when I reached out to him once when I was still upset and confused and seeking affirmation and an apology, he refused to even respond. It's given me a lot of clarity about the quality of person that he is - which is, of course, completely despicable. | MFA programs in particular are rife with this kind of misogyny and abuse - I have heard stories from virtually every woman I know who graduated from an MFA program who experienced something like this (plus I'm white, and the stories that I've heard from my friends who are WOC make mine seem tame in comparison). White male writers in particular have egos the size of the Eastern seaboard, and their sense of entitlement to sexual gratification from their female students knows no bounds. Someone needs to do an objective assessment of MFA program dynamics, especially those programs (too many) that are still populated primarily by white male faculty. Those men need to be made to account for their behavior publicly the same way they've dragged the names and reputations of their female graduate students through the mud. And then they need to be put out on their asses and banned from the academy for good. | Male | ||
252 | 12/2/2017 21:37:31 | While in my surgical training, an attending physician broke a valuable instrument. I was called into the department chief who accused me of breaking it. I said I had not. He replied, “Well, you were the only woman there.” I understood I was to take the blame —and ridicule—for the damage. I had to have a second (male) student, of the same or lower rank on the team, present to make sure the replacement instrument was properly used. This, I later learned, was the Dean’s requirement for purchasing the replacement. For two more years I took on the reluctance of other trainees to team up with my “fumble-fingers.” It even followed me as I pursued post-doc training, as the surgical staff were reluctant to recommend me, based on this false rumor. When I went to the department chair, sweating and vomiting for days before doing so, I literally begged him to recommend me to a very inferior post-doc position. He agreed to do so, with a sense of enormous magnanimity. I literally kissed him for doing so, I was so relieved. Later I learned he had told the program chief that accepted me that I had been described as someone who could “take one for the team.” The accepting director told me later that this was conveyed in a way that implied I was willing to “do antything” to get ahead. This made the program director think I was being passed over by better programs due to lack of skill, that I was only be promoted due to sexual favors. So when I arrived at my post-doc the reception was guarded until I could (over)prove my skills. I received what I thought were an unusual amount of sexual suggestions from my post doc faculty until the director finally told me how I had been presented to him by my former chief. During my humilating 2 years I developed an eating disorder and other self harming behaviors, I think to stop myself from blurting out my story, since to do so would have been the end of my training. At least it felt like that at the time. | Surgical resident, 2 years out of medical school | Chief of department, with ability to fire without cause | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia/Physicians and Surgeon’s | Medicine | Not reported | A less prestgious post doc position than I could have earned on merit | I developed an eating and cutting disorder | I never returned to the same level of prestige in academic institution. Ivy League residency and lower tier post doc and faculty position | Male | |||
253 | 12/2/2017 21:57:40 | At a conference. | I was a graduate student. | He was a full professor at a different institution. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | English | I became fearful of having to face a conference situation. | I have been call a liar and have been told not to gossip when I tried to talk about my experience. | Male | ||||||
254 | 12/2/2017 22:03:49 | Professor made inappropriate comments of romantic and sexual nature to undergraduate, telling about his failing marriage; same person known for hitting on graduate students at conferences | Graduate student | Assistant Professor at a different school (my alma mater) and in my discipline | Other R1 | Music | None; harassment was not known, undergrad did not come forward | None. Got tenure. | I did not apply to a job at this institution, which used to be my dream school, because I knew I could not work with this person. I was also aware that he knew I knew about his behavior and may have discriminated against me because of it. | The person harassed was very close to me, and the situation and my inability to bring justice bothered me intensely for years. | See above. | Male | |||
255 | 12/2/2017 22:39:16 | Prof. hired me as a research assistant and harassed me for years. | Student and then post-grad | Professor. Supervisor | Other R1 | University of Washington | A social science | They didn’t know | Fired for doing worse to someone else. But no one knew why they left. | Male | |||||
256 | 12/2/2017 22:41:24 | Several students came to me and told me about a professor who groped them and had inappropriate sexual relations with one student. | Faculty | Colleague | Small Liberal Arts College | In process | In process | None yet | Male | ||||||
257 | 12/2/2017 23:03:45 | Regular sexual comments and innuendo about myself and others | PhD candidate | Committee member | Other R1 | Boston University | None - this is an open secret in the department | None - this is an open secret in the department | I chose not to ask him for help networking or job hunting | One of many "small" incidents that make life just that much harder. | I learned to be very cautious around male PIs - I always do a whisper network check on potential bosses and collaborators. | Male | |||
258 | 12/2/2017 23:06:49 | Engineering, 4th year undergraduate. I went to see a professor for career guidance. Door was shut. I sat on a chair near his desk. After 10 mins he moved his rolling chair over next to mine. He grabbed my head & kissed me on the mouth forcefully. I was so shocked, it took a minute for me to work out I needed to leave. | Undergraduate student | Professor & subject co-ordinator for one of my classes | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Mechanical engineering | I didn't report it. I've never told anyone. | None | no direct impact - I passed the subject he ran | Devastating, it happened when I was already dealing with severe depression, including dealing with trauma of recent rape & memory of childhood sexual assault | Added to life experiences of being assaulted. Severe depression lasted another 5 years. Took many more years to understand my own self-sabotaging & destructive behaviour. | Male | |||
259 | 12/2/2017 23:07:08 | In mid 2000s, I got invited to the on-campus apartment of a professor with the promise of meeting two huge scientists in my field (all male, of course). Professor was drugged and drunk and proceeded to grope me right in front of the senior scientists that I was trying to talk research with. They more or less ignored me and pretended not to notice the groping. When I extracted myself from that professor (and he fell asleep on the couch), the other scientists decided to leave but insisted I should stay ... which I didn't. The professor started calling me later that night, insisting I needed to come back because he "needed me there". Next day he left roses on my desk with a note "Sorry" ... written on the back of a page of my research notes. It took that level of disrespect for my space and research work to notice that the whole thing had been inappropriate all along. I talked to the only somewhat senior female scientist I knew at that time - who advised me to never, ever, mention this incident to anyone. | postdoc | senior faculty .. not in my field .. but due to personal connections probably the reason I got the job | Elite Institution/Ivy League | IAS Princeton | Mathematics | never reported - based on advice by senior female | none ... and at that time it was clear that reporting wouldn't have made a difference | The only reason I didn't leave science right then and there was that I simultaneously got some huge job offers. Still, I got pretty close to taking the lowest profile offer on a different continent. I changed topics in my field to avoid interactions with those scientists - still kept getting invited to conferences and had to keep giving fake excuses for not going. At some point, the harasser even got considered as senior hire at my tenure track institution. Overall, I've spent an inordinate amount of time and energy on avoiding more harassment or confrontations with the past ones. I still managed quite the career ... but really wonder what I could have done if I'd ever had my brain to myself for a whole week. | I've never again had my brain to myself for a whole week without having to deal with the constant undercurrent of dealing with the emotional fallout from sexual harassment (my own, my friends', then my students' .. and increasingly also the departmental politics around it). | I've largely avoided socializing within science - as it's 95% male and I've had to learn time and time again that sexual harassment, or devastating comments about it, can come from the most "feminist" and progressive colleagues. | Thank you so much for this effort!!! Such an anonymous approach is crucial as it's still pretty much a career-ending choice when victims try to speak up. It would be great to collect names though - to connect the dots when there is a critical mass of reports on the same person. | Male | |
260 | 12/2/2017 23:10:15 | He sat silently behind me in my lab after regular work hours when I was alone on the floor twice. He whistled at me every time he saw me walking in the hall. | Student | Janitor | Other R1 | Official reprimand (1st offense), he was later moved to another building, but was moved back to our area after ~1 year. | I dreaded seeing him every day. I would avoid going to the bathroom so he wouldn't see me. I would avoid working late so I wouldn't be alone with him. I was so relieved when he was moved, and my stress was doubled when they brought him back. | Trust no institution. | When I officially reported his behavior to our department supervisor after years of daily harassment (which many other female students in the program talked about openly on a regular basis), he said he was upset because that meant he was required to report him and "he really liked [him]." He was shocked and had no idea there was a problem, despite the man repeatedly harassing women out loud during regular work hours. | Male | |||||
261 | 12/2/2017 23:10:36 | When I was a PhD candidate, I was invited back to a hotel room during a party at a field station by a professor from another university who was planning collaborations with my adviser (and someone who for a brief period I thought might be a future post-doc adviser). I said no thank you, he persisted, and after the third effort to talk me into it despite stating repeatedly that I was happily married, I finally got up, said good night and left the party. I told my adviser about the incident the next day and expressed disinterest in working on any future collaborations. When we got back to the university, he required me to spend lab time on a collaborative project (that took time away from finishing my own work) with this person, despite what I had told him. I was not entirely surprised by this response, sadly, since my adviser also made multiple comments implying I was fat and should take up running during my time in his lab as well. | PhD candidate | Senior professor at another university (the person who made inappropriate overtures) and my adviser (the person who did not respect my wish to not work with this person after the incident) | Other R1 | Biology | None; only reported incident to adviser who ignored report | None to my knowledge. | The anger I felt towards my adviser for forcing me to collaborate with this person made it difficult to work effectively with him for the last year of my graduate work. We did not part on the greatest terms so I have never asked him for a reference letter. | Disillusionment with academia; feelings of hostility towards my adviser; the event made me feel so small - this person never saw me as a scientist, only as a piece of ass for the taking and my adviser's response just reinforced that feeling. | This was one in a series of events that turned me off on a career in academia. | Thank you for documenting these experiences. From what I hear from other folks, my experiences of sexual harassment in academia were actually pretty mild by comparison. That makes me extraordinarily sad. | Male | ||
262 | 12/2/2017 23:54:28 | I was chairing a meeting on ensuring diversity in our graduate admission, and one (quite senior) colleague demanded I had to clarify what I meant by "contributions to climate" (as selection criterion), but didn't really let me speak and just started to berate me along the lines of "if you say we have a climate problem then .. because I've been here forever .. you're accusing me of rape .. how dare you .. the climate problem are you". I kept trying to de-escalate the situation and promised him a clarifying meeting with department leadership (on the committee task which he kept questioning), but he kept berating me with "you are the problem", "how dare you cut me off", "you are the harasser", on and on. The other 5 faculty (all but one tenured) at best pretended to not notice and not hear my requests for other input/questions ... at worst kept giving the word back to the harasser to "voice his concerns". At some point the co-chair even denied the facts (of how he had run the committee previously) when those came under attack of the harasser, and started siding with the harasser's critique of my decision to limit the discussion to the logistics until after we could clarify the committee task with the department chair. | Associate Professor | Full Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Mathematics | I couldn't risk a confrontation with the harasser (letter writer for one of my students) so just requested a 'bystander intervention' with the rest of the committee. After a couple of weeks of ignoring my calls for help, I was referred to an 'ombuds person' and 'employee health therapist', who first made all the right noises to get me to trust they'd help .. but after various, increasingly traumatizing revisits of the situation, they just ended up informing me that the bystanders were "good guys" and it was up to me to make up with them by "owning my part of it" to keep my standing in the department. The therapist even fed my personal therapist a ton of lies about what had actually happened. | Upon my request, the primary harasser was taken off the committee .. probably exactly what he wanted. But since I decided to step down, too, the committee ended up in the hands of other diversity-contrarians. | I informed the department chair that - before I could serve on any further committees - I needed to know what the process should be in the case of repeated harassment. I was promptly taken out of all committee work. I'm also no longer comfortable speaking my mind - or in fact going to - larger faculty meetings. So I've essentially withdrawn from department business. On the other hand, administrative involvement is probably necessary for the promotion to full professor that I'd be in line for next year .. so I may not bother even applying. Honestly, I've lost my sense of purpose: If - even in my tenured position - I can't do anything to stop such blatant harassment ... how much worse is it for the young generation still ... and so what's the point of contributing to this primal patriarchal form of science?!? | The processing with ombuds person and institution's therapist ended up leading to a huge depressive crisis. I'm no longer feeling emotionally safe in the department and mostly avoid my office. | I'm going to move to another university once I've used my sabbatical credit. Although this is the highest profile and best location that I could have hoped for ... I'm not willing to spend the rest of my career at the sidelines of a department. | We have a whole list of male professors to "avoid being in arms' length of, never join for a group dinner, or be alone in a room with" that is being shared amongst female students. Now that we at least have a solid community of women, this warning mechanism is probably the main reason why there haven't been new reports of faculty-on-student assaults. There are still stories of sexual assault/harassment amongst students every semester - such as "alcohol-induced nonconsensual sex" and "male students masturbating during women's presentations". | Male | |
263 | 12/3/2017 2:06:45 | The person doing the language checking of my ms left inappropriate comments in the margin - which I of course had to read, since they could not be differentiated from the valid comments except by reading them. | Doctoral student | Permanent employment, strong informal position despite not formally my superior. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | Good support from the Equality Officer, but warned that it would get ugly if I filed a complaint, so I didn't. | None | Very uncomfortable but relieved to hear the harrasser left the department eventually. | Not much, although my desire not to work at my old uni probably stems partly from this. | Not at a US university | Male | |||
264 | 12/3/2017 2:15:02 | An instructor in a social sciences department approached me in the break room and asked me to touch his neck. | Graduate Student | Colleague; we had not worked together but occasionally would say hello to each other in passing | Other R1 | Social Sciences | I immediately reported it to a department administrator who was dismissive, saying she had heard that the person who harassed me likely did not know and that she heard he had recently injured himself. She suggested that I talk to a high ranking female professor who could educate the person in question about gender politics and coach them to interact with people in a different manner. | None that I am aware | There was no direct impact, though the incident made me feel uncomfortable and unsafe with reporting future incidents of harassment. | I have had to deal with severe circumstances of harassment in other contexts. This particular incident was relatively minor but the cumulation of experiences has had a negative impact on my mental health. | None stemming directly from this incident. | Male | |||
265 | 12/3/2017 3:37:56 | He walked around behind my chair and picked up my hair and held it; this was one example of many instances of (what I perceived at the time to be) low level unpleasant contact. I later discovered that he had actually threatened other students with failure/expulsion if they didn't agree to sex. | PhD student | Senior faculty member and supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Cambridge University | English | I pursued a complaints procedure, and through an appeals procedure; all were declined. | He was promoted, and no longer sent female students to supervise. | Anger - but otherwise I'm unscathed. Others affected by the same harasser left academia. | It's something I think about occasionally. | I am very aware of these dangers, particularly as they pertain to my students. | Male | ||
266 | 12/3/2017 5:20:27 | A female student and I were harassed by fraternity students during a break from their evening study hall. | I am an Assistant Professor and the female student was an undergraduate student. | undergraduate students | R2 | Latin American Studies | Ask that all student study hall groups be supervised by a faculty member. | None. | Difficulty teaching, concentrating. My college's administration criticized my way of handling the situation. I filed a Title IX report though, so retaliation should not be an issue. | I am D.V. survivor, so this incident triggered a lot of disempowerment and vulnerability issues for me. | It is not just the harassment but also the institution's response that has been very disappointing. I am not sure if I want to stay. | Male | |||
267 | 12/3/2017 5:25:13 | Undergraduate professor (44 yo) made sexual advances toward his female mentees. He pressured me into a sexual/romantic relationship when I was 21. He was still writing letters of recommendation for me (I went to grad school), but pressured me to drop out of school and marry him. He insulted me and told me that other professors saw me as a prostitute, and he showed me a gun once. He went on to marry another student. | Undergrad | Assistant prof | Other R1 | Male | |||||||||
268 | 12/3/2017 6:10:49 | I was repeatedly sexually harassed by a colleague. He would call me into his cubicle and turn his computer around to reveal porn, continuously enter my personal space and make inappropriate comments. | Graduate student | Graduate student | R2 | Seton Hall University | Psychology | I contacted the head of the graduate program, she gave me the information needed to formally report everything. The review committee found in my favor. During the review process he was given a separate office so we didn't have to work together. | He received in-person sexual harassment training and had to do several online modules on harassment. As a result, all grad students at that university are now required to receive sexual harassment training. | I stopped volunteering in a lab that he also worked in | It was extremely stressful. I avoided going to work. I lost several friendships and was demonized by several "friends" because they thought it was ridiculous that I reported it because "that's just his personality." | I watch the behavior of my students more closely and stop early signs of sexual harassment immediately. | Male | ||
269 | 12/3/2017 6:10:53 | I was in my first year of teaching post-PhD, as an adjunct. A student began stalking me; following me around campus (which included having to walk through a wooded area to get from my office to classrooms), waiting at my office door after my last class of the day, when the hallways were pretty deserted, tried to follow me home once but I managed to shake him, coming to office hours and sitting there staring at me, not speaking. | Adjunct, freshly minted PhD. | Undergraduate in a course I was teaching. | Other R1 | English literature | My female department chair laughed when I told her about it and asked for advice. | None. | Not much, really, except that I never regained any comfort with being in my office after hours, on weekends, or any time there wouldn't be a lot of people around--"what about if there's another Joshua?" | Increased fear that year--resorted to circuitous routes around campus and getting home, hiding out in bathrooms, etc., to avoid him. I wouldn't say my anxiety levels were higher off campus, though--just when I was anywhere I thought he might find me. | None--impact was just on daily activities that year. | Looking back, I wonder if this student might have been someone with poor social skills (for instance, on the autism spectrum) who had a simple crush and had no idea that he was terrifying me. So what dismays me is not so much him, but that when I asked for help, it was brushed off. I needed help, and maybe the student needed help too (in behavioural guidance). | Male | ||
270 | 12/3/2017 6:17:28 | While doing fieldwork for my dissertation, sexual harassment was pervasive and extensive, from local employees trying to convince me to sleep with them, asking inappropriate questions, and groping me; to colleagues commenting on my breasts, sharing conversations about my body they had with local employees, and persistently making sexual innuendos; to my supervisor promising the employees he'd send only pretty students to that place to conduct fieldwork. When I had a conflict with another female student, it was generally assumed to be because we were sleeping with the same employee (... we were not, and it was not). My supervisor asked me if a mutual friend, who was an artist, "painted me like one of his French girls." | I was a graduate student | The employees of our field project, other graduate students and researchers at the field site, and my supervisor. | Other R1 | Anthropology | I never reported my supervisor. I did report some details of the employees' behavior to my supervisor (who managed the field site), and I was able to fire the worst harassers. | I cut my field season short because I was so fucking tired of dealing with harassment. I love fieldwork, and I love my research, but I didn't do it as well as I could have because I spent significant mental energy mitigating all of this. I was less productive than I could have been in a harassment-free context. Writing up my results for my dissertation took longer because I kept having to dive back into data collected when I was being harassed (oh yeah, this is the day they asked me when I first started having sex. Oh yeah, this is the day they joked about having a threesome with me). When I compare my work and output to my much more productive male best friend in the program, I think one major difference is that he didn't deal with pervasive sexual harassment and he could put this whole mind into his research the whole time. | It was exhausting and traumatic. And in our #metoo context, it feels like every time I open the internet, I can't escape conversations about sexual harassment and assault. | I chose to continue in my field despite being sexually assaulted during my first field experience (not in an academic context). That means that I'm already working through stress and trauma and thinking about this when I go to the field. I haven't let the more explicit harassment keep me from doing the work and research I love to do. I feel like my interactions with my supervisor have been the more damaging and insidious part of my experience. He's been incredibly supportive and helpful in many ways, but also clearly thinks less of me and feels comfortable making sexualized comments in a way he doesn't for his me students, and I know that will have to come out in things like letters of recommendation. | Male | ||||
271 | 12/3/2017 6:21:18 | Every single male professor when I was in grad school had been or was currently sexually involved with a student. Some professors dated undergrads, some dated grads. Personal incident while in grad school: I was wearing a shirt that showed some cleavage. Professor sees me in the hallway and stares at my chest and he tells me I must come and give him a hug (hugs are not uncommon in my field of dance, but that encounter was definitely not okay) | Grad student | Professors, chair of department, all people with power over me and the students they chose to date. Some of the ‘dating’ was between thesis advisor and grad student. | Other R1 | Dance | When a guest came to campus who had been my dance teacher and I was younger and he had dated a fellow teenager (she was 15 he was late 30s), I did seek some help. They needed someone to actually report the issues, but that would have meant no letters of recommendation for me and no future job prospects in academia. | None | I am extremely protective of my students. I am a tenured professor and have done fairly well in my career. It has not had an impact that I am aware of beyond being extra aware about situations for my students. I don’t want them to experience anything like that in their educational experience. | I am outspoken so no advances were really made to me. I even told off one of the professors who dated undergrads, which actually made home respect me more. I told off the department chair who was sleeping with a fellow grad student and often made inappropriate comments in the office - I was told I wasn’t ‘fun’. The comments stopped when I was around but I know they never fully stopped. He is no longer the chair and he did get fired for inappropriate behavior with students. | Male | ||||
272 | 12/3/2017 6:22:25 | In a methods seminar my first semester, he relentlessly and obviously undressed me with his eyes. The stares were too long, and noticed by other people. | First year doctoral student | Tenured professor in the department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Art History | It was a low impact harassment as far as they go—and seemingly impossible to report—but I felt violated and embarrassed in front of the class. | Male | |||||||
273 | 12/3/2017 6:23:06 | I was a participant in a year-long Leadership Group, sponsored by the University. We were selected by Administration as being promising future admin leaders, and we regularly met to share difficulties and challenges in our leadership roles. It was supposed to be "cone of silence" discussions. In the last meeting of the year, one of our two university sponsored and paid "Coaches" or Mentors, (after I said I was worried about being pressured into being Chair) stated in front of the group that all I really needed, in terms of support, was "duct tape and valium." | I was tenured associate professor and the youngest participant in the group. It was a group of 5 male professors and 4 female professors. Two of the women were about 10 years older than I am. One of the female professors told me not to report it--that it would only make trouble for me. It was one of the younger male professors in the group who stopped the discussion to point out how inappropriate and wrong the statement had been--nobody else really did anything. They seemed stunned. The "coach" apologized afterwards in a one-on-one conversation. | He was the paid leader of all the Leadership Training on campus. | Other R1 | Humanities | None. There were 15 witnesses but no formal action. | None. He continued in his role. I did not report it, though others could have. | It made me realize that one can never be completely honest in those "sharing" sessions, even if they say it's a cone of silence. I'm now Chair of the department, but I believe leadership training at the university is riddled with gender and racial biases. My coach was too threatened by me to help me. | I felt invalidated. And angry. | I avoided this person. And I don't believe in administrative training. | Male | |||
274 | 12/3/2017 6:23:45 | When I started as a grad student in the PhD program at a Big 10 university, one of the male professors in my department was generally known to sexually harass female colleagues and students. Everyone in the department seemed to know this, and faculty members would warn new female grad students to stay away from him. The department tacitly acknowledge the problem by only assigning him male grad students as TAs. Two female tenure-track professors told me (separately) that they had official letters in their personnel files guaranteeing that the professor could not vote on their retention, promotion, or tenure applications because he had sexually harassed them. In 2000, the professor was promoted to an associate provost position at the same university with a substantial pay boost - many faculty members speculated the reason was to remove him further from contact with students. Since then, the sexually harassing professor has been dean at another large state university in the Midwest and provost at a large state university in the Pacific Northwest. After just 7 weeks as provost, he apparently got into a fistfight with a colleague in a school hallway. He was then demoted back to tenured professor, so he is now back to teaching undergraduates. Due to the terms of his contract, he still earns 90% of his salary as provost, about a quarter of a million dollars a year. | Graduate student | Professor in my department - not in my field, so I didn't have much contact with him. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Stopped assigning female graduate assistants to the harasser. Finally promotes him to a lucrative administrative position to get him out of the classroom. | Got promoted and made more money. | Personally: cynicism about the Academy. One of the female faculty members who told me she had been harassed left soon after for another university. | n/a | n/a | Male | ||||
275 | 12/3/2017 6:34:10 | In 1996 I was in a master's program at a large state university in the San Francisco Bay Area. The professor whose classes I was TA for - who graduated with his BA the year I was born - asked me to go to a movie with him, clearly meaning "on a date." I had to tell him no, I wasn't interested, several times before he accepted it. Fortunately I never had to take a class from him. | Grad student | I was his TA for several classes | Regional Teaching College | I didn't even consider reporting it. | None | None | n/a | n/a | Male | ||||
276 | 12/3/2017 6:41:49 | A series of emails - mostly links to music videos, with suggestive "interpretive aids." He was my boyfriend's professor and I told my boyfriend it made me uncomfortable. My boyfriend spoke with him and then came back to me and told me he had said it was just a joke. | Graduate Student | Guest professor at my university | Elite Institution/Ivy League | German | None, I did not report it formally | None | None | Nothing major, but it used up a lot of mental energy that should have been spent more productively elsewhere. | He was a philosopher and told me that I was wasting my mind on historical research. I had been interested in philosophical questions, but threw myself into very historical research after that. | Male | |||
277 | 12/3/2017 6:43:08 | On the day of his oral examination defense, shortly after completing it, one of my graduate students (who happens to be about 20 years older than I and a head taller) grabbed my hand, planted a minutes-long kiss on the back of it, and held it to his cheek all while I was trying to pull it back. He looked into my eyes and would not let me go despite my stunned attempts to withdraw. When he finally did let go he said "Give me a call sometime. Make an old man happy." | Assistant professor, member of his examination committee | My graduate student | Regional Teaching College | History | I was informed that I should tell my dean. My chair has been supportive and he said that I ought to notify the dean, but the student lives and works five states away, was leaving our state that night, and is likely not going to return. He also is graduating, and the school won't strip away his degree or sanction him. So why say anything and expose myself to additional stressors? If it won't make any difference...? I honestly continue to grapple with this question. The event was only a few weeks ago. I know I should tell the dean just to have it on record in case....and yet. | N/a | At the moment, none | It has shaken me. At the moment it put me in a state of shock, my brain at war with itself, at one and the same time internally screaming that he had to let go let go let go and yet also stunned and thinking "is this really happening"...I couldn't do anything except tug uselessly on my hand trying to get free. And this happened in full view of the department front desk (though I think my body shielded clear line of sight, and I doubt anyone was paying attention--and it all was over in moments though it seemed like hours), in my professional workspace... It seems like such a minor thing on the face of it, but it doesn't FEEL minor. | Time will tell | Male | |||
278 | 12/3/2017 6:50:14 | A guest professor sent a dirty poem he had written to numerous female scholars at my institution (both grad and faculty) - not to me. One of the graduate students was horrified and told me about it. My institution has obligatory harassment reporting, so I passed it on to an ombudsperson, along with the email which the grad student had forwarded to me. The institution launched an investigation, which angered the faculty (who said it was just his sense of humor) and the chair of the program hosting him called all of the grad students together to talk to them about it. They revealed that I was the person who had reported it. The institution responded to the whole mess by making everyone in that program go through mandatory harassment training the following year - but since the harasser was a guest professor he did not go through it. He returned to campus AGAIN the following year and someone had told him that I was the person who reported it. He cornered me in the stacks of the library and asked for my forgiveness, weeping outright about how "forgiveness is such a beautiful thing" and (irrelevantly) telling me all about how his father was a cruel man who had interrogated Nazis. I reported this incident, as well, HE went through the harassment training and after he left campus that semester, one of the deans assured me he would never be coming back. | Assistant Professor (tenure-track) | Senior Guest Professor | Other R1 | Medieval Studies | Mandatory sexual harassment workshop | Black-listed from returning to this institution as a guest professor | Hopefully none. I still have not yet gone up for tenure, but I do not expect retaliation. | I think none - except just being really angry at my senior colleagues for a long time | None | Male | |||
279 | 12/3/2017 6:56:17 | While a graduate student I was invited to an after hours worksession with a mentor. After completing that evening's goals she offered me a beer and I accepted. She stepped out of the study and instead of returning with a drink she walked in completely nude. She asked my what I though and asked me to give her a "Dutch Rudder" she forced me to manipulate her forearm while she was gripping her erect penis. After completion I stepped out of the the study to clean up and snuck out the door. Every meeting after was awkward and nothing was ever mentioned. I have share the experience privatly with a few members of the institution without much support. | Graduate Student | Associate Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Gender Studies | n/a | n/a | There have been rummors amongst our small community that I am transphobic and even a TERF. | Anguish over rummors and accuations about me and not the perpetrator | Thinking about seeking my doctoral studies at another institution. | Female | |||
280 | 12/3/2017 7:03:17 | Unwanted sexual advances, persistent inappropriate emails, repeated attempts to ask me out/ask me about my love life. | Undergraduate (freshman) | Instructor/Non tenured Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | *** | n/a | n/a | Although I am pursuing a career in academia, I continue to be wary of male mentors. | Anxiety, specifically regarding male authority | Male | ||||
281 | 12/3/2017 7:05:30 | 1989. The professor, who was directing my senior thesis, called me into his office and told me stories of his friends sexual exploits, told me I was “pure” and “sensitive,” showed up at my apartment with a case of beer, reminded me that he was grading my senior thesis, workshopped my story when I wasn’t present in workshop, told me that when he arrived he received a “list” of students to pay attention to and that I was on this list, had a poster for Playboy’s fiction contest on his door and pointed to it suggestively and said, “You should submit.” A lot of other flirtatious passive-aggressive stuff happened that I no longer remember. He was very confident in his “mentoring” of me. | Senior undergraduate | Visiting professor | R2 | A New England state school | Fiction writer and adjunct professor | Not reported | None. He is tenured at another institution. | When I applied to grad school I would only work with a female professor on my thesis. No real, measurable impact. Emotional impact: different story. | Came to expect this kind of harassment from male professors and male writers. So I learned complex humor and deflect practices to keep everyone at bay. Result? Exhaustion. | I only applied to grad school with tenured female fiction writers on faculty. I am a feminist. I have never wanted to pursue a full faculty position because it didn’t really seem like that progressive of a place when it came to freedom and safety. | Male | ||
282 | 12/3/2017 7:18:15 | Too many times from too many different people to list here. But the most egregious was when my advisor grabbed my hand, placed it on his penis, and said he wanted to "fuck my brains out." | PhD student | Advisor | Other R1 | social science | I didn't report it. | I didn't report it. | My advisor became openly hostile to me because I declined his advances. I did not change advisors because I knew my career would suffer because I would be blamed and my intellectual contributions invalidated because of this incident. | One-year of therapy; on-going rage. | I've relied on great colleagues to help me finish my PhD (none of them know the truth). I am determined to continue to succeed in academia and one-day I hope I will be in a position where I can speak out against this person. | Thanks for doing this. | Male | ||
283 | 12/3/2017 7:24:53 | One student harassed another and then blackmailed him. Both were gay males | Faculty member | Students in the same department | Other R1 | Humanities | Hearings | Left the university | NA | NA | Student who was harassed left the university | Male | |||
284 | 12/3/2017 7:26:22 | A trusted mentor/professor came on to me when we were in his car after our weekly lunch meeting. He told me that he had had feelings for me since my first semester in college (when I was 17, by the way). I was doing an independent study with him over the summer and had to continue meeting one-on-one with him, or else I would not have graduated on time. Leading up to the incident in his car there had been rumors about him being involved with a student who was older than me, but I had ignored those rumors. I now assume there was some truth to them, at least on his part. I found out years later that, after I had graduated, he kissed another (third) student against her will. | Undergraduate (3rd year) | Tenured professor/mentor | Small Liberal Arts College | History | I did not report it. It was a very small department in a small college and I needed him as a reference for graduate school. | I had to take one of his classes the following semester (it was required for me to graduate), and the stress of being around him resulted in me drinking regularly before class and performing poorly, which hurt my GPA and prevented me from being valedictorian of my class. | While I was disturbed by the incident when it happened, it took years for me to fully grasp the impact that it had on my mental health. I still struggle to trust men who are in positions of authority over me and I don't like to be alone with them. Prior to the incident, I had spent many hours alone with this professor discussing our lives, including my struggles with depression and anxiety. He had been a great source of comfort and advice, and his sexual/romantic advances put a taint on that entire relationship and made me feel that he had taken advantage of my trust. | Male | |||||
285 | 12/3/2017 7:30:33 | Students told me that a professor went on an extended rant about the threat of homosexuality in their Bible as Literature course, telling students (including LGBTQ students) that they would feel differently about the issue when they had to keep their children from "turning gay." He had previously made insulting comments about how disgusting fat women are. It emerged that this same professor had been so irritated by the proposal of a program in Women's and Gender Studies years early that he had put together a satirical proposal for a "Fat People Studies" and submitted it to the university. Note that he did not intend this as a genuine contribution to the field of what we now call Fat Studies. He made it clear that it was meant to be an *equally ridiculous* proposal to the one moving forward as WGS. When other senior faculty were asked about these incidents, they replied, morosely, that this is just the way this professor is. | Graduate Student | Full tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale University | English | None | None | To me? None. The undergraduates in the class were quite disturbed. | See above. | See above. | Male | ||
286 | 12/3/2017 8:03:35 | I (having just defended my dissertation) was at an academic conference, on a boat canal tour (this was in upstate NY), quite literally standing by the railing, watching the scenery and minding my own business. He (tenured, MAJOR figure in my field) started talking to me about professional field-related stuff. But then he somehow maneuvered me into a corner of this boat, isolated from the rest of the tour group. While continuing to hold a professional conversation -- in fact, to top it off, he was giving me job market advice-- he kept getting more and more in my personal space, and I found myself literally holding my heavy bag across my chest just to create some kind of barrier. Then I felt his knee first graze mine at first and then pass across my knee so that it was between my knees. First I froze. I mean, broad daylight, conference event, I honestly for a split second assumed he'd lost his footing (we were on a boat), and this was a total accident on his part. Then I realized he was silent, smirking down at me and his knee was now working on parting my knees. I muttered something along the lines of needing to go, I honestly don't remember what. He leaned away from me with a look of disappointment and said, "I guess you're not interested?" I goggled at him and fled. That night, at the conference reception, he continued following me around trying, repeatedly, to strike up conversations with me, drunk by this point. My male grad school friends, informed of the situation, started repeatedly rescuing me, God bless them, but then he would just sit and, very drunk by this point, stare at me lasciviously from across the space, and I mean, fixedly stare. I have since learned, through sharing my story on the whisper network, that he has harassed numerous young women in academia in this and other manners, but, guess what, he is the first on academic social media to express horror before the latest sexual harassment scandal. At a conference since that fateful one, I overheard him loftily saying that sexual harassers should receive no mercy and be outed publicly for their actions. For the life of me, I don't get it. Is this complete hypocrisy, a total disconnect from reality, or, worse, is his definition of harassment full-on sexual assault, while non-consensually putting your knee between a young woman's knees at a conference event is what, his understanding of casual flirting? Years later, at another event, he came up to me and asked gallantly, "Have we met before?" "Yes," I snapped back, "we have been on the same conference circuit for five years running now." "Oh, yeah," he said, "I seem to remember a really lovely chat with you once ... on a boat, was it?" | I had just defended my dissertation and was about to receive my PhD. | He is a tenured professor, extremely well-known and influential in our small field. | Other Research Agency | I put "other," because this happened at an academic conference. | English (medieval literature) | Didn't report it. | None to my knowledge. | None. | None, save a lasting desire to avoid all interactions with him for life. | None. | This is a WONDERFUL thing you are doing, thank you. | Male | |
287 | 12/3/2017 8:14:59 | Extreme sexual harassment, unwanted touching at a professional conference--happened during a "networking afterparty" where drinking was involved. | Doctoral Candidate | Senior professor at another, related university; in my specific field and very well known and widely respected. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Princeton University | History | None | None | Cut down on going to professional conferences | Compounded previous experience of sexual violence, triggered PTSD, depression, and anxiety. | Decided to go into public history rather than staying in academia, purely because of the gender balance; refuse to be associated with this institution anymore. | Male | ||
288 | 12/3/2017 8:26:28 | Grad student colleague continuously made sexualized remarks and jokes and then would also comment "guess this isn't okay with Title IX, ha ha ha" to show he understood the law and also that he could flaunt it | Graduate student | Fellow graduate student | Small Liberal Arts College | Pile up of exhaustion | Pile up of exhaustion | More careful about whom I socialize with, hard to know impact at this time | Male | ||||||
289 | 12/3/2017 8:26:35 | (1) Professor in a position of administrative authority exposed his penis to me while I was a doctoral student; (2) Tenured faculty member pressured me into a date with him (in my first year on TT) and then turned against me when there was no second date and threatened to ruin my career) (3) gazillions of microagressions and offensive comments not worthy of inclusion here | (1) Doctoral student about to receive my PhD, (2) First-year tenure-track professor | (1) Ex-department chair then serving as DGS; (2) tenured, full prof in my department | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | (1) was Stanford University, (2) my current employer | Renaissance literature / English | None, because I reported neither incident. In the former case I was in the professor's office finishing up some administrative business, only a few days before I was to receive my PhD. So there was little incentive to pursue the matter. In the second case, I would clearly have had more to lose than my harasser were I to take the matter up (it was a borderline case, and I was pretty sure he wouldn't make good on his threats anyway). | Harasser #1 is dead. He was suspended for 2 years from the department after another, more serious incident but then allowed to return and resume his predatory ways. #2 is universally recognized as an asshole by everyone who works with him, and my own tale of woe would add little to his impressive profile as a dickhead. | (1) was extremely traumatic, and cemented my decision to have no more contact with anyone from my graduate program. I carved my own way after that and am glad I never had to rely on anyone from Stanford for my success, since the price was too high. (2) Not much; the guy's an ass and I try not to be alone with him if possible. | In the first case, rather severe, at least intermittently. I drank a lot in my first several years as a professor, engaged in some other risky behaviors, and developed a whopping eating disorder as well as severe anxiety. Most of that is resolved now but I think the anxiety and ED won't ever quite go away. | I treat my doctoral students with the utmost civility and respect and am actively supportive of colleagues and students who have been sexually harassed or assaulted. Once I did this to my professional detriment (angering a dept chair) but I have a much clearer ethical vision now, based on my own experiences. | Male | ||
290 | 12/3/2017 8:28:23 | About six years ago, I noticed that one of my professors treated me somewhat dismissively in comparison to his treatment of other students. I did not know why. I ended up participating in a mixed work and service trip led by this professor because it was in my area of professional interest and I was very eager for the experience. There, in conversation with this professor about how I could improve, he said that what was wrong with me is that I had no vices and encouraged me to attend after-hours social events with other students. I did, and the professor would approach me and whisper to me, out of earshot of others, things like, "Are you turned on right now?" and "I bet you're turned on under those clothes." I consistently shut it down over a series of nights out. Later, the professor "forgot" to write a recommendation for me based on the work I did during that trip. | I was a student | The perpetrator was a professor, the organizer of this work/service trip, and departmental chair | Other Type of School | Law School | I never received a recommendation or any documentation from the work I performed on the trip. | I avoided taking other classes in this professor's department, which was, unfortunately, my field of interest. | I found other opportunities for internships and worked in the field anyway. | Male | |||||
291 | 12/3/2017 8:29:32 | Routine creepy comments by a colleague with whom I had just one innocuous conversation at a party. Subsequently told me (to my complete bafflement) that his wife had threatened to leave him because of me. Reconciled myself to gritting my teeth and getting past him politely whenever I ran into him, which was frequently; he and several cronies took up daily positions outside the campus coffee-shop to leer at female colleagues and students. For me (and for other junior colleagues from whom I've heard similar stories) it was an isolated incident, but I later discovered that this same person had been harrassing grad students, in at least two cases amounting to direct physical assault; the university came to some kind of settlement and he's now back teaching on campus, which is appalling. | Tenure-track assistant professor. | Senior colleague (in another department) | Other R1 | UCLA | Comparative Literature | I didn't report this; grad students who did report physical assault by this same faculty member were eventually offered a settlement by the university. | Nothing serious: the perpetrator is back on campus teaching after a short period of "leave" timed to coincide with a fellowship elsewhere. | None -- but students need to be protected from this creep. | None | None | Male | ||
292 | 12/3/2017 8:44:01 | Male professor made several comments over the course of the semester about women being intellectually inferior. On one of my assignments, his comment was, “Your writing is lively and engaging, too bad you don’t know how to think.” Near the end of the semester, I had to give a presentation for the class. The screen wasn’t lowered completely when I began to speak, so he interrupted me, and told me to fix it. I walked over toward him and had to bend over quite low in my nice presentation dress to yank the screen the rest of the way down. He said, “Oh, I wish I could get women to do that more often.” I didn’t see his gesture, but apparently he was swooning over my rear end in front of the (almost entirely male) rest of the class. | First year doctoral student. | Full professor, very senior. This was also a crucial course; doctoral theory and methods. If I didn’t do well, my status would be jeopardized. | Small Liberal Arts College | English Literature | My fellow students (without talking to me about it, or asking me about my experience) filed a title 9 complaint, but since I was not included in that process I have no idea what came of it. | None, as far as I can tell. | This limited my choices for doctoral committee members, since I felt I needed to avoid members of the department who are his close friends and colleagues. I got the sense that talk of this from his point of view had made its way through the ranks of the department, both among grad student instructors (my colleagues) and faculty (his). | It has been two years, and I still worry that I didn’t learn enough in my methods class to be a top-notch theorist or researcher. I powered through the rest of that course on sheer spite, but it was easily the worst I have ever done in a class in grad school. Other students assured me that he had to give me a good grade so I wouldn’t complain about his lewd behavior. I did get too marks in the course, but he never gave me another word of feedback, so I have no idea of whether my methods and grasp of theory are sound. I constantly doubt myself and waste a lot of time overcompensating and obsessing over theory. It is a particularly wicked form of performance anxiety. | Honestly, I think it has made me dig in all the harder, but it is probably too soon to tell. I won’t finish my dissertation until next year. | Male | |||
293 | 12/3/2017 8:53:01 | A tenured male professor made sexual advancements towards a female PhD student employed as a grader for his undergrad classes during “work meetings” | PhD student | Tenured professor | Other R1 | CUNY Grad Center | Art history | Never reported, rumors are known by the chair but no action could be taken bc there was no official report given by victim | None | Unknown | Victim was distressed | Unknown | Male | ||
294 | 12/3/2017 9:05:51 | I went to office hours and the professor explained his admitted misogyny by describing how when he was a student posing in the nude to earn money, women art students spread their legs to encourage him to embarrass himself by having an erection. | Graduate student | Celebrated full professor with a MacArthur grant ahead of him. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Pennsylvania | Art History | The other faculty believed and protected me. | Verbal reprimand | Thankfully none. | Extreme stress. | Made me an advocate. | Male | ||
295 | 12/3/2017 9:08:13 | Incident 1: At a social function at my first big academic conference (around 2008), a colleague pinned me against a wall and suggested we share a taxi back to our hotels. I told him I didn't think that was a good idea and that it didn't feel safe to me, extricated myself, and found a group of friends. Later, I told a number of people about the incident and found out this person had/has a history of being flirtatious/aggressive sexually with students and colleagues. They also subsequently apologized to me. | I was a PhD student | A professor at another institution who was a close colleague of my supervisor | Other R1 | Geography | None, I didn't report it. | None | I don't feel it had an impact. | Because I later became on better terms with my harasser after he apologized, I have often questioned whether I 'let him off easy'. | Mostly it has made me very conscious of how female academics have to be constantly on guard in all kinds of professional (in my case, semi-professional) settings. I have started to incorporate my experience into my PhD supervision, but to be honest as a new supervisor/mentor would very much like to have more/better resources to support my supervisees. | Male | |||
296 | 12/3/2017 9:35:26 | Too many to detail here (10 years ago). The first incident was when my dept. chair handed me a folded flyer before a meeting. It was an ad for pole-dancing lessons, and the chair told me, "in case this academic thing doesn't work out for you, here's an alternative career option." | First-year tenure-track faculty member. | Department chair. | Other R1 | University of South Florida | Music Theory | I was told by the campus EEO office that, even though it came on the heels of regular comments that threatened my career ("we can deny you tenure for X"), this wasn't as severe as some instances they'd seen, so I should just suck it up and deal. When I went to my associate dean, his involvement forced the chair to apologize. | None. | I was denied tenure—apparently because I complained about this behavior. | Ugh. It was rough for a couple years, bu | I'm no longer in academia. | I left academia after the 2015–16 year because I was going to have to start over and frankly, didn't want to go through another tenure clock and give up the rest of my life again. Your book convinced me that finding another job was possible. Thank you. (Might well email you with some of the identifying details, because the harassment ultimately turned into a lawsuit.) | Male | |
297 | 12/3/2017 9:37:56 | This is not a specific incident, but a professor at my graduate institution was required to keep his office door open at all times because of an incident involving an undergraduate in one of his classes. As a a result, female grad students in our department were encouraged to seek other advisors. His field had only one other faculty member, So she became the inevitable choice for most female grad students (and everyone else that was creeped out by this guy). | PhD candidate | He was a faculty member on my department but not in my field. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | English | All I know is he had to keep the door open. | None that I’m aware of. | None | None | Well, I eventually left my grad program due to other examples of the institution not advocating for its students, and that was one of many demoralizing elements | Male | ||
298 | 12/3/2017 9:39:04 | At a conference a friend of a friend continually put his hands on me (and somewhat aggressively texted things that were unwanted and in the above context, likewise were uncomfortable). I spent an entire reception trying to get/keep his hand off the small of my back, and ate an entire dinner leaning far right out of my seat because he wouldn’t take his hand off of the back of my chair. | Grad student | TT assistant professor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | English lit. | None; no report filed (nor at the time, conference structure for reporting) | He’s a repeat offender, so he’s known to the whisper network, and publicly discussed, but still in his position and working, publishing, etc. | None that I know of, but how precisely do I trace some jackass posturing like he owned me (or at least, like he was sleeping with me) while I dodged his hands and talked to important scholars who knew me? | Sadly I’ve experienced far worse. | None aside from making me angry, and prompting me to call out a very senior scholar who likewise harasses women, to his face, at another conference. | Male | |||
299 | 12/3/2017 9:46:18 | I was a beginning graduate student, having coffee with a more advanced male graduate student. He was helping me understand some technical stuff. Two male professors happened by and joined us. The conversation continued. I didn't contribute much because I was soaking it in, plus imposter syndrome. Then one of the professors turned to me and said, "[name], your eyes are so blue today." Obviously he thought the poor little girl was bored listening to the big men talk, and decided to bring me into the conversation by commenting on my appearance. I was crushed and felt put in my place. | Graduate Student | Professor | Other R1 | Linguistics | Confirming that I didn't belong. | This alone - nothing I can point to. My overall depression and imposter syndrome during graduate school was a crushing weight, though. 30 years later - Full Professor - still have it. But I probably would have no matter what. | Male | ||||||
300 | 12/3/2017 9:47:58 | After a public talk on campus, I offered to drive the male guest speaker and one of the professors who was on my dissertation committee home -- the male professor lived near me and the guest was staying with him. This was after a reception where there had been alcohol. The guest was a little drunk. He repeatedly pressed me and the professor to take him to the local strip club which the professor didn't shut down strongly enough. And then the guest started to grope me while I was driving from the back seat. The male professor who was in the passenger's seat either ignored the behavior or was oblivious. I told my female advisor what had happened the next day. She was appalled and asked my permission to tell the male professor what had happened. When she did, his attitude was "well, that's what she should expect if she continues to do this work." | graduate student | one was a professor on my dissertation committee and the other was a guest speaker for the department | Other R1 | linguistics | none | none | none | Male | |||||
301 | 12/3/2017 9:53:00 | The Department Chair sexually harassed our department's female staff. He would make sexual comments and jokes, also lash out at them verbally and in demanding emails, and then offer monetary compensation (not accepted) for his behavior. One of the staff members kept a record of all instances and all emails. The Department Chair (eventually) admitted to some of these offenses and took paid time off for counseling, and during that time, he had a very nice VAP position at a well-respected institution. All staff members moved/were moved to different departments. The women staffers completely revitalized our department (replacing older employees who were inefficient), and it was a real loss. During the initial emails stating that Dept. Chair had been accused of harassment and placed on administrative leave, we got to see how many male colleagues automatically defended him and claimed that his accusers (at that time, not known to also be our staff) must be lying. The Dept. Chair also kept victimizing himself saying he had no idea what these allegations were about and that he would need to resign. During the investigation, this Chair still attended MLA and conducted hiring interviews. This came to light in January 2014. | I was a graduate student, and a member of the graduate committee that attended all faculty & staff meetings. I was also friends with the staffers as we are all about the same age. | I didn't personally know the Dept. Chair as we have a very large department, and he stepped down from a higher administrative position to become department chair. | Other R1 | English | Administrative leave (one semester? one year?) but also a VAP at another institution before he returned to campus | no longer department chair, still professor in same department | none | anxiety, fear, depression | I have become a more vocal advocate | I'll let this young journalist cover the rest: https://dailynorthwestern.com/2015/05/05/campus/lost-in-transition-northwestern-visiting-professors-past-raises-questions-about-hiring-process/ | Male | ||
302 | 12/3/2017 10:08:15 | Between 2010 and 2014 one of my professors, who became my advisor, systematically undermined my academic progress (saying that I was "journalistic" and not scholarly; telling me I had to go to therapy to work on my psychological problems after I admitted to worrying about not being able to make the transition); and then escalated into overt sexual harassment including multiple emails asking if he could "take you out for drinks," "take you out for dinner," and then telling me he loved me, touching me on my leg, inviting me to Las Vegas. I dropped him from my committee after my qualifying exams, which he was on, after he told me that I almost didn't pass but he "loved" me and had fought for me to pass. In terms of incidents with others, I'm not authorized to talk about them but there were many. | Masters' student applying to the PhD program (he was chair of the committee, btw); then PhD student; then PhD candidate | extremely senior professor; chair of the PhD committee; member of my qualifying exam committee | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Architecture | Title IX investigation -- upheld my allegations --> year long delay and then a Privilege & Tenure hearing for his dismissal | none so far | immeasurable - I switched to an interdisciplinary field and am probably not qualified for any professor jobs. I wanted to be a professor but this experience has left me not wanting to participate in academia. So I'm switching careers. Also I'm an incredible teacher but won't be able to really do that. | pretty significant - I've had tremendous anxiety every time I go to campus, it has affected my marriage. It's been a year and a half since I filed my complaint and the institutional silence has been excruciating. I haven't been able to do my work. | Massive - as mentioned, will no longer pursue a career in academia. However, I'm also more motivated now to pursue public activism - running for office, for instance. I have learned so much from learning how to stand up and fight for myself and especially for other women. I have chosen to use this experience to teach me skills that I never would have gained otherwise. And it is also profoundly isolating. | Male | ||
303 | 12/3/2017 10:13:36 | Professor made suggestive remarks (would you like to eat my nuts? while offering me some snacks) during a small two person class held on a weekend - meaning campus was empty. He then told me via email that he would only discuss my grade if I came to talk to him alone. | Masters Student | Tenured professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Communicaiton | I filed a complaint but since he didn't touch me, there was no other recourse and the school could not do anything else to him. He was a known problem in the department but because he was tenured they were unable to do much beyond limiting his teaching responsibilities and interactions with students. | None that I am aware of. | Minimal - I was fortunate to have the backing and support of my boss, advisers, and department chair as well as the other other male student in the class who had noted the behavior and corroborated my report. | It was detrimental to my mental health - I kept wondering what he'd done to other students who were less well known and liked within the program. (Particularly international students who didn't speak English as their first language.) It made me extremely wary as I completed my MA and went on to my PhD. | It made me angry and drove me to get involved with leadership roles in my PhD program where I fought to have information about what to do in similar situations available via our program website. This lead to me being the only woman in the room trying to convince the steering committee for my program to implement these changes. I was ignored. It was very discouraging. | Male | |||
304 | 12/3/2017 10:16:05 | A professor who was directing me in a play on a few occasions groped my chest (I am a male, for clarification) and made uncomfortable comments about my desirability despite my status as a heterosexual. | Grad student who was in a play. | Professor; not returning in the fall. | Other R1 | Theatre | None. | Thankfully none | I sadly swallowed it and accepted this as a thing to be done | I was precarious to begin with, probably did not help | I largely have strayed away from acting since...in fact I haven't acted with many male directors since. | I'm a dude, so I'm a minority in this respect (this shit happens to women far more often tragically). But it sucked. | Male | ||
305 | 12/3/2017 10:24:28 | Unwelcome sexual advances/hitting on me. I was the only woman in the course. I was married and visibly wearing a wedding ring. | Graduate student | Professor of an elective course I was taking | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Physical Sciences | I did not report it to the University. I told a classmate. | I was worried about how I would do in the course after I turned down his advances, because I had an A at that point. He acted like it never happened. I earned an A in the course. I avoided taking any other classes with him, and advised fellow women students to do the same. | It was distressing, but did not derail me. This person did not have much power over my graduate program, and did not repeat his advances after I turned him down. | Male | |||||
306 | 12/3/2017 10:28:50 | A Fellow of the (Oxbridge) college where I was doing my MPhil kept asking my boyfriend if he would share me, if he could have me if we ever broke up, etc. He also invented a research project, promised to pay me as his research assistant, and came up with a plan to take me with him to Heidelberg to look at manuscript collections despite the fact that the project had absolutely nothing to do with his own research area. | graduate student | Fellow (of a different subject in the same Oxbridge college), mo direct supervision or authority over me | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Cambridge University | English | Previously, he'd been stripped of all (undergraduate) teaching responsibilities because he'd pretended to be an MI6 recruiter in order to pressure undergraduate men to have private tutorials with him. He retained his status as a Fellow. | None | None | None, only because I've experienced far worse sexual abuse /outside/ of the academy, and that's the focus of my mental health problems | I'm reluctant to work with men or trust male mentors when they say they want to help me | Male | ||
307 | 12/3/2017 10:59:57 | My colleague arrived at the door of my office and when I said hello and asked him what I could do for him he replied I want you to (have sex) with (another colleague). I didn't answer, just looked at him in shock. He laughed and was clearly waiting for me to laugh with him. I wasn't sure what to do or say, and in retrospect I'm glad I didn't laugh along with him because then he could say he was just joking and I thought it was funny too. Another colleague overheard it and didn't say anything supportive, which I kind of understand. We were both intimidated. | untenured | tenured, full professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Social Sciences | Fearing retribution (I'd just arrived) I didn't report it. | I was worried about retribution-- him doing something retaliatory, preemptively, out of fear that I would report him. This fear stayed with me for a long time, until he left the institution. | I was concerned about his power at the institution and that if I left or reported him I'd be seen as 'a problem child' and not reappointed or, if I left, being seen as damaged goods for leaving a job after only 1 year. | Male | |||||
308 | 12/3/2017 11:01:48 | In the classroom, professor guilty of sexual misconduct with graduate students in the past stared unabashedly at my breasts during lecture, made inappropriate comments about sexual scenarios throughout the course of the semester | 1st year master's student | course instructor, tenured professor (had previously been on suspension but returned to the department the same year I joined) | Other R1 | University of Minnesota | Communications Studies | not reported/none | placed on leave for past incidences but returned to the department and still in tenured position | Male | |||||
309 | 12/3/2017 11:04:58 | My advisor (who was also the graduate program director) was notorious for staring at women's breasts. There was no way to hide this trait. He did it seemingly unabashedly, most often in personal meetings. | Graduate student | Graduate advisor and graduate program director | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Davis | Political Science | After someone finally complained, there was some sort of informal "conversation" and he seemed to be reformed for a time. | none | Hard to say. Probably negligible, although I'm sure it led partly to my feeling like academia wasn't necessarily the right professional home for me. | None at the time. Now I kick myself for actually defending him, and for excusing his behavior. | Very small piece in a much larger bundle of things the ultimately led to my leaving academia. | Male | ||
310 | 12/3/2017 11:12:41 | It was my first day at work at Chapman College (now Chapman University), in 1994, as a TT professor with a shiny new degree in gender history. At that time there were no other tenured or tenure-track women in my department but there were two women in the Social Sciences division. Both of them took me aside, separately, to warn me that I should never ever say anything about professors dating students because our dean had just divorced his first wife to marry the undergraduate he had been sleeping with. One defended this by saying that he had waited until the undergraduate had earned her degree before marrying her. I went back on the job market immediately. | Assistant prof. | Senior faculty, upper administration - all people with the ability to weigh in on my tenure file if I had stayed that long. | Regional Teaching College | Chapman College (now Chapman University) | History | Encouraged it. "It's great as long as they get married" was the policy. | They remained dean for as long as I was still at the college. Don't know what happened after that. | Encouraged me to go on to better things faster than I would have otherwise | More broadly, the impact of being Jewish, queer, feminist, untenured and female at Chapman probably led to a life-threatening depression. I left and it got better. | It turned out that sexual harassment was not limited to Christian regional teaching colleges, so that was saddening, and I could tell five or six equally bad stories from earlier and later in my career. My mental health remains robust, though, as long as I remember to use an intersectional feminist analysis to understand the crap that's going on around me. And my career is doing fine. | Obviously this is not science; it's more like consciousness-raising. Which is great! Thanks to all who speak here and elsewhere. | Male | |
311 | 12/3/2017 11:12:52 | As a second year undergrad in 1987,I had a hard time making it to my Brit Lit I class at 8 am. On one of the rare occasions that I did make it, the professor stopped me, wrapped his hand around my upper arm with his fingers pressed into my breast and spoke quietly “there are more enjoyable ways to pass this class” | Undergrad | Tenured full professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Although I was so shocked and confused I didn’t report it, he was later fired for trying to press an assistant professor into sleeping with him in exchange for his yes vote on her tenure. | I am always wary when senior men make offers to junior women, regardless of how innocuous they may be | For a long time, I thought I had done something wrong. I stopped bathing for a while, and nearly flunked out | I became a professor in part to protect young women from this behavior | Male | |||||
312 | 12/3/2017 11:17:09 | I was an early graduate student at the same institution where I'd gotten my undergraduate degree. A professor I'd taken a class with in another department started messaging me on LinkedIn, A LOT. I learned through conversations with students in that department that he was known to continuously make women uncomfortable, that it was rumored he was sleeping with his international graduate students (he specifically went to China regularly to recruit international graduate students). | Early graduate student. | Tenured full professor, not in my department, but I'd known him as an undergraduate student. | Other R1 | None, I never reported anything | None | Avoid that department at all costs | Not sure how much it contributed to, but certainly didn't alleviate any of my already existing mental health issues. | The more advanced graduate students I talked to about this were pretty disturbed that his behavior had trickled down to people who he had known as undergraduates. I wasn't an undergrad at the time, but right after it was clear online that I was a graduate student, it started. | Male | ||||
313 | 12/3/2017 11:17:58 | told I should let perp tie me up and pleasure me so I wouldn't be such a bitch. Also, separately, another individual" "you should change your personality", as a woman, people will like you better. | full professor | full professor | Regional Teaching College | biology | "he was kidding" (he wasn't). "he was drunk" (he wasn't). Nothing. | none | undermining of my confidence | reversion to major depressive episode. | flattening | Non-Binary | |||
314 | 12/3/2017 11:20:39 | I walked into the department office one morning, when a senior faculty member, a white man in his 70s, approached me to tell me that I "pronounce" my own name wrong, that no culture or language anywhere would spell it that way and pronounce it that way. When I tried to deflect it with a joke, he began to list all the women in the world who have my name and spell it differently and then proceeded to tell me of a female British journalist from the 60s who was, as he put it, "known for her backside." and then he said "So, when I see you, I just think of her and the way the camera always followed her from behind." This was the same faculty member who said of another female colleague of ours who was applying for a tenure-track position "I don't think we should hire her, she doesn't smile enough." | I was a NT-FT faculty member and WPA. | He was a senior faculty member with full tenure. | R2 | Writing Studies (Composition) | I spoke with a fellow female colleague who was an associate dean at the time. She said to me, "Oh, he doesn't really mean it. He used to be much worse. He treated me much worse while I was trying to get tenure here, all of the men did it, but it's just the way they are." I didn't even consider reporting it after speaking to her. | None | None. | Hard to say. It was pretty disappointing and made me really angry. | It definitely made me believe the academy will offer little support for protesting unfair treatment in these types of situations. It makes me want to avoid any department with literature faculty in it if they are older, white men. | Male | |||
315 | 12/3/2017 11:22:50 | My friend's ex-boyfriend (a junior academic at the time, while my friend was a grad student) asked her advisor to disinvite her from a conference where both would attend because the ex-boyfriend would be uncomfortable. | Grad student | Junior academic at ab different institution | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Politics | Advisor initially disinvited my friend. However, a junior colleague of the advisor called out the injustice and he reversed the decision | None | None | Male | |||||
316 | 12/3/2017 11:28:18 | Professor removed everyone from an upper-level graduate seminar but me by saying they didn't meet prereqs—whereas I had essentially no choice but to take the course in order to meet graduation requirements. So it was a class of one, although it probably should have been canceled per university regulations. It was awkward if mostly OK—until he decided that we needed to spend a session studying erotic art together, even though it was only tangential to the main subject of the seminar (it was not an art class and he was not an art professor). Usually we sat opposite each other in the seminar room or he lectured from the front (!), but this time he sat right next to me with art books and even pointed out the penises in the images. ("Oh, I have the non-censored version of that painting right here...") | 2nd-year PhD student | Tenured professor in my department (now emeritus) | Other R1 | Not reported | Afterward, I was so upset that I curled up in the fetal position on the floor in the grad student office and another student had to calm me down. I had nightmares about the prof for awhile afterward. And yet, I still question whether I should have been upset by it or not. I didn't report him. | Male | |||||||
317 | 12/3/2017 11:31:27 | You mean apart from the systemic devaluing of scholarly research on women's work and women's experience (my field) in the Ivy League (where I trained and spent the crucial early years of my career)? Apart from the saddling of women with almost ALL administrative service responsibilities as well as real emotional labor on behalf of students and colleagues, all the time? Apart from those things, I was propositioned, groped, and offered quid pro quos from 3 different distinguished professors in my field on many occasions. Five years ago, I left academia for good. Enough is enough. At least in the corporate world reporting structures exist, and sometimes they even work the way they are supposed to. | graduate student, assistant professor | all full professors | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale, Barnard/Columbia | Theater | none; I was denied tenure | none | I have abandoned academia | depression, anxiety | I have left my field of research. | Male | ||
318 | 12/3/2017 11:35:27 | The most egregious is when I was repeatedly asked out by a professor with whom I was doing a directed study (one-to-one reading seminar). I was a 1st year PhD student. He was recently divorced. He ended up showing up at a party I was at, held at another faculty member's house, and followed me around all night. Creepy as hell even after I said no. And no. And no. But the power dynamic was obvious. Other incidents were less obvious. There was a male faculty member well known in the department who only invited men to speak in class. He held a boys-only basketball game regularly, as well as cigar nights at his house. No women were ever invited. He made sexist remarks in class, usually about women's less-than ability in a historical or contemporary context. He was also known for putting his arm around women-grad student's shoulders or putting his hand on their backs. I saw that myself. And, if my peers are to be believed, no women ever got an A in any of his classes. I don't know if that's true or not, but its plausible. | MA and later, a PhD student in the humanities | Full, tenured professors | Other R1 | History | None. I don't know if anyone ever said a word, even though we all knew what was happening. | Zero | Discouraged me from staying in the academy, among other issues. | At the time, stressful and incredibly awkward. | Ultimately I left the academy post-PhD for other reasons, but the sexist shit didn't help. | Male | |||
319 | 12/3/2017 11:39:45 | Someone grabbed my butt, in my lab, while I was trying to show them how to run a Western blot. So, I deliberately spilled Coomassie stain on the crotch of their pants. | graduate student | medical doctor collaborating with my thesis advisor on a project (so, superior to me) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine | Neurobiology | None, because I did not report it. | None, because I did not report it. But the rest of my lab all knew, and he never tried that shit around anyone else in my lab. | None, because I did not report it and he was too embarrassed to complain about his ruined Dockers. | None, because I'm used to it outside the academy. | None, because I'm used to it outside the academy. | This is only one of several untoward incidents that happened during my graduate and postdoctoral training. Even with these things factored in, I consider Pitt's neuroscience programs to be, on the whole, pretty friendly towards female trainees. This says more about our society than it says about Pitt. | Male | |
320 | 12/3/2017 11:45:36 | Middle-aged male graduate student harassed me and my best friend (also male). The harrasser assumed there was a sexual relationship between me and my friend. He asked my friend about what I wore, what we did together, and other, even more intimate questions with a sexual theme. The harasser also ogled me repeatedly, kneeling or sitting in positions where he could get a good look at my body. | First-year MA student | 2nd or 3rd year ABD student | Other R1 | Big R1 in the West | Humanities | Department chair apologized profusely to me for harasser’s behavior and forced harasser to send me a written apology (which was vague and not at all remorseful) | None | None; however, I am now especially wary of male colleagues who appear too friendly. | At the time I felt angry and weak. The harassment temporarily affected my friendship with my best friend. | None. | I’m now an assistant professor at an R-1. I warn my students about harassment, sexual assault, inappropriate relationships between students and faculty/staff because of my experiences. | Male | |
321 | 12/3/2017 11:47:41 | Campus | Assistant Professor | One was a senior colleague; the other was a staff person in computer services | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Sociology | none | none | none that were obvious | incredibly stressful | none | Male | |||
322 | 12/3/2017 11:49:53 | A male professor had made highly sexualised comments to a female friend and colleague (like me, junior). When I tried to avoid him at an outreach event by saying I didn't need help, he approached me later and grabbed me by the arm, pulling me towards him and asking what I meant. I had to wrench my wrist out of his hand. It is widely known in the department that he's "creepy" but as far as I know has never done anything to trigger disciplinary action. | Postdoc | Professor in my department | Other R1 | Research intensive UK university | I didn't feel like this would be considered sufficiently serious if I reported it and didn't want to get a reputation for making trouble; I was on a fixed term postdoc contract. He's been a senior member of the department for many years and is friends with the other professors. I don't feel it's my place to report his comments to my colleague. I feel I should have done. | He's doing just fine. | It's made me realise how important it is to discuss harassment openly with my own students. I wish I didn't have to. | Intimidating working atmosphere, lack of trust in senior department members, active avoidance of situations where he'd be. | I wouldn't work at that university again if he were still a member of the department. | Male | |||
323 | 12/3/2017 11:54:36 | Campus - my senior colleague (a full professor) was continually remarking about my appearance, my style of dress, my weight. He sent quasi-pornographic, clearly inappropriate videos to myself and other people in the department and then would ask us to watch them while he was present. There were rumors that the AA would no longer let him work unsupervised with female office assistants (all of whom were undergraduate). I remember on various occasions he would touch me in weird places - my collar bone, my ankle. It was not overtly sexual, but creepy. Some of my senior female colleagues would tell him to stop commenting about my physical appearance and he would say that he would and then would come and make comments to me and add in a hushed whisper: "But don't tell so and so because they think that I am harassing you." I was in my second year as an assistant faculty member. He had been a full professor for at least ten. The computer services person started flirting with me over email. I knew him, because I had also taught a fitness class and he was in it. I didn't think anything of it. It eventually escalated to where he was sending me pornographic photos - not of himself, but of women. It was all pitched as us being friends, etc. As it turns out this was a pattern that he had with many women on campus - mostly other staff. To my knowledge I was the only faculty person. I have spent years dodging this man on campus; yet every time he sees me he says hello. And I very rarely go into the campus computer store without making sure that he's not there. | Assistant Professor | One was a senior colleague; the other was a staff person in computer services | none | none | none that were obvious | incredibly stressful | none | ||||||
324 | 12/3/2017 11:56:24 | [Redacted] | [Redacted] | [Redacted] | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | [Redacted]. | Art History. | None. | None. | Caused me to not consider applying for further study until these past few months--in a different but related discipline, and only with majority-female potential advisors. | Loss of confidence, shame, embarrassment. This also coincided with a sexual assault by a close friend, so 2016 was essentially an entire year lost to me in terms of my career, education, and growth. | [Redacted] | Thanks for making this and for being a platform for discussing these issues, especially for women in academia, and especially for us young women in academia. | Male | |
325 | 12/3/2017 11:56:45 | From day one of being hired, I was pursued sexually by my department chair. I was 30, he was 55. He would openly announce his attraction to me in front of students and colleagues. He would openly in front of others express his love for me, describing that he felt about me the same love and attraction as he did for his wife when he first met her. Seeing me, even from afar, would lead to his coming my way to hug me, compliment my looks, my attire, my smile. He would refer to me as his very own Greek goddess. He would call me to meetings in his office to tell me his personal problems and seek my care of him, which when I did not give, made me pursue me all the more fiercely. He declared he needed to be a student in my class to learn from me, and attended every class session for my first semester. He would challenge most everything I said in class. After class, he would stand with his groin in my face as I sat in a deskchair talking with students after class. He would block me from getting out of the chair, so that he could keep his dick close to my mouth. One time as I was bending over to pick up my bag, he ran to the front of the room to put his dick in my face so that when I stood up, my face made contact with his entire crotch. I reported each incident to colleagues and my Dean. I was told to ignore him, as he is mentally ill. I was told he is harmless and that I should laugh it off. I was told that nothing he did was really going to harm my professional development because I was so smart and capable of rising above. When I continued to demand an end to his contact with me, and secured a lawyer, the institution finally put in writing that he is not to be my department chair any more, that he is to stop attending my class, that he is to have no contact with me, that he is not to address me. All this triggered his fury and his behavior became dangerous. He announced to students that he was divorcing me, and posted a sign on his door that because of my hostility towards him, and University invasiveness, that his liberties are being taken away. Students would laugh and joke about it in front of me. They would tease me to take him back because he was so brokenhearted. They reported he would take up regular class time describing his anger towards me as the divorce proceeded. He made regular derogatory comments about me and anything I contributed as an idea during faculty meetings. He wrote a private letter for my tenure file that was later described to me by members of the t & p committee as pages long, filled with hateful descriptions of my incompetence, and that "couldn't have been crazier if it had been written in crayon." Private letters were eliminated from tenure review processes shortly after this episode. The harassment lasted a total of six years, until he was took an early retirement option. Some of my colleagues to this day who supported him are hostile to me for being so cruel to their "kindly colleague" who "suffered from mental illness." This was 18 years ago. | assistant professor | associate professor, department chair | Elite Institution/Ivy League | rhetoric | assurances that they would stop the behavior, none of their attempts were successful, they shared with me regular exclamations of frustration that their attempts to stop the behavior were blocked by his claims of mental illness and protections of the ADA, the institution did nothing to prevent his participation in my tenure review, despite my years long appeal for them to do so, in the end my legal bills were too much and my exhaustion overwhelming. I had to allow his participation in my tenure review. Knowing he had access to all my private information, letters of research, teaching, and service evaluation I would never be able to read, that his voice was part of private deliberations about me, etc. had a devastating effect on my mental health. I did not have a nervous breakdown, but that is only because of my twice a week therapy and years of heavy medication to get myself through the experience. I had no support from colleagues. All knew it was happening, some sided with him, others just avoided contact with me, as if I were diseased. I was extremely isolated in my institution. | none | I thrived. I refused to allow his abuse to harm my career. I worked 80-90 hours a week for most of my career here (still at same institution), and still do as this is all I know, causing me a life of isolation and loneliness for all I do is work. I'm successful, having written several books, many leading articles, becoming president of my academic association, being honored with teaching awards, distinguished research and service awards, achieving full professorship, but my success has come at tremendous cost to my overall quality of life and health. I was never able to learn how to develop healthy work patterns, for nothing short of phenomenal excellence was going to protect me. | I am furious to this day and have been in therapy with the same therapist for 17 years now. Those 6 years of harassment shaped the course of my life and my mental health. | I am a work-a-holic, and once I got tenure I became a fierce protector and defender of others in the academy who are subject to sexual harassment. I do not allow anyone to feel isolated and alone as I did. Every new woman who enters our University is welcomed by me, and I open up channels for conversation as they navigate their experiences. Each new colleague I mentor in this way eventually shares her own story of harassment with me. Not one has been free of it. NOT ONE. Some have left the institution because of it. Some have left academia because of it. Some have stayed and join the fight with me. I fight every day, and this fight attitude has shaped my personality, my mental health, and my physical health. I am plagued by exhaustion and fury. I am quite successful at fighting though, so I continue, and I try to learn how to gather around me the life resources I need to support my work on behalf of others. I suffer now from a malady of health concerns, including a weak heart valve/murmur, chronic anxiety, and compromised digestion (I cannot eat most foods, and live mainly on a liquid diet). I am learning to heal, using acupuncture, yoga, meditation, in combination with therapy. I'm not sure I'll ever be free from this plague. | For so many years, I had to suffer this all in isolation. Being able to share now, and have a community of outspokenness about our shared experiences feels healing and hopeful. Thank you. | Male | ||
326 | 12/3/2017 11:59:39 | I received an inappropriate series of emails from a senior college in my department. | untenured Assistant Professor | Emeritus Professor in my department. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Political Science | I reported to my chair, who reported to the university's EEOC office. This happened twice, as the harassment started again a year after the initial reprimand. | He was banned from the department for several months after the second reported incident. My chair also took away his office. He's now allowed back on campus and is around all the time, even though he has nowhere to go. | The initial report was filed two weeks before my tenure case came before my department. While my harasser was not a voting member of the department, I later learned that his two closest colleagues (who worked in a suite with him) were the only two 'no' votes on my tenure case and one of them packed the meeting notes with terrible comments on my work and research. I was ultimately denied tenure. While I can't prove a connection, I have my suspicions. When I went back on the market, at one of my job interviews, the chair of the department let me know that my harasser was one of his closest friends in the discipline. Unsurprisingly, I didn't get that job. | It was extremely stressful for me. My chair was supportive and did the right thing, but I struggled at work. When my harasser was allowed back on campus, he would lurk around my office for hours, making it difficult for me to feel like I could leave my door open or even leave my office. Even though my chair kept watch over him and helped as much as he could, I never felt safe. In hindsight, it really aggravates me that I, a professional woman with an excellent research profile and award-winning teaching, had to leave my place of employment. Meanwhile, a retired man (with what I later learned was a history of harassment at multiple institutions) is still free to roam about. | I feel very lucky. I got a new job in a much better department in a better location, and my colleagues behave appropriately here. I know how fortunate I am and I feel so grateful every day for a new opportunity, and so glad that I no longer work at my old department (even though I really had no choice). | Thank you for collecting this data. | Male | ||
327 | 12/3/2017 12:05:00 | Dude professor (assistant director of our speech & debate team) made lewd comments to and about an undergraduate woman on the team. Like, "your dress is too short, i can see your ass. if you pull it down, i can see your tits." "your shirt is showing off too much of your tits." "she's a blow up doll for young college boys". also, general sex jokes at women. also would intimidate women through the silent treatment and emotional manipulation if we didn't do what he wanted. | first year graduate student in an MA program | my direct boss on the speech team, and a professor in my department | Small Liberal Arts College | minnesota state university, mankato | communication studies | title IX complaint was successful & he defriended most women he knew through our department on facebook and avoided us in the hallways. quit working with the team on his own accord. however, still taught graduate courses and worked with women graduate students as TA's. when he was up for promotion to full professor, department chair (man) and head of the committee (man) blocked out the complaint so the rest of the faculty wouldn't know. he was promoted. woman professor and director of the forensics team actively asked students not to report him, by the way. told us to write it down in an email and then delete the email. didn't think it was important. | none. | am wary of men in academia, don't feel like i can trust faculty to express fears or discomfort, don't feel like i can go to administration or even affirmative action. | very bad - having to continue working in the same department as him for 2 more years was awful, as was having to navigate the dynamic with the director of the team who asked us not to file the complaint. i opted to avoid most social functions held by the department. felt anxious on school. sometimes feel strong emotional, almost triggering response, when i see other graduate students interact with him on facebook or post pictures with him. | am now in a PhD program, but I don't trust men or older folks in academia. studying trauma as a space of identification for women. | Male | ||
328 | 12/3/2017 12:07:32 | I was working abroad, and was in the process of applying to graduate programs. On the recommendation of a mentor, I reached out to some scholars in my field who were in the same city and asked for informational interviews. After one such meeting a coffee shop, one scholar and I split a cab because we were headed in the same direction and it would be expensive separately since it was quite far. When we got in he sat in the middle, directly beside me, even though we were the only two in the back of the taxi. He put his hand on mine, and when I pulled it away, he then put it on my knee. I leaned as far as a possible against the window, and when he asked why I was sitting like that I said my back and neck hurt. He offered to give me a neck massage, which I declined politely. He started to nuzzle my neck with his face and asked if a kiss would make it feel better. Again I said no thank you and stared determinedly out the window. Thankfully by this point we arrived at his destination. He paid his portion of the ride and got out. The cab took me home and I didn't leave the house for three days. At first I didn't tell my husband, who I had mentioned repeatedly to the scholar in small talk in the cab in an effort to give him a clearer hint. If my disinterest wasn't enough, I thought maybe I could rely on patriarchal norms and hope that he'd at least respect another man's "claim" on me. I was wrong. The patriarchy always screws you over. Within a week I did tell my husband, who offered what comfort assurances he could from across an ocean. I've since only told 4 other people- 2 of whom I told only AFTER they shared their own harassment experiences by the exact same scholar. | Applying to graduate programs | Well connected scholar in the field I intended to pursue | I was not affiliated w an institution at that time. He was faculty at a large public higher ed institution at the time | History | n/a | n/a | I pretty much stopped trying to network with male researchers in my field when I travel or at conferences. I do not conduct any research in cities he is based in, even if it would be hugely advantageous to my research. I avoid conferences he might be attending. | Mostly intrusive thoughts and nervousness at informal meetings with senior male scholars. Esp any time I am alone in a room with a male professor and the door is closed. | As a woman in academia I am inclined to keep my marital status private because it is no one's business and has no bearing on how I should interact with colleagues. However, since this experience I am much more likely to bring up the existence of my husband in conversations w men in my field in the hopes of waving it like a flag that I am not a potential romantic or sexual target. I shouldn't have to do that to be left alone. | *** | Male | ||
329 | 12/3/2017 12:22:53 | To me: 1975 (approx), forcibly kissed in my professor/mentor's lab; to my students: repeated incidents of a faculty colleague's pinching their rear ends and making dirty jokes, both of which he passed off as "just teasing"--and to one grad student: she was stalked by a fellow student. | In the 70s I was an undergraduate, and a research assistant in the lab; in the years of assaults on my students, I was a tenured professor | the perpetrators were full professors except for the last on my list; he was an MFA student | Other R1 | I attended Brooklyn College of CUNY as an undergrad; I teach at Ohio State | I was a double major in English and Chemistry (this was a chemistry professor); I teach creative writing, mostly at the graduate level | none (unreported). In my case, I had no idea how to report it, and it never occurred to me that I could; in the case of my students, they begged me not to, fearing for their careers--the perpetrator was a well-known poet (and this was before mandatory reporting). The poet has since retired. In the last, most horrifying case, the student who was being talked agonized over whether she wanted to report it. I urged her to but did not force it. She feared for her life. I did, however, intervene to make sure she was never in class with him again and made all of my colleagues aware of what was going on--we all worked to keep her safe. (Coda: she has since written about this, but without naming her harasser. And he has gone on to some considerable success. i have tried without success to make his current institution aware of his past harassment--but no one there seems to have any interest. Perhaps this will change now?) | none | none | anxiety and distress (in all cases), guilt and regret in the final case | Well, I fled that chem lab and never returned. I don't know that I would have continued to pursue chemistry--I rather think not. But certainly it was closed off to me at that moment. (As to the impact of my colleague's harassment of my students, and my student's harassment of another student: I watch them all like a hawk now. And I repeatedly tell my students that they must tell me if anything is amiss. And I am writing about it.) | Male | ||
330 | 12/3/2017 12:24:18 | A Professor in my graduate program kissed me on the cheek at our holiday party and told me several times that my partner was quite attractive, implying a desire to be intimate with us both. He behaved flirtatiously in other instances as well. | Masters Student | He was my advisor on my thesis | Other R1 | CUNY Graduate Center | American Studies | I did not pursue one. I did cease to work with this person. | I did not pursue any. I have no doubt he has behaved in a similar manner with many people. | I have been thinking about this a lot. I simply got the hell out of that situation. I recognize that this isn't an option for everyone and that not every aggressor takes the hint. At the time I was employed by a female professor from my undergraduate institution. She was and is a great mentor of mine. In ways I didn't quite acknowledge at the time, having a strong female role model who actively supported my academic goals allowed me to remove myself from a toxic situation. The job she gave me allowed me to earn money so the extra time it took me to switch advisors and finish my degree was less of a hardship, but I also lived in the knowledge that I could let one potential advocate for my graduate career go and that there was still someone behind me. | I worked in the service industry for many years which and the unfortunate effect of raising my bar for harassment to really be assault, which is to say, it was fairly par for the course after many years of tending bar and cocktail waitressing. I rolled my eyes, complained to one or two friends and moved on. Its a bad sad to be so anesthetized. I was also 27 or 28 and had, as I mention above, other sources of institutional support. I didn't much internalize his objectification. I figured he was a sleaze. I suspect this person could and has done more damage to people in more vulnerable positions than I was in at the time. I regret not saying anything for their sake. | It did delay completion of my masters degree because I had to seek a new advisor. I continued to work with him for awhile after that particular incident but my distrust for him made it hard to overcome natural hurdles in a mentor/mentee relationship. I went on from that Masters program to enter a PhD program at an elite university. This and other incidents in my past have shaped my attitude toward choosing people to partner with. I won't have anything to do with any professors who give off even a whiff of flirtatious energy. I'm just not interested in dealing with it. This can be quite limiting. Even now I am in a position where someone I find potentially questionable in the way he speaks to female colleagues has been promoted to an administrative position in the Research Center that gave me the fellowship I am presently on. Building a relationship with him could really help me as I look for work beyond my funded years, but, even if he is only a little flirty and dismissive of the accomplishments of the women in his field, I can't play along, I can't disguise my contempt, so I just keep away. Avoiding harassment is a fairly unaccounted for way in which women like myself miss out. | Thank you for doing this. | Male | |
331 | 12/3/2017 12:41:28 | During a four-year graduate program, my partner and I were routinely made the victims of sexual gossip. Fellow graduate students spread malicious rumors about our sex lives with the intent of destroying not only our reputations, but any potential of building relationships both inside and outside of our graduate program. One professor also engaged in the spreading of these rumors. My partner and I were harassed verbally and over the department listserv. One professor altered both of our teaching assignments, a choice that she explained stemmed from our relationship status. | Graduate student | Fellow graduate students/professor | Other R1 | University of Alabama | Creative Writing | My partner met privately with the professor who had engaged in spreading rumors and altering our teaching assignment. This professor dismissed my parter's concerns. We also both reached out on numerous occasions to our fellow student harassers, which only seemed to make things worse. | None. | I believe that my partner and I have lost out on certain publishing/grant opportunities while we were enrolled in our graduate program. | Those four years were devastating. Even though we have been out of graduate school for a year and a half, we both regularly discuss our trauma. The anger and sadness associated with this time never truly disappears, especially because many of these harassers have cultivated public personas that suggest they are progressive and accepting people. | I chose not to pursue further graduate education because of my prior experience. I am reticent of working with or engaging with other writers who are openly friends/champions of my harassers. The writing world is a small world. Both my partner and I have tried to write about these experiences, but it is exceedingly difficult. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
332 | 12/3/2017 12:42:46 | Repeated kissing of three women (including myself). This was always in front of other colleagues. No one ever said anything, but the other women and I talked about it. | Assistant Professor | Department chair | R2 | Political Science | I don't trust my colleagues to help or do the right thing any more. I'm angry whenever I think about it, but no one else (aside from the other women) seems to think it's a big problem. | Male | |||||||
333 | 12/3/2017 12:44:09 | A sociologist of sexualities has a known reputation for sexually harassing and assaulting students, especially women who served as his graduate or research assistants. In his graduate level course on sexuality, he frequently made jokes about me and another gay male-presenting grad students in the course (e.g., joking that the two of us engaged in fisting). He once asked me and another gay male-presenting grad student to pose nude for his amateur photography. A woman grad student told me he once forced her against the wall and fingered her under her skirt. Indiana sociology was well aware of his reputation but did nothing, even as women students he had harassed and assaulted dropped out of the PhD program. | PhD student (in his class) | Professor (graduate school) | Other R1 | Indiana University | Sociology | None | None | I learned to stay away from him, though he was the lone expert on sexualities in the program. Instead, I worked with other professors who pushed me away from sexuality research given its marginal status in the discipline. | Ambivalence about the path I was pushed on in absence of other sexualities professors in the department. | Lack of options for support on sexualities meant I ended up doing research that didn't reflect my interests. It's taken me nearly 5 years post PhD to return to sexuality work. | Male | ||
334 | 12/3/2017 12:47:25 | Tutor sexually harassed me | Student | Residential Hall Tutor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Man fired and moved dorm | It was difficult | Male | |||||||
335 | 12/3/2017 12:48:28 | Department head kissed me on the mouth in the hallway. I later heard rumors that colleagues thought we were having an affair, but that was untrue. Apparently he secretly adored me for years. I thought we were just friends. | Untenured assistant professor. | Full professor and Dept head | Other R1 | Univ of Oregon | Sociology | Did not report it. | None | When I became Dept Head I found that every single other member of the Dept, besides me, had been given special sidebar raises by him. For years I earned $15,000-$20,000 less than my male peers, even though I was the only consistent grant getter in the history of the Dept, fully supporting 2-5 graduate students annually for 13 years. | Confusion. Disgust. Appalled. It took me years to figure out that my lack of raises could have been related to rejecting him. Deans and other Dept Heads believe he’s such a great guy and have said he would never harm me or anyone on purpose. | I lack the income to donate to charities and causes I would like to support. Gradually decreased joy in scholarship. | Male | ||
336 | 12/3/2017 12:48:55 | Aggressively hit on (kissed and held tightly against my will despite protests) by a very senior Colleague at a conference | Graduate student | Senior professor in my field at a different institution. Worked as a PI on projects with my advisor. | Other R1 | Geology | Not reported. I told a male grad student friend who said “You really thought HE would want to talk to YOU about your RESEARCH?” Which made me feel responsible for what happened and gullible for letting it happen. Frankly, that was more damaging in the long term than the incident itself. | Nope. Still a big wig | Stopped meeting with people 1 on 1 at conferences despite the full knowledge that this was limiting to my professional growth and opportunities. | Anxiety, sadness, frustration | Difficult to say. This is one instance of many that helped me make the decision to leave academics | Male | |||
337 | 12/3/2017 12:50:41 | A Black woman student was petted by a white faculty member with known and unapologetic racial bias. The professor dug her fingers into the student's hair without her permission, laughing and giddily saying "oh, I should stop" but continuing anyway. She excused her behavior for being on painkillers for her broken leg. | Graduate student | Professor | Other R1 | Indiana University | Sociology | None | None | Minimal | I continued to feel unsafe in the program as a student of color. | Unsure, if any. | Female | ||
338 | 12/3/2017 12:55:08 | Male professor lunged at me just outside the Kalamazoo medievalists' dance; he grabbed me; and tried to kiss me. I dodged him and raced away to find my friends. He tried to apologize the following day. I brushed it off. I shouldn't have, because I know he's gone on to harass others. | Assistant Professor | Professor | Other R1 | Whose? The Professor's? London | English | None | None | None that I can tell | One of many such incidents | Minimal. | Male | ||
339 | 12/3/2017 12:57:51 | I have been harassed countless times. By numerous men. Since I was an undergrad. Multiple Rape attempts while out working in remote field locales. Groping. Crotch grabbing. Unwanted kissing, grabbing, holding, fondling. Attempts at coercion. Inapprpriate physdical proximity. Also unwanted attention. Disrespect of personal boundaries. Unprofessional comments. Sexts. Propositions. Comments about my physique. Oversexualized comments (you're a chest babe). Body shaming (move your fat ass!). Threats against career. Some actions occurred during their inappropriate use of drugs and alcohol (i remained sober). Put-downs and retaliations. | At all levels. Undergrad. Grad student. Post Doc. Prior to tenure. And after tenure too! | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Geosciences | One time I filed EEOC. Investigation found I was sexually harassed. The dude was tenured and nothing happened. He still interacts with undergrads at University of Utah. | Nothing happens. | PTSD. Severe depression. I had to drop projects asnd change directions in my research. I feel that coping with such b.s. has stalled my career progress and success. | It has been profound. I vould not go camping after a harasser came into my tent and tried to rape me. | I know that my $$ and prrogress have suffered. | Male | ||||
340 | 12/3/2017 12:58:30 | In 2014 I volunteered to show a new visiting professor around campus and town. He is a well-known artist in the field that I study, and I was honoured and excited to have the opportunity to spend time with him -- some of which did include social activities. During our time together he complained about how puritan North Americans are in comparison to the liberated Europeans, and made several explicit sexual advances toward me. He laughed them off and retreated, after I repeatedly declined. What bothered me the most was that my tenured and tenure-track male colleagues all knew and warned me about him in advance, and yet none of them spoke out against him coming to our university, and all of them were eager to host him and work with him for the year. | Postdoctoral fellow. | Our status in the university was about the same, but as a well-connected artist in his field, he has more traction than me. | Other R1 | cinema and media studies | his behaviour was known and was not considered harassment by my colleagues, but rather "unfortunate proclivities" | none | no significant impact, other than I stopped applying for jobs in that department | no significant impact | In addition to no longer applying for jobs in that university, I stopped researching and writing about the specific form of media that this artist is involved with. | Male | |||
341 | 12/3/2017 13:01:27 | No, never, and even during grad school, I never heard of such behaviors around me. I find important to report a "negative result" for your study, certain context are exempt form such violence (and I feel really lucky, that I haven't witnessed such behavior). | Grad students | None | Other R1 | Public Health | I assume that it would have serious consequences, but none since no such events happened. | I experienced other form a harassment, and it was bad for self-esteem and productivity, but no sexual violence of any sort. | N/A | None | |||||
342 | 12/3/2017 13:01:54 | When I was an undergraduate, a prof offered me an “A” if I would spend the weekend with him. I had gone to his office hours in order to get ideas for the final paper. | I was a junior in the program. | Full Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Univ of California, Berkeley | Sociology | I tried to report it to the Dept Chair — even set up an appointment — but the words would not come out. I lacked the language. This was in 1972. | None. | None. | I was unable to write the paper at all— totally blocked. I ended up telling a friend, who let me “borrow” a paper he had written. | None. | Male | ||
343 | 12/3/2017 13:03:22 | At dinner after a conference I was introduced by another (female) graduate student to a group of senior men (deans, a senior professors) and a few of their male graduate students. She said “This is X, so and so’s new grad student” and the dean said “I could have guessed that by the bra size” and then they all laughed and high fived. I turned on my heel and walked away before I started crying. I was so humiliated. My friend laughed too but later said it made her uncomfortable but that he “didn’t mean it”. I later told another (male) graduate student who said that maybe I was blowing it out of proportion or being too sensitive. But at a different conference almost 2 years later one of the grad students who had been there that night found me and apologized for not sticking up for me. He said that had always bothered him that he didn’t say anything. Eventually he changed advisors because of that and other similar behavior he witnessed from that man. I felt so vindicated. | New PhD student | Dean of a different school | Other R1 | I rejected working on interesting and potentially career building projects to avoid contact with those men and their students | Worsened my imposter syndrome. Made me question if everyone thought I was there because of my looks rather than my accomplishments. | Male | |||||||
344 | 12/3/2017 13:03:51 | Two incidents while at my current institution: 1) student noted that a guest speaker being used by a fellow faculty member had raped her while she was a minor. Student asked me to inform the faculty member - response was that the faculty member would “consider” not using the guest speaker in the future, but wasn’t promising not to. 2) students reported sexual harassment by male faculty member in my department to the chair - they were told that there was nothing that could be done because there would be retaliation against their grades. | Junior TT faculty | Senior, tenured faculty. | Small Liberal Arts College | Non-renewal of tenure-track contract | Stress/anxiety | I am currently on the market without department support; likely leaving academia. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||||||
345 | 12/3/2017 13:06:34 | First conference as a graduate student: tenured male faculty at another university followed me to my hotel room, refused to leave until my roommate opened door and helped me inside. | Graduate student | Tenured faculty | Other R1 | Criminology | I no longer “network” at conferences in order to avoid male predators | I always worry about my safety at conferences | Male | ||||||
346 | 12/3/2017 13:08:03 | A director of a program I work for saw me looking for a printer in the building and offered the use of his office printer. Even though it didn't feel quite right to me, I went in and brought up the document. He sat in a chair right beside the door, and we continued with the pleasant small talk. I brought up my kids, knowing it was a safe topic as he has kids too. He started his response talking about Saturday morning cartoons, then suddenly started talking about ads for Viagara, and how anyone can get hard anytime they want nowadays. I steered the topic back to cartoons, ignoring the comment, and pushed the topic hard toward kids and my husband until the damned document was finished, at which point I politely thanked him and said I had to run to class. Later, I heard he had been harassing other female grad students, exposing himself to one. | Grad Student and Adjunct, not on fellowship. Getting sections to teach as a contingent instructor depended directly upon maintaining a good relationship with him. | Director of the Program that I was grad student in, and adjunct instructor for | R2 | No | No | I couldn't report it- would lose my position and diss would be blackballed possibly | Due to other charges, he had to step down from his position. | Knowing I am not safe at work , and having someone I could not ask for recommendations or work with on projects | I had to push it aside. My FOO was abusive, so compartmentalizing is something I do incredibly well. Served me well here while I felt sick and shocked but had to act normal and happy. | Made it difficult to network in my department, didn't have certain support for my professional work, and made it difficult to navigate working professionally with his partner, who was also in my department and who I worked more closely with. | Male | ||
347 | 12/3/2017 13:09:02 | Witnessed repeated bad behavior by harasser. History of dating students, making sexual jokes to faculty, and improper conduct with students. Also racist and homophobic behavior. Harasser made remarks defending rape that traumatized colleagues and students. | Senior colleague | Regional Teaching College | PASSHE system | Nothing, until harasser also made violent threats against colleagues. | Male | ||||||||
348 | 12/3/2017 13:12:50 | A professor who takes tall female students to lunch/ kisses them on the cheek and mouth. I knew of this after I shared my story with a friend, who had heard of similar incidents | graduate student | professor/ chair (not on my committee) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | American Studies | n/a | n/a | Opted out of opportunities the professor offered to provide me | feeling uncertain in professional relationships. | n/a | Male | |||
349 | 12/3/2017 13:13:41 | Inappropriate touching, jokes of a sexual nature, explicit or offensive comments about women, etc. Escalating and persistent in nature, with carefully maintained plausible deniability/ "its just a joke" defensiveness. Escalated to overt sexual harassment to graduate and undergrad students. | Grad student (early years) | Grad student (same cohort, significantly older) . | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Princeton | Sociology | 1 year suspension. Finished his PhD a year early anyway. | 1 year suspension. Finished his PhD a year early anyway. | I'll be fine. I set clear and early boundaries with this harasser. He avoided me like the plague after I made clear statements "do not text me. do not touch me." It created an awkward social dynamic and basically imploded the solidarity of my cohort, but I am making professional strides and feel confident in my prospects. | I lost a year of mental space while working through it. I feel radicalized, in a lot of ways but it still is something I think about regularly. I bet he doesn't think about it at all. I hate it all. | I left campus. That is not the only reason, but it contributed to it. I'm working in the field remotely. I lost faith in academia. I do not trust universities to look out for our best interest. I expect better from a sociology department. I feel like I did everything right (reporting, waiting for the process) and it didn't matter. If it didn't matter for me (he's got a tenure track job somewhere now), I don't trust anyone to be safe. I don't want academia any more. | Male | ||
350 | 12/3/2017 13:17:12 | My publisher wouldn’t stop touching me. When I said something to the editor, she said everyone knew he was a lech with young women, so I should keep a table between us. | Post doc. I really needed that book for competing on the job market. So I kept a table between us and did not tell him to fuck off | He controlled all my future prospects, or so I thought. | Other R1 | U of Washington Press. But I turned down a PhD position at Berkeley because the advisor slept with all his female PhD students. | Ecology | Keep a table on between you and him | Ha! None of course | None. | None | None | He was an old fart from a different era, and so frail that I could have knocked him over. So I wasn’t afraid, just sleeved out. And I didn’t blame my female acquisitions editor, who I told, because she needed a job too. But I do blame the very very famous male academic editor, who should have intervened and instead refused to see what was happening. He could have stopped it with no harm to his career, but he did not. | Male | |
351 | 12/3/2017 13:18:08 | In 2013-2015, a grad school classmate responded to my work and the work of two other students with either dismissive profanity or suggestions that I should add "hard-core sex scenes" to the writing. He also announced to the class that he would steal parts of our writing for his own. When he submitted said work to the class for review, the professor did nothing. After I told the professor he was harassing me (one month into my first semester), I was told that he likely wouldn't be anything more than an annoyance, but encouraged to come forward if things escalated. Over semester break, he bullied the other two classmates online, repeatedly cornering one of them in person, and transferred into the only class we were all in when he found out that we weren't going to be in class together. I notified faculty again, this time including the chair of the department, and they told me to contact the Office of Student Conduct, after which I got a no-contact ruling (so my classmate couldn't contact me in any way, even through an intermediary). My other classmates also reported him, but only anonymously. The following semester, that ruling was stayed because we had to have class together. He contacted me again less than a year later. When I told the faculty, they said they couldn't do anything because any complaint had to go through the Office of Student Conduct. It felt like a complete lack of engagement with the problem. If the Office of Student Conduct did anything to reprimand my classmate, it's news to me. | Grad student, lecturer | Classmate | Other R1 | University of Maryland College Park | Creative Writing | There were conflicting responses from the faculty, one of whom was understanding throughout and alerted me as soon as she knew if I would have to have a class with the harasser. Another didn't want to have the student in her classes, regardless of what we wanted. She was forced to have him as a student by the Office of Student Conduct. And a third professor treated me kindly at first, then was increasingly hostile throughout the semester and for the rest of my time in the program. The hostile professor only became hostile after I told him I wasn't planning on leaving the program as a result of my classmate's harassment. | The faculty and Office of Student Conduct refused to disclose any consequences for the harasser. | Graduated a year early to leave the program as soon as possible. With the exception of my thesis chair, I don't feel comfortable contacting any of my program's faculty to request letters of recommendation, which is one of of many requirements when you want to advance/continue working in higher ed. | Felt increasing anger because "intimidation" is part of the legal language used by the Office of Student Conduct when talking about unacceptable behavior and harassment on campus, yet I was frequently referred to a service that was specifically for victims of physical violence. Mental abuse and physical abuse often go hand in hand, but the fact that they had nothing else to offer me was infuriating. | Hiatus from academia. | Male | ||
352 | 12/3/2017 13:20:43 | Part of my undergraduate financial aid was Work Study. I was assigned to be a research assistant to a faculty member. Within weeks he initiated an affair which lasted two years; the job only lasted six months. We met secretly for happy sex 2-3 times per week at another prof’s home. (We were both in low-sex marriages.) When he stopped calling me, I was hurt. I went to his office hours to ask what happened, and he forced me to give him a blow job right there in his office. I never again sought him out. Decades later I heard he had many affairs with undergraduate women in his long career. | I was a senior in college. | I think he was an associate prof at the time. He was also one of the first Black profs at UC Berkeley. I am white. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Univ of California, Berkeley | Sociology | I did not report it. | He retired as a dean or Vice President for undergraduate studies. | Nothing. | Hurt, then gross, disgusted. I did not tell anyone about it for many years. | Nothing. | Male | ||
353 | 12/3/2017 13:21:18 | So many instances to choose from since starting graduate school. A faculty member "jokingly" asked if I had performed a sexual act to get a paper published in a high quality journal./Another faculty member who routinely comments on my outfits and appearance asked me to discuss my dating life and experiences as "an unmarried woman" at my university during a meeting with a prospective graduate student, who was also a woman; both of us were mortified./A faculty member outside of my field whom I barely know makes it a point to touch my arms and back whenever he sees me in a way that has caused me to instinctively recoil or try to escape his notice whenever we are in the same place on campus./Yet another male faculty member told me it was "unbecoming to gloat" when I was attempting to verify a detail that was necessary to have correct lest the department embarrass itself in front of the benefactor of a major lecture series./Senior faculty member and known philanderer repeatedly asked me to get drinks or lunch after I declined and tried to create a professional opportunity so I would feel obligated to spend one-on-one time with him./20 minutes after meeting a guest speaker (a senior faculty member in my field), he told me "You know, even the ugly women in India are beautiful." At the end of the dinner following the guest speaker's presentation, he insisted on giving me "a birthday hug" after I had extended my hand for a handshake. None of the three faculty in attendance intervened./Was the only graduate student in a seminar of 15+ asked to come early to male faculty member's house to set up dinner for our class./Tenured professor who was attending the same summer institute as me repeatedly made insulting and sexually charged comments to me throughout the two week program, alternately indicating condescending to me for identifying as a feminist and implying that he was sexually interested in me./Bonus: Repeatedly disbelieved/dismissed by male and female faculty alike when trying to raise awareness about the level of sexism in our department and field. | Ph.D. student/candidate | My director of graduate studies; a faculty member whose course I was taking; a visiting speaker/faculty member in my field; another faculty member in my field at a prestigious peer program to mine; a mentor. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | I filed a Title IX complaint against the professor who asked if I'd exchanged sexual favors in order to get an article published, but only after the incident was reported to the then-chair of my department, who didn't think that the incident "rose to the level" of action beyond a warning. (I had to interact with the faculty member who made the comment and he had institutional authority over me at the time.) | Removed/stepped down from administrative position he held in the department. I know some kind of disciplinary action was taken, but the Title IX process does not permit me to know exactly what that was. | It took me more than five months to decide to report, during which time I would become extremely angry every time I had to interact with this individual, which was rather frequently because of his then-position in our department. I kept saying to myself "He didn't assault me or proposition me, so why can't I get over this?" His comment tainted my significant professional accomplishment. The memory of the acceptance of my first journal article is now intertwined with a male faculty member insinuating that I performed a sexual favor on the journal editor in order to have the piece accepted. I felt both insulted and indignant. Combined with bullying from a woman faculty member in my department also related to this paper, I began avoiding my research and focusing on service and teaching. Meanwhile, the Title IX investigation lasted six months rather than 60 days. I had a great deal of anxiety the whole time about how the outcome would affect my department and whether I would be blamed for causing issues. I still very uncomfortable whenever I run into this faculty member--who, from what I can tell, still has the esteem and friendship of his colleagues. My stress was compounded by my department chair not considering the harassment serious enough to shield me from having to interact with the harasser, even after I had reported it. | I feel fortunate that I have not been inappropriately touched by someone in a position of authority over me. I have come to see academia--especially male-dominated fields like mine--as an industry that commits psychological warfare on women. Each time I experience discrimination or sexism in my department or discipline, it triggers the entire schema and makes me extremely angry. For a long time, women faculty members in my department would basically say "welcome to the profession" whenever women graduate students would describe their frustrations with impropriety and/or disparities in professional opportunities between men and women grad in our department. Over time, the grad students have insisted that the department address the systemic and specific instances of sexism and harassment, but we had to overcome a great deal of resistance on the part of the faculty, including those we thought would be inclined to advocate for women grad students. | Male | |||||
354 | 12/3/2017 13:24:02 | We have a head of department who is deeply condescending and self-entitled. It would get drunk at work parties and tell people about his favourite sex positions and how he liked to fuck his wife. Once when I was a PhD he came up to me and said nice pants then slapped my ass. | I was a PhD | Head of my department | Other R1 | Urban planning | I didnt tell anyone. I was too shocked in the moment and then it was so normalised that it almost didn’t seem important or like anyone would care | None | None beyond a desire to move institutions | None | None | Male | |||
355 | 12/3/2017 13:30:07 | Inappropriate texts, comments, calling me “sweetheart” and “sunshine,” asking for hugs, stalking | First year MA student | Contract Faculty / PhD student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Canadian Institution | Religious Studies | Had a talk with the perpetrator | None | Ruined it. My reputation too. | Ruined it. I am now on a medical leave. | I had to completely change my plans. He is still in my department, so I cannot possibly remain there for my PhD. | Male | ||
356 | 12/3/2017 13:47:56 | TA made uncomfortable sexual comments + asked invasive questions about my sex/love life, later pressuring me several times to go out with him (I refused). When I finally told him to stop all of this, he became hostile and later manipulated my final grade | Undergrad | Graduate TA | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Political Science | None, though I did not report to dept chair or professor. Other TAs witnessed and didn't see it as an issue, so I felt stupid saying anything until it was too late | None - I did not report | I changed my major and grad school plans, postponed grad school, stayed longer in school due to major change | Anxiety, made it stressful and left me trying to regain my footing. Felt embarrassed and gaslit because no one thought his behavior was wrong | Lowered grade impacted my GPA, his presence made me decide to change fields and not attend grad program at this same school/program | Male | |||
357 | 12/3/2017 13:48:17 | At a conference, an attendee senior to me, made sexual advances towards me. | Graduate Student | Professor (different university) | Biology | N/A | N/A | Discouragement in continuing academia | Encountering harassment in meetings especially by people in higher positions makes me wonder if I am not a good scientist and get attention for other reasons. | Male | |||||
358 | 12/3/2017 13:53:25 | About 10 years after I completed my PhD I initiated an affair with someone who had been on my dissertation committee but had moved to another institution. The affair was short lived and not nearly as exciting or interesting as I had hoped. A few years after that, I received a prestigious job offer from his institution, which would double my salary. I would be in a different unit than he and his new wife. After a week of negotiations, the institution rescinded the job offer due to, I later learned, interference by his wife. | Tenured full professor | Tenured full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | In Washington DC | Sociology | Did not report | None | My new career path was blocked. | I was confused for a long time, until I learned why the job offer was rescinded. | I ended up staying at my institution and I never again applied for a new position. | Female | ||
359 | 12/3/2017 13:56:43 | When I was introduced to the board of trustees as a new faculty member, the chair of the board of trustees, an important donor, looked me up and down and said "Well, I'm glad we got a pretty one." Other people were nearby and chuckled. | Pre-tenure faculty member. | Vastly more important to the institution than I was. | Other Type of School | Religion | Embarrassed silence, then told administrator | Expression of sympathy from administrator | Unsure | One factor that made my first few years very lonely, difficult, and anxious | It let me know who not to trust. | Male | |||
360 | 12/3/2017 13:57:44 | An older white male professor commented in detail about vividly remembering a sleeveless top I'd worn at a mid-summer conference many years prior, then ordered me to sit between him and another male professor at a post-conference dinner saying something along the lines needing a young female presence next to them. | Postdoc | Senior professor in my field who has published extensively with junior scholars who are primarily men | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Anthropology | None | None | I felt uncomfortable working on a project with his name attached to it and did not attend conferences or research meetings where I knew he would be present. | None | Male | ||||
361 | 12/3/2017 14:01:11 | Just want to note that I've never been harassed or assaulted within my program or discipline. Much support to all who have, but I some of us haven't been. It's possible. | |||||||||||||
362 | 12/3/2017 14:01:51 | I was stroked / tested with unwanted touch on the thigh and threatened "with war" and with the wrath of professors I admired by a full (yet strangely underqualified) professor when I questioned a timeline for a project. I was taken aback as I had not experienced being touched to demonstrate power and contempt before. I had just explained that I could not do a last minute / haphazard assignment because needed to go to a memorial service after a year of deaths in my family (in retrospect I was also clearly reeling after an emotionally difficult year and after leaving family and my partner). I was new to the country and the department, knew almost no one in the time zone, and was operating all but entirely without a support network in a program that had comps in the first quarter of the first year. He verbally threatened me and suggested the new chair (whom I admired) would have problems with me and I should not be on her bad side--another threat. Indeed, after whatever he communicated to her she did not speak to me for more than six months and described him as her friend several times. I heard informally I was being 'trashed' by the associated personnel. I was a first year PhD student. I later heard my project, which moved outside university facilities, became infamous though I actually did it in order to be far away from him and from his colleagues. The rumor mill on that was also out of proportion, all within a male in crowd, and intentionally damaging to me. To my eternal appreciation, two male colleagues did defend me some years later and I began to talk fairly openly about it after graduation--that helped me heal and feel I had credibility again. | First year, mature international student at a top ten university. Experiencing culture shock and a huge loss of autonomy and support. This happened within the first two months of graduate school when I didn't have any friends or a support network. | Full professor and former chair -- though spectacularly underqualified (he was of another era, of course--I have picked up on some iffy stories about him reaching back to the 1970s. Including from other, in some cases hugely well known, female and POC profs in my field). | Elite Institution/Ivy League | I wish!!! | Performing Arts / Humanities | None - I went to the ombudsperson five or six years later the day after walking. No response--they did not think anything could be proven or done. | None. | I was on the outs for years and in fear for my career--nearly certain I'd lost all credit and credibility. I felt permanently nervous, got sick, and was certainly on the bad end of character assassination. I took a fellowship out of the country and thrived. I poured my energy into my work there. I think I more than persevered--I succeeded, but it was very lonely and hard. And it came at a personal cost I'm still calculating. | My health and well being suffered. It's a long time to be in a hostile environment. Even afterwards it's been hard. And it's somewhat weird to become faculty after being treated like that by faculty. | Surprisingly, I persisted. (This could have been otherwise). My experience made my life choices about defending women in the academy and the arts much stronger. I am no longer naive about institutions' power. | I have had to struggle with self criticism for hating him and his colleagues so deeply and violently. It's not fun to have visceral fight and flight, violent feeling like that. I think it helped me survive -- I had a fight response. But I didn't do anything because I knew what would happen. I did, though, leak something to an officer speaking about sexual harassment. Just a sentence or two. I was incredibly thrilled when I heard the university had begun a title ix office. Ironically it was a long time before I understood what happened as sexual harassment -- though now would say it was textbook. I heard that he had some infamy among women of color -- I am a queer and white identified woman. Unfortunately I heard after the fact. I did go out of my way to mentor women and especially international students who later came through the program. | Male | |
363 | 12/3/2017 14:02:27 | I can only speak for others here. A friend, an undergraduate in her mid-twenties, was taking an undergrad/grad course in Russian with me. The professor repeatedly propositioned her, commented on her looks and body, and touched/stroked her shoulders. She has asked me to keep this confidential, so I will not include the name of our institution. | I was in my first year of grad school. She was a senior in undergrad. | Assistant Professor. Relatively low on the totem pole, but very popular, and the student's advisor. | Other R1 | Comparative Literature (Slavic, German, and French) | None. I urged the student in question to reach out to campus resources. They told her -- and I have gotten conflicting messages on whether this is actually true -- that since she waited over six months to report, and there was no assault, there was nothing she could do. She didn't want to pursue it further, so nothing happened on an institutional level. | None. | It definitely persuaded me to change my focus from Slavic to French -- Russian is a very small department and very small field, and the chances of running into him or someone else the department might be sheltering felt high. My friend is doing very well now, but I know that she is definitely no longer interested in pursuing a degree. | I was disgusted, but mainly worried about my friend. | See above. It also did lead to me taking classes outside the local department, and spend more money to do so, so I could avoid him. | I feel incredibly lucky that I have not experienced any harassment as a graduate student. I know of several women in other language departments who have had their bodies "critiqued" or comments made about their breasts by male colleagues, and we've been in the news for harassment and assault by professors, but the above story is the only incident I know more directly. | Male | ||
364 | 12/3/2017 14:04:40 | This is predation rather than harassment, and at the time I thought I was an equal participant in an affair with an older male (married) professor. But now I realize I was one of his many victims. He would groom and then seduce students, grad and undergrad, telling us how unhappy his marriage was and how we made him feel alive etc. I'm pretty sure we all felt special and chosen, and at the time consented. But looking back it feels revolting. | Graduate student, MA. level. 25 years old. | Former chair of department. 42 years old. | Other R1 | It was in the UC system | French | none. I didn't think it was predatory at the time so I wouldn't have thought to report it. Fairly sure the other students felt the same. | None, he's a superstar. I think his behavior was/is an open secret. He shot to the top of his game in the US, now has a plum position in Europe, is regularly invited to keynote at international conferences etc. | unsure -probably more indirect, via the effects on my mental health. | Significant. I was deeply depressed during the affair. Looking back, I feel used, stupid, resentful, and repulsed by my choices at the time and by his exploitation of the power and age differentials. Also feel terrible for his wife. | I wasted several years traveling to meet him, hoping he'd leave his wife (a hope he fanned) and despairing when he didn't. I was pathetic. It was 15 years until I could make a self-respecting relationship choice. | While this would never count as harassment in a law court, and while I thought it was consensual at the time, I feel this kind of professor-student relationship is deeply exploitative of the unique power dynamic and intellectual "worship" that can happen in academia. It feels like the kind of imbalance that's between a therapist and their patient, and there are really strict professional rules forbidding any personal relationship between those parties. I doubt any such rules would ever exist in academic contexts, though I feel they should. It's also probably really common. Feels good to finally write about it though. | Male | |
365 | 12/3/2017 14:06:57 | During the first year of my graduate program, I separated from my emotionally abusive husband and entered into a new romantic relationship with a fellow graduate student. I am a relatively private person, and as such, kept many of the details to myself as a way of coping with my impending divorce and continued emotional coercion and abuse from my husband. During that time, the fellow graduate students in my cohort (both male and female) bombarded me with questions about my separation and my new relationship, including intimate, detailed questions about my sex life. When I politely declined to share this information, members of my cohort spread malicious, speculative rumors about my sexual history and the current state of my sex life. These rumors not only circulated among graduate students, but also spread to members of faculty, including the professor I worked for as an R.A. Two male graduate students contacted my estranged husband to fill him on the rumors they had heard about my sex life, sparking an escalation of my husband's continued threats and abuse. The professor I worked for an an R.A. approached the graduate student I was then in a relationship with to admonish my partner for entering into a relationship with a "married woman." During admitted students weekend, rumors about my sex life were also spread to many of the prospective graduate students who came to visit the campus. Needless to say, my reputation as a slut, alongside detailed and highly exaggerated if not outright false rumors of my sex life persisted throughout the rest of my time in the program. New graduate students I'd never met approached me while drunk to say that they'd heard I was into "threesomes" or that they'd been warned off from talking to me because I might try to "break up" their relationships. After being given a desirable teaching assignment by our course coordinator, I found out the director of my graduate program had chosen to strip both me and my partner from teaching the advanced course. When I approached the director to ask why we had both been demoted in terms of teaching assignments, the professor claimed that she'd made the decision based on our relationship status. Needless to say, the explanation made no sense and was beyond unprofessional and inappropriate. Just before graduating from the program, I discovered that this same professor had, at one point, invited fellow graduate students over to her house, at which time she had engaged in spreading false rumors about me that she had heard from former students. When I again approached this professor about her unprofessional behavior, she claimed that she was not responsible for verifying rumors before discussing them with my fellow graduate students. | Graduate Student | Fellow graduate students, professor in charge of R.A.ship, director of graduate program | R2 | University of Alabama | Creative Writing | Before I graduated from the program, I did speak to the new director of the program to make sure the issue was known. She was kind and sympathetic, and offered to address the complaint formally with the old director of our program. While I spoke to individual professors and students before then, I had not filed an official complaint, in part because I did not know doing so was possible and I feared even more retaliation on the part of fellow graduate students and faculty. | None that I know of | After my first semester in my graduate program, I mostly withdrew from any program activities outside of classes. When I did go to department sponsored events, I often felt uncomfortable and ostracized. I didn't apply for any additional department awards, jobs, or positions because I didn't think I'd actually be considered for them (in part due to persistent rumors at both the student and faculty level, in part due to the way I'd been demoted in terms of course assignments by the head of the program). I also failed to network with fellow graduate students. I still live with the persistent fear that rumors will circulate when I go on the job market in the future as some my former harassers are still very involved in the field. | Untold. I essentially isolated myself for the duration of my program. I had very few friends. When I tried to address the issue of the rumors and harassment with my fellow graduate students early on, I was either given the cold shoulder or told I deserved what was happening to me. People I'd once considered my friends were willing to ruin my reputation and experience in the program because I wouldn't be forthcoming about my divorce or sex life with them. The impact of dealing with all of this while also attempting to get a divorce from an abusive husband was, frankly, devastating. I spent a lot of time crying. On a daily basis, I felt an exorbitant amount of anxiety and stress knowing that I would still have to interact with these students and professors both inside and outside of class. I still spend hours contemplating how things could have been different. I routinely blame myself. At times, the entire experience feels so shameful as to be unspeakable. I fear rumors will persist as I am still within the academic community alongside several of my harassers. I feel like I have to be the perfect student and the perfect colleague lest anyone in my current graduate program ever catch wind of old rumors and the cycle of harassment begins again. | I trust people less. I do not submit to publications my harassers are associated with and also avoid going to large group conferences that I know my harassers will likely attend. I am wary of networking, as many colleagues I meet already know my harassers through social media and may even be friendly with them. That being said, in some ways, the entire terrible experience has made me stronger. I am more in touch with my mental health and don't sweat the smaller stuff. I am in a new graduate program with wonderful students and faculty, though I still fear that my past may come back to haunt me. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
366 | 12/3/2017 14:08:52 | *** sexually harassed and assaulted 3 female students in the German Department. | Acquaintances of the students. | *** is a tenured professor at Princeton's German Department. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Princeton | None yet | All three female students changed departments. | Male | ||||||
367 | 12/3/2017 14:12:26 | There have been multiple brief instances at this point, the most salient of which have happened in the past few months. A male colleague (who is nearly 50 years older than me) constantly asks me for tech support, which is just an excuse for him to come talk to me. When he comes into my office, he often walks around my desk and stands over me while he asks me questions. He rubs my arms or will wrap his arms around me every time I see him. He's made multiple comments about my physical appearance, including one recent incident when he asked how a guest lecture went and when I said I thought it went well and that students were responsive and participatory, he said, "well, that's only because you're pretty." I have Hershey's Kisses in my office and he kept asking if he could have a kiss, but kept saying it in a creepy way and then made suggestive comments about it afterward. These incidents make me wildly uncomfortable, but due to the power differential, I just try to avoid him as much as I can. However, on multiple occasions, he has emailed me while I'm working from home asking if I can meet with him and when I offer to help over email, he asks personal questions about what I'm up to at home. He's a constant privacy invader and my attemps at being collegial, but distant are ignored or unnoticed. | Assistant professor (tenure-track) | Tenured full professor who will vote on my tenure case and currently serves on the university committee that reviews tenure portfolios. | Small Liberal Arts College | Psychology | Did not report due to power differential. I'm waiting for him to retire, which should be soon. | None. | Makes me wildly uncomfortable and I try to avoid him, except he purposefully seeks me out (emails me for help, comes to my office asking for help, sits by me during faculty meetings, etc.) | Lately, it made me less satisfied with my otherwise amazing job. I love my job, but this is one aspect that's souring me on my current position. | None yet... | Male | |||
368 | 12/3/2017 14:12:27 | Speaking just for myself, I have never been subject to sexual harassment. While I very much applaud you for collecting information I do wish to caution against broad conclusions given the methodology. Scrolling through my Twitter feed I almost didn't click to respond since I am very lucky that I have not had a negative experience in the academy (am currently a female assistant professor at a small low tier liberal arts college having attended two R1 institutions for undergrad and grad). But then I figured it would be beneficial for you to have my statistic as well. Given my thought upon seeing the survey and the nature of the questions (assuming respondent had experienced sexual harassment), I'm not sure you will get make respondents in my situation. Thank for you for starting to learn about how pervasive the problem is. It is definitely a big problem. | |||||||||||||
369 | 12/3/2017 14:28:05 | In 2003, I did work for a tenured science professor at the UO. I collected his online student's assignments from an email address and dropped them into a shared folder. It was a good paying job; $10 / hour for a student job in 2003 was pretty good. And the work was easy. Then out of nowhere, he started referring to me as "Babe" in emails. For example: "Okay, babe". I worked in computer tech support at the same university and I had three male bosses whom I trusted. I told all of them about this incident, showed them emails, and asked them what I should do. Their response was: "I'm not sure". This professor brought in a lot of money and I think they were afraid to rock the boat. Eventually a few days later I called him out over email, saying: "If you could please stop calling me 'babe', I'd appreciate it. He answered quickly with: "I'm sorry" and stopped the behavior. I was 21 or 22 years old. | Undergraduate student | Tenured professor in the sciences | Other R1 | University of Oregon | Spanish (for my degree), technology (for my job) | I was heard by my supervisors (unrelated to the harasser), but not given any support for forward movement. | None | None. I stayed employed. | It was so long ago, but I remember agonizing about what to do and feeling not supported by male supervisors whom I trusted. | I had to work with this person in committee work later. It was fine, but always awkward. This person is not the most socially adept person anyway. | Thank you for surveying. I feel afraid to call this person out seeing as it was years ago and he's quite powerful. I just don't want the attention on me. But it's nice to be heard. Thank you. | Male | |
370 | 12/3/2017 14:31:01 | At an end of the year party for my broadcast journalism class, my professor who was in his 60s got drunk (the party was the prof and his wife, who co-taugh the class and 20 undergrads) and started to talk about my boobs and my cleveage in front of everybody. This was in Utah, which is a conservative state, I’m not Mormon and comments on my cleveage happened more than once. At one point a student who was directing our broadcast for the day, directed the camera guy to focus on my boobs while we were all listening on the internal radio (faculty included) | Undergrad- international exchange student | Professor | R2 | Utah State University | Journalism | Nothing. I was not sure what to do. So I did not report it | N/A | I already was very self conscious as I have an accent so I had a hard time talking in front of the camera. This whole debacle made me believe TV was not for me | Gave up my dream of being a TV reporter | Male | |||
371 | 12/3/2017 14:36:42 | ||||||||||||||
372 | 12/3/2017 14:43:00 | Too much to type - it was him stopping me in the Hall to ask,”do I scare you?” That finally did me in | Assistant professor | Full professor, department chair of another department | Regional Teaching College | Education | Great but I reported him on a whim (on the pressure from student who saw and heard it happened often) but I didn’t have lawyers and he lawyered up - I let it go because it was too emotionally spirit murdering | Fucker is On paid leave - at least 3 others have filed complaints about him | On he job market - enough of his old boys think I’m making shit up | Horrible, depression, increased drinking, weight gain, | Yup - stay off campus | Male | |||
373 | 12/3/2017 14:44:07 | A professor I once had as an undergraduate, who had a reputation for soliciting sexual favors from students (and who was married to one of his former grad students) once asked me in a (mandatory) office hours meeting if I would help him teach a graduate seminar on Hannah Arendt the next semester. I said no. (I was wildly, wildly unqualified, as I'm sure was very obvious.) Nothing happened, but I felt as if I were being tested/groomed by being intellectually flattered. | Sophomore undergraduate | Professor in my department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | He was a philosopher | I didn't report it | None | I didn't pursue graduate work in that field. I got a MFA in writing instead. This interaction was partly to blame. | Minimal. It felt so pervasive; I didn't feel singled out. | I was not at all interested in pursuing graduate studies after witnessing the gender dynamics at play. | Male | |||
374 | 12/3/2017 14:44:22 | Made an advance at a conference | Graduate student | Assistant professor | Regional Teaching College | Sociology | Male | ||||||||
375 | 12/3/2017 14:45:14 | Conference- Gender and Queer Studies conference | Second year grad student | Associate Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Queer Theory | Didn't attend conference for years | Anxiety/depression | Male | ||||||
376 | 12/3/2017 14:50:41 | two of the most significant incidents happened almost immediately one after the other, shortly before completion of my postgraduate degree: 1) harassed and threatened (attempted rape) by fellow postgraduate student at a course event; 2) fully raped by an informant during ethnographic fieldwork | 1)postgraduate student; 2)research scholar | 1)academic colleague; 2)informant | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Anthropology | none -- did not report, out of fear of repercussion from perpetrators | none -- did not report, out of fear of repercussion from perpetrators | Due to 'mental health issues' (the cause of which I did not specify to the school), I required an extension on dissertation submission. I submitted, but by that time I already felt 'broken', and I have not rebounded since then. I would say my career, as I had previously envisioned it, was totally halted (see mental health section and life choices/trajectory section). | gradually increasing panic attacks leading to a nervous breakdown; since then, have socially insulated myself, and struggled with depression, anxiety, and extremely low social confidence -- all get in the way of improvement/rehabilitation (cyclical) | I am still in 'recovery' mode four years after the second event; have not stepped back into academia, and consistently under-challenge myself in employment (I am significantly overqualified for everything I have been doing) because I am uncertain whether or not I can once again handle high-stress situations (where I used to flourish). On paper, I have a brilliant CV... and prior to these events, I was quite driven and confident in seeing myself on a high-level academic trajectory. That has been completely altered, and I am still uncertain of what I will be doing, even a year from now. I would say this is indirect (as in, it has more to do with mental health than a fear of academia itself). | Male | |||
377 | 12/3/2017 14:51:37 | Deliberate attempts to get me and other female PhD students drunk at lab socials, including buying drinks after offers declined. Showing porn on lab laptops, all kinds of offensive and inappropriate comments and suggestions. | PhD student | Senior Post-doc in lab where I was student. | Other Type of School | Biology | Didn't report | None | Unknown. Avoided some potentially useful networking events to avoid harassment | Low | Low | Male | |||
378 | 12/3/2017 14:52:03 | A senior faculty member groping me at a dinner to honor me | visiting faculty | tenured faculty | Small Liberal Arts College | English | Instead of reporting to the institution as a whole, I spoke to an older female colleague and asked if she had any suggestions. She said she would handle it; and must have done so, because it did not happen again. | None | Hard to say | Also hard to say; contributed to my overall sense that I am less valuable/valued than male colleagues in institutions | This is a larger question. I've been harassed in ways subtle and obvious at every step of my career. I don't know what choices I would have made differently if I had been allowed simply to progress at the appropriate, unimpeded speed for myself. | Male | |||
379 | 12/3/2017 14:54:29 | A senior colleague who routinely made disparaging remarks about my appearance, with the obvious intention to intimidate/fluster me | visiting faculty | senior faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | Since the person harassing was someone I reported to, I did not feel able to report the inappropriate behavior. My contract was conditional, and I felt that if I raised any kind of fuss I'd be instantly replaced with someone "less difficult." | None | I no longer work there | Again, a general sense that I will never be taken as seriously in my line of work as men are; that the mere fact of my female body is a mark against my intellectual work | As I said earlier, it's hard to say | Male | |||
380 | 12/3/2017 14:56:15 | I have been sexually assaulted twice and repeatedly harassed by a colleague in my department who has harassed many others on campus, for years. | Both before and after I received tenure. | He’s a full professor. | Other R1 | For some incidents he’s been punished (when there have been emails and audio recordings to back me up. He got a pass on both sexual assaults because it was he said she said. | Reduced research productivity, reduced networking opportunities due to self-imposed off-campus exile | Disillusionment with the lack of support from my colleagues, stress | Male | ||||||
381 | 12/3/2017 14:57:49 | Faculty member repeatedly made (and continues to make) outwardly sexist (and racist) comments, e.g. "we don't need to increase gender diversity in our [STEM] field'' or, *as a panelist at a national conference, in response to a young woman of color's question* "racial diversity is not an issue in our field"; introduces women, including those with doctorates, by the accomplishments of their husbands/partners; insinuated I was foolish for not including him on my committee. | Graduate Student | Professor (of Graduate Seminar) | Other R1 | Biology | None- but I've never reported it because he has incredible power/recognition in the field and could destroy my career. | None | Switching institutions. | Forced interactions exacerbate my anxiety. | Actively avoid interactions on campus with the individual. | Male | |||
382 | 12/3/2017 15:01:18 | During a conference happy hour, a professor from another university complimented the paper I had presented and invited me to submit it for publication in a journal he co-edits. Later, he kissed my cheek, tried to kiss me on the mouth, and asked if I had "any more time" to spend with him that night. | PhD student | Senior professor, journal editor, influential figure in a scholarly community I had hoped to join | Other R1 | English | I didn't report this, partly because it happened at a conference (not at my own university) and partly because I felt ashamed and confused about the whole experience. | The harasser has resigned from his university after being accused of harassing several other women (graduate students and faculty members). He is still listed as a co-editor of the journal, and his social power in our scholarly community doesn't seem to have diminished at all. | I finished my PhD but have decided not to pursue a career in academia largely because of this kind of abuse (along with other forms of abuse and manipulation that have affected nearly every academic I know). | It hollowed me out. | Male | ||||
383 | 12/3/2017 15:06:54 | The chair of my committee joked that I could clean his office while my committee discussed my qualifying exam. | PhD student | Full professor and chair of my committee | Other R1 | Interdisciplinary | Ha. | Damaged confidence lowered productivity. | Pretty flipping bad. | Considering leaving academia. | Male | ||||
384 | 12/3/2017 15:07:21 | A renowned, tenured male faculty member who sits on a board I serve on in grad student capacity is aggressively huggy during greetings; it is nearly impossible to avoid. He gropes the sides of my breasts every time, rubs and lingers. It is humiliating. I know of corroborated incidences from six other women graduate students. | PhD student | Senior male faculty from another institution, sits on board I serve on | Other R1 | Environment/Natural Resources | I have not reported this series of events. My advisor is a man and has made remarks in the past about women in the discipline complaining about sexism and such remarks make it impossible for me to feel comfortable discussing this event or similar events with him. | n/a, not reported | n/a, not reported | I feel trapped and humiliated every time I have to be around him. | I was unsure about whether or not I wanted to go into a faculty position when I began my PhD, but my field is very male dominated and explicit and more insidious incidences such as this are the reason I will not go into academia once I finish. The public sector research environment is not sexual harassment free by any measure, but the climate of silence in the academy is unbearable. | Male | |||
385 | 12/3/2017 15:09:04 | Stalking, inappropriate romantic advances with violent undertones, dinners where all-male groups of senior academics have a conversations in front of me about what they think it's like to have sex with me, unsolicited emails with links to porn videos at work, texts and emails that continue after I tell a person to stop contacting me, etc. Situations of abuse, either towards me or other female students in a highly male-dominated field. Issues that become widespread, affecting dozens of women with little to no action on the part of the university. Other students being raped and assaulted. Multiple gag orders that force me and my friends to keep silent about what has happened to us. Environments where this happens over and over again to many women. | Undergraduate and graduate student | Graduate student and postdoc | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Physics | Sent to the Title IX office. I was belittled and given a gag order by the university. The whole experience was re-traumatizing, and made the situation much worse than if I hadn't reported. Meanwhile there was lots of propaganda being spread around by the university (including huge banners all around campus) about how great they are at dealing with sexual harassment. I had to walk past those banners every day to get to work, while still afraid for my personal safety and under a gag order so I couldn't talk about it to anyone about it. | None known in any of 5 cases I experienced myself, or in any of the other cases I'm aware of that affected other people. | I left the university and finished my PhD remotely. Had to deal with ongoing mental health issues that severely affected my productivity. | Diagnosed with PTSD. Panic attacks, depression, anxiety, nightmares, etc. | I no longer plan to apply for faculty jobs at R1 institutions. | Male | ||
386 | 12/3/2017 15:18:37 | Routine low-level sexual harassment of me, female colleagues, and female students by a senior professor in the department and the continued bystanding of all of my male colleagues | Assistant Professor | Professor (same department - a department in which all tenured faculty members serve on the tenure committee for each and every pre-tenure faculty) | Regional Teaching College | Chemistry | None | None | Contributed to my leaving a tenure-track position for a non-TT position | Contributed to persistent stress, anger, and disgust | Contributed to my certainty that tenure will die an ugly death over the course of my career (the next 40 years or so) | Male | |||
387 | 12/3/2017 15:20:33 | With in past 2 years | Harassing texts/ messages, physical assault, bullying, misogyny, verbal harassment | Co worker | R2 | A north east Ohio university | Sociology | Not reported | Not reported | It has caused me to choose a career outside of academia | Severe depression, anxiety, social withdrawal | Choosing a new path outside of academic work | Not only does this person call himself a feminist, he uses that to lure women into a false sense of security. He uses his status to bully and manipulate women for sex and domination. He demeans female academics. He said if it were reported he'd get "a slap on the wrists". This is rape culture. It has occurred among several females, grad students and possibly undergrads but is unreported due to shame and stigma. | Male | |
388 | 12/3/2017 15:20:47 | A post-doc in my lab asked me if I wanted a massage (while we were in an instrument room - small and windowless). I said no and then he asked me to never tell anyone about it. | Undergraduate researcher | Post-doc in the same lab | Other R1 | Chemistry | none | none | Contributed to my choice to permanently join a different lab in a different sub-discipline | Just grossed me out. | None/minimal | Male | |||
389 | 12/3/2017 15:24:26 | The most egregious example: I had been at dinner with several other students at a conference. A student from another university kept asking me to have sex with him. I said no each time. Finally I stood up to walk away. He grabbed my arm and pulled me onto his lap. I tried to leave again. This time he grabbed my breasts. I ended up running away to my room crying. Plenty of people were there and witnessed the whole thing. This is in addition to the regular sexist comments, jokes etc. Being told my opinion didn't matter because I'm a woman etc. | Graduate student | Graduate students | Other R1 | Entomology | Did not report | Did not report | I have to see this person each year at our national conference. He is now finished with his PhD and possibly continues his harassment. | Seeing him makes me feel very anxious and uneasy. | Did not change | Male | |||
390 | 12/3/2017 15:27:35 | Student hit on me in the middle of class by caressing my hands and asking me out repeatedly | Adjunct professor | Student undergrad | R2 | Hunter cuny | Media | None | None | Students did not take me as seriously. Afraid it would happen again | Anxiety | Careful around students | Male | ||
391 | 12/3/2017 15:35:24 | A part-time senior male honorary academic invited me for coffee then for a walk around campus then when in a quiet part of campus he asked me to kiss him and almost forced me to do so. When I tried to make my way back to the office he walked with me and said that he would invite for dinner but his wife and kids are with him this time!!! | I had just submitted my PhD thesis, that afternoon! | See above | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University in the south of UK | Social sciences | I did not report it | He quit in a matter of months after the incident | None that I know about | My boyfriend broke up with me on the same day after I told him what had happened!! He didn’t say it was directly related to the incident, but... | I felt really shocked and put my ability to judge situation in doubt ... I have been worried it might happen again with other people ever since | I do not wish my name to be included anywhere .... I used to think that women should be able to avoid such incidents, but actually some men in power are just predators: you can’t watch out enough. | Male | |
392 | 12/3/2017 15:37:38 | Manipulated into a relationship and harassed by faculty member over a span of a year and a half. In one instance, he drove drunk to the farmhouse where I was staying and blocked the driveway so I couldn’t leave. | Second and third year Master’s student | Faculty | R2 | Creative Writing | Title IX investigation where he was put on paid leave for 5 months and ultimately ending in his termination | I was in a deep depression, fell back into my eating disorder, got a DUI, and almost killed myself as a result of being unable to cope with the situation he had me in and what the Title IX investigation put me through. | Male | ||||||
393 | 12/3/2017 15:39:13 | Queer student harassed by queer professor | Undergraduate student and employee | Honors thesis advisor and work supervisor | R2 | English | N/A, didn’t report | None | Chose to go to grad school in a different profession and not to use her as a reference or recommendation letter writer, which was tough but I was able to find others | Pretty significant, although I didn’t realize it at the time. I was in a vulnerable place and had shared with her that I was concerned about having money for housing, so she offered me a part time job, and to be my thesis advisor, which seemed like a lifeline. So harassment seemed like a reasonable price to pay for economic and educational security. I had been harassed by many men before and this seemed less inappropriate than that had. | The guys in my class were able to rely on their thesis advisors for letters of rec without a second thought. The other women and non binary people sometimes had similar awkward situations to mine, although theirs were with male advisors who were not also their employers. | Female | |||
394 | 12/3/2017 15:46:32 | Four instances jump to mind, but there are, of course, many more. Instance 1) An major figure in the field came to give a talk on campus when I was an undergraduate student (not even 20 years old) and was lured up to the man's hotel room with the promise of a signed copy of his book as a thank you for driving him around during the day as we hosted him. I was pushed up against the wall as he stuck his tongue in my mouth and started kissing me and asking me to stay so he could show his appreciation. I managed to get away, and went back to my dorm room. Somehow he got my phone number and proceeded to call me all night long asking me to come back or to see if he could come to my dorm room. This person some 20 years later is known for predatory behavior, yet he and his lawyer are so quick with legal claims about defamation and libel that it has gone largely unacknowledged until recently when a critical mass of young (and no longer so young) women have started speaking out collectively. His colleagues consistently look the other way and play dumb. Instance 2) Predatory faculty member was dating graduate and undergraduate students. It was an open secret, except to those targeted by professor. Others did not warn students or punish faculty member. Instance 3) Also occured when I was in graduate school. I took an undergraduate class in my subfield on an interesting topic, and the professor made sexually inappropriate comments all semester long. His girlfriend came to a class film screening and he said he hoped we didn't mind if her head was in his lap during the movie. He also invited us all to a co-ed naked hot tub party at his house to celebrate the end of the semester. I went to title 9 and the party was cancelled, but he told me he knew it was me who "ruined everyone's fun" in front of the class. Instance 4) As a junior faculty member it was mentioned to me by senior women in the department that when a certain male colleague gets upset with women faculty he stops talking to them for a year, and that I should expect it to happen at some point. During my second year as a faculty member he took umbrage to a concern I raised in a faculty email chain and stopped talking to me. Meaning that when I was talking with another colleague he would walk up, pretend I wasn't there, and begin his own conversation with the other faculty member. Everyone in the department knew this was going on and now one did anything. When I shared this with the dean, she told me "oh yes, well he is a unique character" and provided no resources or understanding about how this created a hostile environment for me. | Undergrad; grad student; grad student; junior faculty | faculty; faculty; faculty; faculty | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Ethnic Studies | None; Blind eye; Title 9 wanted to move fsorward with the case, but I was afraid of the reprocussions of doing so; blind eye, acknowledgement that it was happening only to say "he does that, it will stop in a year) | None; none; no naked hottub party at his house that year; none | Anxiety, reluctance to attend conferences or other events where I knew these people would be. | Major depressive episodes, issues with anxiety, panic attacks, low self esteem | Will not apply for jobs where I know these people are; hearing about it when these men pretend not to remember who I am; enduring the power play of these men asking to be introduced to me; in the case of instance 4, it is understood across the campus that this man holds grudges and makes later decisions based on these grudges, as well as runs smear campaigns ---in my case, most recently, he was part of orchestrating a unanimous negative tenure vote in my case. | Male | |||
395 | 12/3/2017 15:53:28 | Incidents 1-4 submitted earlier and I forgot to mention the schools. Here they are in order of incident: UMass Amherst, UC Berkeley, CU Boulder | |||||||||||||
396 | 12/3/2017 15:55:20 | Male made sexually suggestive gestures in order to distract me in front of a supervisor. | PhD student | IT guy | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Public health | I didn't report it | None | I made a terrible impresssion on the colleague | Humiliation | I don't know | Male | |||
397 | 12/3/2017 15:56:47 | approached in hall with clear sexual intentions, touched inappropriately, attempted intimate contact (kissing, groping) | Postdoc | Postdoc Faculty advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Prestigious private university on west coast | STEM | n/a did not report | n/a did not report - he was powerful and I subsequently discovered he had a track record of pouncing on female supervisees (and perhaps males as well) - he desisted once I made clear I would not reciprocate | financial support was withdrawn; rec letters were not available; I found another position, survived (but not at an R1) and today it has fueled my efforts to coach my students | shock. depression for weeks, feelings of unworthiness, guilt and shame, eventually anger | I am a woman of color who is constantly having to prove myself as a scientist. The stakes are too high to let anything derail me. Many have died so we can be educated. I recognize sexual behavior is part of human behavior and it cannot be engineered out of existence.I enrolled in martial arts classes and try to educate the women and men I know to stand up for ourselves and others. | n/a | Male | |
398 | 12/3/2017 15:56:53 | I don't even feel comfortable writing this anonymously - it was such a bad situation. Basically my advisor came onto me really aggressively. He grabbed my breasts, stuck his hands down my pants, and begged me to let him perform oral sex on me. When I expressed shock and pushed him away (trying not to reject him too forcefully as I knew there would be repercussions, but gently saying we had a good professional relationship, and what about his wife?), he asked why I mentioned that my boyfriend and I had broken up if I wasnt interested. Two weeks later I needed a recommendation letter for a pre-doc, and he said he wasnt sure he had the time. That's when I knew that my career was over if my dissertation chair wouldn't write me recommendation letters. So I decided to normalize the situation and give him a way out by apologizing for the confusion. He took it, saying it was unlike him and he was under a lot of stress. And I never brought it up again. | I was a third year PhD | my dissertation chair | Elite Institution/Ivy League | political science | I never mentioned it. He was a big deal. If it was between me or him, I knew who they would support. | none. | I didn't return to the institution for three years, until I defended. I now realize as a tenure track professor, how much learning I missed out on by not being in that environment for three years of my PhD. Also, my advisor was relatively uninterested in talking with me about my work - he always wanted to make it personal. So I kept pushing for feedback, and he would say yes, lets do it over drinks and dinner. And over and over again I wouldn't get the feedback I needed. So I had to spend all this one-on-one time when I really just wanted the normal professional support. | The first thing I thought was - I'm not good at this. I had this person who was highly respected in my field tell me for two years leading up to this incident that I was really good at what I did, but then I doubted it since he had other motives. It created a big insecurity. And I'm now so careful about everything. In retrospective, I never should have been alone with him late at night (I used to be his TA, and we would have grading meetings in the evenings); I should've never mentioned my personal life because I now know that men take the mention of my husband as a reminder that I'm female. I still meet up with him periodically to maintain the positive relationship, but my husband always comes with me. | I most definitely want to remain anonymous. | Male | |||
399 | 12/3/2017 16:18:44 | [Senior administrator] entered my dorm room during my third semester claiming he was there to lay out glue traps for mice. I had complained to housing twice within the previous week. When I asked him why maintenance hadn't done it he told me that he wanted to make sure it got done because he cared about me. He then sat down on my bed. He started asking me about my partner at the time and if we were happy together. He also asked if there was anything he could do for me personally. He then touched my thigh and kissed my neck. I excused myself to the restroom. After hiding in there for 20 minutes I told him that I wasn't feeling well and that I needed to head to bed. He again asked if there was anything he could do to help me feel better and I said no, that I just needed to sleep it off. | College Sophomore | University Vice-President | Small Liberal Arts College | Nicholls State University | Government | I reported the incident to XX the next semester. I saw him in a hallway in the student union and told him what happened. He told me that because I waited there was nothing that could be done because it would be my word against his. He also discouraged me from filing an official report on the incident because it would just hurt my own credibility and future at Nicholls. | None | NA | It made me realize that I could not trust university administration to help students who were victimized. This realization contributed to increased depression and insomnia. | Since Nicholls, I have devoted myself to ensuring that this treatment is reduced as much as possible. | This survey has finally given me the courage to take a stand and speak out against my accuser. I'm going to do so publicly next week. | Male | |
400 | 12/3/2017 16:19:50 | Sometime around 2006 an older, not tenured, white male professor from a department other than my own felt compelled to comment on the way I walked, asking me why I did not walk "like a Latina," without swaying my hips. | I was a tenured professor | He was untenured, an adjunct, older than me--which told me how the fact that I outranked him made no difference when it came to gender matters | Small Liberal Arts College | History | None, since I did not report | He was eventually fired, but not for harassing faculty, but for harassing students. | No professional repercussions, although it did confirm what I already knew about male privilege in general. | None, if you don't count my cynicism vis a vis men | The incident confirmed to me how easy it is for men to say thoughtless things to women, at the very least; hurtful being the next step; before countless men move on to threats and violence--harassment being only one step on a continuum. | Male | |||
401 | 12/3/2017 16:24:51 | Ucsc. I was sexually harrassed by professor XX and watched him harrass other female undergrads | Undergraduate | Professor but not mine | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Unversity of california santa cruz | Literature | Many professors made public statements of support for him when he was called out by undergrads for a pattern of sexual violence | None | Problems with letters of recommendation | Severe | I dont speak to many professors who support him | Article about him is in chronicle of higher ed | Male | |
402 | 12/3/2017 16:28:45 | Second year, graduate school (early 1990s) | graduate student | fellow graduate student | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | National conference for ethnomusicologist | ethnomusicology | never filed an incident report | none | none | minor | none | Male | ||
403 | 12/3/2017 16:31:26 | A student completed a course evaluation with extremely inappropriate content. I️ was the TA for the course, and the content referenced me specifically in a sexual way. Because the feedback was anonymous, and I potentially had to interact with this anonymous perpetrator, it was even more of an affront to me. | Graduate student- teaching assistant | Student in my section | Other R1 | University of Maryland | Architecture | None | Timid interaction with future students - teaching with reservations, not fully involved. | Made me more aware of being female ina male dominated field. | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | ||||
404 | 12/3/2017 16:34:49 | The first time I was an undergraduate English major at the University of Oklahoma (professor invited me to private office hours, touched my leg, commented on my body). It happened again when I was a student worker in the Library (custodian stalked me) and then as an English Grad student at the University of Idaho (faculty member in my department put his hand between my legs at a party, faculty member in my field (one of two) repeatedly pursued me, touched me, cornered me - this last one is the one I'll write about here. | Graduate Student | Tenured Faculty in my field of study | R2 | University of Idaho | English | He was well known. Finally, after 10 years and incidents involving nearly 20 students, he was fired. | Fired | Took time off grad school, won't take classes with male professors. | PTSD, depression | Decided not to pursue teaching career in this field. | Male | ||
405 | 12/3/2017 16:40:39 | I was in a summer program and my roommate was a female high school senior. She left the program after a graduate student took her on a car ride, where he was driving and she couldn't get out, and told her about what he wanted in a wife and how lonely he was. I reported his behavior and he then found me in a parking lot late at night when I was walking back to the dorm alone to yell at me and tell me I was ruining his career and how he hadn't done anything and threaten that if I didn't recant what I said I would regret it. When I didn't back down and was entirely ready to engage in a physical altercation, he stormed off instead. | Undergraduate student | Graduate student, residential advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | CalTech | Computer Science | The next year they had at least one female RA instead of 0 | Required to take sexual harassment training | After a lifetime of this, and despite the years of therapy, I feel broken | Decided not to go to grad school | Male | |||
406 | 12/3/2017 16:42:02 | This is not my experience but of a friend who remains too traumatized to address it here. She was repeatedly sexually harassed, being propositioned, being targeted with lewd remarks, and other worse things that she doesn't feel uncomfortable discussing | She was an assistant professor | Tenured professors | Elite Institution/Ivy League | hers (as is mine) History | none | none | She was denied tenure (despite having a very good mid-tenure review, book out and well received, etc.). She appealed and gave evidence of sexual harassment. Legal costs bankrupted her. She was black-listed and has not been able to stay in the academy and now works in another field. | her words: "it ruined my life" | left academia | Male | |||
407 | 12/3/2017 16:59:33 | My final year of graduate school I--a queer woman of color--was getting strong flirtatious signals from a faculty member--also a queer woman of color. This was someone who I had been attracted to for several years but I never, ever entertained the idea of having a crush on her, let alone pursuing a relationship with her. At first I thought it was all in my head: “there’s no way that this woman is flirting with me, am I insane?” (In hindsight, I can now see how head games were a central component of the manipulation that would follow). I had had a particularly rough few years in graduate school, which included an antagonistic working relationship with one of my committee members and messy boundaries between myself and my dissertation advisor (who I frequently offered emotional and logistical support to as she endured a personal crisis of her own). I think that the dynamics I had with these two other faculty members contributed to me being in an unusually precarious and vulnerable position as a grad student, which is why I found it exciting and flattering to have a faculty member shower positive, flirtatious attention on me. I somehow got it in my head that I should ask her out on a date. To my surprise, she said yes. And that was the start of what would turn out to be an extremely tumultuous relationship that lasted about a year, followed by another year of emotional abuse. While the relationship started out great, magical even, it quickly became volatile and emotionally abusive. It would take me a long time to connect the dots and realize that I might have been preyed upon. For example, long after the relationship ended I was looking at an old text message exchange we had before we had even gone out on our first date. In the text exchange she mentioned that she was trying to ease her conscience by reviewing every email she had ever sent me (before I asked her out). Naive as I was, I asked why she would do that. She replied by saying that she was trying to see if she had been unprofessional at any point (i.e. if there had been any written evidence of her flirtation). She concluded that the emails showed that she had just been warm and supportive, and proclaimed: "So it’s on you.” Later on I would learn that I was not the first student that she had had a relationship with. She had dated another student at a previous institution. And the MO was the same: he had asked her out. I suppose “it” (the responsibility? the transgression?) was on him, too… After a tumultuous year-long affair, she broke up with me and I was utterly heartbroken. This also coincided with me taking a postdoc on the other side of the country, which has lead me to endlessly wonder: did she dump me because the relationship was toxic and that was the benevolent thing to do? Or did she dump me because I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my career so that I could stay near her? There was a brief attempt to rekindle things long distance, until out of nowhere she ghosted on me. At the same time, her phone would (mysteriously, conveniently) butt dial me every week for about 2 months. When I confronted her about it in a text message, she gaslit me and tore me a new one. This is just one example of the kind of catch-and-release manipulation that characterized our interactions. | ABD and in my final year | Faculty member and had just been granted tenure. But did not serve in any direct position of power over me (i.e. was not on my committee, I never took a class with her, etc.). | Other R1 | Humanities | n/a | Unknown | This person has made things difficult for me at professional conferences that we both attend. For example, shortly after the ghosting/gaslighting/tearing of a new one, I was attending a major conference and talking with two junior colleagues/peers when she approached our group and began to loudly and enthusiastically engage with both of my colleagues while completely ignoring me. It made me feel small and invisible. I was so uncomfortable and upset by this that I excused myself and abruptly left the scene. She proceeded to do something similar at another conference we both attended several months later. This behavior feels territorial and like she is trying to bully me out of the way. | This relationship and its aftermath have been extremely damaging to my mental health. She said and did things that not only crushed my spirits and messed with my head, but also crushed my intellectual and professional confidence. It’s basically been the equivalent of pouring gasoline on the imposter complex flames. I really thought she loved me. And maybe she did. But in the end, love doesn’t matter. What matters is respect, and she demonstrated over and over again that she had none for me. | I am currently in a contingent position and on the job market (again). I oscillate between wanting to drop out and leave academe (which she would sometimes subtly suggest I should do) and wanting to get a prestigious tenure track job at an elite R1 as part of my desire to prove her wrong about all the negative things she said about me. Outcome still TBD. | I have spent months obsessively thinking about what transpired between me and this person. I have been reluctant to name it as harassment because I am aware that the stakes are quite different in this scenario. Naming a queer woman of color as a sexual harasser or predator has far greater stakes and implications than does naming a cishet white man. I don’t want to demonize this person, I don’t want her to lose her job, and I don’t want any of this information to be used to further devalue or disrespect her and her labor. For what it’s worth, I still care very much for her and hope she is able to find some solace in this fucked up world we all live in. One of the ways I have been able to come to terms with the trauma of that relationship has been to intellectualize the power dynamic. I know that she has also been the victim of harassment and abuse (both inside and outside of academe). In the context of heteropatriarchal US society and an extremely hierarchical system like the US academy wherein women (especially of color and queer) are devalued, manipulated, and abused at every turn, it is not surprising to me that someone might choose to exercise power in whatever scant ways possible. I’ve seen it over and over and over again wherein marginalized faculty (even the ones who we respect for their social justice scholarship etc.) lash out at or take advantage of grad students in various mental, emotional, and sexual ways. For example, I previously mentioned the messy boundaries I had with my advisor as I helped her through a personal crisis. That crisis was exacerbated by the university's complete lack of human regard for and callousness toward my advisor as she endured the unthinkable. As a person of conscience, I could not idly sit by and watch that crisis unfold, so I did what I could to help in whatever ways I was able. But in hindsight, I also realize that I may have done those things (unconsciously) because it was my first year on the job market and I needed my advisor to do some basic things, such as write letters of recommendation, and, you know, *advise* me during a time when she could very well have gone AWOL. Anyway, this is all to say: graduate students have become repositories for all of the academy’s dysfunction. Some faculty treat grad students like punching bags through which to exercise their own angst, and many graduate students are so insecure and/or neglected to such a degree in their programs that they mistake the punching for support. None of the people mentioned in this narrative are evil. Sexual harassment and other forms of abuse in academe are not the result of one or two or even 500 bad apples. The problem is systemic and cyclical. | Female | ||
408 | 12/3/2017 16:59:53 | At my first conference, a professor from another university pretended to be interested in my research, which was on queer readings of early modern literature. I had printed my work email on the hand-out I gave out during the presentation like I was told to do for networking purposes. I felt like something was off with him at the conference. He emailed me that Christmas, referring to my "sensitive work" with author I was working on. Then, sent me poetry he wrote that was inspired by (don't remember act description but something about young women and grad students). It was dirty poetry. | Master's student (22 years old) | Professor (though in another department so no authority over me) | Other R1 | n/a | n/a | none. He didn't work at my university | Blow to my self esteem, discomfort giving my first paper, uncertainty about whether my research was actually good. | hard to say, though I have not attended as many conferences as I should | Male | ||||
409 | 12/3/2017 17:01:10 | After starting a new job, a coworker pretended to be a “mentor” and soon made very graphic sexual passes at me. I was never physically touched but much was said. | I was brand new in my field, single, and dating. | They had about 10 years in the field and they were single and dating. | Other Type of School | IO Psychology | This was before academia and during my time as a public school teacher. I did not report. | NA | My current research interests include gender-based issues. The harassment played a small role in changing careers. | The impact was moderate. I primarily felt the need to avoid parts of the building. I was also concerned that I could get blamed for some of the issue or that it could be turned around on me. | None to my knowledge. | Female | |||
410 | 12/3/2017 17:04:28 | Every Wednesday a group of us would go out drinking at a local bar, and I was continually harassed by one of the other members of the group (comments about how my boyfriend wasn't good enough for me and he'd treat me better, minor non-sexual touching) but just kind of ignored it. Then he dropped me off at home one night and kissed me without my consent. | Graduate student | Professor (nothing to do with my work or my major, just in my department) | Other R1 | History | Did not report. | None | None. He at least realized what he had done and went out of his way to avoid me. | Added to anxiety | None | Male | |||
411 | 12/3/2017 17:12:49 | Department chair (married) often put his hand on the knee or shoulder of an unmarried lecturer at faculty meetings. Over his career, he made over half a dozen hires, and all of his hires were normal weight, blonde women. | Research assistant professor | Department chair | Other R1 | Public health | None | None | None | None | None | Male | |||
412 | 12/3/2017 17:13:41 | Professor invited fellow grad student to his apartment and groped her. He also did very divisive things to undercut other female students' confidence, including on two occasions when he attempted to bully international students into taking his choice of anglicized name for them instead of their actual names. He also tried to get me to believe I was his favorite student, in private emails. I think that was because I stood up to him a lot in class and was a bit older, so he tried to make me a weird kind of ally. He also insulted another woman - a lady in her 50s - so badly in class that she broke down in tears...and he was supposed to be her supervisor. | PhD student | Senior full professor who had been dept head before I arrived but was at that time only teaching. He taught a required core course so there was no way to avoid him. | Other R1 | Stony Brook University | Art and Art History | Very quiet interviews with grad students by Ombudsman (to whom groped student complained after waiting a few months so that the perp would be less likely to connect the complaint to her); instructions not to talk about it; final determination there was not enough evidence to pursue and it was dropped. Incoming students were not notified or warned. | Professor was henceforth ostracized by our cohort. After we all left, institutional memory was hushed up. Recent students I met had no clue. So, none, although I observed the senior female faculty members who had worked with him for years had long since dissociated and formed quiet little alliances among themselves and there's no way they would have cozied up to him before or after..... but nor did they reach out to us students. This is a prof who knew full well he was untouchable and even said it blatantly outright to the Provost when the latter had a word with him because he always turned in his grades after Xmas (that was before the groping). | Lost intellectual support from a key specialist (him) since he was not safe to speak to. Made for some very uncomfortable interactions at a conference later where he kept turning in his seat to stare at me for long sustained periods and I refused to notice. I had to distance myself from him and by extension my whole dept during a conversation with a prof from another U, who worked in the same area and who had nothing good to say about the guy, and who wanted to know if I had anything to do with him - not an ideal way to interact with somebody who I would want to get to know and have them pay attention to my work. Pretty distracting. And tainting, in a weird way, even if I had nothing to do with it. I mean, how good is a dept that harbours such a person? Do I really feel any pride in being their grad student? Nope. | Just general anger, and concern for the four women students I saw grossly affected by him (the one who was groped and who nearly dropped out as a consequence, and another two who suffered depression and self-esteem loss--one of whom transferred to a different U right after; and the fourth who although she was feisty enough not to outwardly lose anything still had to manage around him since he was supposed to be her supervisor). | Distrust of institutions to actually do anything useful in these cases. Didn't really disrupt my path personally. More willingness to share info among women since the institutions won't. | Perp: *** | Male | |
413 | 12/3/2017 17:14:41 | An assistant professor kissed me (unwelcomely, aggressively) at a department holiday party. | I was a Ph.D. student (3rd year) | Assistant Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Harvard | "Humanities" (to say more would be to make it obvious, were this ever to get out) | None, really. I told my main advisor, who told the Deans, but the harrasser got away with it because of unspecified "mental illness". I did receive much nicer funding than I probably would have otherwise after that for summer travel stipends, etc. | None. (He did not get tenure and left the field, but that was because he failed to publish anything at all, not because he liked to stick his tongue in the mouths of Ph.D. students) | None, really. But this is mostly because the harrasser left the field a few years after it happened. | None, but it wasn't terribly severe. | None. | Male | ||
414 | 12/3/2017 17:25:18 | I was told that it was unfortunate I was pregnant because a male professor thought I was "serious about [my] career." | a PhD Candidate | A full professor with an administrative position (a Dean) | Other R1 | Not reported | None. | None. | Depression, anxiety | Decision to not look for employment at an R1- Primarily to avoid attitudes like those expressed by this individual | Male | ||||
415 | 12/3/2017 17:29:39 | [redacted] | First and second year graduate student, respectively | senior tenured, assistant professor (respectively) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | [redacted] | Anthropology | I reported it to my advisor, who reported it to Title IX office. I think there was an investigation but I never heard of any results. | none | I'm incredibly suspicious of men in the academy. Honestly the whole thing has only strengthened my iron will and rage. But for many months, I thought about leaving. | It's not only the harassers. It's the entire system of their complacent colleagues that have created this nightmare. | Male | |||
416 | 12/3/2017 17:32:24 | Another student was harassed | Graduate student | Professor/advisor | Other R1 | A humanities field | Title IX investigation | None | I'm on academic probation for being behind schedule. | Extreme. | I've decided I don't want to pursue the traditional path to tenure-track professorship at R1 institution. | Male | |||
417 | 12/3/2017 17:42:25 | I was told by a professor, when discussing my final paper for his class, that he didn't want to fail me because I'm "too pretty". I got an A, and I'm still not sure if it was because of my paper or my appearance. | Undergrad student | Professor | Other R1 | Psychology, though the incident was in a Jewish Studies class | Did not report | Did not report | Unsure | Minimal - the whole class hated the professor regardless, and the incident just cemented that for me | I became far less involved in Hillel (who sponsored and promoted the class) than I otherwise would have, and I regret the many missed connections I might have made there every day | I feel I'm very lucky to have had one of the least damaging experiences of sexual harassment possible. Any experience of sexual harassment, though, is one experience too many. | Male | ||
418 | 12/3/2017 17:46:18 | Propositioned by a former mentor at a conference. I turned him down. Weeks later his wife emailed me to tell me to stop pursuing her husband. | Graduate student (PhD) | Full prof, had been my mentor, professor at a previous institution where I did an MA. | Other R1 | History/Middle East Studies | I didn’t tell anyone | I avoid him at all costs. Other than that, none that I know of. | Seriously disillusioned. | I avoid male mentors. | Male | ||||
419 | 12/3/2017 17:46:32 | Professor asked me out, and once my friends convinced me a date probably wasn’t his intention, I behaved normally around him. He then told me that he thought about me while he masturbated | Senior and recent graduate | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Literature | None, because he founded the Literature department of our school. | None. | I wasn’t able to trust my male Professors in graduate school (at a differen institution) for a while. The male professors at this school, however, have been nothing short of wonderful and professional, and this has helped tremendously. | None | Male | ||||
420 | 12/3/2017 17:47:17 | Gosh so many stories, but when I was a grad student, one of the art history professors (married of course) was sleeping with a friend who was 21 (he was 36 and her professor)..while it was consensual, the power dynamics make it problematic. Also, when she broke it off with him, he became obsessive and stalked her a bit. He is now the head of the department. A friend of mine teaches there and said many women had lodged complaints against him, all of which were ignored when he was being appointed. | I was a grad student, also in his classes, but played dumb | My professor, but did not harass me | Other Type of School | Alfred University | visual arts | none | he's now the head of the department | none, other than general sexism fatigue | none, other than general sexism fatigue | none, other than general sexism fatigue | Male | ||
421 | 12/3/2017 17:51:58 | I told a man in the course we were both enrolled in that he was “man-splaining” (to our queer black female research librarian) and he became violently agitated, threatened to sue me, and stormed out of the room. The female professor did not respond in any manner. The agitated man-splainer only calmed down after another man in the class said that he was uncomfortable with his behavior. | PhD Student | PhD Student (same) | Other R1 | CUNY Graduate Center | Theatre & Performance Studies | None | None | None at this time per se | VERY negative. I was afraid to be in the classroom with him and began having panic attacks. | None per se | Male | ||
422 | 12/3/2017 17:52:22 | A professor grabbed my breasts while dancing (this happened twice, in two different occasions and by two different people) | PhD Student | Junior Professor in the same Institute in one case, and Senior Professor at a major University in the other case | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Biology | None | None | Minor - I mostly avoided these people as I moved forward. One still write recommendation letters for me occasionally. | Minor, I dealt with it ok | None | Male | |||
423 | 12/3/2017 17:54:08 | My chair told me to "show a little leg" in order to get through institutional bureaucracy (chair also told me to wear dresses, heels, and blazers to work to gain the respect of older male faculty) | Assistant professor | Chair, full professor | R2 | Did not report | Did not report | Left institution, found better job | Ugh, not terrible but definitely made me feel that this was not a fit | Actually pushed me to get a better job. | Female | ||||
424 | 12/3/2017 17:55:13 | A senior colleague came into my office, closed the door, and proceeded to regale me with stories of his sex life, marriages, and then dirty jokes that he felt it was fine to tell me because I was "cool" and not stuck up like some other women. He was obsessed with all the younger women in the department, wanting to know about their personal lives and when/if they were going to have children. | Assistant Professor | Full Professor in the same department. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | First laugh it off ("that's just him. He doesn't mean anything.") Now dealing with (after over 30 years of bad behavior). | None, yet. | None that I know of. | Made me close the door and run away when I heard him coming. | Spent less time in the department and avoided certain events or gatherings. | Male | |||
425 | 12/3/2017 17:58:52 | A man that I was supposed to collaborate with through an interdisciplinary teaching initiative asked about my dissertation project. When I mentioned queerness, he asked if I meant “deformed.” When I said no, he said that my project didn’t make sense, and that he would refuse to accept such a project. “Good thing you’re not my advisor,” I retorted. | PhD Student, Teaching Fellow, & Adjunct Assistant Professor | Tenured Full Professor in a different department (well above me). | R2 | Baruch College | Theatre (the perpetrator’s is Journalism) | None | None, though I did tell the project director. | Minimal ... see below. | Minimal in the long term ... mostly anxiety and anger. | I have not participated in the multi-disciplinary teaching initiative since (“Learning Communities”) which would increase my pay per course and cut my class size in half, because of this negative experience. | Male | ||
426 | 12/3/2017 18:01:41 | Undergraduate at Florida State in General Education courses. Western History & Civilization professor would stop lectures and compliment my outfits, no matter how modestly I dressed. When the other students would audibly groan or make other comments, I would put my hand over my face and sink into my seat. Every time I did that, he would loudly announce "Oh, c'mon, it's not like I'm trying to DATE YOU or anything!" I had an A in the class, but he would pull me aside after class to demand I meet him in his office to 'discuss' my grades. I agreed once and brought another female student with me, which angered him. He began making negative comments to me in class, so I withdrew close to the last withdrawal date. Back then, before internet, in order to withdraw you had to take a form from the registrar and obtain your professor's signature. I approached him at the end of another class he was teaching, handing him a textbook and the form on top to sign. He scowled at me, and when he finished signing THREW the book, form, and pen at me. Around the same time, my theatre professor kept trying to get me to go to his community theatre productions for "extra credit," but they always included a stop at a bar afterwards. I went once and called a friend to come get me, and he drunkenly cornered me and tried to get me to stay (saying he had a wife, and she wouldn't mind). I declined, and never went again. About a week later, I was standing at a streetcorner waiting for the light to change, and a man began catcalling me from his car. It was the same theatre professor, telling me what he wanted to do to my "hot little tits" and my ass. I don't think he recognized me, but he got the nickname *** "Catcall" *** until I left Tallahassee. I tried to make myself as invisible as possible until the end of the semester. In 2016, he began posting in the Florida "Indivisible" Facebook group; I immediately recognized him 25 years later. He has public posts objectifying women who strip for a living, among others, and I reported him to (with my story) to the admins. | Undergraduate | Both men were my professors. | Other R1 | Florida State University | General Education (at the time) | None. I did not report either incident. | None. I did not report either incident. | None. | I have worried about an ulterior motive from straight males who were professors or administrators. | Although not the main reason, these two incidents were a reason why I transferred to another Florida public state university and majored in Education, where my professors have been mostly female. | While the admins for the Facebook "Indivisible" group messaged me to agree that my experiences with *** were disturbing, they kept his membership in the group. I understand that it is my singular experience, but by them not removing him I felt victimized all over again 25 years later. I am defending my PhD this week on Tuesday, and I am proud to say that even the physical assault didn't derail me from my ultimate goal. My email is *** if you would like to contact me further. Thank you for taking the time to collect this information from others. | Male | |
427 | 12/3/2017 18:10:00 | I was assaulted by a faculty member while at a summer music conference in 2012 | I was a master's student at a different institution from the one at which he was faculty; however, he had been very aggressively trying to recruit me for his institution's doctoral program. | He was on faculty at the conference (in music composition, professors are often brought in to give private lessons or masterclasses for conference participants) | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | He teaches at UC Berkeley | Music composition | After I told people about what happened (including the conference organizers), they disinvited him from all future events and removed his name from their faculty page so as to sever all ties with him. I also tried to start an investigation into him under Title IX, and the Title IX lawyer discouraged me from doing so because the incident did not happen on UC property and I was not a student of his (she did say that I could make the case that he was acting as a representative of UC because there was an extensive record of emails in which he was actively trying to recruit me for his program, but because UC Berkeley's investigative process was such a disaster in 2014, I was advised against pursuing it for my own sake). Now, in 2017, sexual misconduct has been added as a violation of the faculty code of conduct (not just on UC property and with UC students), so I would have a much better chance. I have not yet decided whether or not I want to move forward. | None whatsoever; he continues to serve on faculty at other conferences/festivals and still holds his tenured professorship at UC Berkeley | I didn't write music for almost a year as a result of the incident, and I have purposefully avoided applying for competitions, grants, and other programs on which he is an adjudicator or faculty member. | I have PTSD as a result, and also had developed an eating disorder and struggle with depressive episodes. | At first, I wasn't sure as to whether or not I would continue in music composition or in my graduate studies. However, after years of processing, I've now been emboldened to pursue a career in academia in order to be a resource to other students struggling with the same things. The only way anything is going to get better is if some good people stay in academia and fight. | Thank you for doing this. | Male | |
428 | 12/3/2017 18:19:28 | When I was in graduate school attending a meeting the professor I was working with showed up at my motel room door in his underwear. | I was a first year PhD student. | The perpetrator was a full professor in my program and a possible PhD adviser. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Life Sciences | none | I almost quit graduate school. I had to find a another professor to be my major adviser. | Male | ||||||
429 | 12/3/2017 18:20:22 | It came to my attention, via another professor that was trying to warn me, that my major professor (who was going up for tenure) posted a craigslist ad soliciting "students to fuck around with" that included a photo of himself and multiple of his penis including stats on size and what he was into. The professor who told me decided to go to the associate dean who decided to let it die. He said it wasn't anything he wanted to pursue. While talking to another doc student who revealed she was being sexually harassed by another prof. in our department (my major professor's friend), I told her of my situation. A few weeks later she told another doc student, who told her many doc students in the department knew about it. That doc student then told another doc student who then went directly to the major professor and told him I knew about it then he called wanting to meet with me individually. He wouldn't tell me what he wanted to talk about but I had a suspicion it was about the ad. I called the anonymous graduate student ombudsman who informed me she had to report it because it was a Title IV issue. For 3 months the university HR Title IV rep worked with me to try to get him removed as my major professor. The dean of my department would not take a meeting with us so I had to continue with him as my major - all the while without talking to him at all. He told some of the other professors in the department that I launched an investigation against him and I got the cold shoulder (to say the least). When I was finally able to switch major professors I got a rude email from the dean saying how he thought it was inappropriate for me to invite the HR rep in a meeting and I needed to meet with the Program Director ALONE. (The program director is one of my old major professor's buddies). The university did investigate him & did nothing! He received tenure and I now have to deal with all the rumors that I launched an investigation & caused this guy trouble all because "what he does in his private life is none of our business." (They don't know what the ad contained or said). The dean, who knew the full details, protected him the entire time. He got tenure & I am the bad guy. | Doctoral Candidate | He was my major professor. | Other R1 | A Florida R1 | Social Work | They investigated. HR Title IV rep was supportive. | Ultimately he got the union involved & was awarded tenure. He claimed discrimination based on his sexual orientation. | Lots of rumors, other professors not wanting to work with me, some doc students who liked this professor no longer speak with me. | It was awful. I spent the three months of the investigation walking on egg shells, spending as little time as possible on campus. I was fearful of retaliation. I ended up back in therapy because I felt so victimized. It was all so similar to how a victim of IPV feels. | I have lost faith in my institution. I have little respect for my department. I no longer want to work at an R1 and if I didn't already put 4 years in, I would have quit. | Male | ||
430 | 12/3/2017 18:25:41 | Friendliness mistaken for romantic interest by older male senior colleague with whom I was collaborating. He was respectful of my saying no; however our collaboration fell apart. Keynote speaker seeks me out after his talk. Wants to take me for a drink. Comments on my ass. Senior colleague asked me to get the water for the panel I was speaking on. I was the only woman on the panel. | Associate Professor for first two; Assistant Professor for third. | All senior to me. | Other R1 | All at conferences; Psychonomics and SARMAC | Cognitive Science | OEO intervened for first one. Others were not reported. | None | Unknown | Moderate. I regularly think about these incidents. | Unknown | Male | ||
431 | 12/3/2017 18:35:20 | I was his best student, a great writer, supremely talented, he said. I was 16, 17, 18 -- he was my high school English teacher. He permanently tied my sense of myself as an intellectual and a literary scholar to my sense of worth as a sexual person. He sexually molested me for three years. It was the 1980s. I complained, and nothing happened to him. | I was a high school student | He was my high school teacher, the person who encouraged me to go to college, who launched my career in its earliest moments. He wrote one of the two rec letters required to get me into college, but in it, he said that I was "a nymphomaniac." I didn't get into any colleges (why didn't they alert my high school or me about this letter? Why did they believe it?) and had to apply again the next year. I applied to the same schools and one different one. I got into the different one. I found out about the letter from a guidance counselor who told me about it after I didn't get in anywhere, but she wouldn't show it to me. This was when I decided to blow the whistle -- I complained to the principal. He listened to me and said "that's hard to prove." As far as I know he did not ask the guidance counselor to see the letter she said she had. In retrospect, I can't believe nothing happened, that I didn't make a louder complaint, that my parents didn't complain, that he didn't lose his job. Years later I met another woman who had been his student, with a very similar story about him, and she said he chose a different brilliant, talented girl every two or three years and proceeded to "ruin her." | Other Type of School | I am now a tenured English Professor | none | none | immeasurable. I am who I am because of him, both positively and negatively. | I don't know, except it must be enormous. I've spent years hating myself both intellectually and sexually. | huge. I did not get into college because of him. I ended up at a college I would not have chosen because of him. Thank god for that school. I got a fantastic education, was trained beautifully, got into a wonderful graduate program and have had a great career, in spite of him and his effort to ruin me before I ever had a chance to test myself. He was attracted to me because I was brilliant and talented and hopeful. He wanted to ruin that and did his best. | Male | |||
432 | 12/3/2017 18:36:12 | A professor made a professional film "Rites of Love and Math" of himself acting out having sex with an unnamed Asian woman (supposed to be Japanese, but actually the actress was Chinese) and tattooing a math equation from his research on her body as she twists in pain. He showed it at a local theater and posted inappropriate flyers up about it all around the department; emails also went out to students. In such a male-dominated field, this made many of us few women extremely uncomfortable in the department. I wouldn't call this harassment but I was still shocked that none of the other professors (as far as I know) seemed to care or find this inappropriate. | Student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Mathematics | None as far as I know | None, the film is still advertised | n/a | n/a | Contributed to a toxic atmosphere in the department | Male | ||
433 | 12/3/2017 18:39:10 | Eighteen years ago, in the first few months when I was a new professor at my university, the colleague who had interviewed me at MLA got drunk and grabbed my ass after dinner at his house. | Assistant professor | Associate professor | Regional Teaching College | English | I never reported it. | I never reported it. Didn't feel like I could. | None. | Some loss of self-confidence. | None, but I'm still pissed to this day that I let him do it. | Male | |||
434 | 12/3/2017 18:42:38 | Rape | Student and TA | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | University of Nevada, Reno | Foreign Languages | Insisted on giving testimony in the presence of the harraser | None | I moved on | Emotional distress and depression for 5 y | Big impact | Male | ||
435 | 12/3/2017 18:43:13 | When in graduate school, I was propositioned by a professor emeritus who was a close friend of my academic advisor. I'd known him for a few years, and when I heard his wife was dying of cancer, offered to take him to coffee, during which he asked if we could become involved sexually. He held my hand and told me to 'please not make it an age thing'. I was embarrassed and horrified, as I'd considered him to be a second mentor and believed he'd respected me as a future colleague. I extracted myself and wrote him a letter asking him to cease as it made me feel uncomfortable, and that if he didn't, I would take matters to the university. He never spoke to me directly again, but continued attending department functions during my remaining two years in the program, and eventually did end up dating a graduate student in her 20s after I left. He was in his 70s. | I was a graduate student | professor emeritus - not a member of my department, but a frequent attendee of department talks and functions, he sat in on a few classes, and was friends with my advisor. | Other R1 | University of Kentucky | Psychology | I did not pursue with the university as he didn't talk to me again. | none | It made me wary of male colleagues offering mentorship in future. | I was stressed and embarrassed whenever I saw him at departmental functions, which was at least once a month. I kept the incident from my advisor, because I didn't want it to impact our relationship. I did, however, share with my closest friend in the program, who served as a support for me whenever he was present at subsequent events. It shook me, as I had thought of our relationship in purely professional terms. | I went on the job market in 2009 during the financial collapse -- I was eager to leave the university, despite the fact that I hadn't yet defended, and the job market was poor. I was able to get work, and defended my dissertation, but if I had felt more comfortable, I might've stayed and tried my luck under better circumstances. Thankfully, there was no danger of his serving on my dissertation committee or needing a references from him. | Male | ||
436 | 12/3/2017 18:46:23 | Constant bullying; use of belittling terms relating to my gender; ridiculing other women | Associate Professor | Other R1 | University of Utah | History | Loss of time working on filing reports against this person | Enormous loss of time on research and other projects | Depression, anxiety | Contemplated leaving academia | Male | ||||
437 | 12/3/2017 18:47:45 | A male professor (who was my advisor) took myself and some fellow grad students to the bar for class. I was the only woman there. He began to be inappropriate after half a bottle of wine, by the time he polished off the bottle (by himself) he put his hand on my leg. My male peers did nothing. I got up and left-- the following week he screamed at me in the hallway (in front of 3 peers/other grad students) for filing to switch advisors. His wife also taught in the department and she suggested I not take her class (it was required). Luckily I was able to switch advisors/chairs and she was more than supportive of my progress through the program (I took that class as a literature review). She even defended me when at my first conference a year later he tried to attack my work in front of a room full of people. | Graduate Student | Tenured Professor | Other R1 | None. I went through the formal channels, but no one cared or believed me (it was never clear which of these was the case). After a year several other incidence had taken place with other women (including a faculty member), however, and my new advisor (who was the department head) started placing significant pressure on him to leave the department. Although his wife still teaches there, he has left. | He was eventually asked to leave. | My MA took me 6 months longer because I had to switch advisors/projects. | I am a PhD student now, I am continuing with school because why would I let that jerk win? I also acknowledge that what I experienced was nothing compared to what so many others experience. | Male | |||||
438 | 12/3/2017 18:48:02 | Consistent sexual harassment by one of the most senior faculty at the university, and an individual who had worked in nearly every department and was considered a mentor by senior admins. He was initially the head of my degree program, then became the director of continuing education. Would constantly comment on my appearance, and would call me into his office for "atta girl" meetings while interspersing sexual stories about his 2nd wife. Would talk about how much he liked my breasts in a particular shirt, and would launch into different sexual innuendoes no matter where we were on campus if he ran into me. When I let my direct supervisor know about that he made me uncomfortable, she told me "these things happen" and to not physically go around him anymore. When my position was being eliminated due to budget cuts, she did nothing to help me and at that point he'd heard I voiced a concern about him, and he started a campaign to ensure no other department would hire me. A second marketing professional at the university called me into his office when he heard that my position was being eliminated on the premise that we brainstorm various departments where I could apply. Instead of brainstorming, he told me that I should use the video room "to make my own homemade porn and sell it," and sent me videos of himself in his office nude and sexually aroused. He asked me on multiple occasions to perform oral sex on me. Both men still work at the university. | Full professor | Director of my degree program, then head of continuing education. The second individual was the head of the creative marketing team. | Other Type of School | Full Sail University | I was told to not be put into positions where I would be alone with the individuals. | None. | I learned to not trust men who state they are willing to personally help me with anything. | I have slight PTSD about trusting men who are 'trying to help me' with my career. | I have avoided meeting with males who state that they have information or career opportunities for me. | Male | |||
439 | 12/3/2017 18:56:22 | Beloved professor would always put his hands on women students shoulders during class while he stood behind them seated. 2003-2013 | Graduate student | Tenured faculty | Other R1 | University of Cincinnati | Educational Studies | Never in a million years would I have gone to his office hours, talked with him after class, or asked for him to be on my committee | Male | ||||||
440 | 12/3/2017 18:58:57 | it was maybe midway through the semester, i went to his office hours to discuss a reading i didn't understand. he sat next to me on the couch rather than at his desk, touched my shoulder and knee repeatedly, commented that he wanted to be my "mentor" and help me "excel in the field," that i had "real potential." | junior in undergrad, on scholarship | tenured professor | Other R1 | rutgers new brunswick | english | none -- i never reported it | n/a | n/a | i suffer from GAD and couldn't attend the new few meetings of his course because of overwhelming anxiety. | none, i don't think. except that i never took another one of his courses and, when i decided to go to grad school, crossed rutgers nb off my list for further degrees | Male | ||
441 | 12/3/2017 18:59:56 | A professor in my department who wasn't my advisor or teacher propositioned me. I was his TA, can't remember if it was during that time or right after. I had first heard who he was from an undergrad I met who claimed to be having an affair with him. I later found out he had propositioned his own grad students. The head TA in his class grabbed my wrists violently at a grad student bar outing. At a party at an international conference, a male professor I had never met fingered the been of my dress and was offended by my reaction, since he claimed to be in theater and love the fabric. | 1) grad student and TA 2) before TA 3) grad student | Professor in the department and course. Head TA. Senior scholar at a conference | Other R1 | Jewish studies | One of the harassers got in trouble for another incident. Everyone wanted more evidence to get rid of him but his own students were too afraid to speak up during the interviews conducted. | Male | |||||||
442 | 12/3/2017 19:08:58 | Various instances of sexual misconduct and harassment, which I came to know of through direct experience as well as as a witness. | Undergraduate student | Visiting scholars, graduate student/TAs, professors. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UCLA | Music | Varied, though for the most part the department seemed to sweep things under the rug as much as possible. | Most of them still have their jobs, as far as I know. | I'm a much more defensive and cynical person. | Significant. | Unsure. | Male | ||
443 | 12/3/2017 19:10:12 | My harasser repeatedly made comments about my body, my clothing and my marital status. | Assistant and then associate professor | Head of online education at the time I was running an online course | Other R1 | Stony Brook | Nothing the first time, second time he was let go for health reasons | Not in academia any more. I'm assuming his previous school was happy to get rid of him | Barely got tenure because he was a hire of the provost | Panic attacks, distrust of male authority figures, anger at this system | I have become an advocate for underserved and under represented people | Male | |||
444 | 12/3/2017 19:11:04 | Multiple professors in my department commented on my body image and weight. One professor in particular made a sexually charged comment in regards to my body. This professor was known to have made creepy comments on student’ physical appearances in the past. I was wearing shorts with black leggings under- nothing sexy or revealing. This was in 2011/2012. | 5th year undergrad | Tenured faculty. I knew him since I was 13 though. | Small Liberal Arts College | Music | The department reviewed guidelines of how to talk to students and to not reference their physical appearance. I received no apology. | None | I have never trusted another professor fully. If anything, this incident is only proven to me over and over again that I should not trust professors. | I don’t trust professors. I don’t friend professors. I have made a point of keeping an impersonal relationship with all professors since the incident. I have maintained body image issues since then. | I worry about my future relationships with students. | I did have one professor who stood up for me who I maintain contact to this day. He was junior faculty so there was not much he could do. There didn’t seem to be much recourse. There has to be a better way of reporting incidents and harder consequences. | Male | ||
445 | 12/3/2017 19:21:21 | After turning-in my graduate placement exam, professor prevented me from leaving the room by blocking my path with his body. He proceeded to create small talk about his connections and famous mentors. He suggested that I meet him for drinks to see where the night would take us, and that, if I was ‘lucky,’ he would take me back to his apartment, do things to me, and if I “was any good, [he’d] consider making me breakfast in the morning.” I called him an old lecher with one foot in the grave. He proceeded to mock me and bully me for my entire two-year masters program, particularly in front of colleagues and students. | Entering Masters Student | Associate Professor in Musicology (He graded the history placement exams and taught half of the main musicology courses for my field. He was unavoidable.) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Music Composition | N:a | He did not receive tenure, but I did not report it. I was not the only case. | Impacted my academics and grades | Anxiety, depression | Male | ||||
446 | 12/3/2017 19:22:19 | May 2015. During a full-day, on-campus job interview for an academic position, the search committee head and supervisor of the applied for position spent then entire 8 hours staring at my chest, even before he addressed my face. He also openly oggled undergraduate females, making comments about their bodies. It was blatantly obvious, not an awkward, I-don't-like-eye-contact kind of situation. It was incredibly demoralizing, I lost confidence as the interview went on, and went to my hotel room to sob at the end of the day. | Academic career applicant. | Department head. | Other R1 | Ohio University | Library Science | I emailed their department HR about the incident & was passed on sexual harassment paperwork. The paperwork was returned to me three months later, saying that they officially found him innocent, that I did not have proof of the harasser's behavior. | None. | I lost this job prospect and it pushed me to switch directions in my career. | Incredibly demoralizing, I sobbed after the interview. I was angry, upset, and victimized months after. It was a frequent conversation during mental health therapy sessions. | I am proud of myself for even officially filing harassment paperwork. The non-results of the inquiry influenced me to never approach HR about a serious harassment situation in my career because of the proof that they would never take me seriously. This cost me another academic job I held after this incident. | Male | ||
447 | 12/3/2017 19:26:26 | I was raped at my first international conference. I was invited to meet up with a 'leader' in my field, as a early career researcher this was an exciting opportunity of course. We decided to meet in his hotel lobby, when I got there he said to just come up to his room, he was "finishing off something", I was hesitant, but he seemed like a nice guy. I tried to stay outside because I didn't feel like it was appropriate to go inside. He coerced me into his room, and then made a move, I said no, he kept pushing, I said no, he kept pushing, I said no, he pushed. I probably could have fought him off physically, but what would happen to my career. I'd be the one tarnished if I made a scene or said anything, not him. I had no power. He raped me. Even more repulsive is that I let him do it again. I was visiting his university a few months later - to see other people, I was trying to convince myself that I actually had wanted it, that he was a friend, and he kept saying things like, "I'd leave my wife but you know, the kids". I didn't want him. I didn't want to accept he raped me the first time, so I let him do it again to try and convince myself I was wanting to have his 'affair' too. He raped me on the floor of his office, his colleagues behind a frosted glass window. Even though I know it's not true, I feel like it's my fault. | 1st year phd student | Associate Professor - no academic affiliation to me | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Conservation | I didn't report it | none | I am undecided if I want to continue an academic career after I finish my phd (<1 month). | Anxiety, lack of confidence, disgust, helplessness, depression, anger, frustration, denial, disappointment (in myself). This is the first time I have spoken about it in any form, I can't talk to a counsellor because I can't bring myself to articulate it in conversation. | Obvious impacts on personal and professional relationships, I am hesitant to trust men professionally. It's made me very seriously question leaving academia, multiple times, not long after it happened I tried to quit until my advisor convinced me not too (he doesnt' know about it) | Male | |||
448 | 12/3/2017 19:26:47 | After reading my work on language translation, an individual sought out and contacted me on Facebook to flirt specifically because he took interest in my research and thought I was "cute" – despite the fact that both my sexual orientation (heterosexual male) and marital status (married) were very clearly indicated. Also despite making my feelings about the matter quite clear, he attempted to contact me in the same manner on several other occasions, asking prying personal questions, dropping leading compliments about my appearance and behavior, feigned "sadness" because I wasn't "batting for his team" – and would not cease when I told him to explicitly stop. (He'd back off and a few weeks later try again.) | N/A | A stranger. | Other Research Agency | Language translation | N/A | None | None | See below | I must admit that I was a bit shaken. The persistence was something I was not quite prepared for. My sexual orientation was opposite to his – so on one level I was a bit repulsed – and I did not have the sense to block this individual immediately. When I did move to block him I hesitated, because one big thing came to the forefront of my mind was, "So this is how women feel when they describe this kind of shit." This prompted several in-depth discussions with my wife about her own experiences with harassment, and to this day it is one of the few times I can point to where I have directly experienced a widespread problem that I was aware of existing, but that was more or less transparent to me, personally, right up until I experienced it myself. This has only strengthened my resolve to *strongly* instill upon my children the sense not to treat any other human being in such a way that makes them feel completely objectified and worthless. | Male | |||
449 | 12/3/2017 19:27:23 | 2004-2007 As one of only a few girls in the applied math department, I was subject to nearly constant comments that were derogatory. To be honest, I don't think the boys intended to be hurtful-they just didn't know any better. Comments included things said to my face such as "well, you had an easier time getting in because they had to get girls" as well as things said to each other while I was in the room (clearly within hearing distance) such as "The problem with being in this program is that all of the women are so ugly. Not that we could date them even if they weren't because smart women are so unattractive." When I brought it to the attention of the supervisor, department head, and other officials, I was told that this was something to be expected, and if I couldn't learn to tune them out, I wouldn't survive in any mathematics endeavor. | Graduate Student (Pre-Masters, enrolled in PhD program), Teaching Assistant | Peers (mostly), a few professors | Other R1 | University of Colorado at Boulder | Applied Mathematics | Female and male supervisors and department heads all told me that I was "too sensitive" and I should just get over it. | None | I stopped attending classes regularly, and couldn't work a study group. This caused my grades to suffer, I eventually dropped out of the program with just my masters degree. | I blamed myself for dropping out of grad school, and fell into a major depression. I attempted suicide, and then went to therapy for three years. I still take antidepressants over ten years later. | I never went back to applied math because I've never accepted that I might have been able to hack it without the harassment. After leaving CU Boulder, I taught high school for six years, then began graduate school in an educational psychology program at UConn. | At the time, it never really occurred to me that I was being sexually harassed. It wasn't until I began working for the graduate employee union at my school, and working with other victims of sexual harassment, that was able to put words to the experience. I wonder how many women might be in a similar position. | Male | |
450 | 12/3/2017 19:37:58 | A full professor (female) made repeated references to my body and asked repeated questions about my sex life. She made numerous comments about her own sex life all when we were alone in her office. | Assistant Professor (untenured) | Professor (tenured) | R2 | Music | Never reported | None | None | Minimal | I am a male faculty member. This repeated inappropriate sexual language is made by one of the “good ones.” I’m sure she’d be horrified to know that what she considers playful banter has been viewed by me as harassment. I’m positive she is completely unaware of her power relative to me. She is oblivious to the fact that her comments about my body and my sexual life weigh on me because she is on my tenure and promotion committee. This shows that these cases are more about power than gender. | Female | |||
451 | 12/3/2017 19:39:23 | When I was a graduate student working at the campus library, a senior library worker frequently cornered me and groped me. It was always so sudden and terrifying that I never knew how to respond, other than to cry by myself afterward. | Graduate student | More senior | Elite Institution/Ivy League | None | I still have flashbacks about it | I had to change my shift to get away from my harasser. | Female | ||||||
452 | 12/3/2017 19:39:51 | My senior colleague questioned my sexuality while I presenting work to a departmental seminar. He then followed up by inviting me to come ‘nap on his couch’ (in his office) if I was ever tired. Several instances of invading personal space by touching as well | Assistant Professor | Associate Professor | Other R1 | University of Iowa | Information Science | After reporting the incident to my chair(s) (I had a joint appt at the time) I was made aware that ‘he didn’t mean it’ and that it would be disruptive to the department’s environment if I was to press for a complaint. | None, nada, zero, zip | I avoided that department for nearly a year afterwards, which led to a critical annual review blaming me for being ‘unavailable’ to the department’s culture. | *shrug* another link in the chain. More stress, more problems. | Confirmed my suspicions that the academy can be predatory AND protects its predators. I eventually took a new job elsewhere. | Male | ||
453 | 12/3/2017 19:42:20 | A senior colleague asked a younger/newer colleague out for a drink. When they arrived at the venue, the younger colleague realized this was supposed to be a "date." She made clear that she wasn't interested. He told her that he was "infatuated" with her and kept texting her for months afterward, even though she repeatedly told him he was uninterested. | Junior | Senior | Elite Institution/Ivy League | None | The junior colleague eventually left academia | The junior colleague seems shaken by the incident | The junior colleague left academia | Male | |||||
454 | 12/3/2017 19:46:36 | male assistant prof. was actively pursuing sexual relationships with both undergraduate and graduate students, including those he supervised | graduate student | in my dept but outside my network (not on any of my committees) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | interdisciplinary | unknown | unknown but he did leave the dept. within a few years to go to a different elite R1 | n/a | n/a | n/a | Male | |||
455 | 12/3/2017 19:46:55 | A colleague sent suggestive texts and made unwanted comments while we were TAing the same class together. Though technically a peer, he was at least a decade older than me. He often complained about married life and talked about his wife and children in a way that made me uncomfortable. He kept texting even when I made it clear that I had a boyfriend and wasn't interested. | Doctoral candidate | Peer (fellow PhD student) | Other R1 | Male | |||||||||
456 | 12/3/2017 19:49:01 | male assistant prof. was actively pursuing sexual relationships with both undergraduate and graduate students, including those he supervised | graduate student | in my dept but outside my network (not on any of my committees) | UC Berkeley | Ethnic Studies | unknown | unknown but he did leave the dept. within a few years to go to a different elite R1 | n/a | n/a | n/a | The department was rife with other examples of male professors and graduate students seeking sexual relationships with students. | |||
457 | 12/3/2017 19:49:02 | Stalking | Undergraduate Student | Graduate Student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UT Austin (his current institution), formerly Princeton | Economics | Didn't report | None. He has just been hired as a professor at a top institution. | Male | |||||
458 | 12/3/2017 19:52:53 | I went to lunch thinking it was a mentoring opportunity between two URMs, and he repeatedly grabbed my hand and suggested we should date and have sex. It didn’t occur to me that I had a right to leave or that I had a right to report it to anyone. The department and university had never suggested that we had this right. I didn’t tell anyone about it until he and I ended up as postdocs in the same department. | College student | Graduate student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Science | N/A | None. He’s now a professor. My postdoc advisor recently published a paper with him. The advisor has known for a couple of years what happened and how upset I am by the memories of it. | I could not fully integrate into the department we were both postdocs in. I was uncomfortable with their handling of the information that he had previously harassed me. I felt like I wasn’t taken seriously. It is hard to have a collegial and productive experience in those circumstances. | I had many panic attacks about being near him. When my advisor published a paper with him after knowing he had harassed me, I lost about 10 days of productivity time to feeling depressed to the point of sometimes feeling suicidal. I felt like devalued trash. Doing my research seemed scary. At times I have suffered from nightmares. I am afraid of him. When he and I joined the same department, I confronted him by email and he responded with an email that sounded like a lawyer had written it. He gaslit me and said that it was I who had made him uncomfortable. But he was a grad student. I didn’t have the power he had. He made me doubt a memory that was so strong in me before. I question my competence in ways I didn’t before. I’m afraid to go to the office, to deal with people mentioning his name. But It happened. My body remembers the revulsion I felt when he touched my hand. As time has gone on, it feels worse. At least my rapist expressed remorse, even if he hasn’t taken full responsibility. This guy won’t even admit anything happened. And he was a minority too. He was supposed to look out for me but instead he was part of the problem. | I was ready to quit academia entirely when I found out we would be working together. I’ve published less. I feel more stressed about failing because of this. I have a lot of anxiety. That makes it harder to work. | Male | |||
459 | 12/3/2017 19:58:16 | I was getting a master's degree from 1984-86 when I made friends with the chair of another department. He made several passes and groped me until I finally got wise to the situation. | I was a male graduate student. | He was chair of a department. | Regional Teaching College | University of Central Arkansas | music | I didn't report it | none | none | minimal | none | Male | ||
460 | 12/3/2017 20:05:13 | The same person groped me while we were doing fieldwork, made explicitly sexual comments to me at work, often made implicitly sexual comments in many contexts. Years later, I learned from close friends that they had the same things happen to them, by the same perpetrator. The perpetrator is still employed by the old university, with no reports made against them, as far as I know. | Graduate student | Equivalent (they are a lab manager/technician) | Other R1 | Ecology | None | None | Severing ties with my former PhD lab, I can't do fieldwork with them or use the data that I helped to gather but they gatekeep. | I'm in therapy now. Spent years 'making nice' with my harasser because I didn't know how to report and now I'm dealing with the guilt and regret and fear that they are (still) harassing others. | Male | ||||
461 | 12/3/2017 20:12:30 | We were field technicians together for a summer. He repeatedly made sexual comments and innuendos, and viciously misogynistic comments in my presence and about me. I repeatedly asked him to stop and threatened to go to HR (which was an empty threat because I didn't think I could go to HR) - he only laughed at my threats. Once, he was discussing the breast size of another woman research technician and I asked him to stop or to leave the room, and he laughed "No, why should I leave? You leave." I left the room, walked outside, burst into tears and left work early that day. | Seasonal research technician | Same position. | Other R1 | Marine biology | None | None | Severed ties with that lab, never asked for a letter of recommendation. | Recently, I stumbled across a picture of my harasser on Twitter. He is now a graduate student in my field. I had a panic attack, reliving the summer of harassment. Do I have to see him at conferences? What if he tries to talk to me? Is he harassing the female labmates that were in that picture with him? I'm wracked with fear, guilt, and panic. He made me feel like I didn't belong. That I didn't deserve to be there. I was paranoid - every sexual comment he made about other women when I was around, I knew he was making about me as soon as I left. I was exposed and dehumanized. | Male | ||||
462 | 12/3/2017 20:16:57 | I was at a conference and attended the social where a professor invited me back to his room for "further discussion". Completely unwarranted and left me thoroughly uncomfortable. More examples include uncalled for flirting while I was presenting my poster, questions on whether I'm single, comments on my clothes and appearance and basically discussing everything except my science. | Student, post-doc | Asst professor, asso. Professor | Other Type of School | Biomedical sciences | None | None | Continue to have anxiety in attending conferences and have completely stopped attending socials / networking events | Huge. Left me uncomfortable, disgusted, questioning myself on how I come across to men, wondering what I did wrong to attract unwanted attention and worry about being out of the loop because I no longer attend socials/networking events | Enormous. Looking for non-academia job opportunities even though I only wanted to be in academia ever. | Male PIs don't always realize the impact of harmless (in their opinion) flirting on female trainees. We don't want it, we hate it and it makes us feel like a sexual object when all we want is to discuss our science in the same manner a male trainee does. | Male | ||
463 | 12/3/2017 20:20:26 | Stalked by grad student in my cohort | Doctoral student | Doctoral student in my program | Other R1 | History | Not reported | None (not reported) | Postponed exams due to stress | Significant; triggered previous sexual assault/abuse | Male | ||||
464 | 12/3/2017 20:37:29 | Groping, directed lewd and solicitous comments, inappropriate racial/sexual remarks and jokes | Graduate Student | Faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | New York University | Philosophy | Wasn't reported within the institution. | Wasn't reported within the institution. | Wasn't reported within the institution. | Significant. | Not clear. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
465 | 12/3/2017 20:44:34 | I had a consensual affair with a married professor from another university. We met at a conference, and we saw each other at a few more conferences over a period of 3 years. We exchanged emails and read each other's writing in between these visits. Throughout that time, I believed that I was special to him--that he respected my intellect and cared for me as a friend and lover. I have not seen or heard from him since he was publicly accused of harassing several other young women in our field. This revelation made me feel stupid and ashamed. I am relieved that other women had the courage to stand up and expose his actions. This relationship does not constitute harassment, but I felt moved to describe it here after reading another commenter's post about a similar situation. Even though consensual relationships like this are hard to talk about and don't lend themselves to clear moral judgments, they do happen frequently in academia, and I believe that they're an important part of the overall culture that we are collectively trying to understand and address. I take responsibility for my own participation in this relationship, but I also believe that this professor abused his power with me in an unprofessional and unethical way. | Grad student, age 27 | Professor, age 48 | Other R1 | Male | |||||||||
466 | 12/3/2017 20:50:27 | Faculty in the Department who she had been meeting with (who would be teaching a class the student wanted to take the following semester) told her he had feelings for her and asked her on a date | PhD student | Faculty in the same department, future instructor | R2 | Political Science | NA | NA | Changed choice of committee member, had to reconsider taking a class she wanted to take | Male | |||||
467 | 12/3/2017 21:23:26 | Several incidents in which my diss director commented that she believed I was hitting on/flirting with/had a crush on my research partner to the point we were both really uncomfortable meeting with her together. (FTR, research partner is a close friend and neither of us have feelings for each other beyond friendship, nor have we ever.) Same person would make comments to an entire class about a peer in a class being my "work husband" and that we had "chemistry." The same person is emotionally abusive to all graduate students with whom she works, and she has the highest attrition rate for graduate students. She manages to make it appear that their attrition is their fault, but it is largely due to her unwillingness to work with them/spend time on their work/talk to them as adults/not insult/etc. She has learned to be verbally abusive and follow it up with emails that make it seem as though she was agreeable. Finally, she latches on to graduate students who have children and forces herself upon the children (hugs, kisses, telling them to refer to her as "Aunt [name]." | Graduate student | Tenured professor | Other R1 | English | None/Reported the emotional abuse (power abuse) and everyone said they've been aware of it for ~15 years but that there's nothing they can do. | None | Took me a year longer to graduate than it should have. I left after becoming ABD so that I could get away from the atmosphere. | Since finishing my PhD, I feel as though I am leaving an abusive relationship. There was no celebration on the actual accomplishment of completing my PhD. Instead, it was relief that I don't have to be insulted, yanked around, etc. by the diss director. | I have no desire to work in a TT position at an R1, because a great deal of abuse I've seen stems from R1 and tenured faculty. (I am in a permanent position that is akin to tenure without the research requirement.) I am working to leave academia when my student loans are paid off. I don't have work friends, and I don't put my children in situations where they have to meet or interact with colleagues. | Female | |||
468 | 12/3/2017 21:28:04 | Constant inappropriate "jokes" sexual in nature and creepy. Once wore same outfit two days in a row got suggested was Bc had done walk of shame. Ditto every time I yawned and said was tired-suggestion was Bc was up late having sex not grading/prepping. Remarks above crawling on floor (I was sitting down to sort files in my own office). Just general boundary skirting with sexually suggestive stuff. Right below actionable of course. Grad students have told mw, while discussing Weinstein, he's much much creepier with them and pushes boundaries on regular. I got a weird feeling when I saw how much he paid attention to inebriated grad student at dept holiday but kept it to myself. Regularly makes up excuses to talk to me even though body language etc convey I don't want to and now that chairship is over there is no reason. | Assistant, first year faculty | Chair of dept (interim) | Other R1 | History | Didn't report. Have heard title 9 person isn't given leeway to do her job and I'd seen the way the old Irish Catholic brotherhood (both lay and clergy) protect their own on this campus to know better. Example: slap on wrist to Dean of Students after he showed Koch bros video at sexual assault training that claimed rape was political issue) https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/09/01/fordham-investigates-dean-comments-sex-assault Housing an fired pedofile from prep school with which university shares campus in campus rectory. So already an on campus culture that has conveyed administration will circle wagons to protect their own. Faculty member in question would be expensive to replace. | Much less time spent on campus and in office. Much less willing to seek resources from then chair. Even as colleague it continues and makes it difficult to concentrate after each encounter. Will go back on market or quitting academia bc I won't stay here. | ...... | See above | Male | ||||
469 | 12/3/2017 21:28:04 | Fellow graduate student sexually harassed me and at least eight other female graduate students in the same department. He would ask to have sex in offices, cars, etc. and would say that he needed to cover his crotch because people would see he was aroused. He commented on women's clothing or lack thereof. | Peer/graduate student | Graduate student/peer | Other R1 | Southern Illinois University Carbondale | English | None. It was reported and they said they couldn't prove it. (The first response, however, is that he wouldn't have done that because he had a wife and children.) The chair of the department (who I will submit another story for) stood up for him. | Some of the male graduate students learned of his behavior and threatened him. He stopped talking to peers in his cohort and older and began hitting on females in incoming cohorts. | I am very cognizant of the clothing I wear. | None. | As mentioned above, I am cognizant of what I wear, who touches me, and who I allow into my office when others aren't there. | Male | ||
470 | 12/3/2017 21:29:58 | 2016 | Assistant Professor | Associate Professor | Other R1 | UCR | Humanities | "re-tell the same story to 10 different administrators so you feel like something is happening, and then watch how you get screwed over anyway." Dean told me, "this happened to me too, and the only way to escape is to keep publishing." | Promotion | I was compelled to leave the university | was incapacitated for a year | Female | |||
471 | 12/3/2017 21:31:58 | I was touched inappropriately at my job (shoulder massages etc) and comments were made about my body and attractiveness. | graduate student | boss (on campus job, but not my advisor) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | Media Studies | I didn't report it, but I mentioned it to a friend, who offered me another job in another department, which I took. | None; I didn't report it. | This was more a "money" job and didn't impact my career. | This was horrible. I felt unable to leave the job because I was so desperate for money, but I hated going in everyday and managing my boss's advances and his fragile ego. I felt lonely, abandoned, desperate, and afraid. It made me tired and demoralized while I was working there, and I didn't know who to turn to. In the long run, I am angry and I regret not reporting it. He hired an attractive young woman as my replacement when I quit, and I feel guilty for not reporting him because I worried about what she would have to deal with. I'm still skittish about being alone in rooms with a male boss. | I stopped working in "tech" for a while and stopped working in environments where I would be alone with men. I gradually came back to this work and I am proactive about teaching and involving women. | Male | ||
472 | 12/3/2017 21:34:52 | I've had many experiences of unwanted sexual advances and inappropriate conversations with professors as an undergraduate and graduate student, as well as during my postdoctoral positions. The worst is the one I will note here--relating to an undergraduate student (who was about 50 years my senior) who stalked me and sent me sexually explicit emails when I was a graduate student teacher at UC Berkeley. Once I reached out to my department I found out he had been inappropriate to other graduate students and had sexually harassed a staff member over a period of months with no repercussions. He had a criminal record of multiple sexual assaults and rape (had spent decades in prison), but the Title IX office told me they could do nothing to remove him from the class unless he physically attacked me. He was switched out of my lab but remained in the large lecture I had to attend twice a week. I was told by Title IX to come late and leave early as well as sit in the back of the lecture hall so as to not be seen by him. Having known that he had followed me to places and written me explicit fantasies, made me never again feel safe on campus until I graduated 3 years later. A year after the incident, a fellow graduate student forwarded me new advances he had sent to her. | Graduate student | Undergraduate student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Geography | University Title IX office made no effort to discipline him while my department made all the possible steps to ensure said student could not major or take more classes in the department (the department later received a complaint from said student of discrimination, despite his having harassed 4 members of the department over a period of semesters). | None | It brought back sexual trauma from the past and completely changed my sense of security on campus. I no longer went to my office after hours and was intimidated from attending events affiliated to the center where he had been watching me. I was also very worried for the other undergraduate students in the course who could fall victim to his predatory behavior. | Stress, anxiety, retraumatization | Has reinforced my sense that sexual assault and harassment largely goes unchecked. The response by Title IX that I would need to be "physically attacked" before they remove him was devastating to hear as someone who had already endured harassment and had hoped that this time I would be supported. I had the emails on hand, testimony from other graduate students, and his own public criminal record that neatly supported my claims. I even took in the university sexual harassment policy with the highlighted items the student had violated. | Male | ||
473 | 12/3/2017 21:38:05 | My colleague makes sexual and sexist comments about women (linking body size and energy with sexual prowess, for instance), and at a professional conference paid for by the institution, he was groping women, having them sit in his lap, etc. in front of colleagues. A student formally filed a harassment claim against him after he propositioned her at a student-sanctioned conference. I know of five others (students and staff) who have similar stories but who will not go forward with them because of the school's lack of response to the reported stories. If the sexual aspect is taken out, it's also notable that his treatment of women is noticeably different than his preference/professionalism toward men. Lots of mansplaining, interrupting, etc. | Colleague/Professor | Professor (colleague)--but now division chair | Other Type of School | Arizona Western College | English | They made him take training. | None. The institution has had multiple reports in a variety of manners and has done nothing. | Left the college. | None. I'm (unfortunately) used to it by now. | None. | Male | ||
474 | 12/3/2017 21:38:08 | When meeting with a faculty member, his first comment about my work was, "I am worried about the future of humanity when a woman like you hasn't been made pregnant yet. What is wrong with the men of your generation?" | MA student | Full Professor in my department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Wesleyan University | music | none; I didn't report it | none; I didn't report it | This hurt and was frustrating. I stopped interacting with this professor in any one-on-one setting and did not pursue an opportunity to go on tour with him, which many consider a key to opening up their career. | A lot of anger and alienation. Also a sense that I was somehow weird for not feeling complimented by this (famous) man's attention. Also shame for being talked to about my uterus rather than my work. Mostly I was angry and kept my head down; didn't feel like I was cared for and could flourish. | This incident, and the environment more generally, encouraged a turn toward a kind of work that was less collaborative (I focused on making my own pieces rather than performance) because I didn't want to deal with the machismo in the jazz/improv music world. | Male | ||
475 | 12/3/2017 22:01:50 | Sexting and late night phone calls. | Final year of my doctorate. | Professor. | Other Type of School | Music | None yet. | None. | Professionally, this person won’t interact with me anymore. | Male | |||||
476 | 12/3/2017 22:07:04 | head of department kissed me at a conference evening event. He was 65 I was 30. I was finishing my PhD and knew that I had to shut it down but not so harshly that he wouldn't give me a teaching contract when I finished at the end of semester. | PhD student | head of my department, the person who would determine if I got a teaching contract | Small Liberal Arts College | history | I didn't tell anyone - they all know about him though, so there would have been none | none | none - I dealt with it 'well', and still got the contract in the next semester | I thought of nothing else for weeks. I didn't know what to do | none | Male | |||
477 | 12/3/2017 22:08:27 | At a conference evening event, a guy pushed my against the wall and kissed me while I was looking for the washroom | PhD student | PhD student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Leeds | medieval studies | minor anger - worse has happened at a conference | Female | ||||||
478 | 12/3/2017 22:09:53 | Head of teaching told me to 'prostitute myself' in order to get a job | PhD student | head of teaching in department | Small Liberal Arts College | history | none | none | I did not prostitute myself. I was dropped from the teaching roster later | anger | I ignored him. I'm sure the advice would have helped me find a permanent position faster | Male | |||
479 | 12/3/2017 22:16:34 | In my final few months of graduate school, my dissertation chair invited me to his hotel room while we were at a conference to talk about my work... moments into our "discussion" I found that he was taking his pants off and wanted sexual intercourse. I feared that he would no longer support me if I went against his wishes. At the same time, I worried that people I respected, including my committee members, would denigrate me and my work if it were known that I had had sexual intercourse with him. I took on the situation as my own psychologically, and continue to suffer deep emotional trauma from this experience. I later ended up working with this same professor post-graduation on a major research project, and while I had made clear that I was not interested in any sexual relationship with him, he proceeded to engage in aggressive sexual harassment and sexual assault in his role as my supervisor. Once I settled into the job, he began to routinely grope me at work. He put his hands on my breast and/or genitals whenever he could manage it. He regularly commented on my body, shape, size, and sex appeal. He has verbally and physically threatened to rape me on several occasions. At each meeting with him, I anticipate I will be subject to some sort of sexual abuse or public ridicule because of my gender, but he is my supervisor, letter writer, and a giant in my field. This harassment is on-going and while I want to file a complaint with my university, I have been told by many colleagues and other women he has abused that the university does not care about me/us; it will always protects its cherished professors. And I have watched closely as other complaints of sexual harassment and assault are poorly handled by my university -- and how each time the accuser lost and the accused, often a professor, was unharmed. | Grad student untenured teaching and administration | Full professor supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | social sciences | Catastrophic. I have stopped working on my publications. I stopped believing that I have anything to offer my field or the world. I am anxious and depressed and withdrawn from my colleagues. I have started to look for other career options despite having started off with significant promise in my field and a strong desire to continue my scholarship. | Too much to capture in words. Shame, humiliation, self-blame, guilt, insomnia, anxiety, panic attacks, depression. I have suffered repeated miscarriages, and have other significant health issues that are continuing and are directly related to the stress, anxiety, and emotional suffering that has resulted from this sexual harassment and abuse. | Incalculable. It is the single defining situation in my life -- career and otherwise. I pray that others are spared this agony. I was the first in my immediate and extended family to attend college. My mother cleaned houses and my father was a construction worker who never finished high school. Education became my path to freedom... or so I had anticipated. I worked full time throughout college in order to finance my undergraduate education. It was a miracle that I was accepted to graduate school at a top research university on a full scholarship. This predator took advantage of my vulnerability -- as he put it, "when I first met you, I knew I could do whatever I wanted to you." Both my parents were absent from my life and I had no family support for what I was trying to achieve as a scholar. I was alone and vulnerable. I wanted to be seen, to be told I was smart, to be encouraged in my research, to be given an opportunity to become a professor. He strategically gave me all of what I longed for -- for a limited period of time, and just long enough to get what he wanted. He told me that I was his most brilliant student, I had so much potential, he wanted to help me succeed -- and then he took advantage of our relationship by coming on to me while I was his student, and later by sexually harassing me as his employee. But this is what happens to people like me in the academy -- the marginals within the ivory tower. We are subject to predators like this-- and sadly, the institutions that we depend on to protect and educate us, fail us entirely; instead, these elite institutions offer us up as a yet another perk to their full professors who have everything and nothing to lose. From this experience, I have learned that my life is less valuable than that of a sexual predator simply because he is a full tenured professor (whose achievements, by the way, are owed to the women that he has used to co-author his papers, teach his classes, and ghost write/edit his work and grant proposals, not to mention also the significant unacknowledged domestic labor of his wife). I have learned that if I complain, I will find that my job is suddenly without funding, and other colleagues in my field won't support me. These are terrible lessons to learn-- and I pray that someday they won't have to be learned by anyone because they won't exist anymore. The only way to ensure that this kind of exploitation and abuse stops is for universities to take sexual harassment seriously -- ZERO TOLERANCE -- to fire the perpetrator (tenured or otherwise) AND those in the administration and faculty who protect them. It is time for universities to protect the vulnerable in the community so that the university can be a space for EVERYONE. Until this happens, nothing will change; victims will continue to fear the loss of their jobs and reputation, and will continue to be too afraid to speak out. | The only way to ensure that this kind of exploitation and abuse stops is for universities to take sexual harassment seriously -- ZERO TOLERANCE -- to fire the perpetrator (tenured or otherwise) AND those in the administration and faculty who protect them. It is time for universities to protect the vulnerable in the community so that the university can be a space for EVERYONE. Until this happens, nothing will change; victims will continue to fear the loss of their jobs and reputation, and will continue to be too afraid to speak out. | Male | ||||
480 | 12/3/2017 22:17:14 | A junior faculty member with whom I struck up a friendship decided to pursue a romantic relationship even thought we were both already in relationships. I told him I was not interested. He accused me of having led him on because of supposed low self-esteem and gave suggestions on how to change my life and future conduct. I told him he was incorrect and that I was not interested. Over the next months I believe he started spreading rumors about me among the faculty, who stopped inviting me to join them for Friday drinks and began to exclude me. When the current head of department retired and was replaced by one of my harasser's friends, my teaching contracts were not renewed. I later heard from other people that he and I had had a 'relationship' and that I had used him. | PhD student | junior faculty member - no direct supervisory relationship, but he had a closer connection to the rest of faculty | Small Liberal Arts College | history | officially none. unofficially, they began to exclude me | none | my contract was ended. I was shortlisted for another job and one of my harasser's cronies spread the rumour that I was loose and instigated conflict because he believed the rumours. Perhaps that is not the reason I did not get the job. Impossible to know | initially I saddened by the loss of what I had perceived to be a friend. As I saw him do this to other PhD students I thought about it more and was quite angry. I still think about it and worry about the reality of talking with male faculty too much, in case they develop feelings for me and suddenly feel they have a right to my body or to a relationship. | I believe that I did not get the tenure track job I had applied to because of his rumours. I came second. I am sceptical about friendships with male faculty now. | Male | |||
481 | 12/3/2017 22:22:17 | Director of the Institute where I work implied that I owed him anal sex after I received a promotion in my job and proceeded to harass me verbally and physically after this event for sexual favors. | non-tenured | supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | Male | ||||||||
482 | 12/3/2017 22:37:10 | I was a teaching assistant for a professor. He invited me out to talk about “class business,” but would want to meet at a martini bar, and would spend the time pushing drinks on me and telling me things like “surely you must have slept with your professors before” and “I bet your professors hit on you all the time.” He also wanted to hug and kissed me goodbye on the cheek. After this happened a couple of times, I came up with excuses to not meet, and didn’t apply to be his T.A. again. | PhD student | Non-tenure line professor; Instructor of record for the course I T.A.’d for. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia | English | I didn’t report | I didn’t report | I had been hoping to renew this T.A. assignment, because it paid well, and the professor had offered to line up other opportunities for me, but I felt like I had to avoid him afterwards, so I didn’t pursue them further. | It contributed to my feelings of imposter syndrome, as he only saw me as a woman to hit on, not as a colleague. | I chose not to pursue further teaching assistant opportunities with this professor, though I needed the money. | Male | ||
483 | 12/3/2017 22:44:56 | Stalked for Several Years | Assistant Professor | Non-Traditional/Adult Student | Other R1 | Clemson University | English | "Nothing has happened" and "There's no clause on your syllabus that protects against this, so he is a student & has just as much a right to be in your class as any other student." -- Office of Access & Equity | Finally went to police. | I don't know yet. | PTSD | Thank you for doing this. | Male | ||
484 | 12/3/2017 22:46:40 | He was waiting outside my door, and said he had a question for me. It turned out to be a flimsy pretext to come into my room. He climbed into bed with me. I indicated I wasn't interested. He begged. I indicated several more times that I wasn't interested. He started touching me and asked again. I eventually gave up and let him continue touching me. When he was done, he asked me not to tell anyone, even though he told all of his friends the next day. | Student (undergraduate) | Student (undergraduate) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Music | None (I didn't report) | None (I didn't report) | No overt impact (we work in different fields within music) | Definitely contributed to some self-loathing, depression, and anxiety. | Made me very eager to leave the city in which my school is located. Meant I had to spend a lot of time in my new city building connections. | It took me years to realize this was an assault. While it wasn't overtly traumatic for me in the moment, it upsets me to think about the women he has likely assaulted since then, and makes me wonder whether I would/should have reported it had I realized it was an assault. I think part of why he chose me was because he knew my self worth was very low at that point in time, and I think that is also part of why I didn't realize I was beng assaulted at the time. | Male | ||
485 | 12/3/2017 23:04:53 | Aggressively (physically / sexually) pursued at a social event | Graduate Student | Senior Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Biology | Strangely a big source of anxiety / self doubt for me. I'm not even sure it counts as harassment but a large amount of time later I still replay it almost daily. | Avoiding a particular institute for postdoc | Male | ||||||
486 | 12/3/2017 23:08:26 | Verbal sexual harassment- saying I “look like the kind of woman who would be good at blow jobs”. Again (same man) saying “I don’t think you realise how pretty you are if I was your age I would never let you out of bed”. Loads more incidents of the same nature. | Lecturer | Senior lecturer - had been there over 10 years | Other Type of School | Unitec Institute is Technology | Sociology | None - did formal complaint (twice) & he was sent on a 1/2 training about appropriate behaviour. Didn’t help !! | None | After 6 months I left the job. Especially after I formally complained & they did nothing. | Significant- I began having panic attacks & went on 4 weeks leave after the complaint did nothing. He told other people who were also seniors & they turned against me. Therefore the work place was awful & untenable. | Put me off academia for a long time. It also makes me hesitant to complain to large companies & just leave given it the reactions I faced after complaining. | Male | ||
487 | 12/3/2017 23:30:20 | So I began Undergrad as a joint degree student in tech theater and linguistics. By spring of my first year, I was the youngest assistant stage manager in the dept’s history attributed to my prior experience, enrolled in 22 credits (mostly theater), and basically in the department 9-12 hours a day/6 days a week. Because of my involvement in the show, the other faculty in the production also had my personal contact info (phone, room number, etc.). The stage crew director (faculty member) began texting me seemingly innocent enough about show related things, but it quickly escalated to pressuring me to spend time with him outside of work related things. He also taught one of my classes, and would come up behind me and rub my back. I would shake him off and he’d come back the next class. He touched other girls too, rubbing their backs. I was 17, having started college young, and I was glad to be in this show and out in a big city on my own. But I did know his actions were wrong. I first told a senior in the department how uncomfortable he made me, and she said he had a reputation for that behavior and she would try to watch my back and deflect him. That worked for the physical touch but didn’t stop the texts and calls at night. I kept saying no. Finally grades came out at my marks were far lower than any contributing assignment’s marks would have led me to anticipate. I had been a high school valedictorian (weighted). I was pissed. I went to the show’s director in tears and asked how this could happen (showing high marks consistently on grades). He told me he didn’t believe in grades anyway and that if I cared about my grades, this department wasn’t for me. He didn’t acknowledge he objective discrepancy at all. I spoke with the female department chair and she said (and I’ll never fucking forget it): “you’re young, sure, but you can’t honstly tell me you didn’t know what you needed to do to get a good grade from him!” I walked out sobbing while she laughed. I left the major and didn’t look back. In the two years that followed, many of my friends from the department shared similar stories with me, and nothing changed. Finally, in my final year, one of my close friends from the theater dept became Miss Maryland and was on the TLC show and became a local celeb, especially for the small college where I was. She had been harassed by him consistently and raised the issue (using her newfound platform) to the university level administration. Within the semester, he was gone. The next semester spring before I graduated I was funneled into a 1:1 advising meeting for competitive graduate scholarships with a memeber of the university president’s office. I told her why that one semester’s grades were so bad that it took me from summa cum laude to magma cum laude (basically killing any chance for these kinds of scholarships). Her response: “well if your grades were that important to you, you should have left the dept when you thought the teacher would jeopardize that.” I’d been in performing arts for almost a decade by the time I started college, and I have never done it since. I loved our school, but the whole experience was a huge black cloud. Oh, and as if that weren’t enough, I was in ***’s book like almost every other girl I knew. I didn’t remember the interaction with him that led to my entry in his journal. But I think the university’s whole non-handling of that situation was pretty egregious. I’ve been very lucky in grad school off and on in the last 10 years, nothing like this has ever happened again. | Undergrad | Faculty for the first part. *** was a peer in the extended circle of my social group. | R2 | Umbc | At the time I was in linguistics, but as I said the faculty member was in theatre. Now I do Neuroscience. Not sure how this question is meant. | Described above. Pretty bad. | Eventually he was fired because of the loud complaints of a victim who became a local celeb | Heh. Well I wasn’t viable for any of the scholarships I had spent my life working toward but in the long run (I’m 30, this happened when I was 17) it wasn’t that big of a deal. I got into the top school in the world for Neuroscience and after finishing my masters, started a doctorate. Now I have a post doc at an Ivy League school and am doing job talks at other R1’s. It sucked. I miss theater. I definitely don’t do theater anymore. It’s that culture. There’s no avoiding sexual harassment there. In allied health and science there are far more consequences. | I’d already been in a battered women’s shelter for therapy before this happened, so I think I had more tools and context to deal with it than some of the other girls he did this to. I was angry and sad, but I moved on. | I think this is pretty clear from the info above. I left theater. | I think *** is fair game in an anonymous survey. He was tried in a federal court and convicted 10 years ago. I wonder if knowing the details of that case the way I did (I worked with a faculty member who did ethics training for the local pd. We had the whooole story) actually screwed with me and my perceptions of humanity way more than the incident with the teacher. It’s 10 years later and everything about that is like it was yesterday. | Male | |
488 | 12/3/2017 23:56:30 | 2011: Prof said he really felt that he could 'get close' to me and suggested that we hang out 'on the down low', multiple times | Student | Professor of a class I was taking | Elite Institution/Ivy League | MIT | None | Seemingly none | Negligible | Significant | Unclear | Male | |||
489 | 12/4/2017 0:37:00 | A mentor paid ambiguous and uncomfortable amount of time and energy on me that felt like (but was never articulated) a bid for a relationship. I worked for him as a teaching and research assistant. In thanks for my hard work, he took me out to dinner at a restaurant well beyond my means. As a private pilot, he also, for ostensibly other reasons, took me out for a day in his plane. I was too young to know how to decline or to determine whether I was making too much of his advances. I was quite alright, in the end. He never forced the issue and remained supportive of my work and career until his death. It was less of a physical attack and more of an emotional toll too heavy for a young academic worrying about her career, her status, appropriate responses, image in the department, real motivations, etc. In context, this mentor was a serial husband. He had 7 marriages by the time he died. I am quite unscathed, in the long run, and he was a very good mentor otherwise. But, I learned a lot that has prevented me from being in situations that would have likely turned out quite worse. | I was a graduate student (Masters/PhD). It was in my first & second year that these events occurred, but I continued to have interactions with him for the remaining 4 years that made me uncomfortable. | He was a famous figure in the field, a full professor at the university. He was a mentor/supervisor, in charge of classes and research projects I had been assigned to, though he was not a supervisor/member of my PhD committee. His work was in a tangential discipline for which I was qualified and often assigned as a teaching or research assistant. (More money, fewer candidates) He was about 20 years older than me. | Other R1 | Arts | Did not formally report it. I did solicit advice from my other supervisors and mentors (all male), and the resounding response was support and sympathy, but also a kind of eye-rolling acknowledgement of "he's at it again". Between that and vague assurances that I "would be fine", my concerns felt a little dismissed. | None that I know of, but I knew he had a reputation for being a womanizer, a kind of public secret. | Nothing negative that I'm aware of. | I'm fine now. But, at the time, quite heavy. And it was an ongoing problem, off-and-on, as I had multiple projects with him over 6 years. A thing that sort of hung over me for the 6 years. I do have a mental illness that was diagnosed at the start of our interactions, and it contributed to the problems I was experiencing. Also, the conflicting support/sympathy for my situation co-existing with dismissal of his actions left me confused and distrusting until I could find my feet. | Not really much for trajectory; perhaps the opposite. His positive mentorship has led me to an excellent position in my field that combines my primary discipline with his. As mentioned above, it was also a learning experience. So, in terms of life choices, I have definitely learned that academic opportunity is not always sufficient excuse for putting myself in compromising situations. And, it also makes me quite close to the other men in my life who have been mentors and supportive and have never remotely indicated that there was an intimate interest. | I recognise that the story here is not, by far, the worst you're going to see. In fact, I've done more than survive, I've thrived, in part because of my harasser. In fact, was he a harasser? It's the ambiguity, confusion and distrust that remains... I don't want my story to be included if it diminishes the severity of other peoples' stories. However, since this is about a sense of scale, I thought it was worth including as an indication how the institution enables, perhaps embodies, this behaviour. To my knowledge, none of his male mentees received the attention or support that he gave me, including those in his actual discipline, for better or worse. | Male | ||
490 | 12/4/2017 0:48:20 | ||||||||||||||
491 | 12/4/2017 1:31:23 | I had an emotionally abusive relationship with my dissertation advisor that ultimately involved sexual harrasment. All throughout my time in the program he would alternate between extravagant praise and career-threating criticism (like failing me in my qualifying exams and not accepting chapters of my dissertation), and with every conflict I would seek to end the relationship and ask my second reader, a woman, to direct my dissertation instead. She would always refuse because she thought it would "look bad," and intercede with my director, and the next round would start all over again; I would be the golden child until the moment I was totally inept and wrong and had no business being in a doctoral program. The roots of the dynamic all became clear to me when I came out as transgender and transitioned male-to-female in 1992 right at the end of my graduate program. I had been afraid that if I came out too soon my advisor would find a way to deny me the degree I had worked so hard for. Even though I had started living socially as the person I considered myself to be about a year earlier, and was taking hormones, I was not out in my doctoral program. I finished and filed the dissertation under my old name/gender, and the second I was notified that the degree had been award I went back to my committee to have the title page amended to reflect my new name. I got the other two signatures first, then went to my advisor's house to have him sign it as well. I decided that a quick approach was best. When asked what I needed, I said simply "Let me cut to the chase. I'm transsexual and changing my sex. I need you to sign a new title page for me." I already had pen and page in hand, handed him both, and got the signature before he had time to really process anything. But as soon as he signed, he started literally panting and grunting with emotion, and said "Ugh, umm, ahh, I...I have long considered you a rather attractive young woman." He asked me if I went to sex parties and did party drugs and if so could I maybe invite him some time or score something? All the years of emotional whiplash became instantly clear. He had been hot for me but because he understood me to be a guy he hadn't come on to me, just punished me for being the object of his repressed homosexual desire, but now that he could consider me a woman, it was suddenly "hey baby how 'bout it?" He offered me money "on retainer" to buy drugs. I took his money, walked out of the room, never spoke to him again, never asked him for anything let alone a letter of recommendation, never tried to publish my dissertation, never tried seriously to get a job in the academy until I had built up a new field of expertise in another discipline--that took me another seventeen years. Being inappropriately sexualized by a person in a position of power over me totally affected my life and career-path. I've always been reluctant to share this story publicly, mostly because the conflict didn't involve physical contact, just emotional twistedness, and would be just a she said/he said thing. My advisor has long since retired. Thank you for the opportunity to add my voice and story to this cultural moment. | doctoral candidate/brand-new phd | full professor, dissertation advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of California-Berkeley | History | Not reported | None | I changed fields, never published my dissertation, needed to build a new network of letter-writers; I worked outside of academe for many years before finally being offered tenure at the associate rank at an R1 in 2009, based on my research, publishing, and comparable experience, seventeen years after I was awarded the phd in 1992. | Frankly, it was just another day in the life of being a trans woman. Especially early in transition, the sexualization, objectification, harassment, and discrimination were relentless and systemic. I have a strong sense of self, and feel that I ran the gauntlet and emerged intact on the other side. I have a lot of anger that I try to channel into activism and critique. Living well is the best revenge. | It was an inflection point, for sure. But I'm happy with the life I made for myself outside the academy, and with what it's been like to come back into the academy in middle age. It shouldn't have happened, but no regrets about the consequences. | thanks for doing this! | Male | |
492 | 12/4/2017 1:37:19 | Too many individual incidents to recount so I'll focus on one: In grad school a professor made multiple inappropriate comments about women in the women's history class she was teaching. All the students in this relatively small class were women. Most were straight, some were queer. The professor self identified as a lesbian, and would talk about her sexuality in mildly inappropriate "joking" ways in class and in office hours to "test the water" with individual students, even though she was in a committed long term relationship. She would often ask us about our sexual relationships with other women, and if two of us talked to each other outside class and she saw us, she'd assume we were sleeping together and would question us about it. The worst remarks I recall her making in class were when she joked about "pimping us all out," going so far as to name the nearby street where she envisioned turning us out as prostitutes. Most of us laughed nervously, a few people rolled their eyes or murmured in protest. She pretended these were "just jokes" but it was clearly giving her pleasure to abuse her power in this way--she enjoyed making us feel uncomfortable. She harassed the straight women in class incessantly. When she found out I was queer she backed off a little on me--I think she was afraid that if a queer woman reported her for sexual harassment it would have more weight. She didn't harass the other out queer woman in class much either. Or maybe she was just afraid that a queer woman might be more likely to report her. | Grad student | Full professor, seen as very important in her field--history of medieval women. She knew this and used her status in unprofessional ways. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | None, though many were clearly aware of this behavior. | None | Made me very aware of how I needed to be careful around senior women colleagues and careful not to "send the wrong message" to them (even though my behavior was completely professional), just like around straight senior men colleagues. In the short term it hurt my graduate career because as the course went on I became less comfortable and willing to participate or meet with the professor and she gave me a disproportionately harsh review at the end of the semester--partly, I think, as punishment for not playing along with her bullshit. I protested, because some of the things she said in the review were flat out false (like saying that I wasn't intellectually engaged in class) and she changed a couple of lines, but I knew I could never ask her to be on my committee as a result of her actions. | Made me feel humiliated and sad. I had naively thought that women who worked on feminist issues wouldn't be assholes in this particular way. | It made me more wary and suspicious of colleagues and less likely to befriend senior scholars for fear of gross power plays like this. Initially she seemed like she wanted to "be friends" with her students, but that turned out to be a smokescreen for how she was actually interacting with us. | Female | |||
493 | 12/4/2017 2:20:52 | A male graduate student, more junior than me, repeatedly slid pornography under the door to my apartment. | PhD candidate | Masters student in same department | Other R1 | University of Alberta | Male | ||||||||
494 | 12/4/2017 2:24:19 | Both verbal and physical harassement and abuse, in 2010. After I refused him many times, he tried to destroy my scientific career. (He was for example calling my next supervisor and tried to convince him to fire him) | Postdoctoral fellow | Head of my research team, my direct supervisor | Other R1 | INRIA France | Applied mathematics (that time system estimation for traffic applications) | None | None | I had to switch my application domain, almost left. I got tenured eventually anyway, but I lost so much time and energy because of this. | I had to search a trust person when I left France, untill now I am still traumatized by that. | Huge. I am much more cautious, perhaps sometimes even paranoid. I keep warning young researchers about high chances of experiencing something similar, etc. | I knew of many other colleagues and past colleagues (incl. PhD's) who were abused by this person and it felt like he was untouchable, probably because he was and still is famous and brings a lot of funding to the institute. When people went to HR to complain, HR informed him about it and about who complained. Just incredible. | Male | |
495 | 12/4/2017 3:09:18 | We had a flirty acquaintanceship when he jumped on me in his office and told me that his feelings had changed and we would need to have sex if I wanted to remain friends. He was groping and insistent. I pushed my way out of his office. We never talked about it or to each other again. His office was directly across the hall from mine. | A postdoc | Associate prof | Elite Institution/Ivy League | NYU | Cultural studies | None - didn’t tell anyone | I heard he received a censure because of an incident w/ a grad student but he’s generally well respected as a scholar | Embarrassed that I ever flirted w/ him. I feel dumb that I thought he wanted to be friends - my first “friend” in a very difficult department. I thought he was a potential ally. | Male | ||||
496 | 12/4/2017 3:17:44 | As a young graduate student I had to fend off a respected academic who was very handsy at a conference dinner and repeatedly tried to grope me. When I mentioned this to a well-known professor who was organising the conference, she said ‘oh poor man! He gets lonely.’ I was thrown into him again at a conference a few years later and he wouldn’t take no for an answer, so in the end I had to call a friend to come and pretend to be my boyfriend. Currently I work in a department where the Head of School has taken to randomly asking young female members of staff if people have ever masturbated in front of them. | Graduate student then ECR | Highly-established senior academics | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Medieval Studies | ‘Oh, that’s just his way.’ | Networking at conferences is difficult when older male colleagues apparently think they can touch you up when you are actually just trying to talk to them about work. | It didn’t help, considering this was after other sexual assaults as a teenager. | Still go to conferences but make sure I know who is safe/ how to get away. Wear jeans and jacket, not dresses. | Often the trouble is that nobody else is there to witness it. Who will believe a young woman few people have heard of over an institutional treasure? | Male | |||
497 | 12/4/2017 3:28:18 | test answer | test answer | test answer | Elite Institution/Ivy League | test answer | test answer | test answer | test answer | test answer | test answer | test answer | test answer | ||
498 | 12/4/2017 4:41:21 | During an interview with a wealthy alumni donor, my mentor, and the college dean, the donor looked me up and down and told me I was too pretty to be a scientist; I looked like a call girl. I was wearing a calf length skirt suit with a very boxy jacket. He insisted I sit next to him on the couch to talk about my work and then scolded me for not looking him in the eye and smiling more. | Graduate student, pre-dissertation. The meeting was about a scholarship that would fund my dissertation work. | Donor and alumni | Other R1 | Pharmacology | The dean (no longer with institution) made sure to tell me that he thought the man "misspoke" and "probably didn't mean anything by it" and that this would be embarrassing to the college and potentially damaging to future grad students if it became widely known. | None | That stark experience of being completely at the mercy of someone else's whim had a huge impact on me. I always knew I'd be judged differently in science for being female, but I naively expected that the judgement would still be mostly about my work. I made a string of decisions after that incident that deliberately put me off of a research track to avoid anything like this happening again. | I am unreasonably anxious anytime I have to go into a meeting with one or two men or make small talk in any social setting. I have trouble gauging whether or not the things that happen to me are important or trivial because when something wildly inappropriate happened in a professional setting, the two people who should have defended me instead told me I needed to protect the institution. | See above | What happened to me was so very mild compared to what other women have endured, but what bothers me about it is how many times did he do this to other young women? What else did he do? | Male | ||
499 | 12/4/2017 4:41:26 | Meeting with boss. He closed the door. He followed me as I was leaving and put his hands on my waist. I kept walking. | Subordinate--ghost writer | Dean | Other R1 | Penn State | Education | Did nothing | None -- knew better than to bring it up | Left that job and entered graduate school | None that I am aware of, but I will never forget it. | It made me get out of there. | Male | ||
500 | 12/4/2017 4:55:49 | I had heard of this teacher harassing or making leud and inappropriate comments to men and women alike. I always defended him as did many others at UT. However, there are documented allegations online which have been around for years! Then, after talking in his door way, this teacher, now my thesis advisor, pulled me toward him and kissed me on the mouth when departing a regular meeting. Never happened before or again after, and I always thought it was something I initiated until recently. | Grad (master’s) student | Thesis advisor, tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UT-Austin | Music | Did not report | None | None | Mistrust of future teachers | Male | |||
501 | 12/4/2017 4:59:22 | Colleagues have told me that a well-known piano professor makes sexual advances on his students. It’s such an open secret that the students of another piano teacher befriend all of this other teacher’s students in an effort to protect them and give them support. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Michigan | Piano Performance | Male | |||||||||
502 | 12/4/2017 5:01:17 | In fall 1971, my sophomore year, I enrolled in a class taught by an African American male faculty member who had a reputation for sexually harassing female students. As I was African American and his previous targets had all been white, I assumed I was safe. Around midterm, he insisted I was too advanced for the topic he’d assigned most of the class for a final paper and would need to meet with him in private to devise a topic for me. I knew that “private meetings” with him had been occasions for various forms of browbeating and manipulation for other women. Thus, I spent the remainder of the semester insisting I was too busy to meet with him and begging for a paper topic. Finally, realizing that if I failed to write a paper because I had no assigned topic I could be flunked, I explained my dilemma to another (legitimately) advanced student and asked her to share her topic with me, adding I would do my own research and inevitably produce results different from her own so there should be no question of plagiarism. She agreed. I thoroughly researched and carefully wrote my paper, vowing not to complain as long as the professor gave me a grade of B or above. Less than that and I felt confident my complaint would be taken seriously by the committee on faculty conduct, as I was a well-known, well-liked student with an excellent academic record who was also one of the leaders of the campus black student organization. The professor had been brought up on sexual harassment charges the previous year, but managed to elude censure by painting himself a victim of racism—a claim that would be much harder to make in my case. I received a B for the course, so felt no need to take matters further. The following semester, however, the professor flagged me down one day in the Student Union. He was seated with the girl who’d shared her topic with me and her boyfriend, another of the prof’s advanced students. The prof proceeded to inform me he’d been so impressed by my term paper that he wanted to meet with me to discuss the possibility of collaborating on its publication. At that point, I loudly informed him I was no longer his student, told him exactly what I thought of him and marched off. | Second year undergraduate, not planning to major in the professor’s field | Tenured faculty | Small Liberal Arts College | The class was in music history; my major would eventually be literature. | None sought | None | Taught me that sexual harassment was about gender not race. | It was extremely upsetting at the time, though I was able to vent, strategize and get moral support from my roommate and several other women students in whom I confided. Sadly, one of my elder brothers who visited that semester seemed totally unsympathetic. That too was disillusioning. | It made me wary of men in positions of power in my life. I was already a “loner” in some ways. I think it added to my sense of needing to stay as independent as possible. | Male | |||
503 | 12/4/2017 5:05:57 | One of my doctoral examiners wrote me and another student pornographic letters, then insisted we meet with him for "lunch" because if we didn't, "there would be no repercussions on our exams, oh no." I reported him all the way up through the administrative structure, including to a female dean who called what I was doing self-destructive and dangerous to my career. I contacted a lawyer outside the university and was told it was a university matter and besides, his children and their children went to school together, what was I thinking? I finally found a woman to take the case, but she was pregnant and she needed both mine and my colleague's letters because in hers he was more threatening and he was also on her exam committee. My colleague elected to abandon her education and the lawyer decided to concentrate on her own family. There were no repercussions for the professor. I lost my instructorship there. | Graduate student, finished with exams and writing my dissertation. | He was a full professor and a reader on my dissertation. | Other R1 | University of Georgia | English | I was released from my contract when it ended and not renewed, even though everyone else in my cohort was, and I had exemplary evaluations. I was told that my paperwork about the incident, including copies of his letters, would be held on file; it was not (a sympathetic female faculty member who became chair a couple of years later went looking for it and it was gone). I kept copies of everything, of course. | None, though there were a few years of boycotting his grad classes. And weirdly, other predators were outed a little later, including two senior scholars and the husband of a senior scholar who was teaching as a contract employee at the time and writing erotic letters to female students. At least that happened, I suppose. One of the two senior scholars was relieved of his classroom duties and put in an EAP program for mental health; the other was nudged into retirement. The husband was simply not re-contracted. | Hard to say. I'm not sure, to be honest, that this instance did more than slow me down. I'd made some choices from bad advice that means I am where I am, but that didn't result from this particular incident, I don't think. | Immeasurable, frankly. My marriage ended, my dissertation was infinitely harder to write, I entered therapy. A lot was happening at that point, but very much of how I felt about what I was doing and who I was in my work life became much darker after this. I also got SUPER protective of my students and very watchful of my male colleagues in this respect, a practice I continue, which I think sometimes makes me less than perfectly collegial. | I got really committed to resisting being told I could not succeed in my career. It made me more driven and more ambitious. Sort of fuck you for not seeing me for more than a piece of ass, you total fuck. | Thank you for asking. I appreciate being heard, a great deal. | Male | |
504 | 12/4/2017 5:06:44 | When we were first year PhD students, one of my colleagues was invited on a research trip with a male professor. He insisted that she would have to stay in the same hotel room as him. She reported this to the administration but nothing happened.. she left the program at the end of the year. | First year phd student | Tenured professor | Other R1 | Government/PoliticalScience | None | None | All of the women phd students in my department know about this. It makes us feel like or institution doesn’t care enough about our well-being to do anything. | The student who experienced the harassment left the program. | Male | ||||
505 | 12/4/2017 5:14:06 | ||||||||||||||
506 | 12/4/2017 5:15:07 | professor invited me to a concert with an extra ticket. as the evening progressed i realized it was more of a date, including dancing and a late-night meal after the concert. the night ended with him asking for a kiss when he dropped me off at my porch. I'm not sure whether this would be considered harassment, but it did make me feel uncomfortable and ended any future potential research collaborations. | graduate student | tenured faculty member; potential collaborator on research; fellow church member | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Michigan | psychology | Male | |||||||
507 | 12/4/2017 5:19:04 | constant sexualized comments and references to my private life and that of others. | Assistant and Associate Prof. | Chair/Full Prof. | Small Liberal Arts College | Sociology | Everyone writes it off as "oh that's him". | None | He uses the impression of hyper sexuality to discredit me and others | Stress and anxiety. Retreat. Sometimes I pretend to be more conservative or subdued. | Same - I feel compelled to be more conservative in the things I do to avoid the impression of hypersexualization | Male | |||
508 | 12/4/2017 5:22:05 | A senior colleague at my new job insisted on kissing me on both cheeks whenever he saw me. Nothing I did or said would make him stop. | Brand new tenure-track Assistant Prof | Full professor in a related but different department (same floor) | Small Liberal Arts College | History | I was advised not to make a formal complaint as the dean didn't like whiny young women. Something was said ordone by someone; the kissing stopped but nothing else changed (i.e. he kept his job 'as is') | None | None | Increased symptoms | Male | ||||
509 | 12/4/2017 5:26:46 | At an event to discuss challenges faced by female faculty, I was publicly and repeatedly challenged to "just say what had happened" to myself and others, whilst in front of the full dean's office. After holding my ground for a few minutes, I left the event in tears. | New tenure-track Assistant Prof | Full professor in my dept | Small Liberal Arts College | History | None | None | She was the only other woman in my dept. I felt deeply betrayed and undermined. | I'm determined to not be like her. | Female | ||||
510 | 12/4/2017 5:29:37 | I met a male colleague my own age in my field. He said "so nice to meet ypu. Wow, you seem too sweet to do the work you do." | Tenure-track Assistant Prof | Associate Prof, different institution | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | I've never forgotten it. | Male | |||||||
511 | 12/4/2017 5:35:40 | When I was a doctoral candidate (1985-95), I held several part-time teaching jobs at various colleges and universities. One of my first ones was in a small art history department at a well-known art school. An older male (full-time) faculty member was very friendly. He was European, single and it was initially unclear to me how to interpret his somewhat excessive attention. All of the department faculty—part-time and full—shared a room dominated by his desk and the adjacent desk of the woman who chaired the department. One day I was seated nearby, preparing for my class. The chair was busy on a phone call and the male prof suddenly asked me why in African sculpture male genitals were so “exaggerated.” Annoyed by the question, I was a silent for a second. The real answer I knew was that in African art male and female genitalia symbolize human and agricultural fertility. But doubting his interest was strictly intellectual, I decided to shut down the discussion by deadpanning, “Oh, they’re not exaggerated.” I saw an amused grin on the woman chair’s face. The male prof didn’t bother me with any impertinent questions again. | Part-time instructor | Tenured professor | Other Type of School | Pratt Institute | Art History | None | None | None | About the same as what I dealt with daily on the streets and subways in NYC. | Reinforced my sense of always having to be on guard with unfamiliar male colleagues. | Male | ||
512 | 12/4/2017 5:55:29 | Steady, repeated, consistent invitations for drinks, concert attendance, and social time after hours. There was casual physical contact at first (legs pressed, hands on knees, hands on elbows, etc.) and then invitations for overnights. | First year graduate student | Tenured faculty, very senior. Potential doctoral advisor. | Other R1 | Musicology | I never made a complaint; I left the program. | None. He’s now retired and living happily in England. | I transferred out of a fully-funded PhD program to another, smaller institution for an MA degree while I sorted my life out. | Destabilizing. I never knew if my work was actually good or if it was a ploy. I felt trapped all the time into having to play nice with this man if I wanted to have any kind of future in the field. I totally uprooted my life to escape what was going on and decided to change subfields to avoid ever having professional dependence on this man. | Fortunately, leaving ended up working out far better for me. After two years at a distance and changing subfields (and going into debt to pay back loans from changing from a fully-funded program to one with only a partial tuition waiver), I got into a much finer PhD program where none of this crap went on. Decent male advisors do exist. | I wish this were the only story I had. It’s simply the one that got the farthest, to my shame. | Male | ||
513 | 12/4/2017 5:58:11 | In fall 1989, I was spent three days visiting a campus where I was a candidate for a tenure-track assistant professorship. Most of the time I was chauffeured to and from my hotel and escorted to various meetings by the head of the search committee, a middle-aged, married male who also chair of the university’s art history department. Throughout the visit, he seemed unduly solicitous. At a dinner at his home, I couldn’t help noticing his wife seemed on edge/ possibly resentful about something. Once, when he was escorting me to a meeting, I was startled by his clasping my hand as we crossed a street. (There was no danger and I’m not the “touchy feely” type.) On my last night, he took for a long, nerve-wracking drive in the country prior to a faculty dinner. During dinner, he said something suggestive and I finally lost my temper. Two young junior faculty women were sitting nearby and I saw them exchange amused glances. Luckily, I had another job prospect, which I pursued. | Doctoral candidate at another institution | Full professor, department chair | Other R1 | Art history | None | None | Although I received a job offer, it was known I was unlikely to accept it. Thus, there was no attempt to counter the offer I eventually received from another institution. | Nerve-wracking at the time. It was my first experience flying cross-country for a multi-day job interview. I did not need the additional stress. | I accepted a job in a different part of the country, where I didn’t want to live. | Male | |||
514 | 12/4/2017 6:10:30 | A friends was a TA for an undergraduate course on human sexuality. The course instructor made frequent sexualized comments about my friend, and so she asked to be reassigned to a different course. The department chair refused. | graduate student | tenured professor | Other R1 | public health | None. Department chair refused to reassign my friend to a different professor. | None! | Friend, who was a superstar, did not continue on after the masters degree into the PhD | Male | |||||
515 | 12/4/2017 6:11:27 | There were multiple incidents, but one of them involved a male grad student who repeatedly made rape jokes and threats towards female grad students. | PhD Candidate | PhD student | Other R1 | History | Retaliated against the women who complained. | None. | None, though there were funding implications for the women who complained. | Mainly hostile environment for the students who were targeted. | None. | Male | |||
516 | 12/4/2017 6:15:04 | Male grad student with a teaching assistantship treated his position like his own personal Tinder account. He slept with multiple female students while in charge of their grades. | PhD Candidate | PhD Candidate. | Other R1 | History | Nothing | Nothing. The department knew he's a creep, but he was their golden boy. | None. | Some - particularly over the willingness of the department to continue to support a TA who was having sexual relationships with students that probably weren't entirely consensual. | None. | Male | |||
517 | 12/4/2017 6:16:15 | I was on a job interview for an assistant professor position that turned out to be working with a big name professor: the assistant professor tenure line had been created to recruit this famous professor. The famous professor was recently divorced and lived in the nearest big city 1 hour from the university. The big name professor kept putting his arm around another junior faculty member and on her leg. It was clear that this was tolerated at the university. I could not consider the position seriously after seeing that, and going on the job interview was a waste of my time. | Interviewing for a tenure-track job (was research faculty at another university) | Famous professor in the area | Other R1 | UC Davis | Human Development | Apparently none | Apparently none | I wasted the better part of a week on a job interview that was a waste of time because I didn't want to be at an institution that tolerated harassment like this. I took another tenure-track job, which has been great. | None, was just disappointed. | Wasted the better part of a week on this job interview in a department that tolerated harassment from someone famous. | Male | ||
518 | 12/4/2017 6:16:50 | Tenured male faculty member openly leered at women grad students' breasts. | PhD student | Tenured male faculty. | Other R1 | History | None. | None. | I had to drop him from my committee. | I felt unsupported by the department. | I dropped him from my committee. The department wasn't supportive. | Male | |||
519 | 12/4/2017 6:20:50 | I was a finalist for a job at a regional state university. A male full prof from another department openly bragged about how many of his undergraduates he'd slept with, and then propositioned me for sex through Facebook messages. When I declined, he called me a Puritan and a bitch. I blocked him. | PhD/adjunct (elsewhere) | Full professor | Regional Teaching College | History | None, though I can't imagine they didn't know he's a serial predator. | None. | Well, I didn't get the job, but I can't prove anything. | Job market depression. | I've considered leaving academia. | Male | |||
520 | 12/4/2017 6:34:11 | In my first year on the TT, I was sexually harassed and stalked by a graduate student. I had text and email evidence of the harassment as well as an admission of guilt. After the broken Title IX process allowed this student to reclaim an office a few doors down from mine, he continued to be in my space, ask others about making contact with me, and making contact through my close colleagues and students with me. I shared with my fellow faculty how disturbed and in fear for my safety I was. I carried mace and a tape recorder with me everywhere. This student has recently enlisted his faculty advisor in making claims of retribution as a way to secure additional funding or class placements he wants. This faculty member (a male) has publicly stated that this student is doing important work and that is what should matter. Another male faculty member told me that I should be more considerate of the first faculty member's feelings on this. When the administration suggested that the only resolution to keep me safe was to move my office, I took them up on this offer. Now male faculty are saying that I shouldn't be open about why I moved and that I am not doing enough to keep the issue quiet and restore peace. I have also been targeted by these male faculty during annual reappointment meetings where suggestions have been made that my record is not strong enough, despite it being equal to or better than that of other male faculty who are receiving praise. | Pre-tenure Tenure Track | Graduate student | Other R1 | Political Science | Title IX (investigator failed to produce any notes and misled me regarding the status of investigation), moved my office out of my department | Improved status due to his threats to sue | Ongoing retribution on the part of faculty who support the student | PTSD, ongoing | Potential loss of position if retribution is successful | Male | |||
521 | 12/4/2017 6:41:17 | Female student repeatedly flashed her panties at me while I was lecturing. | Assistant Professor | undergraduate student | Other R1 | Physical Science | n/a | n/a | Distraction, concern that student was soliciting me or attempting blackmail | Continual distraction and paranoia | Loss of self-worth | Female | |||
522 | 12/4/2017 6:46:27 | A male grad student made numerous verbal and physical (sexual in nature) assaults toward a number of women grad students in his department (more than six), as well as undergraduate students in the department and in the class he was a TA for. This went on for months. | Grad student | Grad student | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | University of Calgary, though also heard of similar actions at his previous institution. | The campus office that deals with harassment told us complainants to be careful how much we drank at parties he attended etc. There was a plan to talk with him about how his behaviour was inappropriate. | None. He is now at another university, almost certainly doing the same. | Extended date of completion | Negative. Loss of sleep, increase in anxiety/feeling of responsibility for other women, increase in need to know my surroundings on campus and never be alone when he/his friends may be around. | The last nail in the coffin as I decided I would never pursue tenured work in the academy. | These repeated incidents soured the program and relationships between students. Also: too many male students stood by, went for beers with him, etc etc. | Male | ||
523 | 12/4/2017 6:50:03 | I was at an academic conference and a professor grabbed my butt. It was during a picture, so I didn't see which one, but I was flanked by three faculty members from different institutions | I was a teaching assistant. | He was a faculty member at a different institution, in a relatively small and tight-knit field. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | This was at an academic conference | Literature | None (I did not report it) | None. | I left the subfield I was in and focus on a different area of research | Oh, I don't know. It was disconcerting at the time. | I chose a different field of academic study. | Male | ||
524 | 12/4/2017 6:52:40 | There was a well known professor in my department who was known for his constant sexual innuendos and comments. In some ways, it was considered part of his charm by many, but it was super uncomfortable for most females in the room. The sexual jokes/comments were always gendered (i.e. he never made them about males). It wasn't uncommon for him to make comments about the weight or physical appearance of students in an approving or disapproving way. I remember walking in his office and him frequently looking females up and down and then commenting on their appearance. | Student | Associate Professor | Other R1 | Education | Everyone knew about it, but no one ever said anything. | Male | |||||||
525 | 12/4/2017 7:01:08 | A professor in my department would comment on the clothing his young, female students were wearing (how "provocative" it was) to his female graduate student, who was one of my dear friends and colleagues. He used to tell her how most of his female undergraduates looked "almost naked" when they came to see him in office hours. This same professor invited a former student of mine (I had been her TA) and a former student of his (he had been her honors thesis advisor) out for drinks after she graduated from the program. He got drunk, started telling her about his wife, was commenting on her outfit, and then drove her home (while he was still drunk) and ran a red light. My former student ran out of the car and then told me about the incident. This professor also regularly interrupts, speaks over, and intentionally humiliates in public guest speakers to our department, particularly when they are female and/or people of color. Next set of episodes, different perpetrators: the other, male graduate students in my department used to keep a running list in our shared, graduate student office of the color of underwear their female undergraduate students were wearing. They would watch pornography together on our shared computers in our communal office (where everyone else could see) and would make frequent comments to me and others ranking the hotness of our female colleagues when those colleagues were not in the room. | Graduate Student (PhD Program) | Tenured Professor in Same Department (first set of incidents described); fellow Graduate Students (PhD Program, second set of incidents described) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Washington University in St. Louis | History | None for the harassment perpetrated by the professor; discussion with graduate students about inappropriateness of watching porn on shared computers for graduate students (no other punishment) | None | Minimal for the tenured professor in our department; moderate for the fellow graduate students, in that they successfully marginalize most female graduate students who enter the program | moderate | moderate | Male | ||
526 | 12/4/2017 7:13:49 | I was told by a senior female colleague that a senior male colleague in our department sexually harassed his female graduate student. I was asked to meet with the student to discuss replacing him as her advisor. | Junior | Senior colleague in my field | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | English | None that I know of | None that I know of | Male | |||||
527 | 12/4/2017 7:14:13 | At a major conference, I was on the way to the bathroom and a fellow graduate student in my department propositioned me for a threesome. When I said no, she asked if I was sure at least twice while she had a hand on my arm. | PhD student | PhD student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Musicology | I sought out what my options would be, but ultimately decided not to follow through with anything. | None | I feel very uncomfortable around this person still. | Female | |||||
528 | 12/4/2017 7:20:07 | After I graduated, I was spending time with a former professor. He was very drunk and put his hand down my pants. I repeatedly told him to stop, and he didn't. Eventually we were interrupted by his (very young) children. | Between undergrad and grad school | A former professor, mentor, and (I considered him at that point) a close friend. | Other R1 | University of Georgia | Theatre | Never reported. | It is something I grapple with every day because every day, I wonder if I made the right decision to stay silent about it. Every day, I also wonder how it's possible to find closure. It has also been impossible to creatively write since then. I used to do it on a near daily basis, but I have been able to two or three times since. | I no longer plan on going into academia and teaching. | I always regret what came after that. I never told him that I felt violated afterwards and in fact continued to have a relationship with him for a month or so after. | Male | |||
529 | 12/4/2017 7:24:39 | There is one man I know who has a terrible reputation for inappropriate behavior among almost all of the women who know him. In my last two years of graduate school, I became a member of the same society of fellows that he belonged to. This fellowship invites its graduated fellows back once a year, so I see him every year that I attend. He is now a tenured professor at a respected university. It is hard to explain how insidious this man's actions are. I first met him in my first year of graduate school, when he briefly dated a friend of mine. He was extremely full of himself, and when I saw him now and then at school events, he was one of those awful men who made long-winded comments in the Q & A. But I really only got to know him when I was inducted into the fellowship, and he targeted me. Every year, he has this habit of identifying the newest, prettiest women, and he follows them around flirting/insulting them. At the fellowship meeting that first year, as I asked this (married) professor for advice about the job market, he would sprinkle in little comments like "If only I had met you earlier..." I was initially flattered, but over time I began to see that it was a ritual. The last time I attended, he (and a few other senior male colleagues) latched onto a beautiful graduate student. When he is in this predatory mode, he will come over and put an arm around your shoulders or a hand on your waist. He will get in your personal space, and treat it like a game when you try to rebuff him. I graduated, moved on to my postdoc, and one year into it, he became a visiting scholar at the same institution. In fact, he was put at the next desk over. He was always leaning around the partition to bother me, and there was always a sexual undertone. This is where it gets harder to pin down though. The only specific incident that I can remember is when we were talking to a couple of other people and I said something about a box, and he gave suggestive look a look and said "Your BOX?" It was things like that. Always bringing it back to sex, when we were in our WORKPLACE. And then when it was about work, such as at my public lecture, he would tell people behind my back about how unoriginal my ideas were or how unconvincing my argument was. I complained about him so much that after I left the postdoc, my boyfriend (now husband) encouraged me to unfriend him on Facebook. That was liberating, even though he made comments about it at the next annual meeting. I knew I wasn't the only one who felt this way (the mere mention of his name often elicits an eye roll), but I was surprised when a friend at another school brought him up this fall (pre-Harvey Weinstein). She was a graduate student a few years before me, and she'd had the same experience. We had been talking about inappropriateness from male colleagues in general, and she said something like, "Well, you-know-who is the worst." I suddenly though, Yeah, isn't it a problem that all of these women have felt threatened by him? I know you will hear much worse stories, but this type of sexual harassment is completely pervasive and undermines our careers. It is men treating women as sexual objects rather than colleagues. It doesn't matter what you wear or how you act. These men perpetuate an uncomfortable atmosphere for women, make us insecure about our self-image and our accomplishments, and have the power to pass on their opinions to others. | graduate student (Penn), then post-doc (NYU) | senior fellow in my graduate fellowship (Penn) and professor at another institution, and then visiting scholar (with tenure I believe) at my postdoc (NYU). | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Pennsylvania | Art & Archaeology | I never reported it because it didn't seem "major enough." | none. | none. | a LOT of anxiety and self-doubt | Fortunately, I didn't let his mind games get in the way of getting my tenure-track position at a "little ivy." | Male | ||
530 | 12/4/2017 7:25:29 | My story is trivial, but I suspect it's a window into something bigger. When I was an undergraduate, my campus hosted a very small literary studies conference. I worked as a conference volunteer. A visiting presenter, a senior faculty member from another institution, seemed to take a special interest in my work. His attention was very flattering until, when we were alone, he invited me back to his hotel room to "hang out." I came up with various excuses as he persisted. After he finally gave up, he ignored me for the rest of the conference except for making one slightly disparaging comment in front of other professors. I'm not even sure whether to call it sexual harassment, but it was certainly inappropriate behavior that spoiled the rest of the conference for me. | undergraduate | tenured professor at another institution | Small Liberal Arts College | Male | |||||||||
531 | 12/4/2017 7:31:08 | Where to begin?! I am choosing to include a professional music festival in the definition of academy because I attended for work purposes to collaborate and bond with peer musicians. I met a friend and collaborator at a professional music festival in the summer of 2014. The following summer, he contacted me saying he would be passing through my part of the country; he lives in New York but had a residency in Wyoming, just an hour north of my tourist destination in Colorado. He asked if he could sleep on my couch for a weekend and sight see. I happily obliged. We were encouraged by our festival staff to stay in touch for collaborative purposes, and he and I had worked on a new music commission together previously. Rather immediately after I drove an hour to pick him up from his residency, he made small talk about sex, which made me uncomfortable. But I thought, we are supposed to be peers, friends, mature adults... If he feels like discussing his sex life, I'll accommodate him, but I won't discuss mine. He emphasized his open relationship with his girlfriend back home. Without wanting to feed my own ego, I kept fighting the nagging feeling that he was discussing this to set us up for a hook up later. The day went on with dinner and other sight seeing, and all the while I felt inexplicably uncomfortable. That night, I tried to be a basic, good host by putting on some Netflix. I sat on the opposite end of the couch. I could feel him inching closer. Before it could get more awkward, and all the while doubting he'd do anything and that I'm just assuming he's coming close because I have an ego, I got up to leave. I said, "I'm going to bed. Do you have everything you need?" He made me feel weird - "Is something wrong? Why did you get up all of a sudden?" I told him nothing, just tired, do you need anything, etc. I went to bed. He then made loud noises - absolutely slamming cabinet doors, knocking wine bottles over, uncontrollably high from his local souvenirs. I returned to the living room to ask "Is everything okay?" He took this as me wanting attention from him, rather than me being perturbed that he's so loud and disrespectful. "Why do you keep checking on me?" I told him he's being loud, and my roommate - a young cousin of mine who I'm protective of - is trying to sleep. This happened twice more. After going to bed a third time, I heard him knock on my door and whisper my name. He tried to enter. I got up to greet him - "What do you need?" Rather than answer, he said "Why do you keep asking me that? Do you want to hang out?" I told him no. He tried to enter many more times that night. I slept with a can of hair spray. This grey area was so uncomfortable. This was supposed to be a friendly weekend hosting a professional peer on my sofa, but the following morning, I lied and told him I had too much graduate school homework to focus, so I paid for him to get an Airbnb and stay somewhere else. I asked friends for advice. Some said that simply by turning on Netflix I led him on. I highly disagree. I know I was a bit cold and professional. Others said this was inexcusable. This was supposed to be a professional peer. Why did this happen? Anytime I see someone who resembles him, I actually get scared. He even "liked" my "Me Too" statuses about sexual harassment awareness. I hate this incident. The grey area matters too. | Single | A friend, a professional peer | Other Research Agency | The Cortona Sessions for New Music (Cortona, Italy) | Musician: Saxophone; he was a composer. | None | None | I won't host or seek lodging from peers in my field when traveling worldwide for job purposes. | PTSD. I am afraid of him and people who resemble him. I jump to conclusions when I'd rather give benefit of the doubt. I can't sleep alone at night when I hear noises, imagining someone entering my room. | I have left the music field (for the most part) because its "Boys Club" feel leaves me feeling hopeless, that men will always protect each other and I'll be the whiny female for complaining about harassment or unacceptable behavior. | Male | ||
532 | 12/4/2017 7:35:13 | I work in instructional technology. I have only talked to this particular faculty member a few times because he teaches in a discipline outside of my expertise, but I was helping him when we were short staffed. All three of our conversations have been about using our LMS. He has mentioned porn in all of them. | Staff | Tenured faculty | Small Liberal Arts College | Instructional technology | Did not report because he was careful to not make any comments directly towards me. I didn't think it would be addressed at all because it was vague and because I am staff, our campus has strong classicist undertones. | His department now shares my building. While it is large, it means I will most likely run into him again. I'm mostly concerned about my female student workers. | Male | ||||||
533 | 12/4/2017 7:37:54 | Repeatedly had hands on my shoulder, rubbing back, leaning in uncomfortably...subtle, yet pervasive | Ph.D. student then candidate | Advisor | Other R1 | Education | not reported | none | no help getting a position, floundering and not working in my field | depression, lack of confidence, feeling of betrayal and lack of power, | did not get a university position, no support from advisor getting a position | Thank you for asking. He is now retired, but I wish now he would face retribution. | Male | ||
534 | 12/4/2017 7:44:34 | When I was still an undergraduate, I went to see a professor for a letter of recommendation for graduate school. He started talking with me about our "connection." He said, "Sometimes a professor and his student just have a special connection with one another, and who's to say that's wrong?" I looked him in the eye and told him it was an abuse of power, and he backed off, but I wonder how many times he'd tried that with other young women looking for letters or other kinds of support. | undergraduate | full professor | Other R1 | English | n/a | n/a | none, thank God | anxiety | none, thank God | Male | |||
535 | 12/4/2017 7:44:39 | ||||||||||||||
536 | 12/4/2017 7:54:18 | Perp put his hand on my breast at the college holiday party. Same perp, over a decade later, grabbed his crotch while leering at me at another college social event. | 1. 1st year of tenure-track appt; 2. the year I was up for promotion to full professor. | Full professor | Small Liberal Arts College | St. Olaf College | Music | 1. None (I never reported it.) 2. When I tried to report it, I was told that person only handled reports from students (not true) and that I had to report this to someone else. The someone else was involved in my promotion review, so I never followed up. | None | None apparent | Anger, lots of persistent anger. | I had to make the effort to stay away from this individual at all college events. Even with my efforts, the second incident happened. | Male | ||
537 | 12/4/2017 7:55:06 | I was attending a summer classical music festival with peer professionals. We were all considered "fellows" - not staff and students, due to a wide range of ages. Some participants were post-doctoral and nearly the same age as staff who are professors back home. We were there to create new music together as composers and instrumentalists. My instrument group - saxophonists - happened to be comprised of some of America's top performing individuals, so I was excited to collaborate and even bond with them while in Italy. However, being the only girl, I often felt left out. I would go to dinner with them in the evenings, but they would spend this time talking about their sex lives. Not just open, healthy sex talk - talk ALWAYS defined by women being stupid, objectified, and/or demeaned. I cannot emphasize this point enough. Perhaps I was prude - I don't believe so - but even if I weren't, this was not healthy sex talk. Example: "This girl at a party made a racist statement toward me, but it was okay because I got her drunk and she showed me her boobs. So who won? Me." "This girl was so stupid. She thought I wanted a relationship, so I let her think it until i'd had enough sex, then just stopped texting her." Worse still was the constant explicit commentary on staff members' bodies. Two of the women staffing the festival were my professors back home, both modest, respectable, and world renowned in their fields. Comments I heard regularly were "I wish I could see up her skirt when she bends down", and "I'd pee in her butt." You heard me right. This kind of stuff is hilarious to these guys, but it's so non-consensual on the part of the women! They are there to be respected! The men staffing the festival have none of these problems at all. Also, as a woman, I could literally break down how respected and listened to I was based on whether or not I wore makeup. These were sweltering days in Italy with no breeze or ice in drinks, so I often skipped makeup to avoid itchy skin. Male peers literally ignored me when I spoke. When I wore makeup, they listened intently without processing what I was saying. Lastly, there was an evening where I was with these male peers on a mission to buy a bottle of wine. They told me to "flirt" to get a discount. The wine shop owner was a bald middle-aged man. I jokingly said I would, but when I turned around, my friends were gone and I was alone with this man. I actually got scared and emerged - drunk from our earlier dinner - only to be made a total fool in front of professors while my peers told my staff I was drunk and flirting. I had actually been quite scared. I hated this experience. I paid way too much money with hopes of ultimate professional collaboration in a dream setting, my first chance meeting fellows from the nation's top music academies, only to have this define my experience. | Single | Friends and Professional Peers | Other Research Agency | The Cortona Sessions for New Music (Cortona, Italy) | Music: Saxophonist | None | None | I have left the music field because I cannot trust the boys club; I feel hopeless. | Trust issues, fear of working with men | I am at a standstill. I don't know what career to pursue. I wish I could completely design it around working with women only. | Male | ||
538 | 12/4/2017 7:57:10 | When I was 19, I took an introductory English major course taught by a tenured male professor. I learned throughout the semester that the professor had a poor reputation because of his stringent guidelines and arbitrary grading practices; but I was unaware of his history of sexual misconduct with students--until I became the target of that harassment. Though some of his comments throughout the semester were off-color, I tended to ignore it. But, one day, I wore a gray dress to his class, an anomaly for me as I favor pants and more casual clothes. The dress set him off. He exclaimed that it was nice to see me dressing that way; but that he wished I wore more colors (I tend to dress monochromatically in blacks and grays) and that, given my complexion (I am Mexican-American) I would look particularly good in pastel colors. He then proceeded to derail class discussion in favor of polling my classmates about whether or not they thought I would look better in pinks and purples and more lady-like clothing. If they chose not to answer, he forced them to. Many of my male classmates eagerly participated. I remember explaining to him that my sartorial choices were based on my disdain for traditionally feminine colors and that, as a former dancer, I'd worn enough brightly colored dresses to last a lifetime. That was the wrong thing to say. He became enamored of my past as a ballerina, a fascination that continued when he enrolled his young daughter in a beginning dance class I taught in town--a class that I taught while wearing a leotard and tights. Though he did not harass me at my workplace, his snide comments on my appearance and clothing continued in class. For instance, I wore a bandana in my hair one day (think Rosie the Riveter) and he told me I looked like a "feminazi". Because I had to deal with him long after I completed his class (because I taught his daughter dance), I was always on guard. The last time I heard from him, he messaged me on my personal Facebook page (we are, obviously, not Facebook friends but have mutual friends on Facebook apparently) to explain that he is "proud of me" for my accomplishments as a graduate student. As if he had anything to do with that. | Student (sophomore level) | Tenured Professor (he is now a Professor Emeritus) | Regional Teaching College | English | After the first incident, I set up a time to meet with the head of the department. At the time, I chose not to name the professor (I was worried that I'd get him in trouble and that would jeopardize my grade)--speaking of him in general terms and asking the department chair what she thought I should do. When I finished telling my story in the barest of terms, the department chair sighed and explained, "We've had problems with (insert professor's name) before." She knew who I was talking about just from my vague description of his inappropriate behavior. He next words will forever stay with me: "I have to ask you something, please be honest--has he ever touched you?" Shocked, I replied that he hadn't. She seemed relieved, "At least he's learned that lesson." I was given the option to report him for sexual harassment, but cautioned that as a tenured, white, male professor it would be a he said/she said situation and that, in all likelihood and given this professor's record of misconduct and lack of consequences, that no one would believe me. I chose not to report him, because I didn't want to go through the process only to not be believed by higher-ups. | None. I have since heard he's retired. | None, thankfully. | I felt safe as a student until this happened. Now, I feel like I am always tense in class, always wary. | I have tried to not let it affect me. But, when someone in the workplace or one of my students comments on my appearance, my hackles raise. I don't necessarily know if it's overtly affected my style of dress, but I am very aware of my appearance now. | Male | |||
539 | 12/4/2017 7:58:05 | I was told how to dress. I was told "if you knew how good looking you were, you'd be a fucking bitch." My (male) professor said this to me in front of another female professor. She laughed a little and said nothing. | undergradtuate | A well-known tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Philosophy | None. I did not report the incident. | None | Well. Perhaps because I let him say these things to me without consequence, he remained willing to write me a letter of recommendation for graduate school-- which (I have been made aware) significantly impacted the schools I was ultimately accepted to. | Gave me a special brand of imposter's syndrome. I still struggle to remind myself that I am capable of good work, and my comments in class are worth saying. I also struggle to remind myself that I'm not here on a fluke and that the only reason why I made it to grad school is because an old well-known creep found me attractive. | The longer I go on, the more disillusioned I become with my chosen profession. Much worse had happened to far better female philosophers and few in the field seem to care. It's especially frustrating when I hear stories like mine (or worse) about the abhorrent behavior of tenured philosophers. There are so few jobs in philosophy available. The overwhelming majority of my generation of graduate student (both men and women) are sensitive to this issue in the way I would hope ANY good philosopher would be. Yet so many perpetrators keep the jobs that the rest of us have to fight for. If philosophers can't figure out how to clearly identify what is wrong about this pattern and come up with a way to fix it, then it's true. Doing philosophy, for the most part, is pointless. In other words, the impact this has on my trajectory: the overwhelming inability of administrations and departments to better the mistreatment of women has caused me to seriously question whether I will continue with philosophy. | I have made sure to leave out any identifying information. I give my permission to publish this information (if so desired/needed.) I can't tell you how much I appreciate the approach of this project. Thank you. | Male | ||
540 | 12/4/2017 8:00:37 | Not to me but to my students. I am assistant director at a music festival (something I equate to academy because we are all there on university business for classical music). My students and participants range from age of undergraduate to professor. Two of my students (sophomores in college) approached me on the very last day to say that a participant in the adult orchestra (a separate entity; this man is a college professor back home) had sent them explicit messages over Snapchat, repeatedly and ignoring their pleas for him to stop. He invited them to his hotel room. When they declined, he said "Are you going to make me finish myself?" He sent detailed, X-rated messages about what he would do to them. When they asked, "Don't you have a wife and newborn child back home?" he replied, "Let me worry about that." This man knows these women are his students' ages and that they're there for professional networking. This enraged me. Nothing came of it. Now if I see him at a conference, I don't know if I can greet him with a nonchalant smile, but I also can't address what's actually wrong inside my mind. | Student victims: single | Married to someone else; peer professional | Other Research Agency | The World Youth (and Adult) Wind Orchestra Project | Music: Assistant Director | None | None | Conflict! In my position, as assistant, I felt empowered to tell the executive director but not to do anything meaningful beyond that. She is not taking action. What can I do? I feel powerless but how much more so do my students feel? | Trauma, fear that I am not protecting students | Fear of men | Male | ||
541 | 12/4/2017 8:02:20 | A classmate was invited to a "work" dinner by a Visiting Professor while we were taking his class. He propositioned her, telling her he was into her and that he and his wife had an open relationship. She refused and told me about it afterwards. My friend reported it to the department after I encouraged her to do so and they allowed her to finish the course as an independent study under the supervision of a different faculty. The professor was allowed to teach the rest of the semester and no announcement was made in class. | I was a graduate student taking the professor's course, I was not in his department. | Other R1 | anthropology | Student was allowed to finish course under a different faculty's supervision. Other students were not informed of the incident. | None | I personally ended up getting an incomplete. | I was very angry about what had occurred and the lack of transparency for students taking the course. I had lost respect for the professor and really didn't want to finish the course. | N/A | Male | ||||
542 | 12/4/2017 8:11:20 | My admiration of the editor of a well known literary magazine was taken advantage of for years. While I was an undergraduate and a student of this man, he placed me in situations to which I could not possibly consent, even though I thought I wanted to at the time. He was 34, my teacher, my mentor in the field, and my boss (as I was working as an intern at the literary magazine). He was and is a big name. I was 19 when we first met. It turns out that he was dating the woman he would later marry at the same time he was touching me in his office. I have no idea if she knows, but I know people at the magazine knew because another woman who worked there full time walked in on him, half dressed, and me, fully dressed, and she never said anything. This was a situation from which I could not escape. For years, I continued to rely on this man's guidance in the field, and he continued to take advantage of my admiration of him and his work. It ended, finally, when I found out he was getting married on facebook, and when I asked him why he didn't tell me he was engaged, he said, "I thought you'd get emotional." | undergraduate and MFA student (19-23) | Teacher, Mentor, Boss | Other R1 | Creative Writing | None | None | A fear of male advisors and a decision to never work on a literary magazine again, a disgust with male editors and the fiction they choose to publish. | I suffered through a severe period of depression and resorted to cutting. I became really distant with my mom and she still doesn't know what happened, although I think she has some idea. I attended counseling, which was really helpful, but the impact of this man still is still heavy in my life unfortunately. While my current partner is really wonderful about what happened to me, it is still a source of tension in our relationship at times. He simply can't understand how this man continues to occupy space in my mind. | I'm still continuing in the field. But there are readings I cannot attend because I know this man will be there (he seems to move wherever I am). I've also told a few professors about this man and I hope it doesn't affect how they see me but I'm sure it does. | Male | |||
543 | 12/4/2017 8:14:49 | Senior faculty member entered my office to discuss an email I had sent to him expressing interest in summer teaching. He was known to harass young female graduate students so I was on guard when he entered. It was a group office, but when he saw that I was alone he shut the door behind him. He mentioned the email about summer teaching and I responded that I was "very interested and happy to be involved in whatever way possible" (or something to that effect) - I was intentionally vague because I was new in the program and wasn't sure what the opportunities were, so I wanted to appear enthusiastic and flexible to maximize my chances of getting a gig for the summer. He responded "wow! I love it when women say that to me!" I rebuked him, saying "Dr. XXX, I emailed you about teaching. If that is what you are here to discuss that is fine, but otherwise you need to leave my office." He left. I did not get a summer teaching gig. He oversaw teaching for the next three years and during that time I was never assigned a winter or summer course and never received any responses to emails that I sent him requesting teaching opportunities. This stalled the development of teaching experience for my CV. | First year PhD student | Full professor, director of graduate teaching assistants | Other R1 | Social sciences | Department was aware of the issue but other women who had reported more explicit advances had not seen any action by the department. I did not report the incident at the time (I was new and didn't have any mentor relationships developed), although I have discussed it informally with some members of the department. This guy is receiving emeritus status this week. The department sent out an email asking for students to submit our "memories of Dr. XXX for a scrapbook of his service and contributions to the department." I don't think they want me to submit mine... | None whatsoever. | Stalled development of teaching experience due to retriubution | Discomfort in department over the next 7 years when I pass this person in the halls or when he gets into an elevator with me. Disgust with the fact that the department knows but does nothing about the problem. Anger when I observe new female students being assigned to work as his TAs. Distrust in the department leadership overall, knowing that they do not protect female students. | Knowing that I prevented anything from happening by rebuking him gives me a sense of empowerment, but knowing that it had consequences for my opportunities in the department also gives me a sense that protecting myself comes at a cost. I am lucky - this was a minor incident - but it would have been much worse had I not been prepared to handle it. | Thank you for doing this! | Male | ||
544 | 12/4/2017 8:15:49 | Professor repeatedly showed rape scenes from films in class and asked women to discuss them, cornered women in his office and after class, had sexual relationships with students (undergraduate and graduate), raped a graduate student. This occurred from 2014 - 2017. | Graduate Student | Associate Professor | Other R1 | Purdue | English | A vague email to the dept. stating the professor had resigned. | Associate Professor allowed to quietly resign. | I no longer want a career in academe. | Increased anxiety, distrust of all men, low self-esteem, heart palpitations. | I no longer want a career in academe. | Male | ||
545 | 12/4/2017 8:19:39 | He said he was sorry to hear I was engaged to be married, because he had thought I was serious about archaeology. He had two young children. | ABD | PhD committee member | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Michigan | Archaeology | Not reported. | None | Aimed lower in general ; stopped relying on my natural mentors. But I did get a t-t job. | Angry | Male | |||
546 | 12/4/2017 8:20:07 | I was repeatedly told by one professor that I should use my "hotness" to get ahead in class and my future work. As a 17 year old (I started college a year early), this was uncomfortable and scary. | Freshman in college | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | History | I discussed this with another faculty member, who said this person with tenure could get away with it and I was better off avoiding him. | None | Very minor. I simple feared attending office hours with male professors. | Male | |||||
547 | 12/4/2017 8:23:22 | My graduate advisor from 2009-2011 scheduled one of my advisement meetings at a bar with another female student in 2009. He encouraged us to keep up with his pace of drinking and eventually began to touch us inappropriately as we were trying to leave. He scheduled one more meeting with me while I was out of town on internship in 2011. It would be our first in-person meeting since the bar in 2009, so I accepted to help wrap up my program. For security, I asked him to come to my place of work. Again, he brought another female student with him. This one seemed to be in on it. While he walked around my workplace with my colleagues, he boasted about his work. I learned that he had just finished work on a project I had asked to be involved in when I first met him. At the time, he denied knowing anything about it. He then asked the SVP of the department to be my advisor and relieve him of his advisement duties as he didn’t think my interests were a good fit for him. It was humiliating, and I had to apologize for him to the SVP in private. | I was a first year grad student at the bar, and a second year grad student at the internship. | He was adjunct faculty and my academic advisor. He was fully responsible for approving my curriculum and thesis. He was assigned to me upon acceptance into the program. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | NYU Gallatin | They recommended I find another advisor. | I’m unaware of any consequences for him. | It seemed to help reinforce the belief that harassment was normal and if I didn’t like it, I can choose to leave. Until a year ago, I hadn’t had the financial freedom to leave a job when it felt like I needed to. Instead I’ve found myself trapped in abusive and unhealthy work environments. One male superior sent me a link to a pornographic video on company gchat and I didn’t tell anyone because I was afraid they would tell me to find another job. I had only been working there for a couple of months. I felt a tremendous amount of anxiety and paranoia — I didn’t know what I needed to do to keep my job or feel safe. There was never an explicit order to do a sexual act, but I sensed that my refusal to initiate sex, at work and with my academic advisor, was costing me greatly. After being separated from my employer while on disability, I have been out of work for over a year. I am unsure when my career will resume. | I have been hospitalized for parasuicidal behavior 3 times since 2011. I was hospitalized twice in 2015 after my student loan provider supposedly accidentally cancelled my IBR three times between 2015 and 2016 and overdebited me thousands of dollars and refused to credit it back to me. I had put myself into significant debt for the opportunity of going to a reputable school and learning from faculty whose work I had admired for years. I thought it would be well worth it. I believe that my refusal to meet my advisor’s inexplicit demands, the relationship, the money, and the time was all toxic waste. | I didn’t finish my master’s. I’ve chosen to live and work with people who were unstable and violent, and disregarded any sense of unease around these people as paranoia. I felt like I was the problem who needed to be separated or fixed. I’ve wanted to die. I found excellent intensive treatment and I’m hopeful I can make my life worth living. | Male | |||
548 | 12/4/2017 8:26:36 | A long-tenured professor, known for being "grabby" and flirty with female graduate students, made a lewd remark about another female graduate student while I was in his office to discuss a presentation. | PhD student, on my way to candidacy (his course was one of the last I needed to take before defending comps) | Professor in a seminar I was taking | Other R1 | University of Kansas | Philosophy | None - I did not report | None | I left academia because of the general hostility toward women in my field, though I guess he was just part of that and not the whole reason. | Male | ||||
549 | 12/4/2017 8:27:09 | Circa 1990, full professor backed me into a corner. We had no previous interaction that would have indicated flirting or interest. He put one arm on the wall to block me and leaned in to kiss me. I pushed my way past him and left. It was a half-hearted come-on at best, so I didn't make much of it, but years later I learned he made some other women's lives miserable. Frankly I think I got away because I wasn't that attractive and I'm not into men anyway. Protective covering. | Graduate student | Full professor, powerful, but not on my committee. I had taken his class, but was not currently a student. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UVA | English | None, because I didn't report it. | None | None, although I now assume this happens | Little (I was merely grossed out) | None | It is not anyone who has been accused and mentioned in the media as of 12/4/17. He may be retired, I'm not sure. Thank you for doing this. | Male | |
550 | 12/4/2017 8:31:08 | 3 male TA’s had sex with an intoxicated female undergraduate student | Other R1 | Romance Languages | None | None | Male | ||||||||
551 | 12/4/2017 8:31:47 | At a small conference in Europe, I networked with the keynote speaker (full professor) over a beer at a poster session. Somehow the conversation went in a direction where the professor (European) criticized Americans for prudishly not sleeping around at conferences. He believed scientists get along better if they sleep around at conferences. It felt like an indirect way to proposition me for sex. | graduate student | Professor who presented a keynote lecture at a conference | Other Type of School | Small conference in Europe | Plant-associated microbes | Not reported | Not reported | None | Less comfortable networking with male colleagues I don't know well | None | Male | ||
552 | 12/4/2017 8:36:12 | At the 2016 ASA Annual Meeting, I was a part of the ASA Honors Program and hung out with colleagues in someone's hotel room. We have been drinking and a couple of us wanted to get food at the hotel restaurant. A friend, the perpetrator, and I got on an elevator. Then the perpetrator grabbed my butt and squeezed it aggressively as the elevator went down. I froze, verbally immobile, and trauma memories of my rape came flooding back. I got out of the elevator,threw up at the nearest restroom, and made the excuse to lie down in my hotel room. | Undergraduate | Undergraduate | Other Type of School | 2016 ASA Annual Meeting in Seattle, WA | Sociology | None | None | N/A | I am currently a first year masters student and completely terrified of attending academic conferences now. | N/A | Male | ||
553 | 12/4/2017 8:38:10 | Lesbian sexual harassment - she ruined my life and I could not do a thing about it. Made me a slave basically. I am an actual lesbian so what could I do? She told me I could do nothing and I believed her. She is super famous and important and although I am not the only one she abused, some of the others will still kiss her ass so it is very gaslighty | Grad student | PhD advisor | Other R1 | UCSB | Education | None | None | Delayed effect - I’m crushed / leaving academia - the whole thing really sucks | Broken. PTSD. The woman is famous and just retired to accolades aplenty so is still active emeritus and I keep hearing about her | Changed subfields which set me back as I had to create new networks. | Female | ||
554 | 12/4/2017 8:38:53 | A tenured professor and later the chair who was working with grad students would give teaching gigs and opportunities for additional employment/income/professional development based on gender and sexual orientation and also based on what other professors you worked with. This professor/chair also told inappropriate jokes in class and outed (though sarcastic mean-spirited jokes) LGBT students in class. This professor got away with it because she was a lesbian and it was disguised as playful. In class this professor would also question certain students intellect and make inappropriate jokes about not knowing about certain fields of research or not immediately grasping concepts/theories. | grad student | Chair, Professor | Other R1 | University of Maryland | Humanities | Not reported | Plush self-chosen retirement several years later | This made me question intelligence, ability to focus and write papers. It started the first semester of grad school and made me feel I didn't belong in a graduate program. | Female | ||||
555 | 12/4/2017 8:45:30 | On five separate occasions (at rehearsals, production meetings, and once just passing in the hall), this professor placed his hand on the exact spot between my lower back and upper butt. Every time, I immediately tensed and shifted away. It never stopped him from doing it again, and I finally started making sure there was either several feet of space or a male body between us (I never saw him touch a male student in this way). | Grad student | Tenured Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Theater & Performance Studies | I did not file a complaint | He's retired now, so none that I know of. | I fear the impact it could have had if I reported it. | Only the sick thought of feeling "lucky" it was only this and nothing worse | Male | ||||
556 | 12/4/2017 8:47:22 | Professor harassed male students to "teach them what it's like." But not in a manner that could be construed as constructive in any way. Name calling, belittling, grade lowering. Then, at the end of the semester, she would "trade" student evaluations for grades--you give her a perfect eval, you get to pass the course. | Student | Professor | R2 | FAU | Arts and Letters | N/A | She received tenure. | who knows? | PTSD | PTSD | Female | ||
557 | 12/4/2017 8:48:55 | Male postdoc mentor hugged me, kissed me on the head, and said I love you after long period of attempted harassment | Graduate student | Postdoc mentor and head of digital humanities group I worked for par ttime | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Harvard | History | None | None. He was and still is championed by my supervisor. | Made me skeptical of any intellectual mentorship from senior men as actually a long con | Not great | Male | |||
558 | 12/4/2017 8:50:18 | I witnessed a faculty member say he was going to 'destroy' a student who had filed a harassment claim against him. I reported the retaliation. He then came after me with others piling on. | I was junior faculty | He was a senior faculty and leader in a center I was a part of. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Vanderbilt University | neuroscience | The Dean of Faculty's office retaliated against me. | They promoted him so they could 'pass the trash' and he would have administrative credibility to another university | Devastating. | I was the cheer squad for everyone before this. Now getting out of bed is a journey but I do it, because I have a lab. | I would never recommend this career. I need to find a new job. | I could fill out three of these. Each time I reported harassment of others or helped them file, things got worse for me. My university has 'invited' me to leave even though I passed tenure and promotions 4 years ago. | Male | |
559 | 12/4/2017 8:59:10 | I was at a department social gathering and a senior member came up very close, slid their hand around my waist and then up and grabbed my breast | I was a visiting professor | Full professor | R2 | Sociology | I didn't report it. My job status was precarious. At the time, I just moved myself away from the person. They've been hostile to me ever since. | None | He's been hostile to me ever since, as has my boss with whom he's close friends. They micro manage, keep me under surveillance, create rules that are just for me, and do all they can to frame me as problematic, and even accused me of being "threatening." All of this is on paper in my file. So... It's ruined me. | I'm so stressed out all the time. I wake up to vomit several times a week. I often feel like I'm going to pass out from the anxiety. I feel without autonomy and stifled in my job. I need to leave but the market isn't great. | I am trying to leave this university. If i can't, I may leave academia. | Male | |||
560 | 12/4/2017 9:02:27 | My boyfriend and I were doctoral students and he abused me mercilessly for three years during the program physically, emotionally, and sexually, including throwing hot coffee on me in front of faculty members in our department and forcing me to wear very uncomfortable "sexy" clothes to events with faculty and other students. | PhD student | PhD student | Other R1 | The Title IX office told me that I did not have sufficient evidence for a case because we had been dating and the no charges against him had ever been filed, and that they did not recommend that I talk to my Dean of Students. I talked to the Dean anyway and was told "Don't bring that here." | None. | I don't know. I think I could be a lot better if I had not had to struggle with this during my doctorate, but I am on the tenure track at an R1 now, so it turned out OK career-wise. I do get very nervous when I go to conferences because I am afraid I will see him. People still ask me about him all the time. | Very high. I had severe PTSD and needed extensive therapy, and it has forever changed the way I interact with men - especially male academics. | I am still single and don't get along well with men anymore. He broke my ability to trust. | Male | ||||
561 | 12/4/2017 9:08:16 | I had a consensual affair with a female faculty member (I'm also a woman) in my first year of grad school. The faculty member taught one of the required courses for the program, but wasn't my advisor. Not long after we started up together, a senior male faculty member started a very public affair with one of his advisees (left his wife, showed up holding hands with the student at a talk). He was reprimanded (lost a named chair, barred from graduate supervision for a number of years), but what terrified me was the way that faculty and fellow grad students talked about the grad student involved in this situation (particularly the quality of her work). I realized that was risking destroying my career before it had even begun, and tried to gently withdraw from my relationship with the female faculty member. | 1st year PhD | Assistant Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Humanities. | None: I didn't consider it harassment at the time, and still don't, really. But now that I'm a junior faculty member myself I do think differently about the faculty member's role/responsibility in all of this. | I was able to avoid working with the faculty member, but it was quite a small department/program and so it did limit my options when it came to committee members. | I was quite afraid for my ~6 years in grad school that someone would find out about this affair and it would be the end of my career. At some points I even worried that the faculty member might vindictively expose our prior relationship as a way of damaging my credibility in the department (I see now that this was unlikely because of the repercussions for her, but it felt very possible at the time because she had such strained advisory relationships with grad students). | Thankfully very little. | My story is not in the same category at all as some of the blatantly nonconsensual harassment reported here, but I felt compelled to share anyway to point to the problems that even consensual relationships across power differentials can create. As a twentysomething beginning student, I feel like I was knowledgeable enough to consent WRT to the sex, but not WRT to the potential risks to my career. I'd like to think that if I had been more aware of how damaging a relationship like this could have been to me professionally that I might have made different choices. | Female | |||
562 | 12/4/2017 9:12:08 | messed around, did drugs together, he really made me think he cared for me--I knew he was married but he said they had an open marriage. I was dumb but I thought he cared for me. | his undergrad student | assistant prof. | Other R1 | George Washington University/Rutgers | English/Creative writing | let him go (he claimed it was to be closer to his wife in NYC) | none! recently won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, now hired at Rutgers MFA program | have not been able to write or consider grad school | depression, scared to be alone with professors | always thinking if I could have gone on to get my MFA, but who could I get to write a letter of rec now? | Can't understand how another school hired him with no background check to see how he interacted with students. Why did George Washington cover this up? How many more students is he "messing around with" and what kind of message does that send to know he can act like this with undergrads and still get the Pulitzer prize in poetry? | Male | |
563 | 12/4/2017 9:20:40 | The professor who had to be my dissertation chair repeatedly sent me obscene letters, cards, notes. He gaslighted me into a sexual relationship, saying that that sort of thing had been going on for ages. | ABD doctoral student | Full professor with endowed chair | Other R1 | Arizona State University | Consumer Behavior/Marketing | Acknowledged it, but insisted on a gag order. Officialky, I was given more time to write my dissertation, but no one would work with me because I complained. | He couldn't work with female students for 2 years. Besides that, nothing. | I left the field and never wrote my dissertation. He later took my thesis and published it as his own. I was specifically told that his stature and productivity were more important to the institution than anything I was or would ever be. | Depression, diminution of self esteem, mistrust of men in power. I think he sensed that I had been abused as an incest victim and preyed on that vulnerability. | I taught at a community college in ESOL at a much reduced salary, as I was blackballed. It changed my life dramatically. | I still fear retaliation if my name becomes known. The professor involved is now retired. | Male | |
564 | 12/4/2017 9:27:14 | A prominent scholar/teacher used to get very drunk with her students and at a department party at bar, forced her tongue into a students mouth. We all--students, and probably faculty--saw it, but no one (that I know of) reported it. | Graduate student | My teacher and advisor | Other Type of School | Creative Writing | None | None | She is a very big name in the writing world, and so we all knew we had to "stay on her good side." She introduced her favorites to agents, editors, and blurbed their books. | Long-term. What I described wasn't isolated. In many ways, it ruined my MFA experience. | I chose never to work with her, or ask her for anything, which was probably a detriment to my writing career. | Thank you for doing this. | Female | ||
565 | 12/4/2017 9:36:03 | When working in the Writing Center as a graduate student, I often gave workshops and taught lessons. Students were able to fill out surveys afterward explaining what they'd learned/what we could improve on. One of the surveys came back explaining that I was "dressed too inappropriately" for the student to pay attention. He was distracted. I was wearing a pencil skirt and a T-shirt. | Graduate Student | Undergraduate Student | Other Type of School | English | None | None | I was VERY worried that their comments about my dress would result in disciplinary action by my employer. Thankfully, my employer was not interested in victim-blaming and instead threw out the survey that identified me and my style of dress as a distraction. | I was very creeped out that some anonymous student could objectify me in that way. I still think about it in high anxiety moments. | None | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | |||
566 | 12/4/2017 9:40:17 | A professor I met at an International Summer Camp for PhD students asked me "to dance for him", after he pestered me an entire evening with "provocative stories" full of blatant sexual innuendo. Other PhD students told me horrible stories about him: He had a Chair for History at an Institute in Florence. He supposedly had very low visitors' chairs, so he could look between his female PhD students' knees and many more disgusting stories. After many women had complained about his inappropriate behaviour, he was banned from having female PhD students. That of course meant that these women had less options and he would only help other male PhD students to finish their degrees. When I adressed one of his (male) colleagues (I will call him colleague 2) and told him about this professor's innappropriate behaviour, he just shrugged and said that this was this person's "normal" behaviour and I shouldn't take it too seriously. Absolutely nothing happened afterwards. Said colleague 2 (who also had a Chair at the same institute) slept with another PhD student at this summer camp and later married her (after he left his fiancé for her). Years later colleague 1 died and colleague 2 wrote an overwhelmingly positive eulogy on colleague 1, praising his many professional merits. Like so often, they (all the male colleagues) knew exactly what was going on but they chose to ignore it or behave innappropietly themselves. Very discouraging and infuriating for female academics, to say the least. It takes away so much trust and makes one feel diminished and not taken seriously. | I was a PhD student, thankfully at another unsiversity, so I only had to deal with this person for two weeks. | Professor for History at Florence's Institute for History | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | International Summer School for PhD students in Wolfenbüttel/Germany | German Literature | None | None that I could see | None, just a major disappointment and anger | Another brick in the "wall" of harrassment | I chose to work as a women's advocate at my institution (in my spare time), trying to create a better working environment for my female colleagues | Male | ||
567 | 12/4/2017 9:42:39 | When I first started my MA, I worked as a technical writer in my university's IT department. This position was brief as I quickly learned that my coworkers (other university employees) constantly engaged in rape jokes (and other offensive types of humor--mocking Help Desk callers, jokes about religion and race, etc.). The rape jokes were terrifying and sickening. Both male and female coworkers participated in making fun of women who had been raped or sexually harassed. | Graduate Student | Coworkers/University Employees | Other Type of School | English | I told my boss (she was never around when my coworkers engaged in this behavior). She did not seem particularly invested in disciplining anyone. | Don't know--I quit before I could see. | Because this was my assistantship and I quit 2 months into the semester, I lost my income for my first semester of graduate school and had to take out high student loans and rely on family to help me stay afloat that semester. | Anger | Well, now I know I never want to work in IT again. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||
568 | 12/4/2017 9:44:32 | To me: when I was first hired under the caveat that the department had to hire a woman or they wouldn't get the line, I was told after my hiring by one colleague (they were all male): "I didn't vote for your to be hired. I figured, if we had to have a woman, we might as well get the one with the big tits." To me: when I was a tenured professor talking to an older colleague, he made the casual comment that it was ridiculous for the Faculty Senate (on which we both served) to have to talk about family leave for childbirth, adoption, or even caring for older parents. His argument: "Women shouldn't even be faculty members." | As above, first a brand new assistant professor, later a tenured associate prof. | Both were older, tenured professors. | Other R1 | Texas A&M | Anthropology | None, I never said anything about either incident. | None. | None, really, just made me suspicious of my colleagues true feelings. Even those who never said stuff like this. | None. | One of many factors contributing to my decision not to continue on in academia after a diagnosis of breast cancer in 1999. Yep, I walked away from my tenured position. | Male | ||
569 | 12/4/2017 9:48:37 | Female grad student in the department was sexually harassed by a male graduate student who had violent anti-woman cartoons up on their shared office wall and once grabbed her by the neck and started choking her in the hallway late one night when no one else was around. | I was a tenured professor, victim and perp were grad students. | Grad student. | Other R1 | Texas A&M | Anthropology | Department head really didn't care, cited First Amendment for cartoons on wall, said the whole thing was a he said/she said situation. I went to a meeting with the student and the perp and someone from the higher administration, but the perp brought his lawyer with him, and they kept insisting that since she didn't tell him to stop choking her, it was consensual. | None. | None, except to cement my disdain for my colleagues in the department. | I was afraid to go into the building at night or on the weekends. I no longer allowed my young teenage daughter to accompany me into the office unless she stayed right by my side. I felt terrible that I hadn't been able to help the grad student more. | Yet another reason to walk away from Texas A&M. | Male | ||
570 | 12/4/2017 9:51:02 | One day after having a discussion about professional norms, including not to have sex with undergraduate students, a fellow graduate student asked me in our offices if I would ever consider it. I said no and tried to pack up to leave, but he was blocking the only exit. He asked me again. I said no. He asked me a variety of situations that all involved me and sex with an undergraduate student. I said never and that it was a clear issue of power dynamics. He then told me not to think of it as "sex-sex" but "[my name]-type sex." At this point, two other male graduate students were watch us interact and one noted that I had turned quite red. I fled the office when the three men started talking about when it was appropriate to have/not have sex with an undergraduate student. | Graduate school | Graduate student, fellow cohort member | Other R1 | Political Science | I reported it to the department. I was originally referred to the Office of Institutional Equity because it was viewed as an issue between two colleagues (we were in our offices), but it was then bounced to the Title IX coordinator. I was told that the person was very sorry and I could proceed with charges but that it would be a long process. I continued to have to take classes with him throughout these discussions. Eventually, the coordinator passed on his apology to me, but that was the only acknowledgment I received. | He had multiple complaints besides me to the department chair, so he lost his GA/TA funding and left before the next year. | My own harassment has made me advocate for sexual harassment training and resources on my own campus. I have also used my own experiences to shed light to administration about where they are lacking as a survivor and as someone who has kept up with best practices. | This was extremely triggering for me because it occurred about a year after my rape-- I couldn't imagine talking sex (or what type of sex I did or did not like) with a colleague and not a friend. I also dreaded going to classes with him for the rest of the semester-- he seemed to particularly enjoy getting a reaction out of individuals. | Male | ||||
571 | 12/4/2017 9:54:19 | I hope everyone has the chance to read about the instances detailed here: http://www.osborne-conant.org/harrassment.htm | |||||||||||||
572 | 12/4/2017 9:57:48 | A donor pulled a gun on me. | Development officer | Donor to my institution | Other R1 | Penn State | Liberal Arts | Improved protocols, safety training for myself and my colleagues | None | None, except I felt disadvantaged and judged and constrained by the focus on safety training and such, as though I had in some way caused the attack. (I did not. That particular donor was well vetted and had attended multiple alumni events, but not been visited by any individual officers prior to the meeting.) | Minimal. Fuck that guy. | Minimal, though it made me very mindful of safety protocols and structures, which I formalized for the officers and staff that I supervised. It also made me a lot more vocal with my male supervisors about safe policies for gift officers, because I don't think they tended to consider those issues. | Male | ||
573 | 12/4/2017 9:59:05 | My college voice professor, with whom I had private lessons, regularly made inappropriate comments and observations about blow jobs, my body, and how women were generally untrustworthy during my private lessons. He was rumored to have had sexual relationships with several of his grad students. During one of my lessons he reached over and tried to kiss me -- I responded "do NOT kiss me", realizing that it was happening only because of the extensive rumors about him -- and he said "don't kiss you? or DON'T kiss you?" As in, "are you being playful, or do you *really* not want me to kiss you?" I mean this is only one of MANY stories in terms of experiencing harassment, but gross, I was 21 and he was, like, 48? | College Student | My Voice Professor & direct advisor (had power over my grades and advancement within the program) | Other R1 | Ohio State University | classical music | None (I did not directly report) | None (I did not directly report) | Hesitancy and heightened awareness/ vigilance in the presence of male colleagues in the classical music industry. (not that it stopped it from happening again) Developed a strong fear that my looks were the only way to get the career I wanted. | fear of being alone in a room with a male colleague, definite drop in self-esteem | Hard to say, exactly, but it sure was nice to get the hell out of there and move on, and I definitely worked hard to do so. | THANK YOU. thank you for making a space where we can talk about this stuff. THANK YOU what a relief | Male | |
574 | 12/4/2017 9:59:16 | During my first month of graduate school, there was a problem with the video equipment in the classroom where I TA'd. The main instructor asked me to see if I could catch the professor who had been teaching in the classroom before if he knew how to figure out what was going on. I had never really talked to him before. When I caught up to him, he started ogling my breasts, but offered to help. The video equipment for the classroom was in a closet without any windows and a door that could only be opened with faculty key card access. He brought me into that closet (while class continued outside the door) where I quickly figured out how to use the DVD player. Then he closed the door behind us and started massaging my shoulders as he asked me personal questions and said that he looked forward to getting to know me better. I got away by mentioning that the main instructor for the class was expecting me to start the video and would probably come in herself any moment. He was our associate chair at the time and, as such, as in charge of TA assignments for the next semester. He made me his TA and referred to the three young women working under him as "his ladies" for the entirety of the semester. I avoided him the best I could (possibly to the detriment of my reputation in the department--being non-responsive to your immediate supervisor is certainly frowned upon) and thankfully the situation didn't escalate any further. | First year graduate student | Associate chair of the sociology department; senior faculty | Other R1 | It was a Big Ten school. | Sociology | I shared my experience in an anonymous survey fielded by the graduate students. I wasn't the only one who shared a story of sexual harassment at the hands of this professor. The faculty was overwhelmingly supportive of taking action, but cautioned any graduate student who would listen against expecting someone to lose tenure over what happened. The whole thing turned into a massive and contentious rumor that led all of us to stay silent. No one formally accused the professor. | He is retiring in high esteem this year. | It's hard to quantify. Thankfully, he didn't stay associate chair for long after that. I can only imagine how things would have been different if he had. I'd heard rumors of other students losing teaching opportunities (or funding altogether) after they fell out of favor with him. | It made it hard to know who I could trust in the department--and I had only just barely gotten to graduate school. And after my perpetrator made me his TA the semester following the sexual harassment, I was consistently anxious around him. At times, I considered secretly recording all of our interactions because I was so concerned about further sexual harassment. | I ended up leaving that university, in part because I felt my social ties to my colleagues there were weak. I can't blame all of that on this instance of sexual harassment, but it may have been easier to reach out to other faculty if this weren't one of my formative experiences with the department. And it certainly would have been easier to connect with other graduate students if the culture of sexual harassment hadn't turned into gossip. | Thank you for doing this. | Male | |
575 | 12/4/2017 10:03:54 | At a major conference in my field, the first time I attended, I was at the opening reception. I didn't know many people, but was introducing myself whenever possible. I took a break in between conversations in a corner to regroup, observe the room, and see if I could spot my colleagues (I couldn't.) While I was standing there, an older gentleman looked at me. I nodded and returned to watching the room, and he walked over and engaged me in conversation. At first it was the usual--what do you research, what's your paper on, etc; but then he said he couldn't hear me. He put his hand in the small of my back and tried to draw me closer so he could hear better. I stepped firmly backward, but he tried to continue the conversation. Very quickly, two colleagues (the president of the organization and someone I later realized was my seminar leader) stepped in to our conversation, engaged him, and drew me away. I was so grateful. In the days after, my seminar leader told me that he had a reputation for that kind of behavior and for bullying his female colleagues, which I saw play out (he and I were then in the same seminar). My advisor back home, who was once on the organization's advisory board, also told me that the leaders knew about his behavior and were "trying to figure out what to do" and develop a statement of policy on sexual harassment. I have no idea if he'll be back again this year. | Graduate student | Emeritus independent scholar | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Decline to say; concerned about professional repercussions of naming | English | since it was a conference, very little, but I was thankful to have women on the lookout for me. From what I've heard since, the conference is working on their approach. | None that I know of--he's a retired independent scholar | Nothing major, just some embarassment. My story made the rounds in my sub-field in my department, so that professors I work minimally with mentioned it casually and light-heartedly in conversation, as in "I heard what happened to you..." It also tainted what should have been a huge professional moment, and now I'm worrying about next year's conference and preparing to tell all my colleagues about this man. | Minimal; I was lucky that it took place in public and that I was rescued by some awesome colleagues. But I also wonder--if "everybody knew" that he behaved this way, why wasn't he stopped? I didn't know. Nobody told me to avoid him; I wasn't well connected enough to know about his reputation. Thinking back, it was very clear that I was new and vulnerable, and he used that to his advantage. | None, except anger. But I don't feel as if I can criticize the conference, since I need to belong to the organization and I find it so valuable to my career. I don't know what to do, except tell my friends to avoid him. | Male | ||
576 | 12/4/2017 10:04:35 | Received repeated comments about my youth, beauty, attractiveness, etc. from a colleague this past year. | full professor, tenure-track | tenured | Other Type of School | Why don't you have an option for Community Colleges? | English | Was told that "he's socially awkward" and doesn't mean anything by it. | none | minimal--but it makes interactions and meetings very fraught and frustrating because he keeps trying to talk with me | it's an emotional drain- minimal, but still there every time I have to work with him. | I feel like I have to watch myself because he might be on my tenure committee eventually. I'd react a lot more forcefully and tell him to shove off if that weren't a factor. | Male | ||
577 | 12/4/2017 10:05:48 | A professor (former graduate of my program) hired me to edit and fact-check his book. At our last meeting, he confessed his "deep admiration" for me, among other unwelcome and unprofessional sentiments. | graduate student preparing for first time on the job market | professor, employer (temp, no contract) | Other R1 | English | None, since I was working for him informally. My department admin and dissertation director were both supportive, but said there was nothing to be done. | none | none? | It caused a lot of anxiety when I first prepared my job materials (lots of self-doubt), and continues to be irritating when we cross paths at conferences. | It's hard to say exactly, but I do wonder whether the way it made me doubt the quality of my work (did he really see promise in the article he offered to read, or was it a ploy?) has made me more reluctant to submit articles for review. | Male | |||
578 | 12/4/2017 10:07:12 | unwelcome advances | grad student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | humanities | did not report | none | none | feelings of guilt, confusion, culpability, shame, and wonder at my own role in inviting/encouraging attention | revenge, forgiveness | Male | ||||
579 | 12/4/2017 10:09:34 | A professor, who offered to be "second reader" of my thesis (without my asking -- of course, I had no choice but to accept), began to inappropriately touch me and make inappropriate comments during appointments we made to discuss my thesis in his office. Instead of discussing my thesis, he wanted me to read poetry to him leisurely on his couch, and slowly began to try to touch me in ways that made me feel uncomfortable. He would schedule our appointments around 8 at night after his other office hours were over, and during the last appt I had with him, locked the door with a key (which I believe locked both sides of the door). During that last appointment with him, while we sat on the couch, he ran his hand down my arm and then caressed my waist, and then asked for a hug -- putting his face so close to mine that I sensed he wanted to kiss me. Ultimately, because I stopped communicating with him, he did not provide substantial comments on my thesis -- sending my main thesis advisor only one line of dismissive text to comment on my paper. I now know two other women who have experienced harassment from this professor. I wrote out a detailed account in 2011 to send to the Title IX officer of what happened (this is copied and pasted from the email I sent her April of 2011): Feb 23, Wednesday 7:30pm-8pm -invited me to sit on the couch with him; he said “Office hours are over” and closed the door -sat closer than necessary to me on the couch -complimented my appearance; said “You have a nice sense of style.” -says that he "likes" me often -casually asked me to tell him “about myself” around 7:45 after going over poems -asked me to come back the following week -asked for a hug after our session March 16, Wednesday 7pm-8pm, Office hours -invited me to sit on the couch; sat closer than necessary to me on the couch -asked me where I had been; said it was a long time since he last saw me -expresses often that “he likes talking to me” or that he “likes” me -asked me if I was going to be around for spring break (the next week), as if I could come meet with him then -says that he likes talking to me -he said "he would love to spend all night reading poetry with me" but he "had to go" -asked for a hug afterward, which involved more body contact than necessary April 11, 2011 Monday. ~6:50pm-8:15pm, Office hours -He made it known to all students waiting when I arrived for Office Hours that he would “save (My name) for last,” and asked some students who had been waiting for a while to come back some other time. Met with only one other student very quickly before me and then met with me. -He closed his office door. He sat on his couch and invited me to sit down also, and then he sat in closer proximity to me; often would touch my arm/elbow for longer than a second -He turned off the light, and the door was locked from the outside. I know this because he went to talk to someone he heard in the hallway and then came back and had to unlock the door. -After we discussed poems until around 8pm, he said he wanted to "stop work stuff" and then asked me about how I was doing and I told him I had developed a repetitive stress injury; he was overly sympathetic and suddenly leaned in close to me and ran his hand slowly down my arm, starting from my shoulder. We both quickly pretended like nothing just happened. -Later, after he told me about his trip to the east coast, he began wrapping up our conversation, and, while still sitting near me on the couch, he asked for a hug. Although I did not want one, I was afraid to say no so I did not protest. He made it longer and closer than necessary and his left hand touched down my side and waist and lingered. I just turned away very quickly as soon as I had moved away and averted my eyes and he had jumped to behind his desk and continued conversation as if nothing had happened. -He asked me to meet with him again before I was gone/post graduating so that I may say goodbye -He told me he really enjoyed our sessions, and so I told him our sessions were "helpful," and he said if they were "merely helpful" then his “feelings were hurt.” I did not respond -He talked about how he "tailors his pedagogical relationships with his students to best fit their needs" as if to explain what was happening and then began talking about "transference" in an indirect way -I felt very shocked and uncomfortable afterward; told three people close to me right away and my main thesis adviser within a week ------- In addition, he tried to kiss a friend of mine after meeting her for casual drinks after she had graduated. I also heard from colleagues that he harassed a grad student of his. | I was an undergraduate, a senior. | English Professor -- second reader of my thesis | Other R1 | UC Berkeley | English | Title IX maybe put a note in his file (maybe?). I notified GenEq center... I don't think anything came of these reports | Nothing | He was extremely dismissive of my thesis. Luckily, because my main thesis advisor knew what was going on, she knew not to take his dismissal seriously. Because he was my second reader, he would've been the person to write me a letter of recommendation. I could no longer count on him for a letter of recommendation for any reason. He was at one point the professor I felt closest and friendliest to, the professor I trusted could write me a glowing letter. I felt kind of stagnant after this experience. It definitely was part of my decision to leave academia, but not the only reason. | Depression and anxiety, social withdrawal and distrust for a few years after. It started out severe with some paranoia and poor self-esteem and slowly got better over time. The fact that this professor was never interested in me intellectually but in fact was using me as an admiring student to harass (or potentially worse) was very disturbing and negatively impacted my self-esteem. I also felt very alone in this experience and wish I could have spoken with others with similar experiences. This singularity made me feel like there was something weak or wrong with me specifically. | I didn't want to live in the Bay Area/Berkeley anymore, even though I had friends there and it's my favorite region! I couldn't stomach the idea of running into this professor, and was even paranoid about what he might do to me if he found out about the report against him. | Male | ||
580 | 12/4/2017 10:11:29 | My professor and primary grad mentor kissed me in his office while I was helping him look for a book on his shelf. He said he couldn't help himself. | Phd student | Professor Advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia university | None | Male | |||||||
581 | 12/4/2017 10:12:50 | Graduate students and faculty members were at a bar, discussing how a graduate student was only in the department because "she had a nice rack". Faculty members laughed and agreed, including her advisor. The conversation continued discussing her physical features and her racial status as a Native American. No one (shamefully including myself) spoke up. | Graduate student | Faculty member in the department, on the same floor as my lab. | Other R1 | Microbiology | None. Faculty member the incident was reported to shook his head, said "that was bad", and did nothing. | None I am aware of, she completed her degree and left the program. | None | The event placed myself and other graduate students in a weird place... they are in a position of power, people we supposedly look up to... and then they do this. That there was no consequence to an obvious event of sexual harassment encouraged continued behavior like it, and for some of the graduate students, taught them that this was normal. For myself, it continues to bother me. | The event has pushed me to speak up when/if I hear faculty members or graduate students demean someone. | Male | |||
582 | 12/4/2017 10:17:20 | A professor invited me to spend the night with him at his place. | Graduate student | Professor in my department; not my supervisor | Other R1 | Medieval Studies | Not reported | None | None | Minor | My opinion about the responsibility of faculty to maintain clear boundaries has become firmer. | Male | |||
583 | 12/4/2017 10:21:46 | I was sexually harassed, stalked, and assaulted in military school, the Defense Language Institute. Both the perpetrator and I were enlisted and students, but he outranked me by a few grades, and I was fresh out of boot camp. | student, lower enlisted | student, NCO | Other Type of School | Defense Language Institute | Military, Linguist | Annoyance, initially; accused me of harassing him, later | Subject to UCMJ for different offense, fined | Quit | PTSD | I still throw up thinking about it, maybe filling out this form was not a great idea. | I'm not special. | Male | |
584 | 12/4/2017 10:22:57 | In 1972-3, when I was taking my second degree (this time in biology), I heard rumors about a tenured senior professor, a renowned botanist; I wanted to take his class on Native Plants, open only to upper-division students. There are two parts to this: what I heard, and what I personally experienced/observed. What I heard was that he was a creep and a lech who used office hours to get undergraduates in his office and onto a couch-bed he kept there; that the departmental parties at his house were "wild" and involved drinking, drugs, some nudity, and sexual harassment of women students who attended. The class I took was not the only class he taught. He was said to have taken pictures of his wife on the toilet, and to have shown them at some of these parties. There were specific instances given which, 45 years later, I can't recall clearly enough, but I was told that some women dropped a class, or even dropped out. I do remember being warned that he liked to use the "You're not a prude, are you?" mode of persuasion (this being the early 70s, it worked on too many young women.) And he had a habit of locking his office door if the student gave him a chance. What I observed: In our lab sessions (when we dissected flowers under the microscope to identify the species) was that he liked to roam around "helping" students, and often touched them on the back or shoulder; the male students got a pat; the women students got a squeeze on the shoulder and he was clearly looking down their fronts, not at the specimens. We had graduate student T.A.s, both in the lab and on the field trips (out to various sites to collect native plant material for identification.) I found it easy to avoid touch in the lab and on the field trips, and did not attend any departmental parties at his house. What I experienced: I was an older student, with a history degree (Rice U.) and military experience behind me--and I was married. Also I was then tall and very fit, less than a year off active duty. So although I was propositioned and lightly insulted, I had been forewarned and also had resources he would not expect. It did not affect me as much as it would have a younger, more vulnerable person. I needed to ask him a question about an upcoming field trip and went to his office during office hours. I stood back from his desk, between him and the unlocked door. The setup in his office was as described: a low bed against the wall to the left (he had a big office, as befitted his academic rank) covered in a quilt, with pillows making it a plausible couch, with a bead curtain in front of it, held back partway on the sides. Very harem-inspired. He got up from his desk and approached, suggested that I "get comfortable" on the couch so we could discuss the field trip. I declined. He said "You're not a prude are you? What, you think I might attack you or something?" I said "No, I'm married," and he immediately said "You're not going to let that stop you..." and did the raking head to toe survey with a long pause at my (then small but not invisible through my shirt ) frontage. "And I'm an ex-Marine," I said, giving him a firm look. He puffed up and changed color and I repeated my question about the field trip schedule (one had been re-scheduled due to weather) and he answered sounding angry. I left, convinced that the rumors I'd heard had been true, and that if I'd been younger and without the military experience, I'd have been struggling to get out from under him. It stuck in my mind over the years particularly because so many upper-division undergraduate women and graduate student women passed the rumors about him. | Undergraduate major in the department | Senior tenured professor, much published, widely known in his field. | Other R1 | University of Texas at Austin | Biology | I did not report the incident; I hadn't been physically assaulted and would have had no idea how to report even if I had been. | None. It was clear he was highly prized by the department. If the institution was aware of the rumors, his reputation as a botanist protected him. | I became much more aware of sexual harassment (instead of the steady anti-female bias I'd faced all through school) and when I went into grad school a year later chose a female thesis director. Other things impacted my career more, including the still-strong bias against women in science, the constant gaslighting, and some medical issues completely unrelated to the harassment. | Immediate: despite having been warned I found his behavior shocking as well as unprofessional. I was determined to stay away from him after that, and became more suspicious of other faculty and grad students, and long term more cynical about men and their behaviors to this day. But that was not the only incident (like many women I'd had previous incidents, starting in childhood.) In total, the various incidents and the anti-woman bias and gaslighting definitely affected my confidence, my ability to concentrate, my trust in both men and the legal systems supposed to protect us from predators. This particular incident actually gave me confidence, in that I had "done the right thing" of situational awareness and a firm response to his attempts. Overall, though, it 's just one bright spot. | Cumulative affect of harassment, including this, was to make me less able to compete, more likely to just walk away from conflicts and opportunities that seemed too good for me. Looking back from the age of 70+, I know I have sabotaged myself both by not reaching for the prize, and by going full-on Marine when it wasn't the best strategy...and I know where the sudden crevasses of confidence come from. But I still fall into them. I had once dreamed of an academic career, but by the time I left graduate school short of a graduate degree, I had realized that it was far from the safe haven I'd thought when I was a bookish girl. instead I'm a moderately successful novelist doing wildlife management and prairie restoration on the side. (My graduate work was in ecology.) Married (made a success of that--48 years), one adopted son. Could I have made a success of an academic career if no harassment had ever occurred? Probably. I was smart enough, energetic, willing to work, eager to learn (still am eager to learn) and got along with many kinds of people...though not with some. How much of that is due to how I was treated, I don't know. | Other forms of abuse related to gender but not overtly sexual reinforced the sexual harassment--not just for me, but for other girls and women I knew. Attacking a woman's confidence in her sanity, her intelligence, her "drive," her appearance, etc. erodes the sense of self as a worthwhile individual. For me, it has been the combination of attacks that's had the long-lasting effect...It was like trying to run up a greased staircase. If you took the hard classes anyway, studied hard anyway, avoided the obvious traps (drinking, drugs, illicit sex) you could still be clobbered for being plain, badly dressed, having the wrong skin color, being a child of divorce (a club I was beaten with all through school), and told that any or several of these things proved you'd never succeed, never get out of the low box you belonged in. And the pretty, well-dressed girls could be dissed for being "party girls" and "not really serious" about their education, or (in college) that they'd slept their way to their grades. I know this questionnaire is just about sexual harassment, but I had to bring the rest up. Thank you. | Male | |
585 | 12/4/2017 10:23:21 | ||||||||||||||
586 | 12/4/2017 10:29:36 | The conductor of the new music ensemble verbally abused me for months on end, culminating in an email that called me "pushy and un-self-aware" | Student | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | DePaul | Classical Music | None | Awarded tenure last year. | N/A | Panic attacks | Male | |||
587 | 12/4/2017 10:36:42 | At the end of term, I received an anonymous note I will never forget. These were the exact words: "Shave your armpits you hairy bitch. Then maybe I'll fuck you up the ass. You were the worst TA I ever had." And there was a simple drawing of a woman being fucked up the ass by a disembodied dick. | TA | Pretty sure it was an older male student in my section (returning student) who always challenged my authority and who reacted angrily every time he didn't get an A. | Other R1 | History | I never reported it. I was so angry/horrified/shocked I read the note 3-4 times, then crumpled it up, threw it away, and never wanted to think about it again. | It was an isolated incident, so none. | I was shocked and upset for a few weeks. I still remember that note word-for-word. | If anything, I think it made me more angry and ambitious. I was pissed off and not about to back down because of some asshole. | Male | ||||
588 | 12/4/2017 10:44:36 | I was housesitting for my supervisor while he was out of town, and he asked if his former boss (a 50+year old man with a son older than me) could also stay at the house for a night on his way through on a trip. I said yes, of course. The evening of the night the man was staying there, after dinner - which we had eaten together and talked about science, careers, etc etc - he asked me, "would you like some company in bed tonight?" I said no. I went to my room and lay there scared; I couldn't fall asleep. There was no lock on the door. Nothing happened and the man left the next day, but I will never forget that. I had no idea how to react to such an out-of-the-blue inappropriate question. Up until that second our interaction had been completely normal. | masters student | very senior scientist, leader of an NGO; this man was my supervisor's postdoc supervisor | Other Research Agency | ecology | I did not report it | none, since I did not report it | none, although I am genuinely interested in the work this NGO does but now will forever avoid this man instead of potentially using this contact to get involved/get a job | I wondered if I was crazy to think this was interaction was wrong, or if it was just normal and I was overreacting. | I have lower expectations of decency by senior male scientists. | Male | |||
589 | 12/4/2017 10:45:18 | A colleague was sexually harassed by her doctoral adviser. He tried to get her to sleep with him and when she refused, reminded her that her future was in her hands. | ABD | Associate professor | Other R1 | Communication | None, really, beyond attempting to quiet us and giving the woman extra time to finish her degree. | Again, forced to retired. | Little directly. | It's left me angry and frustrated. | I'm certainly more outspoken about these things than I would have been had the university actually done something real to address the issue instead of sweeping it under the rug. The only reason I haven't spoken out is fear of hurting the woman who was the target of the abuse. | Male | |||
590 | 12/4/2017 10:48:07 | While working with a tenured professor, he wrote on the chalkboard, "Do you want my BBD?" then turned to face me, smiling. When I responded with a silent shocked look, he immediately erased it and then shrugged as if he was joking, but it was clearly meant as a come-on. | visitor | tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Harvard | Astronomy | none | none | none known | shock, disillusionment, how could he of all people do this? | avoid him | Male | ||
591 | 12/4/2017 10:50:00 | In 2014-2015, a female colleague and friend (then a graduate student) became involved in a secret, polyamorous relationship with another female graduate student and a male adjunct faculty member. Technically, this relationship was in violation of the university's sexual conduct policies, as the adjunct faculty member taught in the graduate students' department. The relationship turned unhealthy when the male partner began to play each of the female partners against each other. Ultimately, my friend (who also lives with bipolar disorder) despaired and committed an act of self-harm. Though she recovered and remained active in the program, my friend's action brought the previously secret relationship to the attention of other graduate students in the department. However, my friend's female and male former partners both actively sought to maintain the relationship's secrecy by harassing and threatening other graduate students who inquired about the relationship and/or offered my friend support. The former partners successfully recruited some graduate students to their "side," which created a stilted he-said/she-said/she-said dynamic. My friend, out of a combination of fear of drawing further departmental attention to herself and of potential reprisals from her former partners, insisted that none of this behavior be reported officially. At the time, I agreed out of respect for her wishes; I have come to regret this decision. In the end, the events were an open secret, as the entire graduate student body in the department became embroiled in the affair. One graduate student -- who bore the brunt of the female and male partners' harassment and bullying because of her advocacy on my friend's behalf -- left the program the following year. | Graduate student | One graduate student, one adjuct faculty member | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Theater and Performance Studies | None, as it was never formally filed. When I encountered repercussions from one of the former partners (see below), I sought advice from departmental faculty members. They offered emotional support and some advice on how to proceed, but there was no official response. Both faculty members with whom I discussed my experiences shared some version of the observation that the graduate student scenario mirrored their personal experiences in faculty meetings and that bullying was rife throughout academia. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as victims of such behavior themselves, they did not offer any clear-cut solutions, only (much-needed) emotional support. | None. The graduate students remained in the program, and the adjunct faculty member returned to teach courses the following year. | The year after the events (2015-2016), I became the graduate student representative in my department. Though the events were never pursued through any formal complaint or through any public forum, they continued to structure a great deal of graduate student life in and around the department. The female graduate student/harasser identified me as someone who supported my friend (which, admittedly, I had), and therefore treated me with open hostility in meetings. This behavior increased in severity throughout my tenure as representative, and boiled over around a policy proposal that I put forward over our systems of self-governance (the proposal was that all positions be elected democratically, thus ending the unilateral selection processes that were then in place). Over two months, I received threatening emails and ultimatums to retract my proposal prior to our democratic vote on the topic. Departmental politicking ensued in which two camps appeared, both of which mirrored the "sides" that had formed in response to the prior year's harassment. During the meeting, the female student/harasser and one of her close allies voiced accusations that I was abusing my power and that I was targeting them personally. They refused to permit others present from discussing the proposal, and they insistently returned the topic of conversation to their accusations and their grievances. The female student/harasser's side carried the day, having convinced (or intimidated) enough of the other graduate students to vote down the proposal. It strikes me as deeply ironic that my colleagues elected to democratically refuse the prospect of more democratic processes. Moreover, it strikes me that the scenario is a textbook case of projection, in which the female student/harasser accused me of carrying out a vendetta against her through departmental politics as an explicit justification for her vendetta against me. | For the remainder of the 2015-2016 academic year, I was in something of a state of shock. I avoided campus as much as possible. The following fall, I began to experience symptoms of anxiety when I would commute to campus. When I was on campus, I would avoid my department as I did not want to encounter the female student/harasser or her primary ally. Ultimately, I sought out a month of counseling on campus, but I did not find that very helpful as it required me to come to campus for sessions. Ultimately, I threw myself into my work and made my priority the completion of my degree and finding a job elsewhere. | My graduate program typically lasts 5-6 years. Though I was able to obtain funding for a sixth year, I chose to complete my degree in five, largely because of my desire to remove myself from an unhealthy environment. I was fortunate in that I was able to land a job right out of my graduate program, which has allowed me to move on from these rough three years. However, the experience has alerted me to the ways that harassment stems from broader systems of abuse, how it operates systemically and reaches far beyond any originary event, and how not everyone makes it through such experiences as smoothly as I have. The silver lining (if there is one) is that I have become much more alert to patterns of harassment and abuse in the world around me. | Thank you for taking the time to assemble this information. It is a critical undertaking, and I am grateful for your labor. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
592 | 12/4/2017 10:51:39 | Numerous incidents during PhD (20 years ago). Supervisors making sexual remarks, comments about my body, unwanted touching, lifting skirt in front of students, blocking door so I didn't feel able to get out. | PhD student and teaching assistant | PhD supervisors | Other R1 | Psychology | None, first supervisor considered unable to help it due to drinking problem, second supervisor a known harasser (general advice from other women in department was avoid being alone with him) | None | Nothing major. I realised my supervisors were not going to help me get my PhD so found other networks and mentors instead. | Was not great, but also living with chronic illness at time so both of these together was difficult. Also quality of supervision overall was poor - so slack supervision and harassment was stressful. | None, I knew it was going to be an issue as it was a mostly male department with a reputation for being sexist. As were pretty much all the other psychology departments I knew of. It did make me very angry, and it did make me more determined to stand up for other people being harassed and bullied, which I have done during my career. [This sounds like I was okay with harassment, I wasn't, but there just was a culture of abuse that meant if you wanted to do further study that was the deal. It wasn't fair or right. No minorities, particularly those of us that were women, disabled or PoC liked it] | Male | |||
593 | 12/4/2017 10:56:24 | [Removed] | Boss, then colleague. | Subordinate, then colleague | Other R1 | Development | Counseling and correcting me -- at the time of my departure I had no formal complaints, but my work was greatly interfered with and I had been explicitly denied promotions or consideration for promotions on the basis of "concerns about my management." | Fuck all, as far as I can tell. He has since parlayed his "good performance," which appears to consist of him taking credit for my work, into greater responsibility in his new position, which he still holds. I have avoided any conversation about his current performance, so I'm not really sure what he's doing now, other than presumably being a miserable human. | Male | ||||||
594 | 12/4/2017 10:57:28 | It started off as small comments on my appearance saying I looked hot and I rubbed it off as a culture difference/typical male behavior. After Trump was elected there was a moment I he came into my office to talk about a conferences new sexual harassment policy (stating it prohibited any sexual harassment) to which he mentioned how good I looked, how much fun we'd have at the conference, and then ended with a "joke" stating this is Trumps America so he could do whatever he wanted. At the conference he continued to comment on the sexual harassment policy then whenever other coworkers around he'd find ways of touching me and trying to whisper to my ear saying "you're so hot and you know it. Why don't you have a boyfriend or do you prefer having fun with all men?" I was lucky to be saved by another student who noticed him getting too handsy or find a way out of his corner, but it was definitely too close and a lot of almost which I found I blamed myself for. | Post-bacc | Post-doc | Elite Institution/Ivy League | National Institutes of Health | Psychology/Neuroscience | n/a - This person did get a complaint put against by someone (not me) in which the harasser asked if I said anything to anyone about him making me uncomfortable | n/a | none | increased anxiety/distress | none - this type of harassment has regularly occurred since I started working at 16. It never seemed like anything out of the ordinary just a part of living life as a female in America. | Male | ||
595 | 12/4/2017 11:02:11 | An older male professor asked if I was involved with a different male professor. He noted that the second male professor had "done a lot for [me]" and said suggestively, "does he take you to dinner too?" He did not seem interested in my answer (that the 2nd professor and I had worked together closely, that he was supportive of my work and was writing a grad school recommendation for me, etc). | Undergrad student | Tenured professor, my department advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Wesleyan University | At the time: biology | N/A | N/A | I switched majors and stopped taking STEM-related classes. I ended up attending grad school in a humanities field. | It was upsetting and made me question my self-worth as well as why a professor would help me. | Now if I have a mentor, I make explicitly (and often, unnecessarily) clear the nature of our relationship and try to make a case for why they are mentoring or helping me. I tend now to work closely with women. | Male | ||
596 | 12/4/2017 11:04:42 | When I was an undergraduate, at the end of a fall semester course, my professor invited me to join a lunch discussion group he held with a select group of other faculty, grad students, and undergrads. Thus, I continued to see this professor during other semesters, and he was someone from whom I wanted a letter of recommendation for grad school applications. He kissed me and tried to have a relationship with me. I don't want to say any more, but...more could be said. | undergraduate | full professor (45 years older than I was, by the way) | Other R1 | I was an English major. The professor was a botanist. | none -- I didn't report it | none -- I didn't report it | nothing tangible | deep emotional scarring and feelings of discomfort and insecurity | none | Male | |||
597 | 12/4/2017 11:11:07 | I was raped by a professor nearly 10 years ago. Inquiries with classmates revealed similar things had happened to them, and that he targeted first-year female graduate students for "collaboration" opportunities. | graduate student | Professor (but not advisor) | Other R1 | University of California, Berkeley; University of Arizona | I contacted someone at University of Arizona to comment on his coming up for tenure. They told me other similar allegations had been made but that the allegations did not affect the tenure decision. | None, apparently | Who knows? I have avoided all meetings that he is attending, which is a loss to me, not him | immense! | Can't assess. | *** | Male | ||
598 | 12/4/2017 11:13:43 | Was working out at my university gym [I'm faculty] when an older white man who worked for food service making smoothies mad inappropriate noises when I did hip thrusts and then made a comment about how slender I was looking. | tenured, full professor. | contingent, subcontracted staff | Regional Teaching College | ETSU | Women's Studies | I asked that he be removed from working at the gym and placed in a different food service establishment, but behind the scenes where his ability to harass our students would be less. | Not sure. I believe he was moved, and recently I suspect he lost his job, as he was hanging out in a coffee house M-F during work hours | None, really. | At first I was in a state of disbelief and anger; I still am. I was amazed that, at age 45, I would be sexually harassed at my workplace, somewhere that, until earlier this year with the Tristan Retkke civil rights intimidation, I’ve always felt very physically safe, very protected because of the regular training everyone at ETSU receives regarding diversity and harassment. I took one or two days off work to process the experience because I was unable to focus on my work. I decided to report this to the Office of Equity and Diversity because I understand the psychology and personality of people who sexually harass; they habitually offend because of their sense of entitlement; plus they’re usually allowed to repeat their bad behavior. I don’t want XXXXX to sexually harass any of our students, staff, or other faculty. I feel like I’ve dealt with this fairly well, but I know that others are not as well-grounded as I, and I wish to prevent anyone else, particularly our vulnerable students, from suffering due to XXXXX’s callousness and illegal remarks. This was not the first time I was sexually harassed in my workplace (this happened in 1992). The harassment this October triggered flashbacks of the earlier physical sexual harassment that I experienced, as well as a resurfacing memories of the negative and cursory attempt of that workplace to investigate the claim, which the company failed to take action on. The 2016 harassment has had a significant affect upon my emotions and my physical health. Until that day I’d consistently come to the CPA 5, 6, or sometimes 7 days a week, to exercise. Since then, motivation for pursuing my health goals has plummeted and I’ve gained 5-10 pounds because I’m not exercising consistently. That may not seem extreme, but taking each of those pounds off was a struggle and a reflection of very hard work at the CPA and attention to nutrition, which has also slipped, as I tend to eat as a stress-response. Every time I come to the CPA I consciously avoid going near the Freshens area or catching XXXXX’s attention. When I can, I time my workouts within the small window when the Freshens smoothie area is closed. Instead of being a safe and welcoming place, the CPA has very negative associations for me. Up until October, I’d never felt unwelcome or out of place at the CPA. The permanent staff of the CPA, student workers, and people using the gym—staff, students, faculty, etc. create a supportive and welcoming environment. The CPA was my happy place and I relished the time I spent there. I’m very upset that my exercise regimen has stalled because of XXXXX’s verbal harassment of a sexual nature and inappropriate comments about my body. Besides building muscle and cardio conditioning, I use visits to the CPA as a means for controlling my stress. Going everyday made a dent in my stress. Now, going once a week, or once every two weeks, is not controlling my stress. In fact, it creates anxiety for me because I must be hyper-vigilant about not attracting any harassment from XXXXX or other people. It’s irrational because I know that everything I do at the gym is perfectly normal and within regular expectations of types of exercises. Further, my attire has always met and exceeded the dress code suggested for CPA gym-goers, but since XXXXX’s comments about my body and weight, I am anxious and motivated to conceal as much of my person as possible. While I made an initial inquiry about filing a complaint in October, I’ve delayed making a formal, written complaint because reliving the experience by writing about it, and then describing the affect it’s had on me, is unpleasant. Analyzing how it’s distressed me will make me dwell on it for days and disturb my mood and emotional state. | The 2016 harassment has had a significant affect upon my emotions and my physical health. Until that day I’d consistently come to the CPA 5, 6, or sometimes 7 days a week, to exercise. Since then, motivation for pursuing my health goals has plummeted and I’ve gained 5-10 pounds because I’m not exercising consistently. That may not seem extreme, but taking each of those pounds off was a struggle and a reflection of very hard work at the CPA and attention to nutrition, which has also slipped, as I tend to eat as a stress-response. Every time I come to the CPA I consciously avoid going near the Freshens area or catching XXXXX’s attention. When I can, I time my workouts within the small window when the Freshens smoothie area is closed. Instead of being a safe and welcoming place, the CPA has very negative associations for me. Up until October, I’d never felt unwelcome or out of place at the CPA. The permanent staff of the CPA, student workers, and people using the gym—staff, students, faculty, etc. create a supportive and welcoming environment. The CPA was my happy place and I relished the time I spent there. I’m very upset that my exercise regimen has stalled because of XXXXX’s verbal harassment of a sexual nature and inappropriate comments about my body. Besides building muscle and cardio conditioning, I use visits to the CPA as a means for controlling my stress. Going everyday made a dent in my stress. Now, going once a week, or once every two weeks, is not controlling my stress. In fact, it creates anxiety for me because I must be hyper-vigilant about not attracting any harassment from XXXXX or other people. It’s irrational because I know that everything I do at the gym is perfectly normal and within regular expectations of types of exercises. Further, my attire has always met and exceeded the dress code suggested for CPA gym-goers, but since XXXXX’s comments about my body and weight, I am anxious and motivated to conceal as much of my person as possible. | Male | ||
599 | 12/4/2017 11:14:01 | I was the sole graduate student representative on a university committee charged with evaluating faculty applications for a faculty teaching honor society. All faculty members of the committee were members of the honor society. Committee members were to be paired in teams to evaluate a stack of applications. After our first committee meeting, a tenured professor (about 40 years older than me and from another department) complimented my ideas in front of the whole committee and requested to work with me specifically. At the time, I was excited to be 'chosen' by a faculty member and to receive recognition for my ideas. He invited me to sit in on one of his undergraduate lectures and meet with him afterward in his office to discuss our committee obligations. In our conversation, he asked me about my research and I shared information about my project (and the fact that my project was informed by a personal experience of reproductive loss) . He told me that he *knew* he sensed something *different* about me, but presumed that I had been sexually molested. He then put his hands on my upper thigh and started caressing me. I almost overlooked the fact that he was touching me because I was so horrified and self-conscious thinking that something about how I conducted myself at the first committee meeting gave him the false impression that I had been sexually molested. In retrospect, I now that he was fishing for information and testing the waters with me to assess my vulnerabilities. And I know now that I was targeted by him, which is why he specifically asked to work with me in a team. But at the time, I completely internalized blame for what was happening and thought that I must have done or said something to give him this impression. Regrettably, the approach that I took to dealing with his unwanted attention was to continue working with him in a team and 'prove' (to him? to myself?) that I was capable, confident, in control, and NOT "damaged". All that resulted in was more situations where we were alone together. The whole experience was gross and inappropriate. I want to be 100% clear that I do not think that victims of sexual violence are "damaged". I'm simply saying that, at the time, I had internalized the idea that he thought I was damaged and that I had something I needed to prove to him. | M.A. Student | Tenured Full Professor in another department & school within the university | Other R1 | University of Cincinnati | Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies | not reported | none | n/a | self-doubt, self-loathing | n/a | Male | ||
600 | 12/4/2017 11:14:47 | A fellow student told me in a class that my work (which was about rape and rape culture) shouldn't be about those things. He proceeded to also tell me privately that I should avoid being seen as a "man-hater" or a misandrist, and should explore other themes in my work. Later, he described to me the ways in which my work was successful as though my work didn't involve any intention or craft on my part--as though I'd accidentally gotten a few things right. He is 10+ years older than me. He also attempted to speak poorly about me to my (male) partner. | Graduate student | Graduate student | Other R1 | Ohio State University | Creative Writing | He was accused of sexual harassment by another student and I testified in that case in a preliminary phone interview. During the actual trial, only students who had said positive things about him in their phone interviews were asked to testify. | N/A | N/A | Anxiety | N/A | Male | ||
601 | 12/4/2017 11:17:31 | To quote our president, I was "grabbed by the pussy" by someone who had been a long-time friend and colleague (and was married to one of my best friends and also a colleague). This happened at an academic conference in August of 2016. | PhD Candidate (ABD) | PhD Candidate (ABD) | Other R1 | University of Connecticut | English | Because both he and I were in the dual status of being graduate students and also instructors, the situation was adjudicated twice. With regard to his student status, he received probation (one of the lowest disciplinary actions possible). With regard to his employment status, I'm not legally supposed to know what happened, though they did take action. | Apart from his getting probation as a grad student, I can't really say. | I dealt with that situation for a year and got very little work done on my dissertation. My teaching was affected in a variety of ways (having to cancel class once because of a panic attack, having to move my office hours because my office itself was changed because I previously shared an office with my attacker and his wife, simply being off my game on days when I had to deal with the university's investigation...). I have not gone to an academic conference since because I can't quite stomach the thought. I hope my relationship with my dissertation director has not been affected, but it's hard to say -- he advises both me and my attacker (and, incidently, is the Director of Graduate Studies), so I know he was put in a difficult position. I am also much more wary of academia now than I even had been before (and, spoiler, this isn't the first time I've been sexually assaulted by someone in academia -- I already submitted an earlier response here). | I saw a therapist for a year and continue to struggle with what happened. | hard to say right now | Male | ||
602 | 12/4/2017 11:19:33 | I was coerced into an unwanted sexual encounter through threats, lies, manipulating me through my relationship with his child, and cornering me into professional and personal situations in which I relied on his help, behaving as if he were on my side. | Graduate student | Faculty member in my department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | None to my knowledge | That person was one of two faculty members in my field at the time. I cut off essentially all ties with my department while still attempting to complete my dissertation. I moved to a different town. | I spent years blaming and shaming myself for the interaction. I still have recurrent intrusive thoughts about it. Along with other instances of sexual harassment, coercion, and assault I have experienced it caused me to have a traumatic relationship to sex. | I left the academy. | The academy breeds and coddles manipulators and aggressors of all kinds, especially sexual. I'm healthier and happier now that I am away from it. That's partly because I am away from my harasser; but there were many harassers—I just wasn't always their target. Many of my friends have been harassed, assaulted, and raped by peers and supervisors in the academy. Only in one case did I see someone brought to any kind of justice, and that was a graduate student whom the department already wanted to kick out. The sexual violence of academia can seem to be its own thing, but I think it is inseparable from academia as a rigid power structure in which very few (usually white, usually male) people have essentially absolute control over the careers and well-beings of a larger group of (usually younger, often female, often economically precarious) people. Graduate students, adjuncts, and junior faculty have almost literally no recourse whatsoever in response to exploitative treatment. | Male | |||
603 | 12/4/2017 11:26:33 | Forcefully kissed and groped twice. Once in front of several others in my own and related fields. One person tried to help me get away in the moment, while others ignored the situation or egged him on. Later cornered by the same individual in private and again forcefully groped and pressured to engage in sexual acts. | grad student | senior scientist in a related field | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | STEM | none | none | No direct consequences, but I am aware of rumors around the incident that I fear may damage my career indirectly by proceeding my emerging scientific reputation. | This has had tremendous impact on my mental health, in terms of reduced confidence, memory loss and flashbacks around the two encounters, and panic attacks associated with the rare but ongoing need to interact with the perpetrator. | I waste too much mental energy both thinking about and trying to not think about this. Otherwise I am trying to not let this impact my life. | Male | |||
604 | 12/4/2017 11:26:59 | Sexual Harassment and bullying | PhD Student | Tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | Nothing | None | Confidence, bullying in front of students I was teaching was humiliating | Extremely stressful | I continued in academia, but it severely knocked my confidence. | Male | |||
605 | 12/4/2017 11:27:52 | It's an open secret that several senior male faculty are serial sexual harassers, and have gotten away with it in plain sight for decades. | PhD student | Senior faculty | Other R1 | Wisconsin Madison | Sociology | Denial, cover-up, silence, enabling, "he's retiring soon," "he brings in a lot of grant money," "he's a prominent scholar in his sub-field" | Absolutely none. The department has never acknowledged the existence of a problem, much less its real extent. | I am leaving academia. | I developed panic disorder and had extreme difficulty finishing my dissertation. | I have no interest in working in a university setting. | Male | ||
606 | 12/4/2017 11:29:35 | Sexually harassed after a dinner for interviewees for an academic job. Fellow interviewee made several passes at me. Unfortunately, he got the job over me. | Grad student | Part-time professor at the institution where we applied for the job | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | Never told anyone | None | I didn't get the job, as I was rattled, and performed badly in interview. | It definitely played a role in my lacklustre interview performance. | I didn't get a job that I badly needed. | Male | |||
607 | 12/4/2017 11:31:10 | I was a graduate student assigned to a professor who was known to make a move on his TAs. Also, there were male grad students who received assistantships. Only they put me with him knowing who he was. I was called in to the grad director's office, a man, and he told me to watch my back and to be careful. He said "sometimes you just have to take one for the team" when I asked why I was assigned to him. We went all semester without an incident. No inappropriate comments, no groping, no moves. Then it was finals and we were grading in his office and it started. I said I needed to go, that I had a thing, and would take my portion home to grade and have them to him soon. I tried to get out of there as fast as I could. He walked me to the main office and just as I was going to turn the corner to enter the office, he grabbed my by the shoulders and tried to kiss me. I ducked as fast as I could and made it a point to never be alone with him again. Thank God this was my last semester of eligibility and I was moved to grad instructor status after that. | I was in my second year of grad school at the MA level. I was a TA. | Full professor | R2 | East Tennessee State | History | I did not report it for fear of losing my GRAship. I was told by my grad director that "sometimes you have to take one for the team" | None. | None. I didn't say anything. | It shook me up for sure. I was definitely more careful in the future. | None. | Male | ||
608 | 12/4/2017 11:31:48 | On the card given to me at my going-away party, someone had written "I regret that I didn't fuck you before you left." | Administration. | Anonymous | Other R1 | New York University | Academic computing | None | None | Have not returned to academia | Feeling devalued for my skills and abilities. | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | |||
609 | 12/4/2017 11:32:45 | Female colleagues in my department decided to create an anonymous form so that graduate students, and others in the department, could report gendered issues and issues of sexual harassment. Once they are reported, we write them in n a Post-It and stick the Post-It to one of our doors. The male faculty are now reporting that they feel this is a micro-aggression and is creating a climate issue where they no longer feel appreciated. Two of us are untenured, and the males complaining are all either tenured Associates or Fulls. They are requesting a report by the chair on the one-on-one discussions that he had about climate earlier in the year so that they can find out who is saying what. This issues has been ongoing for at least 2 years but they refuse to see that there is a problem with their behavior. Instead they claim that it is a matter of perspective. | Untenured, tenure track | Associate and Full | Other R1 | Political Science | They have made it clear that this is embarrassing and unfair for them, and that we are creating a negative environment for them. | It is very difficult to come to work. We are cornered by them in the hallways, or excluded from events entirely. | Male | ||||||
610 | 12/4/2017 11:43:08 | What I thought was a friendship with the retired chaplain went weird when he started showing up at my house unannounced. He got all defensive when I told him my son didn't like his hugs. Then he kissed me. I told him that was unwanted and he said he thought I'd indicated somehow that it would be welcome. I got him to stop coming by, but then he would call the house and not say anything when I answered. I told him that I would call the police and ask for a restraining order if he didn't leave me alone. | Full Professor | Retired, but apparently well-respected on campus and around town. | Small Liberal Arts College | Prefer not to answer | The Dean of the Faculty, after some indecision because the guy was retired, agreed to have a conversation with him. The Dean then called me back to report that the guy apologized, but also asked that I "not be too angry." | Just a conversation with the Dean, which was probably embarrassing, since they were technically in the same academic department. | None, at least not directly. | I criticized myself for not recognizing that this was harassment until well into it - and I was even on a committee writing up a harassment policy years earlier! I was also upset that I had allowed the guy to annoy one of my kids. | Not all bad -- I think I've gotten better at protecting myself. This was partly due to the support I got from my own minister (a woman, as it happens) who knows how clergy members are capable of abusing their power. I hope it means I'd be more helpful to harassment victims if they share their experience with me. | I still wish I'd told the Dean that he shouldn't have let the harasser recast the problem as being about my anger rather than the harasser's creepy behavior. I'm also still annoyed at the then-Chaplain, who is a friend of mine but also got her job because of the creep, and knew that he had engaged in similar behavior before. He may have been delusional, but that's no excuse for his enablers. | Male | ||
611 | 12/4/2017 11:44:38 | [redacted] | 1. MA, 2. PhD, 3. MA --- non specific, through career | 1. Full Prof, 2. Full Prof, 3. Post Doc | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | [redacted] | Anthropology | 1. MA commmittee, 2. prof in my department, 3. none | none, none, none | I never shut a door in an academic institution. Ever. Also, I learned never to be alone with senior male faculty as a graduate student. | I don't know. | I think the instances made me a better mentor for my own students and fully, completely, intolerant of people harassing students. | Male | ||
612 | 12/4/2017 11:45:31 | Before I arrived at graduate school, I was warned by my previous mentor to stay away from a particular tenured faculty member because he had a "track record". I actively avoid this faculty member, but know multiple graduate students who have been verbally attacked and sexually harassed by him. He even talks explicitly about sex and grad students at conferences. | grad student | tenured faculty member | Elite Institution/Ivy League | anthropology | The chair of our department and other faculty members have either ignored the situation or told people who have come forward to forget about their experiences. | I've cut myself off from university resources and networking opportunities because it would put me in the same place as this individual | His presence and his actions against my friends and colleagues makes me upset daily. I am always conflicted about whether or not to come forward. He hasn't done anything to me personally, and my friends don't want to come forward for fear of retaliation. | I'm completely disillusioned about academia, my previous career choice. I have 3.5 more years til I get my phd, but I am considering dropping out. If I stay, I will likely switch careers after getting my degree. | Male | ||||
613 | 12/4/2017 11:45:48 | A donor was verbally abusive to multiple staff members, including telling inappropriate stories of a sexual and racist nature. Donor threatened female staff with blackmail if they displeased him. | Staff manager | Donor to my unit, board member | Other R1 | Penn State | Development | Minimal. I removed him from the board, removing his access to football tickets and campaign volunteer events. | Loss of board membership and access to the presidents football box. | Minimal | As his behavior became more erratic, I was subjected to increasing stress and greater scrutiny. It took about 2 years to get the support necessary to revoke his board membership. | None | Male | ||
614 | 12/4/2017 11:51:16 | Other Research Agency | Male | ||||||||||||
615 | 12/4/2017 11:55:43 | Systematic non sexual abuse | PhD candidate | Full tenured professor | Anthropology | None | Forced out | Changed disciplines | Female | ||||||
616 | 12/4/2017 11:56:04 | A donor did not like women. He did not feel they should have jobs. Hee was very critical of them and would not meet with them. | Development officer | Major donor to my department | Other R1 | Development | The unit organized to interact with him through men, when necessary. Good friend often intercede. | None | Great inefficiency regarding his giving. | Minor stress. | Minimal. | Male | |||
617 | 12/4/2017 11:56:44 | I was approached by a professor at Arizona State University in my practice room around 11:45 pm one night. Blocking the door, he asked that I leave with him. I had to refuse multiple times before he left. After that, I received no more opportunities to play in the ensemble he conducted. | master's student | professor and ensemble conductor | Other R1 | see above | music | none | none | none | embarassment | I realized I had to be "tough," and accepted the idea that managing the behavior of those in positions above mine was my responsibility - I accepted that I might need to tolerate some harassment in order to have playing opportunities. Certainly, as I became a professional musician, that was the case. | Male | ||
618 | 12/4/2017 12:03:01 | We were working at the same projet. At the beginning he started with comments on my look when it was clear that I was not interested in him, he started to make critiques and label me as "lesbian", "aggressive", "difficult person", "impossible to 'manage'"...when my supervisor (female) was still at the university there was a non written agreement on my hiring at the department. When my supervisor got retired and the man became associate professor he removed me from any research group and activity. | I was post-doc. Thanks to him I am still a post-doc researcher. | Assistant professor then associate professor | R2 | University of Padova (Italy) Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psichology | Sociology of work | Director of the doctoral program (sociology), professor of sociology of work | None only promotions thanks to his skill to build network with powerful men and women in the academy | Zero research contracts, isolation and difficulties in having any kind of position in other Italian universities because his powerful position in my discipline and the impossibility to explain the reason why I wanted to move from Padova. | Terrible. Lack of confidence in myself. Depression. I cannot even remember my disease | Crucial. I am still trying to find a stable position. I had to move in France in order to avoid to stay in the provincial milieu I have known in Italy. | Male | ||
619 | 12/4/2017 12:04:07 | All during my MFA (fall of 2013 - spring of 2016) my thesis director talked explicitly about her sex life to me and other (usually female) students both in and out of class | MFA student | Tenured professor. She was my thesis director | R2 | Southern Illinois University | Creative Writing | None | None | Little, though it did make my MFA experience uncomfortable | My thesis director was toxic for this and many other reasons that don't specifically have to do with sexual harassment. In aggregate, the affect on my mental health was significant -- I was often depressed and afraid to go to individual thesis hours. | Little | Female | ||
620 | 12/4/2017 12:05:57 | When I finished my PhD, my male advisor kissed me on the lips. He had only once before let his hands stray across my chest while reaching across me to open a car door (he was the driver, I was in the passenger seat). A year after I finished, I got married and he said that he'd not felt comfortable telling me he beautiful he thought I was until after I was "safely married." A small vignette of this relationship. When I started graduate school, I was walking outside during a field course and hear a conversation between two male students -- one said "she's so fat" and the other said "I'd still fuck her." One of several of these types of incidents. I could go on, but not today. | grad school, finishing Ph.D., after Ph.D. | Fully tenured professor, peers | Other R1 | ecology | none-did not report | none | Exhaustion | Demoralization | I move in and out of non-tenured academic jobs, always at the margins. | Male | |||
621 | 12/4/2017 12:07:56 | ||||||||||||||
622 | 12/4/2017 12:08:41 | As I was finishing my PhD, a senior male at my university and in my field, though not in my department, began to talk often with me about his unhappy marriage in ways that were not appropriate. Here's the thing: it never really got worse than this, but only because I got lucky and because I did a lot of work to keep our relationship 'professional.' It started out with him being flattering (saying very nice things about my mind/intellect) and progressed to him inviting me to meals where he would pour his heart about his own failing marriage and make suggestive advances. As this was happening, he gave me a few academic perks (a chance to publish in his journal, participation at a conference he was running) that were useful for my career and which I was happy to have-- though I was always hesitant to take these things and eventually started to say no. At the time I was sad for him. He was very lonely, up for tenure, and clearly under a lot of stress (he is now department chair). As I look back from the safe distance of nearly a decade of time, I feel really sorry for me-- that at a time when I should have been fully absorbed in my writing and gaining confidence in myself as a scholar, I was managing a faculty member's odd sexual pursuit. I ended up graduating a year early and was fortunate the leave the city where he was and not come back. I never told anyone but my husband (who was my husband at the time). I just wanted it to go away. This man made a point of telling me how special I was and I didn't actually see him doing this to anyone else. In hindsight, I would guess I wasn't so special and he's probably used other women who weren't able to get away as easily as I was. I still have to see him at conferences every now and then, and now it almost seems as if this never happened. Is this even worth writing up here? I do wonder if this even counts as harassment (it is, but somehow I feel like it must have been partly my fault). | PhD | Assistant Professor (now tenured) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Male | |||||||||
623 | 12/4/2017 12:09:01 | I was a tutor for student athletic services, and a fellow tutor would sit beside me while I tutored, opposite the student I helped. The fellow tutor would then touch my back and butt. | I was a graduate student | Another graduate student in another department, but in STEM, like me | Other R1 | Physics | I told my supervisor, and she said (roughly), "He would never do that, he is married." | None | I told the harasser to keep an arm's length away from me. He never came within 10 meters of me again. It had no impact, other than to leave me angry with the harasser and the inaction of our boss. | None. | None. | Male | |||
624 | 12/4/2017 12:10:15 | Sexually assaulted by advisor after argument in his office | Grad student | Dept Chair & my advisor | Other Type of School | State University | Counselor Education | Reported later to protect another student was told "what do you want to do ruin his career" and "students lie" | None | Ostracized by peers (apparently he was telling people I was "crazy" and not to talk to me, one of my peers reported to me after graduation he cornered them in an elevator and said "it would be bad for your careerto keep talking to her") leading to lack of support and connections in and after school, loss of a mentor to whom I reported the situation and the connections and protectio he provided, loss of a job when a different incident handled in a similar way sent me into a PTSD related depression | PTSD chronic with both anxious and depressive symptoms, social phobia, panic attacks that manifest as pressured speech (I babble inanely when nervous and dont leave room for others making it hard to connect) and occassional depersonalization (loss of hearing, sight) excessive ruminating coupled with flashbacks and day terrors that make it hard to go to work or be around people, physical changes including chronic fatigue and somaticization (body pains and chronic colds) | Between the assault and the subsequent blame and shame from a trusted mentor, I generally don't participate in anything organized by my discipline including live trainings (bc they happen on campus, are organized by these people or their friends, or they could attend), network opportunities, etc. | After the assault, he laughed at me and said "I own you now" & "go ahead and tell, no one will believe you" and of course, the person I told, who always believed me called me a liar and both men encouraged me to commit suicide (my abuser said "I feel bad for you, it is a wonder you are alive" and "people like you often kill themselves" with all the authority of a therapist and after my mentor called me a liar and I became increasingly suicidal & visibly depressed and lethargic said "suicidal people are so manipulative. If you wanna die, just die. Dont think I will feel bad about it." Also with all the authority of a well respected therapist.) Without my amazing support network that walked me to and from class and to my car bc my abuser used the same parking lot, and took me out and repeated over and over again they believed me I would not be alive. | Male | |
625 | 12/4/2017 12:10:41 | At an off campus event with multiple faculty and luminaries (`40+ people) from the field. A speech was made where everyone at the event was paying strong attention to the speaker. The speech was in fact a joke/toast where it was told that several of the men in attendance wanted to perform amorous/sexual acts with me (I was called out by name and the speaker pointed at me). I had been in my position for only a few months at the time. No one, male or female (aside from my spouse) at the event ever commented on how inappropriate this was or said they were sorry it occurred. This occurred over 8 years ago and I am still at the same institution due to various circumstances. | postdoc | faculty member (who retired soon after) | Other R1 | neuroscience | none | none | Hard to be certain, but it's been a very uphill battle. Especially since those who witnessed the harassment are still my colleagues/bosses. I am the lagging spouse in a 2 body problem. I am now TT, however it was not obtained without threatening to leave (and take my successful spouse with me.) | This was one isolated incident but it definitely set the tone for my relationship to my colleagues and superiors. | I'm very lucky that this and other things didn't completely derail my career trajectory. I tell this story pretty openly to my trainees. | Male | |||
626 | 12/4/2017 12:14:08 | I was at a public event with students, faculty and staff at the end of the year and a faculty member gestured to my chest (I'm trans and still had breasts then) and said she hoped everything went well (I assume with my top surgery, which I don't know how she knew about). I know it's not the biggest thing but I felt so incredibly violated to have someone gesturing at and speaking about my chest at all, much less in public with students and my colleagues in close proximity. | Staff | Faculty | Small Liberal Arts College | Oberlin College | Student Life | Initially I asked my supervisor if they had told the faculty member about it (asking over text) and they responded angrily and indignantly, offended that I would ask such a thing of them. Then after meeting in person I said in my year-end report that I was hurt by what I perceived as a dismissive/blaming response to what felt like sexual harassment, and it was referred up to Title IX, who then emailed me. I said I didn't want to escalate it at all and they let it go. | None. | It made me feel incredibly unsafe at the institution and with my supervisor, something that has worsened/continued since then. I'm currently looking for work elsewhere. | It began a period of serious depression and anxiety, and for the first time in my life I had to start attending therapy and my physicians and therapists have decided to medicate me. For a period I was actually suicidal, thinking about killing myself every day when I came in to work. | It's made me decide to leave this institution much sooner than I planned. I had hoped to stay here with my partner and build a family and a life in the area and now we are in a hurry to leave since we realize the college is no longer a safe place for me. | Female | ||
627 | 12/4/2017 12:15:31 | I was repeatedly asked again and again in a threatening and gruff way whether I was prepared to do part of the job I had been hired to do. This occurred with such frequency that it messed with my head and made me wonder why the man (my supervisor) was asking me every day and offering so little support. He made semi-sexual jokes in my presence, not about me but about other women, and was threatening and angry whenever I disagreed with him. I knew of his reputation as a rager who verbally abused women in positions under him via email and in person as well as his long alleged history of sexual harassment. Finally I told him that I didn't want to take on that leadership role. I made an excuse about having other things on my plate but the real reason was because I wanted to find a way to limit my interactions with him. This came with a pay cut. | Assistant Professor, tenure track | Associate Professor, tenured | Small Liberal Arts College | Creative Writing | I did not report because I feared direct retribution, which I think was a wise move, as this guy is unhinged and would have done anything to sabotage my tenure application. | None. He's only been rewarded by the institution and teaches on a lower teaching load despite his limited accomplishments and limited commitment to the institution. | I have managed finally to get into the leadership position and I'm doing it much better than he did. I feel like the only long-term impact was that in my three years before tenure, I was a complete nervous wreck. | I was a nervous wreck for three years, which exacerbated a chronic illness and made things difficult at home and with my writing. | I have chosen to limit any exposure to this man in my department, which means I am much more shaky in meetings and in a leadership role than I would otherwise have been, but my revenge has been to kick ass. | I am going to fill out an other entry for another harassment instance at a different institution. | Male | ||
628 | 12/4/2017 12:15:49 | When I was in my second year, a new graduate student kept harassing me for a whole semester, saying things such as "We should sleep together" repeatedly, in public and private instances. He also said stupid things such as "I would like to organize events with cute undergraduate students" or "I like innocent looking girls". He also said things about his sexual preferences. He also pretended to be my friend to be included in a graduate conference I was going to in Canada, and immediately offered to travel together and go to a hotel together. I was shocked by his behavior. | Graduate Student (2nd year of PhD) | Graduate Student (1st year of PhD) | Other R1 | NYU | French | None | None | I am now avoiding all events organized by this graduate student and do not want to do service when he is on the committee. | It was irritating to have to go to seminars with him. | I am avoiding all events organized by this graduate student. | At this time, a student in my cohort told me to report the incident to Campus Safety. Now I wish I had done it. I have spoken about the incident with the Chair of the Department, but she does not really care about it. I feel ignored, because the graduate student is on a lot of committees in the department and organizes a lot of events. He really gets all the service lines on his CV and I feel that everybody kind of "knows" how he behaves but chooses to allow him to organize all these events. In regards to #MeToo scandals, I have urged the department to conduct an anonymous climate survey. I would like to record such a behavior in case he harasses a student or colleague in the future, then there will be some proof of his previous behavior. | Male | |
629 | 12/4/2017 12:21:15 | A senior, tenured colleague from a different R1 institution groped and verbally harassed me at the national conference reception. He approached me for what initially seemed to be a friendly hello hug and then ran his hands from my breasts to my butt and whispered a sexually explicit sentiment in my ear, right in front of a group of other scholars. He then proceeded to email me several times and even got another colleague to give him my phone number even though he knew I was married. | Graduate student | A senior, tenured colleague from a different R1 institution | Other R1 | National disciplinary conference | Humanities | I think conferences should be added as an institution type- these are spaces where a lot of harassment occurs. | Male | ||||||
630 | 12/4/2017 12:22:35 | A professor interrupted class to go on a 30 minute+ rant about how he didn't see himself as part of the patriarchy and felt that he'd been unfairly maligned. This was not prompted by any personal accusation or anything directed toward him specifically. The class had been discussing gendered violence in a very professional way. Female students attempted to respond to his concerns and calm him down, this took up a significant portion of class time and was upsetting. | Graduate student | Tenured professor | Other R1 | English | N/A | N/A | I didn't work with that professor again. | Anxiety in class | Male | ||||
631 | 12/4/2017 12:23:05 | I was active in campus politics and in a fight to prevent my institution from moving our English Dept lecturers to a 5/5 teaching load. This was during the time that a budget crisis also cause a furlough, and I was reported by a student for mentioning the furlough in class in defiance of a request that we not do so. The Dean called me in to his office to yell at me not for violating a university policy but for violating an "implied linkage" between two policies. I was pre-tenure and a single mother going through a divorce. It was made clear to me based on that one instance that because the Dean was vengeful and I was a "troublemaker" that I was safer finding another tenure track job because he would probably block my tenure application. | Assistant professor | Dean | R2 | Georgia Southern University | Creative Writing | I filed an official grievance citing multiple instances of gender-based harassment and threats as well as for being yelled at and demeaned like a child in a meeting, and my grievance was denied. | He was eventually forced out after a long series of awful actions | Huge. I relocated to another institution and got a different tenure track job, but my search was hasty. | I didn't sleep well for a year. It took me three years to get over the immediate terror of possibly not having a job and being yelled at by a very scary guy for something that wasn't even a violation of policy. | I had to find another job immediately, and going on the market for a tenure track career isn't something that can be relied upon. I took the first job I was offered, at a school in the Northeast that I really do like, but it's expensive to live here, my husband didn't have a stable job for 5 years, and I would rather have lived closer to family. | Male | ||
632 | 12/4/2017 12:24:36 | A woman in my department informed her supervisor of her pregnancy, then our department head told her that it was a bad decision, that women can't have children and be successful in science, and asked whether "the father was involved." (She was married.... not that it was any of his business.) | she was a senior (4th or 5th year) graduate student | department head | Other R1 | University of North Carolina | neurobiology | none | there continued to be complaints about him for various other incidents and eventually he retired | none, unless you count the continual deterioration of my faith in the system; the woman did receive her PhD and ended up as an administrator in our department. | none, but I can't speak for the woman who was the subject of the harassment. | For me, personally, I found this incident (plus other non-sexual-related harassment by this man) and my university's lack of response to be frustrating and disappointing. It may have impacted my choices and career trajectory because from then on I chose to have nothing to do with this man and other "leaders" in my department, choosing no guidance rather than to take advice from senile sexists. | This same person, who ran our department for 7 years, was also involved in trying to kick a student out of our program for reporting that his adviser was behaving abusively (abuse that multiple other department heads and students, including me, witnessed). This same adviser was under ongoing investigation for sexually harassing 3 female students in his department at the time. I wrote a letter to UNC's graduate school department to describe the department head's behavior in all of these incidents and received no response. | Male | |
633 | 12/4/2017 12:24:53 | I was meeting with a professor in my graduate program who acted as a mentor to me. It was my first semester or second in the program. I always sat on a couch in his office while he sat in his desk chair, but this time he got up to sit next to me on the couch. I was talking traveling to a nearby town, and he was explaining how to get there since I was new in town. He touched two spots on my thigh as a "point A" and "point B" to describe the route I should take. | Graduate student | Professor | Other Type of School | Rhetoric and Composition | I never told anyone. I run into him occasionally (as I now teach at the institution) and feel uncomfortable when I do. | I'm just angry that he felt that was an okay thing to do. I also don't like feeling like I can't tell anyone, but he has a family and I just don't want the drama. | None | Male | |||||
634 | 12/4/2017 12:24:57 | (1) student grabbed my chest after a guest speaker in front of colleagues, later claimed he was just "sizing them" to consider for his own (2) student sent me increasingly threatening letters after not receiving a good grade | (1) visiting scholar (2) adjunct faculty | (1) undergrad senior (2) 1st year grad student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | 2 different places both SLACS | WGS | (1) witnesses included the Chair and 2 Deans, they excused it away because the student was queer (2) the Chair protected the student bc he was one of her favorites, then made moves to force me out of my position - harassment, accusing me of things I could not have done given my role and time on campus, asking students to question my competency | I quit both jobs and have subsequently stopped teaching | There are rumors about my competency and my focus in my work that show up in professional interactions egularly, cost me a key area of my work, I also lost a very good colleague who felt trapped by the chair's response | Activated my chronic PTSD from past assault when school did nothing, I feel afraid around men now and sometimes have panic attacks where I have to go hide in a small, enclosed, locked space before I can breathe, distrust of others | I used to be an up and coming academic with "hot" research & great teaching credentials for difficult subjects, now being inside a classroom causes panic attacks and I dont teach | Male | ||
635 | 12/4/2017 12:27:58 | I witnessed a professor put their hand on a Masters student's/cohort member's thigh. | PhD Student, first year | Graduate Studies Director of our department | Other R1 | Michigan State | English | Male | |||||||
636 | 12/4/2017 12:28:16 | A male undergrad student cornered me alone in my office to lecture and rant to me about how his paper deserved a better grade, based on the fact that his paper critiqued feminism and he thought that "as a woman" I wasn't reading it fairly. I made clear that his grade was based on the ways in which the paper did/did not fulfill the assignment and not the content or his opinion (he'd used interviews with celebrities as scholarly sources, there were citation errors, etc). He lectured me for an hour and refused to leave, and often paced around and seemed physically agitated. He treated me hostilely for the rest of the semester and often made hostile and inappropriate comments in class. | Graduate student | Undergraduate student | Other R1 | Ohio State University | English | N/A | N/A | N/A | Anxiety about teaching | Male | |||
637 | 12/4/2017 12:29:49 | A professor was overtly sexual with me (lots of innuendo). It culminated right before my defense when he made a clear pass at me ("you look great. Where are you going after this?") | Grad student | Tenured professor. On my committee | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Anthropology | Never reported | N/A | Unsure. I laughed it off and have not had much direct contact with his field since graduating. | I have been anxious when attending conferences/events in this field, as I am nervous I could end up a room alone with this person. | Unsure | Male | |||
638 | 12/4/2017 12:38:42 | inappropriate comments and hair-touching | graduate student | senior researcher, tenured professor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | profesional conferences | premodern literary studies | n/a | informal reprimand | difficulty in conducting research or attending professional events where harasser is involved; in short, self-ostracization out of self-preservation | contribution to trauma-based depression and PTSD from previous sexual assault | if anything, an increased determination to participate in the field in a positive way | First of all, thank you for doing this important project. I don't want to disclose my name, but I would like to give a bit more detail. As a medievalist in literary studies, I have heard terrible things about a few people. The Oxford scholar [XX] has a reputation for pressuring young female scholars/graduate students into sex; I was told never to accept a car ride from him. A female undergraduate from a prominent North American university disclosed to me that a male graduate student harassed her and created a toxic environment of shaming her in his graduate program. Another male graduate student befriended a female undergraduate who had disclosed a recent sexual assault to him, then began dating her (inappropriate and unhealthy for all involved). And finally, it was [XX] at XU who has recently set a pattern of harassing me at professional conferences. I know from a friend that he is known for making inappropriate jokes with students. I have found support in my program's faculty, but worry about what this means for my attendance at future conferences. Again, thank you for conducting this difficult kind of work. Best wishes. | Male | |
639 | 12/4/2017 12:39:13 | When I went to go ask him questions about an essay, my professor first asked me to go for coffee on campus with him and then asked me for my number (I was visibly holding my phone in my hand so he made me save his number and call him, I couldn't pretend to not have a phone). Then he asked to go for a drink in town. I met up with him because I was worried it would make our interactions in class uncomfortable or that he would fail me if I rejected him. When we met up he insisted on going for dinner and I didn't know how to get out of it without just running away since he wouldn't listen to me when I said I wasn't hungry and I told him I had food at home. He wouldn't take no for an answer. After dinner he said he wanted to go for drinks so I told I didn't drink alcohol (not true) and went home. | Undergraduate student | My US Global Politics Professor (Lecturer in the UK) | Other Type of School | University of Bath (UK) | Political Science | Never reported it | None | I stopped going to his classes and seminars unless I had to present something because I did not want to be anywhere near him. I missed out on my education because of him. This was one of my first major disillusionments with academia. | I felt like I had done something wrong for ending up in that situation to begin with, like it was my own fault. After I left, I went home and cried even though "nothing" had actually happened other than an awkward hour or so dinner. It took me a while to realize that he shouldn't have put me in that situation to begin with and that he was taking advantage of the power dynamic in our relationship that made me scared to firmly say no to him since he was my professor. When I finally heard rumors about him being "inappropriate" with other women in my class I began to accept that I was not in the wrong for feeling the way that I had about our interaction, but that he was for putting me in that situation. | One of the reasons why I felt insecure in academic environments - I frequently had my doubts about whether my superiors would take me seriously or not or if they were treating me a certain way just because of my gender. | Male | ||
640 | 12/4/2017 12:49:06 | a male professor was propositioning me | graduate student | full tenured professor | Other R1 | philosophy | none | none - but i left the program | i felt belittled and rendered unserious | stress confusion | i left the program | Male | |||
641 | 12/4/2017 13:03:49 | At the American Sociological Association annual meeting, maybe 6-7 years ago, met a full professor just left one institution in middle America for Virginia Tech, he spoke with me, then noticed a young woman who was an undergraduate was hanging out with him from his institution. I knew some of his former graduate students and they said that he had left his first wife for a graduate student and that he consistently had inappropriate contact with female students. As the night progressed, the undergraduate got drunker and drunker. Then in the early morning, she got text from this professor asking her to come to his hotel room, while he was/is married with his 2nd wife who was a student of his. She showed us the texts on her phone. The former graduate student of this man urged her not to go to his room. The undergraduate left. Fast forward a few more years, saw this same professor, who became chair of the department, again in a professional setting. Spoke with me, then after this encounter would regularly try to chat with me through DM of social media site. | graduate student | first full professor, then chair of department | Other R1 | Virginia Tech | Sociology | I'm sure none, this person has an untainted career | promotion to chair, prominent in his field of study | none, just gross to see him lead the field | Disillusionment about the field of study and supporting status quo on who achieves positions of power | Disinterest in trying to network with "top scholars" in this area because of the old boys club that exists | Male | ||
642 | 12/4/2017 13:08:40 | An "important" professor was serially harassing students in his department as well as dating one of the students in his lab. My friend (a male graduate student in his lab) reported him to the department head multiple times and was told to keep quiet each time. Eventually the professor's wife began to receive emails from someone, telling her about the affair. As things fell apart at the university and in his marriage, someone in the department let the professor know that my friend had reported him to the department head. This professor then harassed my friend, sending him threatening emails and calling him repeatedly asking him to confess to telling his wife about the affair (he hadn't). He refused to give him job recommendation letters or publish the second paper from his dissertation. | My friend was a graduate student. | This person was a full professor and my friend's adviser. | Other R1 | UNC Chapel Hill | Active suppression of reported incidents; later, asking the professor to quietly move his lab to another institution. | He was able to quietly move his lab to another institution, where he harassed more grad students and was asked to leave again. After he moved his lab a second time, his widely-reported harassment at the 3rd institution led to the loss of his career. | my friend decided not to become a PI because of his disenchantment with the people in academia. he can't ask his adviser for letters of recommendation (at first because the adviser refused, now because the adviser is a pariah in his field) | my friend had a nervous breakdown due to threats and harassment by his adviser and continues to be in therapy years later. | Male | ||||
643 | 12/4/2017 13:12:10 | After having to take 2 years of unpaid maternity leave to care for twins, as a single parent, I returned to my TT job as assistant prof. My then female chair singled me out for abuse and retaliation; refusing to provide deadline extensions when my childcare fell through, giving me terrible scores on my annual reviews; forcing me to march up and down the hallway and apologize to colleague's I'd "offended" in sending a mistake email. When I confronted her about my low annual review scores, she then referred to my pregnancy and maternity leave (all unpaid!) as a "hiatus" and made sure I knew that "things were different now." | Asst prof | Dept Chair; full professor | R2 | English | I spoke repeatedly to our ombudsman, who directed me to HR. I then filed an EEOC complaint with HR, who took it very seriously. I grieved my low scores formally, and my chair was told to remove some language from my letter and to raise my scores significantly. Chair was delivered a letter and quickly lawyered up. | Chair waged a years-long campaign of harassment against other minority victims (admin staff; nonTT faculty; disabled faculty; faculty of color.) Everyone knew, but there was nothing that junior faculty and contingent faculty could do. I began to speak directly to tenured colleagues about what was happening and began demanding that they intervene in some way on our behalf. When those tenured faculty started getting bullied by the chair, they did begin to act. A quorum of tenured faculty went to the Dean with a no contest vote. The chair was then told the next day (a Friday) by the Dean and the Provost that they could not and would not back her. She resigned by Monday. She has remained in the dept and has NO awareness as to why she was forced to resign--she thinks it is because she finagled an adjunct position for her husband. She's been angry about the loss of pay, but has been granted several different kinds of course releases and is still regarded as a full professor authority figure. | I fought hard on this one. I received tenure. However, my tenure case was wonky at the university level--I did not include explanation for my two years of leave in my tenure file, as I did not want to draw attention to the conflict with my chair (included in my annual review letters and grievance letters) and also because my university has no stop-the-clock policy. Several members of University R&T abstained from voting on my case, and my letter noted the "strange" gap of two years in my probationary period. | terrible. Weeping, anxiety, depression, fear, despair. | I was very concerned that I was the one responsible for the fact that our chair was forced to resign, because I had instituted a vocal campaign the detailed my harassment and I continued to reach out to tenured faculty for support. I voiced this concern with our EEOC person on campus, and he told me, "your case was not the one she was most worried about." This made clear to me that I was not alone in the abuse that I had suffered and that others had also been brave enough to come forward. I don't think I will be completely at ease in my job until my harasser retires. | My harasser was a self-professed, avowed Marxist feminist scholar. She targeted women for abuse--admin staff; contingent faculty; elderly and disabled faculty; pregnant faculty. She herself had been a single mother on the TT. And she had it out for me at every turn. She is everything I do NOT want to be as a colleague, despite being renowned as an excellent instructor and a service workhorse. After this experience, my mantra in all things at work is "how can we err on the side of kindness and generosity?" | Female | ||
644 | 12/4/2017 13:15:36 | drunken phone calls asking about my sex life, comments on my clothes and body, repeated and unwanted physical contact | Assistant Professor | grad student | Other R1 | English | I never made an institutional complaint | none that I know of | definitely made me feel unwelcome and hyper-visible | anxious and depressed | I left the university, though this was not the only reason | Male | |||
645 | 12/4/2017 13:17:43 | In seeking a meeting regarding why my department decided to no longer support my PhD scholarship application (despite strongly stating they would), I was invited to meet with the Director. I was sat on his couch and told how “us girls” would be taken care of. He proceeded to place he arm across my shoulders and lean into my body. Told me that I didn’t have to worry, that it would all work out. I gave clear signals and kept moving away. Months later after my PhD scholarship was approved (at university level as I was top graduate for my year), I was invited to coffee on campus by my boss and colleague of my PhD supervisor and the director of the dept. and told that I dressed provactively: that my doing so “won’t work” with my supervisor as he is gay. I was told that I need to stop using my femininity to get places: it worked in the past, but won’t work now. Told to stop smiling so much and not to flirt. She went on to discuss my sexual behaviour tactics and how I could adjust them to be “more professional”. Although this meeting could be construed as more of a sexual discrimination act, it was part of a dept wide approach to females. Too many incidents to list. Not one of the female PhD candidates of our year finished there. Not one. | PhD student and employee | Director of department and work boss | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Australian National University | Politics in the Asia Pacific | Was told that this was just the way of the department. It happened to “everyone”. Was told repeatedly that complaining would be bad news. | Was promoted to an elite position at another university | In the end I transferred my PhD to another university in another city. I lost my scholarship and this meant a loss of income for almost the whole process. Lost my job at the ANU. Was only 6 months in to the scholarship when I left and this was non transferable, despite being a federal govt. scholarship. Head of Department threatened to “see me ruined”. | Had to deal with a PTSD after it all. | It has impacted on my scholarship. I am no longer as eager to participate in university life despite dedicating myself to academia. My confidence as a scholar took a massive hit. I am not half the scholar I was. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
646 | 12/4/2017 13:20:49 | A senior professor repeatedly made remarks about my looks and body, and would seek me out at department events, talk much too closely, and ask me personal questions that made me uncomfortable. Many people in the department knew of his behavior and thought it was funny that he had a "crush" on me. Whenever we had candidates visit for interviews he would remark on their clothing and footwear, and one time mentioned we should not hire a candidate because she was wearing "sexy boots." | graduate student | full professor | Other R1 | English | Everyone who knew about his inappropriate behavior said he was just one of those "old guard" professors and not worth worrying about | Male | |||||||
647 | 12/4/2017 13:21:08 | At a social event following a national conference, a tenured professor insisted that I kiss him. He was married, but insisted that it was fine, and, when I refused, he said that "his girlfriend says he's the best kisser" and that I would be "missing out." He waited for me outside the women's restroom, making it so I couldn't walk out without him noticing. I ended up slipping away into a group of strangers who, after I explained the situation, offered to "hide me" from the man in question. | Graduate Student. | A professor at another institution; friend of my committee head. | Other R1 | N/A (multi-institutional professional conference) | English Literature | None | None | No formal impact, though my confidence was shaken--I had thought our relationship was professional/academic rather than based on my physical attributes. I have since hesitated to engage in networking in such situations. | Impacts in confidence, stress, and general happiness. | Trajectory remained the same. | Male | ||
648 | 12/4/2017 13:27:45 | I am currently a PhD candidate. A few years ago, a former undergraduate advisor was in town to give a talk. We went out for drinks afterwards and got quite drunk. He invited me back to his hotel room and made a pass at me. I refused to sleep with him; fortunately he did not get violent or pressure me further. | graduate student | former academic advisor (from undergrad) | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | I'm in the humanities, he is a social scientist. | none | none | Unclear (see below). My mental health challenges are not solely, but in part, due to this an other similar experiences have definitely slowed my progressed due to increased anxiety. I have definitely thought many times about leaving the academy all together, in part due to the disillusionment with the politics of professional academe caused by this and other experiences of abuse of power by senior faculty, including those supposedly committed to social justice and through their scholarship. | This and other experiences of sexual advances by male professors posing in the guise of interested "mentor" have made me insecure about my intellectual capabilities, making me fearful that the only reason men in my field show any interest in my work is that they secretly want to sleep with me. This in turn has contributed to (admittedly) preexistent anxiety, which has recently become so severe, due to the prevalence of descriptions of sexual harassment in the media, that I am now taking medication and have considered going on medical leave from my program. | This is not the only instance of sexual harassment I have experienced as a graduate student, and it was the least traumatizing and consequential in terms of my work and career. I may submit additional forms with the details of those experiences. It's very hard to talk about these experiences. What's important in all these cases to me is less the precise details of the nature of the proposition or encounter, but the impact on my mental health and sense of self, and the impact of these in turn on my work, which has been quite negative. The other thing I should add that all these experiences were with male faculty at institutions other than my own, and all occurred in non-institutional/quasi-professional settings (the bar at a conference, a hotel room after a talk). While there definitely needs to be a clearer understanding of what happens between people at the same institution in institutional settings, I think there needs to be more attention given to the potential hazards of these "gray" spaces, which are so common in professional academe. | Male | |||
649 | 12/4/2017 13:28:39 | I have a homemade sign on my office door that reads "The Doctor is In" (like the one used by Lucy in the Peanuts comics). At several points in a semester, somebody would place post-it notes over the "In" with different comments including, "hot" and "sexy." | Third year as Asst. Prof. | No idea because I have no idea who was doing it | Regional Teaching College | Psychology | Not sure - I took the post-it notes down and after the third one I left my own post-it note up for about a week admonishing the writer to act like a professional. | Was really frustrated with the anonymity and not knowing if I should be fearful as well as worried that those types of notes made me look unprofessional by extension. I was genuinely worried that my peers would somehow perceive me as less academic. | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | ||||||
650 | 12/4/2017 13:32:13 | One of my male professors saw me outside the building where he taught poetry. He sat down beside me and told me I looked like a commercial for something. I asked what he meant, he said just sitting there on the brick wall so beautiful with my scarf and hat, that I should be advertising something. He never specified what. | Student, Junior year of my BA. | He taught one of my classes at the time. | Small Liberal Arts College | University of Tampa | English Literature | None, I did not report it beyond my advisor and did not wish to. I did not recognize it as sexual harassment at the time. | Never reported. | I don't know. | further perpetuated my belief that my beauty or lack of was my currency. | I don't know. Going into academia became less appealing as time passed and I saw professors sleep with students and make remarks about women. But, my field is not better now either. maybe worse. | Male | ||
651 | 12/4/2017 13:40:45 | I was taking an upper-level seminar and arrived one day wearing a white t-shirt and pearls. In front of the rest of the students, the male professor looked me in the eye and said, "you look like a virgin." The other students laughed. I was mortified. The same professor blatantly played favorites with some of the female students (he had a clear physical type), although I never found out how far his interest went. | 4th year undergraduate student | visiting lecturer (non-tenured) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | John Hopkins University | Writing | did not report | Non-trivial. | I stopped attending the class and ultimately changed fields. | Male | ||||
652 | 12/4/2017 13:46:16 | Male colleague told me he masterbated thinking about me while we were alone after hours in lab. | Graduate student. | Graduate student. | Other R1 | Biology | None. | Feel unsafe working late around colleagues. Feel no one listens to harssment claims. | Stress, anxiety | This and other incidents make me question science as a career for sensitive people. | Male | ||||
653 | 12/4/2017 13:52:33 | Much older full professor stopped one of my female students in the hall to loudly compliment her body publicly, and then pointedly told me I could learn a lesson | Assistant Professor (student was a senior in college) | Full professor | Other R1 | University of Oklahoma | History (but the institutional context was international and area studies | Dean laughed it off, and complained that said professor has also harrassed her. Chair took notes, but no action | no consequences | blackballed by the institution | Male | ||||
654 | 12/4/2017 14:05:21 | During my first semester of my masters program I quickly discovered that the newest male assistant professor for whom I was a TA and RA was sleeping with a friend of mine (second year student) who he not only supervised clinically but was also on her thesis committee. The particularly egregious aspect of all of it was knowing she'd recently lost a parent after a long battle with cancer and she was clearly still grieving. | Grad student | The professor I was TA and RA for my first year in my MA in Clinical Psychology program. | R2 | Psychology | I never said anything because I all but knew my friend would be judged more harshly than him (i.e., "opportunistic young woman seducing her way to the top”) and that any work she did from that point on would be forever clouded by it. | None that I know of. He left the position after 4 years and took a position at a different university where he obtained tenure. | None | Really fucked with my view of the profession. | I made up a reason about diversifying my research experiences to be assigned to a different professor the following year. I probably could have published with this professor but was so disguised that he was preying on a grieving student that I couldn't even look at him. | Male | |||
655 | 12/4/2017 14:12:55 | I was attending a research seminar at a research center. The leader of the seminar chased me around the archive, got in my physical space during the meetings, cornered me and generally physically bullied me under the guise of his sexual attraction. I felt hunted and scared and finally got sick to my stomach and couldn’t attend the sessions. | I was a visiting fellow at a research archive during the summer before I began in a TT position. In short I was still mentally a graduate student. | A full professor who had recently discovered a photograph on eBay of a famous reclusive nineteenth century poet. | Other Research Agency | Literature | Years later I told the people who worked there and they told me he had been banned from the scholar’s housing facilities at that institute. | None as far as i can tell. | Scared me and made me wary of senior men. | It took me a few months to get over it. I’m still mad about it. If I ever see him in person again I wil confront him and make sure he knows that if I see him harassing any women I will publicly shame him. He is a horrible predator. | I didn’t get to learn anything at the institute and i was deprived of a mentor. The women and men in the institute shunned me and were scared to say anything. | Male | |||
656 | 12/4/2017 14:17:07 | My professor introduced me to a close colleague in the city where I was doing fieldwork. I was affiliated with this person's university for the academic year. We met for coffee once and chatted about our respective projects. Next, he invited me for a second meeting in his office on campus. I had hardly entered his office or he closed the door, blocked the exit, grabbed me and started kissing me. Didn't even say hello... | Graduate Student | Full Professor | Other R1 | History | None | Some, possibly - I told a friend, who (against my wishes) shared news of the incident with an assistant professor at my home university... which is how it got back to my professor. I was mortified, especially as this was days before we were all due to meet at a conference, harasser included. I've never known what my professor did or say (his literal words to me were 'I assume you kicked him in the balls?' and he never mentioned it again) but he was cold-shouldered by various people during the opening reception and left after the first day. I still feel awkward about the whole thing but I am grateful for the solidarity. | None that I can think of, fortunately. | I have a healthy distrust of male professors of a certain type (very comfortable with the power they have). I say 'healthy' on purpose, as this has proven justified on several occasions more - this was just the most physical and threatening one. | This incident, absurd as it was, I have moved past. Verbal aggressions have actually impacted my choices much more than being physically assaulted. Being asked things like 'no that you are married, when do you intend to get pregnant?' or 'another child, really?' by senior male colleagues have definitely changed my 'work persona'. | Male | |||
657 | 12/4/2017 14:20:41 | inappropriate touching, sexual commentary, inquiries about personal sexual preferences | Graduate Student | Mentor | Other R1 | Cleveland State University | Humanities | none | none | none | none | none | Female | ||
658 | 12/4/2017 14:29:09 | Bear with me. I'm shocked at how long ago this was and shocked at how immediate the pain can still feel. I'm not sure when it began, but if it had begun obviously, then it might have been avoidable (or so I am telling myself). This begins in the late 1980s and continues through the 1990s. The perpetrator was a history professor at my undergraduate and graduate institution. I took two classes from him in successive semesters in a subject that I had been dying to study from a professional since I was nine years old. At the end of the last semester, upon finding out I was about to graduate, he asked me to lunch in the faculty restaurant because, he told me, he always took his graduating students to lunch. I thought nothing of this, including the fact that I was the only student at lunch since this was December graduation, and was flattered. About a year or two later, after a major depressive breakdown and recovery, I had decided that I wanted to go to graduate school and become a historian specializing in that field. I went to talk with him about pursuing a degree. He recommended a number of good schools, but said that the best was right there at the University of Houston, studying with him. I look back on it now and laugh at how naïve I was. I actually believed him that it was a good idea to study colonial Native American history at University of Houston with a military historian who knew nothing about Native Americans. (He has, of course, in the past decade co-written a book about Native Americans in the American Revolution. That was my dissertation proposal. Not that I had a monopoly on topic, but still.) Now, understand that no one had told me that the school should offer you funding or anything like that. I knew nothing about graduate school. He did not enlighten me. So, when he said, "stay here," I thought nothing of it and was a bit relieved because that meant I could continue to live at home and cut down on expenses since I was going to be paying for this out of my own savings and perhaps loans. Had I better advice, I might have applied to a better program with someone who had better grounding in the specific area that I wanted to study. Likewise, the semester before I defended my master's thesis, the semester in which most master's student would be applying to a doctoral program if they were in my position, other students asked me where I would apply. I didn't know that I should, which was when I learned that three degrees from the same school, especially a place like UH, is not the best career plan. I asked a couple of other faculty about it, and they told me the same. So, I went to him for advice. He grew furious and demanded to know who would dare tell me this. Meanwhile, he was doing all he could to help a male graduate student apply to Cornell and Columbia. That same student he helped get funding to travel to archives for his master's thesis but told me that I did not need to go to archives for research. Another professor said that he would never pass a master's thesis if the student had not gone to an archive and, although that professor would have been a perfect person to sit on my committee, my harasser would not allow him to sit on it for that reason. Up to this point, I've only been describing the unethically bad advice that this person gave me. The sexual harassment part is almost laughably mundane and cliché. It began with meetings at lunch time. Could I meet at noon? Oh, hey, it's lunch time! Am I hungry? Let's go get something to eat at the faculty cafeteria. He'll pay. Oh, it's crowded. How about off-campus? That sort of thing. Then, he wanted to meet after class, which ended at 9 pm. He'd close the blinds, although we were on the sixth floor. He'd shut the door. He'd want to meet in his "secret office" without windows. His shoulder had a cramp, could I rub it. How about his back? Here, sit on his lap. Really! Sit on his lap. Suggestions about my clothing, about the way that I buttoned the top button on my shirt, or that my skirts were so long, or so short, or that I didn't wear heels, or did. Complaints about his wife and the way she didn't understand him. Complaints about how much he did for everyone and was never appreciated -- "all I get is a dick up my ass," was the way he put it. I'm not kidding. He even gave me a box of chocolate kisses on Valentine's Day and said that he hoped it was full of orgasms.These things came gradually, in a crescendo, moving me from student, to friend, to confidante, to -- I don't know -- schoolyard crush in our interactions. At the same time, he issued steady reminders that, if I did not accept the role, there were consequences. Those comments about being unappreciated contained stories that seemed to me veiled threats. For instance, he said that one student had not thanked him sufficiently in the acknowledgements of his thesis and therefore he would not help that student in job searches or other recommendations in the future. In another instance, he had learned that another, female student (who was quite pregnant at the time) has passed her comprehensive exams. He called her into his office and said something like "let me give you a hug in congratulations." According to him, she backed of. He said that one move told him that he disgusted her and that he was never going to help her with her career, write her a letter of recommendation, or get her dissertation published. So, this told me that I was supposed to publically praise him and allow him to touch me or he would not do the things an advisor was supposed to do in helping a student. Other little micro threats like this cropped up constantly in his disparaging of other students and faculty. Meanwhile, as my advisor, he made sure that I took classes only from him unless absolutely necessary, then only from junior faculty who would not contradict him. He had me do independent studies with him, working on a project as his research assistant, with the promise that the project would result in a publication. Yet, somehow, at the end of the semester, each time, the publication would not materialize because he would have to "put the project on the back burner," and I would not have advanced much in my own research or education. I later learned that this was his modus operandi for his targets, simply to keep them from taking classes from other professors while also earning the requisite number of credits. Two incidents happened when I knew that I could not deny what was going on. The first came one summer, during the last of those independent study classes. There was a weird incident involving a long-time, disturbed graduate student who had submitted an epic poem instead of a dissertation and certain aspects of this poem could easily be interpreted as death threats on the lives of several faculty members, including the harasser. The harasser took to meeting students at a restaurant just off campus frequented by police. That is, until the time came for my meeting. Then, he decided that he had been there too long and was too regular in his movements. He had to throw the would-be assassin off. He wanted to meet at this restaurant elsewhere. As I got out of my car in the parking lot and headed toward the door of the new restaurant, the harasser got out of his and said, "hey, how about over here?" He pointed to an unmarked door under a stairway on the side of a the building. Meanwhile, two people got out of separate cars in the parking lot, looked about, joined one another, and went in that door, as if perhaps they shouldn't be. "There's supposed to be a bar over here that the graduate students go to," he said. I reminded him that I didn't drink and that I'd rather go to the restaurant, but he went over to the door and walked in. Like a sheep I followed him. The only place to sit was on sofas. He pestered me to order alcohol, although he ordered a non-alcoholic beer. I only ordered a Diet Coke. He kept moving away from the subject of the research project and skirting towards sexual topics. I was wearing walking shorts (down to my knees, it was Houston in the summer, after all), a t-shirt, and a long sleeve shirt as a jacket. He suggested that I loosen up and show off a bit more, then he reached over and moved my outer shirt over and peered down at my chest. I covered myself up and said that I was fine just the way I was. His whole demeanor changed. He was clearly insulted. More than that, after that incident, his evaluation of my work, my intelligence, my abilities altered drastically. No longer was I a promising student making excellent progress. I was now lazy and without an analytical mind. He demanded that I take my comprehensive exams three semesters earlier in my program than any other student and before I had finished my coursework, otherwise, he said, I'd be lagging behind and he could do nothing for me. The second incident took place when I decided on a dissertation topic. I brought it to him, but it quickly became apparent that he did not want to talk about the topic. He wanted me to grovel to him. He told me that, if I were to continue to be his student I would have to do everything he said, not just taking the classes he said and following the instructions that he issued, but that I could not date, I could not have friends that he did not approve of, I could not talk to people who me did not approve of, and so on and so forth in a litany of control that astounded me. I knew that I had to get out of there no matter what. So, I told him that I would be finding a new advisor. I had no idea what I was going to do, but I walked out the door, down the hall, into another professor's office, and begged him to take me on, which he did, to his own peril. Shortly thereafter, I lost funding, and the harasser was and had been for many years the head of the committee who allocated the very limited t.a. positions. I later found out many things had been going on behind the scenes. He had ensured that one of the graduate students whom I was dating lost his funding. He golfed with another graduate student and engaged in all sorts of locker room talk about me on the links. He would tell other students or faculty that I was a flake and not very bright. He told me that he wrote a critical evaluation of me, but when I saw that evaluation it was not critical. He threatened other faculty away from me when he saw me speaking with them. He threatened my second advisor when my second advisor tried to advocate for me. When the entire committee decided to reinstate my funding, he went into an apoplectic fit until they relented and did not. The glowing acknowledgement that he had intimidated me into writing he then used as evidence that he could not have harassed me. He told people that I "showed up" at lunch time to trick him into taking me to lunch, when he had made the appointments, and otherwise painted me as someone with a poor sense of boundaries. So, all while he was telling me that I was brilliant, he was telling everyone else that I was crazy and stupid. When I found that out, that's exactly what I felt. | Graduate student | My graduate advisor, a powerful, full professor in the department. | R2 | University of Houston (which is now R1) | History | First, other faculty and students told me to get away from him, find another advisor or go to another school. This was difficult because he had isolated me and undermined my confidence in myself and because other faculty did not want to incur his wrath. I did find another advisor, which entailed a change of specialization on my part. This new advisor had much less influence in the department or field because he was early in his own career. He ended up caught between his own fear of the harasser and defending me. Fortunately, an allied department hired an older, more powerful faculty member who was able to maintain independence and who was happy to take care of me as a student. Meanwhile, when I suspected that the harasser had been retaliating against me, ensuring that my funding (t.a. position) was revoked and preventing me from securing any other funding, I filed a complaint with the Affirmative Action Office. The policy of that office was to interview me, distill my complaint into a one page memo, allow him to respond in as many pages as he needed (he took fourteen, single-spaced), weigh the two, and decide if there was a case to pursue. As you can imagine, they decided "no case." The acting head of the AAO was interim when I made my complaint and, before his response came in, she began a little investigation that turned up at least two prior instances that resembled mine. By the time his response came in, she had been replaced with a permanent head (a man), who said that none of the information that the interim head had discovered could be used because she had not followed procedure. So, my case was filed away under my name but not under the harassers, as was their policy at the time. This was twenty years ago, and I've done quite well in spite of him. The best revenge is success. Still, I feel rage at all of the wasted emotion, the time lost to the migraines, the mental energy and hating myself. I resent the waste of my self. Plus, the damn school still can't address me as "Dr." when they ask for alumni donations. | The closest to actual consequences that he suffered came first, when he was removed from the committee that decided graduate student funding after I filed the complaint, and, second, when he applied to be dean. A friend of mine worked for the head of the dean search committee. He asked her about the harasser and she mentioned the complaint I had filed. The search committee chair went down to the Office of Affirmative Action to take a look and found not just my file but, so she said, others. He was axed from their list. Otherwise, nothing happened to them. He's still known as the department harasser, even by others who have their own reputations as harassers. | Well, obviously I would have gone to better graduate institutions had he not given me such colossally bad advice in the first place. Who knows where I might have ended up had I studied under an actual specialist at a better university where they had some basic ethics in graduate education? That said, after twenty years, I've gotten my revenge through success. This wasn't always the case. I had to change advisors, twice, and I had to change fields, after already choosing a dissertation topic that could not translate from the early modern era to the nineteenth century. I lost funding, which meant taking on part-time jobs in addition to adjunct work in order to pay the bills and to pay the full tuition because teaching assistants also had a tuition waiver. I did not trust the advisor that I ended up with, nor really anyone at all by then, and therefore did not develop the sort of professional relationship that would have benefitted my early career. Because of that, I took a detour into library science that did little but put me into debt and teach me that I am, in fact, a historian and must rebuild a historian's career several years out of grad school. I have only recently earned tenure at age fifty, when I earned my PhD at age 33. The explanation for that, and the better answer to this question comes with the answers to the next two, because my mental health and the choices that I made that affected the trajectory of my life and career were direct and indirect consequences of this harassment. | I am naturally depressive. I was in therapy and taking Prozac before the harassment, but doing very well, so well that I thought I did not need it any more. Because of my improvement, I had made the decision to go to graduate school and to become a historian. I had developed a sense of myself as smart -- maybe not brilliant, but capable and an intellectual. I respected my harasser as a scholar, and his cultivation of me as his student made me feel more confident. When I realized that his interest in me was prurient, that he called me "flaky" and "an idiot" to other graduate students but said I had "great tits" and wanted to "see what's under that top button," that he wanted to help my male colleagues go on to better doctoral programs but became infuriated when I asked if I should be doing the same thing, that he would ruin my career if I didn't let him touch me, then my whole sense of my intelligence, analytical ability, judgement, and future collapsed. During this time, I ended up in not one, but three successive abusive personal relationships, tried to join the Army as an escape (they rejected me because of the Prozac -- thank goodness!). When I lost my funding and then realized that my second advisor was at risk because of his association with me, I became suicidal and began cutting myself. Throughout, I had migraines roughly twice a month, bad ones that lasted several days in a row. Then, the shame. Oh, the shame would not end. Shame for getting myself into that in the first place. Shame for denying it for so long. Shame for not reporting it the minute that I knew that it was what it was. Shame and guilt that, in not reporting it, I had left some other woman vulnerable. Shame that perhaps I was the only one stupid enough to have fallen into that situation. Shame that I was sure everyone who did know thought I was crazy or asking for it or blowing it out of proportion. Honestly, writing this down now, I don't know how I got through it except for those fantastic therapists at the student health and counseling center, more Prozac, feminism, and making friends with a new cohort of graduate students. | This one is complicated because I don't want to make it sound like this was a good experience. It was awful. Yet, as Carrie Fisher said, "take your broken heart and turn it into art." I was a naïve, middle class, white girl with almost no understanding of the way power works. The whole experience cured me of that, from the way he used his power over me and over people associated with me to the way that people on the margins of my story had to judge the cost of tangling with him to the way that the institution protected itself in the process of reporting to the way that I myself became tainted by the harassment not only as it happened, but after and since. Someone told me that I can never charge someone with harassment again after this because then people will think the problem is with me, not with the harasser. That is patriarchy. Thus, the experience brought me to feminism, and feminism taught me compassion with marginalized people in ways that I never explored. That influenced my scholarship and put me in contact with some amazing people I might otherwise have missed, so I'm a better historian than I ever would have been under his alleged tutelage. But, I was also so very jaded by academia, just completely disgusted. If I could have done anything else and still been a historian, I would have. In fact, I did try. I finished my PhD simply because I felt I had earned it through grief but they don't give it to you until you finish your dissertation. Then, I didn't look for a faculty job. I was just trying to figure out my next move when I found a document editing job, which was great. That boss was awful, harassing in a different way, but I was also ultra-sensitive because of my prior experience. When we lost funding for the second time in four years, I got a library science degree, but discovered that I was too much of a storyteller and researcher of my own interests (rather than others') to be happy there, so found my way back to the academic world via community colleges. Now I'm at a liberal arts college. I also got my dissertation published, wrote a short, touristy book, and an academic trade press book in the meantime, all because I wanted to rather than had to. I found my own voice, but all in spite of the harassment. I could probably have done more in my life, and in a straighter line had I not been so angry and bitter and consumed shame. I'd probably be closer to retirement, for sure. I'd be further along, and maybe with more options in this uncertain academic environment. Twenty years offer many contingencies and the historical context has changed. Young women coming up have so much more facing them that, if we transplanted my experiences to today, I don't think that someone in my position could really recover from them. The environment in academia, regardless of gender, is too unforgiving of anything but a straight trajectory that the slightest wobble can devastate a career. A predator will do more than wobble you. | Thank you for doing this. | Male | |
659 | 12/4/2017 14:38:11 | I was a second year in graduate school and my PI, who is a serial narcissistic abuser sought to control my entire life sending countless texts and emails to monitor my whereabouts, not allowing me to go on vacation because "I hadn't earned it" etc. The sexual harassment came in the place of pressure for me to break up with a boyfriend I had at the time as well as other unwanted comments about how I dressed in lab. He would discourage me from eating lunch with my boyfriend and harass me when he noticed we were hanging out together. In a private meeting he said to me "I know you're always coming in late because of you and your boyfriends extracurricular activities," referring to having sex before coming to work. It's a long and awful story really but long story short, he harassed me until I broke up with my boyfriend and moved closer to lab. He threatened to fire me every day unless I did whatever it was he was wanting me to do- cancel my vacation time, sleep in lab. "If it were me, I would have slept her until the results came out. How can I make you care that much?" When I stared to fight back and stand up for myself, he lied to my committee about me misrepresenting my work in order to have me dismissed from the program. I fought this using recordings of conversations and other evidence of the emotional abuse and after threatening to sue, the assistant dean of the graduate school intervened and made a pathway for me to stay in the program but I was already at my wit's end and decided to leave anyway which likely saved my life. I had worked so hard to get my PhD from this #1 program and he had me wrapped so tightly around his finger that I nearly attempted suicide. After I left, three other women in my lab left without the PhD they came there for and I do not doubt it was because of this PIs inappropriate behavior. I still suffer from PTSD and associated issues from the 2 years I spent being abused by this man. The worst part is that even though he lost 5 students in five years they still awarded him tenure (I was one f his first students). In this particular program abuse is not only the norm but is encouraged because his fellow professors (all white men) only encouraged his behavior and when I tried to reach out for help, they discouraged me from seeking help even from a mediator who would help our meetings. As bad as my experience was, I witnessed far worse things happening to my fellow students in other labs. | Graduate student | my PI | Elite Institution/Ivy League | MIT | Chemistry | No one would even meet with me until I threatened to sue for discrimination (3 black students had gone into this lab and all 3 including myself did not make it out). I was eventually allowed to transfer to a different sub-discipline with a different PI but my committee and other professors black balled me from joining other labs. | None. He was awarded tenure despite losing 5 students- 2 black students and 4 female students in 5 years. They did start a "graduate student culture committee" to improve graduate culture but they appointed this professor as the chair of the committee so.... | I was not able to finish my PhD at this institution, was taken off as 1st author of an important publication. | I suffer from PTSD, anxiety and depression that eventually lead to a nervous break down while pursuing PhD in a different program. I thought if I just continued kicking ass and working towards my PhD I would get over it and I could move on like it never happened but it happened and I still struggle to wrap my head around how awful the culture is in MIT chemistry. | I essentially had to leave chemistry. I simultaneously want to go into academia in order to be a resource for students like myself but fear that as a black woman it will be impossible especially given the fact that I have suffered setbacks in my current project due to mental health difficulties caused by my experience. Ive had to set really strict boundaries with my current PI and people I work with to avoid being triggered, especially by texts and emails and personal meetings in small offices which has been really awkward because I just want to be a normal student who is able to have fun with my coworkers. | Thank you for doing this survey. I had no idea that what happened to me was abuse until I took an ethics class a few years later and saw a text book list of all the unethical things a PI could do and realized that if each of them hadn't happened to me- I'd witnessed it happening to another student. Even a year ago I would never have opened up about this experience, even anonymously for fear of retribution because my PI had already done so much to blacken my reputation. After he was promoted despite hurting my fellow students and friends (one woman toiled for 4.5 years under this man before deciding that if she didn't leave she might kill herself) I really felt like I couldn't be silent anymore. Every time I share my experience it feels a bit better. | Male | |
660 | 12/4/2017 14:40:54 | faculty member senior to me “joked” about my sexual preferences, commented on my ass, made sexual remarks so he could enjoy my humiliation | untenured, then sssociate | slightly senior | Small Liberal Arts College | music | i did not tell | not much just decades of discomfort | harmful and comes up a lot in current climate where i feel triggered | therapy is expensive | Male | ||||
661 | 12/4/2017 14:43:42 | I was groped by a professor after he took some of us grad students out for drinks after a guest lecture. | Grad student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | New York University | European & Mediterranean Studies | It was recommended to not take action | None | Changed fields, couldn’t find work | Questioning whether it was my fault | Always wanted a PhD, couldn’t bring myself to apply. Now in school for art and I avoid all male professors like the plague. | Male | ||
662 | 12/4/2017 14:43:49 | He was emotionally abusive in a lot of gender-specific ways, but there was only one time it shaded over into the sexually creepy, when I came back from a research trip abroad and was showing him pictures of the sites I visited. One photo had me in it next to some important ancient thingummy or another. he said, not looking at me but at my breasts in the photo, "Well, the food in [Foreign Land] must have been really good. It looks like you put on some weight there!" | grad student | tenured professor, my PhD supervisor, famous in the field | Other R1 | I only told other grad students, my friends, behind closed doors. They all said, "Ew, how awful!" sympathetically and comforted me because we knew there wasn't jack we could do. | That would have involved me telling someone in authority about it. Yeah, no. | It definitely sabotaged my confidence in dealing with this guy and made finishing the dissertation more difficult. | A therapist once told me, "You have really classic 'daddy issues,' but they're about your Doktorvater, not your actual dad!" | So I leaked out of the pipeline. I might have done so even if my advisor hadn't consistently undermined me throughout the dissertation process and beyond, but at the very least it hastened the day. Officially I left because there were so few jobs in the field, but by the time I got out of there, you couldn't have paid me enough to stay. | I realize this is small potatoes compared to people who were actually groped, assaulted, propositioned, or the like, but it's a symptom of the larger disease. And there was a lot of emotional abuse on top of that (petty power grabs and tantrums, refusal to engage seriously with my writing, insulting me and making it my fault for being unworthy). | Male | |||
663 | 12/4/2017 14:50:11 | Much older faculty seduced a vulnerable student. They had sex. She spoke up. Dean called the faculty member and told him to "report it". Dean told legal the student seduced the faculty. Student got in trouble. Recent. | It happened to a student. | Lower level faculty | Other R1 | Social Work | Dean defended faculty. He lied to Title IX coordinator. I know because I was the original reporter. | Could not teach for one semester. | n/a | n/a | n/a | Male | |||
664 | 12/4/2017 14:52:10 | As an older male professor handed a paoer back to me he winked and said, "you're feisty and I like it" | Undergraduate first year | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | University of Hartford | Medical sciences | Male | |||||||
665 | 12/4/2017 15:01:11 | Two. As a first year doctoral student, I was propositioned at a professional conference by a prominent, senior scholar in my field-he acted as if he was interested in my research interests and then tried to get me to go with him to his hotel room to spend the night. I demurred and really had to keep giving excuses until he finally took no for an answer. Given his status, I was certain that there would be professional repercussions in the future. I still see him at conferences and professional meetings: twice a year minimum over the last 25 years or so, which is of course very uncomfortable. The second instance, in my first years as a new faculty member I was also subject to harassing comments by a senior colleague in my department. It was finally so bad and was happening in front of my students, I spoke to my dean. He encouraged me not to speak to HR but to have a sit-down in his office, with the perp and an ally of the perp. My colleague was shocked that I had been offended and promised reform. He was much more careful in how he spoke to me in public; interestingly, my dean had no trouble with (making sure that?) the perp was on the faculty evaluation committee when I went up for tenure. The perp made sure to make "off handed comments" around me about the power he wielded on the committee so that I was terrified about my prospects for tenure. I was worried that had I spoken up officially or gone to HR at that point, there would be gossip that I was not qualified for tenure and that this was my way of gaming the system (not true) or that I would be detested for going against everyone's favorite good old boy and that that would also lead colleagues to think I was not "collegial." Either way, it seemed to me that I would lose by speaking up. So I didn't do anything but ask the provost that I hoped my application would be fully read and vetted by more than just one or two people on the committee. She assured me my application would be read thoroughly and I did receive tenure. Thereafter, the perp was very mean spirited to me in public contexts and undermining in every way but did not cross a line explicitly that could get him in trouble. He created an extremely stressful work environment. | One as a new PhD student. One as a new faculty member. | Senior faculty | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Religious Studies | A sit down with the perp and dean to "clear up" miscommunication. The request from the dean NOT to go to HR. | None | 9-10 years of anxiety and stress and depression | 9-10 years of anxiety and stress and depression | I don't know. I know that I felt I had to work tremendously hard, to do 10 x the work of other colleagues lest someone say that I was not qualified-- worried that because I had complained once about the perp, that he and his friends had trashed my reputation institutionally and therefore, I needed to prove myself again and again. I do think that these experiences helped me to understand better the situation other women have faced in the workplace. I think I became more interested in feminist scholarship and all of a sudden aware at how many of my former male professors (when I was a student and young and impressionable) had dismissed and diminished feminist scholars in my discipline. I guess the awful experiences led to my awakening, which was ultimately a good thing in terms of my own awareness of the world in which we live and social justice issues. | Male | |||
666 | 12/4/2017 15:03:23 | Oh God. He would comment on my breasts, discuss his favorite types of porn, that he wanted to travel with me, etc. behind closed doors. He seemed to make it clear to other teachers and students that I was "his." I thought that this was my imagination until other professors openly told me things like, "I couldn't give him blow-jobs as thank-you gifts." Turns out, everyone, students and professors, knew what was going on. Even his wife knew--when we met, she "stumbled" and dumped a glass of wine on me. The last time we saw each other, she hugged me and said, "you have been trying to protect me the whole time." I sought help from the administration but they said their hands were tied. I changed schools and degrees, hoping to start over. He wrote letters to those schools denigrating me (I still got into three of the four programs I applied to). Instead of leaving me alone, he told a mutual friend that I gained his respect by getting away. He got my address from another friend and started showing up outside my house, 5 hours away. 10 years later, I still find him stalking me on LinkedIn. Meanwhile, turned out I couldn't escape the hell I had been in. Academia is a small world, the students from my old program had told the ones from my new program, the letters from my old adviser went around my new field. Students and professors in my new school and program felt it was appropriate to discuss things like my boob size and how much cleavage I was showing, or if I was a "nice girl." I have since dropped out and am now PhD ABD. I want nothing to do with academia. | It started second term of my first year, MA. | He was my MA adviser. | Other R1 | Indiana University/Northwestern University | Comparative Literature/Central Eurasian Studies/Rhetoric | Chair at IU said that "we all have boy problems" (this was a woman). NU said that I couldn't be helped by their counseling department because it was a long term problem. I was asked to leave the rape crisis team at NU because of conflict of interest. | None that I know of, but I intentionally do not follow his career. | I have left the field and have not finished my degree. | I had a mental breakdown and tried to kill myself. I checked myself into a hospital for help. | I am now 200k in loan debt. His harassment caused my breakdown which caused me to lose funding. This also caused me to start over, which caused me to need loans, again. I also needed loans for medical bills. I am now actually quite successful in business, but this is where I would have been had I not gone to grad school. I am happy, happier than I ever was in academia. The irony is that I went to grad school because I was writing papers for fun. Now, I don't want to ever write again. It has been years since I have written and I have not had the desire to start. I do not think it will return. I don't think I will be able to read the other responses to this survey. When the #metoo campaign started I started reading responses like these for companionship, but then I started having nightmares. I was also raped by an unrelated man while getting my MA, but ironically, I blame my adviser for the rape. If he had not beaten me down and made me feel like a dirty, used woman, I would not have allowed myself to be treated the way I was by the man who raped me. | Male | ||
667 | 12/4/2017 15:11:53 | When I was an undergraduate, I took a class from a prominent Americanist. I would go to his office hours often, and I felt we had a good rapport. I admired him. Then at the end of the semester, he offered me a ride home. I was the last one to turn in my exam and it was snowing. I lived a mile away. He walked me to his car and then started telling me that he couldn't go through with "it." He had a wife and kids at home, he explained. I was floored. I assumed the car ride would be just a car ride. I felt ashamed that I may have led him on as well as naive. This happened around 2005. | An undergrad. | Tenured prof. | Other R1 | English | it made me doubt my ability and feel small. | He spoke at the university where I am doing my PhD and I avoid him. I am more cautious about speaking to senior men alone. | Male | ||||||
668 | 12/4/2017 15:12:01 | happened to a friend and not harassment but predation. prof said he was in an open marriage, started relationship with younger woman in his field, eventually said marriage intellectually unsatisfying, told her he'd leave his wife for her. Changed his mind but led her on until she had a breakdown. | she was a grad student | visiting professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | philosophy | not reported | Male | |||||||
669 | 12/4/2017 15:22:15 | While I was in my undergraduate program, I had a professor who frequently commented on my appearance, told me I was "beautiful" and several times gave me unsolicited hugs. | I was in my senior year of an undergraduate program. | He was a tenured professor. | Regional Teaching College | Social Work | I went to the program director who was a friend of the professor and she told me it was a cultural misunderstanding; that this is how people in their culture expressed themselves (they were both Latinx) and that I should work on being more culturally competent (I am Asian). | None. | None. I did not pursue this higher, once I learned that my program director was not going to take me seriously and I was afraid going higher would jeopardize my completion of the program. | Male | |||||
670 | 12/4/2017 15:26:35 | rape (pregnancy as a result) | adjunct | student | Other R1 | humanities | not reported | not reported | fear of retaliation/further harassment/abuse so not reported | ptsd | i know how to spot a sociopath now and power doesn't always come from the top down. | Male | |||
671 | 12/4/2017 15:44:12 | I was offered a tenure-track position if I would accept to become the mistress of a senior professor. | Postdoctoral fellow | Full professor and head of the department | Other R1 | Religious Studies | I never complained | Non | I try to make sure that younger scholars are not been sexual harassed. | Shame | I never pursued working relations with that university again. I left. | Male | |||
672 | 12/4/2017 15:48:25 | A male colleague made demeaning comments about me in front of colleagues and members of the community when I was leaving a reception. He had previously patted me on the head, and kissed the top of my head in separate incidents. I wrote him a letter describing the events and he posted in the door and told people I was hysterical. | Tenured associate professor | Tenured associate professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Social Science | His Dean spoke with him, had the letter removed from the door and Onreceived a very poor letter of apology. | None. | I was turned down for a promotion. | I experienced anxiety whenever I thought I might run into him at a meeting or in the corridor. | I moved offices to another building and stepped down from the position I held at a director's level. | Male | |||
673 | 12/4/2017 15:53:27 | Harassing comments; abusive language; quid pro quo | graduate student | professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale | Philosophy | None | None | I left the field | Anxiety, depression, PTSD | I changed careers | Male | ||
674 | 12/4/2017 15:55:07 | I was sexually harassed by my direct boss for 3 years. | adjunct instructor | program director | Other Type of School | law | i was too afraid to come forward; he was my only direct supervisor. above him was the dean. | none | i left adjuncting shortly after. | depression and anxiety | depression and anxiety, loss of ambition, aimlessness. professional stalling. | Male | |||
675 | 12/4/2017 15:57:11 | I was physically groped at a conference by an older (well-known) male faculty member. | Graduate student | Full professor | Other R1 | Anthropology | Everyone told me that ‘he’s just an old man, he does that all the time’ | Question self worth | Male | ||||||
676 | 12/4/2017 16:02:32 | When I decided to leave the university where I had undertaken my graduate degree to pursue a PhD at another university, the Head of School (Archaeology) said to be he would 'miss my tits', I was so shocked I said nothing. I told male colleagues and peers of this man later and no one ever confronted him. | Just completed honours student. | Senior Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Archaeology | None | None | Constant concern that I was evaluated on my looks not my achievements | Significant | I left archaeology and did my PhD in history | Male | |||
677 | 12/4/2017 16:04:42 | A professor openly flirted with me in class before suggesting, in a closed elevator with me, that our "relationship" may go further. | Graduate student | Tenured professor--not on my committee | Other R1 | Literature | N/A-did not report | N/A | N/A | Avoided working with professor whose work largely surrounds my own. | Male | ||||
678 | 12/4/2017 16:06:30 | 1965 - I went to a professor for help because I wasn’t doing well in his class - he suggested that I could do very well if I had sex with him. I was very immature and naive. I told him I really wanted to learn the subject material instead. He was disgusted with me and told me to find myself a tutor. | College freshman | My professor | Small Liberal Arts College | I didn’t report it. | None | I was afraid to contact my professors outside of class and likely did not get as much out of my educational experience as I might have. | I felt stupid and incompetent, and very alone. | I floundered for a long time because I was afraid to reach out to find a mentor or advisor. | Male | ||||
679 | 12/4/2017 16:06:41 | A mentor repeatedly tried to convince me to enter his hotel room and lay in his bed | graduate student | senior professional at major institution in my field | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Anthropology | did not report | It made me question my worth as a scholar and why senior men wanted to work with me (or not) | Felt objectified, sexualized. Worsened my imposter syndrome and undermined my sense of belonging. | avoiding this person's institution professionally and avoiding contacting them though my research is relevant to their work | Male | ||||
680 | 12/4/2017 16:08:48 | While at a conference dinner a senior and highly respected Professor put his hand up my dress and grabbed my crutch. I responded by calling him out and several people around the table (all male and all senior) berated me to 'relax' it was a compliment. | Postgraduate candidate | I was very junior and he was an internationally renowned scholar | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Anthropology | None | None | Deep insecurity and suspicion | Anxiety and imposter syndrome | changed career/ discipline | Male | |||
681 | 12/4/2017 16:09:40 | (1) One night on a required field trip for a geology course, I was asked by my professor to "take a walk in the woods" with him. I declined his offer, but I worried about the effects that might have had on my grade. Also, this was after most people, including myself, had been drinking around the campfire. The timing makes me think that that was a common strategy for him: get the undergrads drunk and then prey on them. I had this professor for multiple courses after that incident and I didn't feel comfortable going to his office hours or being alone in a room with him. (2) While doing field work this past summer (2017), one of my collaborators repeatedly approached me from behind and rubbed his crotch against me. I could feel his erect penis against my back. It was always under the guise of pointing at a map or "showing" me how to use a rock saw (which I already knew how to do, and told him so many times). Officially, I was directing the field campaign, but each time this happened, I froze. I haven't made any formal complaints, because if I want to continue working in that field area, I will have to collaborate with this person. | (1) Sophomore undergraduate (19 years old); (2) PhD candidate (25 years old) | (1) My professor; (2) Senior research collaborator - works for a government agency | Other R1 | Geology | None reported | None | The two incidents I described have made me wary of doing remote field work with men I do not know well, which may impact my career. | The incidents during field work this summer made me feel terrible. I was the one in charge of the field campaign and yet I felt completely powerless to act, and somehow ashamed that I had "allowed" the harassment in the first place. Instead of celebrating the success of my first self-directed field campaign when I got home, I was distressed. Fortunately, my partner has been extremely supportive and has helped me deal with the emotional fallout. | These incidents, plus many other instances of bias I experienced due to my gender, have made me question my commitment to pursuing a career in academia. I wonder if the prized tenure-track position is worth enduring the feelings of insignificance, helplessness, and shame. However, I have decided to remain in academia and, wherever possible, use my position to help combat harassment and make the academy welcome to all. | Male | |||
682 | 12/4/2017 16:10:43 | I was harassed during my first year of graduate school by another graduate student who wanted to date me. I wasn't interested, but he persisted in pressuring me indirectly, by getting all of the other graduate students to try to help set us up. Since he had been at said school a year longer, and was the self-appointed social chair, he had much more sway socially than I did. So I stopped hanging out with the other graduate students, and endured instead a constant stream of teasing from him before and after seminars. | first-year graduate student | graduate student, same cohort, but had been at the school the year before | Other R1 | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | Classics | I didn't report it. I regret it, particularly because this behavior became a pattern for this particular harasser. | None | I almost dropped out, and seriously considered transferring, but chose classes that my harasser was not taking and avoided him socially instead | Immense. I was depressed, and felt completely alone, since I thought all the other graduate students were on my harasser's side | This is really hard to quantify. I am glad, in the end, that I stuck with my degree, but I am not happy about the way I and other graduate students who knew what was happening handled this situation. | Male | ||
683 | 12/4/2017 16:11:25 | I was raped, assaulted, and stalked | graduate student | graduate student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Title IX asked him to leave me alone | He was asked not to come to certain areas on campus (but not prevented from teaching or continuing as a student). | It was nearly ruined | I was hospitalized twice, developed a series of PTSD related physical/mental problems, felt horrible on a daily basis for about 3 years after it happened | I am still trying to understand/work through this | Male | ||||
684 | 12/4/2017 16:12:18 | Stalked by a lecturer, who on one notable occasion told me he would hurt me should I continue to refuse him; left a long and violent message on my answer machine; camped out side my house for 48 hours. | Postgraduate | He was senior and with tenure | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | When I reported it the HR unit told me to 'get in line' he had a long history of this behaviour | None | Changed institutions and disciplines | SEVERE, years of PTSD | Massive I moved from the university I loved to another and had to change my phone/ home and other details. | Male | |||
685 | 12/4/2017 16:13:47 | 1972 A female professor made an accusation of plagarism in a paper I turned in as a college freshman. When I met with her in her office, she made a pass at me - touching my hair, my shoulder, and then further suggesting that she was available to tutor me at her home or mine and private tutoring would positively impact my grade. | A very naive college coed | She was the course instructor and I was a college professor. I believe she was an assistant professor. | University of Texas at Austin | English | I dropped the class and took it again another semester with another instructor. | none as far as I know. I did not report the incident. | none, ultimately. At the time, it caused me to fall behind in classes taken. | I was extremely uncomfortable and did not schedule or attend meetings with any faculty members for several years thereafter. | none | Female | |||
686 | 12/4/2017 16:14:42 | Very senior very very famous emeritus had a long standing problem with leering at women, making inappropriate comments, standing too close, creeping in the building late at night so female grad students didn’t feel comfortable working in their offices. I had multiple encounters with vaguely skeezy interactions, but nothing actionable. Others were not so lucky. I also had a senior male faculty (interviewing when I was on the market) question whether I was qualified to do research on conflict, and suggest that I should be doing something more appropriate | Grad student | Senior faculty not in a supervisor role; second incident was someone interviewing me for a job | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Political science | None but I never complained. There was a climate survey of grad students in the first instance but I’m not sure to what degree the department knew what this individual was up to... although since he was on the faculty for ~60 years I think they must have known? | See above | In the long run it mostly made me mad and probably made me stronger | Not significant but the incidents also weren’t too major | Not significant | Male | |||
687 | 12/4/2017 16:16:00 | A I was harassed by a professor while doing fieldwork, B I was harassed by a professor while visiting another field site, C I was harassed by a graduate student who was the head of my fieldwork team, D I was harassed by a graduate student who was the head of another fieldwork team | A and B I was a graduate student. C and D I was an undergraduate. | A He was a professor at another school. We are 'collaborators.' I have been on a large publication with him. B He was a professor at another school. I was a 'guest' at 'his' site. C He was in charge of my project paying me out of his own pocket to help me with his research D He was in charge of other undergraduates but not me specifically | Elite Institution/Ivy League | A and B Duke, C and D Stanford | Physical Anthropology and Archaeology | A, B, and D never reported. C they requested written documentation. | None | Never returned to the site while they were present. Lost research opportunities. Eventually, quitting academia altogether. | Distracted and depressed me for years | Quit academia | In addition to the instances above: my postdoc advisor, graduate student advisor, and undergraduate mentor were all accused of misconduct and/or harassment before or during the time they were in power over me. While they did not harass me, this absolutely took a toll on me and had a substantial effect on my experience as a junior academic. | Male | |
688 | 12/4/2017 16:20:03 | 1) two men drew a stick figure of me with boobs on the chalkboard behind the projector screen for me to find before my class began. 2) man told me he’d had an inappropriate dream about me. 3) man who started my subfield made inappropriate comments about my appearance at a conference 4) continuous comments about how much my dowry would be in a third world country by field team made up all men. | 1) 1st year graduate student teaching assistant 2) PhD student 3) PhD student 4) PhD student and postdoc | 1) male undergraduate students 2) male PhD advisor 3) male professor at top university 4) outside committee members and graduates students (all male) | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | 1) Rutgers University 2-4)do not wish to say | Earth science | 1) reported to chair of dept, students wrote me an apology, but mostly just tried to argue with me that they didn’t mean anything by it for months after. I just wanted to forget it ever happened. 2-4) did not report. | Has not obviously affected my career | All instances affected my confidence and increase my feelings of imposter syndrome and whether my science was being taken seriously. These are only a few examples that I have only recently felt comfortable talking about, but still only anonymously. | All of the perpetrators were from large R1 to R2 research universities or Ivy Leagues | Male | |||
689 | 12/4/2017 16:20:55 | In 2003, an instructor who was about 30 years older than me singled me out as the ‘best student’ in class and approached me outside the classroom. I let my guard down and one day, he kissed my lips and touched my private part in his office (with clothes on). I didn’t know how to react and took it as a gesture of ‘love’. I was 19 years old. It took many years for me to realize that it was sexual harassment. I thought he liked me but looking back, it was all within his caculation. | Undergraduate | Instructor | Regional Teaching College | Never report. As I said I didn’t realize that it was sexual harassment until much later. There wasn’t such an awareness. | Not that I’ve known of. | Nothing, but I made sure I kept distance with senior male professors. | He led me to my discipline. He’s a really good teacher (at that level) which was why we became close in the first place. But he took advantages of my trust. | Male | |||||
690 | 12/4/2017 16:23:36 | I was publicly denigrated and sexualized for being interested in critical theory like the male graduate students in my department were. | first-year PhD student | professor emeritus | Other R1 | Title IX investigation, inclusive due to protected emeritus status of offender. | zero | immeasurable | residual anxiety and self-isolation in addition to stress-related physical symptoms | I was already doing twice as much for half the recognition, but I have lost a great deal of potential. I no longer hope for an intimate relationship, but I have not changed my career goals. I am now on the job market. | Thank you for this opportunity to share. It means a lot. | Male | |||
691 | 12/4/2017 16:27:13 | I was a GSR for Student Affairs. I worked for the Graduate and Professional Student Council directly under the Graduate Student Body President. I always pushed for the issues I thought were important because I thought that was my job as a student advocate. He pulled me aside one day and he told me I should stop because when I pushed hard I came off as angry and it wasn't in my best interest to look like an angry woman. | Graduate Student | He was also a graduate student but elected as Graduate Student Body President. | Other R1 | I didn't report anything | Not sure | It created a lot of stress for me at the time | That happened during my master's program and when I moved to a different campus for my PhD I hesitated getting involved in student advocacy. | Male | |||||
692 | 12/4/2017 16:29:49 | A decade ago, I was a new tenure track faculty member. The tenured male professor next to me routinely met with his women students with his door shut. I overheard many conversations with inappropriate sexual innuendo, and several incidents of long moments of silence in the office. One day, I recognized one of my own student's voices. A few weeks later, I overheard a conversation he had with the union rep about the fact that the student had filed a complaint. I never heard anything more about it, except that he is still teaching here. But he doesn't close his office door anymore. The student dropped out of school. | new tenure track assistant professor | tenured | Other R1 | Pacific Northwest | unknown | institutional--don't know. Career--no consequences. | Racked with guilt that I didn't do something to intervene. | Male | |||||
693 | 12/4/2017 16:30:25 | Professor forced himself on me sexually, attempting to have intercourse with me. | Student | Professor | Other R1 | Social work | Did not formally report | None | Made it more difficult to treat trauma victims | Severe PTSD with depression | Caused difficulties in my jjarriage | This event has contributed to my choosing not to go into academia. I have been judged by other women for not reporting. | Male | ||
694 | 12/4/2017 16:32:11 | Rape jokes and other frequent misogynist/sexual joking by a prof | grad student | senior prof (I was his TA) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | After I complained to a few people, I think he was rebuked | He might have been rebuked--I'm not sure | So far, none | I had migraines and just a low level of dread all term; my doctor told me to take Ativan before I had to meet with him | None | I was sexually assaulted a couple of times when I was an undergraduate, by other undergraduates. Whatever is happening to faculty, I think worse things are happening to our students. | Male | ||
695 | 12/4/2017 16:33:30 | I have had male professors comment on my appearance with comments like "if I was your student I would ever miss class" and I have had students write on my evaluations "she's hot", and many more "jokes/comments" along those lines. Also when I was a TA to a male professor he prohibited me from coming to class because I was too distracting!!! | Graduate student and adjunct professor | male professors in the department and students of mine | Other R1 | sociology/anthropology | Department wise: I complained to my advisor about the professor I was TAing for and the professor said he was sorry and allowed me back to attend classes | Probably was asked by my advisor to apologize and reconsider his remark. | Aware of my clothes when I teach/present | Aware that people might judge me more based on looks than on my intelligence and the fact that I have a PhD | I tried not to take classes with them or work with them | Male | |||
696 | 12/4/2017 16:35:18 | After being invited to the house in 2005 (normal invitation that many students received) the wife of the faculty member took an interest in me (male). I did not realize at first, until a fellow student joked about it, that it was far more to the interest. My response was that it was just friendly and then there was disbelief from others that I didn't see what was happening. The interest was not reciprocal and escalated to stalking me to events that were unrelated to school or any intersection of life with the faculty member. I had to cut off contact with the family and eventually made all social media private when I moved (2007) so that I could try to make a clean break. There have been no further incidents that I know of, but I am careful when I return to the area not to announce anything on social media about my presence until the final day I am in town. | graduate student | wife of faculty | Other R1 | Management | none. I spoke with the faculty member about his wife and did not report anything. | None directly, later heard it was a pattern and there was a separation in the marriage. Did not keep in contact and do not know the result. | I did not move directly because of the harassment, but there was some impact in my thinking. I am also much more careful on social media about announcing where I will be after she showed up at unrelated events that she found out about. | It has been 12 years and I still think about it. It has been relegated to feeling sorry for the faculty member for having to deal with someone who is/was willing to cheat openly without regard for him. More difficult for me to commit to someone because I wonder if it will happen to me (cheating on me). | I have become more suspicious of people. What would typically be friendly social invitations are overthought and I am less socially active. | Female | |||
697 | 12/4/2017 16:37:45 | Unsolicited video of a colleague masturbating | Graduate student | Colleague (married with kids) | Other R1 | Prefer not to say | Not reported | None to date | Male | ||||||
698 | 12/4/2017 16:41:46 | Big name professor sexually harassed students. Email evidence caught up to him. | Senior faculty. | Other R1 | Loss in institutional perks. | Kept job. Eventually ignored restrictions on working with certain students with impunity. | At least a few devastated lives. | One person left grad program because of it. | Male | ||||||
699 | 12/4/2017 16:47:54 | unwanted / unsolicited kisses on the cheek; commenting that 'he has to get it (kisses) however he can, wherever he can' ; skyped me links to S&M sites in Germany as his 'bucket list'; commenting on my dress, makeup, looks; commented on how I remind him of his wife; querying the 'strength' of my marriage; comments how much I should miss him when he travels o/seas for conferences; informs me he ghost-writes porn series called Purple Princess; tells me I think like him - and that I think like a man | Research Assistant, PhD student | Direct report to; Associate Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Monash University | Education | Caring, suggested a secondary supervisor to break the dynamic; suggested counseling; supportive but I felt their hands were tied | None that I know | Total change in supervision impacted time line to completion | Anger, depression, feelings of betrayal, feeling fucked off, helpless, stress of perceived "loss" of study/work time and the need to 'catch up' Being told by new supervisor that I was 'set up to fail' from the beginning of my studies | cynical towards the value of staying in academia | The fact that I felt SO uncomfortable being in the same room with him I brought my (then) 11 year old son to chaperone me for a meeting with him during the term break speaks volumes. That I had to 'accidentally' kill off video function on Skype a few times to avoid his comments on how I was looking that particular day. The university's Sexual Harassment Unit confirmed that my concerns were indeed flagged by them as sexual harassment and yet they left it to me to take further action. They also informed me that it was not just sexual harassment but abuse of power through dominating control and ego issues. Although I understand that such action would warrant the perpetrator a 'fair trial' and provide him with a space to address my accusations, i felt that leaving it to me was unfair, as it assumes the 'victim' 100% responsibility to take action. Knowing that if I stay in the same field I will be working/interacting with this person (and his wife) and it would not be productive for my career or my mental health, esp as I am yet to complete my PhD. Even then, I am not confident anything will come out of any further action. It isn't 'high stakes crime' (e.g. rape). Best case scenario is that the report would result in his termination so he does not behave like this on campus again. There is much research suggesting that there is no benefit to the victim when reporting.. (see recent London School of Economics project by Jennifer Cirone at the Solace Women's Aid in Camden also lecture recorded on 16 Oct 2017 available via http://www.lse.ac.uk/website-archive/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=3906) unless it is a unified and public shaming in the media of high-profile personalities. | Male | |
700 | 12/4/2017 16:53:33 | One of my PhD committee members, who identifies as gay, regularly comments on my appearance. Before the oral defense for my comps/quals, he joked that he would decide whether to pass or fail me based on how I dressed for the event. | PhD students | committee member | Other R1 | Male | |||||||||
701 | 12/4/2017 17:00:12 | PhD student kept talking about the body parts of women in the office (e.g., "I want you to know what I think about your tits"). He guest taught an undergrad lecture for me and refused to listen to my feedback on his teaching. Said he didn't teach well that day because he got distracted by the hotties in front. He's a grown man in his 30s. Instead, he asked for the names and contact info of the "two hot chicks in the front row". He called my female advisor a "Bitch" and kept trying to start conversations with her students about why we needed a better advisor. He got drunk at a conference and explained to me his ongoing predatory attempts to isolate a female coworker to convince her to date him. He was "pissed off" she wouldn't reciprocate, was "afraid of how out of control he felt around her", and was "afraid of what he might do to her". When I confronted him about the ongoing behavior, his only response was to mention the 'cute face' and breast size of another female researcher. | PhD Student | PhD Student | Other R1 | University of Colorado Boulder | Engineering | University lawyers claimed sexual harassment is not a fireable offense and refused to take any action, despite complaints from 2 women. My department stepped up and defunded him as a PhD student and removed him from our shared office, but is willing to take him back if he goes to some counseling sessions. | Lost phd funding, but may be brought back on as a PhD student and researcher the next semester. Everything is up in the air and feels unresolved. | Harasser publicly denied everything (although he admitted to about half of it in private to the university investigators). His friends, both male and female, retaliated against me in the department. Ongoing retaliatory comments such as: "we hate her for what she did to him (the harasser)", "she's a liar", "if it was such a big deal she should have come forward sooner", "she should have said NO louder", "she knows how to tease men but not how take a joke from a man", and telling all the new PhD students this semester to avoid talking to me if they don't want to get fired. Some students refuse to speak to me now. | extreme anxiety, distress, and lack of productivity. I never used to cry, I now cry almost every other night from the never-ending exhaustion of navigating this process. I had my first ever panic attack one day when walking into my building, because I found out my harasser was back on campus and hanging out in the department lobby. | I am still going to become an educator. But I have lost all faith that any university cares about the physical or emotional safety of students. It's all about protecting the university from a lawsuit. Something in me has just been ground up into nothing, and I don't think it's ever coming back. | Male | ||
702 | 12/4/2017 17:03:35 | The first year of my PhD, I was in workshop with a male professor who [Redacted] | first-year PhD student | Professor | Other R1 | University of [redacted] | Poetry | The director of English and Comparative literature tried to file a Title IX case against the perpetrator without telling two of the students who came forward to complain privately (both of them assured anonymity). When the Title IX office emailed them and said that they couldn't assure anonymity, the female student dropped her complaint, but the male student went forward with it. | This professor is no longer allowed to teach graduate courses, though he can teach undergrad classes (which makes no sense to me; it seems like the undergrads would be at even greater risk). | None yet, but I need to watch my step. It may affect my career if I'm open about this professor's toxicity, since he's linked to a lot of other important scholars and writers in my field. [The rest redacted] | I was not one of the primary targets of this professor's harassment, but I do my best not to attend functions where he could be present. The primary targets of his harassment are two of my closest friends in the program, and it's affecting their mental health more than mine. We're doing our best to protect each other. | Obviously this man will not be on my committee, nor anyone else's in my year or after it. He is dead weight in the graduate program ..[the rest redacted] | Male | ||
703 | 12/4/2017 17:06:43 | Constant inappropriate remarks over the course of a year by my advisor on my chest size. | Doctoral student, 1st year | Full professor/advisor | Other R1 | Computer Science | Felt isolated from department and cohort. Probably made depression worse. | Likely did not connect with a number of people because I was avoiding the department during this time. | Male | ||||||
704 | 12/4/2017 17:10:32 | A few men, systematically making gendered /sexual comments, talking over me / treating me very differently from male postdocs over a period of years. To give one example of many : A colleague said to me, in front of a class of students, that the university would be advertising a position soon and they wanted to hire "people with boobs." then he looked me up and down and said, "hey, you'd be eligible. Or shouldn't I be looking at your chest?" | Postdoc | Tenured professor but fairly junior. We were co-teaching. | Other R1 | Linguistics | I didn't formally report it. Eventually after many years the two worst people were made redundant. The university claimed it wasn't in response to harassment complaints (other women did complain) but in private I have heard that it was. Meanwhile I know at least four women left because of it. | See above (redundancy) | I left the institution. I might have done so anyway though. | It was a contributing factor for years of crippling diagnosed depression. | I left the institution. I might have had better career prospects if I had stayed but I'm pretty happy now. | Male | |||
705 | 12/4/2017 17:10:36 | Continuing hostility from male colleagues toward female colleagues, over the course of a decade of employment. Once I and my female colleagues make it clear that we will not defer to our male peers, we are subject to more exacting standards of evaluation and performance, more onerous teaching assignments, exclusion from institutional support for our academic projects, changes to student grades outside of institutional procedures, and lack of promotion or other institutional benefits. Also, I have been threatened with violence from male students on two occasions (once 8 years ago, and a second occasion 5 years ago). When I initially reported the incidents, administrators told me not to make a police report. When one student continued to make threats, my institution responded in a slow and inadequate manner that further marginalized me in my department and institution, putting me and my students at risk. The institution only responded once the male partner of a female colleague in a similar situation wrote a strongly worded email to an associate dean. The institution did not take any measures in response to my female colleague or myself. | Tenure track, as both an assistant and associate professor. | Chairs of my department and graduate students. | Small Liberal Arts College | School of the Art Institute of Chicago | architecture | A variety of non-responses. I have been told to "do what I'm told," "not to worry," and to "be nice" to my departmental administrators, even when senior administrators admit that my male colleagues have violated institutional policy and practice. On more than one occasion, I've been told that I have a legitimate concern and that the problem has been solved, only to encounter the same problem on multiple additional occasions. | None. | Onerous teaching assignments have interfered with my research and creative practice, lower compensation, lower profile in my field. | Intense stress and some depression. | While I have typically found substantial rewards in participating in university/campus life, I have minimized any role in my institution outside my classroom in response to the hostile work environment. | Male | ||
706 | 12/4/2017 17:16:28 | As an one of five female undergrads working at a remote field camp one summer, I dealt with a bunch of behavior from one of the two senior (male) PIs that made me very uncomfortable. The PI in question encouraged heavy drinking among all at the camp, and would give the women in the camp shoulder rubs, unsolicited hugs, etc. He was very charismatic, so at the time it was possible to laugh it all off, but it never felt quite right. There were about 15 of us in total at the camp, and we slept in one big bunk room. I can remember him sometimes coming into the bunk room late, leaning over my bunk (when I seemed to be asleep), and giving me a ‘goodnight kiss’. Blech. He also regularly made inappropriate, misogynistic statements (“I don’t know why women have children - their asses never look the same again”). This was my first field job as an ecology student. The other senior PI (also male) turned a blind eye to this behaviour (he was very “focused on his science”). The grad students/other research associates at the camp went along with the atmosphere created by the first PI, no doubt because they were also walking a fine line between being in his good vs. bad books. | Undergrad | Senior PI | Other R1 | Biology | Not reported | None | None | Still raises uncomfortable feelings/anxiety/anger that he could get away with this | Unknown | After this summer, I heard rumours he had previously been accused of harassment at his home institution, but apparently nothing had come of it. | Male | ||
707 | 12/4/2017 17:19:00 | My advisor started to hold all of our meetings over dinner. He always framed it like, "you can't afford to eat in restaurants... so let's eat while we talk," but that didn't take away from the confusing intimacy of the "meetings" where we pretty much never talked about my work. Eventually, these dinners turned into dinners at his home (cooked by him, at least 5 times over the course of a year), followed by wine and a movie. He never "tried anything," but I was always confused about why I was there and never knew how to act. I always sat stiff as a board on the opposite side of the couch while we were watching a movie. One time, he reached over, patted me on the back, and said, "relax", but he usually didn't touch me and acted like it was a perfectly normal thing for us to be at his home doing this somewhat intimate thing late at night. His wife was living out of town, and I also had a long distance relationship. There was never any indication that what we were doing was inappropriate, but my assumption was that he was seeking some kind of whiff of sexuality that would never be fulfilled. | PhD candidate | dissertation advisor, the instructor of the course I was teaching, and chair of my department | Other R1 | I spoke to a faculty mentor in the department who gave me terrible advice. Sort of "boys will be boys" and "he doesn't have other friends, so it's our job to be his support system". I also spoke to a dean who said he was clearly "towing the line" but that (understandable) nothing could be done unless I chose to speak out. And, technically "nothing had happened", so I didn't know what I speaking out about. | Nothing. | The greatest loss was that I completely lost respect for my advisor, whose work I used to deeply admire. And, to the degree that I am his student, I lost respect for myself. I don't know if I can move forward in this profession feeling like I'm in a gross lineage of scholars who have elbowed their way to the top by being creepy and arrogant. | Loss of self-respect. Loss of trust in others around me. Deep depression and sense of worthlessness in the work. | I just feel completely lost. I have no idea what my life trajectory will be. I would rather work for minimum wage than be manipulated by a creep who just wants his ego stroked. | Male | ||||
708 | 12/4/2017 17:21:23 | a student forcefully kissed me | professor | an undergraduate student who took my class | Other R1 | political science | accused me of sexual harassment | none | fired from job | contemplated suicide, had panic attacks for months | started therapy and I am never trusting students ever again | Female | |||
709 | 12/4/2017 17:27:06 | A married male colleague in another department kissed me in a private meeting, but it was consensual. A couple of years later he was reported for sexual harassment of a student. | Associate Prof | Associate Prof | R2 | Anthropology | Administrators basically went on a wtch-hunt/ fact-finding mission, asking people with whom he had associated if they had ever experienced harassment, without naming the perpetrator or why they were being asked. As far as I know they never found anything related to this Prof. | Was put on leave, then was reinstated but with severely restricted access to students. | None | None | None | This is a poorly designed survey as the questions are geared towards only people with a harassment story to tell - but you also need to include responses of people who have nothing to report to fuller understand the scale/scope. In terms of this case, I don’t doubt that this happened based on his overstepping bounds with me, but I felt that the process was incredibly flawed. | Male | ||
710 | 12/4/2017 17:38:09 | Visiting renowned prof sent explicit emails to female grad students / made myriad comments to female grad students & junior faculty studying women's history that they didn't do real scholarship. Happened repeatedly over several years. | PhD student | Professor; advisor & exam committee member of a number of the grad students. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Medieval Studies | No faculty member was willing to confront perpetrator; dept chair violated confidentiality and revealed my name to him, telling him that female grad students don't have a good sense of humor - he then confronted me in dept. break room and begged me to help him. Reported incidents to Title IX office - no follow-up from office. Faculty member returned the following year. | None. | Helped me decide not to pursue a TT career. | Male | |||||
711 | 12/4/2017 17:41:50 | My first semester of the PhD my cohort was required to take a “professional seminar” class taught by the director of the graduate program. I can’t remember why, but this was around the time that Jennifer Lawrence and other female celebrities nude photos were leaked on the internet, so the professor brought it up in class. He was essentially victim blaming Lawrence, saying she shouldn’t have taken the photos if she didn’t want people to see them. A female friend raised her hand and said that Lawrence was an adult who took the pictures and sent them in the context of a consensual relationship and her privacy was violated by the pictures being shared with the public. The professor responded by asking her in front of the whole class if she took nude photos of herself and shared them with romantic partners. We were all so stunned and disgusted, but no one piped up to tell him how gross of a comment that was. Another friend was his TA for a semester and he repeatedly made passes at her and commented on the level of attractiveness of job candidates who had come to do job talks. | First year phd. | Full professor, director of graduate program | Other R1 | Sociology | None | None, although he’s being phased into retirement and the rumor is that he was forced to. | None at this time | Contributed to a hostile culture in the graduate program | Thinking about Pershing a career outside of academia | Sociology is a field where we are supposed to “know better” but this happens all of the time | Male | ||
712 | 12/4/2017 17:46:12 | I was invited to go out by mi advisor | Grad student | Chair of the Department and my Advisor | Other R1 | University of Pittsburgh | Spanish | none | none | extremely unconfortable | Lack of self-steem regarding school work | Decided not to continue in academia | Male | ||
713 | 12/4/2017 17:46:44 | University of Wyoming 2011. My teaching mentor began asking me inappropriate personal questions about my marriage, my sex life, etc. He repeatedly called me and emailed me, in addition to one on one meetings, to demand I answer these and other questions. It became clear later that he was having sexual affairs with his other mentees, and presumable expected me to want the same relationship with him. | MA student in the English Department | Teaching mentor, also with an MA. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Wyoming | English | I asked to be assigned a different mentor. This was denied. | None | I was given unfavorable teaching reviews from him to the department | I waited 2 yrs to apply to a PhD program as a result. His treatment of me made me question my abilities as a teacher and a professional. | I’m a few years behind. | Thank you for all that you do. | Male | |
714 | 12/4/2017 17:53:42 | Advisor/mentor kept finding ways for us to be off campus alone. Eventually asked me to sleep with him | Undergrad | Professor, mentor, advisor | Small Liberal Arts College | English | Male | ||||||||
715 | 12/4/2017 17:55:19 | I have faced sexual harassment throughout my career. One of the worst episodes I encountered was from my NIH program official. I trusted him. He asked me to talk with him about my grant on the balcony of his hotel room. I innocently said yes. In the hotel room he put his hands up my dress and attacked me. I fought my way out of the room. Despite my refusal, he kept on trying to sleep with me. I continued to refuse over a 6 month period. I was living on 98% soft money and had no other support. I was/am financial head of household. I was very afraid. Ultimately I found other sources of NIH funding and survived. This person was very powerful and I think that other women did not feel safe in saying no. | Full professor with tenure. | NIH program officer. I was a NIH grantee and totally grant dependent for my income. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Decline to state. I am easily identifiable. | Cancer Biology | No one to tell. | Going forward, it was likely harder for me to get grants. | I survived and diversified my work. What does not kill you forces you to become stronger. I refuse to bow to predators. | I don’t trust anyone. At all. Ever. | I am the sole breadwinner. I worked harder. This was not the first time (or even the 5th time) this happened. My family needs to eat. So do I. | Thank you for doing this. | Male | |
716 | 12/4/2017 18:01:09 | Incident 1 of 2 Had a sexual relationship with the white cis-male Professor teaching an undergrad seminar I was taking | Second Year Undergraduate | Assistant Professor - teaching a small seminar class that I was in | Other R1 | A top university in UK | Literature | Never reported (was told many times not to tell anyone to protect his career). | Lol, none. He is successful and had several more relationships with female undergraduate/graduate students. | A totally distorted relationship to older male academics where I both hate that I get attention for the way I look but also feel rejected if they do not flirt/make a move because it is so common it is almost the norm. I went on to have sexual relationships with three other members of the faculty, although these were when I was studying for an MA and in themselves were much less imbalanced in power than the initial relationship I had as an undergraduate. But it speaks to a heinously laissez-faire attitude to professor-student relationships in UK institutions. | In the immediate moment, writing a seminar paper for the Professor you are sleeping with when you are 19 years old is all kinds of messy. Not being "allowed" to tell any of my friends - which I did not for about 2 years - was incredibly destructive. | Although I am listing 2 main incidents (this comment and the next one) the sexual discrimination and harassment is daily, ongoing, grinding, and disastrous. (I am now a professor at an R1 University in the US). | Male | ||
717 | 12/4/2017 18:01:19 | inappropriate/unwanted comments about my pregnancy | Assistant Professor | Associate Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Male | |||||||||
718 | 12/4/2017 18:02:02 | I was walking down the hallway with my faculty mentor (male senior faculty) when we passed Prof. X, a male senior faculty member from another department. Prof. X did not greet me, but greeted my mentor warmly, took his time ogling me up and down like a piece of meat, and told my mentor, "Oh, I can see YOU'RE having a good day today." My mentor laughed and said indeed, he was. Even though there was no touching, it felt humiliating to be sexually objectified by a colleague, and gross to be objectified in front of my mentor, especially because my mentor did not challenge his peer's behavior. | Assistant professor | Much more senior professor (20+ years more senior) from another department. | Regional Teaching College | Social Anthropology | None (not reported) | None | I felt betrayed by my mentor for failing to challenge his peer's disgustingly unprofessional behavior, and letting it slide by with a laugh. I lost my trust in him, and because this isn't something that I feel I can bring up with him, I have not met with him since. My tenure case may suffer somewhat because I have not been turning to him for advice, but I'm reasonably confident I can get tenure even without his advice. | Felt humiliating, pissed me off, and makes me dread crossing paths with Prof. X (whether in the hallway or in inter-departmental faculty meetings). I already wrestle with imposter syndrome, and this experience now adds some legitimacy to it by causing me to wonder whether it's really my scholarship and service that my male colleagues respect me for. | Added one more thing to the list of reasons why I don't want to work at this place anymore, and why I am contemplating dropping out of academia to help with my husband's business. | Male | |||
719 | 12/4/2017 18:03:44 | Professor of undergrads & grads was (very often) bluntly, and publicly dismissive of women who had been sexually abused as children. | undergrad | professor | Small Liberal Arts College | San Francisco State University | Admin. reviewed a student petition for dismissal, as well as student complaints, and decided to keep him as a tenured faculty member. | None | This was super distressing! | Male | |||||
720 | 12/4/2017 18:07:18 | When I was a PhD student, my advisor put me in touch with a senior faculty member in another department who was doing research on a topic that overlapped with mine. We met for coffee and discussed our work. A few weeks later we ran into each other by chance on the street and had coffee again. After that, he called me several times and tried to convince me to come to New York with him for a weekend. I declined but he continued to call. I stopped picking up the phone. When my advisor asked me how our conversation had gone and I said that he seemed to be interested in a different kind of relationship, she laughed me off and expressed irritation that I didn't appreciate the opportunity she'd offered me. | PhD student | Senior faculty member in a different department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale University | English | None | You must be joking | My discomfort with the situation damaged my relationship with my advisor, who was frustrated by my response--while I felt like I couldn't say anything to anyone else for fear of alienating her more. | Male | ||||
721 | 12/4/2017 18:09:18 | Response 2 of 2: At a party (one of the many many parties) at the house of the Professor mentioned in my first comment, there was a very famous white cis-male poet who was visiting from another top UK institution. By the end of the night I was incredibly drunk. Everyone else had left but I was still there as I was staying with the Professor (who I was having sex with). I remember standing in the kitchen talking to the"famous poet," a 71 year old man (who does not drink - although of course his being drunk would not have made this OK). 71. I was 22. I then remember him putting his tongue down my throat. I sort of stood there in horror as it happened for a while, then told him I had to use the bathroom and ran upstairs. I told the Professor (who was asleep/passed out in bed) - I don't know if he heard me. I did not tell any of the people involved in that circle because I was embarrassed that it had happened to me (I had a much less informed idea about consent back then, and certainly didn't consider it to be something that one would report. Again, this speaks to the general culture in academia. | First Year MA student | Professor and poet at the top school in the UK. | Other R1 | A top UK university | Literature | Not reported / none. | None. | Male | |||||
722 | 12/4/2017 18:10:42 | Mandatory kiss on the lips, sometimes with tongue included, for all female faculty attending department parties | Assistant Prof | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | English/Literature | Never reported as far as I know, though shared among women and allies in & out of dept | He died, eventually. But not because of this behavior specifically. | Learned to go along get along. Learned what the real environment was and so knew how far it was possible to take things. :-( | Probably more than I was willing to admit. I have suffered much worse outside of (and preceding) entering academe. | Did not seek leadership positions; circled my wagons | Male | |||
723 | 12/4/2017 18:13:39 | When I was a prospective PhD student, a department flew out the admitted students to campus for a visit. I met with a senior faculty member in my field--someone whose work I admired greatly, who had been the person who called to offer me a spot in the program. We spoke for a bit about the department and my research, and then he abruptly began to tell me about a museum he thought I should visit while I was in town. He pulled their catalog down from a shelf, drew his chair close to me so that our knees were touching, and placed the book in my lap. Then he slowly leafed through it and showed me all the pictures of naked women. My research was not related to naked women. | Prospective PhD student | Senior faculty member and potential advisor in a department to which I'd been admitted | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Stanford University | English | I chose another program | Male | ||||||
724 | 12/4/2017 18:13:43 | I was a graduate instructor for an archaeology class during my PhD program. A senior faculty member, who was rumored to have been inappropriate in his advances to students, approached multiple students of mine. He would approach young female undergrads and offer them research opportunities with him in Europe. Essentially, he was asking 19 year-old-girls if they wanted to go to Croatia with him, to be his research assistant. This happened multiple times, over multiple semesters. I asked my department chair for advice, because very excited students would rush in to talk to me about it, he told me to walk those girls into his office. While in there, with me present, he would tell the young ladies that professor in question was a sexual predator, that the University failed to do their due diligence and force him off campus. | Graduate Instructor for an Archaeology lab associated with an Introduction to Archaeology course. | Senior professor then emeritus professor | Other R1 | University of Missouri | Archaeology/Anthropology | The department chair at the time warned students, publicly, but nothing was done in spite of numerous attempts by him to file formal complaints. Eventually, after apparently decades, the Harasser, tried to corner a student in the school library, at this point, since he was elderly, she was able to get away, and the harasser was banned from campus (of course at this point he was already emeritus). | None that I could discern. | None. | It pissed me off. | It made me rethink, along with other factors, to leave the PhD program. I moved to secondary education and continue to advise students to speak out when confronted, or witness to, harassment. | Male | ||
725 | 12/4/2017 18:15:32 | I was asked if I used being a woman as an excuse for how people perceive me. | Assistant Professor | Department Chair | Regional Teaching College | Applied Health | The Dean said he would talk with the chair about it. | None | It was the icing on the cake for me to leave. | I felt I had to stop bringing up gender issues since it was clear the chair thought they were BS. This feeling was shared by others in the department who claimed there was "no research" that women are evaluated differently than men by supervisors and students. I stopped wanting to come into the office and then thought about leaving academia. | I thought about leaving academia but I decided it was likely just this set of people. I had tenure but left when I realized that set of men would never value what I did because I was a woman. | Male | |||
726 | 12/4/2017 18:17:42 | The department chair told the assistant department chair it was "Bullshit" that I said my publications were unevenly distributed across my pre-tenure period because I had a baby. I did not ask for time on the clock and took no maternity leave. | Assistant professor going up for tenure. | Department Chair | Regional Teaching College | Applied Health | None. I was able to get tenure but not without strong language to do more research. | None | I left the institution. | I was upset that I overheard the conversation. It was meant to be in private but the door to the office was not closed at the time. | I left the institution. | Male | |||
727 | 12/4/2017 18:19:30 | 2011: One of my professors in graduate school infamously slept with his students, grad and undergrad alike. I confronted him by saying that I thought he would want to know that grad students were buzzing with gossip about his exploits and the student he was sleeping with at the time would come to class and tell people all about what they had been up to. When I spoke to him, he looked and the ground and said, "Thanks" -- then he cut me off professionally, never to speak to me again. He broke up with this particular student shortly after my confrontation and used my name *while he was still inside of her* in a post-coital "this isn't working out" move. He would go on to sleep with several other students while I was in school (and after). This behavior established a value system that confused the metrics for "good work," created competition between women that had nothing to do with the program or our education, and normalized predatory behavior. Of course he has been promoted several times and never held accountable even though his antics are widely known. 2011: My advisor commented on my breasts in a meeting about my thesis. This was part of a comment he was making about why he didn't understand that the professor who slept with students was seeing/interested in a friend/colleague of mine who, according to my advisor was less attractive than me "because [my] breasts [we]re so much larger than hers". This was completely unprompted, of course. 2011-2013 I started dating a man who was a year ahead of me in my grad program who serially harassed my friends by constantly crossing boundaries, not accepting no for an answer, and groping them (sometimes in front of me, sometimes not) while we were together. Of course this means that he harassed me, too. We were together for about six months when he moved to the east coast to attend a PhD program from which he was expelled for groping a woman's genitals at an off campus party. Because they were both in the same PhD program, she was able to levy charges. The University suspended him, and after the term was up they took away his funding, but did not require him to leave the program. He quit when the money ran out. During this time of crisis, he turned to me to perform the emotional labor of supporting him without revealing all of the details of what had gone down. After a couple of years, he moved back to where I lived and began adjuncting at the institution where we met. Not only did the faculty support him during his suspension (he reached out to the professor who slept with students to ask for advice), but they hired him back to work in their department knowing fell well of his transgressions, the charges filed, and his 'fall from grace' in the PhD program he moved across the country to attend. | What does this question mean? I was single and coupled throughout my program -- incidents occurred throughout my three years in that grad program. I was a student. | Tenured faculty, other graduate student | R2 | English Literature | None. | None. Even after telling other professors (male and female). One of these men became Dean. | lack of support when applying to other grad programs, social and scholarly isolation | It's been delayed. When I arrived at the second grad program I attended, I asked people candidly if this was a place where teachers slept with their students, which revealed how normalized the behavior had become. I spent an entire therapy session talking about these professors as recently as two weeks ago. I am easily triggered, and do not trust men. | Isolation, lack of trust, humiliation, shame, depression | I really don't understand the questions about status -- could you clarify? | Male | ||
728 | 12/4/2017 18:23:53 | -older male colleague making a point to single me out as a young woman on faculty recruiting tour, not comfortable with me “driving on my own in the late afternoon or early evening.” —older male colleague mimicking the sound of my high heels in a “humorous” way. | Assistant Professor, 2nd year | Full Professor, 41st year | R2 | Texas State University | Music | Never reported | None, I chose to ignore both instances as they weren’t technically harassment. | I am constantly made to feel like I am not welcome in my department, both because of my age but also because of my gender. I am waiting for this older male colleague to retire. | I have been actively seeking other employment. | I have been lucky and fortunate in not experiencing any real sexual harassment in my workplace. I am a victim of sexual abuse, so I have always been protective of my personal space and highly aware of any situations that could put me in danger. I do believe this overt misogyny is impacting my well-being and does have an impact on my career, but I recognize that it is nothing compared to what some have experienced from their workplace. | Male | ||
729 | 12/4/2017 18:28:44 | When I was a newly hired assistant professor, my department chair would routinely come into my office, tell me how frustrated he was in his marriage, describe incidents in which women had supposedly hit on him, and inquire into the health of my current relationship and sex life. | Assistant professor | Department chair | Other R1 | Wayne State University | English | Male | |||||||
730 | 12/4/2017 18:28:56 | Sexism worst when pregnant. Most appalling was when male colleague whom I had just met hugged me extremely tightly IN A CLOSED ELEVATOR. I was frozen with fear. Also during my national association’s conference my very senior, male panel chair introduced me as “being busy on a new project - making babies” - the male audience twittered - this after I had put the panel together and explicitly sent detailed bio info. Also various comments from university colleagues during Dept. meetings about being “ready to pop” etc. Oh and this gem - former PhD supervisor called me a “producer of babies” and said mothers couldn’t be scholars. No harassment whatsoever at any time from students or female colleagues - always senior male men. Remember: harassment exists to police the boundaries of the profession. Always be vigilant. | Assistant and Associate Professor | Conference colleagues, senior scholars, university colleagues | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | History | Nothing | Made me look foolish on more than one occasion- portrayed me as object of gaze and implication always was that I did not belong. Personal impact: fear, awareness, always wary, and now, ready to fight | Mourn the loss of my supervisor- have never spoken since; fear, betrayal, lack of trust; extreme disappointment that I love being a scholar to the depths of my being but gatekeepers exist to keep women and especially mothers out | I have fortunately been determined to keep fighting | #metoo #ibelieveher; don’t give up; we’ve got your back; never stop fighting; and yes, this is a fight. | Male | |||
731 | 12/4/2017 18:38:17 | Post doc advisor... [redacted because contributor named names, contra policy of survey] | Post doc, then adjunct lecturer | Supervisor, PI | Other R1 | Covered Up | None, besides a "firm talking-to", on audio evidence admitting. | Horrible. | Bad | Debilitating. | Male | ||||
732 | 12/4/2017 19:00:02 | A grad student (from another institution) that I was collaborating with denied me access to a database (a shared work product) because I wouldn't date him. I was in a long term relationship at the time. He demanded to be an advisor on my Master's thesis. Faculty from both institutions got involved. I was given a new, different dataset to work with and ended up delaying graduation for about 18 months as I reworked my thesis topic and did the analyses with the new dataset. | Master's student | Colleague, but at a different institution | Regional Teaching College | Anthropology/archaeology | My advisor hooked me up with another collaborator with a similar dataset. My harasser still works in the field. Many of my friends don't know all the details of what happened. | None? He still works in the field and is well known/liked by many of my friends. | My delayed graduation caused my doctoral advisor to consider me a "risk". She said she almost didn't admit me as an advise. She did, though, and I had a very successful early career. The biggest impact has to do with my participation in regional scholarship. I no longer go to my regional meetings (state level) because my harasser is very active there and still had many friend's. To be a regionalist who doesn't participate in one's main regional society has made things difficult and if I were in a TT position, I'd be very worried. I'm in a great NTT position and have been able to successfully change gears. I shouldn't have had to though. | Because my harasser still has many friends in common with me, I do see him on social media. It is unpleasant, but not much beyond that | I mentioned above. I study California prehistory and haven't been active in the main regional society for many years because of him. I see re-entry into that job market as more difficult now, but I'm mostly happy where I am. I am most saddened by those friends who did know all or part of the story who maintained friendships with him. | Male | |||
733 | 12/4/2017 19:00:32 | ||||||||||||||
734 | 12/4/2017 19:03:02 | A male colleague wrote me a note in which he suggested we have sex. | full time-fixed term | tenure track | Regional Teaching College | English | I showed the note to my chair. He thought it was funny. | None | I changed my office hours in order to avoid my colleague. | I felt stupid and small. | None | Male | |||
735 | 12/4/2017 19:05:26 | A telescope tech looked through the bedroom windows at night to watch us change. He also took at least one picture of a friend while she was naked. He was consistelently talking about sex and its previous relationships. He watched soft porn on the TV while we were observing. | MSC student then phd student | Technician | Other R1 | Astrophysics | They pushed him to retire | None | Stressed for a while. Outraged. | Unsure | Male | ||||
736 | 12/4/2017 19:06:38 | date rape | grad student | classmate | Other R1 | women studies | none | none | trauma | depression and anxiety | cautionary tale to not trust those that say they are being friends | Male | |||
737 | 12/4/2017 19:09:29 | An older male colleague kissed me on the mouth as I was leaving the campus dinner celebration for the publication of his memoir. | Full Professor | Full Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Princeton | Religious Studies | Not reported | None | Male | |||||
738 | 12/4/2017 19:09:32 | I had asked a question of our development director in a faculty meeting, who then went to her boss and said I yelled at her. My boss stopped into my office within 48 hours and stated that I was unprofessional and the he and his boss wanted to meet with me with the HR person. He was very elusive when I asked exactly what the intent of the meeting was an if their interpretation of the situation would go on my record. At the meeting, my boss, my bosses' boss (but no HR person) met. I was first asked for my interpretation of the event, but the subsequent 20 minutes were them both trying to goad me into stating that I was angry. I wasn't angry when I asked the question, which I restated 6+ times. I was then told that I had a history of speaking unprofessionally (even though this was the first time it was noted by a superior) and that I must learn to speak politely. The next 20 minutes were then me listening to them discuss their children, which included a statement that I wouldn't be affected by my child going to college since I worked. There were also elusions to my parenting. I just smiled throughout it. At the end, I was told I had to apologize to the development director who said it was no big deal. | Tenured full professor | Bosses' boss | Other R1 | Health sciences | Didn't report | None | relocated | self-blame. was afraid for most of my career there to ask questions | relocated | Male | |||
739 | 12/4/2017 19:11:18 | I was sexually harassed and assaulted while working I. My dissertation by my advisor. | "all but dissertation" | Former chair of the Philosophy dept. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Philosophy | Found him guilty, but I was told they wouldn't "accommodate" me and had to leave. I can't get LoR now from the school. | He was told not to be alone with female students for a semester | 12 years later, I am still ABD. | PTSD, overall totally negative. Plagues with far more self doubt. | I spent a good part of my life working toward my PhD and I've financially and emotionally suffered. The nightmare never goes away. | There where witnesses who corroborated my story; my assailant admitted everything. I reported this to my state's commission on human rights, which also found my rights had been violated. Statutes of limitations are far too short when it comes to these crimes. | Male | ||
740 | 12/4/2017 19:12:16 | During a university event, two male coworkers commented about my breasts. | Assistant Professor | Associate | Other Type of School | I reported it to HR and was then presented with anonymous "performance" issues. Two months later I was fired. | Nothing | Had to leave the state for another job and although an attorney negotiated a settlement, I still have to report termination as reason for leaving. | I feel like I may never recover and will always worry about losing my job. I regret reporting the incident. | I chose a job that I felt I had to take and it's not a great fit. Not sure what to do now. | Male | ||||
741 | 12/4/2017 19:12:24 | In 2001 I was harassed by my professor in graduate school. He was a famous writer. I asked him to be my Thesis Advisor, and he said "I don't want to be your advisor, because I want to date you." | A graduate student | A tenured faculty member, very famous, Macarthur Genius award, many novels, did not really even need to teach | Regional Teaching College | English Creative Writing | None. Enabled it. | None. | Hard to say | Hard for a time, but I moved on. | Male | ||||
742 | 12/4/2017 19:16:03 | My former advisor had some very questionable boundaries with me particularly, though I learned over the course of two years that he had a track record of sleeping with students. He would take me out to dinner every weekend, and even took me on vacation, but when I would try to discuss what was happening, he would accuse me of being "crazy," or "overthinking things." He would often publicly humiliate me in reference to our relationship. This occurred while I was in graduate school. He had a loyal group of followers at the university, and so my confusion was often dismissed. Because there was a cult of personality in regard to this individual, his behavior was normalized within the department, and sadly, his other former students still believe that any adverse consequences that his targets may have is entirely their own fault. | Graduate student | Tenured faculty | Other R1 | English | None. The department chair is married to one of his former graduate students, and several other faculty members at this institution have done so as well. | None. He was actually promoted during the height of this in both the university and his wider field of inquiry. He also works in a field that specifically encourages the perception that he has a different sexual orientation than his own; I don't think that is entirely coincidental. | I almost quit graduate school, but thankfully I did not thanks to a new advisor who was actually supportive of me and my career without "wanting" anything in return. She (my new advisor) also does not like to elevate her own status by encouraging a cult of personality to reinforce her "genius" that would shield her from responsibility (unlike my previous advisor). I ended up switching fields entirely, and still live in fear of running into him at a conference. | 3 + years of therapy; my self-concept was almost totally destroyed, and I still don't trust myself to be able to evaluate the reality of a situation. I didn't have much confidence anyway, but this particular incident did not help to say the least. Therapy has helped me gain a lot of clarity in regard to this, but it is a work in progress. | As I said, I did switch fields to lower the likelihood of running into him or his friends. I also have a problem trusting people, and can't seem to form romantic attachments to anyone anymore. I'm working on this, but it takes time. | Male | |||
743 | 12/4/2017 19:17:41 | Sexist comments | PhD students | Laboratory director | Other R1 | Physics | None | None | Change field. Did not feel I should stay in the field | Unsure | I changed field | Male | |||
744 | 12/4/2017 19:25:42 | I eventually had the experience of feeling that at least 3 male faculty on my campus, 2 of whom were in my department, pursued friendships with me outside of classes and formal campus events in several instances, and 2 with the goal of establishing consensual romantic dialogues. After I went to lunch with the 3rd, which was a bit too long for my comfort (an intellectual dialogue that lasted 5 hours) I felt uncomfortable when he left me several phone messages eager to get together again, distanced myself from him, removed him from my dissertation committee, and never had anything else to do with him for my remaining years in the program. He seemed to get the message. In that case I cannot be sure whether he was trying to cross the line but took no chances. One, I would say, played on my professional vulnerability and isolation and attempted to cultivate the proverbial "school girl crush." | I was still a student in 2 instances and an assistant professor in the third, in a situation where one of my former professors, a couple years after my graduation, made moves on me and attempted to turn a mentoring relationship into a romantic one. | All of them were university professors at the time and I was a student. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Humanities or literature; in one case the professor was a historian. I think that I began to connect to him and regard him as a friend because he listened to me, and took time to mentor me in ways that my woman mentor did not, who was obviously more invested in her male student. | Never reported | Never reported | There's nothing that I am aware of. Harassment may be too strong a word to describe my experiences. I always perceived that isolation among some male faculty, and being socially dysfunctional, leads them to attempt pursuit of some young academic women, particularly in the cases of those who are single. | Cynicism about friendship and relationships; profound distrust of men. I have the impression that some academic men are uninterested in mentoring and engaging with women to whom they lack accessibility, do not find to be attractive, or are unable to date and build personal or intimate relationships. This predatory mentality has to change. | I am much more guarded and distant. I do not trust most men in academia for ways in which some attempt to manipulate young women | Male | |||
745 | 12/4/2017 19:26:19 | During a graduate conference, a full professor who worked in another department on campus, but was affliated with the English Department smacked the buttox of a assistant professor and groped a female graduate student. | PhD student, ABD | He brought money into the department. The year I ran the conference we tried to make changes, but we were blocked by the graduate director of the department of English because of his influence. | R2 | Ball State University | English | Told by her dissertation chair to drop it. | None. | None. | Guilt. | out of academia | Male | ||
746 | 12/4/2017 19:33:18 | I was attending a week-long academic event I had helped organize that was held in conjunction with an incredibly large national event in 2016. We invited Lester Spense to be our keynote speaker for this event, and I was incredibly excited to talk to him about his work since I respect it so much. The first day I met him, I was excitedly talking about a new book that had just come out, and how it intersected with his work and my own when he interrupted me and asked "Do you have a partner that helps you with this?" I was confused and hurt, and responded "um, absolutely not. I do all of my own work." He replied "I'm trying to ask if you're single or not, that's all." I didn't know what to do since I was shocked for several reasons: one being that he is very public about his marriage and his children, and two, because I was caught off guard. This was the first of many incidents that week with him. I kept trying to keep my other male-identified friends around me, but they also did not understand what the big deal was. I told the group at one point "Lester Spense keeps trying to sleep with me," and my "friend" said "awesome, you should do it!" I was heartbroken, because once again, they didn't understand what it's like to never be asked about your work, but instead treated like someone who is just there to have sex with. On the last night of the event, LS text messaged me on my phone (this is how I found out one of my male friends gave him my number), showed up at the bar we were at, bought me a drink (which I did not drink), and told his ride to go on home without him because I would take him to where he was staying. He lied to me and told me he was getting divorced. I told my friends I didn't want him in my car, and the other event organizer said "god dammit just take him to xxx's house." So, that man's friend rode in the front seat of my car while Lester Spense literally pouted in my backseat because it was finally clear to him that I would not be sleeping with him. He continued to text me for two weeks after this event. | PhD student | Fairly famous tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | He works at Johns Hopkins, but it was an event at another university | English | None | Absolutely none | None for now; I worry about running into him at conferences in my field | It actually helped me gain understanding and confidence talking it out through therapy. It was a very rough week though. | Now I don't blame myself when things like this happen. | Male | ||
747 | 12/4/2017 19:35:30 | This is just the worst of several harassers during that degree: From 1999 to 2002 a classmate slowly morphed into a cyber-stalker. Some of the lowlights included: 1) discovering that he had programmed a tracking app that checked every 5 minutes whether I was logged in, and in what room, which explained why he always seemed to show up wanting attention as soon as I arrived at work, 2) the time he insisted that I really meant yes even though I was repeatedly shouting no, because some guy had once told him that erect nipples indicate arousal (it was a hot Saturday afternoon, and I'd briefly gone into the air-conditioned office to grab something, while wearing a tank top), so he wouldn't stop hugging me, 3) the other time he wouldn't stop hugging me and I had to pour my drink down his back to get him to back off, 4) the time he physically blocked me from leaving his apartment, insisting I had to sleep there, then after I tricked him into complacency by pretending to give in, and made a run for the door, he threatened to throw himself over the banister of the very steep staircase if I didn't stop (I did finally convince him to let me leave), and finally, 5) after I cut off all contact, stopped answering my office phone, and told others in my lab not to let him in, he hacked into my email so that he received a copy of all of my incoming mail for 2 months, then unsatisfied with only getting incoming mail not outgoing mail, tried to hack further into the system and finally got caught by the sys admins. | grad student | grad student in same department | Other R1 | Computer Science | Uni lawyers got involved, and he was suspended for 6 months, but I had to claim that I was afraid of him in order for them to do it. | His advisor was informed, but the record of it was only going to be on his transcript temporarily. So probably none. I don't know. Needless to say, I didn't keep in touch. I think he was forced to do some counseling too. | Didn't get much research done for 8-10 months. Left the field immediately after finishing my Masters. | Spent most of the final year of my degree depressed and drinking to get to sleep. My next few relationships were really dysfunctional, because I had developed trust and self-confidence issues. 15 years later I get tense when I'm near the building where our offices were (and I now teach at that university). | I learned that the only good response to unwanted attention is no response at all, because even a clear rejection is taken as positive reinforcement. The experience made me savvy enough to save me from being a victim of the serial sexual harassers in my next graduate department. Dealing with the relatively less intense harassment in academic philosophy was a cakewalk after that horror show. | Male | |||
748 | 12/4/2017 19:37:57 | Sexual harassment and stalking began in 2010 and continues to this day. | Grad student went it began; now untenured academic. | Senior scholar in my field. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Englidh (20th-century Poetics) | n/a (we were/are not at same institution) | n/a | Has discouraged me from attending conferences and poetics events where I am likely to run into him. Has discouraged me from forming professional connections with his colleagues and friends. | Has led to feelings of fear, shame, resentment, isolation. I know no matter what I do to block contact, he will find a way to harass me. I trust only a few friends to share this with given the deep and toxic misogyny of the academy and our field. | Male | ||||
749 | 12/4/2017 19:44:53 | there were low level sexual comments, offhanded, that seemed calculated to make me uncomfortable. A lot of propositions that were almost definitely intended as jokes, but that I got the feeling were also a way of fishing for actual sex. Over the next two years, there was a constant level of this behavior, and several independent instances of surreptitious groping, during group pictures, at parties, etc. | grad student | grad student, older | Other R1 | New York University | Music | None, not reported | none | little | occasional moments of being triggered by memories, that sneak up on me. It sometimes keeps me from being able to focus or work for about a day when that happens. | unclear | Female | ||
750 | 12/4/2017 19:47:11 | In the context of some administrative changes, things were messy and I was new to working with the group, and my boss said, "this would never happen if women weren't in charge." Standing in my office doorway while I was seated, uninvited and unplanned stop by my office, rolled his eyes. | New hire/faculty | My boss, department head | Other Type of School | medicine | not pursued | n/a | not sure, I still work there | ongoing paranoia and tiptoeing around my boss, years later | Male | ||||
751 | 12/4/2017 19:50:26 | My friend was propositioned/harassed by our professor when we were in the same cohort in graduate school. | Grad student. | A tenured prof in our department. | Other R1 | UCSC | Sociology | Grad students were interviewed as a response to my friend's complaint. | None that I am aware of. He kept teaching us, and undergrads. | Little personally, but it was stressful for my cohort member. | It was anxiety producing for her. | She and I finished our phds eventually. She even has a tenured position (tho not I). She had her head on right. She complained, and I think that helped her feel empowered to a certain degree. E.g., she wasn't afraid of that pos. He really was creepy! And there were rumors about him propositioning other students -- both grad and undergrad. He should not have been teaching, upon reflection, imo. | Since it was not my experience I decline to divulge more. However, I will share this link. Thank you for conducting this project. I am surprised I was never sexually harassed or assaulted in academia, since my younger years were absolutely rife with such destructive experiences. Maybe by the time I made it to academia, my whole being shouted do NOT fuck with me. | Male | |
752 | 12/4/2017 19:50:51 | as a first year student, I was flirted with by a senior professor though other students told me I wasn't "his type" Had a professor inappropriately ogle me as I bent over and make a suggestive comment. This same professor commonly followed me to my office, commented on my clothing and my appearance. Been given an unwanted "should massage" in my office by a male professor. Another student in the department was kissed by a senior faculty member. | graduate student | professor | Other R1 | History | made the chair re-read the sexual harassment policy | none | left program | PTSD/anxiety | Male | ||||
753 | 12/4/2017 19:54:00 | Someone (presumably one of the male grad students in the program with access to my office) papered my bookshelves around my desk with porn images. | Third year Ph. D. student | Unsure. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Berkeley | Paleontology | I didn't report it. | Unknown. | It pissed me off and made me determined to succeed. | I was pretty upset for a few weeks. | See above. | There were other incidents, including one with a male faculty member making unwanted comments on my body in front of male grad students at a party. In confronted him privately. This was in the early 90s. | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | |
754 | 12/4/2017 20:02:23 | My advisor loudly claims to be a supporter of women and minorities, and is married to a woman of color. But for me (a woman) he mostly alternated between abusive and indifferent. When he was on a bender, he'd show up, demand attention and talk a mile a minute. Then he'd disappear for weeks or months on end and refuse to look at drafts or submit letters. In private he'd tell me my work was terrible and go on and on about his own work instead, but when other people were watching, he'd appear supportive and helpful. This all took a toll on my mental health, and it's taken me years to recover from what I now see is abusive and gaslighting behavior. | Graduate student | Tenured Full Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Rutgers | Philosophy | None | None; he recently moved to a fancy Ivy League post | Male | |||||
755 | 12/4/2017 20:10:45 | September 2017, November 2017 | 1st year PhD student | Older male students | Other R1 | Classics | I did not report harassment, but last year one of the same men was reported and he was found not at fault by claiming it wasn't his fault for not knowing how to talk to women. | Maybe he will get a reputation among women for not being someone to work with, but I doubt this will follow him onto the job market. | In our seminar together, I make sure I stay with another female student at all times so he can't talk to me. I try not to be in the office alone with him which sometimes means not being in my office. I tend to avoid department social events where there is alcohol (even though they can be fun and can be great for networking) because he makes the remarks when he's been drinking. | It's gotten to the point where I spent an entire therapy session talking about one incident and my therapist and I had to make a safety plan in case things escalate. | It reinforces the idea that I'm getting paid too little to work too hard to get interrupted and intimidated by men all day. Sometimes I think I'd feel more empowered as a high school teacher, so I might not go all the way to the PhD. | I think men especially in fields like Classics get away with more because they can act like the incidents were just the result of their social awkwardness. Predatory behavior is easy to hide behind perceived nerdiness because dorky guys seem harmless until they're not. But when they are called out, they can sink into an "I didn't know any better" excuse. | Male | ||
756 | 12/4/2017 20:13:19 | Talked to me about sex | Grad student | Full professsor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | None | Male | |||||||
757 | 12/4/2017 20:14:38 | Solicited sex | Grad student | Tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Shook confidence | Wondered about longevity of career | Male | |||||||
758 | 12/4/2017 20:15:24 | Sent inappropriate photos | Grad student | Full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | Male | ||||||||
759 | 12/4/2017 20:15:30 | Spring 2016 | Applying to grad schools | Tenured professor, on admissions committee | Other R1 | UT Austin | Classics | not reported | none | adding to the accumulating number of reasons I want to drop out | Hard to quantify, but definitely there | Another reason I want to drop out of PhD program | Male | ||
760 | 12/4/2017 20:17:18 | Throughout my masters | Masters student | "mentor," tenured faculty | Other R1 | UT Austin | Classics | not reported | People know he's creepy and department has distanced themselves some. | Avoiding classes with this professor even though he's in my field | I see a counselor I can't afford to talk about this kind of stuff | Just another reason I don't want to end up in this field even though it's what I work towards every day | Male | ||
761 | 12/4/2017 20:18:16 | I witnessed my Grad Advisor flirting and touching a TA from his class. It was at a gathering of a few TAs and He at his house. He and she were drinking and smoking pot--so a bit loaded. It appeared consensual, or even perhaps that she was initiating. But he was not stopping her. I was sober. I feel confident that he would not have put the brakes on sexual activity as long as she was initiating. I also feel that if I had initiated in that moment, he would have invited it. I felt very uncomfortable. The other women graduate students in the space were not participating in the flirting and touching. | Grad student | Tenured Prof, and my Grad Advisor | Other R1 | Siciology | None | None | This incident made our relationship awkward. But he became harsh later due to pronounced theoretical/methodological differences. l am uncertain whether the incident played a role. He made finishing my PhD very stressful and difficult. | The whole relationship became abusive and awful. But I the part this incident played in that was a relatively small part of it. I didnt think about it at the time, but i think i lost respect in him due to the incident, and much more so due to his harshness with me pertaining to my ideas. | Again, the relationship was toxic for me but its hard to pull the effects of this one incident apart from the larger mess of toxicity. I cut off all contact with him after graduating, so no mentoring or letters, and I have been adjuncting since. I barely survived grad school. | Male | |||
762 | 12/4/2017 20:18:50 | Professor showed images of female academics in class and critiqued their physical appearance. November 2017. | undergrad | tenured professor | Other Type of School | Art History | Not yet reported | not yet reported | we'll see... | Reached out for support from feminist advocate | we'll see | Male | |||
763 | 12/4/2017 20:21:37 | Established academic in my field expressed interest in my work during a national conference. Went out to eat with him and a group of others (mixed genders and career-stage). Things were fine. Later, at the hotel bar he asks me to sleep with him, goes into explicit detail about what he'd like to do to me. I said no. He proceeded to grab me to him and deliver an open-mouthed kiss. To this day I have no idea who witnessed this (it was a crowded place!) or what they thought. | Junior Faculty - Assistant Professor | Tenured Professor at an R1 Institution | Other R1 | English | N/A | None | Heebie-Jeebies and a desire to NEVER see this person again. | Nerves that night, now extra careful when meeting new people | None | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||
764 | 12/4/2017 20:21:55 | Whenever he had a few drinks at a department/University/conference event, my advisor would hug me much closer/tighter than usual (and hugs were very infrequent, one of the few other examples of a hugging occasion was when my mother was diagnosed with cancer). On a few of these occasions, his hands would move down my back and onto my ass. He is a very tall man and I'm of average height. For his hands to end up there just cannot be by accident. | Ph.D. student and Ph.D. candidate | Ph.D. advisor | Other R1 | Religious Studies | Male | ||||||||
765 | 12/4/2017 20:23:09 | When I expressed other feminist sentiments at a department social function, he asked, publicly and loudly at a bar and in front of fellow students, if I had been raped and then said it was a fair question and he assumed I was since I was so sensitive about thees issues. | PhD student | more senior student | Other R1 | UT Austin | Classics | Not reported | Some social repercussions in my cohort | None immediately | I've had to talk to my counselor about it a lot because it makes me feel like if I care about women's studies, people will make assumptions that I'm just a crazy victim | I don't know if I can stay in this field if this keeps happening. | Male | ||
766 | 12/4/2017 20:25:49 | Wore a half-apron on Halloween (lazy maid costume) over a knee-length black dress with sleeves down past my elbows and a collar that buttoned up all the way to my neck. Former department head walks in while I'm working the department front desk, asks "So are you a regular maid or a dirty maid?" Asks me to twirl around so he can see my dress a little better. On a separate occasion, had me look up pictures of Kate Moss in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition while I was on the clock. | Undergraduate, student worker | Tenured professor, former department chair | Small Liberal Arts College | English | I didn't report it. Thankfully, the other professors who were around when this happened were horrified and assured me that I would have their support if I pursued action, but I didn't want for people who didn't know the situation to get to know me as 'the person who got Dr. X in trouble' | Male | |||||||
767 | 12/4/2017 20:26:21 | I've been immensely fortunate. I've never been harassed by colleagues at work. I was in a department that had an unusually high proportion of women for my first job, and a civil department for my second. I've had male students resist my authority, but that's not quite the same as harassment (I think). | Small Liberal Arts College | Philosophy | I've had male students be snarky and obnoxious. Nothing from colleagues, fortunately. | ||||||||||
768 | 12/4/2017 20:26:45 | My advisor became attracted to me, and started staring at me in a sexual way, and talking a lot about me at home (something which I know because the wife literally stopped by my office and said: "my husband talks a lot about you"). He also made numerous comments about my attire and appearance, and made one bodily suggestive gesture (a hip thrust) when I was in his office. The wife became threatened, literally stepped on my foot, and stormed into an office when I had a meeting with my advisor about a grant application. then my advisor did stop staring at me, but he also turned quite hostile. This affected my progress as the hostile relationship with my chair made me demotivated. | graduate student | Professor (and his wife) | Other R1 | UCSD | I was discouraged from filing a complaint. | none | my graduation was delayed, I considered dropping out | this undermined my mental health and I had to seek counseling | This may affect my choice to pursue a career in academia | In my personal experience the discourse on sexual harassment is a farce. In reality students are absolutely powerless, and have to choose between putting up with the behavior or making a career choice or change research topics. I did make an informal report about this, and was told not to report this.Moreover, one professor in my department is a serial harasser (let's call him professor X), so I was told that the behavior of my advisor surely was not as bad as that of professor X, as if this should invalidate my experience, or validate my advisor's abusive conduct. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
769 | 12/4/2017 20:45:20 | Over the course of five years, my main advising professor exhibited manipulative and isolating behaviors and possessiveness. He made frequent and unsolicited comments about my appearance. He engaged in unlimited gossip about his colleagues both in our shared institution and beyond, as well as gossiped to me about my own colleagues. He would compare me to his other students (my colleagues) so that I knew I was 'special' to him. He made professions of love to me and identified as my 'father figure.' He inquired into my romantic life and upbringing. He made professions of love to me and then when I attempted to hold him accountable to some of the behaviors that had crossed boundaries, he abdicated responsibility and asserted he had done nothing wrong but only loved me. This culminated in the academic year 2016-2017. | an undergraduate and then a master's student | faculty member and then main advisor | Other R1 | Oregon State University | History of Science | A confidential Title 9 Investigation that was invasive and at times icky. It concluded that the abusive faculty created a hostile environment; It is my understanding the faculty member was no longer permitted to advise female graduate students and had to have a monitor in his classroom. The counseling center I got help at gave me extended support. | None other than having to have a monitor in the classroom and adhere to an accountability program. | I mean, I still successfully graduated and got into an excellent Ph.D. program, but it was a lot harder than it would have been otherwise. I honestly don't know how I did it, and I contribute a lot to my family and female faculty who supported me through the investigation process. Additionally, in terms of material logistics, I had to be careful about where I was at on campus and when because i didn't want to run into him, and in most of my classes he was in his office only about 10 or 15 feet away. So being on campus was like navigating a battlefield. I had to get a new advisor. I've since moved on to as a Ph.D. in a new program in a new state and building new relationships with current advisors is fraught with fear and confusion, being around old white men in my current program and community is triggering (and they're unavoidable), and i have a difficult time engaging with males in general. So it has a continued impact on how well i can engage with community in academics. | The emergence of panic disorder symptoms. Medication. But symptoms are ongoing and in my ongoing counseling support I'm doing a lot of work around relationships as a site of trauma and trying to figure out managing new along with ongoing relationships in my life. I'm still dealing with a lot of anxiety around relationships. I think good benefit has come out of it in terms of discerning predatory behavior in males and being willing to advocate for myself. But I am still struggling with shame and a sense that I should have known better, that I was wrong, and that I build unhealthy relationships. | That remains to be seen. I hope I can discern abusive relationships with men in the future. I'm struggling to feel like I am free to be me in the new community I'm a part of and what that looks like. I'm struggling to focus on academic work and have confidence again in my capacities for discernment and being successful in relationships. | Thank you. Just--thank you. | Male | |
770 | 12/4/2017 20:54:12 | [Removed] | Adjunct lecturer | Assistant professor | Other R1 | political science | Student filed a complain and dept. was informed. Dept. stalled on responding and there was never an official meeting about it. Title IX office did follow up with the friend to interview them about the event. Basically, no response. | The Prof. was given a promotion; made director of the Public Policy center a short while later. He now has tenure. | I have to work with them / see them every day. The student had to switch programs and move to another state. | It is stressful to see this person, and to know our department did nothing. | I have experienced harassment in every job I've had. I haven't left the academy; its the only job I know how to do. I am completely disenchanted with it though, and feel sad that our more progressive profs just wanted the issue to go away. | Male | |||
771 | 12/4/2017 21:00:37 | In graduate school, I met with a faculty member in another program who was a potential committee member or outside advisor for my dissertation project. At our second meeting, he attempted to kiss me in his office -- or, rather, he tried to get me to kiss him. It was weird and awkward and very manipulative. | I was a Ph.D. student. | The perpetrator was an Assistant Professor, a potential advisor for my dissertation research. | Other R1 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | I didn't report it. | The context of this was odd, because the prof was someone who would have been a cultural advisor more than an advisor specific to my discipline. But I needed cultural advisement as well, and he was one of a very small handful of people at the institution at that time who could have fulfilled that role. | Male | ||||||
772 | 12/4/2017 21:00:39 | When I had just graduated from MIT in 2005-2006, I went to a conference in Washington DC (then called the Serious Games Summit). It was one of my first conferences in a field I am still a part of. The entire time I was there a man at the conference stalked me and continued to proposition me. I had to escape him a few times, such as by jumping into taxis to avoid him. He would sit behind me at any session I attended and continue to harass me, making my time at the conference extremely uncomfortable. | I had just graduated as a masters student | He was a fellow conference attendee | Other Research Agency | It was a conference: the serious games summit | Games/Media | None, I told no one | None, I told no one | Makes me not want to attend conferences and not want to connect with people, particularly men, which is difficult because 90% of these conferences are men. Now I bring my kids and will purposely bring my very young daughter to any social events to ward off any type of behavior. | Made me very anxious about attending conferences and networking in my industry / field in general. | I ended up becoming a professor. I am now tenured. But I am at a smaller school, not R1 because I stopped networking and trying to make those connections because of this type of behavior. Almost every conference I have attended has had some form of this type of harassment, whether it is direct proposition, men trying to get me to go to drinks with them, or just now that I'm older and married, gender exclusion and pretending I am invisible and not even there. | Male | ||
773 | 12/4/2017 21:17:49 | 2015 | undergraduate | professor | Other R1 | UC Berkeley | English | Unknown | As a transfer undergraduate I was informed by female graduate students about a professor who had raped and sexually assaulted multiple women. I was told never to take a class with him and that no action could be taken against him. | Male | |||||
774 | 12/4/2017 21:21:40 | She touched me in the lab. | I was an intern | She is a professor then and now | Small Liberal Arts College | Cant say | Liberal Arts | Told me I should enjoy her company | None | I will never be the same | Not good | Not good | Female | ||
775 | 12/4/2017 21:23:50 | Between 2015-2016 I attended a program known for its conservative-right wing leaning policy research and support. There, I was subjected to all kinds of harassment, including degrading comments related to my past (I was internationally trafficked in the sex industry as a teenager), labeled a whore, subjected to gender based discrimination and other forms of violence. One of my professors, a PI on a study my classmates and I worked on as part of our class assignments, failed to end a particularly problematic interview with an individual who had been released from prison, where he was sentenced to serve time for violent crimes, notably for domestic and gender based violence. The PI allowed the individual in question to engage in sexual harassment by making crude comments on my appearance, on my ethnicity, right after talking about his sexual exploits with few different women. The PI did not intervene even when the individual propositioned me for sex, and after the interview she blamed me for the outcome, and minimized the situation. | Graduate student | Professors, Dean | Other R1 | School of Criminal Justice Newark, Rutgers University | Criminal Justuce | More harassment | None | Extreme | PTSD | I had to change schools. I got sick. I almost quit. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
776 | 12/4/2017 21:24:37 | unwanted advances, cornering, kissing, groping | ass't prof / research postdoc | full professor / postdoc sponsor | Other Type of School | Univ of Erlangen | historical theology | none (I did not report) | none, although I later heard he had to take sensitivity training after others complained | prevented me from finishing tenure book | work paralysis; depression; since the Weinstein thing, flashbacks | left the academy | Male | ||
777 | 12/4/2017 21:37:38 | A group of male students wrote very sexually explicit course evaluations about me (specially about my body parts). There were about 4-5 of them in the same class that were on the same theme so it was likely a coordinated effort by the students. I told the senior people at the university what happened but I didn't make a formal report (I did not know that was a possibility). A dean said, "if she dresses like that, what does she expect" to a group of my colleagues, who reported it back to me. (not that it is relevant AT ALL but I dress veeeeery conservatively) | first year TT professor (I am a cis woman) | students and a dean | Small Liberal Arts College | political science | see above | none | Not sure. | I felt so ashamed. The comments were about my body so I felt very physically vulnerable and exposed in the classroom for several years. | I do not trust this senior administrator who has been promoted several times since. My colleagues and even some students have told me similar things she has said about students (including some very racist things). I have to send students to see her to get assistance on various matters and I worry a lot. | It didn't occur to me for years I could discuss this (and other) forms of harassment publicly because I just felt so ashamed. One year, I shared it with several students (studying to be educators) who had themselves faced harassment. I thought this small story could help to illustrate the scale and pattern of this phenemonon. Since then I have judiciously shared this experience (and others) when it seems like it will help others feel less vulnerable and alone. I think I'll keep doing that. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
778 | 12/4/2017 21:40:10 | Chair told me he could get me another year of grad funding funding if I was “close to him” | Grad student | Full professor and advisor | Other R1 | None in my case but another student made a complaint against him and he took a leave. | Lost position as chair, kept professorship | Left academia, never asked him for reference. | Male | ||||||
779 | 12/4/2017 21:40:21 | unwanted touching at a conference | graduate student | senior scholar | Other Research Agency | History | None | None | No longer wish to pursue academia | Limited | Significant | Male | |||
780 | 12/4/2017 21:59:37 | I have had many incidents, most of which are leaving me out of email, excluding me from departmental projects, or sending emails around about me which are slanderous to the department/school/executive group (more on this one below). I have also been denied access to departmental funds to take students on excavations (2000-present). Though there is one incident that I always report. I was called an 'hysterical feminist bitch' by a male colleague in 2003. He took credit for the development of a new MA, for which we were both designing, in front of a group of students. He said 'my MA that I am so hard at work on'. I said, that's 'we are doing it'. Just after the team taught class he screamed (I am not exaggerating) at me saying that I should never embarrass him in front of students. I responded that he should give credit to people for the work they are doing. His response was 'it's not important and you are behaving like an hysterical feminist bitch'. I turned my back on him, walked away, and I went to our university HR, but I was still on academic probation, and was told it's his word against mine, and there will be trouble for me, not him. Given my status as a young lecturer (Assistant Professor), I didn't have any support. Fortunately this person is in a different department from mine and that was the last day I ever spoke to him or taught with him. He continues to damage women in the University. Moreover, the MA he was so diligently developing never came to fruition after I turned my back on him. | Lecturer on probation (Assistant Professor). | Lecturer (we were on probation together). He's now a full professor. I am still the equivalent of an Associate Professor. | Other R1 | University in the UK | Humanities | It's his word against yours. There was nothing anyone could do. | Continue to encourage his behaviour, as I know other women who continue to have problems. | This one off event was an indication that women have no voice or protection at my university. This is further evinced by another colleague's actions that have been continuous since he joined the university in 2007. This colleague has gotten away with sending slanderous emails about colleagues (various genders, no one is safe) that are unfounded to the entire department, school and to members of the University executive group. There are yearly, if not monthly, complaints made to HR about his behaviour, but it was only when men started complaining that action is beginning to be taken, though even this is slow. | For the feminist bitch comment, it was a wake up call that there is no support, so I didn't let that 'get to me', my objective is to tell everyone I meet about it to warn them about the person and the university. I have been a victim of the email harassment I described in the previous section three times. The first time it happened I couldn't eat and lost ten pounds, I went to HR because I had proof in writing, but they did nothing. The second and third time, I didn't let it get to me, but went to HR both times, they did nothing and told me I was overreacting. I was overreacting to someone stating in an email to the entire school that I had no skills to contribute to archaeological excavation and didn't deserve departmental funds to take my students on excavations (I've had more digging experience then said person, who basically ruined his excavation just outside Rome and is banned from digging at that site, and have written books on the subject with reputable publishers: Cambridge, Brill). I have learnt to ignore these emails, but am perplexed why when he does this to men, they are not said to be overreacting. | I am trying to develop a career outside of academia. I love my research, I love my students, but I am sick and tired of the University's spineless reaction to these people, who get promoted much quicker than those who actually contribute to the place! I am also very tired of this kind of behaviour. | I am sending you a private email. I will loose my job if I name these people and the University. | Male | |
781 | 12/4/2017 22:00:55 | Pursued by male prof in another department while I was a grad student; he was initially charming and I dated him briefly; then he dumped me for an undergraduate student; then he went back to pursuing me aggressively, ignoring my rebuffs; and finally he physically assaulted me one night, together with his male friend (they pushed me to the ground and kicked me repeatedly in a secluded but public space) | New graduate student | Professor in another department; lived in same hall of residence | Other R1 | English | I was too scared (and frankly totally shocked, appalled, and bewildered) to tell anyone | None | I avoid socializing with male professors (who are now my colleagues). I believe this disadvantages me in general... the boy’s club... | I blamed myself. I tried to please men more. After a couple of other very bad experiences I became more enlightened. But I had no safe space, no opportunity, to talk about it at the time. That was hugely damaging. | Absolutely terrible. | Male | |||
782 | 12/4/2017 22:13:55 | First tenured job (in UK). Chair of department repeatedly bullied me, as well as other younger colleagues. We felt powerless... we didn’t know who to tell.... I heard he had made unwanted passes at other colleagues and I was just grateful he wasn’t sexually aggressive to me. Finally he encountered me alone in the small photocopying office, closed the door, pushed me against the machine, and whispered right in my face as he leered at me “you don’t like me very much, do you?” I somehow escaped, and shortly after that my colleagues asked the Dean to take action. So he had us report to a member of the executive. We met as a group then individually. We were encouraged to speak freely and told this was confidential, but that the university took the latter extremely seriously. Shortly after this process the chair was pronounced to vice principal. He now has a prestigious chair elsewhere. Lesson learnt: universities promote the problem away rather than deal with it. The experience was profoundly sickening and traumatic | Lecturer | Professor, chair of department | R2 | English | Promoted the harasser | Further promotion to another more prestigious university | I do not trust institutional processes to deal with bullies and harassers; I got another job in another part of the country | Devastating. There are long periods when I couldn’t stop crying. I was diagnosed with depression. I had chronic insomnia | I left the university as soon as I could — that was the sole focus of my academic life, to escape ( thank God that I could) | Male | |||
783 | 12/4/2017 22:14:15 | I was being "groomed" by my Professor. At first, office hours were very respectable. Then the door shut, then I went from sitting across the table to right next to him. Then our hands were overlapping on the mouse, and then one day, I got an inappropriate kiss that was too close to my lips for comfort. I spoke to other students in my class and they did not believe me since this Professor acted so distant in the classroom. To make a long story short, he was very upset when I professionally ended working with him, and then to make matters worst, his best friend wrote me a terrible letter of rec. and made my quals a living nightmare. In addition to this, another faculty member who knew him, and who I was trying to conduct research with, stopped writing back to me. To say the least, after these encounters, I felt paranoid and blacklisted. | Graduate Student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Social Science | They stated that they would only follow through with the complaint if my name was attached to it. I feared that if my name was attached to it, I would have a limited chance of graduating since I had already been blacklisted by this faculty member's friends on campus. | As a result of what took place, I was a year behind in my graduate school trajectory. How do you tell people that the reason you are behind is because of things that took place because of your gender/sexuality? I feel It simply cannot be done without looking as if you are the problem. When I give my graduate school year, I will seem lazy to some, like I wasn't productive because I chose to be... this is why I never judge the duration of people's academic journey, there maybe a story like my own. | zero. | Just thinking about this, hurts. I was already across the country, away from family and friends. I contemplated suicide because it felt like no one was in my corner. I spoke to other women on campus and received statements like, "but he has such a pretty wife!" and "he has a million dollar grant, whey would he do that???" | I evacuated from a toxi situation by getting ABD and leaving back home. I am happy with my choice. | Male | |||
784 | 12/4/2017 22:14:16 | In office hours with an historian with whom I was taking a graduate seminar, he asked about my background and my experiences conducting research in my country and region of origin. I expressed my concern about street harassment in that context. He then told me he could imagine what men there would say to me, and used my language to make reference to my skin color and attractiveness. | Ph.D. student | Assistant professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Male | |||||||||
785 | 12/4/2017 22:16:16 | Sexual advances from a gay professor as a doctoral student | student | Professor | R2 | music history | Made my exceedingly aware of the power disparity between professors and students | Hard to say. I think it led for a while to low self esteem | Probably kept me from pursuing any meaningful life partner. | Male | |||||
786 | 12/4/2017 22:34:24 | When I complained to my chair that I wanted to drive home earlier than after our final fall meeting, he said, drive half-way, check into a hotel, rent yourself a porno and kick back. Of course, the male colleague who was present denies hearing such a thing. | Asst prof | My boss | Other R1 | Kent State | Eng | He remains a dick | Male | ||||||
787 | 12/4/2017 22:56:07 | Colleague used sexual innuendo frequently in interpersonal contexts, meetings, and the classroom. When I interviewed he whispered to me “I just watched you being seduced” after the waitress at lunch convinced me to try their homemade dessert. Really gave me the creeps. Red flags went up and I talked to several friends and mentors before I accepted the offer. He also wrote bad horror fiction with mildly pornographic scenes that he asked female colleagues and students to read. His behavior was more troubling with 2 female colleagues than with me - asking specifically about their sex lives. One colleague complained to the Dean before she left the institution. I also heard students complained to the Dean about him on occasion. | Asst. professor | Colleague with full professor status | R2 | SUNY Plattsburgh | Communication Studies | He met with the Dean after a colleague complained. I don’t know what transpired in the meeting | None | He told people that he was my mentor but I didn’t want to be alone with him, didn’t consider him my mentor, and didn’t want to read his trashy novels (once he reached full professor he stopped doing scholarship and spent his time writing fiction ... understandable for creative writing profs but not someone in my field). | It caused stress particularly as I made the decision to accept the job offer and after I arrived to campus directly from my PhD program. | none | He definitely created an uncomfortable climate. Other senior faculty would laugh at his antics or say “ well, that’s just J.” I also heard a male candidate (who wasn’t offered the job) complained yo the Dean because this person made an inappropriate joke about sex in a hot tub during the teaching presentation . The candidate said it threw him off and led to a poor performance . I was there when it happened. | Male | |
788 | 12/4/2017 23:06:25 | Hostile / sexist Work enviournment. Senior prof staring at my friend’s breasts constantly. “Put your balls in the vice” “pussy” etc etc | Doctoral student and grad teaching assistant | Senior faculty | Other R1 | I’d rather not say | Jazz Studies | None | None | Made me very cautious and aware of power imbalances. Made me very cynical. | Just more pissed off! | Hard to tell | The offending prof is now retierd and has dementia. He is a frail old man who does not remember anything nowadays. I think me reporting at this time would not help anyone, so I let it go and moved on. | Male | |
789 | 12/4/2017 23:10:03 | Lewd comments about my cleavage (not that it matters, but I was wearing a conservative flannel button-up) at the end of class | PhD student | The professor teaching aforementioned class. At that point, I was considering asking him to be on my committee | Other R1 | None | None | I never asked that particular professor to be on my committee. Bullet dodged! | Caused PTSD from previous incidents to flare up | Disillusionment with academia in general | Male | ||||
790 | 12/4/2017 23:42:51 | discrimination with a young mother .I did not got a position for having a baby | MA student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | Arts | For very long I though that my career would be over because I had a child | Female | ||||||
791 | 12/5/2017 0:21:56 | Girl pushed me, started kissing me pining me against wall. Started to take of my pants and grabbed my penis in a sexual way. | I don’t understand this question | Classmate, work college | Other Type of School | Business (at that time) | Never filed and claim | None (never said anything) | Enlightening | More cautious now | Less trusting | Female | |||
792 | 12/5/2017 1:17:06 | After a conference presentation, in which he commented that my dissertation should never have gotten past defence, the male chair asked me if I would submit a paper to his journal, while staring directly at my breasts. | New Ph.D. | He was the panel chair as well as the editor of a major journal in my field. He also held a tenure-track position in my field at an elite university. | R2 | History/Jewish Studies | none | none | I don't feel comfortable having anything to do with this sub-field anymore. | Feeling angry, sense of betrayal, disgust, lack of self-worth. | A contributing factor (among many) to my decision to have a breast reduction. | Thank you for bringing attention to such an important issue! | Male | ||
793 | 12/5/2017 1:25:18 | A tenured professor in the department regularly made sexual comments to female students, usually in the form of narrating his own sex life but often in the form of flirtation. Other female grad students dismissed my assertion that this was inappropriate, saying things like 'Oh, he just has issues with boundaries' or 'oh, that's just [Firstname]'. | Ph.D. student then candidate | Associate Professor, not my own teacher or mentor but the teacher or mentor of many of the women he said these things to | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | No reports or institutional responses that I am aware of | None that I am aware of | Negligible | Negligible except as one among many instances of lowlevel gaslighting | Distrust of even (especially) well-liked senior men, distrust of female colleagues | Male | |||
794 | 12/5/2017 1:40:24 | Perpetual sexual harrasser in a different department. Also racist / homophobic comments. His manager knew and witnessed many incidents but never did anything. Many employees aware / experienced. In my shame I never confronted him until a female coworker approached me in distress to try and deal with the latest event she had experienced. I dealt with in confidence to her satisfaction (I hope). | employee | co-worker | Other Research Agency | Marine science | None | None | I am considering leaving the company due to the lack of managerial action dealing with these sort of incidents | See above | See above | Male | |||
795 | 12/5/2017 1:41:56 | Rape | Student | Professor | Other R1 | Female | |||||||||
796 | 12/5/2017 1:59:28 | I was at a party as a freshman in college. A girl kept feeding me shots until I threw up, then took me to the dance floor where she reached her hand into my pants and grabbed my genitals. When I tried to push her away she twisted my testicles and asked what was wrong. I shoved her into another person and ran away. | single | near stranger | Small Liberal Arts College | undergrad | none | unknown. she had multiple cases opened against her at once (i did not report my incident). | none | none | none | Female | |||
797 | 12/5/2017 2:06:38 | False allegations of sexual harassment are sexual harassment. I was very surprised to be informed- in 1995, on a January Monday at 1:15 p.m.- that I was accused of two years of “ongoing and increasingly worsening sexual harassment” and that there was a request I be expelled from the school, this from five fellow female students at a small Canadian college. I was to attend a meeting the following morning at 9:15 in the “Executive Meeting Room,” according to the short handwritten note on the envelope I was provided, with eight pages enclosed, including four pages of sexual harassment allegations, signed by the women, and four pages of either college rules regarding sexual harassment and/or college procedure on dealing with such issues. The next morning, as I was seated alone in the hallway terminus, five fellow female students were led by me, by a sympathetic college staffer, who looked like a helpful aunt with a collection of flower girls before a wedding, as four of the women were dressed in white, toes to shoulders. The college staffer led them to an adjoining room to the large Board of Governors Chambers. I was led into chambers about five minutes later, by a college vice-president, who pointed a chair to me, his back to me as he walked, without pausing or breaking stride, in a gesture I thought at the time like a duck hunter would point orders to a hound. Again, the allegations comprised four typewritten pages signed by these women, all student journalists, one student editor, one advertising manager, and one friend- which was a shock to my then girlfriend. When I showed her the allegations her face went so white her freckles stood out. We locked eyes, trapped in the surreal nature of it all, in one concentrated moment. I had read the first page only by the time the hearing began. I thought the issue was so bizarre I would attend the meeting the following morning to find out what was going on. The reason why my girlfriend was shocked upon reading the allegations is that she met this friend, ***, the previous November, just two months prior. On that occasion *** came to the newspaper classroom office where I was working late, alone, about 7:00 p.m., my girlfriend seated beside me, waiting for me to finish typing out some project. We were journalism students, after all. *** asked if I was familiar with the trades wing of the college. I was. She said she had to cover a trades show and didn’t want to walk there by herself, and would I mind walking with her. I said sure. Students have the option of asking security to escort, but a friend does in a pinch. When I got to the newspaper office door, I turned to my girlfriend and suggested we all may as well go down. It was a bit of a hike, the long corridor in trades did look dimmer than during the day. We quickly discovered the proper door, and it was a full trade show inside, Snap-On Tools with a truck and tool display, Bear Instruments, others, a agriculture combine with a pexiglass side so viewers could see its workings, plus coffee and donuts. Once inside *** went her way and we went ours, to take a look. Just over one week prior to this meeting in the Board of Governors Chambers, *** came into the newspaper office, and exactly as before, my girlfriend was waiting for me to finish typing out a project and in exactly the same seats. This time *** was livid. The student editors, who chose which stories were printed, had met their 24-story quota for marks, as well as their lovers and close friends, but none of the other writers had, like herself. Without those published stories her final mark suffered. She invited me to a meeting where the writers were to confront the editors. I attended that meeting- by accident, as I had my first class in the room, and tired, at the end of the class with an hour free, I laid my head down on my desk to sleep when the room began filling up with writers and editors. *** sat on the floor. “I made it,” I called to her. “I was looking for you,” she said. The room was unusual in that the desks were against three walls, creating a speaking well in the middle of the classroom, an unusual seating arrangement. I spoke on behalf of the writers, earning the obvious wrath of one of the two senior editors, ***, who demanded to know why I was at the meeting, a rather odd question. That was just over a week prior to this meeting in the Board of Governors Chambers where *** sat beside ***, both of them dressed in white from shoulders to toes, demanding- this is not an understatement- my expulsion from the college, both citing, with three other students, a long history of sexual harassment. To say I was shocked is an understatement. Nothing came to mind. I could not fathom these women could tell an untruth. It was not a formulated thought of mine that they had lied. All I felt was this whole experience was surreal. The other three women were ***- I thought that was her first name for the longest time, like Mary Ann or Peggy Sue- but actually *** is a last name. *** and *** were the other two. I’m sure after nearly a quarter century their last names have been all changed with marriage. *** was the only one of the five women who was not dressed in white. “Nothing of a sexual nature has happened to me,” she said. She told the committee she was there to support her friends and that she was a witness to many of the sexual harassment episodes. Interestingly, well after the hearing was done, when I showed the allegations to a retired city police inspector- he had taken up private investigating- the first thing he did after reading was tap the page with the back of his hand- where ***’s name was- and said, “She’s the ringleader.” Even then, right at the time he said it, I didn’t understand. It took a moment to fathom what he, with his long years of police investigative experience, could see in a moment. The allegations read out ranged from *** wrote I had rubbed my head on her legs- this was, apparently, immediately after that meeting of writers vs. editors. *** wrote I had asked her about her and her boyfriend, which, she said, were questions that were not of my business and made her feel very uncomfortable- this was part of a brief conversation about November or December, we talked sporadically as we typed. *** wrote I had leered at her leg “accidentally” exposed from the knee down- I am not kidding here- and had also asked her out once repeatedly and she had to leave the room to end the requests- I had actually asked her what was happening in the Barn- the student bar on campus where liquor was served and musicians played- and did ask her if she wanted to go- and she, in turn, asked her teacher boyfriend, who answered from the hallway, just outside the door, until then hidden from view, and she said they would meet me there. I ended up working late and didn’t go. *** said I had leaned on her leg while talking to her and this put her in so much fear she was afraid to leave the student newspaper office until I was well gone for some minutes. I was on my heels for the entirety of the hearing. It was too much to absorb. I was entirely unprepared. It was a bit like a police officer asking if you’d come down to the station to answer questions to get something cleared up, and instead, being escorted into a courtroom where the judge is waiting, the jury is waiting, the Crown Prosecutor is waiting, the allegations are presented, and after a 15-minute break you are told to defend yourself. Nothing came to mind. I rambled helplessly. That I had not been their fellow student for a year and a half as alleged never came to mind. I had been their classmate for one semester and three weeks, as I had graduated with my own class the year before , in April, and came back as a third-year student. That never came to mind. That I had worked late in the newspaper office with my own classmates, most of them female, ***, my editor, at least 20 times, late and alone, no problems, ***, a teacher of 14 years experience, about five times, late and alone no problems, ***, a former beauty queen, I’m sure 30 times or more, late and alone in the newspaper office, no problems, ***, once ’til 5:00 a.m., late and alone, no problems, the list goes on, ***, ***, others, if not late and alone, we worked for hours each day week in week out in our two-year college until graduation. That never came to mind. One member of the sexual harassment committee, the registrar, asked if me if anyone had ever felt uncomfortable around me before. The committee’s student member asked me if I knew it was wrong, why did I do it. I wondered aloud why the issue was happening so quickly, I just learned about the issue the previous afternoon. “I AM THE CHAIRMAN!” the vice-president bellowed, and I shut up about that, I thought I’d be kicked out of the room. The women were not challenged by committee members on any item. Later I understood why. To challenge a victim on the truth of allegations is to revictimize them. That’s why I was challenged. But I was not prepared at all. I hadn’t yet even absorbed the impact of what was occurring. At one point *** said I had shown the allegations around the newspaper office- I had- and she wanted me “brought to issue” on that as by doing so I had disrupted their place of work and their safety. “We have to work there to do the work we have to do. He has disrupted it,” she said. At home, a day or days after the sexual harassment hearing, I read the allegations for the first time. I discovered, then, for the first time, they were in the form of a petition. I called out to my girlfriend, “Hey! This was a petition about me!” All these many years later it is hard to fathom the sexual harassment committee took ***’s complaint seriously, that I should be in trouble for showing a petition to students who worked in that newspaper office. I had shown about five or six female students while I sat in one spot. I really wanted to know what they thought of them. I was at a complete loss. So were they, it seemed. In the end I was found guilty, expelled from the college, and would only be allowed back with the permission of the college president, the two-vice-presidents, and the dean of student services. There was no appeal permitted. I did write the college and ask about their appeal provisions, later, on the advice of a lawyer, who grinned broadly when the answer came back that there was no appeal. With that meant we could proceed directly to Court of Queen’s Bench. To make a long story short, I won in court. I returned to college just shy of one year later, in January 1996. A female student journalist in the new second-year class asked me for an interview about what I’d gone through. She suggested we go into anther room for the interview. We walked into the very room where, almost exactly one year before, that writers vs. editors meeting had taken place. She likely would have known nothing about it. She would have been a first-year student then. The room looked exactly the same. The desks were in the exactly the same place, against three walls of the classroom, creating a speaking well in the middle of the room. It felt surreal. As she asked questions I ignored her, walking from desk to desk, putting my hands on the desks, incredulous. It was as if I walked into a time tunnel, suddenly transported back one year before the sexual harassment hearing, before the court process. It was as if I had been transported back in time to the last place where things made sense. I didn’t sue for money. I just wanted the decision of the college overturned so I could continue my education. I returned to the college and lasted one semester. Those looks of disdain I had from the communications staffer and that receptionist were rife in the college They were everywhere. I was untrusted and the talk of the college. I felt so uncomfortable I let go of my plans for two additional diplomas. I’ll leave it there. | I was a student in a community college. | Classmates. | Small Liberal Arts College | Lethbridge Community College. It's name has since changed to Lethbridge College. It was a community college for vocations and trades, not really a Liberal Arts College, but that's the closest description, above. | Print Journalism | As above. I should add one of the points I won the case on was that the college violated the Individual Rights Protection Act. After I won my case the college revised their sexual harassment policy. All mention of the Individual Rights Protection Act was removed from the new policy. | None. They were treated quite well, with every sympathy. After I was expelled one was quoted in the student newspaper, saying, “It will never end. I sacrificed a big part of myself.” So they played victim to the end of their time in college. And beyond, but I'm getting word count warnings, so I can't add much. Interestingly, our photography instructor dropped by, weeks after the hearing, months before the court date, and informed me *** had, the previous semester, gathered a number of female students together to give him negative teaching evaluations. So her assembling female students together to jeopardize my future at the college wasn't the first time she had done such a thing. It was the second time. | No idea. | Not entirely sure. I am very untrusting now, even all this time later, extraordinarily so, even of friends. I am still rather stubborn. I get very upset with obvious injustice. That may be a good outcome. On the downside I do have a lot of 'Why bother' moments. I first felt that after the hearing, deeply, for weeks. It was all so surreal that at times just getting off a chair and crossing a room seemed absurd. Why would anyone walk across a room? Why would you do anything? Why would you plan for anything? It was as if suddenly discovering birds never flew, they walked on sidewalks while carrying luggage, and people parked cars on their sides, trees never had leaves, the sky had always been green and grass purple, and people ate on rooftops burning money to keep their plates warm, and everyone acted as if that was normal, and only to me it was all making no sense. That is the best way to describe how surreal it was. That feeling hasn't completely left, as it still comes back from time to time and it's been almost 25 years. That's a considerable downside. It's energy-sapping. I should add my girlfriend at the time ended up in the hospital over this. It seemed information overload. She was in hospital a few days. The nurse had given her a glass of orange juice and my girlfriend, after the nurse left, wanted it watered down. It was too thick, she said. I kept watering it down and she kept tasting it, asking me to water it down. In the end it looked like water. She said it still tasted like syrup. That broke me. I nearly gave up fighting. That was a big 'why bother' moment. It was too much. Entirely too much. I'm not sure how I recovered from that moment to continue to fight. I nearly gave the whole thing up then. | I graduated in print journalism. I still write. I did write a book about this issue back then. A well-placed college staffer told me I would not win in court, that I was trying to push over an apple cart. So that's what I called the book, Pushing Over the Apple Cart. I split the book in three volumes and never did publish Book III. Book 1 is free. Kobo sells it as an ebook. This isn't a plug for the book, it's just more or less answering the question, above. I graduated in writing and I write. | Female | ||
798 | 12/5/2017 2:27:34 | a professor emeritus and president of the town and gown society that I am on the committee for regularly accosts female students on their way into meetings and initiates physical contact with them (hugging, kisses on the cheeks) that makes them uncomfortable, including me. has also made inappropriate comments about the romantic lives of female students and illegally accesses the university records to obtain contact information for students (male and female), including home addresses | student, junior committee member | professor emeritus, president of the society | Elite Institution/Ivy League | currently pursuing action, extent as yet undecided | significant, makes for very uncomfortable atmosphere during meetings | Male | |||||||
799 | 12/5/2017 3:45:10 | Drunken conference participant followed me around a bar, stared at me and put his hand on my butt several times. | Professor | Lower - he was a rep for a publisher | Japan Association of Language Teaching Conference | Applied Linguistics | President of JALT contacted me personally | Offender warned of consequences of reoffending | None | None | None | Male | |||
800 | 12/5/2017 4:00:53 | Long time ago now, about 1987, when I was working as am undergraduate research assistant in a lab. A postdoc escalated from making sexual comments to me, to rubbing his groin against me (pinned me to lab bench as he walked by), trapping me alone in small lab rooms, threatening me with a knife, and stalking me to my home. | undergraduate | postdoc | Other R1 | genetics at the time, neuroscience now | I reported to the lab PI (who was also Dept. Chair) who said I should learn to get used to it as a female in science. I think the PI must have talked to the postdoc because the harassment became more threatening soon after reporting. The lab PI also believed, after, that I was incompetent at my job. I also reported to a campus police officer who said no crime had been committed. | none | I dropped out of the lab and abandoned genetics as a focus. | I was 'jumpy' for years, carried a weapon, and it negatively impacted my personal relationships. | (This is the right question!) I switched scientific fields. I still continued in another field in science, got a Ph.D., and became a professor, but think I was robbed of passion and productivity then to now. It basically removed any accomplishments to that point. I was a really good student in genetics, even taking graduate level courses as an undergraduate. | Thank you. | Male | ||
801 | 12/5/2017 4:44:46 | Two incidents. 1. 1980s: I was a grad student and an extremely famous visiting scholar whose class I was taking body-blocked his office door and pressured me to come back to his lodgings one night. Something similar happened to the other woman grad student in the class. There were reporting procedures in place for faculty who harassed undergrads, but not grad students, at the time, and it was not entirely uncommon for faculty and grad students to become involved. When I told my mentors in the dept. -- all women -- they 'tsked' and said it was a shame but just to do my best work in the class and hope for a good grade. In the end, he gave everyone in the class the same grade without, evidently, having read the papers. (I should say, however, that harassment was so common for women at the time, I finally just shrugged the incident off. Recently, however, when I attempted to tell fellow academics about it, some -- including women -- reacted with denial, saying they could not believe that the scholar would do that, both because it contradicted his politics and because he later became involved with a man.) 2. Late 1990s: I had my first job, a visiting appointment. The new department chair, appointed from another university, took an evidently unusual liking to me, appointed me to committees and positions inappropriate for a visitor, and told me that if I did well in these he would try to arrange a tenure-track job. I had come from a working-class background where I was used to this kind of thing at jobs and didn't realize that it was not proper academic procedure. He made remarks strongly implying to fellow faculty that we were having an affair. I tried to imply back that this was no so, but did not feel free to say anything that would upset him. They treated me very poorly. An added complication was that a few key woman faculty members appeared to be highly jealous, as he was considered very dashing, as well as understandably resentful of this special treatment -- though I had not asked for it and didn't know what to do about it. I went to a compliance officer, and was told that I could file a report, but that it would very likely be damaging to my career; this seemed true, so I didn't. In the end, he did try to arrange a tenure-track appointment; the rest of the department quietly rebelled; he was made to step down as chair for other reasons; my visiting appointment was ended a year early due to 'budgetary considerations'; and I was forced to leave for another -- thankfully, much better and saner -- visiting job elsewhere. (Here I should make a caveat as well. I do not believe that he realized what he was doing was harassment. He seemed genuinely to feel that I was a person of special ability -- or to project that upon me -- and that we were beginning a meaningful working, and romantic, relationship. His last relationship had been with one of this grad students, who then became his colleague, elsewhere. At the new institution, he said, he felt lonely and misunderstood. Because I did not feel myself in a position to tell him what I really felt, he took my politeness as confirmation. I say this not to defend him in any possible way but to slightly nuance such situations, in which the powerful do not view their imposition as one of force or violence, but are rather unable to see that it is inappropriate to use underlings to fulfill their physical and/or emotional needs. I also believe that this explains why so much of this behavior is generationally-bound -- that younger faculty may have more cultural awareness. I would also like to say, however, that I feel complicit in having accepted special treatment on this basis, though. The flip side to harassment no one's talking about is unfairness to those passed over for opportunities in favor of the direct target. Not to victim-blame; however -- as Laura Kipnis argues in a recent New York Review of Books piece rather sharper than some of her previous works -- women are not children. As long as some stand to benefit from playing into traditional gender roles, or passively fail to resist them, objectification -- dehumanization of women into both 'attractive' and 'unattractive' or 'repulsive' objects, the first both rewarded and imperiled; the second imperiled in different ways -- women will simply be reinforcing the system.) | 1. Ph.D. Student; 2. Visiting Assistant Professor | 1. Visiting Full Professor teaching course I was taking; 2. Full Professor and Department Chair | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | 1. Harvard University; 2. University at Albany, SUNY (SUNY Albany) | 1. Comparative Literature; 2. English | 1. No reporting system for faculty/grad student interactions at the time; shrugged off. 2. Discouraged from reporting due to potential damage to my own career. | 1. Zero. 2. Slightly harmed an already increasingly poor situation, but was not treated as central. | 1. None. 2. Harmed my reputation; kept me out of the running for tenure-track jobs at that institution; forced me to move to another institution. | 1. Little. 2. Extreme, on bases both of harassment and mistreatment by other faculty due to misperception of situation: became extremely unbalanced and unable to perform research; lost over 10 lbs. from inability to eat; a disastrous time. | 1. None. 2. Inability to perform research during this period led me to fail to be prepared for a campus visit elsewhere, losing chance at a job that would have been perfect, both personally and geographically. | Type of institution: 1. Elite, Ivy League; 2. R2 the aspiring to R1; now R1 | Male | |
802 | 12/5/2017 4:44:53 | Hit on by Prof. | Undergrad | Chair of Film Dept. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | Liberal Arts | Male | |||||||
803 | 12/5/2017 4:46:29 | In a lift, after a meeting with a senior member of academic staff, a colleague in a graduate studies student association with whom I had been participating at the meeting, approached me in utter fury, invaded my personal space with his head inches from mine, and in a clearly threatening manner, warned me not to undermine him in future in meetings (I had no idea what he was talking about and was speechless in shock). My immediate response was to back away, raise my hand between us, and check where the panic button was in the lift. In the three floors it took the incredibly slow lift to travel, I was stunned and struggled to understand what I'd done to cause such an outburst (!), and spoke soothingly to the man about misunderstandings etc. The lift door opened and we walked together to our research centre and he continued behaving as if nothing had happened. He was student representative on the management committee of our research centre, as well as on the graduate student body, and in subsequent encounters, sought to limit my access to research resources (access to meeting rooms; did not share information with me, and did so to others). The bully/harasser was a protegee of the former Director of the Centre and clearly enjoyed a status not available to other graduate researchers. | graduate student - doctoral candidate | senior PhD doctoral fellow | Canadian university | Humanities | I reported the incident to the Director, but asked that no further action be taken as I feared any investigation would prompt further retaliation. The research centre has no policy on sexual harassment or bullying. There are no protocols that I'm aware of in the Faculty, though the University has more recently investigated allegations of sexual harassment and has an office for human rights/equality. | None | It added enormously to the stress I was dealing with, adjusting as a new member of the Research Centre and seeking to become part of the 'team', and I oriented my later participation in the Centre's research activities so as to avoid engaging in activities/events that he would be present at. | it was very stressful to be in a research centre daily in the presence of someone that had done this. I've no doubt that this would not have happened if I was a man or a more senior status woman. | A year later, he succeeded in getting a job and moved to another university. I subsequently learned that other student representatives had also experienced some of his outbursts. However, they were not in the same research centre and not of the same physical intimidating quality. | This behaviour was facilitated by the fact at the outset, no orientation was mandatorily provided to all graduate students on bullying and harassment. The research centre and the Faculty have no accessible guidelines or policies on harassment or bullying. The bully was a protegee of a senior academic. There was an added complication that the ethnicity of the bully is not Caucasian in a predominantly Caucasian environment. I also did not want to be accused of racism. | Male | ||
804 | 12/5/2017 6:02:53 | During my 5th year of graduate school my advisor (who was a recent hire) told me two stories about undergraduates coming on to him and, a few months later, wrote me a suggestive note that invited me to start a sexual relationship with him. I told a non-tenured female mentor in another department and spoke with HR about reporting. After speaking with them I decided to confront him myself during a meeting. When confronted he denied that "he meant" any of it. After that I did not experience continued advances. | PhD student | My main PhD Advisor who was an Assistant Prof. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History of Art | None. I chose not to report it to my chair or HR. | None that I know. | Minimal in the long-term but for at least one year I avoided him and after that never trusted him. Fortunately I was able to bring a second advisor on board. | Graduate school was already very stressful for me and so it's hard to distinguish this particular incident. Certainly it exacerbated my anxiety and it slowed my progress on my dissertation because I felt uncomfortable around my advisor. | I still struggle with whether or not I should have reported the incident to my chair or the university. The person in question ended up not getting tenure and that helps my conscience a little. Also the incident(s) were passive and I was able to confront him myself. The incident has made me more aware of my interactions with superiors as well as my own students. Having gone through this experience I am more aware of "creepy" behavior and would probably say something far earlier. | None. Thanks for starting this document. | Male | ||
805 | 12/5/2017 6:08:46 | He blocked me from getting water because he insisted on knowing if my beautiful necklace was silver. I ducked under him and he stood behind me. A student saw and tried to intervene. He told her “I’m not talking to you” - I quickly answered and left - because yes, I was scared . . . at 42 years old with a PhD in a public space. | |||||||||||||
806 | 12/5/2017 6:15:27 | Senior professor (male) attempted to bully assistant prof (me, male) in numerous department meetings; when that didn't work, he grabbed my ass in the hallway and leered at me. | Assistant Professor | Full Professor | Other R1 | University of Miami | History | Found no basis, although there were other cases filed against him by other people. | None, although several years later was banned from campus for other behavior | I looked for another job ASAP | Depression | Moved to other side of the country, gave up local opportunities, but was lucky (and no doubt, privileged) enough to find other ones in another place. Some would say better. The move led to a divorce, however. | I was lucky, in many ways, in terms of the outcome--and not in others. The failure of the university to do anything--in fact, they warned me that if I responded in self-defense if he did it again, I would be fired--was illuminating, to say the least. | Male | |
807 | 12/5/2017 6:15:59 | Intern witnessed and reported co-worker watching porn videos in his office. | Student | Professor | Other Research Agency | Arecibo Observatory | Astronomy | Nothing, although later for another case of discrimination that was ignored, the federal govt issued a warning | None | Disrespect for authority | Moved into a different subfield | Male perp/Female enabler | |||
808 | 12/5/2017 6:20:52 | Slapped on the ass before a seminar meeting after 3 weeks into a program, around 15 years ago. | Graduate Student | Graduate Student | Other R1 | Arizona State University | Art | Slow response rate eventually after 3 incidences then individually warned. | He finished but essentially bombed out due to drug addiction, but is coming back has an adjunct position last I checked. I had to go to class with him for another 2 semesters. | My advisors were there but were reluctant to deal. It had to happen more than once to get action. Finally told a woman advisor/professor who helped. | Large impact on my confidence, I became ‘gun shy’ per se. I was a graduate student. I am still in academia, but it’s a hard career as is. | This wasn’t the first time and it has influenced my expectations of success beyond. I have had 2 colleagues thereafter who were bullies per se at separate institutions. I have also worked where one adjunct colleague was a sexual predator on students whose behavior with closed doors was really suspicious and uncomfortable; he was largely supported and included in meetings with the chair instead of tt faculty. | Everyone should always say something even if it doesn’t stop right away. Assume if it happens to you there are more. | Male | |
809 | 12/5/2017 6:22:41 | I was 16 years old, my drum instructor tried to kiss me. I have no indication that I wanted that ever. | high school student | teacher | Other Type of School | high school in TX | high school student | I did not report | none, I did not report | I worked harder to get out, go to college get a degree in mechanical engineering and be better than the"men" | I felt like something was wrong with me. | don't trust authority, men | In middle School, the drummers were sent to a back practice room to"practice", but instead the (maybe 5) boys would turn out the lights and grope the two girls, me and another girl. The girl and I got sick of it after several weeks so we left out the back door. We got in trouble for leaving the school, but when we explained why, we were no longer the ones in trouble. I don't think were serious consequences for the boys though. But we had to sit in the back of the band class doing nothing after that. In college, at The University of Tulsa, as I was walking to watch intramural games around 9:30pm on campus, a very big guy, jumped out of some bushes between two buildings and tried to rape me. Came up behind me, put his arms around me, tried to drag me being the building. My screams saved me. I reported it to school security, they stopped a guy who fit the description, but let him go without even asking me if he was the culprit because they knew him, a football player. End of story. This is just the physical harassment. Verbal harassment happens so often, I've learned to forget about it, as do many women, I bet. | Male | |
810 | 12/5/2017 6:37:20 | I was propositioned by one of the two other people in my department. I said no. He said I was "too hung up on bourgeoisie notions of morality" (he was sleeping with a student at the time and my boyfriend was just about to move across country to live with me). I went to HR to report, saying I hoped it was bad judgment, but wanted it on record as he'd be on my tenure committee. He made my life hell. A student later came to me saying she'd been raped by him. I again went to HR. Nothing happened. When I got an outside offer, but decided to stay, the creepy dean also known for inappropriate behavior offered me not a penny more. I had to leave. | Assistant professor. | Recently tenured faculty. | Small Liberal Arts College | Religious studies | None | None at the time. 10 years later the college's lawyer called me. The perpetrator "resigned" 3 days before classes began. | I had to move from a city I loved across the country. | Terrible. He said I was only hired because he thought I was cute. He accused me in front of the dept chair of lying to get the job. | The stress contributed to the break up of my relationship. I moved at age 22 to a new town and serious dating desert. I had a child on my own (I wanted a child, but would have preferred to be partnered.) That slowed down my productivity and career advancement. | Male | |||
811 | 12/5/2017 6:43:53 | ||||||||||||||
812 | 12/5/2017 7:03:55 | I was told to smile when I looked upset (which I was) walking back into my office. | research assistant professor, non-tenure track | assistant professor, tenure-track | Other R1 | I did not report this, I spoke directly to the harasser about why it was harassing language. | I have been registering a series of these microaggressions in my head for the past couple of months | Male | |||||||
813 | 12/5/2017 7:10:26 | Nothing... I'm responding because nothing happened to me.... I do know of others who were harassed and/or assaulted and don't want to take.away from that. Just want to give a voice from someone who was not. | Undergrad, grad, postdoc ... I have five degrees. | Not applicable | Other R1 | food science (3 dgrees and postdoc) , philosophy (bachelors), rural extension (masters) | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable | Canadian institutions aren't immune from having professors, staff and students act horribly and illegally toward women... maybe I was just lucky ... or undesirable because I'm plain looking. I'm not LGBT so that's not a factor. | not applicable | ||
814 | 12/5/2017 7:17:12 | A senior member of the Classics Department at the University of Texas at Austin. I was a doctoral student and he invited me to his house under the guise that there would be several of us watching a Spurs basketball game. I was the only one. He tried to pin me to a wall and kiss me as I tried to leave. After that point, presumably because I rebuffed him, he treated me terribly. I have emails to prove it. Even as an outside committee member, he refused to accept my dissertation for more than two years. It was horrifically stressful and I had every reason to believe that he was bad-mouthing me everywhere (turning the fact that I could not get my dissertation done into the message about my lack of abilities...when he was the one refusing to read it). It is well-known that this professor is a sexual harasser. Her was formally accused more than once through the University and both of those women had their careers ruined. He remains and is still teaching today. | I was a doctoral student | Senior faculty member, Department of Classics, outside committee member | Other R1 | University of Texas at Austin | Classics and Art History | I did not formally report it because prior reports ended up hurting the accusers. | ZERO | It was horrifically stressful and I had every reason to believe that he was bad-mouthing me everywhere (turning the fact that I could not get my dissertation done into the message about my lack of abilities...when he was the one refusing to read it). | Now, about six years after finally getting the dissertation through, I think I am finally 'uncoiling.' I really had to be so protective of myself and always felt like I was on the edge of losing everything. It changed who I was in profound ways. | I swore, after this experience, that I would not work in a department with a doctoral program. I think that advising students at that level can bring out the worst in people. I don't want to work with people who act the way that I saw at Texas and I don't want to be complicit in behavior that can hurt students. | Male | ||
815 | 12/5/2017 7:21:33 | Saw a male senior researcher say multiple inappropriate comments (constantly commenting on appearance) of two young female students. I reported to someone more senior what I had seen. | Postdoc | Senior Researcher | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Physics | None | None | Both of the women involved left academia | N/a | Both of the women involved left academia | Male | |||
816 | 12/5/2017 7:33:42 | He picked me out of a crowd at the university's graduation ceremony, my first schoolwide event - immediately started flirting, and followed me out to my car, saying, "Don't let people see we're talking, they'll get the wrong idea," a huge, shit-eating grin on his face. I dismissed it as odd, but looking back, that was a GIGANTIC red flag - why would you even think to say that? A casual friendship progressed to constantly asking me out through many "no"s. He would corner me in an empty hallway and tell me how beautiful I was, and that I'd regret not going on a date with him, details of his current (evidently prolific) sex life and how he'd pull younger women (I was 26 and he was 40). My dismissal of his interest just made him come on stronger. The most egregious incident was after I went to lunch with him; he tried to kiss me in the parking lot of the school, in the close quarters of his car. I pushed him away; he's 6'7" and muscular, so I consider myself lucky that he didn't push further than that. He claimed another employee had a crush on him and was jealous of me. I have no idea if this was true; I do know he was using the story to try to emphasize how "lucky" I was that he was paying me attention, i.e. that SOME women would fall over backwards for him, but he was choosing ME. He emphasized that last part rather often; that despite all the other women he was seeing and bedding, he'd drop them for me in an instant. I had heard from other women that he was known for this sort of thing, though I don't know to what extent. I know he had asked out my predecessor as well; she had warned me. It's one of the reasons I never reported it to the school - I knew he was more valuable to them than I was, so why bother. (For-profit school, awful corporate administration.) I was at this school less than a year (2014), so all this occurred in a pretty compressed timeframe. He got engaged and brought in his new fiancee shortly before I left; I still wonder if maybe he had been dating her the whole time, which in some ways adds another layer of "yikes" to the whole thing. | Faculty/librarian | Former Dean, current faculty/chair of a degree program. | Other Type of School | Stratford University | Library | A few months after I left, I received a call from the VP of HR to ask me about this, as she had heard rumors. This suggested to me that someone else had come forward to complain, though I can't substantiate that. She told me that since I hadn't filed a formal complaint while still employed, they couldn't do anything. Essentially, implying it was my fault that he was still there. This occurred in a right to work state, so that's a poor excuse. I actually kind of laughed at her, since I had come forward about an inappropriate incident with a student and she told me it wasn't the school's problem. I had approached her AT THE SCHOOL'S SEXUAL HARASSMENT TRAINING. Why should I ever trust her again, after that? I told her as much. | Now a dean at another, private college. Not sure if he was pushed out of the school, or willingly took another job. | I left the school, and found a much better job. (I was planning on doing this anyways, so little impact besides lowering my professional tolerance for "flirts".) | It was weird. I could identify what was happening WHILE it was happening, without reacting the way I might have thought I would. He would say things like, "we have to keep our conversations to ourselves or people will get the wrong idea," and I'd immediately think, "holy cow, that's textbook "our little secret" grooming language." But in the moment, I just wanted to get away, so I'd just laugh and leave. It was certainly a stressor, but the biggest effect was that contemporaneous, disconnected mental narrative. I'd never experienced it quite so severely before. I assume it's some sort of survival mechanism. | I now prioritize an environment that strongly supports their employees. | Male | ||
817 | 12/5/2017 7:41:39 | 2008. A member of the staff (quasi-faculty, non-tenured) whose role was conceptualized as outreach (Director of a national non-profit located within an academic program, which virtually all organizations focused on the discipline belong to) became notably obsessed with a former grad assistant and current grad assistant of his supervisor. The behavior was not overtly threatening, and he consulted me about his "crush" on one of the two. He was also dating a friend of mine at the time. His supervisor asked me about it eventually, as did his girlfriend, because he told them/me about efforts to engage both parties, including eventually asking the graduate assistant to his boss out and being rejected, but continuing to make reasons to talk to, address, work with, and so on the assistant. There was gossip about him "leering" at the assistant, and he and his girlfriend had a fight about the former assistant, when he tricked her into going to a concert at which he knew both the current and former assistants would be there, at which he was highly focused on the two assistants and not on his girlfriend. His girlfriend told me she felt he was "obsessed" with both, and told me after the concert incident that she felt he might be stalking them. I was later told that the current assistant had told her boss that she was uncomfortable, and asked that provisions be made for her to avoid him. Unfortunately, he was in the office well beyond standard business hours, and their offices were near each other, so this required her to shift her focus somewhat from in-office work to field work, and to work in the office only when others could be present. | Colleague to the abuser, classmate to the current assistant (Both completing a grad degree in the program and employed by the college), acquainted with the former assistant. | Colleague/friend | Other R1 | Would rather no disclose, but it's a top 10 program in multiple related disciplines. | Rather not disclose. | Supervisor made arrangements to minimize contact while alone in an office setting. | None that I'm aware of beyond counseling by his boss. This person had other criminal issues, however, and was fired and arrested a few years later. | None on mine. None that I'm aware of for the assistant. | None. I know it was vexing to the primary victim, though. I can't speculate on the former assistant's take on it, however -- they remained friends until he died some years later to all outward appearances. | None. I can't speak to the feelings of the person(s) affected, though. We haven't explicitly discussed it since roughly 2009. | Male | ||
818 | 12/5/2017 7:41:56 | Series editor asked me up to his hotel room, same day that he told me that he wanted my manuscript for his series. | junior faculty | very senior | Other R1 | Religious Studies | none | I didn't end up placed in the series---for that reason? Not sure. | Angry, self-doubtful. | Male | |||||
819 | 12/5/2017 7:54:44 | nothing | master's / PhD student | have worked primarily with professors | Other R1 | social sciences | none, but I wouldn't know what to do if something *had* happened. | probably none. | none | none | none | I wanted to take the survey as a female (and female-presenting) graduate student in a male-dominated school, at a male-majority R1 institution, to say that I cannot recall ever having been hit on or otherwise harassed at my R1. This is not to say #NotAllProfs but just to say that having to think about those questions made me reflect: if I *had* been harassed, what would I have done? We now have staff (and one faculty member) who have put themselves forward as being "safe spaces," having undergone some kind of formal training towards such, for students who might have been harassed or belittled; but the one faculty member isn't tenured and the staff is, unsurprisingly, low in the hierarchy, so if I were harassed and reported it to them I wouldn't honestly expect anything productive to come out of the event. The other aspect of my program I'm thinking of: I'm currently a GRA for a multi-prof writing project, and the participants--who all know each other, and are all tenured--routinely blow off deadlines and generally treat each other, in actions if not in words, with contempt. And I'm thinking: if it's that hard to police something as simple as "you need to get the portion of the paper by me to X date," how on earth are we going to police stuff like harassment? I feel like the academia-as-a-cult metaphor might be useful here: thinking about how hard it can be to call out bad behavior within the cult (or, if "cult" is too pejorative a word, tightly-knit group--the church organization, the small town, the we're-all-in-this-together small business, etc.) might shed some light on how to restructure academia so that bad behavior is punished and potential bad behavior is discouraged. I mean, I would never correct a victim of harassment or assault (which is to say, me and almost every woman I know) if she wanted to talk about "toxic masculinity," but I think that the framework of toxic masculinity, as important as it is to talk about, doesn't quite get at solving the problem, which may have more to do with social hierarchies and demonstrating power within the group. (I.e. if you can violate group norms *and get away with it*, you have demonstrated your power to the larger group. In this way it might actually *benefit* harassing and/or misogynistic professors to have whisper networks spring up around them--everybody knows that they're the assholes, and everybody knows that no one's apparently powerful enough to stop them from being assholes.) Anyway--I should emphasize that I speak only for myself and I cannot say, as much as I wish I could, that my experience has been representative of any other students at my school or university. Thank you for doing this. | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | ||
820 | 12/5/2017 7:56:00 | I was grabbed around the throat and held for a while, but showed no fear and he let go. It was as he was walking me home after an evening meeting on campus, supposedly to keep me safe. | Single, a high school student, no boyfriend. | He was a friend, not a boyfriend, but thinking back on it, he was a predator and I was playing with fire. (He was known to have been forceful to another girl I knew.) He was like an older brother to me, a college student on the College/Highschool/Elementary School campus I grew up on. | Other Type of School | Private Christian School (Seventh-Day Adventist) | B.A. Theology | Didn't tell anyone. | None knew, so none. | Not sure. But I grew up to hate men in the future, due to a romantic breakup/disillusion, so this added to it. | I pretend it doesn't affect me, that I can handle it, I'm fearless. Actually it makes me nervous and I have trust issues. I have to be in control, hard to surrender control, even to my loving husband. Not sure if it is only this incident that affected me this way, but it is part of it. | one of the steps down a slippery road of self-hate and hatred of men, etc. But don't think it was the root cause. | I hated him, hated what he did to my friend, thought I would never get hurt, and was forever creeped out by him afterwards. Would walk around campus and shoot daggers out my eyes whenever I saw him, but never told him or anyone else why I hated him or most people didn't even know I hated him or was creeped out by him. He's on my FB so I can keep an eye on him and not suddenly be surprised to run in to him accidentally. I want to know where he is, so I can control when and how I see him, on my terms, and preferrably not at all. | Male | |
821 | 12/5/2017 8:04:35 | I was walking to the stadium when a group of undergraduate boys drove up next to me in a car and slowed down. Three leaned out and they shouted and whistled at me until I hid behind a bus. Then, they honked and drove off. | Graduate Student/TA | Undergraduate students | Other R1 | University of Texas Austin | Classics | None | None | Very little | Sense of extreme vulnerability every time I walk on campus. | None | I've only recorded one instance of harassment at my most recent institution. My undergraduate institution definitely had its share of harassment stories as well, but I've chosen to limit this to the past year, or else I would be listing off story after story. | Male | |
822 | 12/5/2017 8:19:36 | My Chair kept touching me in various ways despite how uncomfortable it obviously made me feel. No matter how many times I verbally explained I didn't like it, my supervisor kept touching me. It was part of a larger pattern of harassment from two people, my Academic Chair and Dean, which included teaching assignments that exceeded allowance limits in the collective agreements for which I had to keep going through the grievance process to be right-sized. One day I finally stopped my supervisor from hugging me by putting up my hand and holding her back. She immediately complained to the Dean and HR. A disciplinary letter accusing me of insubordination was put in my permanent employee file (for refusing a hug!) and I was docked a day of pay. I had to file a grievance to get the loss of pay reversed and the union helped me fight it all the way to arbitration. But, paperwork is now in my permanent file at this institution accusing me of insubordination, but with no context explaining the situation. Every step of the way, the senior leadership defended this behaviour insisting she had a right to touch me in whatever way she wanted at any time. For the first time, I finally understood why HR had done such a poor job supporting faculty when we were being sexually harassed by students. As the Director of HR said right to my face, they did not think we had rights over our own bodies when at work. | Tenured faculty member of 10+ years | Chair and Dean | |||||||||||
823 | 12/5/2017 8:30:17 | I was hired as a part time research assistant for a side research project for the history department of a major university. Turns out our supervisor used the project as an excuse to hire a dating pool for himself. I know that's a tough statement to back up, but he hired at least three more people than he had grant money to fund, all women between 24 and 39, mostly blonde, all single, and he asked about half of us out. It all blew up when it came out that he was dating two people who he directly supervised at the same time. Plus the money was running out. This was a little more than a year ago. When everything began to collapse around him he lashed out with threatening text messages and passive aggressive song lyrics taped to the walls of our offices. | Research Assistant (he promoted me to Research Specialist through kind of shady HR means. I didn't realize it at the time but he was trying to do little favors for us so we would have loyalty to him.) | He was a published author, professor, and my direct supervisor. I was on the tail end of a graduate internship and in desperate need of a job that would pay the bills/cover health care. I owed him my job, and he made a point to remind me of how "early career" I was and how he had to sort of make the job up for my benefit. I almost felt like I couldn't tell anybody else at the University that I even worked there or I'd lose the job. Literally nobody else at the project had any idea what was going on with our side project, we were even in a separate office building to the main project, on a mostly empty floor. He never hit on me directly, but these were some of the ways he tried to cover his tracks. | Other R1 | History | He was removed from the position but not fired, sort of allowed to "retire." We aren't allowed to make any kind of official statement about why he left the project. | He got a better job immediately afterwards, at a different institution. | I work in a small field, and almost everybody knows what happened. Even though he never harassed me directly, as a young woman hired under these circumstances it makes it look like I was hired for my looks and, therefore, am incompetent. Which is frustrating, because if anything I am overqualified for my position. We are under an immense amount of pressure to produce quality work to show that we are more than just a punchline in an absurd story, but the shadow of this completely ludicrous situation is going to follow us around. | I'm real mad about it. | I've been interviewing at other history projects (I love the work, this is what I want to do) but I still have to see how this will impact my career long term. | Male | |||
824 | 12/5/2017 8:30:55 | In my first semester of grad school a grad student sexually assaulted me at a party. | First-year MFA candidate | MFA candidate in a different (more prestigious) field | Other R1 | University of Iowa, Writers’ Workshop | Creative Writing | I reported and got a no contact order. No support was offered by my program. | Sometimes he was asked to not come to social events; he started meeting for mentorship with the head of the program, which is not common practice; he was given preferential funding and jobs working with undergrads | I was quite young and started avoiding the community, and networking is important in my field. He tried to harass me around my funding applications through a third party. The program refused to apologize to me when I came to them directly near graduation and I feel shut out as an alumni. | Depression, PTSD, heavier drinking | I wanted to drop out of my dream program every year, I couldn’t really date or make friends for a year after, I don’t really remember being 25, I’m hyper vigilant in my new program, which makes it hard to network. | Male | ||
825 | 12/5/2017 8:35:45 | I was 19 and a junior at a coed private research university, eager to do my best so I could get into a top graduate school. A full professor in my field invited me to have tea on a Sunday afternoon at his apartment to talk about my preliminary research for my senior thesis project. We sat down on the couch and he served me a bizarre strong liqueur that I didn't drink. Suddenly, in the middle of our conversation, he threw himself on top of me, kissing me even as I squirmed away. He groped me, tried to push himself into my underwear under my skirts, and kept trying to French-kiss me as he attempted to undress me. Somehow I managed to push him off me. He then cried and said he was lonely and begged me to stay to eat something. I was terrified he'd bad-name me to my other professors in the department so I stayed. The "meal" was almost worse than the groping: for two hours, he didn't ask me anything about my research or give me any real advice but instead made me listen to his problems with his relationships, divorce, etc. After that day, he made no effort to find out how my research on my senior thesis was progressing--or even if I had found someone else to supervise my project. | I was a first-semester junior at university. | He was in his late 30s, a full professor in my multi-dept/field group. He had had several major research grants so was admired by colleagues in humanities/social sciences. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Shared confidentially | Humanities/social-sciences (shared confidentially) | None. I tried telling a newly hired woman faculty member in my senior year only to have her share that she was having a consensual affair with the same man (he was her senior colleague and his getting involved with an untenured faculty member was an abuse of power). It was clear to me that not saying anything was crucial to my having support from other professors, advisers, dept staff, and university administrators for my current and future academic career. | Absolutely none. He was awarded a name chair at an even more prestigious university. | --I never really trusted male heterosexual professors after that, even years after the incident. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop even with men rumored to be 'gentlemen'. It took me ages before I trusted that I could go to a male professor's office hours much less to his home. That meant I sacrificed many opportunities for mentoring. --I was obliged to find a different sr thesis adviser. Soon after the incident, I changed the area on which I was working for my research. I completely dropped study within a large scholarly area in which that professor was a specialist. --I had a major crisis in my because I had no sr thesis director and also not enough professors to write recs for me for grad school. My dept chair had his own (male) mentee and pushed me to not write a sr. thesis at all or to change departments so I could work on areas he believed unimportant (like gender).The many obstacles nearly convinced me I didn't belong in academia. | I was intermittently depressed and anxious over the next two years. The required silence was esp devastating. Even years later, if I saw him at a distance, I would go white and start shaking. | --I took a huge distance from any prof (or colleague at a conference) at the first sign of creepy remarks or inappropriate touching. You could go through a lot of professors fast that way and it affected what I chose to study. --I almost left academia completely because----despite excellent grades--I had no support in my undergrad dept for my present and future studies. --The silver lining: I became more independent in research and pledged to become a role model in academia so that young women in the next generations would never be as alone as I had been. | I suspect the scale of sexual harassment in North American academia is enormous. And it also has taken a terrible toll, even for those who rode the ferris wheel to the top. So many of us lost confidence that our professors were interested in our ideas, our writing, our research. Many of us even bought into myths--perpetrated by these predators and their enablers--that we had provoked them with our demeanor or that they were sex-starved from having devoted their youths to their oh-so-brilliant careers. But this harassment was never about anything we did. And it was certainly not about sex. It was about the extent to which they were doing everything in their power to ensure their privilege would not be threatened by people who were shifting the goalposts on what research was valued in academia. So long as we were afraid to be alone in their office hours, to go to their homes, to ask much of them in terms of advising or mentoring, their power within the university was intact. If we could be silenced about their peccadilloes, wouldn't it also be easy to demand silence when they voted against giving fellowship support to women, LBGT people, and POC--or when they wrote against us for tenure and promotions? Out of these silences came many tragedies of complicity that will haunt academia for years to come. | Male | |
826 | 12/5/2017 8:35:45 | I was 19 and a junior at a coed private research university, eager to do my best so I could get into a top graduate school. A full professor in my field invited me to have tea on a Sunday afternoon at his apartment to talk about my preliminary research for my senior thesis project. We sat down on the couch and he served me a bizarre strong liqueur that I didn't drink. Suddenly, in the middle of our conversation, he threw himself on top of me, kissing me even as I squirmed away. He groped me, tried to push himself into my underwear under my skirts, and kept trying to French-kiss me as he attempted to undress me. Somehow I managed to push him off me. He then cried and said he was lonely and begged me to stay to eat something. I was terrified he'd bad-name me to my other professors in the department so I stayed. The "meal" was almost worse than the groping: for two hours, he didn't ask me anything about my research or give me any real advice but instead made me listen to his problems with his relationships, divorce, etc. After that day, he made no effort to find out how my research on my senior thesis was progressing--or even if I had found someone else to supervise my project. | I was a first-semester junior at university. | He was in his late 30s, a full professor in my multi-dept/field group. He had had several major research grants so was admired by colleagues in humanities/social sciences. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Shared confidentially | Humanities/social-sciences (shared confidentially) | None. I tried telling a newly hired woman faculty member in my senior year only to have her share that she was having a consensual affair with the same man (he was her senior colleague and his getting involved with an untenured faculty member was an abuse of power). It was clear to me that not saying anything was crucial to my having support from other professors, advisers, dept staff, and university administrators for my current and future academic career. | Absolutely none. He was awarded a name chair at an even more prestigious university. | --I never really trusted male heterosexual professors after that, even years after the incident. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop even with men rumored to be 'gentlemen'. It took me ages before I trusted that I could go to a male professor's office hours much less to his home. That meant I sacrificed many opportunities for mentoring. --I was obliged to find a different sr thesis adviser. Soon after the incident, I changed the area on which I was working for my research. I completely dropped study within a large scholarly area in which that professor was a specialist. --I had a major crisis in my because I had no sr thesis director and also not enough professors to write recs for me for grad school. My dept chair had his own (male) mentee and pushed me to not write a sr. thesis at all or to change departments so I could work on areas he believed unimportant (like gender).The many obstacles nearly convinced me I didn't belong in academia. | I was intermittently depressed and anxious over the next two years. The required silence was esp devastating. Even years later, if I saw him at a distance, I would go white and start shaking. | --I took a huge distance from any prof (or colleague at a conference) at the first sign of creepy remarks or inappropriate touching. You could go through a lot of professors fast that way and it affected what I chose to study. --I almost left academia completely because----despite excellent grades--I had no support in my undergrad dept for my present and future studies. --The silver lining: I became more independent in research and pledged to become a role model in academia so that young women in the next generations would never be as alone as I had been. | I suspect the scale of sexual harassment in North American academia is enormous. And it also has taken a terrible toll, even for those who rode the ferris wheel to the top. So many of us lost confidence that our professors were interested in our ideas, our writing, our research. Many of us even bought into myths--perpetrated by these predators and their enablers--that we had provoked them with our demeanor or that they were sex-starved from having devoted their youths to their oh-so-brilliant careers. But this harassment was never about anything we did. And it was certainly not about sex. It was about the extent to which they were doing everything in their power to ensure their privilege would not be threatened by people who were shifting the goalposts on what research was valued in academia. So long as we were afraid to be alone in their office hours, to go to their homes, to ask much of them in terms of advising or mentoring, their power within the university was intact. If we could be silenced about their peccadilloes, wouldn't it also be easy to demand silence when they voted against giving fellowship support to women, LBGT people, and POC--or when they wrote against us for tenure and promotions? Out of these silences came many tragedies of complicity that will haunt academia for years to come. | Male | |
827 | 12/5/2017 8:37:32 | Upon meeting me for the first time, in a one-on-one conversation, the senior woman said, "I gotta say, you are just beautiful." And gave me a look, kind of an 'up and down.' | postdoctoral researcher | leader in a national academic society | Other Research Agency | Astrophysics | Lack of trust for that national society, and that individual. We are few, because we are minorities, and it makes it harder for me to go to that community as a resource. | adds to impostor syndrome: "Am I just here because I'm pretty?"; the comment has stuck with me and occasionally pops up in memory out of nowhere. | I avoid contact with that community. | I'm male and identify as cis/hetero. | Female | ||||
828 | 12/5/2017 8:45:53 | I was a fifth-year student in a professional degree. My thesis advisor was flirtatious, would constantly text (including saying things like "I love you"), invite me to drinks even though I was underage (I went), invite me back to his place, get so drunk he couldn't drive and say I had to drive him (I drove), try to kiss me once I was at his place. When I texted him back less, didn't pick up his phone calls, or tried to pull away, there was always some sort of consequence: a reminder that thesis prizes were coming up; later on, my grad school recommendations were mysteriously "late" when I stopped texting. I performed warmness until he submitted the recs—he was known in the field. I started sharing with friends years later; many told me this was a repeat thing: they had seen him in his apartment elevator holding hands with a student; a friend told me she had sex with him (when she was a student); yet another that he had tried the same too-drunk-to-drive trick. He's now Dean at another school. | Undergraduate student | Thesis advisor; visiting associate professor (I think) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Cornell | Architecture | I didn't report it. | None that I know. | None that I know. | I feel an incredible guilt that I didn't protect students who came after me by reporting him. I still haven't reported him. I'm now a tenure-track professor in the same field but doubt my own credentials and success—how will I know if those early successes were because of his ulterior motives? | Trying to be an advocate for my students; to act in solidarity with my female and underrepresented colleagues; making an active effort to change disciplinary discourse to be more inclusive, activist, political; focusing on my own visibility as a form of resistance. | Male | ||
829 | 12/5/2017 9:11:11 | After a lot of hard work and dedication I got my dream job. The university is a perfect fit and I am excelling in both teaching and research. However, most days when I come to work a senior faculty member comments on how I look. My clothes, my skirt, the shoes I wear and how they flatter my figure in some way. He even has gone as far as to say maybe I should stop saying this, because it could be harassment? These comments insinuate that my value is in the way I look and not in the way I conduct myself in the classroom or in my research. They make me feel small and self conscious and have lead to me avoiding department gatherings and informal events. | first semester Assistant Professor | Full Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Male | |||||||||
830 | 12/5/2017 9:13:39 | Commented on dress, size of penis | Job candidate | Professor at university interviewing me | Other R1 | University of Florida | Law/political science | Unknown | Did not get job | Avoided certain colleagues | Female | ||||
831 | 12/5/2017 9:15:41 | I was sexually and racially harassed at my former institution, by colleagues and the Dean and Associate Dean. I filed grievances with HR and Affirmative Action, and nothing was done. The perpetrators were protected, and so i resigned and now work at a different institution. | Woman of color tenured faculty member. | White faculty members in my program, including department chair, and Dean and Associate Dean. | R2 | Portland State University | Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | NONE. | NONE. | Huge impact. I resigned from my (tenured) job, and found a new position. For two years I did not write or publish anything, as I was embroiled in filing grievances, attending (forced) mediations, etc. | Huge impact. I was deeply depressed for a long time. I also continue to feel anxiety in the academy. | Very large. I remained in the academy, but it's been challenging. | |||
832 | 12/5/2017 9:18:51 | PhD supervisor and senior historian in field always held our supervisory meetings off campus, always in dingy pubs. I was naive and a first-generation female student living across country from home, with no social supports. He always ordered us beers during our afternoon meetings and then he always held forth as to his thoughts on whatever he was working on. At the time I thought this was creepy but perhaps normal. Now I am angry that he ruined my PhD experience. Fortunately he has now been blacklisted by most in the field, though his work continues to receive awards. | PhD student | Supervisor and Full Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | n/a | Fortunately he has been blacklisted by most in the field though he continues to hold a prestigious research chair position and receives regular funding and awards. | As a young student I was unaware that this man had been widely shunned; as a result I have had to completely distance myself from him professionally and personally and I know for a fact that I have lost opportunities because people used to see me as his naive acolyte | Confusion and fear caused by his "grooming" strategies and sadness over loss of opportunities | For the first 10 years after my PhD people associated me with him. As a result I lost job and funding opportunities. I have since completely distanced myself from him and made new contacts; this is helping my career but I feel I will always be tainted by association (ugh). | Be very aware of your advisor's reputation; your future depends on it. | Male | ||
833 | 12/5/2017 9:24:27 | 1. A fellow graduate-student and former lover became violent with me (and threatened my friends) in a public place after we'd broken up (and he was with his new girlfriend), he later left me several abusive and threatening voicemail messages. His advisor was the chair of our department; our director of graduate studies was also his friend (they'd attended the same elite private secondary school). I got support from the Dean of GSAS and from a departmental mentor, but nothing formal ever occurred. 2. In the second year of my PhD, a senior male academic took an interest in me at a conference. He taught at a different university, but in the same city. He told me he wanted to edit a volume with me on our shared interests, and when I met with him to discuss it, he told me about how much he could do for my career. When he later invited me to dinner at his house to meet other senior academics who, he said, could be good for me to know, I felt I had to accept. I went to his house (there were, thankfully, other people there), and he told me that he was lonely and single, and that I should break up with my boyfriend. I called my boyfriend, told him to pick me up, and never talked to that man again, and stayed far away from him. I only told my boyfriend and close friends what had happened. 3. At my current place of employment, I've had senior male colleagues comment on my appearance, my body/features, and touch me. I have no confidence in my institution to deal with any of these issues adequately, and can't afford to get labeled as difficult or a troublemaker. | Graduate school; assistant/associate professor. | Senior to me. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | When I took the threatening and abusive messages to the dean, and told him I was considering if I needed to take out a PO, he said that he would support me whatever my decision, and that if I chose to do nothing at the moment, he would make a note of our conversation in case I changed my mind down the road. | Zero. The guy who threatened me in grad school is a tenured professor (with a reputation as a jerk). The professor who propositioned me is a person of enormous influence in my subfield. None of my male colleagues who've touched me or made sexist and inappropriate comments have had any disciplinary actions against them. | Zero. I'm incredibly fortunate. | I was terrified every time I went into my graduate department for the rest of the academic year after my former lover had threatened me and acted violent. Thankfully, he was at the end of his PhD, so I only had to overlap with him for another 8 months. I spent a lot of time wondering if I was overreacting. The harassment I've experienced at my current institution had made me really, really angry. | I'm now focused on my research output so that I can get a job at a different institution. | These are only a few of the incidents. I've also been sexually harassed by students, asked out on dates, had students leave their phone numbers on evaluations, and make comments about my body and how good I'd be in bed. | Male | ||
834 | 12/5/2017 9:24:41 | A senior professor in my field comments on my body, looks, and clothing at every conference where we cross paths. In the same conversations, he offers to confer professional favors, such as invite me for talks, review my book, etc. | assistant professor | full professor, endowed chair | Other R1 | English | None (I never filed any complaints) | None | adds to my imposter syndrome | When this first started, I felt very shaken by it. Now I'm just pissed and use it to fuel me. | Male | ||||
835 | 12/5/2017 9:48:04 | my freshman year at a private liberal-arts research university on the east coast. #1: Fall semester: first guy invited me to a meeting in his office (we all had them) which he scheduled late in the day after most everyone had gone home. He required me to produce 6 drawings of myself naked. When I returned with the assigned work, he commented as much on my body as on my artistic skills. I tried to avoid one-on-one contact with him and, to counter gossip in dorm and class, I pretended the assignments were edgy, avant-garde experiments that I chose myself. I had to insist all the time I didn't have a crush on him. UGH! How could one improve if one couldn't work closely with the professor. Fortunately the work for that course was done outside the studio so I could limit my contact, if not stem the loss of the artistic skills a more noble man might have helped me develop. #2: Spring semester: Second guy haunted the studio at night and on weekends when students were required to work there. He badgered us if we did not turn up nightly and accused us of not being serious artists. Over vacation, he invited himself to my empty dorm for dinner, expecting me to cook for him though I managed somehow to avoid his not-so-subtle advances. He kept asking inappropriate questions about my sexual experiences and insisted all inexperienced girls should have sex with a very experienced older man, etc. I hated being in the studio after hours and took an incomplete. I never finished his course. Because of these two creeps, I never took another art course at my undergrad university. | i was 18 and a freshman taking advanced studio art courses. | --Professor #1 was 50, a full professor, and already had art in major museums --Professor #2 was in his mid-30s, an up-and-coming artist who claimed to know lots of powerful people in the art world, visiting for a 1-yr professorship which was renewed for a second year. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | NA | at the time, art | None. I told no one with any responsibility within the institution about either one of them until after I graduated, though my roommate/friends knew & were concerned about #2. The next year I often saw him partying with female students in a campus dorm near mine. I later heard he had crossed the line with one or more students and had been asked not to return the following year. No one ever seriously explored why I didn't complete the incomplete which fortunately I didn't need for credit and, because it was in my freshman year, did not damage my undergrad record. | None for either for their behavior toward me. The second guy must have done something very alarming to have been discontinued after his second year but I never knew more than that he was just not invited back to teach. | I found other short- and long-term ways to work as an artist and other means to study art, though I majored in another field at my university. | I had to consult doctors because of panic attacks second semester of my freshman year. The shrink whom I was given at the university health service asked me whether I was just imagining these men found me attractive and accused me of exaggerating to get out of completing work on time. He sent me home with a benzodiazepine that made me want to sleep constantly. Fortunately, my roommate got me off the drugs immediately. With other friends, she insisted I should take an incomplete in the second guy's course so i could put my energies into my other courses and regain confidence. I also had the sense never to see that therapist again. | I hated going to professors' office hours. I never took another art course at my undergraduate university though that had been my planned major. I did other things I loved just as much. I survived. | In the 1970s and 1980s (and, unfortunately, for far too long after that), so many male professors in academic institutions, as well as in art, music, and theater schools, acted like the young women in their courses were a parade of nubile bodies for their delectation. It was incredibly difficult to be taken seriously for one's work. Long these events, I was having dinner with a gay male friend whom I had supported, in the same period, when he came out to his professors and then to his family. "You really exaggerated," he said, "with the feminism and all. Maybe if you'd just sucked it up a little more, you'd have been a lot happier. I know the rest of us would have been." He expected me to laugh with him. | Male | |
836 | 12/5/2017 9:51:43 | every week of my life | undergrad, grad, faculty, staff | usually peer | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | None. EVER. | NONE | I usually quit, or cried a lot and quit | Male | ||||||
837 | 12/5/2017 9:54:02 | This is a mild incident. When I had trouble with my visa/green card, the chair of my department told me several times that I should marry one of my colleagues. The colleague in question was significantly overweight, and though younger, many colleagues privately worried about his life expectancy due to the weight. I had to request in writing that the comments stop. | Off-tenure track | Boss | R2 | The jokes and comments stopped upon request | None | I felt further disempowered and unvalued for my contribution to my department. | Depression, insecurity about my place in the department. | Due to this and other incidents, I dropped out of academia. | Male | ||||
838 | 12/5/2017 9:57:12 | I was repeatedly yelled at (voice was raised), twice in a closed office and once in a hallway, by my department chair. One of these times, he threatened my prospects of promotion because I was defending the merits of a program I had been selected to lead within the department. | Untenured assistant professor | Chair, Associate professor (no tenure at the institution) | R2 | Cannot disclose, due to settlement agreement. The institution is a regional leader in the Middle East. | I eventually filed a Title IX report based on a separate issue (the institution refused to pay me for a semester when I was on leave and accepted a position at another institution - but they had given 50% pay to a male colleague with less experience who left the institution under the same circumstances). I used these incidents as evidence of consistent gender discrimination/harassment of women at the institution. The institution eventually settled the case and I was paid 100% for the semester of leave. | None | The stress probably slowed my productivity, but ultimately my career has been successful in spite of it. | I hated my interactions, and avoided interacting, with this person during his tenure as chair and after. | The chair's behavior was one example among many of the institution's hostility to female faculty. I knew I did not want to stay at the institution for the long term, and I did not aspire to be promoted (knowing that faculty positions at higher levels are fewer), so I left after 4 years. | Male | |||
839 | 12/5/2017 10:02:58 | The professor for whom I was a TA constantly made comments about my appearance, clothing, and makeup. At one point, he asked me, in front of my entire class, if I was married or planned to get married soon. | TA, PhD student. | Full, tenured Professor, one of the first founders of STS | Elite Institution/Ivy League | MIT | HASTS | n/a | nothing | makes me constantly on guard, sensitive | n/a | n/a | Male | ||
840 | 12/5/2017 10:18:48 | Over the course of a year, a tenured professor attempted to initiate inappropriate relationships with (at least) three PhD students, each of whom he was a committee member for. | PhD student | A senior faculty member | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Stanford University | Education | No one reported it to the institution because they were afraid that he would keep them from graduating, since he was on their dissertation committees. They were also afraid to remove him from the committee for fear of his being angry and blacklisting them (he was considered a "rising star" at the time and is now quite senior). He did most of his harassing, other than in their offices, via email, so there is concrete evidence available, but his power is such that the women were still intimidated. | None that I know of other than a bad reputation among students. I never took any classes from this person or worked with him, by choice, even those his interests were relevant to mine. | None of my career directly | It had a damaging effect on all three women that it happened to (and those are just the ones that I was friends or friendly with). | I have always wished I had reported this behavior. I was pushed to have him become one of my advisors but I refused to. I didn't take any classes in his area of expertise because he taught them. | Male | ||
841 | 12/5/2017 10:20:04 | I was invited for an on-campus interview at an R1 school in the midwest. During one of the one-on-one interviews, an associate dean moved his chair next to mine and put his hand on my leg. I was shocked and humiliated and didn't say anything at the time. | PhD candidate during on-campus interview | Associate Dean | Other R1 | Title IX office followed up with me | unknown | Humiliation | The experience made me reevaluate my commitment to pursuing a career at an R1 institution, and possibly academia in general. | Male | |||||
842 | 12/5/2017 10:21:42 | Over the course of three years, I was subjected to sexual innuendos and subtle intimidation from a professor who was the only one teaching classes I was required to take. Incidents took place in his office when I was supposed to be getting feedback on my writing. He commented on my weight, my age, suggesting that I would be prettier if thinner. That I was too old to do well in grad. school. That I needed to be more "submissive" (his word.) He suggested that he was still sexually interested in me despite my "flaws" (his word.) | Graduate Student | Tenured Full Professor | Other R1 | University of Kansas | Art History | None. I went to both the Ombuds and to Human Resources (laughable department title.) Because I didn't have any "evidence", I was told "nothing can be done." | Ha! None | I was ultimately denied entry into the PhD program in Art History and told explicitly by this professor, who was in charge of graduate admissions, that he didn't want me to take the place of a younger student who might have more to contribute to academia because their career would be longer. | I spent a while feeling like crap until I said "Fuck him" and got re-excited about my research. | I applied and was accepted to the American Studies Department (with a wonderful faculty and stellar advisor.) I am finishing up my dissertation on the same topic that was deemed "not worthy of further study" by the Art History Department: Late 20th century Female Weavers and Their use of Digital Technology | I'm over 50. The kind of crap that I got from the above mentioned professor is neither surprising nor a first. I worked as a paramedic and paramedic instructor in both public and private sector. I've been harassed and sexually harassed most of my working life. Graduate school itself is set up to demean and abuse students. The silo-ed nature of most disciplines does not allow for anything other than paradigmatic bullying, which often takes the form of harassment, intellectual and physical. I love teaching. I'm still excited by being in a classroom with students and watching light-bulbs going on. But I also spend a lot of time figuring out how to work around the hierarchical flaws inherent in the system. | Male | |
843 | 12/5/2017 10:28:43 | A senior male faculty member targeted and harassed me. In person, he told me that "You won't get a job on your own merit, it depends on how much they like your husband" and, after my defense, "Well you won't last long in academia, you'll go and have six babies." He sent me angry emails accusing me of stealing "his funder." He also made comments of this nature toward other women. In one class, he told a woman that she had been successful "because, let's just say it, you're an attractive woman" and said another very successful woman had only risen to her position because of her husband. | I was a Ph.D. student in residence from another university as a trailing spouse. | He was the founder of an organization within the university and my supervisor there. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | An elite R1 in the Midwest. | None | None | It greatly impacted my confidence; I was in a vulnerable position, having moved 2,000 miles away from my PhD program while attempting to continue my research remotely. At a time when I needed support from mentors, he chose to villianize me. I felt trapped, because there was nowhere else for me to go at the university and I already felt I "owed" him something for making a place for me in his organization. | I suffered from clinical depression and anxiety for a year. | Luckily, I was eventually able to get out of this situation as I gained more confidence, and my career trajectory has been good. But I still hear his voice in my head from time to time and it makes me anxious. I have to serve on a student's committee with him next semester, which will be the first time I've seen him in years, and I'm dreading it. | Male | |||
844 | 12/5/2017 10:55:59 | My senior year at an Ivy League research university, I was given the honor of being being an undergrad section leader for students who were interested in extra tutorials. The person assigned to supervise me called me at home at inappropriate times and asked inappropriate questions. Though there was never explicit sexual content to his behavior, it was always lurking at the edges as he stared in lechy ways and made creepy or misogynistic comments. I worried that if I didn't talk to him at all hours or listen to his bizarre ranting, especially about female colleagues, that he would blackball me with other professors or in my graduate school applications (he insisted throughout the autumn that he should be writing to support my grad school applications and though I never gave him a form, I was still afraid he'd do something to jeopardize my career). In the second semester, he cut my hours and told me that I would instead help him with his research because there weren't enough students needing tutorial work--a situation that meant I would have more personal contact with him, the last thing I wanted. I was desperate not to lose the income that the teaching was supposed to give me at that crucial moment of completing the work that would help me get into a top graduate program. I tried to wriggle politely out of the awkward situations without talking about the creepiness; fortunately my undergrad mentor intervened to ask that the supervisor assign me to one of his groups instead. Rumors flew around his behavior with grad students and even a female faculty member. I was afraid to tell my mentors or the dean, though I later did talk about it at some length with one professor who shared stories far worse than those I'd been hearing but said that issues had been raised with the chair and dean--to no avail. | I was 22 and in my final year. I needed the job so I couldn't quit. I was applying to grad school, so I had to be careful not to rock the boat. | He was about 45 and had a permanent position in a dept. that was in a contiguous field and the same building as my own. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | will share confidentially | will share confidentially | None to my knowledge. I told no one until after I graduated. I did learn by the spring I graduated that some people in the university were aware he was a problem because of incidents involving abusive behavior (even violence) toward a female faculty member. Years later I alluded, to someone who came to that department after I graduated, to how much things improved after my undergraduate years. She knew exactly who and what I was talking about. In fact, I'd (luxuriously) forgotten his name until she spoke it that day. | None to my knowledge | None, fortunately. I later checked to see if he'd written an unsolicited letter to the institution where I went to grad school and there was, fortunately, none in my file (though who knows if he wrote some other university: at the very least he wanted me to think he could do so at any time if I did anything to contrary him). Like all such repeated frittering-away at women's well-being, this series of episodes made me feel like the decks were sufficiently stacked against women's success in the university as to require more fortitude, more perseverance, more focus. I was grateful for the professors in my undergraduate institution who helped me keep my eyes on the ball so that creeps like this didn't affect my sense of self or my academic work. | Thankfully none. | None except that I have always believed it was crucial to stand up against creeps like these and their enablers. This survey is a great way to do that. | Toxicity has effects substantially beyond any specific incidents of sexual harassment. A department that tolerates abusers communicates implicitly to everyone that the people like those being abused are not worthy of support. | Male | |
845 | 12/5/2017 11:07:47 | Several male faculty members in my department commented on my pregnancy with my first child. One told me that I was so big he was surprised I could still walk. Another told me that nobody would blame me if I decided to quit and be a stay at home mom. | Assistant Professor | Tenured professors | Other R1 | Engineering | I didn't report | mild. I was a bit discouraged but didn't change any plans | mild if any | none | Male | ||||
846 | 12/5/2017 11:13:33 | Advisor made inappropriate remarks that escalated into blatant propositioning, implicit threats, pressure to engage in a romantic relationship, and sexual touching | undergrad (sophomore) | tenured professor | Other R1 | interdisciplinary social sciences | Complaint was found to have merit following Title IX investigation; harasser got a letter in his file (no harsher punishments are given without multiple complaints; grad students I knew at the time told me I wasn't the only one and tried to get others to come forward, but since the others were grad students all were too afraid of the professional consequence to come forward— something I totally understand now that I have finished a PhD, myself) | Was later promoted to a dean-level position | Had to find new mentor; did not publish as an undergrad (since the new mentor I eventually found was not a productive researcher and was not interested in supporting students in that way; I had to beg him to advise my thesis and he made it clear that he didn't want to do it) | Diagnosed with major depression | Biggest impact (which is still reverberating in my life more than a decade later) was that all of my early career choices were based on the absolute necessity of having access to school- or employer-based health insurance (since this was before the ACA and my applications for individual coverage were rejected due to the depression diagnosis). I went into a PhD program too soon, in lieu of exploring my first choice career because I couldn't be an intern or have an extended period of unemployment. | Most of the male faculty in the small department where this happened were either in relationships with former students or were rumored to have initiated sexual relationships with their students. (No such rumors surrounded ANY female faculty member.) The department did not then, and does not now see itself as having a problem with sexual harassment. Also, in retrospect, I realize that I overlooked a lot of inappropriate comments from male faculty when I was a PhD student because they were "just comments" and I was confident that the speaker would not physically assault me. That's kind of a low bar for any adult, but especially for university faculty. | Male | ||
847 | 12/5/2017 11:21:23 | My work was prominently featured at the annual conference for my discipline. One of the attendees found an article in the popular press about my work and contacted me via Twitter. We had never met before. After a little chatting back and forth about our research interests (which I thought was an early stage of networking), he invited me to meet him in his hotel room. He explicitly told me that he wouldn't meet me anywhere else, saying he had an early flight the next day. I declined his offer. The next day, I confronted him about what happened. He responded by admitting that he had gotten flirtatious with me, but also by telling me that I was out of line to accuse him of sexual harassment. | Graduate student | Professor and Program Director of Science in the Public Sphere | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | The conference was the American Sociological Association. He works at UNC and heads Science in the Public Sphere. | Sociology | None. This guy is too powerful for me to want to report him. | None. This guy is too powerful for me to want to report him. | I can't imagine Science in the Public Sphere will ever want to work with me, even though I'm emerging as a public sociologist. I was also flustered during my presentation at the conference, which was the first time my work had even been selected for a panel at such a prestigious conference. I also stopped engaging in as much networking at the conference because I felt like I couldn't trust who was interested in my work and who was interested in having sex with me. I just felt like a sex object to the men in my field. | I was upset then and I'm upset about it now. I remember being angry and sad and running out of the conference to cry---and then being upset that I'd done that during such a potentially big moment in my career. | I worry that reporting this scholar will hurt me. But I really, really want to report him anyway. Especially when I see him work on issues of women in higher education. | Male | ||
848 | 12/5/2017 11:21:59 | about 6 months ago, a cis-man who was my mentor in my undergraduate degree explicitly hit on me via Facebook messenger. I'm now a Ph.D. student at the school he attended. We share similar speech/debate/academic circles. He was my mentor -- he wrote me a glowing letter of recommendation to two of my universities. He's married and I have discouraged him from these types of highly charged messages. I have sought to redirect his amorous attention back to his marriage. I would like to preserve this mentorship/friendship, and have tried to be empathetic to circumstances which might be leading him to seek out sexual fulfillment in me. However, this has really damaged my view of him and has negatively impacted me. I've started to wonder if I he wrote my letters of recommendation because he was sexually attracted to me and does this mean I'm not fit for academic work? Another incident mirrored this when I was a student on a competitive speech team at the same age when I was my mentor's student. I received explicit messages from my married coach about how "sexy" and "pretty" and "hot" I was. "What would you think of me doing X to your body". The speech season had just ended and I was graduating -- I think he thought he was in the clear because he wasn't my coach anymore? | First person, happened recently. I am now a Ph.D. student -- technically he is my peer/colleague. Second person happened when I was an undergraduate student. | First person was my professor/mentor. The second person was my coach. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Communication | The first person, I spoke to a mutual colleague who informally investigated. We do not share institutions anymore -- just similar professional circles. The messages continue. One every other month or so. The second person, I've never talked about and certainly did not bring up to other coaches. He was fired shortly after in unrelated incidents. | First person: His reputation is eroding for various reasons and this is one of them. The grapevine culture isn't formal but it protects me and my reputation and hopefully will alert folks closest to him that he needs help or that someone should be aware. Second person did not remain in the academy but due to his incompetence and merit rather than because of this incident. | I hope none thus far. It's important to me that my reputation be intact given the topic of my work being precarious [sexuality and gender]. Also, I've seen first hand the way institutions "treat" this type of problem and it is not complete and it is not well. The onus is always on the victim to be an advocate and I do not have the strength on top of everything else I am doing to proceed along in my career. | Moderate to severe. I mostly don't think about it. I've been hit on by men all of my life. But, if I'm honest, it's shaken my belief in my own abilities and worth as a scholar. Did he write letters of recommendation for me because he wanted me to feel sexually obligated to him or indebted to him or because he thought I was a good candidate for graduate school? Both?Q | I would prefer to work with and in environments with women and specifically women of color/international women. I prefer to stick to my own kind in group settings [women, LGBTQ, folks at the same social strata as me]. I'm hyper aware of distancing myself romantically/emotionally from het men in my department. I would not have a heterosexual cis-man on my committee. No. | My incidents happened at large state institutions -- state universities/colleges | Male | ||
849 | 12/5/2017 11:37:33 | While I was an REU student (a type of undergraduate researcher), I was stalked by a graduate student who worked in the same building. This graduate student told me that there was a group outing for the REU students happening and that he could drive me over from the lab. I didn't know anyone else yet, and I believed him that there was an event. He lied; there was no such event, and I ended trapped with him in a bad part of town that didn't have any public transportation (this was before uber). I was a 19-year-old summer intern without a car. He put his arm around me and ushered me around, forcing me to go with him to various spots. I was very uncomfortable and told him I wanted to go back, because he was my only ride out. I had him drop me off a distance from where I lived, but he followed me back to my apartment, where he kissed me and wouldn't let go of me. I had to use all of my strength to force him off of me and literally ran away from him and locked the door. I told my direct supervisor about it, who told me that I was being unfair to him and that I should go on a date with him after all that effort that he went to. My direct supervisor, a grad student, also told me in private (in the cleanroom) that he thought that women did not belong in science as they (we) were not naturally good at it. He said that he thought women were better suited to cooking and cleaning. At the same institution, the Principal Investigator also trapped me in his office and had me sit behind his desk with him, uncomfortably close, in order to watch some laser safety training videos. He just stared at my breasts the entire time. I had no idea what to do. Again at the same institution, there was a lab technician who got too close to me and made some lewd comments about my appearance. This was all within the span of 3 months. I obviously reported all of the above, along with the experience of another female REU student, who told me that she was subjected to sexual comments from her PI and sexual discussion amongst that PI and the grad students about the desirability of the female REU students. Nothing was done -- no consequences for anyone involved. However, I did face retaliation from my superior, who attempted to sabotage my research and heckled me at my final talk. This was within the last five years. | Undergraduate research assistant | Superior colleagues or principal investigator (all four were male) | Other R1 | University of New Mexico | Physics | None | None | Attempt from my superior to sabotage my research | Temporary but severe. | Hard to estimate. | Male | ||
850 | 12/5/2017 11:52:17 | I had a colleague who frequently commented about my weight/ perceived thin-ness. One day, in front of students, as we were transitioning between classes, he speculated as to whether, when I took a shower, the water actually touched my body, and if so, where? Or whether I was so thin that the water just went around me. | Adjunct faculty | Senior adjunct faculty | Regional Teaching College | Art/Art History | None | None | None really | The presence of this person made life uncomfortable for me in the department. I'd almost be late to my classes that came right after his, because I tried to avoid seeing him during the transition to avoid remarks like this. | Didn't change my life choices, just my immediate circumstances. | Male | |||
851 | 12/5/2017 11:52:40 | Breasts were grabbed. | Graduate student | Also a graduate student | Other R1 | Communication | I didn't tell anyone. | I feel like no matter what I accomplish, I'm always just a set of tits. | Male | ||||||
852 | 12/5/2017 11:52:49 | once i made clear i was not interested bc he was married, etc, at a conference with co-PI, myself, and an undergrad, he only got internet in his hotel room. I had to use it to upload docs to the study site and add data to the public site prior to the presentation. He was in the room, then said was gonna go get ready. I kept working, he apparently showered and came out of bathroom in a towel. I left bc very uncomfortable. He could have gotten dressed in bathroom obviously, since I had to be there to do the work on the internet, which in retrospect, was clearly a red flag. After returning, after a week or so, wanted to schedule a meeting and suggested he drive me to a park ~20mins away and we talk there bc it was beautiful. I said no, I would rather meet in my office. That's when he emailed as if *I* was the inappropriate one, saying he didn't feel comfortable meeting with me in *my* office with a closed door and that's why he suggested a meeting in public. I told my co-PI, who also thought it was strange and wrong and not needed to meet with him there. He said I no longer had to have any contact with him at all, and would get everything from my supervisor. | Bost-BA Research Assistant | Co-Pi of project I was working on, tho not my direct supervisor, who was the other co-PI | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Geography | none | none | I wasted time on this project that in the end fizzled out bc this co-PI was very hard to work with in other respects too. | Male | |||||
853 | 12/5/2017 11:58:40 | A male, full tenured prof in my grad dept. is known for being strange/a sexual harasser. He said lewd, sexual things at the holiday party about a colleague (Black woman) and her body. He has married and divorced a couple of his former students according to passed down history among grads in the dept. He holds grudges and jeopardized the passing of PhD of a student he had married and then divorced. We are told not to take classes with him by our advisors and our older grad students. The story is that they tried to get him out but can't bc he has tenure. Not sure how real, how hard "they" actually "tried" and when was the last time, bc I've been in this place 10 years and it was before then. Only undergrads take his classes. His last student, who was an international male, he was toxic and abusive to in how he treated his project and in their communications. | grad student | White male full professor, tenured | Other R1 | Social Science | lol, none | none | not sure, we could have had a better professor that we actually could have taken classes with | none | none, aside from not taking classes in an interesting subfield bc he is only one teaching them. so took related classes in other departments. | Male | |||
854 | 12/5/2017 12:02:34 | GSI/TA was widely known for being in romantic and sexual relationships with students, and would make "offers" to female students in office hours and before after class around things like getting free passes on assignments and exams in exchange for "grabbing drinks" or "chatting" with him over email (which was widely known to be code for sending nude pictures). | undergraduate sophomore | GSI/TA | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Michigan | None, to my knowledge nobody ever reported it. I find it hard to believe that his department wasn't aware of what was going on though. This particular GSI taught multiple sections for more than two years and everyone I ever spoke to about him had the same experience and perception. | Still a PhD student at the same university. Recently won an award for being an outstanding GSI. | None. But I know there were multiple women in the class that decided to drop their minor in this department because of him. | Hated going to this class (it was required by my college). Rarely participated, only went to office hours when required. | None, thankfully. | Male | |||
855 | 12/5/2017 12:06:44 | "Closed door meetings" with older male profs and undergraduate female students with visible affection displayed by profs, room and tent sharing between male profs and undergraduate female students. | undergraduate student, graduate student | promoted faculty | Small Liberal Arts College | This happened at more than one institution, one R1 one liberal arts college. Three unrelated faculty engaged in similar behavior. | Physical Geography | None | None | I left the field of geography because of pervasive racism and annti-female sexism | It was hard to switch fields, and to understand if I were to stay in the field, this was the best I could expect. | I left the field of geography because of pervasive racism and annti-female sexism | Male | ||
856 | 12/5/2017 12:14:39 | 1) As a first year graduate student, I went to a start-of-semester party set up for us by some older graduate students. One of the older graduate students in particular was designated as the first year student coordinator, and his role was to help us adjust to graduate student life. I wore a skirt to the party. I bent down to pick something up, and this student coordinator used the opportunity to put his hand up my skirt on my thigh -- in full view of an entire room of first year and older graduate students. I was humiliated and shocked, and no one did anything. At the same institution, I was solicited by several graduate students in my year. 2) Another first year graduate student picked me up at a party, threw me over his shoulder, and wouldn't put me down. He repeated this about five times, only putting me down briefly in between. The next day, I told him it was inappropriate, and he told me I was wrong. 3) Another first year graduate student, previously my close friend, tried to initiate sex by putting his hand on my leg while I was drunk and falling asleep, even though he knew I had a boyfriend. He knew that I would not have consented if I had been sober, and he didn't stop when I said no. I lost my best friend. When I told my other male peer about it, he told me that it was hard in the world for nerdy guys, and that I should try to be more empathetic. | First year graduate student | Older graduate student, head of the "welcoming committee" ; other first year graduate students | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Physics | None, in all 3 cases. I didn't report. | None, in all 3 cases. I didn't report, and most of my peers who knew about what happened didn't care. | Hard to say. I generally feel alienated by the department culture. It is much easier for my male peers to make friends and network. | 1&2) It made me feel very anxious and alienated because so many people witnessed it and did nothing. 3) This event caused the most mental distress. It happened last, so it compounded all the other sexual harassment I had been experiencing. (All these events happened within 1-2 months of each other, on top of ~5 other unwanted sexual advances from peers that I didn't include here.) As a result, I experienced panic attacks and dissociation. I felt like everyone was out to get me, or at least indifferent towards my sexual harassment, and I was very unstable for a while. | Hard to say. My grades suffered. | Male | |||
857 | 12/5/2017 12:23:56 | Inappropriate romantic/sexual relationship between highschool student and teacher | student, 17 years old. | My teacher. | Other Type of School | Elite private boarding school. | The teacher was fired. (but it was his second offense) | None. | Male | ||||||
858 | 12/5/2017 12:27:08 | My senior colleague repeatedly said things like "You should wear your hair down more often...long hair really 'does it' for me" (a specific quote). He would enter my office space without knocking and my classroom while I was teaching to 'hang out.' He would put his arm around my shoulders/waist. Each incident I would tell him/yell at him no, I would push him or grab his hands and take them off my body. I started locking my office door, ostensibly eliminating my open door office policy for students. I asked my department chair to notify him in writing not to come into my classroom unannounced or without prior arrangement. When engaged in other research activities in my work spaces, I would work at night or on weekends when he wasn't on campus. This same senior faculty member also misrepresented my career accomplishments on my CV to the administration at my college; luckily the administration was highly supportive of my work, were aware of the details of my research, and knew that he was undermining the significance of my research. | I was untenured when it started; it continued post tenure and promotion. | He was my Department Chair, then senior faculty. | Small Liberal Arts College | Art & Design | Our handbook required me to repeatedly tell him 'no' at each instance of harassment in order to be in compliance with the procedure. I filed a formal complaint with the administration; because this faculty member also had a drinking problem, the administration seemed to tip toe around the faculty member because it 'complicated' the situation. Students also complained about the faculty member's statements and behavior with them; the administration would ask the Department Chair to "watch" the faculty member (essentially babysit him), and "keep them informed." Nothing was done to him. He eventually submitted a formal apology to me, and he said that he was sorry that "I had a problem with his behavior." He also stated off the record that "there was nothing I could do to him." He was right. | None. He finally retired, but continued to come to campus. The administration *finally* barred him from campus unless an event was open to the public. | I was able to achieve tenure and promotion, and despite his abhorrent behavior, have had success at my college campus. I have had to endure this person being lauded by other senior faculty members, and was asked to keep everything quiet, which really sucked. He was regarded as a "precious genius" (despite not making artwork for at least a decade) and I had to suck it up and keep my mouth shut. | I *dreaded* coming to work, although I loved all of my other colleagues, the students, and the campus in general. I had to create work arounds--working at night and on weekends--to avoid being around him. He would enter a room and my stomach would drop. I'm still so sick of hearing about how amazing/much of a genius he was despite the fact that he's gone. Some of his colleagues created a scholarship in his name, so his legend as a genius as spectacular professor lives on, despite his atrocious and irresponsible behavior to both faculty and students. | I avoided campus and certain research facilities because I knew he'd be harassing me there, or that it left me vulnerable to his harassment. I moved my studio space to my home, which really limited aspects of my research...or rather amplified aspects of my research over others because they were more conveniently executed at my home. | This faculty member didn't show up for his classes, didn't give out syllabus for his courses in the later years, would leave campus in the middle of the classes. There were so many additional issues that were going on in addition to the harassment (to myself and at least one other person in my department)...and the admin did ZERO. Thanks for doing this survey!! | Male | ||
859 | 12/5/2017 12:30:06 | I was approached at multiple meetings, when nobody else was present (elevator, walking back to hotel after a dinner). In one case, the person tried to kiss me. In another I was propositioned for a sexual encounter and affair. | tenure-track assistant professor and later on, tenured associate professor | Senior researchers in the field, fellows of (multiple) professional society. what you call scientific heavy weights. these people were not at my own institution, but rather people that have power over my career development as references/experts in my field. they might be asked to write evaluation letters for my promotion at my institution, my professional society, sway "public" scientific opinion about my work | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Georgia Institute of Technology | engineering | not reported, as the perpetrators were not at my institution | I have avoided going to specific conferences and workshops and I do try to not collaborate with people at the institution of the perpetrator(s). The fact that I have tried avoiding working with these men has resulted in me being labeled as difficult to work with, carrying personal grudges etc. Certainly I have not felt protected enough to either disclose the reasons behind my decision (to not work anymore with certain individuals) or going public with it. | I have double-guessed myself in all my personal interactions in my professional life. I used to think that I can be one of the guys and go out and drink with them or have dinner with a group of people, but clearly, things are easily misunderstood. The challenge of course is that now I systematically miss all the unofficial networking opportunities. | I have seriously considered leaving academia. | Male | |||
860 | 12/5/2017 12:34:45 | Early 2010s. While meeting in his office (just the two of us) over the weekend to go over some research results, he confessed he finds me attractive. He also stated, on this as well as several other occasions that he would make a move if he was not married/had children. I did not know how to respond, and overall tried to ignore the situation. | Undergrad RA | Tenured Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Harvard University | Neuroscience | Did not report. I was not sure how to process what was happening, how I should react, and how it would impact my career. | I avoided that department when applying for grad school, as well as asking for a letter of recommendation from this professor. I also did not further pursue this research project. | Acute impostor syndrome. I wondered (and I still do) why I was awarded the research position. I've lost trust in male supervisors, and experience significant stress if I am alone in a room with one. | Male | ||||
861 | 12/5/2017 12:38:30 | I have not had an experience with this person personally because I had been sufficiently warned, but his reputation is known far and wide in our (not very big) discipline. He's known for grooming female students, his own and others, always blonde and young, pressuring them into relations, and for assaulting students on more than one occasion. His reputation is for being a lech with all female students who cross his path. | Graduate student | Tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | currently NYU | Art History | Not a peep. He left his last elite institution under somewhat dubious circumstances only to be gloriously promoted and celebrated at his current institution. | Again, nothing. He is widely cited, invited to lectures, and honored. And it's not like it's not an open secret. There are high ranking female professors still willing to work with him even, putting their careers above students' safety. Oh and their morals. | When applying to grad school, I did not apply to his institution because I work in his same subfield and he would either be my advisor or on my committee and I couldn't risk that or condone that. | Well my undergrad already made me paranoid. This is an anonymous form and why am I still not naming this person, even though we all know his name? And of course, it's delightful to know that I'm attempting to enter a profession where one okay book will make up for complete moral decrepitude. | I want to break academia down, from the inside or out. | Male | ||
862 | 12/5/2017 13:08:40 | Professor in my department approached me and a female graduate student and suggested that we "act more like men" in his class and beyond to ensure we'd be successful in academia. Implied that we needed to be more assertive, speak louder, and defend our viewpoint "even if we think it is probably wrong" because that is what a man would do and that is how to be successful as a scientist. The conversation continued for about 30 minutes, and at one point when my fellow student was visibly upset he said he was going to leave because he could tell things were "getting emotional." He came back later after speaking to his wife just to tell us that he still thought his advice was good. After a few days and a meeting with the department chair, he emailed us to apologize. | PhD student | Professor (tenured) at my university | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Ecology | Title 9 was notified and our department chair met with him to discuss the conversation. | slap on the wrist--the incident was noted in his file. | I will definitely never work with him again and I will be more supportive to students in the future if I hear about anything like this happening, including approaching the harasser myself if I am in a tenured position. | for a while it was very awkward to keep attending class because he was the professor and it made me a bit anxious. After a while my anxiety just became anger and now I feel ok about it, albeit very frustrated. | I am even more determined to act like the woman I am and be successful at the same time. | Male | |||
863 | 12/5/2017 13:12:14 | I experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, manipulation, and gaslighting for 3 years by a professor/predator in my department. (There were at least 6 other students who experienced something similar with the same perpetrator to varying degrees). He used foreign countries and study abroad programs in order to gain the trust of his students and build "relationships" with them, once he had their trust and goodwill, he pounced and then used them/us as suited his needs. | Graduate Student | Professor | Other R1 | Classics and Archaeology | Original provost response: Sanctions/probation 5 years Chancellor response upon receiving appeal that included medical documentation: Termination | Termination and no letters of rec - career over (as far as I am aware) | Currently, none -- unless you count my new fear of male professors, no trust in academia, fear of continuing in the field, and fear of going near my University. | Complex PTSD which is now treated with daily drugs (this keeps the nightmares and flashbacks at bay). Therapy for over a year to deal with the after effects of sexual and emotional abuse. Continued inability to put my personality back together and or my self-confidence and self-respect. Continued shaming by friends and academics. | At present, I left the University to pursue research abroad because staying in the same town as my abuser was too painful. I fear the majority of my department. And most of campus has become a trigger for flashbacks. | I will add that while none of the faculty was aware of exactly what he was doing, there were many rumors about his "relationships with undergrads." Most of them wrote those off because he was "open about his friendships" with his undergrads and ex-students. Several of them looked the other way when he invited only female undergrads/grads to his apartment for movie/game/wine nights. When I confronted him about these things he informed me that, "I wasn't being fair. That he was simply trying to fulfill his duty to be a good representative for the department and really there was nothing wrong with it." He would also take them on trips alone and had multiple students sleep in his bed at one time. The abuse was evident on multiple victims, all of whom (including myself) exhibited traits of "trauma bonding." | Male | ||
864 | 12/5/2017 13:20:00 | Rape, physical intimidation, sexualized comments (There were many events; multiple cases of each) | Graduate student | Other graduate students, undergraduate students, professors | Other R1 | UCLA | English Literature | Attempting repeatedly to get me to drop my complaint, public hearings in which I was “cross-examined” by my harasser, no information re: whether any action was taken. | In the specific case noted above, I know he had to deal with university proceedings, but he remained in his program and graduated. I do not know whether there were any other consequences, because I was not allowed to know. In all other cases, absolutely none. | I did not finish my degree and am no longer in academia. | Clinical depression, anxiety disorder, PTSD | I have no career to speak of | Male | ||
865 | 12/5/2017 13:37:09 | repeated unwanted sexual advances after I repeatedly said no. | undergrad | colleague in student organization | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Philosophy | He confessed to sexual assault and harassment in writing and no disciplinary action was taken because it didn't happen on campus. Just one mass email went out condemning it but didn't mention his name. | None. He still attends this school. | I've dropped classes he was in and avoided doing institutional activities that he did. | Very high anxiety. | Male | ||||
866 | 12/5/2017 13:54:02 | Ph.D. advisor never came on to me, but was known for making "mischievously" inappropriate comments about his sex life, sexual history, porn-watching habits, etc. Aggressively pursued at least one former advisee after she completed her doctorate. After I finished the Ph.D. I noticed that verbal "boundary testing" escalated whenever we were in contact and I have kept my distance since then. | Ph.D. candidate | Ph.D. Advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Stanford | English | Some incidents involving others were investigated; no formal penalties that I ever heard about. | Nothing significant. | Minimal, especially compared to some. He was mostly a good advisor in other respects. There might have been professional advantages to a closer relationship when I was a recent Ph.D. (publication opportunities, etc) which I decided were not worth the stress of pursuing. | At the time I wrote it off as "that's just how he is," which was very much the culture of the department. Given stories I heard later about that department, I'm a lot angrier about how pervasive the culture of "bad behavior" by male faculty was, even if it was performatively ironic bad behavior. I wouldn't say there was trauma but the recollection of grad school now leaves a bad taste in my mouth. When I see him at conferences now I'm careful not to be alone with him, even in public settings, which is a bit humiliating. I would have welcomed a closer relationship with him at this point in my life if I trusted him not to be a creep. | Male | |||
867 | 12/5/2017 14:05:07 | I was part of a student committee preparing to meet with a dean who was notorious for the way he treated female students. He openly leered at women, and I had experienced that on a few occasions. I was the only woman on the committee of six, and I mentioned in a planning meeting that I wanted one of my colleagues to sit next to the dean so I didn't have to. When one of the students asked why, I said I didn't want him to be able to touch me and I didn't want him looking down my shirt. This male student responded, "Well, maybe that would be a good thing if it could get us what we want." I had another male student colleague tell me that my best shot at academic success would be to wear a low-cut blouse to all meetings with my advisor. I was in a graduate seminar where the female students got lower grades than the male students. I was in a graduate seminar where every time a male student made an observation, the professor would refer to it later by saying, "as Joe said a moment ago..." but if a woman made a remark the professor wanted to bring up later, he would say, "somebody pointed out..." The same professor routinely mocked a female colleague for all sorts of things during the gentle chitchat before class began. | graduate student | other graduate students; advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Notre Dame | History | none | none | It makes me wonder if I want to continue to work in academia | It means I am no longer willing to work in an environment that demans my silence as a prerequisite for my participation. I am still furious. And I report the heck out of anything that is reported to me now that I'm in a different institution. | Male | |||
868 | 12/5/2017 14:19:56 | It was a very long time ago - 1974, but I was raped by my professor | Undergraduate, 2nd year | Prof and music teacher- I was a music major and he was both band director and private lessons, both required subjects | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale | Music | Said they would have a conversation with the two of us to decide what to do. It turned into the first sexual harassment in education law suit, Alexander v. Yale. We lost and he remained at Yale for a number of years. The judge ruled I was no longer a student and therefore no longer affected by the injury and did not allow me to testify in court | None | Left the field of music entirely | Thought about suicide, left school for a while | There are other reasons now but I left the US and didn’t return | This was a long time ago and public so it might not be useful but especially since e-mail became available I have received reports from Yale students that harassment is still a huge problem as well as stories from other women who were harassed by the same professor. Thank you for this. | Male | |
869 | 12/5/2017 14:22:01 | A senior professor told me that when I moved to a new city I needed to invite him to visit for a social call. And that I needed to make sure I get a nice place to live so he could stay with me (not at a hotel). | Postdoc | Full Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | A Univ. California system school | Engineering | I did not report it | I did not report it | TBD. I have been trying to avoid him, but playing nice. I got other women in my department to cover for me when he was supposed to give a seminar (he ended up cancelling). There will still be many times I will need to interact with him, though, so we will see | Anxious when dealing with him, less trusting in general with colleagues | None yet. I have started a faculty position anyway. | Male | ||
870 | 12/5/2017 14:22:31 | At a conference, an MFA professor and major gatekeeper at my field grabbed my ponytail, held it up, and said, “whoa! Who ever thought that (my name) would turn into a babe?” He had nicknames for all the girls and was riotously sexist but apparently this was ok because he was gay so it was a joke and we were allies. | One year after I earned my MFA from his program. Permanent job. | Tenured, head of major professional org, gatekeeper, professor in charge of first year of very, very competitive MFA program | Elite Institution/Ivy League | An arts field. Don’t want to say more | I didn’t tell. Why should I? The last person they hired calls women “randoms” and “hoes” as a joke and came to school on cocaine and said that most (fellow MFAs) in a Facebook photo were “fuckable” | None | None. I left the field but for other reasons. Confronted my fear of job insecurity, lack of talent or anything important to say, desire for a relatively balanced non cosmopolitan life | None. I was amazed he thought so. I had thought I had avoided harassment thus far by being deliberately, calculatedly ugly and badly dressed. | None | Male | |||
871 | 12/5/2017 14:25:01 | Professor told me he would take me out on a date, then proceeded to speak explicitly about sex and sex acts. | Student | Professor | Other R1 | Political Science | Unreported. | Unreported. | Male | ||||||
872 | 12/5/2017 14:32:43 | Routinely flirted with, invited for drinks, offered drugs, invited to home, approached at student parties, treated as a favorite in classrooms and academic events, referred to as sexy/attractive/hot etc to other faculty and students | Undergraduate, and later, MFA candidate in professor's program | My professor, former professor, recommending professor, and potential faculty member when accepted to MFA program (which I declined attending due to his attentions) | R2 | UNC-Greensboro | English / Creative Writing (Poetry) | None | None | Chose to attend a different, less elite MFA program; gained reputation as harasser's lover when I was not; students threatened to have my application to the MFA program flagged (never happened); socially ostracized in the poetry community; rumors followed me to new MFA program where I was explicitly told by a maleness faculty member over drinks with other students that "there will be no fondling" as a result of these rumors, and was denied my top choice for thesis director by same faculty member despite being one of only 2 poetry fellows in my class, and the most visible student leader and program volunteer, roundly recognized as exceptionally hard-working and talented. | Hard to measure. Panic attacks, anxiety and depression resulting in therapy and medication throughout graduate career and afterward. | I left academia | This is certainly the most significant example of harassment I have exerienced in academia, and the only one I have the energy to write about at this time, but is by no means the only example I can cite. | Male | |
873 | 12/5/2017 14:36:51 | Numerous incidents with several male faculty. One stands out as the worst, but the others were just as worthy of being written here. I will stick with this one: A tenured professor repeatedly came to my office taking up increasingly large amounts of my time talking about nothing, trying to get me to talk about my "feelings" and my childhood, and repeatedly talking about his as a way of asking me about mine. After trying to get the person to back off in nice-ish ways, such as by saying that I had a lot of work to do (this did not stop the person), I had to begin asking this professor more bluntly to please back off a bit, such as by talking about professional and personal boundaries and how I needed him to respect these. The professor did not stop. He flooded me with emails, most of which were bizarre and prying emails. If I did not answer them soon after they were sent (and they were sent not just during the work week but at nights and on weekends as well), then he would then come to my office and insist that we talk / have a long discussion about this --i.e., about why I did not answer his emails, about what my feelings were about his emails, and about how he was hurt that I had not answered. When I tried to avoid these meetings by insisting that he respect work/professional boundaries he also started insisting that he had no idea what "my" boundaries were, that the only way he could know this was to test them, and so I *had* to answer his questions about my feelings. he continued to send me inappropriate emails and to visit to my office and demand long periods of my time. Some of these emails said things like: he wanted to start a fan club for me, he wanted to work together with me on academic articles, he wanted to do a book reading club with me (so that I would have to spend endless amounts of time talking with him about some book), and did I like/would I accept hugs..... Since nothing was working and he kept insisting he could not know what *my* boundaries were, I had to make them very clear: I outlined in an email that I would not answer his emails on the weekends or at night, that I would not answer any emails that were not strictly work related, and that --since there was really absolutely nothing we needed to email about relating to work-- I did not want to receive more than one email from him a week. I also said that I probably would not be able to answer this email right away, and that he needed to accept that it may take me a day or so to get back to him. He flipped out and tried to tell me that the whole reason I had gotten the job was because HE pushed for me to be hired, and the whole reason he had done this was because he thought that he and I were going to be good friends. He had thought I was one of those people he could really connect with, and he was so hurt. And he was angry that he had been mistaken about this....etc. He sort of threw a tantrum. For the first week after this he did send me a single email. The second week I received no contact from him at all, and I thought finally I had managed the situation. But the third week he stopped me in the hallway to say that I had not answered his last email. Confused, I told him that I had. It turned out that he had sent me an email the second week, but he sent it to the wrong address (to a student's address). Because I had not received it, he reforwarded it to me, then also sent me another email. Both of these emails had nothing to do with work, but were all about his feelings around this new situation. He also printed out an additional letter and shoved it under my door. AND he put a card in my mail box with Hershey's "kisses" and "hugs" taped to it. This was all within the span of 2 or 3 days. And then, when I did not respond to any of these, he called me on the phone in my office (from his office) to find out why I was not responding. I had to go to the department chair for advice. And things just got worse from there. | Visiting Assistant Professor | Much older, tenured professor | Other R1 | Rochester Institute of Technology | Social Sciences | (1) The chair at the time ORDERED me to file an HR complaint against this faculty member. I was a Visiting Assistant Professor. Women on my committee told me to NOT file a complaint or it would make me seen as a liability and end my career. I was pressured and harassed by HR people with repeated calls over a period of weeks, with them trying to make me file and with my chair "ordering" me to file. Neither my chair nor HR told me that filing was optional (though I knew they could not make me do it). My chair also "ordered" me to go see a counselor at the Center for Gender and... something else. I told him that I was not sure I wanted to do that and he told me this was not optional, it was required. My chair also "ordered" me to print out all of my email communications with this professor and to write up a summary of all of the office visits I had had. I did these things, and I visited the campus Center on Gender.... but I did not file a complaint. There were multiple issues of harassment and discrimination at this university that impacted me (it turns out --I was told-- that there were several lawsuits against this institution at the time, including --again, I was told-- a class action lawsuit for sexual harassment and sexual/racial discrimination. I was also told that at least one student had filed a complaint against this professor, but nothing was done.). Later, I had another problem with another male faculty member who came to my office and would not leave. This faculty member was not tenure-track, but he now has a tenure track job. I also had a problem with a separate male faculty member who expected me to do all of the work on a campus event we were supposed to be organizing together, but then to allow him to take all of the credit. I did everything, particularly bringing the speakers and attendees to the event; but he claimed he had done it all (he didn't even know the speakers, or anything about the topic of the event, so it was fine that he did not help any more than giving some of his budget to the event. It was problematic that he and the department chair told the Dean of the college that HE was the one who did it all, and therefore HE should be promoted to this or that position). This faculty member was not even in my department at the time. He was a lecturer in another department who had inherited a Native center on campus from a tenured professor who had left and arranged to have this professor run it. He was also friends with the chair who wanted to bring him --and his center-- into the department. He is now in that department on a tenure-track line. Still later I had another problem with a faculty member, a Research Professor who brought grant money into the university, who demanded that I use my personal Facebook connections with Native people in order to bring people out to his Symposium on Languages AND he wanted me to *make* one traditional Native leader that I knew show up at his event so that he could use that for positive event publicity. He did not want the Native leader to *speak* at his event, though this was a nationally respected leader for his language revitalization efforts. Instead, he wanted this leader and all of my Native friends to come sit and listen to a bunch of academics talk and theorize about the revitalization efforts these people were already doing in their own communities. I told this professor that I did not think his requests were appropriate. I did ask him for more information on his Symposium, and I offered input on how to make the event more relevant to the people he wanted to attract. But he did not like this idea, did not give me any real information on his event, and then wound up complaining about me to the new department chair because of my lack of help. The department chair acted as if I was some huge problem because I would not act as a secretary and exploit all of my friends for the event this professor was organizing that had nothing to do with me. I had not been asked or agreed to help work on this event with this professor, and I hadn't even gotten any viable information on the event. Yet, the chair tried to end my contract because of this (!) and this Research Professor called a department meeting, inviting everyone but me, and then attacking me for alleged noncooperation, or whatever. I was told that the vast majority of other faculty members defended me against the chair and this Research Professor. But the first professor discussed above was allowed to speak to the other faculty in this meeting about my future at the institution, and he was allowed to tell them that he had had problems with me, and that I thought everyone in the department was a shark rather than a dolphin, and so I clearly had issues with perception....etc. I worked through the end of my contract, but my contract was not renewed. I did not want to be there any longer, anyway. But it is somewhat infuriating that I was basically demonized for not doing every inappropriate thing any male coworker demanded of me. The first, tenured professor kept his job. The other three professors, who were all non-tenure track at the time, are now all in tenure track positions at the university. | Professor 1: no consequences. Professors 2, 3, & 4: promotion to tenure track job. | I left academia, the career I had spent more than a decade preparing for ended. | Tremendous | Tremendous | Male | ||
874 | 12/5/2017 15:06:08 | Professor (my advisor) walked up behind me in lab, grabbed my braid, and said, "Nice handle." He laughed to himself and my male friends were appalled. We were all too shocked to do or say anything at the moment. Same professor would tell me I was beautiful frequently. Same professor would slowly encroach on my personal space during the course of a conversation, slowly inching his way closer. I only noticed this when I had retreated so far that I bumped into furniture. My male friends in the program would go with me to the professor's office to ask hw questions since I didn't want to be alone with him - less awkward comments about my looks when others were around. | Undergrad | Professor, direct advisor | Other R1 | Science | Did not report | Felt like the Professor knew me the best (had taken more of his classes than any others) and would write nice rec letters. I did not report it and allowed him to write me rec letters for grad school. It feels weird and I don't feel great about it. I guess maybe I didn't report it because it felt hard to quantify. | More aware of my personal space. I don't automatically think all male professors will act similarly to this guy. I give all profs the benefit of the doubt. | Male | |||||
875 | 12/5/2017 15:12:50 | A male professor found me on linked in and sent me messages with sexual connotations. He told me I was hot, suggested meeting for a hookup once class was over... after I refused, he went away for a while but then started messaging me again after a few months. I blocked him & did not contact him for a letter of rec, even though I was applying for a PhD in his field of study. | A masters student | Associate professor | Other Type of School | University of Louisville | Political Science | I did not report. | None, as left unreported. | The situation made me more cautious about engaging with male professors. Since most of my professors were male, it made it more difficult to identify a mentor. I ended up choosing a female PhD chair who was completely unresponsive. I ended up switching to a male chair before writing and defending my prospectus, but if I had had an engaged chair from the beginning, I likely would have been ready to defend at least a semester sooner. | The situation caused me to doubt myself as a scholar because it felt like I would never be taken seriously. I was one of the top performers in class discussions & I received high marks in other classes with non-harassing professors. It’s also affected how I approach male faculty now that I’m married, as I feel I have to be selective in my word choice towards them. But in the end, I feel I’ve overcome most of that particular situation. Other instances, such as child molestation, abusive relationships & rape definitely affected me more significantly; but this situation, at school - which had always been my safe place & the place where I felt I could shine; I’d already completed two Masters prior to the degree I was pursuing at the time - it struck a different chord. No place felt safe or protected from the sexualized male gaze. | I suppose that harassment did not end up affecting my life choices much. I’m still in academia, still determined to succeed despite the looks I often get from older, often male faculty at conferences - either questioning my intelligence or checking me out, sometimes it’s hard to tell... sometimes I think it happens simultaneously. | Male | ||
876 | 12/5/2017 15:14:50 | I recall a fellow graduate student saying during a meeting of graduate students of colour that she was the victim of bullying by the then male Chair of the English Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She was pursuing a graduate degree within that department. My recollection was that she thought this to be a pattern of behaviour suffered by others as well. This story was told to us somewhere in the period 1990 - 1994. | I was a graduate student in the School of Engineering. | I did not know the perpetrator. As far as I know, he continued service without repercussions. | Other R1 | University of Colorado at Boulder | Victim: English. Me: Computer Science. | Unknown | Unknown | I do not know how it impacted her career. | I often wonder what we could have done. We were concerned about our futures as graduate students. I wish we had a safe way to help her. I have suffered in directly through harassment suffered by my friends and family. | I have not been a direct victim of sexual harassment. | Male | ||
877 | 12/5/2017 15:15:53 | In 1999, I was sexually assaulted at knife point by a grad school class mate/ jilted boy friend (who broke into my apartment and planted grey IKEA knives all over my living space). He left my home and went directly to the chair of my department, who was a confidant of his. The chair of my department declared that my rapist was "just blowing off steam" (his pent up anger being the result of my having left him). I did not file a complaint. I was dealing with a critically ill father and was shy and embarrassed, having been well warned about this man's violent tendencies by several female faculty ("I told you sos" were thick in the air). Not one person did a thing, including me. My having never I pressed charges is, hands down, the biggest regret of my life. I have, throughout my life, worried that this decision has resulted in this man assaulting other women. I am sure he has and I feel responsible. | PhD candidate | Also a PhD candidate | Small Liberal Arts College | University of New Brunswick | None. | Unknown. He never did finish his degree, but I am sure he would not have in any case. | It is hard to say. I have earned a doctorate and am a tenured prof, but it was not easy; I felt like an outsider in my department after this incident and I retreated entirely; grad school remains the darkest and isolated time of my life. | Far more than I imagine, I am sure. I am (very) proud of myself that I persevered, but there is literally not a week in my life that goes by that I do not think of this event with anger and great regret for the way I handled it. I have recently drafted a letter to the then-chair of my department. I have not yet sent it, and I am not sure I will - but it was very cathartic to write. I am the parent of a young child with intellectual disabilities. If someone like me, with full intellectual capabilities, was unable to stop or respond to being raped, I worry constantly about how she will fare in this world. I am terrified for her, but am determined to never let this happen. | I am sure it delayed my completion of my degree. | Male | |||
878 | 12/5/2017 15:40:50 | I was a graduate student attending the national conference in my discipline. During my presentation Q&A, a male senior faculty member (who I didn't know at all) berated me publicly for my research, outlining in detail each part of my presentation he took issue with. When I called on other people during my Q&A session, he scoffed loudly and would wave his hand dismissively each time I answered, to the point where the chair of my panel intervened. This faculty member continued this behavior with the one other female graduate student on the panel, and became an entirely different person during our more senior male colleagues' presentations. This kind of behavior doesn't seem to be relegated to TV dramas like Mad Men; it's just a little disconcerting to see it happen in real time (to you!) in 2015. | PhD student | Senior scholar (full university professor) | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | I was a student at Stanford; my harasser's institution was the University of Vienna. | History of science | None; none sought | None; none sought | None yet; we'll see soon? | The comments and behavior definitely threw me off; initially, I had brushed it off as something that "just happens" at conferences. It made me very wary of how I came off during public presentations; I was pretty despondent about it for a day or two but spent a good month thinking of different ways I could have responded that day (and strategizing about how to avoid this kind of situation in the future). Incidentally, something similar happened to me *at the same conference* in 2016; I didn't report either of these instances because I was worried that it would turn into a he-said-she-said fiasco and ruin any chances of advancement in an already-small field. | It definitely made me way more cautious, and I feel like I am very intentional now about where I present my work. (Not that I wasn't beforehand, but I'm less likely to put myself in situations that I know will be openly hostile, even if it could be good for my career.) | Male | ||
879 | 12/5/2017 15:49:31 | Female PhD Graduate student sent a picture of a male professor's penis on more than one occasion with solicitation for sex on text to cell phone on purpose (intended recipient). Professor was not tenured at the time, went to HR and title IX investigation was opened. He got a warning and two years later got tenure. | PhD Grad student | Assistant professor | Other R1 | Male | |||||||||
880 | 12/5/2017 15:52:49 | 1) A member of my committee joked leeringly about an undergraduate student (who happened to be a famous film actress) who petitioned to take his seminar, insinuating he was thrilled to enroll her because she was so hot. 2) I was privy to the men in my male-dominated cohort basically ranking the women in our program by looks and explaining that they tolerated stupid remarks from women colleagues according to the speakers' attractiveness. 3) A member of my dissertation committee told his cousin (who lived in my building) that he was infatuated with me; she passed this along and it was incredibly demoralizing feeling that all he liked about me was how I looked--though this proved true. 4) As a jr. colleague, my chair told me that he imagined walking down the halls with one new female assistant professor on one arm and another on the other; he was fantasizing about basking in their reflected attractiveness. It was again demoralizing to feel that women cwere appreciated primarily for their appearance, not their contribution to the program. I worried a lot about tenure in this climate. | graduate student and junior faculty member | senior faculty, male graduate cohort. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University for grad school | English | None | None | None--no support, certainly | Really, really depressing. | Stuck it out. Now have tenure at an elite institution and am trying to crush this sort of crap out of the academy. | Male | ||
881 | 12/5/2017 15:52:56 | Riding in an elevator at a hotel hosting the American Astronomical Society meeting many years ago, I had a Billy Bush and Al Franken moment. Another man and I boarded the elevator. As the doors were closing, a female graduate student boarded; she stood between us and the door. We all faced forward, toward the door. For no apparent reason, except perhaps to show he was one of the guys and maybe had had too much to drink, the other man pretended to grab her ass and looked at me for my "locker room" approval of his antics. I admit that I smiled and suppressed a chuckle so that she wouldn't hear. Now I would frown disapprovingly, but then I admitted to playing the role of "of one the guys." She never knew what happened. No one else was there. The man has since become a very powerful person, the Director of a major Institute in North America. Since she was (and is) unaware of what happened, I am unsure if this is harassment but I suppose it would be contributing to a hostile work environment if I felt it did. But it was at a conference hotel after the reception, so not really at a work function. It was just juvenile - but he was in his thirties. The key thing is that it was years ago and now that man is a powerful and apparently good leader of the field - an ally of the cause of equality for women in STEM. Everyone would say he's one of the "good guys" but I remember this incident. | Professor | Peer | Other Research Agency | American Astronomical Society meeting | Astronomy | I did not report it | None | None | I feel ambivalent about whether this is harassment. Undoubtedly very many people think sexual thoughts about others around them but don't make gestures or vocalize their thoughts. What distinguishes this in my mind and why I mention it here is that if that particular man witnessed such behavior today in another man, I think that he would report him, obtain surveillance video from the elevator, shame him publicly, and possibly end the career of the guy. I did nothing. I'm ambivalent as to whether doing nothing is the right thing after all in this circumstance. | None | Thank you for providing this survey. If I had ever reported this, the guy would deny it, and say that I am making this up to hurt his reputation. Or the authorities, back then, probably would have shrugged it off, as "really? why bother?" What distinguishes this in my mind is how even a "good guy" can have this sordid history. I don't mean to make too much of it - if it was only one foolish and harmless act, years ago, that hurt no one (except possibly me, but I deny that it hurt me other than now disrespecting this hypocrite when he projects to others as such a righteous man now and is universally respected for that veneer). I suppose if it was a pattern of behavior, then someone else would have reported some other instances witnessed by more than one person. | Male | |
882 | 12/5/2017 15:59:02 | This is not an example of sexual harassment, but I've included it as it's a hard-to-categorise example of how young female students of colour may be taken advantage of sexually. It's a long story with some terrible details, but here's a summary (which is still quite long). I am an East Asian female graduate student, who began a close polyamorous relationship with a white male graduate student in my first year of studies (Fall 2015). He is three years senior to me, and is writing his dissertation on feminism. It started off as a good relationship, and he was only seeing me when we became involved. I had no reason not to trust him (he expressed very radical and progressive views on race, feminism, and sexuality), and was happy for him to begin seeing other people. But in the short span of a few months, it slowly but surely escalated into a situation where he was (1) sleeping with two other East Asian women on campus, (2) had slept with two other East Asian women on trips overseas, and (3) was sexting a half-Asian woman who was in another country. Before meeting, he had also been involved with several Asian woman. One of them was an female undergraduate in philosophy he saw when he was already a graduate student, and their relationship ended terribly for her. The fetishistic nature of all of this slowly got to me, and it was emotionally devastating as he was someone I had come to trust. Our relationship deteriorated and ended very badly. There was a lot of gaslighting involved, and many attempts to make me feel guilty and blame the other women involved, but I eventually realised that he was the one with the problem. The relationship ended extremely badly, and I developed PTSD shortly afterwards. I was afraid to be on campus and in my department, for fear of seeing him and the other women on campus. He also lives right next to the department (his room can be seen a short distance away from the main entrance). The PTSD was debilitating, and has affected me from Spring 2016 to now (Fall 2017). It set back my work and personal life in many ways. Amongst other symptoms, I had multiple panic attacks daily. My mental health problems were exacerbated by my knowledge that he was literally being paid to do research on feminism. As no crime or policy violation had been committed, the department could do nothing other than to offer me psychological support, and extensions on incomplete work. I am thankful for them. After a long journey, I was finally told a week ago by my therapist that I no longer fit the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. There is still work to be done, and it is still difficult to sit in the same room as him as I am often forced to do. But I am proud of the progress I've made, and look forward to getting even better. | 1st-3rd year of PhD programme | Three years senior to me in the PhD programme | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Philosophy | I received a fair amount of social support from my fellow graduate students after the fallout, who, unknown to me at the time of the relationship, were nervous on my behalf as they knew of his racial fetish. My professors' hands were tied, and some of them were on his dissertation committee. But some of them privately offered me enormous amounts of personal psychological support, for which I'm grateful. My professors were also understanding of my three unresolved Incomplete grades for seminars I took. | None. He continues to be paid to do research on feminism. | Three longstanding Incompletes that are still unresolved | A long period of PTSD, depression, prescription and recreational drug abuse | I've become even more determined to make the field better for minorities. | For anyone who has read this long story, thank you. | Male | ||
883 | 12/5/2017 15:59:48 | This is not an example of sexual harassment, but I've included it as it's a hard-to-categorise example of how young female students of colour may be taken advantage of sexually. It's a long story with some terrible details, but here's a summary (which is still quite long). I am an East Asian female graduate student, who began a close polyamorous relationship with a white male graduate student in my first year of studies (Fall 2015). He is three years senior to me, and is writing his dissertation on feminism. It started off as a good relationship, and he was only seeing me when we became involved. I had no reason not to trust him (he expressed very radical and progressive views on race, feminism, and sexuality), and was happy for him to begin seeing other people. But in the short span of a few months, it slowly but surely escalated into a situation where he was (1) sleeping with two other East Asian women on campus, (2) had slept with two other East Asian women on trips overseas, and (3) was sexting a half-Asian woman who was in another country. Before meeting, he had also been involved with several Asian woman. One of them was an female undergraduate in philosophy he saw when he was already a graduate student, and their relationship ended terribly for her. The fetishistic nature of all of this slowly got to me, and it was emotionally devastating as he was someone I had come to trust. Our relationship deteriorated and ended very badly. There was a lot of gaslighting involved, and many attempts to make me feel guilty and blame the other women involved, but I eventually realised that he was the one with the problem. The relationship ended extremely badly, and I developed PTSD shortly afterwards. I was afraid to be on campus and in my department, for fear of seeing him and the other women on campus. He also lives right next to the department (his room can be seen a short distance away from the main entrance). The PTSD was debilitating, and has affected me from Spring 2016 to now (Fall 2017). It set back my work and personal life in many ways. Amongst other symptoms, I had multiple panic attacks daily. My mental health problems were exacerbated by my knowledge that he was literally being paid to do research on feminism. As no crime or policy violation had been committed, the department could do nothing other than to offer me psychological support, and extensions on incomplete work. I am thankful for them. After a long journey, I was finally told a week ago by my therapist that I no longer fit the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. There is still work to be done, and it is still difficult to sit in the same room as him as I am often forced to do. But I am proud of the progress I've made, and look forward to getting even better. | 1st-3rd year of PhD programme | Three years senior to me in the PhD programme | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Philosophy | I received a fair amount of social support from my fellow graduate students after the fallout, who, unknown to me at the time of the relationship, were nervous on my behalf as they knew of his racial fetish. My professors' hands were tied, and some of them were on his dissertation committee. But some of them privately offered me enormous amounts of personal psychological support, for which I'm grateful. My professors were also understanding of my three unresolved Incomplete grades for seminars I took. | None. He continues to be paid to do research on feminism. | Three longstanding Incompletes that are still unresolved | A long period of PTSD, depression, prescription and recreational drug abuse | I've become even more determined to make the field better for minorities. | For anyone who has read this long story, thank you. | Male | ||
884 | 12/5/2017 16:04:02 | There is a senior male scholar in my field who regularly--compulsively even--oversteps boundaries with most women he encounters in professional settings. Over the past decade (and I know from senior colleagues that this has gone on much longer), I have both experienced and witnessed inappropriate behavior from him on multiple occasions at conferences, invited talks, etc., including: 1. excessively touching/stroking women's arms, shoulders, and backs, 2. giving out French "bisous" that just happen, as if by accident, to land on the recipient's lips, 3. handing out his phone number with a casual invitation to visit him at his hotel later. | Grad student, junior scholar | Senior scholar in field | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Medieval studies | Unknown (don't know if anyone has ever reported him to his current or previous institutions) | None to my knowledge. Still actively working, teaching and advising grad students. | Not much, as I've never worked in his department and have always had the freedom to politely (more on that) disengage and avoid working closely with him. More concerning is how his behavior may have impacted his students and junior colleagues who don't have that freedom. | Again, as an outsider, I've only ever felt uncomfortable and not really threatened. But conferences are anxiety-inducing enough for young scholars without having to "diplomatically" fend off unwelcome advances. | Thankfully I have had a lot of support from other senior scholars and have never had to rely on his. I have privately advised female students to avoid working with him. I do feel somewhat constrained by our shared networks to be friendly toward him (at arm's length!), and find it sad that that's a dance young academics must learn to get by (which, as a side effect, teaches harassers that sexually aggressive behavior is no big deal). | I know of a number of other incidents involving other harassers and victims, but will leave them the choice to add their stories or not. | Male | ||
885 | 12/5/2017 16:10:13 | I was touched by someone I did not want touching me. I was also subjected to crude remarks in public. | Assistant Professor without tenure | Provost/VP for Academic Affairs | Small Liberal Arts College | History | I was told to leave this person alone. | None | Denial of tenure the first time I went up for it; ongoing financial loss and marginalization by the institution at which I am still employed. | Over time I have come to hate this place as well as the work that I spent a decade of my life to prepare for and thousands of dollars I am still paying back. | As I get older, I am increasingly stuck at an institution that does not want me here and refuses to promote me regardless of what I do | Male | |||
886 | 12/5/2017 16:24:22 | Three different incidents in three different Canadian universities as I worked towards my doctorate in Englisht Language and Literature. The first involved several approaches by a professor to join his "groupies" to share wine and literary discussion. I believe one or more of my peers became his paramour and I was a distinct outsider for not joining in. Their marks were quite high! The second was more serious and involved being stalked by a professor in the department who made several attempts to get in to my apartment accompanied by compliments and then pleas to pursue a relationship and which was only stopped by threats of exposure by my fellow student and myself. Interestingly, while he was not one of my profs, his best friend gave me the lowest mark in the class (all my other marks were in the "A" range.) The third incident may have cost me a position as an assistant professor when I rejected the advances of one of the professors on the hiring committee who had invited me into his office after the interview. This included removing his hand from my knee. | Undergrad, MA candidate, PH. D.a.b.d. | All had tenure | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | English Language and Literature | Not officially reported | None | Emotional trauma for sure, career impedimentry, constant struggle against the "old boy's " network | Feelings of guilt, loss, inadequacy, defeat and despair | Ended up completing all but my doctoral thesis and later left academics and became an elementary teacher where I have dealt with harassment of a different kind! | Male | |||
887 | 12/5/2017 16:25:34 | My professor was so happy to start working with me on my Ph.D. Shortly after I started working with him something very odd happened. I wanted to work on a topic and he emplored me to use only a certain source - a new "Anchor Bible Dictionary". I told him I was beyond the stage of relying on a dictionary and should be using primary sources. He insisted. I wrote a paper based on his "advice" Later, when others were given teaching appointments I was denigned. Years later an encounter with another professor of mine shed light on his odd request. He had taken the paper based on this limited dictionary to the chair and complained to him of my poor quality work. This set the scene for his control over me. To make a long story short he attempted to corner me, even going as far at to tell me that I had an extension to submit my final Ph. D. manuscript. I recorded his conversation with me on the phone. He was the Graduate Advisor of our department so there was no way he was making a mistake. I called the Faculty of Graduate Studies and found out I didn't have an extension. I didn't need one. I am one of the few Ph.D. candidates who submitted their manuscript without approval from their Supervisor. I have no clear idea what he was up to however I had been warned to avoid him but no one ever told me why. Once I realized that something very odd and manipulative was going on, I felt that he was trying to manuoever me into a situation where he would be totally in control and I would be desparate and to anything to get out of it. The only thing I could imagine that he was up to was sexual in nature, although he never insinuated anything. His behaviour, the isolation and ostricization he manufactored is highly suspect. | Ph. D. Candidate | Full Professor, Head Graduate Supervisor | University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON Canada | Religious Studies | I had a meeting with someone from the Faculty of Graduate Studies who was alarmed about the fact that he had misguided me years ago.r | I was denigned teaching experience. Other students and professors remarked to me that I it was odd that students in their second semester were teaching courses and I had been there for years and had only taught one. I never got a scholarship when many of his other male students did. I was not allowed to publish. I was constantly told I 'wasn't ready". One new professor learned of my research in his job interview and asked to meet me. He was gobsmacked that I wasn't published and he was not in a position to help me publish. He later asked to me my advisor but Reinhard said no he wouldn't give me up. | This made me fall behind on publishing and teaching experience. I was not well respected. I did get a full time teaching job before I graduated however it was not well received by my department head. The lack of teaching experience and published meant I was far behind. | Devastating. I was humiliated. I kept at it because I believed in my research and for personal reasons. | I now work in a Liquor store. I have a Ph. D. I am very unfullfilled and feel embarassed to end up working at $16 an hour and no benefits. | Thank you very very much for the opportunity to address this. I graduated in 2002. I stalled my courses and took far too long to finish because I needed to keep some control. I did get a Ph. D. however, it is useless now as a career. | Male | ||
888 | 12/5/2017 16:33:52 | I was in my last semester of my undergraduate degree and writing my thesis. My married much older thesis supervisor told me he was in love with me and he was 'open to whatever I was open to.' I had been without parental contact for two years and he knew - I worked three part time jobs, including for him, for several years. He was the only ongoing adult in my life (I was 24 and he was 50). I had feelings for him but looking back they were ridiculously idealized and based on neediness for adult support. We got involved and under the terrible stress of it I dropped to 89 pounds. I tried to end things once a week and he would go into hysterics contacting me, escalating in urgency and threats to hurt himself until I contacted him back. He told me not to tell anyone - roommates, friends, other faculty - because he said the real trouble with involvements was the perception that I would not have earned my grades. He also made sure I knew he was friends with the Dean and the President of the University. I froze on the writing of my thesis. The term ended and I still could not bring myself to write. He urged me to finish, saying he could not wait to 'get his hands on me when I was done.' (We had not had intercourse but were sexually involved). Ultimately he spent a week in my room sitting beside me as I wrote so he could make sure I finished. The day I handed in my thesis I moved back to my parent's home, even though it was not a safe or healthy environment for me. I was one course away from finishing a Physical Science degree as well, and my plan had been to finish that during the summer, but I left to get away from him. I started a joint Masters-PhD program and was still confused and kept in touch with him, but while trying to maintain boundaries which he did not respect. I saw him in person once and he pressured me and would not take no for answer for sexual activity. I finally got help, blocked his number and he became hysterical and blamed this on 'people who were influencing me.' He contacted faculty and other grad students at my new university to ask questions about me. I fell into a deep two year major depression and never finished my Masters. | Undergraduate | Thesis supervisor | Small Liberal Arts College | McMaster | Political Science | None | None | Ended it | I was acutely depressed for two years. Returning to graduate school triggered panic attack and anxiety. | I did not finish my Physical Science BSc or my Masters. I left academics. I worked in non-profits to support myself and now teach part time as an adjunct at community college. | Male | ||
889 | 12/5/2017 16:44:43 | Professor slept with his advisee, and in turn heaped free stuff and praise on her. After a student complaint, he was told to "knock it off" by the university but was allowed to keep advising her. Changed his tune and made meetings hugely uncomfortable by openly criticizing her to other students and mocking her failure to make progress. | grad student | supervisor | Other R1 | University of Southern California | x | Told to stop, allowed to still advise student. | None: he was a huge moneymaker for the university | USC's response to this and other incidents forever made me distrustful of reporting any incident of power-based harassment. | Contributed to an overall unhealthy, distrustful department | Male | |||
890 | 12/5/2017 16:46:48 | Several incidents that included myself and several women, including a full professor, in my department. First incident began when I was an MA student. I knew him from classes and he seemed harmless enough. He asked for my number to discuss coursework and then he began to text me constantly. He would ask to come over or invite me over; I then found out he was going through a divorce. He wouldn't take no for an answer. He borrowed one of my books to scan for class and asked about "Netflix and chilling" when I asked to get my book back. I politely declined. Soon afterwards, he yelled at me in public after an unofficial department event and promised he "wasn't going to rape" me. He got really angry. I quickly left and turned off my phone because he kept texting me. I filed a Title IX after this and began to avoid him at all opportunities. We had two classes and he tried to "talk" to me about what happened. The Title IX coordinator didn't file anything. When I filed a Title IX the second time, she couldn't even find my file and then, once she had found it, claimed that I was "more concerned for his well being." No, I wanted to be safe. In other cases in my department, he has done similar things to students who were younger than him. He also "accidentally" showed his penis at an unofficial department function. Several female students saw it. He has been known to be openly hostile to female professors; his whole body language and attitude changes when talking to them, especially when one even potentially challenges his authority. One professor filed a Title IX against him. Our Title IX coordinator did nothing the first time 3 women and 1 professor reported him; she hardly did anything the second time several women filed a Title IX complaint. | 2nd year MA student and 1st year PhD student | 2nd year Graduate student | Other R1 | History | None/he met with Title IX twice (once for each time I filed a Title IX on him) | None | I am much more cautious around male academics. I always make sure to keep a "safe" distance, especially after my harasser attempted to say I was friendly with him and potentially try to blame me after his behavior. I switched out of a class to be away from him. I know other women have switched classes, one changed her focus away from European history to American history, as an MA student to avoid being in the same class as him. | I went to a psychiatrist and was prescribed anxiety pills. I couldn't be in the same room as him because I would break out into a cold sweat and it would become hard to breathe. I avoid contact with him, and walk extra fast when I see him. | I switched out of a class to be away from him. I am still continuing with academia, mostly due to the support of my friends and advisor who has been so kind and made sure I have to interact with him as little as possible. | Male | |||
891 | 12/5/2017 16:47:20 | I was a female PhD student who was also working full time. I still had office space in my academic department and shared the office with my supervisor's new post-doctoral student. This post-doc indicated interest in my PhD project as well as my external job. Often after work I would come into the office to work on my PhD and the post-doc would also be working. The post-doc suggested collaborating on a number of projects and I was very excited by the prospect of professional collaboration, as the research sounded very interesting and might lead to publications. The post-doc then thought that because we spent time together discussing research as well as personal matters and news/popular culture, and occasionally shared a meal in a public restaurant, that meant we were "going out", that I was his girlfriend; he repeatedly tried to put his arm around me or to hold hands with me. Every time this happened I said that I was not his girlfriend and that I wanted to keep the relationship professional. He said he would be going to another country for another postdoc and he asked me to join him after I was finished my PhD, so that we could collaborate. He said he would pay all expenses. He offered to help me finish my PhD by writing one or more chapters, and by paying my tuition. I declined his offer and reminded him that I was not his girlfriend. I told him that I was disappointed that he had turned a cordial professional relationship into something that made me very uncomfortable. I stopped doing my PhD work in the office unless I knew that he would not be there, and I tried to avoid him whenever possible. He left to do his other postdoc and much international traveling, and he kept sending me letters and gifts for years afterwards, from all over the globe. I never replied to or acknowledged his mail. In some of the early letters, he declared his undying love for me and repeatedly asked when I would be joining him so that we could be together. I stopped reading the letters. I did not finish my PhD and stayed working full time, then quit my job and moved to another country for another full-time job. I was glad to be so far away from him in a location where he could not easily find me or contact me directly. Colleagues who were not aware that I was not interested in correspondence from him forwarded me mail that he sent to me at the University. The postdoc has sent the occasional message to me over the years through LinkedIn, although we are not Linked. The messages have been personal but without romantic overtones. Over twenty years later, I am now in an academic position in my original country, and recently received an email from the former postdoc (at my work email) to let me know that he is starting a new PhD (in an unrelated field to his postdoc area of study) at a University in a city that is not very far from where I live now. I am not concerned, but I do not understand why he continues to make contact; I have never replied to any of his mail or emails. I should demand that he leave me alone and never contact me again by any means, but it would mean making some sort of contact with him to do this, and I am concerned he will misinterpret this as some kind of interest in him. | PhD student midway through my degree | Postdoctoral student of my PhD supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Toronto | Molecular systematics | never reported it to anyone of authority at the institution, only to some friends | I don't know; none that I am aware of | made me disappointed in myself, made me disappointed that yet another interaction with a male colleague on a professional basis turned into something that was neither professional nor desired; may have contributed to me not finishing my PhD and leaving the country, although the PhD was almost dead in the water already before the incident | did not help; at the time I was already being treated for depression, unrelated to the harassment | I left academics for a very long time but had a very interesting, enriching career as a civil servant in another country; now I am teaching professionally in an academic institution in a very satisfying position | Male | ||
892 | 12/5/2017 16:53:22 | He was a visiting professor at my university who returned later to a neighboring institution. It was well-known that he hit on his students, especially the undergrads. I don't know how much these lopsided power relations were consensual but I have always felt uncomfortable that I remained silent. Only much later did I realize how widespread this kind of behavior was by him as well as by several other male faculty in the departments he visited (at both institutions). It's clear that his sexual come-ons to his students were part of a pattern of harassment that both departments/universities tolerated. Male students, even the lackluster ones, were mentored by him. Meanwhile, almost all the female students, especially the smartest ones, he tried (often successfully) to have sex with. This division of attentions permeated interactions well beyond his specific 'affairs' but he was not the only faculty member in those departments to abuse trust and practice inegalitarian treatment of their students. | I was a grad student taking classes from him. | He was my professor. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | -- Both institutions in same elite/ivy category | His field was German | None whatsoever to my knowledge, One of the professors who invited him to teach made frequent jokes about how every time the visiting professor came to speak/teach, he had a new student on his arm. Most were 25+ years younger. It was creepy. | None. | None except that people always assumed that any women whose work he praised had slept with him. Some of his relationships may have been consensual but he also slept with people who undoubtedly were hurt by his transgressions of appropriate boundaries. At the very least, these young women lost their opportunity to have an unbiased teacher and an enduring academic mentor for their work. He stole himself from them. In effect that meant that he also stole himself from those of us who were not objects of his attentions. | None. | This kind of abuse of power always makes you wonder what you should have done differently to defend people less able to defend themselves. I wish I'd had the courage to try to make that professor understand the boundaries that he should have respected. | Thank you for compiling these surveys. | Male | |
893 | 12/5/2017 16:56:16 | A professor requested my friendship on Facebook when I was in his class. He also requested the friendship of another young woman in the class and nobody else. He posted on our walls suggestively. He showed up at her work when she was bartending a propositioned her for sex. He told me he no longer has sex with his wife. He texted her his room number at a conference. I told my "feminist professor" about this and she just told him about it and he made fun of me for complaining. | Graduate student | Full professor | Other R1 | English | None | Made me bitter/frustrated/disillusioned | Male | ||||||
894 | 12/5/2017 17:01:19 | At a conference my supervisor told me he was in love with me and wanted to start a relationship. He is twice my age and married. He told me he tried to not to have these feelings, but it was the way that I looked at him and he couldn't fight his feelings. He told me this while we were working on my poster presentation the next day in my hotel room. this is not an uncommon occurrence as typically him and all his students work in someone's room at a conference, but I suddenly realized that i was alone in the room with him and that he was now a threat. I was terrified. I politely declined, but it took a good hour of discussion to convince him that I didn't feel the same way. At the time I felt like this man had all the power to make me not graduate. | graduate student | Thesis supervisor, professor | Other Type of School | Canadian University | Engineering | I didn't report, finished by thesis shortly there after and graduated as fast as I could | none | Minor. | I already struggled with anxiety disorder on low self esteem with regards to my career. There was a lot of self doubt for years. I was sexually harassed quite a bit by my fellow students as an undergrad. I was told by many that I only got into graduate school because of my looks. This man was my mentor for years, he knew of my self esteem issues and he helped to build up my confidence over the years. In one moment , I was right back to being the girl that got into grad school " because of her tits". It's been over 10 years and I'm better now, but it took real work. | I don't trust men when dating very easily. They are only interested in me for sex. | Female | ||
895 | 12/5/2017 17:06:12 | Récurrent sexual harassment by research supervisor - innapropriate comments, questions about marital status and boyfriend, unwanted touching and staring, comments about appearance and dress | Undergraduate student/research assistant | Tenured professor/ undergraduate research supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | McGill university- faculty of science/médecine | Department of neuroscience/neurosurgery/psychiatry | The dean of graduate studies and the dean of medicine met with myself and the 7 other female students also making complaints, ultimately they did not take any action and did not reprimand or discipline the professor in question | None | Made me drop out of the masters in experimental medicine I had been accepted to under the supervisor. | Generated a lot of anxiety and stress. Prompted me to visit a cognitive behavioral therapist on how to manage interactions with the professor for the remainder of the time it took to complete the project | Made me drop out of the graduate program I intended to complete. | Male | ||
896 | 12/5/2017 17:11:18 | My best friend was sexually propositioned by her mentor professor on a school-related trip. He read her explicit poetry and followed her to her hotel room. | Undergrad student | Professor. He is still my professor even though it’s been reported. He’s also Chair of the Communications Department. | Other Type of School | Arizona Western College | English | They interviewed the victim, the perpetrator, me, and others who knew what happened. The professor was given a slip in his file with no repercussions. | None. He was promoted. | None. | Negative impact. He is teaching a class that I have to have to graduate, and no other professors teach it. | I am uncomfortable on my campus. However, it is not my story. The victim is still suffering. | Male | ||
897 | 12/5/2017 17:12:44 | Staff at research center said my lipstick was sexual. Then something about my using lipstick was me showing my vagina or wanting to show my vagina. I just felt deeply uncomfortable and more black pants, black shirt an no make up and left hair messy to not be talked too. Dean of my head school college frequently referred to grad students as sweet girls. | Grad student. | Superior, research staff and then, dean. | Other R1 | UIC | College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs | Didn't report | Na | Na | I might have reduced opportunity by being less of a show boat. I don't want to be physically thought about. | Could have gone to public agency and left engineering firm. I make less money at nonprofit. Job is gratifying, but not first goal. | Male | ||
898 | 12/5/2017 17:12:48 | Multiple of incidents of sexual harrasement by peers in undergraduate program: penises drawn in my notes, sexual gestures made at me while presenting in front the class, being cut off and told I was "hot" while trying to do work projects. Being labelled as a "slut" even though I was a virgin at the time. Name calling. Being asked on numerous occasions if my breasts were real. Ass slapping. Unwanted advances, unwanted kissing. | undergraduate student | fellow students in my program | Other Type of School | University of Western Ontario, (Canada) | Civil Engineering | None. It was 15 years ago | None | None. Harassment is not tolerated in my workplace and I'm doing extremely well as an engineer. I even went on to get a M.ASc at a differently University | Anxiety disorder. Distrust of men in relationships | Career wise it only made me want to succeed even more. I'm 37 and still single though. I don't trust men in relationships. They only want me for sex. | When I decided that I wanted to pursue a graduate degree, I went to a professor to get more information and was told that I was not the right type of student for a Master's Degree as I never spoke up in class or really participated. I had amazing grades though. I wish I had told him the reason why I never participated. I just didn't want to draw any more negative attention from my peers. | Male | |
899 | 12/5/2017 17:22:56 | ||||||||||||||
900 | 12/5/2017 17:23:01 | touched without consent by my supervisor in a hotel at a conference. ran away, and then had my supervisor repeatedly knock on my door and try to call my room all night. it was terrifying to me at the time. | student | phd supervisor | Other R1 | University of Waterloo | Physics | I didn't report it. needed letters of reference. | none | In the end I am very fortunate and ended up in a tenure-track position but i changed research areas to avoid him (starting fresh is hard) and i left collaborations I was in as a phd student to avoid him, significantly hurting my publication record. | causes anxiety often, especially around conferences. I avoid social interactions with colleagues. i avoid conferences when I know he will be there, but sometimes I still need to be in the same room as him and it is torture for me. | i'd like to think that it hasn't affected my life choices, but I'm sure it has. I have a hard time trusting people, it was such a violating experience. It has made me a better supervisor to my students and made me much more sensitive to subtle signs of harassment. With more career security now I also feel able to speak openly about things that happened to me as a student (I am in a male dominated field and besides the incident with my supervisor I experienced other harassment and many uncomfortable interactions during my phd) | Male | ||
901 | 12/5/2017 17:27:12 | Whenever I had to go to his office he would stand immediately in front of me and stare at my breasts as we talked, never once looking me in the eyes. | Student | My instructor | Small Liberal Arts College | Liberal Arts | I didn't report it - the place was a viper's pit and I knew I'd be harassed completely out of there. | It made me more determined to stand up for myself | It made me angry a lot of the time and undermined my self-confidence because I was a straight A student but my breasts got all the attention (and they are NOT spectacular breasts, by the way) | I went into the field of Human Rights | Male | ||||
902 | 12/5/2017 17:27:45 | professor had me over to her house under the pretense of dinner then tried to get me to sleep over with her, in her bed. | grad student | visiting professor, now a senior administrator elsewhere | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | |||||||||
903 | 12/5/2017 17:43:28 | I had finished my MSc and had been working in the academic department in my University for a year afterwards. One of my former professors asked me to join him to do some fieldwork. I agreed and we spent one evening locally and then one weekend out of town, conducting field research and collecting samples. It was professional and productive the whole time and on the overnight trip we stayed in separate rooms at a hotel. He paid for both rooms and for all meals. When we returned late at night from the weekend of sampling, he dropped me off in the parking lot on campus where my car was parked. Before I exited the vehicle, he put his hand on my leg and bent forward to kiss me. I turned my head and he kissed me on the cheek. He said he had romantic intentions and wanted to start an affair. He confessed that he had had an affair some years previously with one of this graduate students but that because I was no longer his student nor employee, that it would be OK to be with him. I declined his advances, said goodnight, and left the car. Subsequent interactions with him were somewhat awkward at first, and we remained cordial. | in between MSc and PhD, working full time. | former undergraduate professor and MSc committee member | Other R1 | University of Guelph | Biology | not reported; I did not consider it as harassment at the time, just an embarrassing and awkward incident | He is very highly respected in his field. I occasionally hear rumours from former academic colleagues of his alleged misbehaviours in the distant past, and have heard unsubstantiated rumours of harsh academic discipline for some kind of harassment of a female student in the more recent past. | He later wrote me a letter of recommendation for my PhD application but I never saw the contents of the letter, and I did not mention the "harassment" incident when I asked if he would be a reference for me; neither did he, and he agreed to be a reference. I never should have asked him for a reference and I still regret this very very much. | Confusion mostly, I guess; if anything I was a bit flattered, but mostly disappointed in his behaviour and in mine in allowing myself to be in a vulnerable position alone with him in the field and in his car - if he had not been a decent sort, it could have gone horribly wrong. I considered him as a colleague and a mentor, not a romantic interest, so I did not think anything inappropriate would happen. I later heard from a friend that she has also been approached by him in a similar manner some time earlier and that, unbeknowst to me, he had a bit of a reputation for this kind of behaviour. This made me think I was a stupid idiot for getting into the situation and for being so naive. I never thought it would happen to me, as I had very low self-esteem and thought that no-one would be interested in me in that way anyway. I supposed it made a lasting impact on me as one of the first incidents in my adult life where a male colleague turned a professional working relationship or platonic friendship into something that was also personal/romantic/sexual while I was not interested in them in that way. I felt like I was not a worthy colleague, I was just a girl. It left me jaded and wary about future professional collaborations and interactions with male colleagues. | I have tried to not to get in a possible compromising position with a male colleague. I continued my academic pursuits but later quit my PhD for a full-time position in a government laboratory. | At the time, his "confession" about having had an affair with one of his students seemed to confirm my impression that "they all do it" - male professors having affairs with much younger female students; now someone I admired and respected very much professionally and personally was human and just like the rest of them. I have not talked about this incident to anyone else other than the one friend at the time. | Male | |
904 | 12/5/2017 17:43:44 | The prof used to stand very close to all the female students when talking to them. We laughed at him behind his back but he really made us feel uncomfortable. He also wrote suggestive comments on my paper, like about "the shape" of it, etc. He even phoned me at home where I lived with my parents to ask me out for a drink. (I didn't go.) | I was an undergraduate. | Professor. | Other R1 | Political Studies | I didn't tell them at the time because during the 1980s it was something that happened that I just thought young women had to put up with. Later, when he was up for some kind of promotion, I think I did write about it in an anonymous survey that our department held about him. But as he got the job, I don't think it made a difference. | See above. | I'm not sure it had an impact. | It was creepy but he was the only one who was harassing students--in my experience--so it was more about his aberrant behaviour. | Just pisses me off now that he got away scot-free. I hope he is feeling worried now. I might send him an email and remind him. | Male | |||
905 | 12/5/2017 17:43:50 | Sexually assaulted (raped) by member of lab group after a social get together with the entire group. | Undergraduate Student | Peer, member of lab group | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of British Columbia | Geography | Counselling support, referral to Vancouver Rape Crisis Nurses at Vancouver General Hospital | None | I switched programs, moved to a different province, haven't visited Vancouver since, and completed an interdisciplinary (non-honours) programme through distance education so as to not incur more student debt by switching to a completely different school. By not being in the same city as the person who assaulted me, this also meant that I did not have the same opportunity for networking and using the social connections available when attending a school in person. | Post traumatic stress disorder, years of ongoing therapy. | Career choices changed and delayed | Male | ||
906 | 12/5/2017 17:45:06 | In 2010, my TA supervisor regularly used inappropriate language when addressing me, calling me cutie and other pet names, signing emails "XO". He always wanted to have meetings at his house. He made a lot of really dirty jokes that were not at all related to the course (obviously). In fact he didn't actually teach much so I tried to pick up the slack for the sake of the students. My colleague was his student and he would always walk behind her (to watch) and I started to notice he would walk behind me as well. He treated his female undergrad students in the class more favorably than the males. I didn't do much about it, I just wanted to get through it and move on. I wrote an email to him detailing what was inappropriate and unwelcome and he tried to laugh it off and chalk it up to cultural differences. Years later he still invites me on trips even though I've never said yes and have no other interactions with him (I've moved on to another institution). | Graduate student | TA supervisor | Other R1 | Environmental Science | Equity services was helpful. Admin was understanding and offered support if I wanted to make a report. I chose not to make an official report for the sake of my career. | Waiting out for a lovely retirement. Has been getting away with it for years. | None | At the time I felt very guilty for not shutting it down/ being a poor role model for the students. I still feel guilty knowing he hasn't changed. | None | Male | |||
907 | 12/5/2017 17:52:09 | 1. when i was an undergrad, my teacher (a phd candidate who was teaching the course) seduced me, and i let him. it started with personal emails sent during the semester, followed by a request for an in-person meeting concerning feedback on my final paper (which i'm sure not all class participants were subjected to) and then later the same day, an email asking me on a date. i went because i liked the attention; he made me feel smart and important, and i thought that he would help me if i continued to grad school in this academic field. with time i have realized the power dynamics that were at play. 2. when i was doing my masters degree, another phd candidate (who was auditing an MA course i was taking) began to aggressively harass me. he would always make sure to sit next to me in the small class, which was distracting and made me feel very uncomfortable. he would tell me false/negative rumours about my other male colleagues, i believe in an attempt to alienate me from them and to make himself seem superior. at break and after class, he would corner me and force conversation, which veered between unwelcome flirtation and dismissive explanations of my own research topic. he obtained my email address and used it to begin on-site harassing me, often emailing me about my appearance while we sat in class. i waited longer than i'd like to admit before reacting, because i was afraid of making an awkward situation in my first year of grad school, especially with someone in higher standing than me (phd vs. masters student). eventually, after the messages became increasingly sexual, i told him (via email) that i wasn't interested and wanted to be left alone. he responded with 5 or 6 emails sent in succession, accusing me of over-reacting, of being a bad feminist, and generally manipulating me into thinking that i owed him a second chance -- manipulation so effective that it almost worked, had it not been for my supportive cohort assuring me that he was completely out of line. at the end of semester, i approached our (male) professor about the incident, as i knew i'd been hugely distracted by this all semester and would likely get a low grade as a result. though i was extremely nervous to bring this to the prof's attention (firstly because i am generally uncomfortable talking to profs/people in positions of authority, secondly because i found the whole situation to be very embarrassing and didn't want to admit any of it to him, and third because i thought he would think i was making it up for a higher grade). after briefly laying out what had happened all semester and the different types harassment i had endured from the phd student, the professor's response was to thank me for not taking the matter to the administration. i finished the class with my lowest grade received at the graduate level up until that point. | undergraduate and graduate | two phd students, and one tenure professor who protected one of the phd students | Other Type of School | concordia university | fine arts (film studies) | professor thanked me for not taking the issue higher | none | extreme anxiety, negative impact on grades and interpersonal relationships, trying to take courses outside of the department (to the detriment of my research) in order to avoid the people involved | extreme anxiety, feelings of inadequacy, resulted in dropping several courses in order to be part-time in status to preserve mental health | disappointment in academia generally, forgoing any attempt at pursuing higher levels of grad school (phd), the awful realization that there is no support for victims nor consequences for perpetrators and those who protect them | thank you for studying this and i'm sorry you'll have to read so many crappy stories | Male | |
908 | 12/5/2017 17:53:01 | In 1985 the Pharmacology Professor made sexual advances towards me when I objected he threatened to fail me after I refused to meet him after hours in his office for extra tuition he failed me. I challenged the decision to no avail | Nursing under grad | Pharmacology Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Western Ontario | Nursing | No support from the Nursing Faculty I did not Graduate. | none | I could not advance in my career had to take time off lost wages and had to repeat the course one pear later at my own expense | Diagnosed with severe anxiety | I did not graduate that year with my class, consequently I wasted a whole year and had to travel 200 miles at great expense to repeat the course . T was married at the time with an 8 year old son. | Male | ||
909 | 12/5/2017 18:02:58 | Professor of Linguistics at UW Madison took every opportunity to grope female grad students. If you rejected his advance, he lowered your grade for his course, which was a required core course for many emphases. When I first arrived in the English department, another female grad student warned me about him. He repeatedly told me to come to his office for conferences, but I was able often to find ways to avoid being alone with him by having someone with me, or meeting with him in the hallway. I didn't escape his groping and uninvited kissing entirely, but he must have seen through my evasive techniques because he gave my work a B+, the only grade below a solid A I ever received throughout my graduate work at U of Arizona and U of Wisconsin. But I did better than a fellow grad student who ended up slapping him and pushing him off her. He gave her a D which meant she could not continue in grad. school. | I was a PhD grad students and TA | Full Professor and instructor of a core course. | Other R1 | University of Wisconsin (Madison) | English | I went to graduate director who told me there was nothing the university could do as this man had full tenure. | None, though I did hear that many years later he received a verbal rebuke. | I was considering doing doctoral work in linguistics, but I could not go in that field because I would have had to work with this professor. At the end of the year, when I received an unexpected adjunct teaching offer at UW-Eau Claire, I decided to leave UW-Madison. I never finished my PhD. | The harassment was compounded by the attempt by another English professor to put his name on my work and publish it without attribution to me. I had positive and supportive experiences in my two years with my professors at the University of Arizona from which I received my MA. But one year in Madison in the PhD program sent me into a depression and resulted in an ulcer. | I often wonder how my professional life might have been different had I finished my PhD in Linguistics, but I did have a 30 college teaching career with many successes and some awards. However, I always was considered "less than" because I didn't finish my PhD. And I never told any colleagues at UW-Eau Claire why I left Madison. So I think they assumed I just couldn't finish the dissertation, which was not the case at all. I left because I was not emotionally able to continue in Madison in a department which permitted male professors to take advantage of female grad students. | Male | ||
910 | 12/5/2017 18:04:20 | Small Liberal Arts College | |||||||||||||
911 | 12/5/2017 18:06:31 | One of the professors in our department had serial affairs with graduate students and possibly undergrads. He openly had an affair with a grad student whom he was supervising while I was a student in the department. This impacted all of the students in the program as she took on his authority, telling other students what he had said about their work. I reported this to the ombudsman, but nothing could be done as I was not the one involved with him. He went on to continue his pattern of having affairs with students. It is no secret. I quit grad school. There were many reasons why I left, but the prof's behaviour and the university's inability to deal with it were part of the problem. | Grad student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Western | Humanities | None as far as I could tell | None as far as I know | Deep distrust of the academic system | Frustration and anger. | It was one reason I left grad school | Male | ||
912 | 12/5/2017 18:17:38 | My supervisor would go into great detail about her "dates", including telling a story about a date who took her to a sex shop, in front of me and my student workers. She also rubbed my back and arms and ran her hand over my head. | I was staff working in an academic administrator's office. | She was my supervisor, brought in to manage the office in a restructuring. | Other R1 | The reporting structure was changed so that I no longer reported to her. My office location was changed to be away from her. As I'm male, it took a little doing to get university HR to take it seriously. (Departmental HR was great, though.) | Nothing immediate. | I began searching for another position away from that office. | Not great! | I was always careful to maintain professional boundaries, but that made it even more imperative for me. There's no way I would want anyone else to feel like I did, even through actions committed inadvertently. | Female | ||||
913 | 12/5/2017 18:21:08 | A library stalker /harasser groped me sexually in the library (he crawled up under my dress and grabbed me). This happened in the closed stacks of a big research library. I had a legal stack pass. He had an illegal stack pass (he worked for the university but was not a student or faculty member or administrator), but the library staff kept renewing it despite the fact that he had already stalked or attacked a number of women including a library worker. It was summer vacation and I was alone in the stacks. The attack was violating and terrifying. The university response was even more violating. | I was a PhD student. | I had never laid eyes on him before that afternoon. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | NA | Humanities | Sweet bumbling cops, kind bumbling library workers. And then from the university administration: absolute craven incompetence. I asked only that the university administrators take action to improve library security, do something about the known stalker/attacker, and set up a better, fairer system for reporting sexual harassment. They couldn't do the most minimal version of these things. | He was fired but only after he pleaded guilty in court to lewd conduct 1 yr later. | It was a a waste of time to try to get the university to take seriously a serial abuser in the library. The campus police were nearly all men and clueless. The Title IX administrators were incompetent AND obsessively preoccupied w/ keeping this out of the press. The official investigator wasn't qualified to take notes on a flea circus. She kept saying "It's your word against his" and asking me what I was wearing, etc. It was obvious the administration didn't value female graduate students. I persevered with a complaint because if a major research university couldn't keep its grad students safe in the public spaces of a library, then how could it expect to protect students behind closed doors from professors who did not respect boundaries? The U's Title IX compliance arrangements were nearly non-existent and the ones they pretended to put in place were almost worse.The silver lining was that the female prof who helped me through this became a mentor from whom I learned many important things about academia, including how to speak truth to power and survive. | I alternated between anxiety from the university's treatment of the women who had been stalked and groped by this guy and feeling empowered by support from friends and mentors. | --I have forever after been uncomfortable being alone in the closed stacks of a library. --I learned not to trust the administration or HR to protect our rights. --I learned, to paraphrase Sarah Ahmed, that when you expose a problem by filing a sexual harassment complaint, you become the problem. This is not a reassuring lesson, but it's a good one to have assimilated early in my academic career. | You are a hero for doing this! Thank you! Thank you! | Male | |
914 | 12/5/2017 18:23:07 | When I was an Assistant Professor, my Department Head was frequently just too close physically. Then he started winking at me during faculty meetings. It was humiliating. He would just put his hand on my shoulder in the hallway or something. It was nothing that would be seen as extreme but it really effected me. | I was an Assistant Professor. | Department Head | Other R1 | Plant Biology | I spoke with an Associate Dean about it. I think the Dean may have had an effect on the behavior. | Zero | Unclear | It caused me quite a bit of anguish. The harassment was so subtle but it was real and ate at me. | As an Assistant Professor I felt I just had to deal with it and move on as best I could. | Male | |||
915 | 12/5/2017 18:28:03 | In 1990 I was a new professor at U of T. I'm gay and was in a new relationship. The chair of the department invited me for lunch and asked more questions about my sexual relationship with my partner than about my academic progress. He always insisted on telling people that he knew I was gay from the moment he met me. A couple of years later I had an altercation with a colleague in the same department. The chair came to me not to resolve the issue, but to say that if I was feeling tense I could always go to his office, lock the door, and let him give me a blow job. | Untenured assistant professor | Full professor, chair of the department. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Frequent bouts of anger that he was able to pull this power play on me. I was able to write it off as just an unwanted advance, but the fact that I more or less had to laugh it off and play along with him bothered me, and in particular it made me realize how complicated this kind of harassment is. | Because of this incident I was determined never to let any younger faculty or students have the slightest reason to think that I was attracted to them, even if I was. It's just wrong to convey that kind of thing when you hold the power in the situation. | I was 38 at the time and he was around 60. I wasn't attracted to him in any way. I was embarrassed at his constant leering at me and my partner. I'm not very damaged by this, luckily; I just thought he was an absolute idiot. But I wasn't the only person he did this to. | Male | ||||||
916 | 12/5/2017 18:32:37 | sexually assaulted (rape) at beginning of second year of grad school (2012) | Graduate student | Graduate student (peer) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Sociology | None | None | extreme discomfort in department; feeling isolated and alone; loss of self-worth | have chosen to leave academia | Male | ||||
917 | 12/5/2017 19:15:58 | I am a Canadian who was hired at a university in Washington State as an Assistant Professor in Materials Science and Chemistry. I found the transition from graduate school, which I found to be collegial and enjoyable, to the highly competitive world of American academia to be very difficult. Sometime in my second year at WSU I was reading one of Jane Goodal's books. I was sitting in a faculty when I suddenly realized that I was surrounded by a classic primate male dominance pecking order, and that I was the male at the bottom. Until I had arrived at WSU I had been a quite successful student and postdoc, so needless to say I found my new position to low status to be difficult. The department had quite dysfunctional dynamics at the time and quite a lot of energy was expended by the faculty making sure that everyone stayed in their place in the pecking order. I did notice that the two women in the department were treated differently. They were not so much part of the pecking order, and for this I envied them. I simply wanted to be valued for who I was and to make a contribution. The environment was not encouraging and I often felt humiliated. I did not thrive this environment. I left after four years. After a lot of soul searching and with guidance from the book "What Color is My Parachute" I was able to redirect my life. I have since had quite successful career in industry. I am a valued employee in my firm and I feel I am making a contribution to its success. | Assistant Professor | The various Associate and Full Professors | R2 | I'd rather not say | Chemistry/Materials Science | Not applicable, since I did not file a complaint at the time. | Not applicable, since I did not file a complaint at the time. | I left academia and I would recommend anyone who is not happy in academia, for any reason, to leave and fine something for life fulfilling to do. | I think the stress of my four years in tenure track has permanently changed me. | Leaving academia was the best thing I ever did. For many years it was my dream and I worked hard to get there. However, academia is by nature highly competitive and only suitable for people who want to devote their life to their work. If one is looking for work-life balance and has variety of interests, then I now realize that academia is a poor choice of career, whether one is male or female. At the same time, I do feel that people in academia should be expected to work harder than other people and for less money. They have the privilege of being able to focus on their life's work, rather than working for someone else. But, if one does not have a life's work, then why bother, there are better things out there, I promise you. I also think too much effort is expended on counting the numbers of different people from different demographic groups. The focus should be on finding the most talented people, with a passion to pursue their interests despite the obstacles. It turns out that it was not for me, but I do acknowledge that great human progress has been made by giving selected people (mostly, but not exclusively, men) the opportunity to pursue their interests to the exclusion of all else (e.g. Newton, Einstein, Stephen Hawkings, John Polanyi, Margaret MacDonald, Jane Goodall, etc.). | not sure it is relevant | ||
918 | 12/5/2017 20:11:49 | Consensual sexual relationships with my PhD advisor. Being in a polyamorous lifestyles, we also had many consensual threesomes with his girlfriend. Also went to sexclubs while abroad. I was never pressured into anything. It is still going on. | PhD student | PhD advisor but I wouldnt say predator. | Other Research Agency | Wont answer. | Social sciences | Never felt the need to talk to the institution | None | None | None. We are good friends. | None. | I have decided to answer, even if clearly no harassment was done, just to illustrate a maybe unknown and unexplored avenue on this subject. Like I wrote, it was clearly consensual. I have been living in a ethical non-monogamous lifestyle for quite some time, and my good friend who is also my PhD advisor has a similar background. | Male | |
919 | 12/5/2017 20:14:56 | Undergrad senior year, I was taking an independent study with a professor I trusted an admired. One day, he stopped me while I was in the middle of presenting a paper to comment on the length of my eye lashes, and occasionally, he would make comments on the clothes I was wearing. He also told me at one point that I was "too pretty to be taken seriously." I am fairly certain that he thought he was being helpful somehow by telling me this. | Undergraduate | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Philosophy | I didn't report it. I wasn't entirely sure that it was actionable, but I knew it made me feel super uncomfortable and unsafe. | I stopped attending. | I didn't finish my undergrad degree | I can't even begin to quantify this. | Again, I didn't finish my degree. I trusted that this professor would be the one to write letters of recommendation to grad schools for me... | Male | |||
920 | 12/5/2017 20:36:57 | Would constantly try to flirt with me, and make me come work in his office with him, with the door shut. Would say gross comments about my body, sexual stuff. One day he asked me on a date and when I said no he screamed at me to the point where an admin from down the hall came to rescue me. | undergraduate (research assistant) | tenured faculty (supervisor) | Other R1 | UC Berkeley | They put me in mandated appointments with a sexual assault social worker, allowed me to drop the position, and pressured me to take anti-depressants. | none | My career blossomed when I chose to come to terms with what happened to me, and support other women and girls who also experience sexual harassment and assault. | I almost flunked out. It was my final semester and I was having panic attacks every time I tried to go to campus (I had also been raped by a classmate that same semester). I was an honors student before this event, and barely graduated. | I became an advocate for survivors of sexual assault and now study gender violence. | Male | |||
921 | 12/5/2017 20:38:03 | My advisor made frequent comments about my appearance and how attractive I must be to men my age. Comments like "I see a little skin between your shirt and your pants today; that hip bone must drive all the boys wild!" and "Your hair looks really nice today; all the boys were staring when you walked into the room". At first I thought he was trying to be nice or helpful, but his comments got creepier and creepier. Then, he started to touch me more than the male students in the lab. First it was just a hug to celebrate a milestone now and then, but soon he was insisting that he drive me the one mile between class and the lab and then he started to rest his hand on my shoulder the whole way. Then, one day his hand slipped under the collar of my shirt and he commented on how soft my skin was. I tried to avoid him more and more but the gradual nature of his harassment and his complete control over my academic future made it difficult to confront him directly. Shortly after that, he asked me to practice a presentation in his hotel room during a conference and pulled me onto his lap while I was speaking. The next week, he reached out and touch my left breast during a casual conversation about the shirt I was wearing. After this, I quit my PhD program and tried to finish a master's degree as quickly as possible. | Graduate Student | My advisor - tenured professor | Other R1 | Georgia Institute of Technology | Mechanical Engineering | I asked the dean of my college about switching advisors, but the dean (male) shut the conversation down with the response that "no other advisor will want to take you on at this point." After graduating, a fellow lab mate and I filed two separate formal complaints with a Georgia Tech lawyer about our experiences, but we never received any follow-up information. | None - the offending advisor was recently given an award based partly on being "an outstanding advisor and mentor" even after the formal complaints had been filed | I started at Georgia Tech as one of the few female students in mechanical engineering with the goal of earning a PhD and becoming a professor. Instead, I struggled to maintain decent grades and graduated as quickly as possible with a Master's degree. | The 18 months I spent at Georgia Tech were the saddest months of my life. I saw a GT counselor during my time there, but I was both too afraid and too proud to tell her much about what was happening to me. Instead, our sessions focused on my relationship with my boyfriend at the time. In these shielded conversations I was able to talk about the insecurity and fear about my future that the harassment was causing, which was helpful, but I often wonder what would have happened if I had shared all the details I shared with the lawyer years afterwards. Since then, I have been lucky to be supported by very well-qualified friends and family, but I still cry spontaneously at unrelated reports of sexual harassment and assault. | The biggest impact by far has been the ever-lasting blow to my confidence. I had always thought of myself as a strong woman who stands up for herself, but this memory of my own inability to protect myself will haunt me for the rest of my life. In professional settings, I feel most comfortable around other women and I have gravitated towards female-heavy teams. A few years ago, I left engineering and started a new career in health policy and public health where most of the people I work with are female. On a personal level, I have lost several close friends because I shared my story with them and they responded with questions like "Why are you telling me this?" or "Are you sure?" It was too hard for me to look them in the eye after that conversation. It has also caused some similar issues with family members. | Male | ||
922 | 12/5/2017 20:41:42 | While serving as an Associate Dean, the Dean started approaching me to share hotel rooms with him on business trips, and to become involved sexually. I said no several times, and started finding reasons to miss lunch meetings, and bow out of conferences, and to work from home. Over the course of several months he continued to press me. Eventually I agreed to become involved. He disclosed he was also involved with two other women in our faculty (one woman was untenured) and had been for several years. When I tried to get out of the situation and refused to share a hotel room with him, he said he had 'gone to the wall for me' regarding my application for a promotion. I did get out of the situation, but I did not report it. I consulted with our Director of Human Rights and Equity, who told me that over the years there were campus rumours about this Dean regarding inappropriate relationships. I guess I wasn't in the circle where those rumours were circulating. I see now there are various codes of silence operating around these issues. | Associate Dean | The Dean of my faculty and I reported directly to him. | Other R1 | Canadian University | I did not report | I did not report | I left my role as Associate Dean before I completed my term. | I sought counseling as soon as the situation began, and continued to receive counseling for 3 years after. | This situation caused a major loss of trust for me. Going forward, I don't trust men in administrative roles and I am totally discouraged about administrative work in the academic world. Women are in subordinate administrative roles and men are abusing their power. | Male | |||
923 | 12/5/2017 20:47:41 | Sought mentorship and support from a male professor who I admired. Initially, I was thrilled that he took an interest in showing me the ropes of academia because I was in my early PhD program years and my faculty advisor was on sabbatical. The questions and discussion on post-PhD program plans slowly lead to his commentary and questions on my dating life (and hints at who I was intimate with), my appearance, my plans for marriage and children (hinting at me getting older and getting on with the process ASAP). This carried on for years. The inquiries of my dating life came sporadically but when they did, they were very intrusive with an underlying tone of questioning who I was intimate with. Some other extremely uncomfortable exchanges happened, with him showing up to events that were student only gatherings that he happened to “serendipitously” come upon. Questioning me about dating a fellow classmate and asking if my relationship with my classmate was intimate. I refused to answer and he insisted that I tell him. l I received an invitation to a social outing which I interpreted as a date and I froze. I was scared and appalled that this confirmed my fears that he may be interested in me, but I was too scared to tell him he had crossed the line. Not knowing what could come of it, I immediately distanced myself. When possible, I avoided meetings where I knew he would be or I would arrive a bit late so that I would be able to pick a seat away from him. I started missing meetings or shying away from certain conference activities to avoid him. The final day that I was a student, he came to sit next to me to congratulate me and touched my leg above my knee. I sat there, motionless, glad that it would soon be over because I was done and I would never come back or have to deal with him getting too close to me, or touching me, or commenting on my looks ever again. Though I admire his work and respected him as a scholar, he absolutely used his power to intimidate me. I tried to stand up to him once and he reminded me that I was not his equal. | Grad Student | Assistant Proff | Other R1 | Fear of retribution, fear of sharing the field and having to see the perp at conferences and meetings. | I developed some pretty strong hypervigilance skills which have taken a toll on me. The anxiety that dealing with the experience has caused is horrible. | I chose to leave the R1 world to hopefully minimize my having to cross paths with the perp. | Male | ||||||
924 | 12/5/2017 20:50:21 | In 2007, my PhD supervisor told me to prostitute myself to fund my field research. | PhD Candidate | My PhD supervisor | Other R1 | University of Cincinnati | I shared my circumstance with the department. They did nothing. | None. Myself and one other female PhD Candidate stopped working with that supervisor within one year of each other. I was aware that he was also acting in a negative way towards her. | I switched supervisors. The supervisor was still on my committee and persuaded one other committee member to not sign off on my dissertation defence. All other committee members, including external, signed off on my dissertation defence. I left academia, and have no plans on returning. | I left academia and am very suspicious and guarded when it comes to trusting any male teachers or instructors. I no longer freely disclose any personal information about my academic background. | Male | ||||
925 | 12/5/2017 20:56:41 | As a woman who has been in a consensual relationship with a more senior male in my field, I think it important to note that this does happen. And while the relationship ended badly, I do not believe he has or will ever do anything to harm me professionally. (this is not to say that I would suggest such a relationship to a friend, nor is this intended to in any way minimize the horrible things that have happened to others) | grad student | professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Philosophy | Male | ||||||||
926 | 12/5/2017 20:58:53 | At a conference dinner, I witnessed a senior researcher who was chatting with a postdoc reach over and grab/squeeze her butt in the middle of the conversation. | postdoc | senior researcher at a national lab | Other R1 | astronomy | none | lost collaborators | avoid conferences the harasser attends | Male | |||||
927 | 12/5/2017 21:03:23 | I feel funny writing this, as I have been very lucky and not experienced the really terrible kinds of things that many others have reported. But I'm writing it anyway, to demonstrate that these kinds of issues have been with us for a long time; and that they stay with you for a long time - in my case, 40 years. My event happened in the mid-1970s. I was a really good teacher and had put in my hours so I would be awarded one of the few lectureship positions available to grad students. I wasn't given the lectureship, and I asked my advisor why. I'll never forget him telling me that "You have too much sex appeal to be successful in academia," and the award had to go to the student who had the most potential to succeed. Ironically, in a way, that person was a woman, apparently without so much sex appeal. | PhD student | My advisor | Other R1 | University of Maryland College Park | Psychology | None. | None. | None really. I have had a very successful career and am now a dean/department head. | I still think about it all these years later. | I have avoided teaching. I think some of that is due to this bad memory. | Male | ||
928 | 12/5/2017 21:20:17 | I was introduced to a man through an ex-professor at my university [He had quit and was no longer a professor when this happened]. We informally knew each other. I was asked by the ex-professor to introduce his friend to women in my university who his friend could potentially fuck, and I was also asked to send his friend photos of attractive women students in my campus. This made me very uncomfortable. The ex professor's friend called me 10+ times a day asking me to introduce him to girls in my university but I told both of them that no girl is interested (I did not ask any women). The ex-prof then told me that his friend thinks "I am the hottest", and soon the friend started asking me to sleep with him, started soliciting me for sex. I blocked off the friend and very soon the ex-professor and I stopped communicating. I have a friend from a different university who has had a similar experience with this professor- he tried to do the same thing with her. I wish I had the courage to say No from the start. I relented because the ex professor was very pushy and I did not want to jeopardise my relationship with him as he was a well known academic whose recommendation got people a place in Ivy Leagues. | Student | Ex- Assistant Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Law | Did not report | I have publicly spoken about this incident on facebook, and it was shared by 70-80 people. No career consequences so far. | None, thankfully. | It traumatised me, and I felt powerless and helpless. | This has made me very cautious of men trying to prey on me, and using positions of power to prey on me and my friends. I have made a habit to publicly call out these people when their behaviour is out of line, despite the consequences I face [ the consequences are manifold, emotionally taxing and overwhelming]. Nevertheless, I refuse to suffer silently anymore. | Male | |||
929 | 12/5/2017 21:25:12 | Professor X not only has a reputation on campus as being utterly pretentious and condescending to students, but takes every opportunity to be sexually explicit in class (under the guise of being his “scholarly interests”). He has a well-established reputation as “creepy” and it is known that he has made advances toward female undergraduate students (myself included) | Undergraduate Student | Full Professor | Regional Teaching College | Sociology | No known reports have been made by others; I never reported | I had to overcome psychological and emotional abuse (feelings of powerlessness, insecurity, inferiority, loss of mentor, threatened) | I avoid particular conferences that I would like to attend and turned down a job in another dept at the same institution | Male | |||||
930 | 12/5/2017 21:30:15 | The department chair requested that I do work as a GA for him that semester, rather than for the professor to whom I'd been assigned. He gave me disks which supposedly contained primary sources I was supposed to transcribe, but which actually contained his own "creative writing"--stories in which he narrated his sexually explicit experiences with his partner and his gratitude to her for the S&M role she made him play. It was gross. | Grad student working toward a Ph.D. | Chair of my department | R2 | English | They said it was inappropriate, but made excuses for him based on an illness he'd had the year before. | They told him not to contact me again. Nothing else happened to him. | I didn't request a letter of recommendation from the (endowed chair) professor for whom I was supposed to work that semester, because I sensed that he thought I had caused trouble for the department chair. The professor spoke with me little after that, and I have no idea what facts he was actually aware of. | Despite being told not to, the professor emailed me with abject apologies, wanting to tell me personally how sorry he was. So I had to go back to the institution and reiterate that I meant it when I said I wanted no contact with him. The whole incident was such a disappointment to me--I knew they were making unjustified excuses for him, and I've never been able to erase the disgusting images he wrote about from my mind. And as I was an older, married student, I had serious concerns about how he might harass the much younger, single women in the grad program. He had a reputation for being weird in a way that one couldn't quite put a finger on (until he gave me those disks). | Very little. I accepted a TT appointment at an institution largely run by women and have done well there. | Male | |||
931 | 12/5/2017 21:37:24 | March 2016, at an architecture school. A high - profile, senior male member of faculty interrupted my class while was teaching in an open studio environment. He was agitated and argumentative, demanding that we attend a public lecture immediately. After several minutes of verbal harassment, I asked him to please leave my studio, and he then threatened me that I would be punished "in another forum". He then proceeded to repeat this behavior with several other junior female faculty; he threatened them with job termination and humiliated them in front of several peers from the local professional community. In the past, the professor had asked me on a date in front of his class while I was walking down the hall. He asked if that constituted sexual harassment, to which I replied, "not yet". He is known as a bully and manipulator in the architecture community. | Assistant professor | Tenured professor, on my tenure committee | Other R1 | Cannot disclose due to HR agreement | Architecture | I met with HR and they conducted an investigation. They reported back to me that the only thing he could be disciplined for was "unprofessional conduct". He was removed from my tenure committee and was told to have no contact with me. | None. He is still employed and a highly "respected" academic. | I left the institution 2 months later. I avoid schools where he might have an influence. | The memory of it makes me feel insignificant, and like an impostor; that I had no business teaching in that institution, that I was worthless. | There are many women who were affected by this man, via his bullying or aggressiveness. Most of the women feared making a stink because he has a great influence and can make careers in architecture or stifle them. | Male | ||
932 | 12/5/2017 22:02:22 | So many stories- which to choose? Professor showed a powerpoint of what kinds of items would be good bribes for grades. Many of the items were luxury apparel/luxury lifestyle items. Gave every non-cismale student the heebie jeebies. Touched woman/femme students' knees. Frequently discussed sexually explicit topics that had nothing to do with class. (this was an intro astronomy class). Although he is married with kids, propositioned a classmate on a dating website and sent her very sexually explicit messages. Made me dread going to class and lab, especially because lab was at night on the roof of the science building. | Undergrad | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | English/Libraries | We reported the sexual harassment stuff to the Deans of Faculty and Students. I never heard if anything came of it. | Unknown/none | None- but am even less likely to donate money to undergrad institution | Further trauma in a long-line of sexual trauma | none | Male | |||
933 | 12/5/2017 22:06:32 | My social work prof kept cornering me and harassing me about having an affair | Single student | Married- professsor | Other R1 | Wilfred Laurier university | Social work | Didn't repoet | NA | NA | Raised anxiety- stopped working out on campus. | Unsure | I also worked at the same university - once in counselling services and later in business department. A collective effort was made by several counsellors over decades to report my ex-boss for harassment (emotional) - was told by harassment officer that they would reach back out with outcome- never heard but he was angry. Felt very unsafe. Years later in different department, left job and requested an exit interview to document my experience but without any character assassination. Someone who experienced same treatment asked me to obtain my records- none of what I had talked about had been documented. Universities are a cesspool of professors on very long leashes with no real accountabilities taking big liberties. | Male | |
934 | 12/5/2017 22:07:03 | Cohortmate with whom I had a close relationship subjected me to repeated phone calls, stalking including showing up at my apartment unannounced, creating scenes at social events when I didn’t pay enough attention to him, and trying to turn mutual friends against me when I chose to date other people instead of him. Many people witnessed this behavior and he was never seen as anything more than “lovesick and not handling it well” because he was such a “nice guy.” When confronted about his behavior, he told me he felt he deserved to date me because he had put so much effort into our friendship. | Ph.D student | Ph.D. student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | American Studies | None, but I never reported it | None, but I never reported it | it hastened my exit from the town where we lived, and finishing my doctorate at a distance slowed me down. However, I would have left anyway. | It created a lot of stress. | Male | ||||
935 | 12/5/2017 22:23:16 | colleague suggested we share a hotel room while on business travel. | Other R1 | typical NDA HR process | Male | ||||||||||
936 | 12/5/2017 22:24:56 | Stalked by student, including him attending every single office hours, often just lurking in hallway, and following me home on the bus. | adjunct instructor | student | Other R1 | I called Title IX, they did nothing. They noted his name in a "secret list of creepy guys." Mentors in my dept suggested I hold my office hours in public. That was their only idea. | Male | ||||||||
937 | 12/5/2017 22:36:29 | A professor in my department was discriminated against based on her gender and sexual orientation. Another professor harrassed her by making degrading comments and by unfairly influencing the decision regarding her tenure at the institution based on her gender/sexual orientation (2013) | Undergraduate Student | Tenured Professor/Department Chair | Small Liberal Arts College | Bard College | Psychology | my professor was fired, and the college president also made degrading remarks to her | None | I was less eager to pursue a career in psychology because I saw firsthand what happened to people like me who were queer and not men, and who actually did good research. | It definitely increased my anxiety and depression, which I was already struggling with. It also made me less likely to seek help for the abusive relationship I was in, because I saw how no one stood by my professor. | I decided to give up on psychological research for many reasons, and this was one of those reasons, sadly. | Male | ||
938 | 12/5/2017 22:36:41 | A professor in my department was discriminated against based on her gender and sexual orientation. Another professor harrassed her by making degrading comments and by unfairly influencing the decision regarding her tenure at the institution based on her gender/sexual orientation (2013) | Undergraduate Student | Tenured Professor/Department Chair | Small Liberal Arts College | Bard College | Psychology | my professor was fired, and the college president also made degrading remarks to her | None | I was less eager to pursue a career in psychology because I saw firsthand what happened to people like me who were queer and not men, and who actually did good research. | It definitely increased my anxiety and depression, which I was already struggling with. It also made me less likely to seek help for the abusive relationship I was in, because I saw how no one stood by my professor. | I decided to give up on psychological research for many reasons, and this was one of those reasons, sadly. | Male | ||
939 | 12/5/2017 22:37:50 | I was sexually assaulted by another grad student. He engineered a situation in which the rest of us drank excessively while he only appeared to do the same. I started to regain consciousness while he was groping me. When I refused to keep quiet about what he had done, he portrayed it all as consensual. Mutual "friends," both male and female, spread rumors about me, portraying me as unstable or alleging that I had pursued him. Some of these people lied about events when the university conducted their investigation. Following the investigation, I was black-balled by other grad students. At least one student continued to repeat the story of how I had "wronged" her friend four years after the assault, spreading her allegations to people completely unconnected to the situation. | PhD student, studying for prelims | PhD student | Other R1 | English | Administration within my department were hesitant to get involved. Eventually, the university became aware of the incident and conducted an investigation, interviewing everyone who had been at the party that night. | He was suspended from the university until the semester after my anticipated graduation. | Five years later, I have not finished my PhD, and I don't anticipate finishing. | Immediately after the assault, I had extreme PTSD, which included panic attacks, depression, and anxiety. Although it's gotten much better, certain situations still trigger my PTSD. | Instead of my intended career as a university professor, I'm now a community college professor, which I find very rewarding. I still tend to be wary, hesitant to trust new people. | In addition to the social, professional, and psychological impact of all of this, I have also developed fibromyalgia due, at least in part, to this situation. I was diagnosed almost exactly one year after the assault. It was initially extremely debilitating to the point that I was bedridden for most of the day. Several years later, it has gotten considerably better, but my condition still requires modifications to my lifestyle. | Male | ||
940 | 12/5/2017 22:47:49 | Cohortmate with whom I had a close relationship subjected me to repeated phone calls, stalking including showing up at my apartment unannounced, creating scenes at social events when I didn’t pay enough attention to him, and trying to turn mutual friends against me when I chose to date other people instead of him. Many people witnessed this behavior and he was never seen as anything more than “lovesick and not handling it well” because he was such a “nice guy.” When confronted about his behavior, he told me he felt he deserved to date me because he had put so much effort into our friendship. | Ph.D student | Ph.D. student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | American Studies | None, but I never reported it | None, but I never reported it | it hastened my exit from the town where we lived, and finishing my doctorate at a distance slowed me down. However, I would have left anyway. | It created a lot of stress. | Male | ||||
941 | 12/5/2017 23:54:56 | As a PhD student, I found myself mired in icky ambiguously sexual circumstances with 2 different professors. The least awful was a professor who held his final seminar session in a bar over pitchers of beer & then invited me to for a bite to eat afterward. I hoped we were going to talk about my project & thought surely he meant we'd grab a burger or some quick Thai food. But then he walked me into an expensive white table cloth restaurant and proceeded to order appetizers and wine and all these things he surely knew I could not afford. So reluctantly and awkwardly I let him pay, which made me feel crazy. After, he casually said let's go to my place to finish talking about your paper & I really really really wanted to go home but didn't know how to say that and felt so strange about having been treated to such an expensive meal. It sounds insane but I couldn't figure out how to get out of this night with him. It was all so confusing b/c in class he talked all the time about his kids and wife ("my wife" and never by name. She was a fairly visible feminist & in hind sight, I see that he leveraged her feminism all the time to position himself as a feminist. UGH.) Anyway, I felt terribly embarrassed to be taking this as a date when he had made himself out to be such a family man & felt confused about how to extract myself, especially because I was still hoping for help in publishing the essay I had written for his seminar and that I cared so passionately about. That was icky but it was only 1 seminar and 1 grade at stake. More shattering was the next year when I was promoted from graduate teaching assistant to the prized fellowship everyone wanted - assistant editor to a very prestigious journal. The editor, my boss and a leading feminist, was both gate-keeper in my field and now boss of my graduate fellowship. She held in hand, then, both my immediate daily survival and the keys to my future, a future I had leveraged with considerable student loans. Although my fellowship contract obligated me to provide 20 hours a week of editing work, my boss expanded the duties to include coordinating dry cleaning, car repairs, credit card disputes, out-out-town fee-based speaking engagements and travel plans, etc. I wasn't allowed to go home for winter break b/c it was time to copy edit the galleys. This makes no sense b/c the journal was published in Baltimore by Johns Hopkins & we were editing on the west coast. So what did it matter where I finished the galleys? My boss never looked at the articles after the initial content editing was done anyway so it's not like we needed to collaborate. What I'm trying to explain is how I felt a little imprisoned, almost indentured. Sexual harassment was the cherry on top of this toxic covenant. I felt uncomfortable all the time & started wearing baggy clothing, which my boss hated. One time in front of my peers, she mocked the overalls I was wearing, exclaiming, "I can fit a fist in your pants" and then proceeded to shove not 1 but 2 fists into my crouch, right there in front of everyone. Another time at a conference, after I had just presented my paper and people were swarming to congratulate and ask me questions, she interrupted everything to spank me, right there in front of my peers and prospective future employers. I was mortified and I swear my brain stayed frozen for many days after that incident. I was so stuck and had sacrificed everything for this opportunity to study so I thought I had to accept the behavior. I thought I was managing but was so surprised each morning to discover that my pillow was wet. I lived in a crappy apartment so naturally I looked for a ceiling leak that might be the source of the wet pillow. Honestly, I really thought it was caused by an environmental leak until I finally realized my pillow was soggy from the salt tears I had been weeping in my sleep. I guess my conscious hours were so completely indentured that the only time I could cry was during sleep. I was trapped in a viciously competitive environment and so we students carefully guarded our secrets from each other. (Tragically, then, we didn't support each other or warn one other of possible hazards.) For this reason, I suspect but can not confirm that at least 2 other women in my program also may have experienced sexual coercion and harassment. One of them may have been in an even more precarious position than me b/c she was on a student visa and needed this professor's support to maintain her visa status. I completed my degree because I’m not a “quitter.” But I never asked for a letter of recommendation and I never once checked to see what jobs might be available in my field. All I could do was flee the entire sphere of influence. I paid off my student loans by working in a field unrelated to my training and in fact one for which a college degree is entirely unnecessary. I maintain that the abuse changed the course of my life, a fact about which I am still bitter. I’m telling you this now for several reasons. 1. I’m tired of holding it in my body and am ready to release this bitterness. 2. I believe that young students are vulnerable and should be entitled to a safe place in which to complete their educations. 3. College & graduate students are impressionable; the reality is that they are being cultivated as future workers & bosses in every sector of our economy. In this way, sexual misconduct on our campuses contributes to and perpetuates an insidious culture of harassment which spreads throughout the entire economy. For this reason, campus abuse has the potential to harm all workers, not just college students and graduates. 4. Although I am grateful for my education and believe that you can never foreclose on the knowledge and thinking skills I carry in my head, technically I don’t use my education because I felt too traumatized to pursue the career I studied. 5. My education was partially funded with public dollars which subsidized my graduate fellowship and student loans. One could argue this public investment was wasted because I never attempted to work in the field for which I trained. If you buy my statement that I was deterred by systematic abuse, that is an egregious betrayal of the public trust & resources. | I was a PhD student. | My perpetrators were tenured professors. As indicated, one was my teacher for only a single seminar & in a different department, so it wasn't quite as shattering as the abuse by the person governing my fellowship & keeping watch at the gates of the field I hoped to enter. | Other R1 | University of Washington | American Studies | NONE. I never reported anything and so in fairness, I never demanded a response. This reflects ridiculous naivete as well as isolation. But one of the ways my 2nd harasser kept me in check was public humiliation, which was witnessed many times by people in power within my program and field. No one said or did anything. | None. | Devastating. I never tried to pursue the career for which I trained. I was too traumatized. | I was terribly depressed for months and months and did fantasize about suicide. | As I indicated above, I got as far away from the academy as I possibly could. My job now doesn't even require a college degree. I dislike my work and it's not very fulfilling. But I am able to provide for my family, ensuring that my daughter has access to an excellent education. Although she's not quite old enough to know why I am so insistent about this, I have been teaching her since she was very young that education is all about allowing yourself to be mentored. But you must choose your own mentors wisely. Do not EVER let them choose you. You must be the agent in that choice. | P.S. This happened in the early 1990s. Even after all these years, I am unable and unwilling to confront my perpetrators. But if you want to contact me for clarification, that's OK. ***email redacted*** | Various incidents with people of different genders | |
942 | 12/6/2017 0:41:15 | It started with comments of my PhD supervisor on my physical appearance, which I brushed off and ignored by changing the subject. He started asking me to come to events, to which I believed other people would go as well. These occasions turned out just being me and him leaving me to feel uncomfortable, as he was clearly trying to single me out. I kept mentioning my long-term partner of 9 years to highlight that I have no interest whatsoever in anything other than professional exchange. During supervision meetings I placed my bag on the chairs next to me, so he couldn't sit too close. He sent several emails, complimenting on/or using vulgar language about my body parts. As "welcome", he patted me on the head in front of students I was supposed to give a lecture to. Perplexed about what happened I simply overrode the deep embarrassment and simply gave the lecture in the hope nobody noticed it. He patted me another time on the head at a school exhibition opening, where I finally had the guts to ask him to stop this behaviour. His response was: "But this is the only accessible part of your body?". My reply: "NO part of my body is accessible to you!". After this, I reported him to my research department since the behaviour got worse and his harassment more invasive. I stopped avoiding him and remained as professional as much as I could, but my dismissal just made him come on stronger. He tried to kiss me at the end of the last supervision meeting I ever had with him, walking all across the room towards me before I've almost left the space. I prevented the kiss and walked off, fuming, of course. The other second supervisor that time, made inappropriate and sleazy comments about my physical appearance (my legs, staring overly long at my chest and between my legs), offered zero practical advice with regards to the PhD and boasted at public events in front of others that he won't read my writing anyway as he had "more important things to do". I had nobody to talk to and felt utterly ashamed that this was happening to me. My initial reports to the research department were only met with disbelief and embarrassment, but no concrete advise or action followed the report. My avoidance of the two supervisors soon turned the atmosphere sour, so the backlashes started to happen: the supervisor now tried to boycott an exam, a promised lecturer position fell all of a sudden through, he called on my private mobile phone only to shout at me for minutes. He started side-lining me, shared my confidential research documents with his other PhD students without permission and started using my work for his course development. It took almost a year until I was permitted to change to another supervisory team. | PhD student | PhD supervisor, tenured full professor, head of department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Will share confidentially | Will share confidentially | The supervisor was confronted, but he took it out on me by minute-long shouting and calling me "crazy" the day after. The colleges' student support listened, but took no action either. | No consequences whatsoever. Both supervisors continue with their careers. | Immense delay with the completion and submission of the PhD. | Intense anxiety and panic attacks (hospital treatment, heart problems), sudden low confidence and self-esteem; the stress and tension nearly ruined my relationship of 9 years. Immense tension that I'm forced into silence and disappointment that cowardice and compliance won in the institution I used to love. Anger, fear and guilt that a similar situation will repeat and that I'm partly responsible if that's the case as I want to complete my own degree. | Unfinished PhD, but committed to complete and to make a change in academia for other students and researchers who deserve safety and protection during their education. | I have mentioned on numerous occasions that an anonymous reporting system could be a constructive format to combat sexual harassment, sexism and other unwanted interactions in academia. That this keeps happening is a classic case of "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?", or, "Who guards the guardians?". This could be fixed if the people affected would be taken seriously. I'm glad that this list has been created. Thanks again, Karen. | Male | |
943 | 12/6/2017 0:50:46 | When I was a graduate student researching sex tourism, a senior member of faculty would visit my office to talk about his experience staying near brothels in my host country, what the sex workers looked like (mostly cup size, with accompanying hand gestures), and ask me about my findings. He would also ask my officemate to leave so he could speak to me in private; when my officemate refused, he would ask me to go somewhere private to talk about sex work. | Graduate student | Reader (UK scale - between associate and full professor) | Other Type of School | UK university | International Relations | Didn't report, but his creepy behaviour towards graduate students and fellow staff was well known | None - he is a full professor now | Luckily, I would say none | Stress at the time, discomfort coming into the office | Luckily, none | Male | ||
944 | 12/6/2017 1:01:44 | I was a graduate student. During my studies I suffered bullying by one of my committee members. My graduate program director stepped in to defray some of her most aggressive attacks on me, but in the meantime began telling me about the women in his life whose academic careers he had launched. I ignored the allusions. When my committee member ultimately tried to have my thesis defense scuttled, I relied on him to protect my work. He did. Following the successful defense, he stated outright that the next time we saw each other he expected that I would have sex with him. Because his reputation preceded him, his defense of my work taints my work regardless of the fact that I did not engage in anything but a professional, academic relationship with him. But I cannot speak out about this because it will then provide fodder to the abusive committee member in attacking my work. | I was a Masters student. | Graduate Program Director: head of my program | Other R1 | York University | Cannot say: the program is unique | N/A | None | I missed opportunities because members of my committee were suspicious of my relationship with my director. | It has greatly damaged my sense of value to the academy. I did not have the confidence in my work needed to continue in an academic career. | I no longer work in the academy: not merely because of the sexual harassment, but because of the intersection of sexual and professional harassment by two senior academics out of the four charged with overseeing my work and studies while at the university. In truth, the far more damaging attacks came from the bullying perpetuated by the abusive committee member. That he depicted her as "crazy" and "looking like a crazy woman" to those she was appealing to to have my defense scuttled was a needed protection for me, but deeply unsettling to me as a feminist. I was being protected from attacks by a CIS female professor by a CIS male professor's misogyny rather than just because I was a student who had spent years researching a project that produced strong results that challenged my committee member's own work. | Male | ||
945 | 12/6/2017 1:10:08 | Sexual Assault 15 Feb 1977, followed by stalking for years | MSc Student | Full Professor, Graduate Chair for the Department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Toronto | Chemistry | No mechanism existed. Because of the stalking did not feel safe in building after hours or on weekends, which slowed my research. Kept door to lab closed and locked because of stalking. Supervisor annoyed by this. His initial reaction was disbelief and told me that I had misinterpreted the professor's behaviour. Only believed me after I told him graphic details of the assault. Eventually went to U of T ombudsperson and encouraged other females who had been assaulted by this guy to go as well. I knew seven other graduate students harassed and assaulted by him. | None - left U of T when sexual harassment policy took effect. Moved to University of Chicago and left a few years later "under a cloud". Finished career in Australia. | Slowed me down a lot. | Initially blamed myself. | I am a full professor at another institution. I was pretty determined and this guy was one of many obstacles (lack of familial support, physical disability, chronic health issues were others). I resented the energy that dealing with the stalking took. | This summer I learned from a woman who was an MSc student the same time that I was and since has become a human rights lawyer, that his attentions were not just on graduate students, but also undergrads, especially honours students, many of who quit their theses. As an undergrad, she was part of a group of female 4th year honours students that went to the Chair and the Dean about his behaviour toward students. It was clear that they were not the first group to go to the Chair and Dean about this. Nothing happened! Between us, we were able to name over 20 students harassed by this guy. Over 2/3 quit their studies. | Male | |
946 | 12/6/2017 1:41:48 | November 2016, at the largest conference in my field: I was at a reception with three friends. While we were standing at a bar table, a senior professor (+/- 60 years old) joined us and started talking to my friend, the only other female at the table. She quickly felt uncomfortable, moved around the table, as a result of which the senior professor came standing next to me and started a conversation. While talking, he made an unappropriate comment how I should work for him. During this conversation, he carressed my hand, touched my back, and eventually stroked my ass. At that point, I stiffened. My female friend saw what happened and pulled me away, leaving the reception. | I had recently graduated as a PhD 5 months prior to the conference and was at the time working as a visiting research fellow at a small institution in Canada | Senior professor at the Evangelisch-Theologische Fakultät at the University of Mainz. I had met him several years prior to the incident at the university where I did my PhD, where he had given a lecture. He remembered me from that time as well. He is a serial offender, I found out after the incident. | Other Research Agency | SBL annual meeting | Biblical Studies | None. Even though I considered doing so for a long time, I did not report the incident because filing an informal complaint with the organizer of the conference would not have the outcome I envisioned for myself (an apology from a serial offender mean little to me – what I would have wanted, for example, was for him to be prohibited from attending SBL meetings for a number of years) and a formal complaint was an incredible hassle that I feel could have potentially been damaging for my career. One does not want to be known as a "troublemaker." I think this is a serious issue as to why a lot of harrassment stays under the radar. | None | I am much more aware of my position as a woman. I more easily feel uncomfortable in the presence of senior male colleagues and I have become much more self-conscious about my collaborations. | None | None | Male | ||
947 | 12/6/2017 3:02:01 | As a job candidate on a campus visit, male members of the department staff entered my hotel room against my explicitly expressed wishes. On two different occasions (is this a thing?) (It was early 2000s, so I'm hoping things have changed...) In the first campus visit, my unwelcome guest followed me to the room after I picked up the key at the hotel reception desk. He had been helping me by pulling my (very small) wheelie-bag. Once I had my key, I told him 'thanks so much, I'll take it from here.' He responded by not handing the bag over, but proceeding down the hall toward the room, the number of which he evidently knew. At the door of the room, I thanked him again and expressed my gratitude for his having met me at the airport etc. and told him I was looking forward to continuing our discussion of local colonial history over dinner. I reached for my bag which he relinquished. I then pulled it over towards me, turned, and opened the door. He then held the door open for me as I pulled the bag in to the room. I stopped, turned back, and said, 'thanks again' only to have him push past me into the hotel room. I had told him - three times - that I didn't want him in my hotel room, despite whatever pedagogical benefit he thought his presence my have for me. In the room, he stood by the bed and explained the history of the view out the window. I interjected to tell him I was tired after my flight and needed to rest/freshen up before meeting the person driving me to the dinner. I walked back and stood at the room door, holding it open. He left. I didn't think this was 'sexual harassment' so much as just plain rude. So I wrote this first incident off as 'just weird', figuring they'd sent someone with poor social skills who thought it would be more important for me to understand local economy history as written in the landscape than feel safe and have my boundaries respected. Not someone I necessarily wanted to have as a colleague, but, ok, whatever.... At least they let me know this guy likely wouldn't listen to me on any other matter either.... On the second visit - same thing, campus visit for a TT position - this happened after the obligatory second night's more informal dinner with grad students and faculty. So I was already exhausted from a 22 hour long-haul flight, the research presentation, interview, teaching demonstration, first breakfast meeting, meeting with the Dean, meeting with grad students, and a trip to a local attraction, we had this last dinner. And, after dinner, Prof A suggested we go on to a pub that was on the walking route back to my hotel. Since I was in one of those disciplines where there's a culture of pub-going and it's very important, in terms of perceived 'fit', for a female candidate to show she has a sense of humour and can hold a drink, I knew this was still the 'fit' part of the interview. After what I thought was two rounds of drinks, it was arranged that Prof A would walk me back from the pub to the hotel - short distance, but easy to get lost and 'not safe' for a woman alone. I had a breakfast meeting the next morning, then that was it - my breakfast interviewer, Prof B, would take me directly to the airport afterwards. Prof A and I had been discussing teaching and pedagogy in our research area and how to integrate research into undergrad teaching over our post-dinner drink. As we walked up to the front of my hotel, I suggested I could pass on some course outlines I'd put together but not circulated during my interview. These covered areas of pedagogical strategy we'd discussed in the pub and he could add them to the file the selection panel would review. Total mistake. The course outlines were in the 'interview folder' I'd left in my hotel room earlier that even. So we walked Into the hotel lobby and I motioned to the chairs in the reception area and told him 'please wait here, I'll only be a minute.' He ignored that and followed me on to the elevator. His lack of response to my directions showed me he was clearly more inebriated than I had initially thought. Despite my telling him to wait at the elevator, he followed me to the room door. I couldn't believe this was actually happening (again), but I didn't want to be rude (or violent.) Despite my telling him, even more firmly to 'wait at the door' and pulling it so it would close behind me - in his face - he pushed the door open, came into the room, and then stretched out on the bed.... So I gave him the course outlines by tossing them on top of his chest. Then I told him 'you need to go home NOW', relieved that the room layout meant I could easily sprint for it and lock myself in the bathroom. Thanks be, he finally got the message and left. By the time I got to breakfast with Prof B, I was furious that I'd found myself in that position while ON A CAMPUS VISIT JOB INTERVIEW. TWICE. | Job applicant on a campus interview on both occasions | Member of the interviewing department's faculty and selection committee | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | University of Minnesota, Duluth/University of Kentucky, Lexiington | Geography | I didn't report the first incident, because it seemed to be simply a very 'tone-deaf' senior male academic being insensitive. I reported the second incident in somewhat indirect terms to Prof B. I explained to him that I had been somewhat disconcerted by the end of the previous evening because Prof A had become pretty inebriated and had followed me into the hotel and up to my room. I explained I had felt compelled to be rather rude to him to get him to leave my room. I told Prof B that Prof A's actions had made me very uncomfortable. I asked if Prof A had issues around boundaries with younger/junior female colleagues and Prof B gave me an answer in the affirmative. Prof B discouraged me from taking the job, suggesting my career would be better off if I stayed on the fixed-term contract post-doc I held at the time. Prof B did not suggest any institutional reporting or wider discussion... I couldn't figure out if this advice was meant for my own well-being or because Prof B favoured another candidate. I noted that as a very weak institutional response, which gave me no confidence in departmental culture. I was offered the job. And decided that I wouldn't take it because I couldn't face dealing with Prof A (or Prof B) and couldn't imagine that this awkward encounter or any further/future issues along the same lines wouldn't be interpreted as reflecting badly on me in that particular department and in the wider discipline. I eventually discussed the reasons behind my decision to decline a very good TT job with a male mentor in my discipline. He confirmed that Prof A had a history of striking up 'inappropriate' relationships with grad students and junior faculty members. Subsequent discussions with Prof A's former graduate students (male) confirmed this was the case. One colleague explained to me that it was more or less just part of a female colleague's necessary professional skills to be able to navigate that dynamic, because we were all adults. | Nil, as far as I am aware. | Ironically, I was successful in both interviews. But I came away so uncomfortable with my glimpse of 'departmental culture' in both places that I declined two TT jobs. | The first incident shook me a little. The second really undermined my self-confidence and I associated it with a subsequent episode of mild depression, treated with counselling. I found it very difficult to be productive and to be enthused about publishing the in field of my PhD - my work overlapped significantly with Prof A's and that of several of his students and proteges. I'd been really excited about working with him as a mentor and collaborator in terms of developing my future projects and publications. I came away feeling rootless and unenthused about my academic career. Here, I'd put all my efforts into what had been an effective pitch for at TT job in what was a high-profile research cluster internationally. And what mattered to the high-flying research powerhouse professor in my field seemed to be my 'pleasing personality' and possible availability for an extramarital liaison...., not my research or possible trajectory etc. So, narcissistic wound and much anxiety created... And I associated what happened with not being 'on top of my game' after long plane flights and the cross-cultural differences in communication involved in interviewing in the USA (not being American myself)...which was both minute self-blame and a huge extrapolation. I decided I needed coaching on being less 'pleasing' and more forceful in interview contexts etc. | I started collaborating with people outside my discipline and publishing in other areas, so became very interdisciplinary and very cynical about the culture of recognition in my PhD discipline. Career-wise I remained in my post-doc and then eventually converted that into a contract Research Fellowship. I never applied for another job in the USA. I eventually took up a continuing appointment in a third country. This means I no longer live on the same continent as a my parents and most of my immediate family. I have a career, but it's a different one, with a different trajectory and location. | Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence... three times is way more than a bad habit - it's a culture of harassment. I'd like to know if a) anyone else has had this experience of being harassed/treated inappropriately as a campus visit candidate (I usually find I'm never alone in this stuff) and b) if any departments have actually briefed faculty involved in the interview process that the job candidates hotel rooms are 'out of bounds' and private space, even if they are paid for by the host institution. | Male | |
948 | 12/6/2017 3:51:30 | I was harassed, isolated, and bullied by my supervisor. I was constantly yelled at and demeaned until I went on stress leave. I could not turn to my human rights officer because her boss was also my boss--and she was in a sexual relationship with him (he got her pregnant while he was being investigated for harassment). My union did not support my claims and the university victim-blamed me until I quit. | I was a permanent (tenured) librarian. | He was dean of the library and multicultural learning. | Small Liberal Arts College | Cape Breton Univeristy | Information Science | I approached my union. They told me not to grieve my boss but to file a harassment claim. This claim should have been supervised by a human rights officer, but she was f*cking my boss (he was her boss too!) so I had no human rights officer. Instead I was assigned a social worker, who was so overworked she could not give me support. The university hired a lawyer to investigate. Each member of the library was asked to give a statement--and each statement was recorded (I read them all--it was brutal). Most everyone said on record that I was "crazy" or "mentally unstable". Everyone insisted our boss was "good to them" and I must me making things up. When the university-hired lawyer found no evidence of harassment (despite lots of proof--I had emails he sent me, notes, witnesses...) my social worker stopped returning my emails. I went on doctor-approved stress leave but the university insisted I return to work. I asked to be transferred to another department. They said no. I approached the province's human rights officer and she said there was a time limit on harassment complaints and said I was too late to file a complaint with the province (apparently I only had a year). She too stopped returning my emails. The place made me so sick I eventually had no other option but to quit. I asked for a package and they refused to give me one. | He was promoted from manager to dean! | I will never, ever work for a university again. That's my choice, of course, but as of now I'm done working for assholes. Done done done. | This harassment severely affected my mental health. I have doctor's notes to prove it. This all happened in 2014-2015 and I'm still healing from the experience. With no money and no mental health doctor options where I live, I have had to heal on my own. I have actually turned to gardening and farming as I have found this has helped me heal. | I keep saying to people, if any good came of this, it's that it gave my life clarity. I realized this harassment wasn't an isolated event, but part of a larger, systemic problem. I realized that all systems--food, education, entertainment, etc--are all based on power and oppression. We are all, no matter where we live and what we do, subjected to the imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. I realized that it's impossible to change this system from within. This is why I've decided to never work for these systems again. I want to use my talents and knowledge to build a better, more just system. I've decided to start with food--literally start from the ground up. By growing food I want to grow a better, healthy, non-oppressive system. And I'm not alone! There's lots of women who've now turned to farming as a way out of this system. | Hi there, I am definitely ok with you using any of this info. I'll email you the names of everyone involved. I have nothing to hide, I never had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and am all outta fucks to give. Thank you for doing this. | Male | |
949 | 12/6/2017 4:10:35 | I was harassed, isolated, and bullied by my supervisor. I was constantly yelled at and demeaned until I went on stress leave. I could not turn to my human rights officer because her boss was also my boss--and she was in a sexual relationship with him (he got her pregnant while he was being investigated for harassment). My union did not support my claims and the university victim-blamed me until I quit. | I was a permanent (tenured) librarian. | He was dean of the library and multicultural learning. | Small Liberal Arts College | Cape Breton Univeristy | Information Science | I approached my union. They told me not to grieve my boss but to file a harassment claim. This claim should have been supervised by a human rights officer, but she was f*cking my boss (he was her boss too!) so I had no human rights officer. Instead I was assigned a social worker, who was so overworked she could not give me support. The university hired a lawyer to investigate. Each member of the library was asked to give a statement--and each statement was recorded (I read them all--it was brutal). Most everyone said on record that I was "crazy" or "mentally unstable". Everyone insisted our boss was "good to them" and I must me making things up. When the university-hired lawyer found no evidence of harassment (despite lots of proof--I had emails he sent me, notes, witnesses...) my social worker stopped returning my emails. I went on doctor-approved stress leave but the university insisted I return to work. I asked to be transferred to another department. They said no. I approached the province's human rights officer and she said there was a time limit on harassment complaints and said I was too late to file a complaint with the province (apparently I only had a year). She too stopped returning my emails. The place made me so sick I eventually had no other option but to quit. I asked for a package and they refused to give me one. | He was promoted from manager to dean! | I will never, ever work for a university again. That's my choice, of course, but as of now I'm done working for assholes. Done done done. | This harassment severely affected my mental health. I have doctor's notes to prove it. This all happened in 2014-2015 and I'm still healing from the experience. With no money and no mental health doctor options where I live, I have had to heal on my own. I have actually turned to gardening and farming as I have found this has helped me heal. | I keep saying to people, if any good came of this, it's that it gave my life clarity. I realized this harassment wasn't an isolated event, but part of a larger, systemic problem. I realized that all systems--food, education, entertainment, etc--are all based on power and oppression. We are all, no matter where we live and what we do, subjected to the imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. I realized that it's impossible to change this system from within. This is why I've decided to never work for these systems again. I want to use my talents and knowledge to build a better, more just system. I've decided to start with food--literally start from the ground up. By growing food I want to grow a better, healthy, non-oppressive system. And I'm not alone! There's lots of women who've now turned to farming as a way out of this system. | Hi there, I am definitely ok with you using any of this info. I'll email you the names of everyone involved. I have nothing to hide, I never had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and am all outta fucks to give. Thank you for doing this. | Male | |
950 | 12/6/2017 4:16:32 | My professor, that was a trusted advisor, insinuated/called me out in classes about my sexuality and instigated a sexual relationship with me utilizing his knowledge of my personal life. | Single/student | No, he is married, though he has made it clear that it’s an open/poly situation. He’s the department head. | Small Liberal Arts College | Humanities | Did not report, he is the department head | See above. | None yet, possible transfer | Anxiety, grieving, and depression all related | I’m currently trying to decide my course of action because of his power in the department and the small size of the program. | Male | |||
951 | 12/6/2017 4:20:02 | As a grad student at an R1 and a TA for the first time, the male ABD grad student who was supposed to "mentor" my TAship gave me horrible reviews in every meeting though my student evals were good and observations with others had all received glowing feedback. I heard from other students that he had made disparaging comments about my body; then I learned he was also dating his other mentee who happened to be especially slender. There was nearly a full a semester of these horrible exchanges with him before I knew this was the reason behind his disdain for me. In the final review he smugly wrote in my evaluation as a criticism of me that I had fewer women participating in my class (there were something like 23 male students and 2-3 female students in this particular class), but did not bother to note the ways in which I encouraged the participation of the few women to specifically mitigate that imbalance. All this in the larger context of The program I was in, which was certainly a boys' club--a fellow female student and I were once severely chastised by a tt asst prof for whispering during class (we had a presentation coming up but class time was being mismanaged by the previous presenter--a male student who could do no wrong in the eyes of the professors--we were whispering to decide what to cut from our presentation). Certain male students could turn in slipshod work--one repeatedly wrote his on napkins--and it would still be praised. My tenured full Advisor would comment on female students appearance regularly and other female grad students sometimes boasted about using this to their advantage either by dressing provacatively when meeting with him and/or crying in his office hours, which somehow we all knew was something persuasive to him. He liked to be called at home, wouldn't use email, but if you called, he would answer saying he just got out of the shower and was totally naked. | Grad student | More advanced grad student "mentor"; boys club with tenure track asst prof and tenured full professor advisor | Other R1 | English | Did not report | None | Received no TA mentoring, opportunities were limited to receive feedback in classes, advisor was a confusing minefield | Makes you second guess yourself and your worth and the quality of your work and it's value | Hard to disentangle as I've only reported 2 years of experiences here, went on to further degrees and faculty positions--it's structural and nearly daily | Male | |||
952 | 12/6/2017 4:55:57 | Several of my colleagues (graduate students) have been pushy and insistent inviting me to go on dates with them. They wouldn't take "no" for an answer, especially since, according to them, I wasn't "seeing anyone" at the time. When I consistently declined, they sent me email rants, calling me names, refusing to speak to me ever again etc. | Graduate student | Fellow graduate students | Other Type of School | Université du Québec à Montréal | Philosophy | None. | None. | I've decided to quit academia as soon as (/if) I get my degree. | Stress, PTSD, impostor syndrome. I need to take anxiety meds whenever I go to campus. | I no longer work at my university office and I avoid setting foot on campus, I no longer participate in any department events. This has made me hate philosophy, hate my graduate program, hate all my colleagues. I considered quitting my graduate program, but my scholarship has a clause imposing that I either finish my degree or I have to reimburse years of funding. The financial burden being too big, I decided to quit academia as soon as I finish my degree. Philosophy is too hostile to women. | Thank you for putting this together. Academia (esp. philosophy) has a harassment problem (which, by the way, includes psychological harassment) and institutions keep on choosing to ignore it. | Male | |
953 | 12/6/2017 4:55:59 | I was standing with a group of colleagues in a common area of the department, chatting casually. A very senior, famous colleague was standing next to me. He put his arm around me in an apparent gesture of bonhomie or collegiality and his hand went down to my waist. He then pinched my waist. Hard. It was gross and humiliating and I felt violated. I just put up with it because I didn’t want to make a fuss. This was after I had learned I hadn’t gotten tenure, so there was no reason not to alienate him, but letting things go was so ingrained in me from junior professorhood and being a grad student that I didn’t even think to protest. I put up with so much sexism and saw so much racism in that department that this was just only a tiny step beyond business as usual. It was disgusting | Junior professor in the extra year you get after you don’t get tenure. | Very senior, very famous | Other R1 | Boston University | Religion | Didn’t report | None | I interviewed for other tenure track jobs in my field but I didn’t get hired. I think this incident, and the general sexist and racist behavior I experienced and witnessed at my institution made it harder to put on a smile and act as if I couldn’t wait to get the job at X institution when I was interviewing | Terrible. It was a reminder of how powerless I was at an institution that had just denied me tenure. It made me even more depressed and angry and full of self loathing | I left academia, but not directly because of this. It was just the cherry on top of the shit sundae that is life as a woman in academia (or the workforce in general) | Male | ||
954 | 12/6/2017 5:13:21 | As a young assistant professor at an art school I noticed an older adjunct faculty member who would lurk in the halls or appear out of nowhere and stare. Other colleagues agreed he was "creepy." Fast forward 10 years. I was now department chair and it came to my attention that this same guy, who taught poetry writing, was making female undergraduates pretty uncomfortable. Rather than teaching everyone together in a classroom, he held tutorials in his tiny office with the door closed so that he could work with each individual student on her writing. One student came forward when she received an envelope of poems at her home address (which she had not shared with him -- he had gotten the registrar to tell him where she lived). Although he would deny it, the poems were highly suggestive and personal, mentioning, for example, a tattoo on her leg and the street she lived on. He also called her on her cell phone and asked her questions about her boyfriend. He would have students bring some of their art to class so he could help them translate their inspiration into words; in her case he honed in on a photograph in which she appeared in the background, in the shadows, partly nude. (This was in that tiny office with the door closed.) The student filed a complaint, and I had her taken out of the class and asked another colleague to work with her through the rest of the semester so that she could get credit for the course. This was just the first incident. This student filed a complaint which was adjudicated through a complex system that included both the in-house sexual harassment procedure and the state-wide faculty union grievance process. His defense was that he was working very hard with each student to draw out their creative energy based on what he saw in their work, and of course, they explored all kinds of subjects in their work. The fact that they were 20 years old and he was somewhere in his 70s, supposedly mature enough to know where to draw the line, did not seem to register. He had several advocates in the department, all male and quite senior to me, who argued that his writing poems for the students was a matter of free speech, and that stopping it would cast a shadow over the principles of artistic freedom at the school. The poet was able to keep his job with a stern warning, an order not to have students in his office alone, and a remedial sexual harassment training program -- something required by state law that had not really been enforced for adjunct faculty, putting the university in a position of potential liability. He came to my office in the fall and told me he was very sorry, he now understood, and I would never have any trouble with him again. I told him I hoped he meant it. But of course he kept up the same behavior, choosing new students for his obsession each term. After the students saw that he had not been fired, they were very reluctant to bring new complaints against him, and feeling very upset that I had not been able to get justice for the first student, I did not feel I could push them to complain, as I could make no promises. I could only take the incident to the civil rights officer, but without a formal complaint we could go no further. Every time I went to him and told him I knew what he was up to, he wanted to know who complained, and whined about how he had a constitutional right to face his accuser. He denied and denied, and begged me not to take away the only meaningful thing left in his life. After a couple of these incidents he seems to have understood he couldn't do this with students in his class, but decided it would be ok to stalk random students he saw in the halls. Two years after my term was up, he turned his attention to a graduate student, followed her to the cafeteria, invited himself to have lunch with her, offered to help her with recommendations, etc. She didn't like it but she felt she had to be polite to a professor. Then he wrote a little play and e-mailed it to her. There was immediately a second e-mail saying "maybe you shouldn't open that other e-mail but just delete it." Naturally she opened it. It was very explicit. She brought it to public safety, who called HR, and at last he was escorted out of the building and banned from campus. The grievance procedure dragged on for over a year with his old friends declaiming over and over the violation of his civil rights, but the firing was upheld at last. | Chair of a large liberal arts department | Adjunct professor | Other Type of School | Art history | The academic advising office and the civil rights compliance officer jumped into action immediately. The faculty member filed a grievance with the faculty union, so that the union officers were obliged to shepherd him through a multi-stage grievance hearing. When I argued with the literature faculty about not rehiring him they were adamant about keeping him until the grievance procedure was finished, and I was outnumbered with no one in the administration who would come forward and help me push back. | After several more incidents, he was fired and banned from campus | This didn't have any tangible effect on my career, except that I refused to run for a second term as chair. | There were three very stressful, angry years in which I felt powerless in the face of faculty members who supported him and a clumsy and ineffectual bureaucracy. Although it has been over 10 years, my pulse increases every time I remember it and writing this is stressful in itself. I continue to second-guess my younger self and wonder if I could have done better by the students. With a few more years of wisdom, and, honestly, as a full professor who could retire any time I like, I would be louder and more insistent if I were in such a position again. | I got a PhD to be a scholar and a teacher. Any appeal that administration might have had was absolutely killed by this experience. I chose to arrange my teaching situation so that I would not have to deal with this person's supporters any longer, and I have shied away from leadership roles in the college unless the project and goals were short-term and clearly defined -- for example, working on the promotions and tenure committees. This is also partly because the longer I am in the academy the more I remember one of my mother's favorite metaphors: it's like shoveling shit against the tide. I think I can do more as a scholar and teacher, working directly with students rather than trying to fix a flawed system. And I am certainly happier and healthier that way. | I think this is anonymous enough despite the details. The faculty member in question and his friends have already made enough of this public with their ridiculous indignation that I am not concerned about violating confidentiality. If someone reads and recognizes this story, that's fine. So feel free. Telling the story feels like a small way to counteract the injustice and damage done to the students. | Male | ||
955 | 12/6/2017 5:19:58 | I taught in an architecture program, which demands an intimate relationship with students in a studio setting. A professor in our program was repeatedly initiating unwanted advances and comments with female students. He was often found at student parties inebriated and harassing female students. On two occasions he went over the line: At a hotel stay during a field trip with students he insisted on hosting a party in his hotel room in his bathrobe. He apparently groped a student's breast in a drunken state. During a critique session with a female student (who it turns out had been traumatized at an early age), he started to discuss with her his stimulation preferences and how many fingers were appropriate for vaginal stimulation. Apparently this carried on for quite a while. Her colleagues were too intimidated and scared to say anything. She was traumatized. | Assistant professor (tenure track) | Associate professor (tenured) | Other R1 | A Canadian School of Architecture | Architecture | they placed him on "research leave" for a term while they "investigated" | NONE | Informal reprimand for myself (male) and a colleague (female) for bringing up the issue with admin. | The place was obviously dysfunctional, I left for another dysfunctional university. | I am a committed feminist. | Today is Dec 6th. The anniversary of the massacre of 14 women in the engineering faculty at the Universite de Montreal by Marc Lepine with an M14 assault weapon. | Male | |
956 | 12/6/2017 5:21:16 | I was pinned between the library stacks with a professor who blocked my only exit and grabbed my breasts. He told me he would do my assignments for me if I would “play” with him. When I tried to report him to my Chair, she told me that reporting this would delay my dissertation defence by a year or more. | PhD candidate | Full Professor | Other R1 | Northern Illinois University | English | I was strongly discouraged not to report this. | None. | None. Because I stayed silent. | This was 20 years ago. I still think of it, especially when I’m working in a library. I never go into stacks that are walled in on one side. | I’m now a Full Professor—but I forever regret not reporting this man because I know he continued on with his predatory behaviour. | Male | ||
957 | 12/6/2017 5:29:45 | My department chair continually harasses me almost every day and always tries to shift the blame to me rhetorically by calling me "trouble" and things of that nature. His wife also works in the department (and is also tenured), so there is no way this will end well for me (a graduate student). | Graduate student | Tenured Professor/Department Chair | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | None | None | I live in constant fear every day of what will happen to me | I'm currently in therapy | None (yet), because I refuse to avoid spaces in my department because I am facing a horrible job market. | Male | |||
958 | 12/6/2017 5:37:03 | At UCLA when I was teaching as a visiting instructor and then a graduate student from 2006 to 2008 there were two senior professor who sexually harassed me. None of them is the professor accused in the recent Title IX case involving a History professor. One of the professors professed his love for me and was constantly stalking me as if to casually run into me and have an opportunity to strike a conversation and/or invite me for a date. He was notorious for pursuing graduate students in his department and no-one bat an eye when they saw him harassing me. He was a senior professor and my situation back them was typically quite vulnerable, especially when I became an international graduate student and had enormous sums to pay for my education. He helped me learn about fellowships and may have put in good word so that I won some of those, which put me in the delicate position of having to put up with his advances. The other professor, from my graduate program, would call me to his office regularly to theoretically discuss class work. In reality, he took that opportunity to harass me. He'd shut the door immediately after I would come in and then force a conversation about his youth and how much he'd like me, saying things like "Had I known you when I was young..." At one point he insisted on putting a piece of candy (from his native country) directly on my mouth, which I resisted. I wasn't familiar with that move, but as I saw it had clear sexual connotations. | Visiting instructor first, then graduate student. | Senior faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UCLA | History | I didn't report it to the Title IX Coordinator. I wasn't aware of my options, given that I was a recently arrived international student. | None. | Compromising situations, general unease as I was trying to pursue my education having to deal with these creeps. But to be honest, sexual harassment has been a constant in my life, ever since elementary school. | See above. | I couldn't avoid professor number 2 because he was a member of my program and thus had to take two courses with him. | Male | ||
959 | 12/6/2017 5:41:46 | 1981 I was aggressively groped by the Dean of the School, and I objected to his behavior. I was subsequently subjected to disparaging remarks over several years, as well as to lower raises and other compensation that he had final say over. | Assistant Professor | Dean, senior scholar in my field | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Anthropology | Some faculty supported the formal University inquiry, and eventual court case against the University, and others were extremely critical and supported the harasser. | The Harasser had a long-term reputation for this behavior with women graduate students and assistant professors. The University was displeased, but took no direct action at the time. | In 1985 I was brought up early for tenure, denied tenure, sued the university, and won. I was offered and accepted an excellent position at another R1 university, where I was granted tenure. While this event happened decades ago, when I think about it, it still infuriates me. | It was a grueling and humiliating experience during the last year that I was teaching at that institution, but I knew I was right. Having the support of several senior colleagues, and an excellent lawyer who specialized in labor law, made the difference in my ability to stay focused on my work while I sued the University. | There were senior male scholars who thought I should have kept quiet. In situations where they could have evaluated my work, I tried to have their names excluded from review processes. The experience convinced me of the importance of speaking out, and I have been active in advocating for others at my University. | Male | |||
960 | 12/6/2017 5:53:59 | Higher up tenured professor insisted on off-site social-setting meetings (to check my progress). This turned into a friendship. He then invited me to his cottage when I was making plans to go away for a long weekend - saying the cottage would be empty. After leading my car there he gave me a drink and we chatted. When he got up to leave he pushed me against a wall and pushed himself against me and put one of his hands around my throat as he made sexual advances. I was terrified but also realized that I was trapped. [A previous report to the Department (in situation with contract Prof that was new) had led to my being refused for specific teaching positions where the contract Prof worked.] | Grad student | Tenured Assistant Professor | Other Type of School | Science | Not reported due to career ramifications | None. I heard rumours of another female grad student where this happened with the same prof - and she was chased out of the university (by animosity and inappropriateness from other professors) and never heard from again. | Suspect he would trash my career if I ever act anything other than sweet as pie. I stay far away from the academic institution, and far away from the professor. . | WTF - are there no decent men? | Prof later mentioned that he knew if I had relationship with him, my ex would be infuriated and try to destroy me (out of ego) - which is exactly what happened. The Prof was laughing when he said this to me and talked about how his manipulations were like shooting fish in a barrel. | If the University Dean's and Department Heads refuse to act on these types of situations, the impacts to female students can be overwhelming. Imagine a world where my Department was known to take this type of issue seriously. I would have told them and walked away from this friendly Prof. Is the idea of academia to have a world where we conduct the highest calibre research, or is the idea to have women dealing with baggage so that males can claim women do not deserve higher pay, or equal hire rates? | Male | ||
961 | 12/6/2017 6:05:36 | 2014. I served as a TA for him; it was a large lecture class, and so he had to wear one of those microphones that clip on and are attached to a little battery pack. Most classes, he would "accidentally" drop the battery pack in his pocket before turning the mic on. He had a tremor, so there was a plausible excuse, but he would ask me (a) to unbutton his shirt to clip the microphone on properly and then (b) reach into his pocket to take out the battery pack and turn it on (I was then expected to put it back into his pocket). This felt super weird and creepy, but I went with it because he made it clear that there wasn't another choice. Sometimes, during class, he would ask me to step outside of the classroom with him (into this little vestibule). He'd put his hand on my arm, look deep in my eyes, tell me that it was time for a break and he was going to head to his office, and to tell the students to come back / expect him back in 15 minutes. I don't know whether this was a proposition or not, but the physical contact alone during the conversation was super weird. | Grad student | Full professor, famous. | Other R1 | Psychology (and Neuroscience) | I didn't report it | No substantial impact, except I decided not to approach this professor with an idea for a collaboration. | Male | ||||||
962 | 12/6/2017 6:50:15 | I was sexually assaulted by a PhD student. | PhD student | PhD student senior to me | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | Music | N/A | None, even though I shared my story with two friends at the department, who technically should have reported this. | After I confronted him and he shut me down, I avoided my department as much as I could. I avoided talks where he might be. I lost a lot of confidence and a lot of opportunities to network and collaborate. | Deep. I've thought about seeking therapy many times but I fear that working through this in therapy would make my current family life spiral out. | I've thought about leaving the program, or the academy wholesale. | This incident was the worst of it, but it's by far not the only one in the same department and/or at other departments at other institutions. The other incidents were forms of verbal sexual harassment on part of male faculty. | Male | |
963 | 12/6/2017 6:52:39 | Small Liberal Arts College | Female | ||||||||||||
964 | 12/6/2017 7:01:10 | This just makes me mad because it's indicative of how pervasive assumptions about harassment of grad students by senior male faculty are: At major annual conference in 2017, I went to a late night reception famous for inebriation (after having open bar dinner with a small professional society I'm also a member of), kept running into more colleagues and kept myself busy running around the reception greeting lots of old friends. (this is all good, I enjoy this part of conferences) Two senior male colleagues from other institutions who I've known for years (and trust, this isn't about them) came in with a female professor who'd also been at the dinner but had been seated far away from me. I waved at them as I rushed past to find a friend, the woman yelled as I went past about my "flat abs and great body." I glared at her. Later after she came up with a colleague of mine at my current institution and had him introduce her to me, she said the two men she was with before didn't want to and she suspected "they were keeping me for themselves." NO, they are my friends and were, I think, protecting me from an awful person. As we chatted about research and work in our vaguely similar fields, she asked me incredibly simplistic questions and started giving me advice for my eventual dissertation writing. I am an assistant professor on the tenure track. When I corrected her that I wasn't an MA student, she ran away and refused to speak to me for the rest of the night (thank god). I didn't bother to remember her name because I was so mad at the time, but now I wish I had because I would like to avoid her in the future. | assistant professor | tenured professor elsewhere (I'm pretty sure) | Other Research Agency | Conferences overall are draining because I know I'm being leered at by some and approached for conversations by others only because I'm young looking and conform with broadly socially acceptable beauty "standards." It really didn't help to have this woman treat me as if I was just a body there for the senior men to admire and prey on. No male colleague has ever said such awful things to me. Some may have behaved mildly inappropriately (I have been really lucky all these years that nothing worse has happened) but no one has ever been so blatantly dismissive of me as this woman was by assuming I was very young and going to sleep my way up. | Female | ||||||||
965 | 12/6/2017 7:06:51 | ||||||||||||||
966 | 12/6/2017 7:21:04 | A professor used a meeting ostensibly about my TAing in his class to "confide" in me about his marriage ending and to ask for advice on dating. | graduate student, mid way through program | Associate Professor, later to be chair of the dept | Other R1 | I did not report | None | Nothing consequential, I made up a reason not to TA for the professor in question | I was uneasy in the department for months after, avoided dept social events and felt on guard with this professor (and sometimes others in the dept) for the remainder of my graduate career | minimal | Male | ||||
967 | 12/6/2017 7:24:19 | A student held a hyper-sexualized running joke about my body all semester. Spoke openly about being able to "get" me, bragged about placing text about my body in his final course work. He also harassed my female students. | Visiting Assistant Professor | Student | Other R1 | Fine Art | Title IX review, found guilty, but allowed to reenroll in my course (as he failed and must retake.) | None that I am aware of. | Felt/feel less less safe in the workplace. Loss of faith in the institution's desire for a harassment-free campus. | Paranoia, nightmares, anxiety, etc. | I still hold the position and am fighting the student's return to my classroom. | Male | |||
968 | 12/6/2017 7:24:34 | [Removed] | A Master's Student. He was a member of my thesis committee. | Assistant Professor | Other R1 | Writing & Rhetoric | I reported it to the director of my graduate program. Nothing was ever formally filed because they said they didn't have enough to file. | [Removed] | I was emotionally traumatized. I avoided him in the halls. Defending my thesis was very stressful. I did pass and go on to get my PhD -- but I did everything in my power not to see him. At conferences, I still go out of my way to avoid any sight of him. The last email he sent me was so nasty that I couldn't even read it all. | I never sought treatment. But I was very emotionally upset. | As a master's student I was research a lot on white privilege in the writing classroom. I stopped doing anything with critical race studies because my perpetuator made me feel unqualified to continue that work. | Male | |||
969 | 12/6/2017 7:33:42 | My second master's degree was pursued at a contemporary art institute in northern France. The program was set in a way that through ongoing mentorship, research and creative production is developed. The mentor is given a healthy production budget to create work while accompanying the student/younger artist through the process of developing and creating their work. There are about 12 students in any given year and 4 mentors, leaving each mentor with 3 younger artists to follow and meet regularly with in the studio or as they feel fit. The institution invited a well known French filmmaker as a mentor. He had been accused on a number of accounts for sexual assault and abuse and was, at the time, being tried for an incident concerning a female young actress he had hired for a film. This man was invited to mentor young artists + film makers and was paired by the institution to work with me. To say the meetings were uncomfortable and inappropriate is an understatement. We met initially at the studio and since this generated in me feelings of discomfort at later dates we met in an office at the institution as to be in a more public setting. At each of our meetings we would be quite intoxicated and speaking inappropriately about my body and my work as a female performance artist. He gave no sound guidance or mentorship. We met a total of three times over the course of the year (the program is meant to be an opportunity for far more exchange) with his advances getting more direct each time. The other two young artists working with him felt similarly - a woman who was also experiencing harassement and a man who felt his mentorship was nothing more than a bar-like conversation. I stopped meeting with him all together and spoke with the director about my (our) experience. This was not addressed in anyway. I was able to continue to make my work through the institution without the support of the mentorship program. | Master's student | Hired Mentor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Le Fresnoy | Visual Art | Blanket the situation, silence, no response. | None. | Challenged. | Unsettled, uncomfortable, disoriented, distraught. | Concerned. | Male | ||
970 | 12/6/2017 7:35:28 | The senior women in our department were completely marginalized as happened at MIT 20+ years ago. The women were left off all major committees. Any of us who spoke up were labeled as bullies, pushy, greedy, polarizing, a gaggle, and worse. Female files were messed with by our dept Chair. A subset of male faculty took students out and got drunk with them during recruitment events and allegedly hit on the students. The successful women were accused of getting favors from higher-ups in the administration. | Full Professor | Associate and Full Professors (w/ tenure) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Chemistry | Outside agencies brought in to help -- the men were never held accountable. This was a classic case of implicit bias--the men complained about ALL of the senior women and ONLY senior women. Yet, no one pointed out to them they had serious gender bias-in fact, these men claimed upon hearing that there were "gender issues" in the dept after an anonymous survey that they would not come to the table to fix the dept if gender was part of the discussion. In the end, the strong women were "coached" and encouraged to change (walk more softly, talk more softly) so as not to "intimidate" the men. | None. One left. The others were "paid off" in pre-retentions behind the scenes as the some of the administration felt sorry for them after they were called out in a complaint. The students who had complained stepped back and would not testify after they found out they needed to turn in their names. The internal investigation (filled with lies) painted the women as "the problem"--basically making it look like the men did all of the negative things because the women deserved it because they were "bullies", "pushy", etc. | It has taken up hundreds of hours of my time as well as my female colleagues and many others. | Awful-at one point, I was close to a nervous breakdown. Panic attacks at night. I still do not like to go into the building. I am looking into leaving. | It slowed things down--making me ponder my future. I love the University -- just not our dept. I kept my research going somehow. It hurt my family, health, etc. | Male | |||
971 | 12/6/2017 7:37:52 | A professor for whom I was TAing started inviting me to get happy hour drinks on occasion--I took it as friendly and supportive at first. Then he started hugging me goodbye, lingering longer and longer each time. Culminated with him texting me over a holiday break about how he couldn't stop thinking about me. | masters student | non tenure track professor in another department but for whom I worked as a TA | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Environmental Studies | I didn't report to the institution. I confronted the professor directly, told him I was uncomfortable (via text) and he reacted with (feigned?) surprise but the harassment stopped after that | none | none | I felt guilty and responsible and also upset and confused, was embarrassed to tell anyone for fear of getting him in trouble or drawing attention to myself | minimal | I had largely pushed this incident out of my mind until I was entering another incident (at another institution) for your database. Suddenly I remembered and thought, Geez, yeah, that was f*cked up too! It is amazing how we normalize these things because they are sooo sickeningly common. | Male | ||
972 | 12/6/2017 8:00:33 | Alone with professor on a trip to Ireland to take lake samples. We got to the hotel and had a couple drinks before checking in, at check in he said the university only gives him enough money for one room, so we’ll have to share it. We had discussed the sleeping arrangement before leaving for Ireland and he assured me we would have separate rooms. I pull all the favors I can from friends and family to pay for my own room, and he is rude and dismissive to me for the rest of the trip. | Undergraduate student at their first summer position. | Tenured professor. | Other R1 | University of Saskatchewan | Geology | None. | None. | I was afraid to say anything, because he held total power over my grades and future career. | Afterward, I found at least five other women he had done this to on trips to various foreign countries. Not all of them had the means to pay for their own rooms. Not all of them got away as lucky as I was with just rudeness to deal with afterward. I don’t trust anyone with tenure. | I will never again even think of a career in academia, it is a blanket protecting predators and power freaks. My dream was always to teach and be a researcher. No more. | He is now married to one of his former students, she was 21 when they got married, he was more than twice her age. | Male | |
973 | 12/6/2017 8:19:41 | At a conference, after a reception where my mentor introduced me to a senior professor at least 20 years older, when we were all going up to our rooms in the elevator, he put his thumb down the back of my pants and whispered his room number in my ear. I kind of gasped-laughed and nothing else came of it. At that same conference, two well-known poets propositioned me during the last evening. | First year graduate student | Full professor, not at my university. Close friends with my mentor. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Trinity (Dublin) | Literature | None. | None. | I stopped socializing/attempting to network with senior men in academia for a decade. | Low-grade paranoia that men aren't interested in my ideas. | Potentially missed professional relationships. | Male | ||
974 | 12/6/2017 8:27:57 | I faced the question many women face in their graduate studies: have or postpone having children? I was seen as a promising student and dedicated scholar when I first arrived, but that changed when I got pregnant. Questions and comments about my dedication, persistence and interest arose. And when pregnant a second time, I heard many times, "You probably won't finish," or "Are you really going to stick it out," or "I was convinced you were going to check out" or other discouraging/disparaging comments from students and professors (male and female alike). I had one professor that was exceedingly gracious and kind and supportive, but that was very much the exception. | PhD Student | Professors and some students | Other R1 | Social Sciences | I addressed the comments with the individuals as they were spoken, but did not bring it up through formal means because I figured there was no point in doing so. | None - no formal complaints were lodged. | I was thoroughly disenchanted by academia and I chose not to stick around. I was offended, thoroughly, and saw no chance for redemption. I mean, it can happen, maybe, but I wasn't going to stick around to find out. | On the one hand, I felt unsupported and disrespected. The questions/comments were rude, dismissive and/or offensive to me. I am very committed and hardworking. I was constantly irritated by the assumption that I could not succeed, and also that I was throwing away my potential since I would not be able to work the unrealistic demands placed on graduate students. Maybe I wouldn't be able to give every drop of blood and sweat (though I did manage to do so somehow) but how's that MY fault and not academia's for creating such a garbage system? On the other hand, I never had such a fiery source of motivation to complete my degree. I walked away mostly disgusted with it all. | I have forsaken academia and am loving my non-academic professional life. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||
975 | 12/6/2017 8:33:19 | I have been harassed a lot (as we all have), but one in particular that stood out was a wealthy donor who regularly gives money and donations to our collection, who is also in his 90s. He occasionally takes our Executive Director and I out to lunch and on one occasion when he insisted I get dessert (which I didn't want) I asked what he was getting and he looked me up and down and said 'I'll have you for dessert.' Our ED, a woman, sat there and laughed rather than supporting me, so I just stayed silent. | Rare Books Curator | Donor | Other Type of School | museums and libraries | ED's complete dismissal of my concerns and refusal to follow up about them. I need the job so haven't pursued it because I don't feel like I can | None. | Discomfort being around male donors and volunteers, and detachment from my interest in my work. Right after this point my two bosses began to try to pin various fire-able or reprimand-worthy offenses on me (not dressing appropriately was a huge one, despite the fact that I wear the same clothes I've always worn to work). They intentionally change their expectations constantly so I'm always wondering when I'll be in trouble next, and if/when I'll be fired, and I'm afraid to speak up about this as well as other things they've done (like totally diverting conversations about sexism and racism in my exhibits and insisting that we include elements that I find at best insensitive). It hasn't been explicitly said that our donor's comments were the reason why, but my work is actively trying to court more donations out of him and trying to push me out, so I have a suspicion the two are tied. I am trying to find another position, but as academic hiring moves at geologic speeds, I haven't yet been successful. | I had cripplingly bad depression for about a year, and just recently got past it. Until about a month ago (so, early November), I cried at work every day since about January, if not before (the incident was in December of 2016). | This experience, with our ED (and her boss) and with the donor, has made me doubt my entire career and has caused incredible uncertainty and shame. I've recently been able to work through it and to reframe my work as a non-central part of my identity, and to recognize that their behaviors have nothing to do with me and that I am valuable,, a good colleague, etc. but it took a while to get there. I have found some silver linings to my experience with my boss' reactions and unprofessional behaviors because it's forced me to sit with what I want and what isn't a good fit for me in a workplace and to really articulate those things. Because my career is so specific, I'm looking to branch out to other areas in art, museums, libraries, etc. I'm also considering starting a nonprofit but want to wait until the idea is more fully formed. I'm not sure what I'll do next, but one thing I want to do when I leave here is to be open about this experience and to be proactive to use my experience to address assault and harassment wherever I end up next. I used to be very proactive in that way as a rape crisis coordinator and as someone who publicly spoke about being raped as a teenager, but for some reason it has felt more intimidating to report harassment in my career. | I'll email you my information shortly. Thank you for doing this | Male | ||
976 | 12/6/2017 8:34:35 | I’ll describe two unrelated incidents because I suspect the combination of them led to me getting kicked out of my program. First: a different male professor regularly showed video of violence against women, sometimes sexual violence, in a seminar and would dock students’ grades if they left the room for the duration of the video. Second: a male professor regularly initiated sexual relationships with female graduate students on false pretenses, then intimidated them into staying away from campus. | Doctoral student, final semester of classes & comprehensive exams | Both untenured faculty | Other R1 | Art and Art History | I spoke to several faculty I trusted about the first man and was told there was nothing I could do, and that I should keep my head down and take it. I asked these faculty to speak to the department chair about it, and I frequently objected in class. I reported the second man’s behavior to the department chair and was pressured to give names of those harassed. I did not, so nothing happened. | Both got tenure. | Soon after passing my comps (and reporting the second man), my advisor inexplicably changed my dissertation prospectus timeline such that I’d have to go several years without funding. I had to drop out. | In conjunction with the financial terror that my department held grad students in (this was during the recession and no one’s funding contract seemed worth the paper it was printed on), my discipline’s pervasive classism and racism, and the general shitshow that is graduate school, I was massively depressed and deeply traumatized. I did not attempt suicide but I frequently wanted to. It took many years to get back on even emotional footing and unlearn the trauma responses I picked up. | I thank God every day that I left academia. I miss teaching and research like the dickens, but nothing is worth what you have to put up with in academia. I moved into tech. I don’t like my work as much, but hilariously, tech has been far more welcoming to me as a queer woman and better for my mental health. For all the industry’s many problems, I make good money and I have access to an HR department. I’ve gotten harassers fired. | Everything I went through would have been really different with a union. Please unionize. | Male | ||
977 | 12/6/2017 8:46:00 | Final year at SMCC a few of us went out to watch one of our professors play piano at a local restaurant. His drummer came over to talk with us during a break and we discussed my guitar lessons and enjoyment of singing. Evening ended with my receiving a ride home from the drummer because it was late and I had a drink that was making me feel tipsy. Guy was a complete gentleman and made sure I got in. Also received an invite to check out this folk group this drummer liked. I agreed thinking it would be fun. We went the next evening to the show. I went with the intent of enjoying the show with a new friend. He was married and I had no interest in him other than a friend. That evening he offered to drop off a cd of a band he managed to see if it may be of interest to me to join. We made a plan to meet at a local coffee shop that following weekend. Before we met he emailed me an urged he needed to come by later than planned and would meet me at my place. I wouldn't normally let someone I hardly know stop by my place but where he was friends with my professor and was a professor himself I trusted him. Big mistake. Within 15 minutes of him entering my place he made a move. I told him I wasn't interested as he was a married man and I don't get involved with men in relationships. He apologized and we went back to talking. Then out of the blue he is pushing me down on the couch and forcing me to have sex threatening me the whole time. At one point I must have dissociated because I become aware of the fact he had turned the futon into a bed and was touching me. He didn't stop and leave until early the next morning. Telling me if I said anything I would be harmed. He called and Facebooked a few days later asking me how I was doing and if I wanted to get together again. I had to get a lawyer to help me get a protection order against him and I worked woth my school to ensure my safety. I tried to charges against it but the police felt there was not enough evidence to press charges. | I was a student | He was a fellow professor and friend of my professor | Other Type of School | Southern Maine Community College | Behavioral health and human services | They got me a closer parking spot so not to bump into him. Other than that they felt there was not enough to fire him. | None | The event left me with PTSD and has been a challenge to overcome. Currently the anxiety from the PTSD has forced me to take a break from my Master's program. | PTSD anxiety still has hold of me | I am not as outgoing or self assured as I used to be. Once a daring person I now am overly cautious and easily overwhelmed. | Male | ||
978 | 12/6/2017 8:57:29 | All of these incidents involved friends in the academy--and in all cases I protected their feelings afterwards, in one way or another, mostly by affirming that 'it was ok.': 1) While I was in a Humanities MA program, a PhD student at the same institution insisted he was in love with me, called me every night, threatened suicide. We were in several classes together and through hints he managed to convince the professor I wanted to work with that we had had or were having a turbulent sexual relationship. We were not. 2) As an early assistant professor at a small conference, a peer at another institution--someone great, fun to talk to, very smart about language, and (of course?!) professedly unhappy in his home life--kept lightly touching me and finally less than lightly. I froze; he asked "so, you don't like hugs?" This person was married with several children and he knew I was going through a painful, confusing divorce. A very small incident, but memorable for me, because it felt like he had discerned--and was exploiting--both my (I thought, carefully hidden) personal sadness and my (out-in-the-open) intellectual desire for lively conversation within my field (which was hard to come by where I was teaching, and which I missed very much that first year after grad school). Later I found out he has a reputation for isolating a particular woman at a conference, turning on the charm, &c. 3) Different conference. Assistant prof exactly my level and field, quite tipsy, stuck his hand up my skirt and rested it on my inner thigh while we were talking to other people (we were on barstools swiveled to face the room; they were standing around us in a semi-circle). I had moments earlier batted his hand away, but in this moment I did not, because I did not want to call attention to what was happening. I did not want to shame him. NOTE: All of these people are people I like(d) and care(d) about. All of them were friends as well as colleagues, at least briefly, before these things started. And I've dealt with the other kind of harassment, where power and fear are in play, and where I had no desire afterwards but burn the harasser's career to the ground (but, of course, couldn't). I bring these three particular incidents up because--if things are changing--the supposedly gray areas need some attention, too. If a female colleague is friendly and animatedly discusses all the academic topics you like to animatedly discuss, it does not mean she wants to sleep with you! And if you want to test someone's attraction at a conference maybe just don't--but certainly don't touch her/shame her/test her in front of advisers/colleagues/conference-goers to see what she does, I more or less behaved like a deer in the headlights in all of these situations--nothing much career-wise or physical-safety-wise was at stake, yet I was flooded with fear and shame. | MA student; early assistant prof | Friends, colleagues | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | English | None | None | None really. I'm a warier at conferences, and don't really do much socializing without a group. My favorite thing about academia--talking about books--now feels like something I need to be careful not to do with male colleagues too openly (which remains a little astonishing to me. Confusing intellectual engagement for sexual interest seems willful, NOT naive, especially among people who are gifted-close readers of texts, of behavior). | Honestly, more than it should have been! The academy, for good or ill, was the most stable, sane part of my life during these years, and the relationships within it--to a large degree bounded, scripted, based on shared intellectual interests--were often enormously sustaining for me. Their violation made me feel destabilized, uncertain, angry, helpless. | None | Male | |||
979 | 12/6/2017 9:04:54 | comments of sexual nature to me and about other female colleague in front of me and others; comments demeaning my mothering because I worked made to me and in front of others | assistant professor | associate/full professors in my department | Regional Teaching College | History | did not report | none | uncertain | unhappiness, particularly from feeling I was unable to complain without repercussion | left institution for another | Male | |||
980 | 12/6/2017 9:05:10 | Faculty member assaulting graduate students, sexual relationships between faculty members and undergrads (while in the field), faculty members screaming at and threatening to sue one another. | Grad student, Faculty member | Tenured faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | ___ | ___ | Assault on grad student lead to quiet dismissal. Other forms of harassment met with no institutional response. | Tenure loss (for assault), questions sexual relationships and bullying had no effect | The time and energy wasted would have been enough for me to write a short article. In both cases dept profile and productivity was lowered | I was not directly involved in any of these cases, but the wasted time, need for caution, and general "ickiness" I feel when walking into the building have an impact on my wellbeing. | I've avoided to work with people who I've seen others treated poorly. Seeing others abused and mistreated has also made me consider ways to escape my department and depend less on academia for work, identity, and self-fulfillment | Please also do a survey on other forms of harassment, bulling and discrimination. | Male | |
981 | 12/6/2017 9:14:26 | A supervisor in our library was flirting with, pinching the behinds, and making suggestive comments to the more attractive men (students working as shelvers) in the library. They were humiliated and terrified to say something to management, as she had repeatedly gotten away with it despite warnings. She was also arranging to keep attractive men working with her in the basement while sending those she believed unattractive upstairs for heavier duties to drop off books. | I was a shelver. | She was a supervisor of student workers. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Simon Fraser University | English/Linguistics | She had been suspended three times for accusations of harassment, but they couldn't fire her because she was a woman being accused. | A warning. | It made me very aware of the fact that sexual harassment is not gendered. It can happen from men to women, women to men, men to men, or women to women. Also, it made me very cautious of dealing with women in the workplace, as they appeared untouchable when harassing men. | Made me cautious. | I still wound up working in a library, but I refused to back down in the future when I was physically/verbally assaulted/humiliated in public by another future co-worker who was a woman. After multiple investigations and repeated assaults that were proven she only received a minimal slap on the wrist because she was a woman and belonged to a more powerful union than myself. I was in PTSD counseling for a year. (It was a different BC Post Secondary institution.) | Sexual, physical, or psychological harassment happens throughout the college/university environment. Frequently, it happens when someone feels that they are untouchable or unquestionably in the superior position. I have frequently found that there are usually several women in each institution who will feel that since they are women they can get away with impunity doing to men what would never be tolerated by a woman from a man. Men live under fear of such individuals and situations since accusations are rarely believed, or the man is disregarded/laughed at if they bring accusations. In both of my situations the women were given warnings because the management was afraid of bringing or acknowledging charges made against a woman and how they would be received publicly if such charges were made public. It has made me much more cautious in interacting with women in post-secondary institutions and in work environments in general. | Female | |
982 | 12/6/2017 9:17:10 | A rumor was spread around the department that I was sleeping with a senior faculty member, who was also my graduate adviser, and in exchange was receiving preferential treatment. | Graduate Student | Fellow Graduate student | Other Research Agency | Anthropology | None | None | I felt isolated within the department, many people believed the accusation and it made the relationship between myself and my adviser strained. | I was depressed and hurt by how many people seemed to believe the rumor. Worse they made it seem like that if this situation was occurring (it wasn't) that it would have been my fault. | I quickly finished my degree and left the institution. | Female | |||
983 | 12/6/2017 9:17:59 | When in my office, the person would walk into my office without knocking and even if I was in a meeting he would start talking to me and ignore others. His behaviour escalated over months, to putting his hands on my arms and backing me up physically as I tried to avoid physical contact; I was fearful of being alone with him and gradually started to work increasingly at home. He came to my home and at my door he leaned forward to kiss me and I backed away and closed the door. | I was a Ph.D. candidate who also held a job as coordinator of a learning centre at the same university. | The perpetrator was a full professor in my department. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Calgary | Education | I asked for support from my Ph.D. supervisor who in turn said about the perpetrator, "he has been doing it for years" implying that nothing can be done about it, and that I should be flattered because the perpetrator "usually" targets "young grad students." I asked for assistance from human resources and I was informed that I should ask the perpetrator to meet with me privately, and express my concerns to him face to face. If the behaviour were to persist, I should then write a letter to human resources, filing a complaint. | None | Inordinate amount of stress and loss of employment while I was completing my doctorate. | I did not think of it as a threat to my mental health until I was interviewed a year later by a doctoral student doing research on sexual harassment in post secondary institutions. As I spoke about the details of the series of events, I cried a lot, in large part with relief that someone was listening to me!!!! | I left the University to teach at a community college. | Male | ||
984 | 12/6/2017 9:21:59 | A professor at my law school in B.C. forcefully put his hand under my clothing and groped my genitals. | First year law student, first semester of law school. | Tenured Professor in the law faculty teaching the subject area I had come to law school to study | Other Type of School | University of ------; Faculty of Law in British Columbia | Law | I went to speak to the appropriate student services department and met with an individual there, but I was not permitted to file a formal complaint and was dismissed outright. I was told that because this action was not tied to me getting a better grade that there had been no wrongdoing. The justification was that I was not taking a class from the professor. | None whatsoever | I chose not to pursue the specialty that professor taught despite that that it had been my chosen path prior to entering law school | Not drastic ramifications honestly. More just an introduction to the real world which it is common for older men to prey on younger women | I specialized in a different area of law other than the area that professor taught in. He was the only professor teaching in that area and after he assaulted me I did not feel comfortable taking any classes from him. | Male | ||
985 | 12/6/2017 9:22:16 | A professor/head of department in which I was enrolled, put his hand on my thigh and said "I really like your dress..." This happened right before class. He was an alcoholic. In class he would often say, this piece is very good, but I think that you really need to do it in "the nude". He based this on psychology and freeing the spirit. This was said so many times that all the men in the class often talked about it and laughed. In discussions with women on campus, I realized that every male professor in the art department had sexually harassed students or peers..The department head was married to a woman but having an affair with a male art historian, the head of the print dept was know to say to women, "...what is a beautiful woman like you doing in art school?..." Several men were married to former students. | student | He was the head of the department in which I was enrolled. | Other R1 | The University of Iowa | Art- Intermedia- Performance Art and Video Studies | 5 women reported his behavior. He was disciplined in the mid 1990's. He entered class and shamed the group, saying why don't you come to me directly? Although I was not one of the 5 women, he thought that I was. He told his male assistants that he was sure it was me (they told this to my sister). The 5 women who reported are bisexual and were activists at WRAC. They were from upper middle class families and are all professors or leaders in the field now. | He was eventually forced to retire. A former male student was hired to take his place and was fired for sexually harassing his students. He now teaches at a smaller school and is married to a former student in the western part of the state. | I completed my degree (MFA). However, I chose to get a 'real job' because I had student loans to pay-- and $15 an hour position in my field--without benefits was not worth it to me. CAA's conference in NYC, where they hold 'interviews' in hotel rooms did'nt sound to me like a safe place to me. | Bad: sadness, depression,--where were did the women's lib activists go? Did they all sign on to this? Good: I want to help women and minorities more, because I have a sense of what they are experiencing. I needed a female mentor, but none were available. That left me vulnerable to male predators. I tried to go to WRAC but was told they were only interested in helping women of color and/or lesbians. I am white and working class. Now that I paid off my student loans-- after being in debt from 1981-2017. I feel better. I feel much more empowered. | I work in a job that does not require a degree. If I had chosen this path at 18, then I would be making more money and have more in retirement. At 18, I was sure that I had the talent to be the next Georgia O'Keefe--and to do that without an Alfred Stieglitz. As I went through school, I became more aware that most successful women have an Alfred Stieglitz or an Alice B. Toklas (if you id as lesbian) | Congrats to Ms. Turana Burke!!!!- person of the year. #me too. We are 'sick and tired and we are not going to take it anymore'... power to the people. PEACE | Male | |
986 | 12/6/2017 9:23:17 | Female undergrad I know was emotionally manipulated into totally inappropriate conversations and situations by a (much older) professor who has made "off" comments to me in the past. Not sure how much things escalated. | graduate student | professor | Other R1 | Physics | Seems to be an open secret in the department. | Nothing that I can see. | I didn't work for this person even though their research is interesting to me. | I'm mainly worried about my friend since she is younger and has less experience with this type of behavior. | Since academia explicitly claims to be a meritocracy, when academics ignore someone's plight, they're also saying: I don't think your work will ever be as valuable as the work of this "genius" creep. That's a lot of discouragement for a young scientist to put up with. | Male | |||
987 | 12/6/2017 9:26:39 | Stalked | Student | Fellow Student | Small Liberal Arts College | Art | None | None | Intimidated | Bothered | Avoid women | You don't collect data on the gender of the victim in these questions. The narrative of this survey is to portray females as victims and males as harassers. Its findings will be invalid as we only know the gender of the harassers. | Female | ||
988 | 12/6/2017 9:31:16 | This survey seems to be explicitly for people that have been harassed in some way. What about people that want to admit to doing the harassment? Have you considered an anonymous channel for this, with links or suggestions about how said person can address their admissions? | |||||||||||||
989 | 12/6/2017 9:40:18 | My dissertation advisor was grooming me for a sexual relationship. At an early meeting, he saw me removing lint from my leg, and looking me up and down, said, "Don't worry, you look fantastic." He soon after changed our planned early evening meeting at his office to a bar downtown, the site of a nude photo exhibit at the time. I declined the meeting. I told two close colleagues about my concerns and they minimized them, saying that he treated students like family members so lines were blurred and he just did things differently. Shortly after he was outed as having a sexual relationship with another student and was fired. | I was a doctoral student in my first year. | My dissertation advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Education | He was fired for sexual impropriety with another student | Male | |||||||
990 | 12/6/2017 9:41:15 | Last year, after discovering that the chair of a theatre department was being accused of sexual assaulting an undergraduate student, several graduate students came together to petition the accused professors continuing position on the board of our national organization. His university had prohibited him from contact with students, but the board--which made many decisions pertaining to graduate student involvement and participation in the annual conference--included student members and required him to be in contact with students. As such, graduate students compiled a petition asking for his removal from the board. The petition was met with disdain and anger from women and men who were tenured faculty saying our discomfort with his presence was ruining his reputation. We received emails with threats to sue us. We received emails insinuating that we were cowards for remaining anonymous and we were threatened with repercussions for trying to create a safer space. It made the semester very difficult for us as graduate students. Quietly, they removed his name from their website and he stepped down from the board. This year, the professor plead guilty to a lesser charge of assault. The account details the situation of the original assault and notes that "he grabbed her shoulder, accidentally removing the strap of her dress and exposing her breasts." The whole situation was incredibly upsetting. | Graduate student | Board member & Professor | Other R1 | Theatre | Threats and tactics to quiet us | Recently plead guilty to assault, still maintains tenure at his university though not currently teaching | Created a culture of fear | Scared to speak up, delayed work, exhaustion and increased anxiety | Questioning how to support students when I am aware that no support exists for staff/faculty/sessionals | Male | |||
991 | 12/6/2017 9:46:06 | 1) As a female graduate student I was told I was not eligible for a high-status departmental job because I was a "girl" and the male, tenured faculty member in charge liked to have an even "boy-girl balance" because the "dynamics" worked better. Our graduate program had more female students than male. The faculty member in question was known to be in a relationship with one of his female students--the "girl" who did get the job. 2) As a female job candidate on a campus visit, a male dept chair stalled and delayed at dinner, keeping me alone with him at the restaurant until 11pm. Everyone else had left hours before. When he finally drove me back to the hotel, he asked to come up to my room and talk with me more. When I politely declined, he tried to extend the conversation in his car for nearly another hour. He told me he was disappointed when I insisted I had to go inside--without him-- near midnight. I did not get the job. | female graduate student | tenured, senior male faculty member | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Humanities | did not report formally, but mentioned to advisor who was disappointed and sympathetic but not surprised or interested in pursuing any response | none | possible missed opportunities, lost jobs--hard to say for sure | a reminder that in the game of academia, I was a gendered object and prey... | I find myself (subconsciously, unintentionally) avoiding situations where I will have to collaborate with men in scholarly or administrative settings. | Male | |||
992 | 12/6/2017 9:46:57 | I was one of four young, female research assistants working for a senior tenured professor at Simon Fraser University, who was also the primary supervisor for my Master's degree. I had moved across the country from Nova Scotia specifically to work with him, because he was internationally recognized for his research on substance use. Prior to moving I spoke with two former students of his, who cautioned me against working with him because he was known to have a temper and didn't work well with women. I was 21 and alone in a new city. Initially he was very warm and we enjoyed a great rapport. He brought me on to exciting projects and we co-authored several papers together. He learned that I lived near his home and began suggesting that we have work meetings there, over a glass of wine. I was uncomfortable with these meetings, but felt obligated to go so I wouldn't miss out on research opportunities. The meetings frequently went from the professional to the personal, where he would share intimate details of his life with me: his failed marriage, the child he had co-parented, etc. I felt sorry for him and figured he was just another lonely, work-obsessed academic. I began to sense underlying tension and stress at our research center a few months in. I learned through the other RA's that my supervisor was known for being verbally abusive and was prone to screaming at them in person, sending late-night ranting emails, and accusing them of "sabotaging" his career. During my time at the center, two of his longest-serving RA's quit, and one of them shared her concerns with the Dean of the Faculty. She was offered a job with the Dean's office, and the university did not take any disciplinary action (that I'm aware of) or check on the well-being of the other Research Assistants under his employment. His other Master's student, a man, quit within 3 months of working with him. In my second year, my supervisor invited me to join him on an all-expenses-paid trip to Brazil to work on a collaborative research project. Over the 10-day trip we worked together all day, every day and stayed at the same hotel. He was in great spirits, and I felt like the "chosen" student. When I was leaving to return to Canada, he reached across the taxi and held my hand. I did nothing and tried to interpret it as a fatherly gesture. As I was leaving I mentioned I was excited to travel back to Nova Scotia in a few weeks to spend Christmas with my boyfriend. Things deteriorated as soon as I returned to Canada. I found a series of long, ranting emails that the other RA's had warned me about. He claimed I had made an error in a literature review that had humiliated him in front of our international collaborators, and accused me of being incompetent and trying to ruin his career. After a string of abusive emails, he cut off virtually all communication with me. I was in the middle of writing up my thesis and he made it clear that he would not be available to support my work. I was completely isolated. As Christmas came closer, he told me that I was too far behind to take holidays and that he didn't want me to leave. I did not share details of my travel plans with him, and left. He went found a printout of my travel itinerary at the office and send me a series of belligerent emails where he insisted that I needed to return immediately, claiming that he had left (long-awaited) feedback on my thesis at the office. I phoned my program chair in tears, telling her I needed to find another supervisor. She encouraged me to stay because my defense had already been scheduled and it would be better than starting over. I successfully defended my thesis, with a friend in the room for support. I could have pushed for a publication afterwards, but I didn't want to have any further contact with him. He made me feel like a failure. My friend (a man) started his PhD with my former supervisor a few months later, and quit shortly after experiencing a screaming tirade where he was insulted and threatened with physical violence (his exact words: "I will kill you".). In the years since, I've learned that his abuse was systemic and widely known within the research community (I always get a raised eyebrow from other academics when I mention his name). I found myself in a situation where I was totally powerless, had no institutional support and was subjected to verbal abuse and inappropriate romantic overtures from someone I trusted and admired. I know there are people who have experienced far worse, but I've found ways to minimize what happened to me for too long. This experience eroded my confidence in the integrity of the academic system to protect its students, and radically and permanently changed my career trajectory. | Graduate student and research assistant | Primary supervisor and employer | R2 | Simon Fraser University | Faculty of Health | When I shared my concerns with my program chair (a woman) and my plans to find another supervisor, she encouraged me to continue because I was "so close" to being finished. She acknowledged that he was known for being "difficult", and tried to comfort me by saying that he only worked with very bright students. | None. He left and is now a tenured professor at the University of Toronto. He is frequently featured in the media. | I was unable to publish any of the findings from my graduate thesis and do not have an academic recommendation from my supervisor, which has severely limited my ability to continue to pursue academic training (PhD). He cut a promising academic career short before it could start. | I developed an eating disorder and used drugs daily for the last 6 months of my Master's program. | I'm proud of what I've accomplished with my career in the years since these incidents occurred, but I still carry a lot of shame about what happened to me, and regret that I was unable to pursue the academic career I had initially envisioned for myself. | Since the #metoo campaign started I have been looking for an outlet to share the story of what happened to me and other women who worked for this person. Thank you so much for providing space to me and others who have experienced harassment in academia. It's comforting to know that I am not alone. | Male | |
993 | 12/6/2017 9:48:37 | Nicholas Hanson, a professor who had been suspended from the University of Lethbridge pending trial for a sexual assault charge involving a female graduate student, was allowed to remain on the board of our national theatre association (CATR) for months. When an online petition emerged to urge the board to remove him, the authors of the petition were threatened with legal action. Hanson was later found guilty of assault (he plead down, but the details of the case are clearly sexual in nature - he "touched her shoulder accidentally causing her dress to fall down and expose her breast" after shutting himself, drunk, in a room with her alone and blocking her exit.) | Graduate student | Professor | Other R1 | University of Lethbridge | Theatre | His university suspended him -- our national theatre board didn't bother until they were embarrassed by an online petition. | Pending. | I left academia shortly after this. It wasn't the only reason, but the treatment of women in academia was definitely a huge contributing factor. | n/a | n/a | Male | ||
994 | 12/6/2017 10:02:16 | as soon as i started my MSc my supervisor started being too friendly. at first i thought he was nice and kind but then I felt pressured and trapped. he had me over for dinner a few times and would let me to stay in the guest room because the buses had stopped running. He offered to take me to Banff on the wknd to show me the beauty of the rocky mountains. but when we checked into the hotel, it became evident that he was only getting one room (two beds). i was scared and uncomfortable and second guessing myself. he paid for it and it was the most expensive hotel in the area. but then he started to expect me to come over to his house too much. he would send me friendly text messages late at night and on wknds. the 2nd time he invited me on a wknd trip, i said yes but added that a male friend was going to be in the area too and could we invite him to join us. after that he was mad and i felt bad. for months he alternated between punishing me and praising me. i finally confronted him and he said he thought i had led him on. when i pointed out that i didnt know he was interested because he treated the other female grad student the same way, he said he was interested in her too. i told my cosupervisor and she went ballistic. she called him and screamed at him and he apologized to her. she wanted me to file a complaint but i didnt. i was too scared and embarassed and uncomfortable. the other grad student went to the ombudsperson on campus and he made her feel scared. he told her that she should wait until after her comprehensive exam and that then they could arrange for a third party mediator to meet with her and our supervisor together. she was mortified by the idea. my cosupervisor filed the complaint and i provided screen grabs of text messages. i finished my MSc and left university of alberta. i found out recently from my cosupervisor that he was found guilty of harassment but thats all i know. | i was a new MSc student (22 y) | he was a tenured professor (50 y old) and my direct supervisor. | Other Type of School | University of Alberta | Biology | professor had breached the policy on harassment | none (some disciplinary measures that do not seem to have affected him) | i left academia and still feel ashamed and traumatized. i also feel like i didnt do enough because i didnt file the complaint. | i suffer from depression and anxiety and low self esteem. | i got a job at the same place i worked at after undergrad. they are nice to me. i didnt need a reference letter and it is a science related job. i am careful around men. I have a MSc and a publication but I never want to go to alberta again or have to talk about my MSc work during an interview. | the university didnt do anything. they had to deal with the formal complaint but never interviewed any of us except for the prof. he denied any romantic interest only because there wasnt any proof. he had to admit he had been "too familiar" and that he had shared a hotel room because it was in the evidence i gave the complainant. the other grad student refused to participate and asked for her name to be redacted from the complaint. U of A will not disclose any of it because of the privacy act. even during the complaint he was allowed to go to the arctic with the other student. they never brought in another supervisor or separated him from us. he still has all the power. | Male | |
995 | 12/6/2017 10:04:39 | Was offered sexual favours by students, but under the guise of joking/flirting | Professor | Students and research assistants. | Other R1 | Brock University | Applied Linguistics | Laughed it off | Nothing. One is still employed as a career TA. She has union seniority, and still regularly makes sexual comments to her students, including on social media. She no longer interacts with me as I made my displeasure with her well known, although not the why of my displeasure. | Toxic work environment | Anxiety | I hate my job as a professor, not just because of sexual harassment, but other forms of harassment and a climate of zero accountability, starting at the top of the institution. Brock University is a sick mess. | My name is Ron Thomson... at this point I'm not afraid of going public given the right context. | Female | |
996 | 12/6/2017 10:07:56 | Are the survey results still public? | Are the survey results still public? | Are the survey results still public? | |||||||||||
997 | 12/6/2017 10:10:16 | A prominent man in my field grabbed my thigh while sitting next to me at a conference dinner. He later cornered me at a reception, told me his wife didn't care what happened at conferences, and invited me to back to his hotel room. | First-year graduate student | Tenured professor, highly respected in my field, at a prestigious public university | Other R1 | The University of Virginia | English | I spoke to my (male) advisor after the fact, and he told me that this man was notorious for "going after girls like you," and that I should ignore it | none | None so far | This incident occurred at my first major conference--it made me feel as if my academic achievements were the least interesting thing about me, as if my place at that conference dinner was to entertain him, rather than to grow as a scholar or network | Male | |||
998 | 12/6/2017 10:10:54 | I was walking down a hallway in July 2017 and unknowingly dropped a receipt. A man picked it up and got my attention to give it back. His coworker grabbed the receipt, eyed me up and down with a disgusting look on his face and said "Just one minute, I want to see what kind of lingerie she purchased." | Employee | Outside contractor | Other R1 | University staff | Did not report | Did not report | Anxiety, discomfort wh.en male contractors that I do not know may be in my secured building | It adds to previous traumatic experiences I have had. | No impact. | I live in Canada, if this is relevant. | Male | ||
999 | 12/6/2017 10:13:53 | The first time I met the (esteemed, tenured) professor I was supposed to spend my PhD years working, he caressed my hand when when shook hands, and then made me sit close to him on his couch instead of in a chair across from his desk. I had been warned that he "likes French women." Over the past couple of years, I have seen him touch women without their consent on multiple occasions. He obviously gets a kick out of toeing the line between "vaguely inappropriate" and downright unacceptable. I have since changed my entire study focus in order to avoid working with him. Half of the department ignores his behavior or says he's "just an old man," and the other half won't rally against him in fear of what he could do to our careers. | 1st year graduate student | Future Advisor, tenured professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Indiana University | literature | sad nods | changed field of study | changed entire master's thesis | Male | ||||
1000 | 12/6/2017 10:14:11 | After undergrad, my old advisor tried to kiss me when we met to discuss my grad school prospects. | between undergrad and grad school | my advisor | Other R1 | Political Science | did not report | did not report | It made it difficult to go through with applying to school because I needed his recommendation. | I experienced anguish and began questioning whether I was really good enough to become a professor or if professors who had encouraged me only did so because they saw me as a piece of ass. It made me question my intellect. | I overcame the incident and entered the academy. In grad school, I was wary around male professors. I now remain watchful of my male colleagues. | this sucks. thanks for compiling this list. | Male | ||
1001 | 12/6/2017 10:20:05 | In a parking lot after a drink to celebrate my new collaboration to a project, a colleague/fellow student admitted being attracted to me, I told him I was not interested and he pressed his body against mine and pinned me between my car while the guy who wanted to kiss me. After the refusal, his attitude towards me changed and he started to be uncooperative, difficult and treated me differently alone vs in groups (cordial in groups, cold and difficult in the office) | Undergrad, full-time student, newly hired to work as a part-time coordinator on a PhD project for one of my teachers. | He was the previous coordinator, he recommended me to the professor as he needed to take some time off and wanted a replacement. He also was a class fellow, different cohort but we had few classes together that Fall. He was new to me, I did not know him prior to the classes. | Other Type of School | Public University in Canada | Contemporary Languages | None | None | I left my post as a coordinator (loss of income), I dropped the class I had with him (delay in my course pathway) , ultimately left the program. | Depression, anxiety, self-doubt, anger, shame | Loss of potential new project involvement, left the program and considered going to a different University/Town to finish my undergrad | Male | ||
1002 | 12/6/2017 10:20:09 | UBC (Canada) - Conversational French Class, Arts Faculty: professor well known for sleeping with his students, obvious favourites in class who recieve good marks, professor makes it clear he wants to have sex with me, I refuse, then my marks become failing grades, he belittles me all the time, tells me my French is horrible and that I will fail. Finally I can’t stand the stress of attending class and drop out. Later I see the prof on campus, and he asks me “why did you quit, I would have passed you in the end?” Ironically his most favourite student was with him, obviously acting like a couple. Not reported, simply quit, lost opportunity as I intended to specialize in languages UVIC (Canada) - Poli Sci, Arts Faculty: professor routinely tells class that political science is not a domain for women. Politics are for men. He was tenured, no action taken by university despite his stance being widely known. UVIC (Canada) - History, Arts Faculty: professor known for assaulting female students, female students support each other by spreading the word to never go in his office or allow yourself to be in a room alone with him and never let him shut the door or you will be at risk of assault. The worst part: woman’s studies professor also coached female students to never be left in a room alone with him and never let the door be shut. An underground network kept female students save, while the university ignored his actions. I really respected the woman’s studies prof, because she was putting her career on the line by protecting female students. | Undergraduate student | Tenured profs - no point in reporting, more risk of consequences for victim than perpetrator | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UBC and UVIC - top provincial universities in Canada | Educator | None - never reported ... after many, more sexual harassment incidents in high school ( even more vulnerable age) I was experienced enough to know that keeping my mouth shut and dodging the gropers & perverts was the best way to get thru school safely and keep on progress to my own career goals. I became an educator so future students could have a safer and more enjoyable learning experience. I thought about the few teachers who were excellent mentors and decided to emulate them, and continue their legacy. | None | Lost opportunities - I pursued several career goals before deciding on education. Four areas that I wanted to pursue were: acting, architecture, languages, and the RCMP ( police). In each of these I encountered teachers who were abusive, sexual predators and their actions traumatizing enough to halt my dreams. Decided on Education so I could make a different experience for future students. | Loss of self-confidence - distrust of men and life long struggle to overcome these challenges. I once challenged an abusive staff member when I was a School principal, eventually the staff member was transferred into a position with no student interactions ( night custodian). During the process I asked the school board admin staff to intervene. One administrator told me that: Oh, well. Good thing it is education and not medicine, meaning that it was not a life or death circumstance, so her abuse did not have serious consequences. I told him that he was wrong. In education, abuse kills the human spirit. It is simply a slow process. And if harmful enough, some never recover. The residential school system imposed on First Nations students in Canada is a good example of how extreme abuse can slowly kill the human spirit. I believe educators have a responsibility to stop abuse and harassment when it occurs in schools. | Loss of career opportunities | Male | ||
1003 | 12/6/2017 10:31:49 | -male mfa student spread rumors about me when i decided not to pursue a relationship with him, wrote stories about me and read them aloud in class, wrote blogposts about me, refused to comment on my mock defense as other students were expected to. -male professor made inappropriate jokes in class, let students drink at workshop, rumors his wife had a mental breakdown, when they divorced he began a relationship with a female PhD student at another school, he refused to attend defenses of poetry students (two females) he "didn't like," belittled women's poetry in class ("coy" "juvenile"), ignored critiques of male poetry that women stated made them uncomfortable, after an incident in a workshop with ended in him throwing teacher evaluations on the table and saying, "Just try to fire me. It won't work." -undergrad sent email to a poet in another state who was publishing her work and confided she felt uncomfortable with a male mfa student at our institution teaching a class. he was insisting on private meetings and threatening her grade if she did not agree to these meetings. this poet sent a woman in my program the email and we met with this student. got her out his class. -male higher up in admin position who is also a writer accused of sexual assault outside the office. continues to work at university. used to be a cw professor but was removed from position. allegations came out while i was interviewing for job. with counsel from friends, decided to take the job because it could be a huge opportunity for my career, i felt i could hold a firm line with him and not allow him to come to readings. i was the only one who knew about allegations in the office. i insisted right away that he not attend literary events. insisted that this was a professional responsibility i had / to ensure that literary events were neutral and did not take a position regarding the allegations, which were widespread in the community. i took the job to further my career. i did everything i could to protect myself and be honest with every person who agreed to do literary events at our school. about his presence and my position there and that he was not to attend events. he agreed to not attend events but intimidated me while also pretending to like and support me as an employee. it was a very confusing two years of gaslighting and threats. he threatened to show up at events, told me he hoped the people who were runner ups for my positions would not come to readings or panels I was hosting or attending, would suggest i do things that were explicitly against emory policy (having students pick up authors from the airport), asked me to co organize an event related to literature but not explicitly literary that ended up not happening (knowing i could not refuse helping with the event), he bad mouthed ppl who had supported his victim and tried to sue several women who voiced support for her on social media, forced me to have a closed door meeting with him about why my social media was private / why i was not friends with him on social media, lied about his health and his marriage to other poets and co-workers, gave me extremely high performance reviews, but wrote a LOR which would make anyone question hiring me (i had decided not to use it and opened it after making that decision to not use it.) he cancelled the literary series i did, blamed the cut on someone who was leaving the institution the next week, and while he assured me it had nothing to do with my performance (insisted I had done miraculous work, amazing work), he blamed me for the series ending in front of all my co-workers. i also discovered as i was leaving that he had reactivated a social media account that i had not yet blocked and used it to follow me on social media. there were times were it seemed he knew things about me he shouldn't have. | student and then employee | professor, higher up in admin. department | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | creative writing | went to student conflict office with 2 other students during mfa, wrote letters with about 5-10 other students to chair of creative writing addressing issues with this professor. was told nothing can be done. was given a book about how to work with assholes in a professional environment. was told by chair our comments were "abusive" and a "slap in the face." no response by institution about admin higher up. no idea what they know, if they know. felt i could not report since assault happened to someone else, off campus. it would be hard to convey context and why he was threatening me, how it was emotional abuse. | none | was asked explicitly about allegations against admin higher up and my response to them in the workplace at a job interview (informally). while it was informal, i knew i wanted to be honest, but professional. tricky ground. they were v. impressed with my response, but i was v. anxious speaking about it. male professor at mfa offered support and assistance getting jobs to students he favored. gave them scholarships and dept. awards during mfa. i have not written in the last year because of stress working with higher admin person. i am now working part time in order to heal / get my health back. i'm going to change careers completely. | anxiety, therapy needed, high blood pressure for a short time, sleeplessness, triggered by dramatic interpretations of sexual assault, panic attacks, fear, paranoia, difficult understanding my role as a victim (since I was not raped or sexually assaulted and mostly experienced covert emotional abuse). | changing career. will still write. have and will write about these incidents. fear of retribution. | Male | |||
1004 | 12/6/2017 10:34:27 | The professor for whom I worked (he was 40, I was 19) constantly hit on me, invaded my personal space, and asked me out for drinks. At one point, he kissed me (hard, tongue kiss). I came to find out this was a pattern for him--I was not the first. | An undergraduate student | A professor for whom I worked in the area of my major. | Other R1 | The University of Texas | Astronomy | I struggled to go to work every day, and my stress level was very high. | I changed my major, but not for reasons related to him. | Male | |||||
1005 | 12/6/2017 10:35:49 | A former professor (and my thesis advisor) came onto me after I had graduated, despite the fact that I was in a relationship with one of his current students. He also would remind my then-boyfriend that I had had a crush on him (the professor) first. | Had recently graduated from MFA program. | Former professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Creative Writing | I didn't report anything as I was no longer a student | NA | None, though it did lead me to question whether his support and encouragement during his mentorship of me was fueled by sexual interest rather than a genuine appreciation of my work. | I was extremely upset at the time about whether and how to bring up the matter with my boyfriend, who was quite close with him | None | Male | |||
1006 | 12/6/2017 10:39:58 | Quid Pro Quo (for marks) with my 1:1 voice/music professor in 1st term of 1st year, 1994. Comments about my appearance, requests to wear tighter clothing and he would sit on the music bench in odd positions that made me feel very uncomfortable. | I was a 1st year student at Queen's University at Kingston, ON | He was my professor. I recall he was a notable performer from the community but not a Phd | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Queen's University at Kingston, ON | Music Dept | Listened but didn't do anything about it or document it or follow up with me | None to my knowledge | I outright stopped singing which had been a life long passion to that point. I don't trust men in the music field and will only let my daughter be coached by a female. I also lost money as the course was quite expensive and I dropped out because I felt so uncomfortable. I had to go to summer school to make up for lost credit, spend more money on courses/housing/accommodation and not work while I was in school. | Hard to say since I am now in my 40s. But at the time, I was so angry with him and so incredibly disappointed with my university - which seemed so progressive on the outside but in reality, had no infrastructure set up to handle me. | I don't sing anymore. It used to bring me massive joy. | How did Queen's measure this Prof's ability and suitability to teach? I'm assuming it was only based on his performing record and he wasn't vetted or educated about what is proper teaching behavior and that sexual harassment is 100% NOT ACCEPTABLE! I consider Queen's partially responsible for my experience as they allowed and facilitated a predator - on top of not doing anything about it, even though I brought it to their attention. | Male | |
1007 | 12/6/2017 10:40:10 | I debated whether to post this or not, as it's relatively minor, but I think it's important to chart the staggeringly broad range of creepiness to which women are subjected, and particularly women of color and/or international faculty, even (or especially) from otherwise well-intentioned leftist men in the form of "benign" sexism/paternalism if you will. Among many examples that have happened to me and others, I think the most revealing is this one: A female colleague from abroad was hired at the same time that I was. For background, I'm a white American woman. The chair of our department complimented her on her hair, appearance, outfits, smell, etc., and hugged her "to welcome her to the department" every time he saw her, for months, until she finally got up the nerve to say: "No hugs." | Assistant Prof, tenure track | Associate Prof and chair of dept | Other Type of School | a Catholic school in SF Bay Area | History | Momentary embarrassment or confusion perhaps, and confirmation of his status as a jackass in our eyes. | Not sure if it's related but the chair never signed the paperwork she needed to get her new classes approved; with this person it's hard to tell if it's just his normal incompetence or reprisal. Luckily a new chair was in place the next year. | I can't speak for my colleague but I know it caused her a lot of distress and we would spend a lot of time strategizing, trying to make sense of his actions, etc. | Just confirmed my instinct to stay away from this guy and never let him have any power over me if I could help it. | Male | |||
1008 | 12/6/2017 10:41:03 | I was harassed by a young prof at Dalhousie, Halifax, NS. The prof is a very fashionable guy and seems dependent on validation from students. I am African Canadian and he took special care, in class, to stress I am not "African". I went to his office to talk. He told me he can provide favours if I will provide favours. He continued with plenty of facial gestures and suggestive invitations. I pretended not to understand. He told me, ""Come on. You are not that innocent". I left the office. My mark is F. | student- working part time at various on-campus minimum wage jobs | prof-- full credit core course | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Dalhousie | I am afraid to state this for fear of further harraassment. | None. Told me it was "cultural" and 'friendly" | absolutely none-- his jokes got laughed at. Dept thought it was 'cute" | F on my full credit, core class. Unable to take additional credit until that class was repeated with a passing grade. Delayed graduation. I learned that safety is reserved for rich, majority students and fashionable exotics. | I know I am unsafe and institution will not help me. | I know now I must protect myself. The system has no respect or concern for my safety or protection. | I hope so. | Male | |
1009 | 12/6/2017 10:45:40 | I was physically cornered by a student in an office with a closed door in an attempt to intimidate me into modifying their grade in a way that was weirdly gendered and involved making comments that could be construed as sexual, which combined with the less than an inch between us, was very intimidating. | Instructor | undergraduate | R2 | Sociology | My department chair offered suggestions on how to avoid such issues in the future. | None | none | I keep my office door locked at all times now, and only meet with students in public places | This is only one such example. I was also backed physically up to my car at a community college by two male athletes in an attempt to intimidate me into modifying their grades. While intimidation and close bodily proximity may not by necessity be interpreted as sexual, it was clearly a gendered attack on my sense of security that led to an investment in mace. The school, in that case, simply shrugged and said that the parking lot was public property and no one was hurt. But then, I am only an adjunct. | Male | |||
1010 | 12/6/2017 10:47:59 | During my course this semester, my professor invited a visiting professor to speak to our class. Following the presentation, the visiting professor came up to me to complement me on the points I had raised during the discussion period. This conversation was brief and professional. Following the lecture, my classmates, professor and the visiting professor went to a pub. While everyone was listening, the visiting professor (who was sitting on the other side of a large table), stated that he and I had talked after the presentation, and that we had engaged in "verbal intercourse". He then commented on the fact that I was blushing. This all happened very publicly, in front of all my peers. | Student | Tenured, visiting professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Toronto | Education | After reporting it to my professor, he has decided to change his policies in his classroom (e.g. make sure he knows the people he is invited to speak to his students, have an explicit anti-harassment policy for all his courses, and ensure all visitors are aware of the policy). | None | None | It was very embarrassing and it took me a few weeks to get up the nerve to tell my professor what had happened. I doubted whether or not I would be heard and supported. | None | Male | ||
1011 | 12/6/2017 10:47:59 | I was a PhD student who also happened to be pregnant. Faculty made comments like "if she wanted to breed, she should have stayed home" and "don't you know what birth control is?" | Ph.D. Student | Faculty - tenured professors. Fortunately, not my direct advisors. | Other R1 | Geography | None - I didn't report it, but heard about the comments from my advisor and other students. | None | Declined opportunities that involved those faculty. | Huge negative impact. Started working from home more and no longer pursued opportunities to engage with those faculty. | Made sure to choose an institution that was more family-friendly for my career. | Male | |||
1012 | 12/6/2017 10:48:26 | This is a minor incident but creeped me out nonetheless, and the way in which some colleagues blindly admire this guy has me experiencing cognitive dissonance and doubting my own instincts. I was teaching in a prestigious program on campus that had been directed by the same faculty member for about 30 years. The program is much resented because he controls it tightly and brags about how it takes only the "best" students, but he only lets some people teach in it. I was admitted to this select company but by means of various indications, knew my "place" was to stay quiet and not challenge him. A few years later at a graduation dinner with free drinks this man came closer than I felt comfortable, and then for no apparent reason, placed his hand on my lower back. I moved away. Shortly thereafter he retired. | Associate Prof. | Full professor and director of program I was teaching in | Other Type of School | Catholic university in SF Bay Area | I mentioned this to a trusted male colleague, who scoffed and made me feel like I was overreacting. This in spite of the fact that the man in question (the program director) had been the subject of a sexual harassment lawsuit of some sort a few decades ago, which (rumor has it) was settled out of court; he was also part of a lawsuit alleging sexual and racial discrimination in his department, of which he was chair. His accuser retired recently, and is known as "crazy" on campus. Since telling my colleague about the incident, and being pooh-poohed, and since the election of a sexual-harasser-in-chief, and since #metoo, I have found it almost impossible to enjoy the friendship I formerly enjoyed with the trusted male colleague, who I now see as completely blind and in denial. | Male | |||||||
1013 | 12/6/2017 11:01:23 | While teaching an introductory composition class how to analyze images for their multimodal projects, a student interjected and asked if I had a Snapchat and if he could Snapchat me sometime. The rest of the class went silent and looked uncomfortable until I changed the subject and moved forward with the lesson plan. At the end of class, I pulled the student aside and told him to never talk to me like that again. He seemed confused that his comment was rude and inappropriate. | Graduate Teaching Assistant | Undergraduate Student | Other R1 | English | I emailed my program supervisor and the composition coordinator about the situation. They encouraged me to keep them in the loop if the student harassed me again. | None | None | None, but made me feel a little wary of male students | None | Male | |||
1014 | 12/6/2017 11:01:38 | This was perhaps just the bad behavior of the individual, but as a collective, we all chose to remain silent and not report the incidents of sexual harassment on behalf of one of our colleagues. It's possible the administration knew about it, but didn't intervene. For the first two to three years that my cohort was in our PhD, one of our colleagues sexually harassed (groping and overt sexual comments and probably more that I don't personally know about) a large number of women in our program. We laughed about it and talked about it at the time because it was so persistent, but it was actually pretty bad. Why did we just go along with it? One night I was the target of his unwanted harassment. He kept announcing to the small group of people at a professional event that we had "gotten naked in the bathroom/had sex in the bathroom" (of course not true). He cornered me several times, trying to grope me and/or kiss me. It was so obvious that that another male colleague stepped in to ask if I was ok. I later called the perpetrator to tell him never to treat me like that again. His excuse was that he was high and he never apologized, just gave me more excuses for his behavior. He later went on to have a "relationship" with a young undergraduate student in one of his classes that seemed to have an f***ed up power-dynamic (obviously). I believe he is still teaching, so I would be very worried about hiring him to teach young women. He is winning awards and publishing books these days, so his power and opportunities for teaching are probably increasing. I've heard he is clean now, but I still wouldn't trust him. Obviously, this behavior is not as bad as some, but I wish I could protect his students. It makes me very sad and angry to think that he might still be out there, protected by the academy and his power, perhaps preying on students and women in the writing world. | PhD Student | PhD Student / Colleague | Other R1 | U of Houston | Literature | None that I know of | None | I have become disillusioned with the academy (partly because of his behavior, but for other reasons as well) and am no longer a part of it. | Disillusionment with men | Male | |||
1015 | 12/6/2017 11:03:15 | Frequent occurrences of verbal sexual harassment at work, less frequent physical touching. | Senior administrator | Senior adviser to administration | Regional Teaching College | Higher education administration | Removal of harasser under guise of retirement with significant severance package; although, later found out that he was retained as adviser "behind the scenes." | As he was well into retirement age, the only consequence was long-term financial. | After I named him, I began to lose support of my colleagues and then termination. Then almost a year of unemployment and now underemployment. Now unable to secure higher ed admin position among education network. | Anxiety, depression, assessed with PTSD. | I have several years until I can financially retire. I will likely have to move to another province, sell my home, etc if I want to resume work in higher education administration. Its been over a year and a half and I still second guess my decision to name my harasser. I would love to name him and my former organization if only to tear him down and everyone else in the cover up but what benefit would it be to me? Nothing. I have everything to lose and slowly am losing it. He had nothing to lose and still receives accolades. | Male | |||
1016 | 12/6/2017 11:04:04 | I was meeting a professor whith whom I studied Islamic Philosophy when he was visiting Hopkins. There isn't any specialist of Islamic Philosophy at Hopkins so he became my recommender. We kept meeting every year and I would send him papers that he read very carefully and gave me great feedbacks. Then the last time we were supposed to meet, at Harvard after his conference (he lives in Israel so I thought I could make the trip to Boston, and I thought we we had become "friend" by then...he's around 75 years old so I trusted him) he suggested by email to meet him in his room because he "had breakfast" and that I could bring my bathing suit to take advantage of the hot tub. | Graduate Student | Professor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | We met at Johns Hopkins University but he is now teaching at Bar Ilan. He did his phd at Harvard and we were supposed to meet there because of a conference. | Humanities | I canceled my trip and lost my plan ticket | None | I lost the recommender who can attest of my skills in Islamic Philosophy and Arabic. | I was physically shaking the day before meeting him. I couldn't believe what he wrote in the email. I felt betrayed and distraught for few days. I also blamed myself for being so naive. | Don't trust men even when they're 75 years old and seem to mean well. | Male | ||
1017 | 12/6/2017 11:11:42 | [redacted] | Graduate student | Tenure-Track assistant professor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | [redacted] | Male | ||||||||
1018 | 12/6/2017 11:16:35 | At the ArcticNet Conference where I was presenting a poster in a student poster competition I was left waiting to present to the final judge, who was a colleague and collaborator of my supervisor. He left me waiting well past the end of the time when I should have finished presenting. When I got up the courage to ask him when he was going to assess my presentation he looked me up and down and replied with a creepy "Oh I've been judging you all night". | I was a Project Manager of a research project | Colleague and collaborator of my supervisor (who was one of my employers) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Geography | This happened at the ArcticNet Conference which has a poor reputation of addressing sexual harassment issues/complaints | None. | None, other than making me feel uncomfortable and wasting my time by making me wait when I could have been attending an important work meeting. | Left feeling uncomfortable, annoyed, and demeaned. | This, combined with interactions and similar stories I had heard about this individual made me think twice when my supervisor suggested a PhD that would have necessitated collaborating with this individual. I ultimately decided not to pursue the PhD at that time, although having to interact with this individual was not the main driver in my decision. | Thank you for doing this important work. Academia desperately needs to change. | Male | ||
1019 | 12/6/2017 11:23:34 | On 6/28/2017, my pharmacology professor asked me to stand up, and he closed his office door. He then started to grope me, placing his hands on my stomach, going up my breasts, and I could feel him breathing in my ear. He told me it was to help me "get pleasure". He claimed I had no ability to "have fun". Later in the afternoon, we were working with radioactive substances, and he once again closed the door and put his hands around me. This time he bit and licked my right earl. I told him to stop and it hurt. He laughed. | Student | Professor in pharmacology | Other R1 | University of Vermont | Pharmacology | They actually took it more seriously than I thought. They did an investigation. I called the police, and they also did an investigation independent of the school. They allowed him to remain at work though while this was going on, and I had to leave. | Not sure. I left. | I couldn't finish my degree. | Tremendously awful. The predator targeted me because he knew I had a disability and said no one would believe me if I reported it. He sad that if I said anything there would be bad consequences for him. I did and people did believe me. But, it's been hard because I have a feeding tube, and while he was groping me, he tried to pull it out. Sadistic. | I don't think can ever go back to pharmacology and too bad, my lowest grade was an A. | Male | ||
1020 | 12/6/2017 11:24:28 | The Lab Manager in the lab I was working in is a habitual sexual harasser. He has made sexual comments to many (if not most) of the female staff and students in the lab. This was especially egregious in situations where he was drinking alcohol (department parties, conferences, lab outings). On one occasion, he loudly and repeatedly asked female students and staff members (including me) about our masturbation habits. This was in from of our supervisor/primary investigator. On another occasion, another female student and I were comparing the boots we were wearing as they both had decorative straps on them. The lab manager interjected, asking us whether those straps were used to hold our legs up during sex. These are a few of the more salient incidents with this lab manager, there are many other passing comments made over the 3 years I worked in that lab that made me uncomfortable. While I didn't feel safe calling him out directly, I made it as clear as I could that his behaviour was unacceptable to me. I did not laugh or respond to his comments. I got the impression that he resented me for this, and he spoke negatively to our supervisor about me on several occasions. | PhD student | Lab Manager in the lab I was a student in. | Other R1 | University of Ottawa | Medicine | The supervisor/primary investigator was aware of this issue in general, and even witnessed some of these incidents. I believe he warned the lab manager to stop, but it was obviously ineffective. | None. | I withdrew from my PhD studies 3 years after joining this lab. However, the sexual harassment from the lab manager was only one of many reasons that I left my studies. | During my time in this lab, the lab manager's behaviour constantly interfered with lab operations, as female lab members had to go out of their way to avoid working closely with him. I was pretty successful in avoiding him, but more than anything, this made angry. Why should the women of the lab have to accommodate his unacceptable behaviour? | I withdrew from my PhD studies, but this was only a small factor that contributed to my decision. Now that I'm in a new lab, I'm more vocal and outspoken about sexual harassment when I hear about or witness it. | This was at a Canadian university - which I classified as R1 even if we don't really use that label. | Male | |
1021 | 12/6/2017 11:25:22 | The Lab Manager in the lab I was working in is a habitual sexual harasser. He has made sexual comments to many (if not most) of the female staff and students in the lab. This was especially egregious in situations where he was drinking alcohol (department parties, conferences, lab outings). On one occasion, he loudly and repeatedly asked female students and staff members (including me) about our masturbation habits. This was in from of our supervisor/primary investigator. On another occasion, another female student and I were comparing the boots we were wearing as they both had decorative straps on them. The lab manager interjected, asking us whether those straps were used to hold our legs up during sex. These are a few of the more salient incidents with this lab manager, there are many other passing comments made over the 3 years I worked in that lab that made me uncomfortable. While I didn't feel safe calling him out directly, I made it as clear as I could that his behaviour was unacceptable to me. I did not laugh or respond to his comments. I got the impression that he resented me for this, and he spoke negatively to our supervisor about me on several occasions. | PhD student | Lab Manager in the lab I was a student in. | The supervisor/primary investigator was aware of this issue in general, and even witnessed some of these incidents. I believe he warned the lab manager to stop, but it was obviously ineffective. | None. | I withdrew from my PhD studies 3 years after joining this lab. However, the sexual harassment from the lab manager was only one of many reasons that I left my studies. | During my time in this lab, the lab manager's behaviour constantly interfered with lab operations, as female lab members had to go out of their way to avoid working closely with him. I was pretty successful in avoiding him, but more than anything, this made angry. Why should the women of the lab have to accommodate his unacceptable behaviour? | I withdrew from my PhD studies, but this was only a small factor that contributed to my decision. Now that I'm in a new lab, I'm more vocal and outspoken about sexual harassment when I hear about or witness it. | This was at a Canadian university - which I classified as R1 even if we don't really use that label. | |||||
1022 | 12/6/2017 11:26:30 | A full-time professor in the design department (not my major) followed me around while I was working on installing a student show. He often stared at me during this process, going out of his way to speak with me DURING his classes. A tenured illustration professor asked a friend of mine if she would be interested in doing some private figure modeling (nude) for him. A graphic design professor would address female peers in my class (including myself) as "woman." A full-time staff member at the school texted a student to tell her about his crush on her among other uncomfortable things. He was her boss and she was an undergraduate student-worker. A full-time professor in the film/video department would tell students about his home-life (including his unhappiness with his marriage), would drink and get high in front of students, and went so far as to begin harassing a student online and through texts/calls. He would ask students not to tell anyone about these moments. He often took students out drinking, especially on trips. A professor in graphic design was caught staring down a girl's shirt and caught mumbling under his breath, "There is a God." The chair of the photo department would inappropriately speak to female students, ignore male students, and harassed/intimidated a fellow employee. Would stand behind her and watch what she was doing at work for long durations. Etcetera... | Undergraduate and I worked here after I graduated | Professor or Colleague | Small Liberal Arts College | Columbus College of Art and Design | Art | The institution or those at the school confided in, have told many of us to speak with the harasser directly. Or it is simply so much a part of every department that it had become our day to day and we knew nothing we said would get anywhere. After many complaints regarding a specific professor, he got a promotion. | None. | I don't feel safe in academic environments and it often makes me question my decision and interest in being an educator. | Male | ||||
1023 | 12/6/2017 11:26:40 | In my last year as an undergrad I was talking to a professor as we walked down the hall. He reached behind me and put his arm around me and grabbed my ass. I removed his hand and kept talking | I was an undergrad student | Full professor | Other R1 | University of Florida | Wildlife Ecology | Not reported | None | None | Frustration | None | Male | ||
1024 | 12/6/2017 11:33:19 | 1. I was told how many women do not return to their pre-baby body status shortly after I returned from a maternity leave that I had to fight to have and congratulated for getting my pre-baby body back. Numerous jokes have been made regarding my breastfeeding status and need for "pump breaks." 2. I was told that I would not have trouble finding a job because I'm pretty. 3. I've been touched on the lower back and thighs by male colleagues. | 1. Assistant Professor; 2. Doctoral student; 3. All of my life (but mostly as a postdoc) | 1. Professor and Associate Professor; 2. Associate Professor; 3. Professor | Other R1 | Psychology | I did not report it. | I've felt that having a baby severely impacted my career in general, but has made it "okay" for many people to comment on my body, my appearance, how tired I look, my performance, etc. I also always hear the words of my graduate school adviser who told me that I won't have trouble finding a job because I'm pretty. It haunts me - I want a job based on my ability, not my looks. | It always makes me second-guess myself. Did I do something that makes it okay to say these things to me? Am I living up to my looks? If I make a mistake, will people assume it is because I have competing factors in my life (e.g., my daughter)? | It makes me second-guess myself all of time in my life as well. And it makes me terrified to raise my daughter in our society. | 1. Male; 2. Female; 3. Male | ||||
1025 | 12/6/2017 11:33:22 | I experienced several interactions with my boss/supervisor as harrassment. On one of our conference trips, he said good night to me by touching my hip and giving me a kiss on the cheek. During another trip, I was staying in one appartment with him and other colleagues. We had separate rooms but shared a bathroom. One night when I came out of the bathroom, he was standing there only in a tshirt and his boxershorts. I just said good night and went to my room. Another colleague of mine (same job position) once told me about the following incident that happened to her: Because he had taken over some work for her, she said that she owed him something. Then he said that he could think of something but this would be inappropriate. He often commented on our outfits (one colleague was asked why she did not wear skirts) and told us to use "our charme" for achieving some things, e.g. when doing interviews. This all happened between 2011 and 2014. | I was a PhD student and employed by the Political Science department at my university. The person in question was my boss, my PhD supervisor and examiner. The position was temporary and I had many different contracts. Although I was always promised the extension of my contract, it was never done at once and I was unsure how much conflict I could risk. Further, he graded my PhD. | He was full professor, he was my supervisor and the examiner of my PhD thesis. | Other R1 | Political Science | none | none | I think that his evaluation of my PhD thesis was influenced by how I reacted to him (being distant, less social) and his letters of recommendation for me became less positive. | It was very stressful because I was worried that my reaction to him would have negative consequences for my PhD and my career. I further questioned whether I evaluated the situation correctly because other colleagues (mostly men) expressed less concerns about his behavior. I felt a bit alone and excluded from the research group. I had other colleagues though that were very supportive. | I moved on to another university but his disrespecting behavior towards me still sometimes makes me doubt my qualifications. Further, I still see him at conferences and find it difficult to deal with him. | Male | |||
1026 | 12/6/2017 11:33:51 | I experienced several interactions with my boss/supervisor as harrassment. On one of our conference trips, he said good night to me by touching my hip and giving me a kiss on the cheek. During another trip, I was staying in one appartment with him and other colleagues. We had separate rooms but shared a bathroom. One night when I came out of the bathroom, he was standing there only in a tshirt and his boxershorts. I just said good night and went to my room. Another colleague of mine (same job position) once told me about the following incident that happened to her: Because he had taken over some work for her, she said that she owed him something. Then he said that he could think of something but this would be inappropriate. He often commented on our outfits (one colleague was asked why she did not wear skirts) and told us to use "our charme" for achieving some things, e.g. when doing interviews. This all happened between 2011 and 2014. | I was a PhD student and employed by the Political Science department at my university. The person in question was my boss, my PhD supervisor and examiner. The position was temporary and I had many different contracts. Although I was always promised the extension of my contract, it was never done at once and I was unsure how much conflict I could risk. Further, he graded my PhD. | He was full professor, he was my supervisor and the examiner of my PhD thesis. | Other R1 | Political Science | none | none | I think that his evaluation of my PhD thesis was influenced by how I reacted to him (being distant, less social) and his letters of recommendation for me became less positive. | It was very stressful because I was worried that my reaction to him would have negative consequences for my PhD and my career. I further questioned whether I evaluated the situation correctly because other colleagues (mostly men) expressed less concerns about his behavior. I felt a bit alone and excluded from the research group. I had other colleagues though that were very supportive. | I moved on to another university but his disrespecting behavior towards me still sometimes makes me doubt my qualifications. Further, I still see him at conferences and find it difficult to deal with him. | Male | |||
1027 | 12/6/2017 11:37:37 | I had a sexual relationship with my M.A. advisor that was initiated by him. He was well-known to have "affairs" with students and, in hindsight, he obviously groomed me. | M.A. student | M.A. advisor, full Professor | Other R1 | University of Hawai'i | Significantly negative | Male | |||||||
1028 | 12/6/2017 11:39:16 | ||||||||||||||
1029 | 12/6/2017 11:41:35 | A tenured faculty member in my MFA program repeatedly stalked, seduced, and harassed female grad students, often for many years after the fact. He was asked to leave the university and is now a tenured professor at a California university. | Grad student | tenured faculty, co-advisor to my thesis | Other R1 | Arizona State University | MFA Creative Writing | None officially. He was asked to leave unofficially. | He was asked to leave unofficially but now has a higher profile position in CA. | None. I witnessed the systematic behavior and impact on my peers, but was not harassed myself. | Made me distrust faculty mentors and question the motives of men in positions of power who want to work with me. | Male | |||
1030 | 12/6/2017 11:41:51 | Extended abuse over 4 month period | Student | Professor (not supervisor) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Psychology | Wasn't reported | Wasn't reported | Unclear yet, happened recently | Experienced major mental health problems during and afterwards | Male | ||||
1031 | 12/6/2017 11:42:18 | in the early 1990s I was second year master's student at NYU. My girlfriend was an undergraduate senior at Yale. Both of us are people of color. At the time we were in the class of a professor who had some kind of dual appointment at both schools. This professor is a white male and he knew we were dating. Early in the semester, the professor began hanging out/drinking intensely with my girlfriend and another woman of color in their class. My girlfriend reported that after one such outing the professor insisted on walking her to her off campus apartment. At her door he began asking her to let him come inside, grabbing her and forcibly kissing her when she said no and attempting to open her jacket. She fought him off and he left. After this we both stopped attending his class. We discussed reporting him but my girlfriend wanted to move on. He either called or wrote to apologize and accepted a final paper from her without her further attendance. He did not reach out to me and as a result of the incident I stopped attending both my classes at NYU. I contacted him and my other professor asking for incompletes. The other professor granted me the incomplete, but he never replied and failed me. Confused how to navigate the incident and an F in a master's program I dropped out of graduate school and never returned. This eventually turned my incomplete into another F. | I was a second year master's student at NYU. My girlfriend was a senior at Yale. | He was a professor with a dual appointment/fellowship at both schools | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Yale and NYU | Cinema Studies | None, we did not report | None, we did not report | I dropped out of graduate school and had to pay back student loans on a failed degree attempt. My girlfriend had difficulty graduating in time. She had considered graduate school but abandoned the idea. | We were both professionally aimless and depressed for a number of years. We broke up shortly after. | I have spent my life in para-academic contexts struggling to create the kind of community and work life that I think I could have had if I had stayed in school. I adjunct at a small local college and have been ineligible to apply for tenure track teaching positions because I have no terminal degree. I have thought about just getting a master's somewhere but am ashamed and confused about what happens when I show up with my NYU transcript and the two Fs. | Male | ||
1032 | 12/6/2017 11:42:58 | Spring 2017 - The professor of our class made many inappropriate comments to the female students in our class. This included telling the male students to "keep us in line," telling female students to smile, etc. The worst is that he made two separate rape jokes. I reported him after the first, and supposedly someone from the department spoke with him, but he made the second one (this time about pedophilia) after that conversation. | MBA Student | Professor | Other R1 | Arizona State University | Business | They spoke with him, beyond that none to my knowledge. | None that I know of, he is still teaching classes. | I totally disengaged from the class. I'm sure it had an effect on my grade, and I decided not to pursue entrepreneurship anymore. | It really messed with my mental status. I'm a rape survivor and to hear someone make light of the worst moments of my life was horrible. | I've decided that we need more female professors, so I'm trying to go back to school for a Ph.D. in hopes that I can be a positive influence. | In general I found a lot of misogyny in the MBA world. I think that ASU did an admirable job trying to combat it, but it wasn't enough. The male students in the program were worse than the professors though. Of course not all men, but there were a lot of guys in the program that were a least a little misogynistic. It would have helped if there were more female professors, female guest speakers, etc. | Male | |
1033 | 12/6/2017 11:45:25 | Undergraduate male student read creative piece aloud about sexual and/or fantasies with female and male students in the class, referring to us by name. Professor knew of the content of this piece prior to this student reading it aloud and allowed it to be read. In fact, she encouraged it. | Undergraduate student/ peer | Student: male peer; Professor: instructor/female | R2 | University of West Georgia | English-Creative Writing | I reported the incident formally though the Professor advised me not to; nothing happened to the student or to the Professor. Professor involved is female. | None | none | I'm very much aware that I am not the one in control of my body and that no one will face consequences for telling me they want to rape me or to harm me. | Male | |||
1034 | 12/6/2017 11:47:09 | [Redacted after retaliation] | [Redacted] | [Redacted] | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | [Redacted] | Geography | N/A | I no longer attend social events that involve alcohol | Discomfort | I intend on completing my PhD, but I will not likely pursue a career in academia | I realize these are minor instances, really just unprofessional behavior rather than harassment. But my discomfort in the above situations leads me to believe that they were only symptoms of more severe actions and attitudes toward women in academia. Others women's experiences with the men mentioned above likely have been much more damaging. | Male | ||
1035 | 12/6/2017 11:50:45 | Male professor made sexually-explicit remarks, sexist remarks, and homophobic/ transphobic remarks in class. He would then watch me for my response. When I stopped responding, he kept me after class, yelling at me that I needed to participate and that I was a bitch who was dragging the whole class down. | Master's student | Full professor | University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez | English | Department head told me that reporting him would look bad for me and that nothing would happen to him since the man in question has tenure. | none | I'm not a valued participant in the scholarly community. | I know that there are people who will do similar things to me. I know now that departments and programs will always discourage me from reporting similar incidents. | I sent him an anonymous glitter bomb. | Male | |||
1036 | 12/6/2017 11:51:33 | 10 years ago, I was a post grad research assistant at a top ranking known Dutch University. The department was scandalous with various professors having sexual relationships with their female PhD students whom they later left their wife for. Top incidents include: 1) Getting patted on the head by an older white male colleague remarking how adorable I was, then started to place his hands on my shoulder while standing behind me staring down my top. I twisted away, stood up and walked away. 2) Having a male lecturer who always leered at bachelor students he was teaching show a flip out full of photos of female undergrads to male students and boasting how he slept with them all. 3) While waiting in line at the airport about to go to my first academic conference, got waved at and then hugged and kissed (unwillingly) by one of the ‘infamous’ professor who slept with his PhD. I jerked away to be confronted with a death stare by the current PHD he was sleeping with who was accompanying him to the same conference. In my current role as non-tenure assistant professor at another top Dutch University; I have been subjected to verbal abuse, intimidation and bullying for the past 1.5 years by a supervisor who has carried the same pattern of abuse to women in my position. I’m the 3rd he has pestered in the last 5 years. He likes to accost me in hallways and drag me into his room for a dressing down, I have been called up at the end of the day when no one is around, then threatened by him on the phone. Once he insisted after yelling at me through the phone that I should go out into the hallway and either “cry or pretend to cry” so all who meet me will know that he is not to be messed with. He has called me “a sweet little girl” in multiple professional encounters. The bullying behaviour started when I refused to let his male protégés lift along on my grant which I won single handedly. | Research assistant, assistant professor. | Colleague, supervisor. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Urban Studies and Planning | I have recently quit as despite all official complaints lodged, the authorities at the university have decided no action can be taken as it’s a he-said, she-said. This is in spite of documentation and eye-witnesses accounts. | None. He has been admonished but not dealt with. Most who know shared sympathy but said “it is what it is, I’m not surprised and yes, there’s not much change possible” | I was stopped from working on research actively. I was denied tenure or promotion. | After 1.5 years of doubling my teaching load in retaliation, I was fighting off depression and possible burn-out. I developed chronic asthma and allergies too. | I will be leaving the country for a tenure position in a Scandinavian country. I had to stop the process to purchase my home due to career instability and my depression has impacted my home life. | Male | |||
1037 | 12/6/2017 11:52:01 | My boss (chaired professor in Physics and director of the independent research unit I worked in) repeatedly made inappropriate comments regarding a colleague who had just had a baby, remarking on her disgusting breasts, how inconvenient it was that she was breastfeeding (taking time with her office door closed) and that I'd better never get "knocked up" and that he would monitor my birth control pills. Also poked a Nobel Prize winning female scientist in the chest while drunkenly ranting at her about how she "didn't know how to speak to students." Also kissed our Executive Director (he was married to someone else) on the mouth and groped her before a public event. Also drew pictures of penises as a joke while in meetings with his all female staff. | direct report employee | my boss. | Other R1 | Arizona State University | Science Communication | None. I spoke with the Employee Assistance Office who told me to document my interactions, but when talking to other deans, none of them, notably all male, thought that anything was amiss. | None other than the majority of the program he headed left within 6 months. He's still at ASU, still the darling of the university President. | I switched fields entirely. | Made me hate going to work everyday, seek out counseling from the Employee Assistance Office, and made me find a new job in a different field. | Took a new position as different from my previous position as I could. | Male | ||
1038 | 12/6/2017 11:52:54 | I was seduced and then raped twice by a professor with whom I was then taking a seminar. The rapes took place in my apartment and at his. He also frequently pushed me up against the wall in his office and undressed me and fondled and kissed me, against my will. I was immobilized. | 1st year graduate student | My professor. Someone I hoped to work with in the future. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Comparative Literature (English/German/French) | The title IX officer told me not to tell her his name and actively discouraged me from filing a formal report by describing it as a harrowing, arduous experience in which I would be in trial as much if not more than the perpetrator. She was cold, indifferent. She said that unless I filed a formal report there was nothing she or the institution could or would do for me. | None | Devastating. It led to my dropping out of graduate school and made me vulnerable to further harassment and seduction. I felt powerless, frightened of repercussions. | Long-lasting depression and self-doubt, Severe PTSD. | I left academia and then returned to it briefly, but because I never fully dealt with the PTSD, and consequently developed a severe depressive disorder which led me to drop out of academia entirely. | Male | ||
1039 | 12/6/2017 11:54:31 | Male professor would stare at my breasts every time I spoke/ was around him. He often told me how I should go to his house for dinner someday. He once told me that I'd make a great high school teacher, since it would let me be a stellar wife too. There are a number of rumors/ stories of this same man having sex with his students and stealing money from the department. | master's student | Full Professor | University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez | English | None. | None. | I am careful which kinds of shirts I wear to campus, and I don't wear makeup so I don't accidentally entice anyone. | Male | |||||
1040 | 12/6/2017 11:54:52 | I heard stories of one one male prof who propositioned two of his TAs and got angry at them when they didn't take him up on it. This prof also bragged in seminar about all of the older "cougars" in the area that he was courting and all of the gifts they were supplying him with in exchange for dates. There was a male grad student in our department who had physically abused several women (including me--he once slapped me across the face at a party when I started to leave because he wanted me to stay) and was later known to have raped other women at the school. Faculty knew about these incidents and he still completed the degree and they all wrote him recs for jobs. A male mentor used to make jokes about how I was "a slut" and would ask me personal questions about me/my partners. Once, while discussing other women he found attractive, he told me he added that he thought I was hot. This was someone I had developed a friendship with, so the line was blurry. But I always asked myself if he supported my success because of this banter. I know of at least three women who have been aggressively propositioned by (drunk) senior male colleagues at conferences. | Grad student | Other R1 | Communication | None | Just lack of trust | Anxiety | Male | ||||||
1041 | 12/6/2017 12:01:39 | There have actually been a number of instances at my institution, both directly related myself and others. There is a tenured faculty member who is known to be "creepy" and to look down student's shirts when speaking to them, I was told never to be alone in a room with him, and to always be covered up when speaking to him. This faculty member also likes to get students' phone numbers to talk about things from class, but it is very uncomfortable. Additionally, this same faculty member is known for having failed an entire group of students in class because they were critical of two other females in that class who had gone out for drinks with the faculty member. The graduate school has tried to fire him on numerous occasions, but have not be successful. Another faculty member was known for having an affair with a former student. A graduate student, who is also teaching undergraduate courses, is known for hanging out with, drinking/partying with, dating, and sleeping with undergraduate students. When people complained about it (students and full-time faculty), the department chair said there was nothing he could do about it. I personally have had students ask me out and become defensive when I said no. At another institution, a student did this, and then followed me to my car to harass me about why I wouldn't date him. I had to specifically say, "are you going to follow me to my car?" for him to leave me alone. A friend had a student send her inappropriate emails relating to male genitalia and how he would like to do particular things to her. She complained to the department head who said there was nothing they could do. I have also had students question my ability to teach the course by questioning my age and qualifications. While it's not exactly sexual harassment, the department at my current institution is also well known for overt sexism and favoritism of white men when making hiring and class assignment choices. | PhD Student | Professor (tenured) | Regional Teaching College | Literature | Nothing they could do about it (from department chair) | None because it's just expected that we deal with it, ignore it, and move on | It's annoying, but hasn't really bothered me. It also makes me very aware of my surroundings and a bit on guard with male faculty and students. | It does make me question whether I want to continue in an "old boys' club" environment that it seems like academia has become, particularly when there still seems to be a lot of victim blaming and repercussions for victims in these circumstances. | Male | ||||
1042 | 12/6/2017 12:02:14 | I was in my second semester of a 4 semester program (2 academic yrs) in an engineering lab run by the lecture instructor. I was holding a heavy piece of laboratory equipment with both hands when the lecture instructor walked over to me and poked me in the stomach and asked if I was ticklish. I asked, "Excuse me?" and he repeated the action and the question. Another female classmate stood by watching with her mouth open stunned into speechlessness and asked if I was okay after. I had classes and labs led by this instructor all four semesters of that program before I transferred to another institution to finish my Bachelor of Science in Engineering. | Student | Instructor/Professor | Other Type of School | SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology) | Petroleum Engineering Techologist | None. I was much younger at the time and I didn't think it was serious enough to report to the department head. | None as far as I am aware. I left that institution in 2008. | None. I decided to continue on with pursuing a degree and career in engineering, but my career has not been sexual harassment or assault free by a long shot. This incident was probably one of the more benign ones. | While this was not the first incident of sexual harassment that I experienced up to that point in my life (I was ~19-20 at the time), it was after that I started thinking that I wasn't seen by men as a person but as an object or a conquest. | I avoid putting myself into situations where men in positions of power can target me (I tend to stick in groups). I keep discussions straight and to the point, possibly interpreted to be "cold" so my normal "nice" demeanor can't be interpreted as a sexual advance. | It seems like women are being driven now more than ever to pursue education and careers in STEM, but the "old boys club" and the sick justification of their behaviour still exists despite codes of conduct, employee handbooks, etc. If I had a re-do of my life, I'm not sure I would have continued on in STEM to be honest as the sexual harassment just got worse in the corporate environment. | Male | |
1043 | 12/6/2017 12:03:16 | A tenure track faculty member, who was my instructor at the time, came up behind me at a holiday party and propositioned me. Someone was giving a speech, and she walked up behind me, put her hand on my butt, and leaned in to whisper in my ear. She told that I could come home with her that night and that her husband wouldn't care. They had a deal, she said. The speech ended, I walked away as fast as I could, and we never talked about it again. | I was a graduate student and TA. | A tenure track professor, who was my instructor at the time of the incident. | R2 | None. What would they even be able to do if I had said anything? | None, although this person was later reprimanded for other offenses. | None, surprisingly. If anything I think she was nicer to me in class than to my classmates. | I was pretty mad about it. | None, although I definitely avoided this person for the rest of graduate school! | Female | ||||
1044 | 12/6/2017 12:05:09 | I was sexually assaulted by a colleague in 2009, who proceeded to grope and harass and belittle me for years, until I finally filed a report in 2012. This same colleague was harassing two of our departmental staff, another TT professor, and female grad students from several departments. | newly hired TT assistant professor | Assistant prof, but years ahead of me, served on the department's Personnel Committee | Other R1 | UMass Amherst | Humanities | I reported this to complaint handlers in my department when it happened, and no one did anything. I finally filed a complaint with the office of Equity and Diversity, which handles Title IX stuff, and they dragged their investigation out for 9 months. There were two other pending complaints against the same guy. I had my office moved out of the department, and I was removed from 2 committees and told not to attend a series of campus-wide events for a semester to avoid running in to him. They ultimately ruled that I misunderstood his physical contact with me, because he is Latino and touches people. He got tenure while the investigations were going on. | None. He got tenure during the investigation, and had won a big NEH grant. He left UMass for other reasons, and is at another R1 institution now. He has important and well placed protectors. | I have a reputation as a troublemaker. My assailant filed a successful complaint of workplace bullying against me about a year after my complaint was dismissed. There's a letter in my personnel file. I do not get appointed to interesting or important committees, including the Personnel Committee. People at the university steer clear of me. | My mental health suffered considerably. I was diagnosed with PTSD after the events--but it was the University response that was the most devastating to me. I tried to take some time off through our sick leave police while the investigation was going on because I was having trouble being on campus and teaching, but I was told that if I "sicked out," it would "look bad" for my complaint--like I filed it just to get time off. | I'm still at this awful university, and I'm deeply unhappy but I don't want to leave academia entirely. I am now a full professor, but I do think about leaving every day. While my perpetrator might be gone, the people who protected him are still here. One of the hardest things about this has been the number of women who didn't stand by me, said they believed him, said they were "friends with both of us." | Male | ||
1045 | 12/6/2017 12:12:26 | As a graduate student teaching assistant, I was told that my male students would never learn anything in my sections because they would be too distracted by my appearance (as a normal-looking young woman in modest clothing). | graduate student | senior graduate student (Head TA) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Political Science | None | None | none that I am aware of | Now as an assistant prof, I still second-guess whether any of my students pay attention to what I say rather than how I look. | none | Male | |||
1046 | 12/6/2017 12:14:38 | I was invited out to have a drink with two colleagues to discuss collaboration on an upcoming symposium project that our work bore relation to. He was accompanied by a female colleague. He flirted really flagrantly with me, asking me my ethnicity and background and staring at me, to the point that my friends asked me if I was okay afterwards. He also asked what I did (not what my colleagues did) and name-dropped all these famous academics he said I could meet if I called him on his cell phone (which he only gave to me). Etc, it was endless. I left feeling really shaken and discouraged about my work, like it had been a set-up, but also like if all of those people he mentioned were his friend then I had to let it go. | graduate student | very celebrated visiting fellow | Other R1 | didn't report it, didn't see the point - he had his hands in a few different departments and he's well respected | of course not | I'm wary every time I take a meeting with a more accredited male scholar and try not to do it alone. Also, more self doubt; I left that meeting feeling like the way to get ahead in the academy might be to let people like that introduce me to others and hope that they're not like him. | Male | ||||||
1047 | 12/6/2017 12:14:43 | A Chair at the university I attended and worked at sexually harassed me and three other student works at the library we all worked at. He would grab us, brush up against us and stare at us while we worked. | Student workers at the largest university in Canada | Chair of a Department; Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Toronto | Anthropology | He was banned from the library for 6 months, we were asked to meet with him face to face so he could address our accusations. HR handled the case appallingly, they insisted we not meet all together so as not to fed off one another hysteria, they even posed the idea that when we were being sexually harassed the professor had simply been "deep in academic thought". | I'm fairly certain I was overlooked for a job because of the harassment complaint | None, except my suspicion about HR opting not to hire me right after the complaint | As an individual with mental health issues to begin with I found the incident very disruptive to my mental well being. I have difficult trusting men, difficulty believing that anyone cares what happens to me, or women as a group. | I'm now a firm advocate for victims of sexual abuse and an ally for women, I feel like it's made me very weary of men, and institutions of power that prompt and shield toxic masculine behaviors. | Male | ||
1048 | 12/6/2017 12:21:16 | Harassed at an admissions interview - interviewer placed his hand on my knee, well up under my skirt. Ostensibly it was to reassure me that I didn't need to know much about his own research (which I hadn't really read up on in depth, giving I was not applying to work in his lab or sub-field... which was a fact I tried to explain but he had great difficulty grasping) | PhD program applicant | Professor and member of admissions committee | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Toronto, Canada | Medical Genetics | Nil. Mentioned to Head of Department that I had not appreciated this guy's interview style when I withdrew my application. He seemed to feel they'd done a good job in screening out someone who wasn't entirely committed to a career in his field and thought she could do other things. | Nil | Couldn't bring myself to apply to another grad programme in that field and do another set of interviews for admission. Though I had already been awarded a competitive 3-year Doctoral Fellowship from the Medical Research Council to pursue doctoral-level study in biological sciences/genetics, I didn't want to go on in that field. I declined the funding. I decided to leave STEM for social sciences, retraining via a masters. I later found out that another female applicant from my undergraduate programme became so angry with the sexist attitudes she encountered in the same series of admissions interviews that she walked out. She left STEM and became a yoga instructor and studio owner. Kudos to her! | I was treated for depression in the gap year that followed, a condition exacerbated by working very long night shifts as a waitress and bartender. I didn't connect the decision not to attempt my PhD in the field I'd trained for to my depression, except in retrospect. | I left STEM and switched to Social Science. I thought that the culture would be different and senior men less likely to harass... (huh?!) Because I only have postgraduate-level training in Social Sciences, it's often been suggested to me that I'm ill-prepared for teaching or won't be able to contextualise topics properly in the history of my current discipline etc. etc. | Totally blocked out this guy's name... But now I know why I have anxiety when it comes to job interviews... Skype? Fine. UK-style panel interview, good. Anything involving 1:1 meetings? Stress-inducing, even decades later. | Male | |
1049 | 12/6/2017 12:26:12 | Colleague told me, I don't need to do a PhD because I will be married and have children anyway. | MA student | Also MA student, around the same age | Other Type of School | European University | History | none, did not report | none | none | none | motivated me to finish my PhD earlier and working hard to get a better job than him. | This didn't really impact me much, so it's maybe not the best story to include (also I guess I'm lucky that this is the worst that has ever happened to me), but I think about it quite often and it makes me rather angry, every time I see him. | Male | |
1050 | 12/6/2017 12:37:06 | Professor made remarks about my appearance and chest size. He also made it known that that he did not approve of me earning as PhD as a mom with kids at home. This was my first year of grad school, in 2008. | First year graduate student. | Tenured professor, supervising me as his teaching assistant | Other R1 | History | Met with department head to report, nothing happened after that I'm aware of. | None. | Probably none. | I considered quitting grad school. I was sick with anxiety for most of the quarter about having to work with this person three times a week as his subordinate. | I left academia after the PhD, but largely for other reasons. However, | Male | |||
1051 | 12/6/2017 12:39:40 | During the reception after a job talk, the candidate joined a conversation I was having with graduate colleagues. The candidate said I had asked a "really hard" question during the Q&A, commented appreciatively on the similarity of our research and proceeded to keep his arm on my shoulder for what I remember to be several minutes. It made me extremely uncomfortable as I had never, ever been touched in any way by a professor before. | Graduate student; I was one of the grad liaisons for the job search | Tenured professor under consideration for senior hire | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English/Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies | Unknown; I talked to an adviser, who talked to the chair; the chair wanted to speak to me, but I found Title IX procedures so intimidating and confusing that I didn't want to unintentionally initiate mandatory reporting processes | Professor got hired | I've suffered from considerable anxiety and panic after the episode; much of the anxiety stems from the fact that I felt very violated by the gesture but its meaning or intention was so inscrutable, and so I doubt and discredit the pain I've experienced ("it's not a big deal," "i'm sure it didn't mean anything," "others have experienced much worse," etc.). I continue to wonder if any other graduate students have experienced similar disrespect toward their personal boundaries. | I'm worried about future short-term and long-term employment opportunities that will put me in proximity with him. He's a very famous name in the area of the field I work in, and I find myself not attending events I would otherwise go to for fear that he'll be there | Male | ||||
1052 | 12/6/2017 12:43:01 | Professor in the department looked all female students up & down and made sexually charged comments towards female students. This professor would stop and stare at me down a hallway, and when I would try to walk past him, make a comment about my outfit or my hair or something else completely inappropriate. I was warned about this professor by many people before entering the department, so it's clear that the department considered them acceptable. | grad student | Full Professor | R2 | Computer Science | none | none | Couldn't work in my office after 4pm, since I was scared of being alone with him (he ran a program after hours and was usually the only professor around then). This slowed the progress of writing my thesis and I had to plan my schedule around times that he wouldn't be the only authority person around. | I felt scared to be around the department. | I strongly considered gender makeup when picking universities to interview at, which crossed off many institutions in my field. The lack of female professors in the department, after the fact, now seems unsurprising to me. | Male | |||
1053 | 12/6/2017 12:47:37 | There have been so many things that happened. One is my senior faculty colleague in the office next door to me. He stares at my chest whenever we talk. I have heard that he does this to other women in the department, and that some have considered making formal complaints. But no one has complained officially. | Assistant professor - associate professor - professor | Senior faculty colleague | Other R1 | Physics | None | None | None that I know of | Increased stress | I'm now looking for jobs at other universities | Male | |||
1054 | 12/6/2017 12:55:32 | In 1999, I was a master's student in criminology at the university of Toronto in Canada. The director of the centre, XXX, was one of my profs. He was grooming me for the PHD program and acting as a mentor of sorts and invited me to meet some of his PHD students at a bar after school. He told me that he had to pick up some clothes at the dry cleaners first and then go home to change and drop them off- then we would go to the bar. He asked me to come with him in his car. I was very hesitant to do this. I knew that he had a history of dating his PHD students. I knew from a very good friend that he had left his wife of 30 years for one of his PHD students. Reluctantly I went in his car- wanting to meet the PHD students as my goal. When I entered into his house he gave me a tour and showed me every room including his bedroom. I felt very uncomfortable and immediately went downstairs and stood at the front door telling him i would wait there for him. Seconds later he came down the stairs with his jeans undone and his penis hanging out. He sat on the love seat in the living room and patted the seat beside him as an invitation to come sit beside him and do as he wished. I was stunned. I didn't say a word and sat in the rocking chair across from him. He took one look at me and said, "You can go now." I replied, "so, we're not going to meet your students?" He answered, "you can meet them another time." I left immediately and ran down the street crying. Called my husband from a pay phone and felt sick. The next day, I told another student what happened and asked her who i should tell (which profs). She told me to keep my mouth shut and just finish my MA and get out. She said he would make my life hell- he has done it to other students before and no other prof would support me. I was devastated. My dream was to do my PHD. I eventually felt so disgusted by academia and him that i finished my MA and never went back despite being asked by other profs to apply for the PHD. | graduate student | Professor and director of the centre of criminology university of toronto 1999 | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Toronto- Canada | Criminology | didn't report it | none | Left the field and didn't pursue my PHD despite being requested to | Anger, bitterness, hard to forgive, anxiety | Regret not doing my PHD. I was one of top 5 in class. | I would like to confront the prof. I know where he works now- at university of cape town. Would love to send him an email but afraid of consequences. What can he do to me? Anything? | Male | |
1055 | 12/6/2017 12:55:46 | When I was an undergraduate student in my final year in 2005, I was groped and kissed by a professor while in his office during a private meeting. | I was an undergraduate student in his class | He was the professor of a class I was taking. He was the thesis supervisor of my roommate. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | McGill University | Communications | None. Unreported. | N/A | I currently work at the University where this harassment took place. I have taken steps to avoid encountering the harasser. | Distrust of authority figures. Depression. | Unsure. | Thank you so much for doing this. When the #Metoo movement started, I finally told my friends and family about what happened. I am still too afraid to report the harassment at the University, even though I know that this man has most likely continued to harass women in his classes. I felt that no one cared about what happens in the academic environment. I feel it is one of the most patriarchal environments to study and work in. | Male | |
1056 | 12/6/2017 13:00:30 | I was an undergraduate student and [Redacted in entirety] | Undergrad student and nwo an assistant prof. | Full professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Psychology | None. | None. | Minor | Minor | None | Male | |||
1057 | 12/6/2017 13:03:07 | During the 1990s, when I was completing my dissertation at the Shakespeare Folger Library, I met a well-known professor, who had written an article about debt and childbirth that was very influential on my thinking. I was very keen to work with him and learn from him. So I initially approached him. We rode the metro home together from the library and he was very solicitous and friendly, so eventually I confided in him that I was having suicidal thoughts. My mother had recently died, and I was then heading into a severe depressive disorder, a complete breakdown. He was about 15 or 20 years older than I was, and he presented himself as a concerned person, a kind of rabbi or therapist. He encouraged me to consider taking medication. I looked up to him both as an older man who himself had struggled with sorrow and as an intellectual mentor. I now realize that he was grooming me. We were "friends" for about nine months before he made a pass at me during a conference at the University of Chicago. He did not come to dinner one night because, he said, he was ill. I went to check on him at his hotel room, as I would have done for any friend. When he first came on to me, my stomach lurched and I felt as though I would throw up. I abruptly left his hotel room. Then, doubting what had just happened, I returned to ask, "was that what I think it was?" He then confessed that over the previous nine months he become very intoxicated with me. He was very smooth and slow. I trusted him. I did not think he could hurt me. What started out as sitting on the couch and talking eventually led to some very intimate sex in his bed. It was consensual, but I believe he deliberately abused his power an older scholar, a mentor, a confessor/rabbi, and "concerned friend" to seduce me. He lured me into a furtive relationship that lasted for a few months and destroyed my marriage. He told me he had had many affairs with graduate students, because he was unhappy in his marriage. He led me to believe that I was different than the ones who came before and that we had a future. Then he went back to his wife and cut things off. I became even more unhinged and depressed and suicidal. Eventually I told my husband, who was furious with me, understandably. I felt as though I had sinned, been cast out of the garden, committed a terrible crime. I blamed myself entirely then. My husband and I were under a great deal of professional and economic strain at the time, and, tragically, our marriage did not survive the blow. | Graduate Student | Full professor in my field of 17th and 18th century culture | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Shakespeare Folger Library | 17th and 18th century English literature and history | None. I did not report it. | None | Destabilizing. Made it nearly impossible to finish my dissertation | Destroyed my marriage and my mental stability completely. | It ruined my life. I have never regretted something as much as I regret this. | Male | ||
1058 | 12/6/2017 13:06:59 | A well-known economic historian approached me at the Folger Shakespeare Library in the 1990s, when I was finishing my dissertation. He claimed to be impressed with and interested in my work on early modern economic thought and gender, and I looked up to him as an important mentor and patron. We were friends for many years, corresponding frequently by email. He read my work and gave me a lot of helpful advice. He also came onto me at a conference and pressured me very strongly to come to his hotel room for sex. When I rebuffed him, he ended his friendship with me entirely. I have not spoken or heard from him since. This was a blow, since he had been an important patron. He has a strong vindictive streak and I wondered what horrible things he told people about me after this incident. | Assistant Professor | Patron, mentor, recommender (I depended on him for letters) | Other Research Agency | English literature | None. I did not report it. | None | Severe. Great loss of support and patronage | Contributed to my depression | I lost an important patron and was thus less fortified to go up for tenure. Ended up leaving academia for this and other reasons. | I met him at the Shakespeare Folger Library but he teaches at Carlton College | Male | ||
1059 | 12/6/2017 13:15:06 | As I was leaving for graduate school a professor who I had a class with and that my classmates said was interested in me invited me to coffee to discuss my future and wish me well before I moved. When we left the coffee shop he hugged and kissed me on the lips without warning. | Recently graduated undergrad | Full professor (my professor in 1 course) | Other R1 | Male | |||||||||
1060 | 12/6/2017 13:18:20 | While planning a students' trip, colleague tried to make me stay in his room. After having tried multiple times to make me drink, and after multiple invitations to his place. Two years ago. | VAP | Tenured. Of course. | Small Liberal Arts College | Not reported (out of fear) | None | Impossibility to work with him again with consequences on my enrollments. | Not sure how to describe it | I am quite sure this colleague thinks nothing if it and that he was super kind to offer. | Male | ||||
1061 | 12/6/2017 13:19:14 | I was drugged and raped in my first month attending post-secondary education. | Student | Student | Other Type of School | Queen's University (Canada) | Chemical Engineering | I was too ashamed to report what had happened to me. | Limited. | Significant. I carry that night around with me always. It felt like someone took a part of my spirit away from me that night (I am reduced to tears as I write this all down for the first time and see what impact it has had on me). Fifteen years later, a good week is when I only think of that night a couple of times. I could not remember the name on the dorm room door I escaped from. I could not prevent this from happening to someone else. I have felt a lot of guilt about that fact. I went into a deep depression after the rape, I had bouts of anxiety whenever I saw someone wearing a red hat around campus (the only clear memory I have of my rapist). When someone makes a rape joke, when I watch a rape scene, when someone touches me without consent, when someone makes ignorant statements about being raped - I am brought back to that night. Sometimes I am alone when this happens and I can cry, sometimes I am with my partner or close friend and we can talk about it and sometimes I am in a board room at work and I choose to say nothing. For if I said something 15 years of emotions would be heard and everyone in that room would know that I had been raped. That is a part of me I rarely tell people I work with, I want to be seen as a respected peer not a victim. | Significant. I try and speak to young women about career choices, sexism in the STEM field industries and about what happened to me. I encourage those young women to seek help and make sure their friends seek help if something should ever happen to them. | Male | |||
1062 | 12/6/2017 13:23:39 | I was alone with my professor in his office when he informed me, "There is something I have always wanted to share with you." When I indicated he could continue, he confessed to having been "extremely attracted to me" since "the moment (he) first saw me in class." He then asked me what I wanted "to do about this." When I replied that I wanted to forget it had even been said and go back to discussing my letters of recommendation for graduate school, he asked, "What? Do you think you are unworthy of love?" He insisted I "think about it." I awkwardly left his office. He then missed the deadlines for half of my grad school applications. | undergraduate student (21 years old) | Instructor, Research supervisor (50 years old) | Other R1 | University of New Orleans | Psychology | I never reported it because I was convinced I must have sent "flirtatious" messages without meaning to. | n/a | I almost left the field. Started looking into getting certified in teaching instead of applying to grad school again. Could not try to publish my independent research project because it would mean working with him since he has supervised the research. | went into severe depression, gained 20 pounds, and did not date for 3 years | switched to a different subfield and the later switched back to his subfield once he had left the department | Male | ||
1063 | 12/6/2017 13:27:53 | It was my first year in the program. I struggle with alcohol problems, but when I was invited to an event by a senior grad student and faculty well respected in the department, I decided to go. I didn't realize how much drinking would be at this event. The senior faculty member continued to keep topping off my glass with a bottle of whiskey until the bottle was empty, saying that as a first year, I needed to be properly inducted or something like that. I immediately blacked out and don't remember much, flashes of leaving the campus with him and some other students and stumbling around and toppling over tables. When I woke up the next day, I had a big gash on my chin, a large bump on my head, my glasses were broken, and I was still very much drunk and nauseous. There was a sticky note on my desk that said "Thanks for the good time ;) ". I was mortified but didn't have any time to think through what had happened as I had to get to campus to teach section. I later found out that a much older graduate student had written the note after taking me home. I was so ashamed and embarrassed I didn't even want to know that meant. I just brushed it off and pretended like nothing happened. The faculty that kept topping off my drink is notorious for getting involved with students and making lewd and inappropriate comments towards both undergrad and grad female students. The senior graduate student has also been really inappropriate with other female graduate students as well. | PhD Student | faculty and senior grad student | Other R1 | sociology | Horrible. I went back into counseling and was terrified to go to any department events. | Male | |||||||
1064 | 12/6/2017 13:30:32 | A fellow undergrad student invited me to watch a movie with him. We sat on his couch (upright, not touching) in his dorm room with the door closed. After about 10-15 minutes, he grabbed my wrist and forced my hand onto his penis. I tried to leave the room, but he beat me to the door and held it closed, all while telling me he was sorry. Because I couldn’t get past him and was afraid to upset him, I sat back down on the couch. A few minutes later, he grabbed my wrist again and held my hand against his penis. Again, I tried to run out of the room, and again he blocked me from leaving while saying he was sorry. Instead of sitting again, he wanted us to lie down on the couch together. I complied, and then when I ran for the door I had a head start and was able to run underneath his arm as he tried to block me in. I ran back to my dorm room and locked the door. | Undergraduate student | Fellow undergraduate student | Small Liberal Arts College | Albion College | Law (majored in Philosophy and Religious Studies) | A few weeks later I had a panic attack at a mandatory panel event where rape survivors spoke about their experiences. I ran out of the venue and back to my room. Someone must have identified me, because I received several calls from the student counseling center. I know they were concerned, but their calls were very unwelcome and stressful for me, and they eventually stopped trying. | None. He was seated next to me at our graduation ceremony, as our names were adjacent alphabetically. He acted as though he had never met me before and tried to make small talk about our post-college plans. | As a result of PTSD and panic disorder, I have needed to take almost a year of leave during my first three years of practice. | I have been diagnosed with PTSD and panic disorder, as well as depression. | I check up on him via social media (his privacy settings are lax) a few times a year to make sure that he hasn’t moved to my state/city or been given a job that would give him access to women in a one-on-one setting. | I feel like it’s too late to do anything, but I wish he had to face some kind of consequences for what he did to me. | Male | |
1065 | 12/6/2017 13:33:16 | Was out for drinks with another grad student when he told me I only did better than him on our math midterm because the professor wanted to fuck me. I was I left the bar he complained he had paid for all my drinks (he had not) and didn't even get a kiss. He proceeded to stalk and harass me for the next few months. | First-year grad student | Another first-year grad student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Political science | I reported it to the dept, they seemed confused about what to do. Once the situation escalated they told him not to talk to me anymore and gave him a cushy non-teaching research position so he wouldn't be around undergrads. | He got a full-year RA position and a semester of basically just non-teaching fellowship, so it was pretty great for him. | It was very stressful, but the department's lack of response was more upsetting. | Male | |||||
1066 | 12/6/2017 13:35:29 | I have been experiencing varying levels of harassment while collecting qualitative data (in public spaces) for my dissertation. When I went to one of my committee members to get advice, he responded, 'well, look what you look like.' | 1 month from defending my dissertation proposal and becoming ABD. | Committee member, tenured professor, taught both my qualitative methods classes | Other R1 | Sociology | The comment from my professor was the cherry on top of the cake. I have been feeling incredibly angry and sad about how harassment at my dissertation sites is making it difficult for me to continue (mentally) to collect good data and continue with the project. I felt powerless and hopeless when I reached out for advice and empathy and left feeling worse. | Male | |||||||
1067 | 12/6/2017 13:37:09 | While I was in my first year at law school, my male classmates openly and repeatedly ranked our female classmates in order of attractiveness. They would specifically discuss the merits of individual women’s breasts, legs, butts, etc. I pretended not to mind, and even laughed along with them if they directed conversation at me. They never happened to mention my “rank” when I was around for these conversations. | First year law student (1L) | Section mates | Other Type of School | University of MN Law School | Law | None - I did not report it | None | I had to take all of my first year classes with these male students, and it added stress to an already stressful time. | Combined stressors causes me to relapse into anorexia and bulimia that year. | I am less trusting and less comfortable around my male colleagues than I would be otherwise. | Male | ||
1068 | 12/6/2017 13:39:45 | A professor made sexual comments all through a graduate course. He talked facetiously about asking sex workers how much different sex acts cost. He would make comments about kissing us. They were non sequiturs in the middle of lecture. He leaned toward a student and acted like he was going to kiss her and kept talking about it, in the same tone of voice as a mom pretending a spoonful of mashed squash is an airplane. He did this all the course. Most of the professors in our faculty are sleeping w/ students. Supervisors are sleeping w/ students they supervise. More are than aren't. One professor went to a different college b/c he was sleeping with undergraduate students here. He is the only guy who even got in trouble but he was just sent away. No one cares. Everyone is to afraid to say anything b/c it will ruin your career and also who would we tell. There isn't a place to tell. It's wrong but none of the established faculty think that it is wrong and everybody is doing it. | graduate student | professor | Other Type of School | Criminology | None | None | Frustration, cynicism, trauma | Anger, trauma, triggering, upset, distress | Made me disillusioned | It's everywhere. It's all through everything. People need to talk about faculty doing this. They start the orientation for graduate students by saying not to sleep with our students but they are all sleeping with their students. | Male | ||
1069 | 12/6/2017 13:40:38 | Few years ago at the pub at with PhD students and faculty a very drunk and much older, married woman professor got quite amorous, made 'eyes', cozied up to me at the table, and made veiled comments. I'm male. | PhD student | Associate professor | Other R1 | Social sciences | None, didn't report it, but it happened in front of a dean and other faculty. | None as far as I know, and I hope there weren't. I was more worried about her safety as she was staggering drunk by the end of the evening. I'm sure she'd be mortified if she remembered. | None. | None, but it felt really awkward at the time. | None. | Female | |||
1070 | 12/6/2017 13:45:06 | While walking into a room full of graduate teaching assistants, the course supervisor (and my job supervisor) tapped my ass with his folder. Several other graduate students saw him do it and made immediate eye contact with me. | I was a graduate student and his graduate assistant | He was my job supervisor. | Other R1 | Penn State | Communication | None. I didn't report it. | None. | At the time I felt disempowered. He later did something again and I called him on it. | Shock and embarrassment | I got a wicked dose of reality about interacting with older white male professors. | Male | ||
1071 | 12/6/2017 13:46:54 | Met with my professor at his home to prepare for an exam. I was offered heavy liquor and while we reviewed exam material he began to massage my shoulders, neck and back. He asked what kind of bra I had on and as I replied that it was a sports bra, he proceeded to place his hands on my chest above my breasts. I froze and attempted to redirect his attention to exam questions and material. I was successful in doing so. Prior to this I had attempted to meet with him to review materials, but it turned into a dinner at a restaurant. | Senior in college | Tenured prof | Elite Institution/Ivy League | The University of Texas- Pan American | Former biology grad student | Those individuals in positions of power do not always abuse it, however individuals who choose to do so, impact the lives of those who are exposed to these abuses of power for a lifetime. No person should feel like they have to “play the game”, and lose sense of self in the process. Has been and always will be WRONG. My overall experience as a female in STEM and research was incredibly positive, nurturing and one of the happiest times of my life. Acknowledging that this happened to me to someone outside of my husband, allows me to accept, admit, and move on from something that I’ve avoided grieving for years. | Male | ||||||
1072 | 12/6/2017 14:12:56 | This isn't me, but it's my field: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/nyregion/columbia-student-sexual-harassment-lawsuit.html | Classics | Still an ongoing investigation, but he's stepped down from all student-related activities: https://www.thecut.com/2017/11/columbia-william-harris-sexual-harassment-lawsuit.html | Male | ||||||||||
1073 | 12/6/2017 14:21:15 | I entered into what I thought was a consensual relationship with a same-aged colleague during my postdoc. Our relationship lasted two years. We were in different labs but with overlapping research, which became more similar while we were together (and while we discussed our ideas). He was gaslighting me the whole time. While we were still sleeping together, he began writing a paper that specifically and viciously, by name, targeted my ideas. It was published in a journal on whose editorial board he (and his PhD advisor) were members. He thanked me in the acknowledgements (misspelling my name). I did not know until shortly before his paper came out, and would not have shared any of my ideas, unpublished manuscripts or grants, if I had known. I would never have consented to sex (or even friendship) if I had known about his paper. Although I thought our sex was consensual, he knew I couldn’t consent on the (one as far as I know) occasion that occurred after he started writing his paper. While that is not rape exactly, I still feel sexually violated. I moved apartments after we broke up for other reasons (he had submitted his paper at that point, but I did not know). He tried to find out where I lived and showed up at a social event for a mutual friend even though I had told him I was not comfortable being in the same room. He also texted me for about a year wanting to meet in person (during which, still unknown to me, his paper was in review and then in press). I had to see him in person at a conference (this year, after his paper was published) and he didn’t try to approach, but I had also told two male friends what he had done, and they flanked me the entire time. Meanwhile, he still has documents that I shared on work I haven’t published. | Postdoc | Started as postdoc, now he is a “rising star” assistant professor. He received a very prestigious award in his first year on TT. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | I didn’t report to any institution. | None. | I walked away from the topic he published about, including killing a side project that was meant to follow up on my prior work (on which I had been supervising a student, who I eventually told about this because I felt the student had a right to know why his hard work could not be published). And I cared a LOT about that topic but I feel violated when our papers are cited together, I feel that way every single time I look at my google scholar citations. Furthermore, because I had to bury work I had already done, I have published more slowly and am still a postdoc while he is now on the TT. His PhD advisor is very famous and he was the best/most productive student ever in that lab (advisor would never believe me telling him bad things about the golden boy). He and his advisor are on journal editorial boards and I am not. Either one of them could be asked to review my manuscripts and grant proposals. I have no guarantee that he won’t keep trying to discredit my research. | The first year after we broke up, when he still lived in my city before moving to his TT job, I was afraid to go outside. I still have physical panic attacks (never happened to me before) when I see any man who looks a little like him. Where I currently live is also his hometown/parents live here, so it is plausible that he could be around. I am also afraid when I see his PhD advisor (who is at a different university in my city, so I see him at talks related to our research sometimes). I’m still afraid he will find out where I live (or use my department’s website to show up at my office someday). And as long as I’m still a postdoc, I am stuck in this city. | I have not had any physical relationships since him, so that is three years now. I don’t know if I can ever trust a man again. Rather be alone forever than risk having my consent breached again. | Male | ||||
1074 | 12/6/2017 14:26:07 | In 2010 I entered into a relationship with my professor, who was twice my age. He pursued me, taking advantage of my youth, and I felt as if I could not end the relationship without academic penalties. Rumours flew, impacting my professional reputation to this day. | 20-year-old student. | Professor | Other Type of School | Marketing | I never reported it but he was accused of harassment by another student following my graduation. Those accusations never resulted in any formal repercussions. I’ve heard rumours that he is a repeat offender when it comes to pursuing students. | None that I know of | I greatly dread the possibility of working with people who graduated from my school/major in the years around my time there, as I assume they all know about me and think ill of me. I am very cautious when applying for jobs. I have a poor reputation among my classmates and as a result, cannot benefit from networking with them. | Anxiety/depression, impact on subsequent romantic relationships. | Very cautious about jobs I apply for. I’ve tended to apply to less-prestigious companies/positions to lessen the possibility of working with someone who knows about the relationship, resulting in a lower salary than would be expected at this stage in my career. | I’ve thought about reporting him but worked at the law firm that does respectful workplace investigations for his institution. I could not deal with the further professional humiliation of a former colleague interviewing me about my experiences with this man. | Male | ||
1075 | 12/6/2017 14:34:37 | I was a first year graduate student (~2007)and was tasked by my advisor to show a visiting phd student our lab, and we also went on a field trip. During the lab tour, my advisor was with me and the visiting student- I'll call him- Dave. My advisor stepped out a ear shot for a few minutes. Dave told me his back hurt, and followed up with a smirk and told me that was because his "cock was so big." Later on the field trip, he pulled me aside to whisper that he'd like to "rub one out" on the rock outcrop we had just seen, presumably because he was enjoying himself. I didn't said anything, because I didn't want to be difficult, and maybe everyone would think he was funny and joking and I was overreacting. | Graduate student | Graduate student | Other R1 | Geoscience | None | Avoid being alone with male students. | Male | ||||||
1076 | 12/6/2017 14:40:37 | My advisor tried to have sex with me when on a trip to South Africa. I turned him down. The next day he took a proposal away from me that I had been working on for about 1 year. | Research associate (postdoctoral) | Advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Washington | Physical Oceanography | I put in a complaint with the ombudsman. There was an investigation that took 2 months. I was ostracized during these 2 months from everyone in my male-dominated department. At the end of the investigation, they found my advisor not guilty of harassment. | None | I left academia and found a job at a consulting company in Victoria where I was also sexually discriminated against (that's another story!!) | Severe depression | I have moved away from academia because of this. I now work for a non-governmental organization. I still avoid all contact with people who work or collaborate with my former advisor | Male | ||
1077 | 12/6/2017 14:42:47 | As I was completing my MA, my advisor became increasingly touchy feely. He would place his hands on my hips, my waist, my shoulders when we were in his office. I did my best to dance away. In celebration of my MA defense, he took me to a local restaurant, where he kissed me on the lips. That evening, I emailed him to say that I had not consented to the kiss and did not want it to happen again. He admitted to it and replied that it was an "unintended gesture." But it was clearly planned, as he knew that I had left my husband mere weeks before and that I was in a seriously vulnerable position. | Just completed MA | Graduate advisor | Other R1 | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | History | Since my advisor had admitted to the kiss, I thought my case was a clear-cut one. I was wrong. I spoke to my department chair and many members of senior administration. I filed a formal complaint against my advisor. While my department sympathized with me, they said they were unable to do anything. Senior administrators said there was no policy in place to handle harassment of graduate students by faculty. So I found empowerment by sharing my story and telling it to as many people as I knew. I found empowerment by working to change campus policy on the sexual harassment and assault of graduate students. | He had to complete an online anti-sexual harassment course. | I completed my PhD with an advisor outside my specialty. | I was only allowed to stay in my graduate program because another faculty member made the political decision to advise me. Over the years, I have had to explain why I was a student at UNC and didn't have a letter of rec from Prof. X. (This question even came up in an on-campus job interview.) I continue to see him at conferences, where it is not uncommon for him to give the keynote address. Prof. X's connections even influenced where I submitted my book manuscript for consideration. | Male | |||
1078 | 12/6/2017 14:53:38 | A former female colleague insinuates that male academics she has or hasn't met, but takes a dislike to, have abused or otherwise undermined her. She'll also try to professionally and publicly humiliate people of any gender who discuss her scholarship in anything short of adulation. This happened to me, and I later learned through my peers that I was just the latest in a still growing line. | PhD student | Peer, now a tenure track professor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Various | Arts | I sought advice from my institution when I found out that I was being stalked and my colleagues were being contacted. My institution was supportive and suggested that I consider involving the police, which I didn't but sometimes regret. | Harasser is now tenure track and seems to have suffered no consequences. Her CV is excellent and she has quite a fan-base in her circles. With so many burnt bridges though... | Cost me a publication or two, and at least one colleague whom she didn't know but I'm pretty sure were contacted. | Severe. For a while, I was afraid to walk around town, lost sleep, and had severe anxiety attacks. It actually helped me a lot when I found out I wasn't the only person she'd done this stuff to. | I avoid engaging in research that that might have us cross paths. It's been a few years, but I still periodically check to google scholar for plagiarized work, and a few other things. | Female | ||
1079 | 12/6/2017 15:01:37 | This happened on and off campus hours at the University of Alberta. I was spiritually, sexually, financially and psychologically abused. The experiences was more like a small cult operating on campus. There was this one guy who used to be a Masters Student at the UofA back in the 1980's, but it did not work out so he runs a mailing/Copy store on campus. He is still very much connected to Academia because it was my friend who is PhD' student at the time that introduced me to him. At first he appeared to be all father figure and loving, and at the time I was searching for a fatherly influence in my life because mine had died, I was searching for God and trying to find my way into this world. I was lost. So he took me under his wing, until a year later he started performing sex acts on me in the name of religion. When I would fight back and say stop, he would fight me back and tell me all sorts of things that were wrong with me, and thats when the brainwashing happened. He had me convinced that I was sick and needed his sexual touching to "heal" me, and everyone who operated in that inner circle took his side and demonized me. So I followed the crowed because I was being bullied, and they had me convinced I was spiritually damaged. There were times when I was in the back of his store- naked. Him molesting me. I wanted to scream and run out, but all I could think about was the shame and humiliation and dishonour this would bring to my family, and all the pain it would cause my siblings.There were so many people waiting in the store, and I could not do anything. No one to help me or even believe me. No one would believe me. At the end of 2013 when I just could not do it anymore, his abuse, his power over me was just to much so I broke free and sought treatment a year later. I did not report it to the University or to the Police because his inner circle was made up of powerful people in these fields. I realized that this was more of a cult. By this time I had also met professors who were just like him who claimed to have all this power and could mentor me. Instead I was financially, emotionally, psychologically abused and it was so deep and bad that even I had reported it, I would have been laughed at. By than it was too late as well, I was 29 years old, and one would take my case seriously. If anything it would backfire, and I would have been caught in all kinds of defamation lawsuits and so forth. I just did not have the means, platform or support to report them. It was not worth it at the time. | student | A professor. Former masters student who owns a mailing and copy service business on campus. | Other R1 | University of Alberta | interdisciplinary | I did not report it, I am way to scared too because these guys have a lot more power and influence than I do and I could end up hurting myself. I am not sure if the University even knows that this is taking place on their campus. | I have been threatened by these guys. They told me that I was to say anything they would come after my family and I. I was told that I was being watched, and that if I said anything negative about them they would know about it and come after me. The business owner said that the police would not protect me, and that people would think I am crazy and that I would end up in the psyche ward at the University of Alberta Hospital. I am so afraid these guys and what they could do to me and my loved ones. I have just stayed in silence for the last 10 years, and not said a word to the University or the police. | I was a young student trying to develop support and mentor ship. I wanted to go into a masters program, and pursue a field in public health or medicine. But, because of the trauma I experienced, I had to put all that on hold and reevaluate my life. I am currently back at the University upgrading because my GPA took a horrible hit. Iam working in an unrelated field, I hope I can find my way back into Academia, but I am not sure what my future in it will be. I can't really concentrate on my work because I get triggered a lot. As for my work, because its physical and it keeps my mind engaged with other people, I tend to power through my work and my day, but other times are just crippling. | I was diagnosed with double PTSD. I suffered from insomnia, paranoia, sleepless nights, emotional outbursts, anxiety, panick attacks, anger, and intense fear. Being back at the University of Alberta has not helped my situation, if anything it has triggered me, but I am trying to power through it so I can get my work done and focus on my future in Academia. Currently, I suffer from bouts of anxiety and panic attacks and this is more to with my anger and hurt that I feel powerless in this situation and not being able to share my story. It hurts to know that these guys are still getting away with it, and living life as if nothing happened. I still carry this burden, I feel crippled by it. I feel shame, humiliated, dishonour, dirtiness, used and abused. This is what I live with everyday. | I don't trust people anymore. I have changed phone number. I take precaution, and make sure not to associate with people that know these people. I hide my social media accounts. I take notes, and make sure I always have an exist plan in place in case I should run into them. If I am walking alone at night on campus, I am always on my phone with someone until I get to my car. I am very paraniod. I take alternate routes to avoid driving by the store on campus which is directly across the street from the University of Alberta Hospital. I avoid working with a particular ethnic group because I don't want the professor to find out that anything about me. I refuse to go anywhere or participate in anything that these guys or people they may know are associated with. This experience has ruined my life, taken my innocence, and forced me into hiding because I worry more about the safety of my family than my own. | I hope my story remains anonymous because I fear backlash, but I hope that my story can help others too. | Male | |
1080 | 12/6/2017 15:05:59 | My advisor played favorites by inviting the male students over to his home for drinks. I was never invited (only woman in the group). Until one night, when he invited me to share dinner with him, his wife, and his wife's brother who had just gotten over drug/alcohol problems(?). Basically he invited me over to set me up with his brother in law (who was ~10 years my senior). I didn't go. | PhD student | PhD advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Never reported | None specifically, but my relationship with this advisor became more and more strained because of this and other incidents that involved other women in the department. I left years ago and we almost never talk, and I don't ask him for letters. | Male | |||||||
1081 | 12/6/2017 15:12:52 | I was told by a student in one of my classes that women should e pregnant, barefoot and behind the stove. I was teaching an introductory IT course. I was in my second year of teaching. That student is now an instructor at same college. | part time instructor | student | Regional Teaching College | Humber College | Computer Science | I did not reported | NA | I kept quiet as to not look like I cannot handle a class. | anguish, disgust | Not working at the institution anymore. | Male | ||
1082 | 12/6/2017 15:23:49 | Every meeting, the professor, our employer, would place his hand somewhere on my colleague's lower body. Like he'd rub her thigh or hold her hand, and these were only the public instances and ones that I saw. He regularly hires something like ten to twenty RAs so there were a lot of people in the room too. | Both the victim and I were students working as research assistants. | Professor | Other R1 | University of Toronto | Sociology | I didn't report the professor. The colleague didn't make a move, the professor was my employer, and he was tenured, so I didn't do anything. If my colleague said something, I would've supported her. So there wasn't any reaction from the school. | None. He's still there taking in a lot of RAs. | N/A | N/A | N/A | Thank you. I may email you later. | Male | |
1083 | 12/6/2017 15:24:50 | After I passed my comprehensive exams, my PhD advisor sent me an electronic gift with a sexually suggestive title. I tried to ignore it, hoping it was a misunderstanding, but after a couple of days he inquired if I got his gift. I wrote back telling him that I did not accept it because it was disturbing and inappropriate, and asked him to drop the topic so that we can continue with a strictly professional relationship. He replied with a story detailing his feelings, telling me how smart I was, and that he thought it was mutual "because [I] was seeking [his] advice." Luckily, all this was by email, since he was abroad at the time, and by the time he came back I was going abroad for a research. | 2nd year graduate student | PhD Advisor. Full Professor with a named chair. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | Counseling center offered me therapy, and told me it was my choice whether to file a formal complaint. We've talked about pros and cons of filing a complaint and I decided not to. | I considered changing fields to avoid working with him again, but decided to stay. I mostly worked with one of my committee members from then on. I have a tenure track position now. | Whatever imposter syndrome I had before it quadrupled after the case. I realized that all the praises I've received from him were false, and I could no longer trust anybody's positive assessment of my work anymore. Almost 10 years after and I still suspect hidden motives when I hear praise. | Male | |||||
1084 | 12/6/2017 15:25:23 | During a lab, a member of my lab group full-on grabbed my boob. When I made a loud "UM" in response he said, "wow you say um when you're uncomfortable huh?" As he rubbed my bra strap. In a room in bgs | Undergraduate student | Undergraduate student | Other R1 | Western University | Biology | N/A | N/A | N/A | None, more fed up with men though | None | Male | ||
1085 | 12/6/2017 15:26:56 | At a professor's retirement party, he greeted me (and another female grad student) stating "if you had dressed like this in class, maybe I would have paid attention to you more." (we were dressed formally- in dresses and makeup, etc, because it was a formal occasion!) | 2nd year phd student | Retiring Professor | Other R1 | Anthropology | Male | ||||||||
1086 | 12/6/2017 15:29:58 | A professor in my former graduate program was known for making sexually suggestive comments, to the point that it's become a bit of a running joke in the department. He was DGS when I arrived (5-10 years ago), and supervised sexual harassment training for TAs; during the session I attended, he kept asking the administrator leading the training whether it was ok to look at porn on the university network. I've been told by male colleagues that in office hours he often asks them about their sex lives, and pressed at least one male student to admit that another female student (the prof's advisee) was attractive. He seems to be warier of making sexual remarks to women, but did repeatedly advise me and other female grads on our "affect" (too aggressive, confrontational, etc.) and especially on the tone of our voices, which was always too high for his liking. | Grad student | Tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | To my knowledge, no one has reported any of this; if they have, nothing has been done about it. No individual remark seems quite egregious enough, although I'd argue that the overall effect creates a hostile work environment. | N/A. He's one of perhaps the three most important figures in his field; while I was in grad school (within the past 5 years) the department hosted a conference in his honor. | He's not in my field, but I certainly avoided interacting with him/coming to him with questions when he was DGS. His advisees tend to be miserable during grad school, but he gets them good jobs, which is supposed to make it all worth it. | N/A | N/A | Male | |||
1087 | 12/6/2017 15:46:40 | In 2009, I was a graduate student presenting at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in San Francisco. On the last day of the conference, I went to the publishers' display room. There were several displays and upwards of 100 attendees browsing books. I was wearing a shirt that read "feminists, you can't beat 'em" - it was a shirt I had purchased from a feminist bookstore. A man approached me as I was browsing books (I'm not sure what is academic affiliation was and I didn't know him). He told me he liked my shirt. I said "thank you." He added "all the apostrophes are in the right places." | Graduate student | Not sure | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Composition | It has weighed on me that I didn't report this incident immediately to the CCCC executive committee and NCTE | Male | |||||||
1088 | 12/6/2017 15:52:46 | Full prof in another department harassed me while I was untenured. The ABSOLUTE worst of his harassing behaviors was when he paced outside my classroom door while I was teaching and stared in at me. He would also bound into my office hours and interrupt conversations I was having with students as a bullying tactic; he would stand and hover over us as if to say, "I'm here, I'm dominant; this young female professor is not." It made several of the female students visibly upset/uncomfortable and it clearly enraged me. He frequently sent me unsolicited emails until I eventually directed all of his emails to go to spam. He would also "pop in" unannounced to my office when I was alone and attempt to explain my own academic field to me (and of which he knew nothing). Even when I told him he was full of shit (and I directly told him this), he wouldn't shut up or leave me alone. | Tenure track | Full professor | R2 | History | I reported to my chair so that it was "on record." My chair offered to support me in any sexual harassment claims I might pursue. I did not formally lodge a complaint as I had absolutely no faith that it would accomplish anything but waste my time, of which I (then on the tenure track) had very little. | None. I've seen him do it to others after he "gave up" on me; he angrily told me that "for some reason I don't like him" -- this was shortly after I received tenure. If he's emailed me since, I don't know because it was many years ago that I directed his emails to spam. I've never doubted that he has behaved similarly to many other women on my campus over the decades he has been lurking and bullying and harassing there. | I burn with rage every time I think about it. | For a while, I was purposely choosing alternate routes on campus in an effort to avoid him. | Male | ||||
1089 | 12/6/2017 15:56:46 | Stalking, bullying and eventually a full on mobbing | Tenured | Rank above | Other Type of School | Ryerson | Community service | Attack the complainant | None | Prevented promotion and all opportunities for many years. Many health impactsv | Stress related illness | Avoided campus for years . Had to change routine | Male | ||
1090 | 12/6/2017 15:59:04 | 1) Male professor was very helpful until I mentioned I had a boyfriend. Then his tone changed entirely. 2) Male advisors invited male students for dinner or drinks - never invited female students. | Graduate student | Full professors | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Princeton University | Sociology | Not reported | None | Male students with same advisors got much more support during the job market process, and ended up with higher ranked jobs | Male | ||||
1091 | 12/6/2017 16:02:24 | In 2008 until 2011 I worked with a professor in a botany department that would make advances towards me and touch me inappropriately. | Undergraduate | Professor | Other R1 | Botany | None. I never reported it. | None. But it was widely known | I changed fields | I went through a depressed period and don't trust men in power | Changed fields | I still don't talk about it with anyone. | Male | ||
1092 | 12/6/2017 16:15:47 | Two years ago this upcoming spring, a prospective graduate student visiting my department took advantage of a dinner party that my friends and I held to welcome prospectives to the department to make inappropriate comments to myself and another female graduate student (both much younger than he). He made smacking motions behind the other graduate student's back when she bent over, miming spanking; and he told me repeatedly that I was "dangerous" in my low-cut dress, that he and his wife are in a don't ask, don't tell relationship, and that he is allowed to do what he wants on the top half of a woman. He was also aware that both me and my friend were involved with other people at the time. | I was a Ph.D. student. | He was a prospective graduate student finishing his MA at another program. | Other R1 | History | I reported the incident to our department chair, who happened to be female. I do not know what she did, or if she did anything, but the prospective student, who had been accepted but had not yet received funding that had been likely to materialize, did not end up in our program. | I was extremely lucky. At my Ph.D. program, I feel very supported in any issue related to sexual harassment or discrimination; and in this incident, while humiliating and degrading, I felt the department handled my report and the situation well. | It just reminded me how vulnerable we can be to harassment -- that a prospective student who should be on his best behavior during his campus visit felt so entitled and sure of his position that he thought it would have no consequences to treat/harass current graduate students in that way. | I'm persisting in my Ph.D. Again, my program has been blessedly free of harassment from within, and I know I'm lucky in that way. | Male | ||||
1093 | 12/6/2017 16:22:50 | I lived at an interdisciplinary graduate facility during my MA. A male Ph.D. student, who I knew quite well, raped, sexually assaulted, and sexually harassed at least four or five women (one of whom is a close friend of mine) while he lived at the facility and worked through his program. It took a year and a half after these students reported the incidents before the university in question expelled him, and that was in part because a news segment about this was about to be released on Canadian national television. | I was an MA student. | I lived with him at this small facility for two years and knew him well. | Other R1 | Geography | He was eventually expelled, but only after months of dozens of students, including the survivors, lobbying the university to take action. | Expelled and his student visa revoked. | No impact, since the incidents came out after I finished my MA and moved on to a Ph.D. program in a different country/at a different school. | I have monthly nightmares about this man (where I confront him, or am not allowed to; etc.), likely because I knew him well and am close friends with one of the survivors. | It let me know how arcane university administrations can be in responding to allegations of harassment and assault; the university in question seemed to do everything it could to impede the investigation into the incidents and only seemed to respond once large-scale media coverage was imminent. | Male | |||
1094 | 12/6/2017 16:50:43 | A former collaborator has been threatening to try to endanger my job and ruin my reputation if I don't give him projects that he feels 'belong' to him. He has painted me as an 'underling' who 'owes' him for his expertise as his one and only argument. No argument has been based on a financial or intellectual investment. For a year before that, I endured baseless (literally fictional, I don't mean exaggerated) accusations, being told I need to 'STFU' about my own discipline, hearing him say 'Oh she's a very reasonable woman' [in contrast to the rest of us, I guess], and being told that the most useful thing I can do for our collaboration is to 'smile more'. I emailed him after the 'smile more' comment to say that I didn't think that was a particularly professional thing to say to me, that I had specific expertise to offer in our collaboration and that I hoped he would put more emphasis on that instead of whether I smile. Later, any time we disagreed about any issue, he replied with comments like, 'OH and Suzy [not my real name], a WOMAN told me this!'. It all started as an annoyance that I wrote off as immaturity, but has become a tool to try to intimidate me into acquiescence. | Assistant professor | Assistant professor | Regional Teaching College | We are at two different medium-sized comprehensives in the southeast. | Biology | My institution has said they will engage if he follows through on his threats and issue essentially a 'cease and desist' letter to his institution. His institution is trying their best to blame it on him being stressed out and me making a big deal over nothing. | None. | Nothing so far other than stress. I have not yet tried to publish the work, though. | Significant. I've spent a lot of time crying, spending time meticulously cataloging every single effort and dollar in order to counter his charges. | It may result in me withdrawing my name for consideration as an officer in a society, because I know he will launch a smear campaign. I just don't have the energy. | It's been very difficult for me to convince anybody, anywhere that this individual's behavior is essentially bullying. People cite his pre-tenure stress without acknowledging mine. I used to be friends with this person, and he knows from many years ago exactly how to manipulate me. I'm no longer to be a doormat, and I'm trying very hard not to reward his attempts to intimidate me and wear me down, but it is becoming difficult to stay the course. But I know if I give in, it will only result in him being emboldened. I don't feel like I have a great deal of support. | Male | |
1095 | 12/6/2017 16:51:44 | At a Cultural Studies Association conference, a couple of male faculty--including some involved in the leadership structure--invited graduate students to go out for a drink after the closing plenary. Once we were at the bar, the faculty decided that we should go somewhere else; they suggested a nearby "bondage bar". One of the faculty leaned over to me and said in my ear, "What will your husband say when you come home with marks all over your body?" | Grad student | Tenured faculty, not at my institution | Other Research Agency | Cultural Studies Association | I didn't report to anyone | n/a | None, other than I left as soon as I felt safe to do so, losing the opportunity to continue networking | No long term impacts, but it freaked me out at the time. | none | Male | |||
1096 | 12/6/2017 16:53:32 | Sexually assaulted by a peer | First year PhD student | Second year Ph.D. student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | Communications | Not reported | Stress and anxiety | Stopped attending grad events, moved to a different city after coursework. | Male | ||||
1097 | 12/6/2017 16:54:08 | I was 19, on a field trip. Older grad students convinced me to take tequila shots. Went to my tent, blacked out, later came back to and found my 30-year-old TA'a tongue in my mouth. I kicked him out, and it was fine- but the other students made fun of me and called me a whore, and my professor never spoke to me again. I had the best grades in the class, loved the subject, and never pursued it because I was too embarrassed to ask for a reference. The assault wasn't the bad part - everyone else's reaction was. | Undergraduate | Teaching assistant | Other R1 | Oregon State | Biology | Never filed a complaint | No | Switched fields to avoid having to talk to people associated with the incident | Embarrassed, and thought I couldn't and shouldn't pursue that field as a career. | Took 5 years off before finally getting fed up with the work force and returning to grad school - in Geology instead. | Thanks for doing this. | Male | |
1098 | 12/6/2017 16:58:21 | I was working in an open office environment, with low, moveable walls separating our computer work areas from each colleague. We were all lecturers at a private, quite exclusive university. I was one of 2 women working with 8 men. One man had a very "one of the lads" way of interacting with the other men. With myself and the other woman, he chose not to interact at all. We were invisible (which, because of his attitude and aggressive nature, was fine by us.) He would bicycle into work each day, and strip down to only his underpants, wipe his armpits and chest with a towel, and change into his work clothes for the day in his cubical area. Remember, this is an open-concept office, the cubical was just 2 low moveable walls, no door. We were all witness to his morning habits. I asked him twice to please change in the side-office, the one we used for consultations with students during work hours. He refused, stating that we were all adults, and in any case, I was married and familiar with the male human body. I had to resort to telling the head of our group, who in turn asked my co-worker to stop it. His response? He confronted me, and said I was upsetting the harmony in the office. I wish my male co-workers had stepped in as well. I'm not angry that they didn't. However I'm certain their input would have yielded better results. There were other similar "one-of-the-boys" type incidents, pretty much daily. Too many to catalogue. One that does stand out is the day he had Brazilian models doing a run-way show blaring from his computer, calling all the men over to have a look. They were all crowded around, and when I came in, the co-worker showing the video said I didn't need to be there; it wouldn't be my kind of thing. The crowd of guys quickly dispersed as soon as I arrived. I think they were embarrassed, and I'm certain they felt bad. Yet, they didn't call him out on his behaviour. Again, I wish they had. And yes, this is in an academic, higher education environment. | Full-time lecturer at a private university. | We held the same position. | Small Liberal Arts College | Humanities | The leader of my group stepped in only when asked. It was easier to ignore the behaviour of the man rather than address it. | Nothing. | It made me question what being a part of academia meant. I had a very clear image of what it meant to work in that environment based on the high level of education of the people I would be working with. I was so disillusioned and disappointed. I questioned my career choice. | Nothing that was long-term, but there was indeed daily stress whenever I had to cross paths with this man. I had to see him every day. After I had complained, he made a point of changing direction in the hallway, or just outright ignoring my input at meetings. | After 15 years of academia, I have taken myself completely out of it to start my own counseling business where I am in control. I will never again have to deal with the ingrained hierarchy that exists in the university system, whether in terms of gender or seniority, or a perceived "higher" status that is not always based on academic merit. | Male | |||
1099 | 12/6/2017 17:02:00 | Professor carrying on sexual relationship with PhD advisee who was in and out of inpatient mental health care | MA/PhD student | Assistant professor, primary advisor | Other R1 | Anthropology | No public acknowledgement, other professors recently have confided they were aware of it but didn't do anything | Continued mental health struggles, dropped out | Male | ||||||
1100 | 12/6/2017 17:02:28 | Blackmailed into having sex, ~2010 | Sober, conscious, lucid | Sober, lucid, a friend | Other Type of School | Feelings of worthlessness, suicidal thoughts | Male | ||||||||
1101 | 12/6/2017 17:04:39 | Numerous incidents. Like, dozens... For exemple, 3 teachers: 1 in high school who hold in hostage my cello, in goal to see me one on one. He treaten to get me fail (and did it) 1 at CÉGEP (he was 78 years old!!) who use his title (he was my teacher AND the director of department) to play with my results (40% instead of 89%), in order to manipulate me and sleep with me. 1 in university, was the director of the music department; I was asking for help, advices for fundraisers etc to get a cello (mine was broken) in order to go through my baccalaureate. He take me out for a drink and tell me that him and his friend had a really good escort agency.... | Student | Teacher, director of département, other students, policemans, janitor... | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Gerard-Fillion high school, CÉGEP st-Laurent, UQAM | Music and humanities | None | None | I refuse all gigs (cello) given by boys (so, roughly all of them), went poor, and sick (PTSD of harassment and numerous rapes, depression etc) | Huge. PTSD, depression, dissociation, general anxiety disorder, sleep phobia!! Etc. Was lonely | I don't think my English is strong inof to describe ... It changes EVERYTHING. Canot have a boyfriend, go on gigs like I should, and all the life choices | Thanks for your work... my e-mail if you need: ***email redacted*** | All males | |
1102 | 12/6/2017 17:25:27 | During my three years in a master's program, my first adviser began to withdraw support for my project (by stalling for months on end ordering supplies and whatnot) once he learned that I was involved with a male graduate student whom he fancied (he is openly gay, and jokes about pursuing straight men). I tried for about 8 months to navigate it without rocking the boat until I finally asked a committee member to intervene and take over my committee. During the process of removing him from my committee, which required a meeting with every-freaking-body, he then began to spread rumors that I was sleeping with the person I asked to take over my committee and that's why I wanted to change my committee. On the contrary, my eventual adviser has warned me that it would be war with this guy if I changed my committee. This guy was the graduate coordinator at the time and he 'disappaeared' numerous forms to claim I hadn't met deadlines, only to find them after I presented my own copies (multiple times). Anyone who vocally supported me was retaliated against; he had a lot of friends in high places and was the social center of the department at the time. I had only two faculty members in the end who spoke up for me. I had one write me 'poison pen' letters because I didn't realize she was an ally of his, more than a mentor of mine. It was horrible, I was blackballed for several years, I had to sneak around to apply for a Ph.D. program AND had to tell my prospective Ph.D. adviser about all of this before I even really knew her, I contemplated suicide, I contemplated leaving academics, and I had to worry for half a decade whether anybody thought I was a decent academic. I was so marginalized socially and professionally for years, it almost drove me out of the industry. I completely rolled over once speaking up incurred more abuse. I didn't know how to defend myself as a 20-something graduate student. I was astonished that everyone looked the other way with such ease. I was heartbroken that my hard work mattered less than his fun parties and vindictiveness. It absolutely broke me. | graduate student | full professor | Regional Teaching College | Appalachian State University | Biology | My new adviser and my teaching adviser were very supportive, as were three graduate students. The chair, the assistant chair, the CoS dean, the ombudsman and the graduate school dean said straight to my face that the issue didn't interest them. | None whatsoever at the time. In more recent years, I think people have caught on and he no longer has the social power he once had. I'm not sure if I had anything to do with it, though. I think it was just the difference of a new suite of faculty and 15 years. | I was marginalized. I was blackballed. It impacted what institutions I applied to for a Ph.D. program. Some people told me they just didn't want to get involved with a drama-associated student. I applied for Ph.D. programs without even telling my family where I was applying. I was reclusive for the first couple of years despite my Ph.D. department being very supportive and functional. I remain paranoid to this day about whether people think I'm a floozy who didn't do her own homework. | I was contemplated suicide regularly for months. I cried almost every time I went into the building for most of a year. I was afraid to go to Student Health because this guy had friends everywhere, in every office. I stopped trying to make friends among graduate students. I stopped socializing with people because some turned out to not really be my friends. I started working 3rd shift in the lab because graduate students taunted me during the day. I became paranoid, and disillusioned about academics and about people. I am affected to this day, although it takes increasingly less work each year to be open to the decency of people. | Ultimately not much. I stayed in academics and I have been very successful. For a year or so, it was definitely in the front of my brain to leave the industry. For another several, I wanted to stay in but was miserable a lot. After about four years of people not making eye contact with me at a tight-knit annual conference, people gradually began talking to me and asking me what had happened with all that. They began to put the pieces together as he did this to other people and some realized that they had been duped back then. A couple apologized to me, others have gone out of their way to be over-the-top supportive of me (I read that as a mea culpa without having to acknowledge it). On the bright side, I know what it means to experience this and it tuned my own radar to be more on the lookout than maybe I was back then. It did wreck any idealism I had about the academy, but I'm ok. I hope I can be a good force for my students. I have talked to them about this situation, both men and women, without using names, in the hope that they will be more attuned, more assertive and more supportive if they see their peers being treated poorly. | Thank you for doing this. I rarely talk about this. It's too screwed up for anyone to believe. I didn't share anywhere close to all the things he did, but I'm happy to if you ever want to know. | Male | |
1103 | 12/6/2017 17:36:17 | Several experiences at conferences-- met senior male professors as I am on the job market. Then after the conferences, they asked me to have more "relax" and "informal and private" conversation at "nice and moody" restaurant dinner / drinks. I simply pretended not read /listen the messages, or sometimes counter-proposed if I can talk about my job at his institution or coffee shops. they never responded back. | PhD candidate, Job candidate | full professor | Other R1 | Social Science | Just disappointment | I often hesitate to apply the institutions that those male professors I encountered are in. Some say I am too sensitive and need to be strong. But with my childhood memory of sexual harassment, I instantly avoid any circumstances that may cause more serious outcomes. | Male | ||||||
1104 | 12/6/2017 17:37:39 | In the guise of giving me "extra mentoring" I met with this professor several times to discuss my work. After a few meetings we were discussing my work less and less and his marriage and lack of interest in his wife more and more. I often had to make up excuses to leave early since the conversation could not be directed back to the work. In our final meeting I was grabbed and propositioned in front of a coffee shop full of people--all of whom "politely ignored" the incident and refused to meet my eyes on the way out. Afterwards I found out I was only one in a long line of "favored" female grad students to experience this treatment. | 6/7 year grad student | Fully tenured professor in another field; member of my dissertation committee | Other R1 | Univ of Illinois | Writing Studies | None. I didn't report it at the time. After harassment continued to follow me into my first tenure-track job I told my advisor, which was when I found out about the other students. Several professors in my grad dept apologized for it happening to me, but since the harasser was then in the Provost's Office I was counseled to just lie low and let it pass. | None--continues to advance | Delayed completing my dissertation; spent the first 2 years at my first job defending myself against plagiarism and misconduct accusations made directly to my dept. chair and dean. I was able to disprove the allegations--and other professors on my committee came to my defense then--but it significantly slowed down my ability to do the work that a new asst. professor must do to advance. Ultimately, I had to leave my first job because I was never going to be able to meet the criteria necessary for tenure on the clock established at that institution. | Unmeasurable. I ultimately sought treatment for depression and still struggle with it today. | Career advancement was dramatically slowed. I have a difficult time trusting colleagues. I've ultimately left the research track and teach full time. It works for me, but I do wonder "What if..." | I know of at least 3 other female grad students this same type of harassment happened to. The harasser is no longer allowed on committees in my old dept. but last I heard he still works with female grad students in his own dept. | Male | |
1105 | 12/6/2017 17:43:18 | An unknown male scrawled my name on the wall of the men’s bathroom. My male colleagues teased me about it on more than one occasion. | Adjunct Professor | Unknown | Other Type of School | Technical college | English | Bathroom renovation over a year after the fact | None | Unwanted attention from male colleagues | Embarrassment | Felt dissatisfied at that institution, worried I would not be taken seriously | Male | ||
1106 | 12/6/2017 17:46:41 | Several instances of older professors "grooming" me while I was a grad student, meaning taking me to dinner alone and feeling out whether I would sleep with them. However, the extent of it was suggestive conversation and money spent on me. I was not molested, attacked, or retaliated against when I just went home afterward. I did not sleep with any of them. But I wouldn't say I didn't know what was going on before I went to dinner. Complicit, curious or something. | Grad student. | Senior professors in other institutions in my field or in other fields. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Religious studies | Did not file any official complaints; did tell friends who confirmed that I was probably being solicited and ick and steer clear. | What I think most about is how being a compliant female in these instances probably helped my career. Then again, I truly did not encounter the horrific things that others have, which I certainly would have experienced has horror too and deleterious to my person and likely my career. | I never felt I didn't have agency in the situations so it was ok. | I assume I'm a near anomaly in having gotten through ten years of grad school (MA and PhD) and 18 years of tenure-track and tenured employment with only this experience of harassment to report and I'm not sure how or why but it's another angle on the whole. | Male | ||||
1107 | 12/6/2017 17:51:28 | Older male very senior colleague made remarks about my physical attractiveness, race, and offered his telephone number. Came up behind me and touched my lower back and shoulders in a very long "caressing" way while I stood in line for a meal at a conference. | MSc student | Full professor, head of a clinical department from a different university. Co-Investigator on a research grant I am employed by as a research assistant. | Other R1 | University of Toronto | Medicine | None, I didn't report | None, I didn't report | I keep my distance, which is possible since he is at another university. | Male | ||||
1108 | 12/6/2017 18:08:13 | Physics prof leered all quarter. Called me after final to say I had cheated. That my answers matched those of an old exam. He said I needed to retake exam on a Saturday (when campus empty). My bf walked me into bldg. Prof mortified. He refused to show me exam I took and one it "copied." I retook the exact same exam as 1st time, got same grade (C+). Sense is he was setting me up. | Undergrad at community college | Tenured professor | Small Liberal Arts College | SFCC | English (Modernism) | Did not complain. I was scared. | N/a | None | Coupled with other SFCC incident, profound. | Coupled with other SFCC incident, I changed schools | Male | ||
1109 | 12/6/2017 18:16:56 | Male tenured professor serially groped female students / serially said inappropriate and intimidating things to female students in the department over the course of many years and nothing was ever done about it. Never happened to me, but I heard about it all. the. time. | Other R1 | University of Michigan | Creative Writing | I know others went to the administration to report it many, many times, but nothing was done. I don't know details. When I went to talk about it with the program director she said "he's not nearly as bad as he used to be" and explained that firing him would sever ties to the program's wealthy funder, making it an impossibility. | None as far as I know. He retired and there's a lectureship in his name so he's kinda still around. | Made me feel the institution didn't have my back / didn't support women in general. | Male | ||||||
1110 | 12/6/2017 18:23:43 | Dated a fellow grad student. Ended things, but remained friends. He shared personal text messages I had sent to him to faculty members and department leadership which tarnished my relationship with the entire department. | 1st year MA/PhD student | 3rd year MA/PhD student; about 15 years my senior | Other R1 | UCSB | Political Science | None | None | I am leaving my program this year. | I have been in therapy weekly. I isolated myself. I doubt my ability. | Because I am transferring programs, I will be about 2 years behind my degree trajectory. I will also be uprooting my entire life across the country to change programs. | Thank you for doing this. | Male | |
1111 | 12/6/2017 18:36:29 | At a department gathering, I wore a skirt and the first thing a male prof said to me was that he “appreciated being able to see my legs.” One of the only other times I’ve worn a skirt he made a similar comment about in the hallway outside his office. There was also a sense among women graduate students that he was prone to inappropriate comments, a rumor that he had an affair with a grad student, and he would often talk about his marriage in inappropriate settings. A different professor in the same department told me to serve a visiting scholar coffee at our weekly coffee clatch. I organized the coffee with a male grad student who was also there, but of course he didn’t ask my friend to serve the other scholar. I declined. The same professor introduced my writing partner and I, who work on women and gender, at a small conference hosted by our department. The previous few papers had been about animals, and he said “So, speaking of animals, our next paper is [title of paper that included the word women].” | Graduate Student | Professor (later department chair), Professor | Other R1 | History of Science | Did not report | Did not report | It was a little tricky choosing my committee since the skirt comment prof is one of only a few in the deparment that works on my subfield, he offered—through my chair— to be on the committee, repeatedly. The other prof humiliated me at a conference but it didn’t have a lasting impact on my work, just my self image. | It contributed to my anxiety about grad school in general. I was lucky, it was all mild, but still something I shouldn’t have had on my mind. | It’s one piece of a tapestry of reasons I’m considering not staying in academia after my PhD. | Thank you for collecting these stories. | Male | ||
1112 | 12/6/2017 18:38:05 | Anally raped in advisor's office, advisor almost prevented me from graduating by refusing to sign completion paperwork and schedule defense, advisor stalked me for four years, advisor hit me in the face. Advisor spanked, harassed, bullied other students | PhD candidate | Dissertation advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | I had reported it to the dean because I was prevented from graduating and had to file an extension. They didn't have me meet with the title 9 officer until 5 years after I graduated and there was a new dean. | Heh. He married a former student. | I created my current job as an ombudsperson to run interference between students and their advisors because of my experience. I was told during my defense that I'll never get hired anywhere. | C-PTSD, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation | I gave up ever teaching in my field | Male | ||||
1113 | 12/6/2017 18:47:32 | As I was leaving a graduation party for that year’s Masters students, the supervisor for my assistantship came outside with me, came up behind me, and grabbed my ass. “God, I’ve been wanting to do that for two years.” | About to finish my Masters | Associate Professor & supervisor for my assistantship | R2 | Not reported - he was (and still is) well-known in the field and could have sunk my career | N/a | None, but they would have been tremendous had I reported the incident | Male | ||||||
1114 | 12/6/2017 18:51:24 | Students have commented on my appearance on evaluations and rate my professor | Adjunct, Assistant, & Associate Professor | Students | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | At a regional teaching institution & at a community college | None | These have made me self conscious about my choices in wardrobe, especially when teaching larger gen ed classes that foster the anonymity that seems to spawn these comments | Self conscious about appearance | Change in wardrobe - less personality and fun; more cautious and conservative | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | ||||
1115 | 12/6/2017 18:55:20 | A friend was pursued by a married professor in another department; after she had clearly told him to stop, he continued, including showing up at our building, brining her chocolates, calling & texting her. He has a reputation for doing this with other women, as well as rumors about students. | She was Associate Professor | He was Associate Professor | Regional Teaching College | Not reported | Not reported, but he’s been promoted to Professor in spite of his reputation for doing this with other women as well | Male | |||||||
1116 | 12/6/2017 19:02:49 | Senior professor asked me to join him at a conference dinner, it was only when I got there that I realized I was the only one and it wasn't a group. Dinner was benign, though very uncomfortable, but he then kept asking to see me again over the course of the conference. Later he sent me text messages that were inappropriately personal | Graduate student | Professor, editor in chief of an academic journal | Other R1 | University of Sheffield. Occurred at a conference | Sociology | none | none | Male | |||||
1117 | 12/6/2017 19:04:30 | -very elderly former provost (master) of a Cambridge college, inappropriately touched and was very close, and sent suggestive e-mails | graduate student | former provost (master) of a Cambridge college | Elite Institution/Ivy League | College within Cambridge University | none | none | Male | ||||||
1118 | 12/6/2017 19:04:42 | Chair of the department because sexual relationship with TT faculty hired along w/me and gave preferential assignments and $$. Then when she ended relationship he stalked her and drove her out of the department. Other faculty 8:1 ration men/women routinely made sexist comment during faculty meetings when no transcript was amde. For example “ can we submit for reimbursement for porn on our travel”. Also- reported harassement of female students by staff member 5 times to title lX and uni did nithing but warn him, further endangering students. In addition, I was removed from commities pre-tenure to “ help focus on my portfolio” while my committee assignments were given to male colleague also up for tenure. An on and on and on. Requested repeatedly to be included on grant proposal in my specialty area and found later new male colleague was added as Co-PI. | Pre tenure assistant professor | Chair and others | Other R1 | Decline to state | Biology | Nothing | None | Constant sense of dread and inability to protect student. Loss of power, impact, momentum, funding. | Same as above | Complete loss of faith in academia | Thank you | Male | |
1119 | 12/6/2017 19:09:35 | (I'll give you one of a long list of occurrences I have experienced.) Over the course of a few years, I endured a string of harassing incidents from a more senior colleague, from being labelled "the feminist" to being called a "psycho feminazi wench" (in an email, no less). He tried to "give me a birthday kiss" in the photocopy room, in front of another male colleague. He hit on me at a college function in front of a group of male students and at another function in front of colleagues. After the incident in front of male students, I a wrote a complaint. It was handled internally. Following my complaint, he proceeded to slander me to my colleagues and any staff member who would listen. When a new President took office, he managed to get his ear and actively tried to tank my tenure bid. My tenure was delayed a year and almost derailed. I had received 4 letters of support for tenure from external evaluators. I had published a book and several articles. I had excellent (empirically validated) student evaluations, and had been a non-tenured President of my national scholarly society. After the year delay, the Dean told me he was going to recommend I not receive tenure. I told him I had a labour lawyer. And was not averse to putting their faces on the front page of the local paper. | I was a contract instructor/tenure track. | He was tenure-track/tenured. | Small Liberal Arts College | Theology | Verbal intervention. Possibly a letter in his file. | None. He is now up for Full Professor. | I have spent the last 5 years fighting for my tenure, trying to write, trying to stay invested in my teaching, trying to research. I have been bullied about my field of study ("too narrow," "too focused on women," "not theological enough," "too feminist") to the point where I live with a type of PTSD about my work. I have been disparaged among the staff of the College and some of this has gotten to students. All because I rejected the advances of a sexist, misogynist colleague. | I float in and out of depression and anxiety, for which I am medicated, and I have chronic stress headaches. I am in therapy and trying to sort through it all. | I'm back in the classroom after a full year sabbatical following tenure (I guess they didn't want to fight a legal battle they knew they would lose). I spent a good bit of my time reflecting on the strength required to stay in the academy and the shame associated with taking all those years of shit. I came a bit late to my career and I need the financial stability my academic life affords me, so leaving at this point feels precarious. But if I could find something I'd love as much, with the kind of stability my current position offers me, I'd leave. The book I write as I leave academic life will be an account of all the shit women face not only in the academy but more specifically in my discipline. This scenario is one of many different incidents of harassment (sexual and otherwise) I've faced as a scholar. I have some amazing colleagues (male and female) and some total dough heads. Thank God for the good ones. | Male | |||
1120 | 12/6/2017 19:10:12 | I was a visiting PhD fellow at the CUNY Graduate Centre in NYC in 2007 taking a number of courses with their preeminent elderly white male professor of Marxist Geography. As a mature student, an out lesbian of colour and a longstanding political activist I largely kept my distance from the social life of bars that was the cultural life of the largely white male marxists in the department. After two months of interesting course work I decided to attend a departmental event, reception and after-social at the pub. My professor suggested we sit at the bar away from the departmental crowd to have a chance to talk. Amidst an interesting political and intellectual exchange, a few drinks and laughs I turned to get something from my bag - when I turned back to the table he was suddenly right on me and without a word, question or notice started to french kiss me. I was stunned and picked him up by the shoulders and lifted him off me... asked him where his coat was - he said upstairs... I told him he was going to get his coat, while I was gathered up my stuff and left the bar - without him - to head home. I was in shock and literally ran out of the bar to the subway back to Brooklyn as fast as I could. | A visiting student at the department of Anthropology | He was the Professor of three classes I was taking that term and the highest profile academic at the CUNY Grad Centre | Other Type of School | CUNY Graduate Centre | Anthropology - Marxist Geography | After much hand wringing as a long-standing activist on violence on women I decided I could not afford the consequences of taking on the most high profile academic in my field as a mature PhD student with entering the field in my fifties. As a lesbian of colour who wanted to be known for my own work not for taking down the top white male marxist in the field. Therefore I did not launch any official bureaucratic action but settled on a "whisper campaign" in which I would tell my feminist, progressive and racialized colleagues. I therefore told the head of the department, other women professors in the department and the field - many of whom were very angry and supportive, but said they could do nothing without me making a formal complaint. I discovered from a fellow student that many women students, particularly students of colour, had left the department as a result of persistent sexual harassment by the most high profile white male professors in the department. Another visiting fellow told me in confidence that the two highest profile white men in the department would openly compete with each other over which women students were in their "stable." A feminist professor told me my dark curly hair and brown skin were favoured by my harasser. Another fellow student said her sister who is a lesbian was also sexually propositioned by this same professor at an AAG conference. | None materially... in spite of my sharing with high profile colleagues | I was surprised by the depth of the negative effects of this incident, how much it undermined my health, my work, and became an effective brake on my otherwise solid professional momentum. Much of my work was intertwined with his... I had to rethink everything... I am still in the process of finishing my doctoral thesis. | I was very distressed and disillusioned - I could not attend classes without much trepidation - I would arrive late and leave early to avoid contact the professor. I was unable to attend Association of American Geography conferences for five years after this. My PhD work went into limbo and it was another six years before I was able to come back to it with any degree of productivity | My supervisor - also a white male marxist - did not understand the seriousness of the impact of this on me and my work - he blamed me for the derailment of my work - I had to switch supervisors. Overall the incident lengthened my PhD work by at least six to seven years and caused so much stress and distress that I ended up with an autoimmune disease along with persistent depression and isolation in my academic field. | Thanks for doing this - your work on this is much appreciated. I really think there should be an open discussion at the Association of American Geographers Conference on sexual harassment in the discipline. | Male | |
1121 | 12/6/2017 19:10:52 | About 10 years ago. Perpetrator aggressively stalked and harassed victim on a daily basis, on and off campus, for two years after victim turned down his romantic advances. | Victim: Assistant professor, first and second year on tenure track. | Tenured full professor in same department. Part of small group of tenured faculty responsible for evaluating victim. | R2 | Perpetrator forced to resign | Career destruction | Loss of productivity on tenure track, victim ultimately achieved tenure but still suffers the consequences of years of lost productivity, and promotion to full prof. will likely be delayed. | Victim has PTSD, suffers guilt for consequences for harrasser, intermittently fears for her safety, and constantly worries about delayed retaliation. | Likely minimal as victim has stayed in department. As it should be. | Not permitted by my institution to share any information on this case in confidence or otherwise. | Male | |||
1122 | 12/6/2017 19:11:57 | Inappropriate comments about my breasts at department events by senior colleagues while I was an untenured professor. Comments about how female faculty or grad students who got pregnant would never advance in their career. | Assistant Professor | Full professor | Other R1 | Religious Studies | Made me doubt myself and feel uncomfortable around these colleagues | Male | |||||||
1123 | 12/6/2017 19:28:06 | It can't be described succinctly as it has been ongoing for a couple years. This is a self-imposed mentor. I am not actually sure if it's harassment, but it's definitely manipulation, with sexualized and racialized statements about other colleagues, students, random women, and myself. Borderline inappropriate texts/selfies. Unreciprocated touching like shoulder rubbing, etc. Near constant talk about sex life and a mix of insults and compliments about my and other colleagues' appearance. Belittling/sexist statements to minimize my academic interactions/collaborations with other male colleagues. Sexually charges most 1:1 meetings, and generally exhibits controlling/jealous behaviours at conferences/events, following/watching me. While I've explicitly rejected all of these behaviours lightheartedly (through sarcastic/joke type responses to his behaviours) and also more seriously when I realized the subtlety wasn't working, I also think I have contributed to the tone of the interactions in a few moments - hence my uncertainty that it's harassment. My attempts to break out of this dynamic are actively resisted through controlling and confusing behaviours, and a refusal to notice or respect my attempts at enforcing boundaries. | just a bit ahead of me | Other R1 | a Canadian institution | I can't report it because I am unconvinced colleagues would believe/support me over him. | Distracting and unsettling. Has me oddly positioned/situated relative to him, and thus always feeling at risk/on eggshells. I feel controlled/constrained/confused in my career, as a result of this dynamic, since he has large networks and is well-liked by mutual colleagues. Lots of effort goes into managing this dynamic and its impact, when I should be spending this energy and time on my actual research/work. | I've had to seek counseling as it has completely unsettled my sense of normalcy. It has impacted my personal life/marriage. My friends have had to hear a lot about it. | It almost led me to miss out on a major opportunity in order to "get away" from him. I chose the career opportunity instead, but that also means I chose to continue in this dynamic. | Male | |||||
1124 | 12/6/2017 19:32:18 | A male professor in my department harassed me while I was doing my masters program. It started by him trying to get me in a spot socially at the campus bar or at events where he could talk personally with me. He was extra nice, complimentary to the point of it being flirtatious and it felt creepy. He always seemed to be nearby. I recall walking down the hall on my way to class one day and he walked by and made a comment about my boots, and how sexy they looked on me. I felt like I couldn't even dress my usual way. He got my cellphone number from one of my male classmates without my permission and called several times late at night, each time I said no to grabbing a drink and after that he gave up. I made it quite clear I was not interested. My roommate knew this was going on and she had heard another student in our program was going through the same thing and was going to report it. Fastforward 6 months I graduated and was working in a different city and got a call from that roommate. A group of female students from the university were wanting me to join then in reporting my experience because there were now a number of stories coming out about the guy. I didn't want to go there, I was busy trying to make rent and find a stable job. I just didn't think it would be all that beneficial to me. It's been 10 years and I still think about that asshole and regret not speaking up. Not for me but for future female students just trying to get through their schooling which is hard enough. Then to have a member of the faculty actually interfering, making you feel creeped out and uncomfortable is just unacceptable. The worst is I'm pretty sure his department knows but that they just haven't done anything. | MA candidate | Faculty in my department (not a professor of mine though) | Other Type of School | Western University, Canada | Arts | It just took up mental space. I was a busy student and it felt like he was always lurking. The crazy part is I was so used to harrssment in the workplace which I'd experienced before with a senior manger at a previous job. That I just didn't react. I knew what was happening was not right but I just let it go because it became my normal. | Male | ||||||
1125 | 12/6/2017 19:34:26 | I was attending a week-long academic event I had helped organize that was held in conjunction with an incredibly large national event in 2016. We invited [redacted] to be our keynote speaker for this event, and I was incredibly excited to talk to him about his work since I respect it so much. The first day I met him, I was excitedly talking about a new book that had just come out, and how it intersected with his work and my own when he interrupted me and asked "Do you have a partner that helps you with this?" I was confused and hurt, and responded "um, absolutely not. I do all of my own work." He replied "I'm trying to ask if you're single or not, that's all." I didn't know what to do since I was shocked for several reasons: one being that he is very public about his marriage and his children, and two, because I was caught off guard. This was the first of many incidents that week with him. I kept trying to keep my other male-identified friends around me, but they also did not understand what the big deal was. I told the group at one point "[redacted] keeps trying to sleep with me," and my "friend" said "awesome, you should do it!" I was heartbroken, because once again, they didn't understand what it's like to never be asked about your work, but instead treated like someone who is just there to have sex with. On the last night of the event, [redacted] text messaged me on my phone (this is how I found out one of my male friends gave him my number), showed up at the bar we were at, bought me a drink (which I did not drink), and told his ride to go on home without him because I would take him to where he was staying. He lied to me and told me he was getting divorced. I told my friends I didn't want him in my car, and the other event organizer said "god dammit just take him to xxx's house." So, that man's friend rode in the front seat of my car while Lester Spense literally pouted in my backseat because it was finally clear to him that I would not be sleeping with him. He continued to text me for two weeks after this event. | Undergrad | Tenured Professor, chair of Media and Society Department | Small Liberal Arts College | Hobart and William Smith Colleges | Media Studies | Nothing that I know of. | Nothing that I know of. | NA | NA | NA | Male | ||
1126 | 12/6/2017 19:43:08 | Senior graduate RA "took me under his wing" on project, which lead to requests for lunches. During those lunches he told me that a "woman like me needed a strong male advocate" and intimated that the best way to get advanced on project was to couple. He became increasingly aggressive and I dropped out of the program. | Student | Senior graduate student | Other R1 | various | left position without reporting, having already been a survivor of sexual assault at same institution | none | left that field entirely | hard to say | left that field entirely | Male | |||
1127 | 12/6/2017 19:55:51 | I keep submitting my entry and deleting it, sigh. Diss adviser (at time) would praise my work one minute, then put it down the next. He oscillated between hyper-attentive and entirely absent. Once after drinking, we had sex. Afterward, adviser refused to talk about it, telling me I was naive. After he'd left my institution and we'd discontinued our advising relationship, we saw each other at a conference. He followed up with a flurry of e-mails insulting me, my research, and my friends. | Graduate student | Tenure-track professor | Other R1 | Humanities | None. Department faculty were aware of allegations against him by women both inside and outside of institution, but took no action. | None. He moved to another institution before going up for tenure. In fact, department faculty wrote him letters of recommendation supporting his application. | Experience left me resentful of my department, which surely came through in my interactions with people. I earned my degree and left with few allies. | Where to begin. | I rarely collaborate/seek friendship with cis men ranked higher than me at my new institution. I am certain that, when it comes down to it, the academy will protect them and not me. | Male | |||
1128 | 12/6/2017 20:01:41 | I was a graduate student at a national conference, attending a happy hour for alumni of my graduate school program. Among them was a very prominent professor from another institution with whom I had been in correspondence about shared research interests. After numerous rounds of drinks, the event was ending and he said he'd like to give me one of his books, which was in his hotel room upstairs. I went up to his room with him, and after the door to his room closed, he said he'd always liked redheads and asked if he could give me a massage. I was shocked and said "You're married!" to which he replied, "It's okay, [my wife] is into it." I managed to say something indicating I wasn't interested and got out of there as fast as I could, found my friends, and cried the rest of the night. | I was a graduate student. | He was a highly regarded professor at another institution, widely recognized as being at the top of our common field. | Other R1 | History | Unreported. | None. | None. He actually died a few years later. | I was shocked to have been propositioned by someone whose work I highly respected, and who I knew to be married. I doubted myself, wondered if I had done something to encourage him, and blamed myself for naively going to his hotel room for a book, which in retrospect was an obvious ploy. | This professor was so highly regarded in my field that I worried about the consequences of rejecting him. I certainly felt disillusioned about a person I had highly respected and I felt disrespected as as a scholar. We would surely have had additional interactions had he not unexpectedly died a few years later. | Male | |||
1129 | 12/6/2017 20:06:41 | 2003-4 (or possibly the year earlier): professor sent creepy harassing emails to a friend in a class of his, along with telling her inappropriate stories about his personal life and divorce and such; I read the emails and they were to my eyes very inappropriate, but as he was a hotshot young guy on the way to big things, it was doubtful that that interpretation would be taken by the department, so he got away with it. | graduate student - as was my friend | newly minted associate professor; was being bumped up to full professor at the time for reasons | Other R1 | University of Southern California | Classics | It was pointless for her to report it - USC was terrible and he was a star in Humanities | He's a big name and I see him everywhere. He likes to run down female scholars I know... it is less than charming. | None on mine beyond feeling queasy now - my friend changed her thesis to get away from taking any more classes with him | see above | Male | |||
1130 | 12/6/2017 20:11:36 | A professor in the department where I was teaching sexually assaulted the department's administrative assistant (pushing her against the wall and trying to force himself upon her). She got away and told the chair of the department (also a man) who asked her not to report the professor. She felt she couldn't report him after that, so it went unreported and the behavior was never addressed. She has continued to work in the office with that professor for more than five years since that happened. | Administrative assistant | Tenure track faculty | Other R1 | History | The chair of the department asked the victim not to report the assault. | None. | The administrative assistant felt she could no longer trust that the chair of the department where she worked was looking out for her well being. Then he left for another institution and she had to remain in the department with the professor who assaulted her. | The administrative assistant had to adjust her schedule so she would never be alone with the professor who had assaulted her. She never felt safe. She still works there and still hasn't reported him. | She feels trapped by the need to stay in her job in order to earn retirement benefits. | Male | |||
1131 | 12/6/2017 20:25:17 | A senior faculty member (former department chair) had made many comments to female trainees including myself about their appearance (weight, clothes, race to name a few) while we were required to be alone with him as part of our clinical duties. We would be stuck with him in his office for more than an hour at a time while he told us personal stories instead of working (if the trainee was male these stories would include those about sexual conquests and women’s breasts). He had no sense of personal space and would frequently back me into a corner while talking. He also once started dancing with me without my consent. | Trainee/fellow | Professor Emeritus | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of California, San Francisco | Medicine | When the issues were originally brought up with the program director he said he was very uncomfortable and couldn’t do anything about it. A year later other women went to the Administration which resulted in an investigation but no action. Now it is almost a decade later. New trainees complained again and he is finally no longer allowed to work with trainees. But he still has an office next to my lab and has had uncomfortable interactions with staff/trainees. We’ve filed new complaints but aren’t hopeful, so we are in the process of changing the locks on our lab doors so he can’t get in (the plan of action determined to be the best approach by our department chair). | Finally not allowed to work directly with trainees after almost a decade of harrassment complaints. | I’ve looked at jobs in industry but haven’t left yet. One of the other women I trained with left the institution early mostly due to the poor response to our complaints. | Much emotional distress resulting in decreased work performance | None yet | Male | ||
1132 | 12/6/2017 20:53:53 | At the end of my first semester as a PhD student, a highly successful, conservative female professor (my adviser) took our class out to dinner. A classmate who was also a first-year PhD student, but in another department, came up to me in front of the professor and would not stop talking about how his friend was attracted to me and wouldn't stop talking about how "hot" I was. He went into great detail about how many people were talking about it and what this guy had apparently said. It was very uncomfortable, and it made me self-conscious about my credibility with my adviser for the subsequent 5+ years of graduate school. During the same semester, a tenured professor would blush around me and seemed to have a crush, and some of my fellow students teased me relentlessly for thanking him at the end of each class. (I used to do this to all professors--Midwestern courtesy overkill.) When someone who wasn't in the class started teasing me about it at a party, I told her that I really was just being polite and wasn't trying to attract attention for it. She replied, "It's ok--you're just a sexpot." | PhD student | PhD student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | none - I felt guilty and didn't pursue it | none - did not pursue | increased insecurity about my credibility with peers and senior colleagues have made it even harder to ace the obligatory presentations and networking | anxiety and paranoia | Hard to say the degree to which these events have contributed, but I am extremely self-conscious about the validity of my work, even though I have now earned my degree and been published in various peer-reviewed arenas | thank you for conducting and publishing this survey | Male and Female | ||
1133 | 12/6/2017 20:54:33 | I witnessed this as a male grad student: a senior professor directing "jokes" toward female grad students in group setting, e.g. saying that their phone numbers was written all over the men's bathroom stalls. Humiliating stuff. And non isolated, as in people talk about this as a problem with this faculty member. | grad student | senior faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Political science | none that I know of | none that I know of | I was not the person targeted. | I was not the person targeted. | I was not the person targeted. | Male | |||
1134 | 12/6/2017 20:54:52 | Emeritus professor repeatedly touched and kissed graduate students | Graduate student | Emeritus | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Stanford | Psychology | I did not report it. Someone else did, but it went nowhere. | None? | I avoided seeking valuable guidance from him after this incident | None | Not sure | Male | ||
1135 | 12/6/2017 20:58:34 | On the morning of my viva voce, a colleague (who is also a close friend) suggested that I should flirt in order to pass. He asked what I was wearing, and before I could stand up from behind my desk, he jokingly asked if I was wearing a power suit. I said that I was more comfortable in a dress. He replied that, in that case, I'd have to bat my eyelashes at my (male) examiners and speak in a diminutive, feminine voice--which he proceeded to demonstrate. I quipped, 'Is that how you passed your viva?', and tried to brush it off. However, it was an unpleasant way to start the day, and it left me wondering if everyone would be paying more attention to markers of my gender than to the academic merits of my research. | PhD student | PhD student who had recently passed his viva (officemate and friend) | Other Type of School | [UK university] | Archaeology | n/a (not reported) | n/a (not reported) | none | virtually none | none | Male | ||
1136 | 12/6/2017 21:01:19 | Professor started calling me names when i wasnt in class and i was unable to defend my self. Started body shaming me and calling me "big".... And asking where is big .....?Has anyone seen big....? Do you know where big.... is? | I was a engineering student at STFX in 2016-17 | Professor, PhD. PEng. FEC | Elite Institution/Ivy League | StFX | Engineering | After i launched complaints and had several students confirm after numerous meetings with the Dean it was determined there was nothing they could do. Swept it under the rug and washed their hands. | None. Still employeed and teaching. | Ruined my self esteem. I became the butt end of countless jokes. Was made fun of ridiculed and made fun of by members of the program for the rest of the year. Even junior students a year below knew about me and called me out in public or in class. | I felt worthless. I was so depressed and as a result i withdrew from school activities and lost out on relationships and friendships. I withdrew from all social aspects at school because i just wanted to be invisible and not have all this negative attention put on me. I stayed in doors and stopped socializing and going in public. My last year was misserable. | Ruined my last year at school. Ruined my self esteem. I havent spoken to anyone from my graduating class in over a year. I doubt anyone from my program will every forget me as anything other than big .... I felt so angry and was confused. I suffer from body image issues and im very concientious about my body and weight. I also dropped out of school and im waiting two years to finish the last half of my program at dalhousie university because i dont want to go to school with the same people from stfx engineering and have to listen to them repeat this nickname to me. I also dont want that name to start at dalhousie or catch on there. | The school has a history of harrasment in the enginnering department. But the school turns a blind eye. STFX engineering was terrible for bullying and harrasment. I will never return to stfx for any reason as long as the engineering professor Phd PEng FEC is employed. | Male | |
1137 | 12/6/2017 21:07:19 | We have a new building with glass walls, so that meetings and classes are clearly visible from hallways. In our graduate seminar, every single time a woman walked past the classroom wearing a short skirt or tight clothes, our professor would stop speaking and overtly watch the woman walk past. He would then follow with comments such as "now thats what I'm talking about" and "thank god for that". Several of the men in the class would laugh. This happened every single class for the entire semester. | 2nd year PhD student | Full professor in a small department. Instructor of a class. | Other R1 | University of Texas | Geography | None | None | Male | |||||
1138 | 12/6/2017 21:21:54 | I was sleeping in my dorm room. I woke up at 4 am and one of the football players (I later learned he lived in the dorm) was sitting in a chair next to my bed and had the covers lifted up and was staring at my sleeping. I screamed and he ran out of the room. | I was a freshman. | He was a star football player for the Michigan State University and lived in our dorm | Other Type of School | Michigan State University | Undergraduate | I reported this to the director of the dorm. She called me into a meeting with several resident officials (I can't remember who they were, but there were about 3 or 4 people.) I was told that since he was drunk and didn't remember the incident, and that since he didn't rape me, that was no reason to tell the coach and have him lose his scholarship over this and be kicked out of school; that they would put "a note in his dorm file" (meaning that he would not be likely to be able to get a job as a resident dorm leader, which is a job he would never apply for anyway since he was on football scholarship; and they would ask him to apologize to me if he remembered who I was, which he said he did not. They told me that they thought this sufficiently handled the problem and asked me if I would consider this case closed. This was my first night of college. I was 17 years old. I did not have a chance to consult with my parents. I felt pressured to agree and so I did. | He continued to play football on full scholarship. | I was uncomfortable in the dorm for the rest of the year, but no impact on my career. | depression for the year. | no | Male | ||
1139 | 12/6/2017 21:27:15 | I was holding my TA office hour and another TA was working in the same office (he shouldn't have been in there during my office hour, but I figured it would be easier to put up with it than ask him to leave). He started chatting with me while I was trying to work and our conversation eventually turned to Woody Allen films, which I said that I would no longer watch. He then proceeded to tell me that he did not believe that consent was black-and-white, that he did not believe that someone could realize after a sexual act that they had not consented, and that he thought that victims should be entirely responsible for proving they were assaulted because society is too hard on people accused of sexual assault. He then said that if consent actually is black-and-white, that he might have been sexually assaulted by a woman when he was a teenager. I couldn't leave the space because it was my assigned office hour. | 1st-year PhD student and TA | 1st-year MA student and fellow TA | Other R1 | English | I made an appointment with the graduate advisor because I was hugely uncomfortable and also didn't know if I was supposed to report the disclosure this other TA had made because he would have been a minor when it happened. When I told the grad advisor about our conversation, she said that she was sorry I was uncomfortable, but that I should not have told her about it because it was a private conversation. She said that I could actually get in more trouble for sharing things like that than for not sharing them. I said that I didn't want her to do anything about it, but that perhaps next year part of TA orientation could include an overview of the university policies on consent and sexualized violence. She said no. Her biggest concern was that another TA was in the office during my office hour and, as such, offered to send out an email reminding TAs not to do that. She never sent the email. | None. | More than anything else, this incident ruined my relationship with my graduate advisor, although I would never tell her that because so much of my degree depends on getting along with her. | I was and still am uncomfortable near this person. He is the union representative for our current TAs, and I feel guilty for letting my TAs interact with him and guilty for not telling them what happened. I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I read an email from him. | I actively avoid being alone with him and I do my best to avoid talking to him at department events. I am now in a position where I train incoming TAs in the same institution, and I include in their mandatory training an overview of the university's policies on sexualized violence. I also put a system in place to avoid ever having TAs in the office during other TAs' office hours. | Male | |||
1140 | 12/6/2017 21:38:26 | An older professor repeatedly made advances towards me, including making repeated inappropriate comments when we were in a professional setting. When firmly told to stop, she insisted that no one would ever believe me | beginning graduate student | Senior Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | N/A | none | I decided not to stay in academia. | N/A | I am not staying in academia, no one will ever believe me and nothing is going to happen that will change that. | Female | ||||
1141 | 12/6/2017 21:46:24 | At the library finding books and journals for research. A male went into the stack across from me and started removing books. I thought it was someone acting up for kicks and then realized the person was waving their penis at me through the shelves where the books had been removed. I turned away and moved to a different area. The man followed and did the same thing again and again eventually getting so bold that he started walking towards me holding his penis and waving it at me. I left at that point and did not return to the library. | Undergrad | Unknown - older male | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Queen's U | Biology | Not reported | Not reported | Unwilling to return to library - did not do well on the assignment | Disgusted | Lowered my opinion of males | Male | ||
1142 | 12/6/2017 21:51:29 | I was presenting my undergraduate research during a poster session at a conference when a male graduate student (from a different university) approached me and starting asking me questions. I eagerly explained my work, but he started changing the topic of conversation and asking more personal questions. Eventually he asked what I was doing after the session and asked for my number. I turned him down, and he left. He not only made me uncomfortable by hitting on me in a professional setting, but he also took up my presentation time. I had been hoping to network and share my research because I had just applied to graduate school. | Undergraduate student | Graduate student | Other R1 | Astrophysics | None | None | Partial loss of networking opportunity | Discomfort for the rest of the poster session | Male | ||||
1143 | 12/6/2017 21:59:42 | He was my English teacher at the university where I did my BA. This was three years ago. He would make comments in class about the boy sitting next to me being unable to concentrate because I was sitting next to him. He continued to pick on people (read boys) who would sit next to me. He would ask me to meet him separately and then ask me what was wrong. He never let it go when I told him everything was fine. Later, he would tell my friends (when I was standing with them) that I act like I am scared of him and he has no idea why. He would also make indirect comments about me in class. Second year, we didn't have his class. But when I passed by him in the first week of second year and ducked to avoid meeting his gaze, he sent someone to call me to meet him. Ever since then I have tried really hard to avoid him. And after I refused to meet him, he has never called me. | First year student | He took my General English and British Literature classes in the first year | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Humanities | I did not take up English honours in the third year because I knew he was going to be the class teacher | I was a nervous bundle before his class. Wanting to avoid a teacher who takes your class is not easy. Going to meet him for signatures, I was anxious. I couldn't share it with anybody because the few people that I spoke about this to told me that it didn't count as harassment, let alone sexual harassment. Then I started blaming myself and doubting my abilities to discern the nature of what was happening to me. | I had hung on to the course in the hopes of taking up English honours in the third year,but I didn't even send in an application. I eventually dropped out in my third year. Even now, I am not sure if this counts as sexual harassment. I have stopped discussing instances where I have felt extremely uncomfortable with other people. | Male | |||||
1144 | 12/6/2017 22:02:19 | I think it is important to mention that I'm a female Mexican student (sorry if my English is not perspicuous enough). This is something that happened to me after I finished my Master's degree. Shortly after I defended my Master's degree, my thesis supervisor told me we should celebrate, so he invited me to lunch. We lunch together next Saturday and after that, we went to the bus stop and he said something and kissed me. I was really confused, I didn't know what to do. He said he did it because he perceived I was attracted to him, but I wasn't, I just admired him, it was just intelectual admiration and respect. He was really intimidating when he said that he "perceived" I was attracted to him, so I had no idea what to say in order to explain him I was not attracted to him without making him angry. I though that if I let it go and forget about it, he was also going to forget it. But the next week he ask me to go to his office to talk about my PhD admission and my PhD project. He actually didn't wanted to talk about that, he just made me sit on his lap and kissed me. I was really confused and I though that I had no choice but to "follow the game" becase asking him to stop behaving like that could cause me troubles with him. Of course, I didn't want troubles with him, he was not only going to be my PhD supervisor but he was also the Academic Secretary of our department (the most powerful guy after the director of the department). Shortly after that he said we should go for a coffee but he took me to his house. There he sexually abused of me; after that he said we were on a relationship and we should see each other more frequently. Again, I thought I had no choice, I though that if I said no, my academic career would be over because he was a very powerful guy, one of the most powerful ones in our department. So I agreed and we saw each other for a month and a half. This "dates" were on weekends and took place at his house, so basically the "date" was just taking me to his house to be sexually abused. After a month and a half, I was completely traumatized, I told him I couldn't bear any more and I wanted to end the "relationship". He was really rude, he didn't take it well. I tried to get a new thesis supervisor before the beginning of my PhD, but "mysteriously" nobody in the department wanted to work with me, they said the best person to supervise my dissertation was him. So the first 18 months of my PhD I suffered his revenge because he devoted all his energy and power to make my life miserable, I suffered psychological abuse from him and I perceived rejection from many professors from our department. Besides, he wasn't doing his job as my thesis supervisor. I told him I needed a change of thesis supervisor because there was no significant progress on my PhD investigation. He got very angry and he said he was going to use all his power to prevent a supervisor change. I was lucky enough to find support in a female professor, who fought for me and helped me to find a new PhD supervisor. | I had finished my Master's degree when he raped me, but the psychological abuse continued during my first year as a PhD student. | He was the Academic Secretary (the most important authority in our department after the director) and he was my Master's degree and PhD supervisor. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas-UNAM | Philosophy | None | None | I lost 2 years of my PhD, so I didn't finished my PhD on time and lost very important job opportunities. Currently, I'm struggling to find a job because of that. | I'm very traumatized and I haven't been able to recover my confidence and self-esteem. I have been in therapy since then and I take antidepressants to function more or less "normally". | I lost my confidence, now I am really insecure and I feel my work is not god enough. Before this happened to me, I was the best of the class, I won the 2 most important awards for undergraduate philosophy students, and everyone saw me as a philosophical promise. But after the harassment, I lost confidence on my self and I was depressed; the low self-esteem and depression that followed the harassment had a very negative impact on the quality of my work and my career overall. Due to my lack of self-esteem and confidence , I don't have the courage to apply for a god job, I feel I'm not good enough. | I really appreciate someone is concerned with this kind of problem, it means the world to me to know there's people like you. I hope we can do something to help victims of sexual harassment in the Academic environment. I will be happy to do everything I can to help other victims, so please let me know if there is something I can do. And again, thanks for doing this, it nice to know there ir someone who cares. | Male | |
1145 | 12/6/2017 22:20:44 | I was 7 months pregnant and a member of the board of directors came to my work place. In front of me in a room full of my colleagues he asked my direct supervisor if he was father of my baby as a "joke". He did this to humiliate my supervisor due to professional tensions. I doubt he even considered the repercussions to me. I doubt he considered my humiliation and shock at all. | post-doc | board of directors at my non-profit research institute | Other Research Agency | Agronomy | none | none | When I am asked about my harasser I pretend that our work relationship was amicable. I cite personal reasons for leaving my job. I needed letters of reference to move on, so I didn't rock the boat. | I regret not telling this guy to fuck off the second it happened. I am deeply ashamed. I was too shocked to react. I let myself down. I worry about the women I left behind. | I quit my job. My relationship with my supervisor, who was also a mentor and friend, was always strained after this incident. A job that I enjoyed was no longer fulfilling and I could see no future there, knowing without a doubt that I was not a valued or respected employee. | Male | |||
1146 | 12/6/2017 23:05:22 | My experiences began in the spring of my junior year and lasted until graduation. There were 3 male faculty in our department who would invite female graduate students and "talented" undergraduates to their homes for celebrations and parties. They would also hold office hours for undergraduate and graduate courses at local bars and nightclubs, so that all students who had questions about final papers, course materials, etc. would go these establishments. My own experience began when my then-professor bought me a drink. One drink turned into two drinks, and it seemed relatively harmless at the time. After all, he kept saying what an excellent student I was! A few weeks later, the professor threw a party with 2 other male faculty members at his home. They invited a number of female students to attend... though we didn't know that they had only invited females. Many of us were excited to attend, as the invitation made us feel like adults--like we had finally "made it". Alcohol flowed and a few of us were encouraged to spend the night over for our own safety. I ended up leaving, but my friend remained and had a sexual encounter with one of the male faculty members who was her boss. It wasn't until a week later (after many phone calls/emails/text messages) that I began a sexual relationship with a male faculty member whose class was required for graduation. | Undergraduate | Two Assistant Professors, Associate Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | None | The experience "de-professionalized" me in that many of us believed it was normal for professors to hold office hours in bars, open their homes for parties, and engage in sexual/romantic relationships with students--even if they served as their committee members. It was only when I went to graduate school did I realize how toxic and unprofessional the faculty were/are. | Depression, shame | After a long period of feeling incredibly foolish (and re-learning how to interact with respectable faculty), I took my studies and professional development much more seriously than most graduate students. Perversely, my past experiences made me successful or so I tell myself. | Male | |||||
1147 | 12/6/2017 23:06:56 | My experiences began in the spring of my junior year and lasted until graduation. There were 3 male faculty in our department who would invite female graduate students and "talented" undergraduates to their homes for celebrations and parties. They would also hold office hours for undergraduate and graduate courses at local bars and nightclubs, so that all students who had questions about final papers, course materials, etc. would go these establishments. My own experience began when my then-professor bought me a drink. One drink turned into two drinks, and it seemed relatively harmless at the time. After all, he kept saying what an excellent student I was! A few weeks later, the professor threw a party with 2 other male faculty members at his home. They invited a number of female students to attend... though we didn't know that they had only invited females. Many of us were excited to attend, as the invitation made us feel like adults--like we had finally "made it". Alcohol flowed and a few of us were encouraged to spend the night over for our own safety. I ended up leaving, but my friend remained and had a sexual encounter with one of the male faculty members who was her boss. It wasn't until a week later (after many phone calls/emails/text messages) that I began a sexual relationship with a male faculty member whose class was required for graduation. | Undergraduate | Two Assistant Professors, Associate Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | None | The experience "de-professionalized" me in that many of us believed it was normal for professors to hold office hours in bars, open their homes for parties, and engage in sexual/romantic relationships with students--even if they served as their committee members. It was only when I went to graduate school did I realize how toxic and unprofessional the faculty were/are. | Depression, shame | After a long period of feeling incredibly foolish (and re-learning how to interact with respectable faculty), I took my studies and professional development much more seriously than most graduate students. Perversely, my past experiences made me successful or so I tell myself. | Male | |||||
1148 | 12/6/2017 23:08:23 | On my second day of class in my first year of seminary a professor invited me into his office after class. He asked me a series of personal questions under the guise of offering spiritual direction. He asked explicitly about my divorce and current marital status, then raised his eyebrows and informed me that I certainly could be remarried by now. His class lectures frequently revolved around sex, which was unusual for a class in Christian Church History. He would say inappropriate things to the female students. One day he asked about what we think when a ‘hunk’ walks by. He would also make objectifying statements about women. When I complained about it he would tell me that some feminist theologians think that we need to be talking about push up bras and sexuality. He never respected me as a theologian and made clear his amusement of me, particularly when a male classmate made a disparaging remark towards me. My classmates look up to him and he has a good reputation in the community as a pastor. He claims to be a women’s advocate. I doubted my own experiences until he finally commented on my “slinky dress,” (I was wearing a modest sleeveless blouse behind a podium) in a photo of me at a public speaking event at a local church. He also made fun of a mutual friend and colleague because I had expressed admiration for him as a chaplain (which is the field I’m preparing for.) He would encourage us to speak up and then remind us that the faculty have so much power over grades, and professional/academic recommendations. | First year master's student | Professor of Church History and Formation (and Pastor with many community connections) | Other Type of School | Seminary - Masters of Divinity | What was startling to me was that when I reported the professor to the school director she knew who it was before I shared his name. I only partially disclosed because I had not had time to process everything. She told me to schedule a meeting with him and tell him that it was wrong and trust that she is working with him on his issues. I knew that I shouldn’t do that, but I didn’t know what else to do. So I confronted the professor and he didn’t respond well. Then a friend told me to file a Title IX complaint, which was the correct course of action for me to take. However, I then had to meet with the academic dean who was very kind but did not know what to do. He and the title IX coordinator confronted the professor and asked for his side. Then I received an email addressed to me but cc’d all of the aforementioned people that reinforced his own power. He then began emailing me and I had to tell him not to contact me anymore. HR finally got involved and they want to refer me for ’support services.’ | Nothing yet. | I worry about my ability to proceed in my program. The harasser also told me changes that I needed to make if I wanted to be a chaplain. By the end of last year I didn’t think I would ever be competent. | I have had a hard time focusing on schoolwork for a year and a half because it’s so stressful. Due to the nature of my program it includes receiving spiritual direction from the person who harassed me. I finally told him not to contact me because I was having nightmares. | I've considered transferring, but this school has a good reputation in my career field. Even though I continued to enroll in school I gave up on the idea of becoming a chaplain. Fortunately I have had some friends encourage me to continue with my career goal. I have considered converting to a different religious tradition also. | Male | |||
1149 | 12/7/2017 0:05:50 | sexual assault in 2013 | graduate student | professor | Other R1 | art | after 3 years he was fired from his tenure position | missed deadlines, crushed dreams, quit editing, gave up the grant i was given | gained 10kg to protect myself from men, can't really enjoy sex | quit academia, decided not to continue with a phd, stopped talking to several of my peers | Male | ||||
1150 | 12/7/2017 0:13:46 | I was harassed by my supervisor. His office was being moved, so he used this as an excuse to set our first meeting off campus on a Friday afternoon--we met at a bar. He also postponed our meeting into the evening. Another time he recommended that we see a film that was tangentially related to my work. He suggested that we meet at a theatre near my apartment. After the film, he sent me an email saying that he was hoping to "receive more hospitality," which I assume was a reference to the fact that I didn't invite him to my place. At one of our meetings, he mentioned being accused of harassing undergraduates. These stories continued until I received my grades and my degree, which is when I stopped responding to him. | MA student | My MA supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | McGill | Not reported | None | He made my life difficult because he wasn't getting what he wanted. He gave me grades that I didn't deserve. He once yelled at me in his office, for no legitimate reason--using a minor issue with my project as an excuse to exercise his power over me. | I was young and didn't know better, so I blamed myself. I doubted myself a lot. I felt like an impostor. Was I somehow inviting his advances? Is this how I was advancing in my career? I'm now a PhD and I refused to work with a male supervisor. I'm happy with that decision, but I wish I didn't have to make it. | I won't work closely with straight men. | Thank you for doing this. | Male | ||
1151 | 12/7/2017 0:46:24 | I was sexually harassed and assaulted by my music instructor in graduate school. The private music lesson is an intimate space--with just a professor/instructor and a student in a small room. Over the course of the academic quarter, the instructor would touch my arms, hands, and lower back in a way that was being masked as the pedagogical teaching of technique. He would also make sexually suggestive comments with respect to my playing style or the music. In the middle of the quarter, I was invited to his house for dinner, and I attended with the understanding that his female roommate (an adjunct lecturer in the department) would be home. She was not. Things started to become awkward after dinner, when he asked me to sit on the couch. I have repressed exactly what happened next, but I did end up leaving his house abruptly once I started to feel like I was in danger. The next time I saw him on campus, he grabbed me and kissed me forcefully. I was so shocked and disturbed by all that had happened, I ended up dropping the course immediately. He then started to call me incessantly --so much so that I felt I should change my phone number. Later, I learned that he was exerting similar predatory behavior to other Asian females like myself--some of whom were undergraduates. There was a rumor that he had even slept with one of the undergraduates. Once I heard this, I became outraged and decided to tell one of my professors. | Graduate student | Visiting instructor | Other R1 | Ethnomusicology | This was before the era of Title IX offices on university campuses, the idea(l) of zero tolerance, and certainly well before the current #metoo movement. The first professor I spoke with advised me to either share my story with the University's Ombuds office or to take my case to a higher court of law. Another professor asked me pointedly whether or not what I experienced could really count as sexual harassment (and whether or not I was properly accounting for "cultural differences" between the instructor and myself.) I filed a formal complaint with the University's Ombuds office and went through most of the proceedings until I learned that I would have to face my harasser in a formal mediation session. I effectively dropped the case by ignoring all requests from the Ombuds office to proceed. The one short-lived policy that was enacted was a departmental change of requiring all doors to be propped open during private music lessons. | No consequences. | No impact on my professional career. I have been one of the lucky ones in my field. | I took several years off after graduate school and left the country. I think my mid 20s were spent trying to reconcile and ignore that trauma and humiliation. There were four other women who admitted to being harassed by the same instructor. But I was the only one to stick my neck out on the line, since the other women did not follow through with the proceedings. The "incidents" were public knowledge in my department; I was the source of gossip and even accused by the harasser as being the "orchestrator" of false allegations. I felt that the Ombudswoman was not a neutral party, and in the end, she started to become very pushy in her efforts to have me confront my harasser. Since I ultimately dropped my case, I still have a great deal of shame for backing out and allowing this sexual predator to get away with his actions. I often think about this, every time a new sexual predator is named. The most insidious predators are the ones who understand how to abuse power and know how to manipulate the system. They continue to prey on the vulnerable because they have gotten away with it in the past, and because they have been enabled by those in power. In terms of mental health, the impact was severe, and has been reignited in recent weeks. | I attribute this (and other events that I have not named here) to contribute to my inability to trust men in relationships. It has had a surprisingly damaging effect on this aspect of my life. Although the wounds are deep, I do hope to get over this someday. | Male | |||
1152 | 12/7/2017 1:12:24 | My very first true creative writing mentor as an undergrad--I thought the promise of my work made him interested in me. For 1.5/2 yrs I believed I was being guided, assisted, promoted based on talent and effort. Truly, I dont believe I was submitting poor material, but all of it was called into question when I was asked out for drinks alone. Went. And began to sense in tone, comments, intensity that this was not an academic/purely intellectual meeting. I had experienced a very deep, abrupt, and disruptive loss in my family and consolation took a strange turn. Very soon the conversation turned to a romantically slanted one, whereby I made excuses and left. Profoundly disappointed. Every gesture, any 'standing too close' any compliment to my work.. all changed tone. All the "support" changed tone. When I discussed it with a graduate 'peer' I was met with, "what did you expect? You're pretty." I felt lost. What a strange thing to have to view ones physical self as an intellectual impediment. And then there was the worse, should I? | Undergraduate | Department Chair and Prof | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Literature &a Creative Writing | Writing for films and winning awards, so, you know, fitting in. | Some self doubt, but really profound mistrust in academia and careful relationships with anyone trying to assist after. Generated suspicion in future relationships, which is obviously stunting in some ways. | Self doubt, suspicion, resentment that all had to be managed through my academic career. | Prepared me to enter into business eyes wide open--there are no friends--however I think that is a very cynical view, and one I wish were not a part of my experience. | Male | ||||
1153 | 12/7/2017 1:27:44 | Both of my PhD supervisors were serial harassers of female students. They were particularly aggressive toward the cohorts of young master’s students who cycled through the department each year and therefore were most likely to (a.) not be aware of previous histories, and (b.) try to simply tolerate or avoid the harassment as best as they could because they knew they would only be in the department for the one-year program (although I have little doubt these experiences in some cases terminated thoughts some of them might have had of continuing for a PhD in my department). As a male student who witnessed some incidents and had others confided to me, not all of these stories are mine to tell. However, I will say that none of this behavior was remotely secret. My advisors boasted openly about their constant pursuit of students and deliberately spread rumors about students they wanted to sleep with, were sleeping with, or had been unable to sleep with (the latter category of course being on the receiving end of some of the worst rumors). They also boasted about having helped particularly fabulous looking students gain admission to the department, presumably meaning that students merely gifted with brains rather than with my advisors’ standards of youth and beauty would not have received such preferential treatment. And of course since physical appearance and perceived pliability were the only attributes my advisors valued in women, they were loud and noxious misogynists when it came to speaking about the intellectual capabilities of female scholars. No matter what superficially charming façade they might occasionally put on in mixed company, when they were among fellow white males (naturally they were bigots, too), any female scholar was deemed simply incapable, weak-minded, and unfit, regardless of whether she were a student or a Max Planck Institute director. It was this level of presumption that all males must feel the same way and so there was no need to hide their behavior or beliefs among comrades that was probably a factor in the viciousness against me after I spoke up. They simply could not believe that a fellow male would be so traitorous as to object to their actions – after all, they had never harassed me personally – never mind that someone would be insane enough to act in a way so obviously and terminally detrimental to my own career prospects in academia. Apart from what I witnessed in my own department, I’ll just add a short note regarding my experiences in a non-academic career track after I finished my PhD. I am not an especially gregarious individual, and yet the number of times I have had professional women outside the academy confide to me their assault experiences during graduate study is both stunning and more than a little horrifying in view of how much of an undercount it must represent compared to the number of women who were understandably never inclined to share some of their worst life experiences with a random male colleague. It must therefore always, ALWAYS be remembered that any sampling of sexual harassment and assault experiences within the academy is necessarily going to underestimate the scale of the problem because it will invariably under-sample women who left academia in part or entirely because of harassment. | PhD student | Both of my PhD supervisors held the rank of Senior Lecturer, which is roughly the British equivalent of an Associate Professor in the U.S. | Other R1 | History | My department chair angrily told me that he was already aware of female student complaints but of course wasn’t going to do anything about it. He then declared I would no longer have the right to any PhD supervisor at all if I didn’t want to work with the serial harassers who were my assigned supervisors. Presumably he thought this would be enough to keep me from finishing my dissertation (and since the department had already cashed the last of my external fellowship checks at this point, they were A-OK with that). However, I fled the country, wrote up my dissertation from another institutional base, and then demanded to submit the dissertation for examination by an external committee, which was standard procedure under the British system where my department was. At this point, the department chair tried to have himself reassigned as my official supervisor and thereby run out the clock on my university registration, despite the fact that his background was utterly irrelevant to my research and indeed farther away than any other member of the entire department. One of my ex-supervisors suggested some of his drinking buddies as members of the dissertation examination committee. Etc. Etc. Etc. It was ugly. Ultimately, I gained the right to submit my dissertation to an impartial examination committee and was passed for the PhD, and at this point I left academia and accepted a non-academic job. | Promotion. Obviously. Both of my ex-supervisors were rapidly promoted to the rank of full professor – a bigger deal under the British system than the American – and the department chair now has his own new department at another elite school. | I left academia and have had a varied career track including a short period in diplomatic service (where my first assigned mentor boasted of having given women higher scores on the Foreign Service oral exam if he liked their legs). | Yeah, it’s hard. I’m obviously extremely fortunate in that I never experienced any of the harassment or assault directly to myself and instead was only retaliated against in a non-physical manner for speaking out on behalf of others. I never forget that this is by far the easier consequence. Nevertheless, especially lately with harassment finally beginning to be taken more seriously and so many stories constantly in the news, it is really difficult to focus on work sometimes without spiraling into a whirlwind of old emotions. It’s not helped by the fact that I recently started working again on research related to my old dissertation topic, and however much I may intellectually like the subject, it is still bound up with these ugly experiences from the past. You never stop wondering if there was a different way of speaking up that might have been more successful at having an impact rather than just leading to you getting swatted aside like a meaningless insect. Partly there is the question of what an alternative career outcome might have looked like, but these days I mostly wonder what my failure to actually take these assholes down fifteen years ago means for countless women they have encountered since then. Shit, I’m tearing up even as I write this. | In the last 22 years of academic study and professional work, I have had a total of one two-and-a-half year job, one three-month fellowship, and one six-month fellowship that did not involve at least one of my superiors being at some level a harasser or embezzler. Even in the very rare cases where I can genuinely say that my outspokenness did contribute to a modest degree of change, it only happened after I had been successfully squashed and driven out, at which point changes were quietly implemented later. At this point, I am unemployed and emotionally beaten down by the experiences of the past couple of decades but extraordinarily lucky to have a wife with a successful career and therefore to have the opportunity to take a bit of a respite from the workplace. Can I just make one request to those of you continuing academics, though? I know you’re all terribly busy (contrary to the plethora of shallow hack jobs and opinion pieces in the press) and that you get a lot of random queries from random people. Nevertheless, sometimes that “independent scholar” who writes to you with a quick question or solicitation for advice is only an independent scholar because they once took it hard on the chin in an effort to make your own workplace a bit safer. Perhaps hear us out occasionally if you have time and if we’re serious and respectful, because under only slightly different circumstances of fortune, it really could have been you sitting in our place. | Male | |||
1154 | 12/7/2017 1:32:58 | I was repeatedly sexually assaulted by one of my male professors, while I was his student, when I was an undergraduate. | Full time undergraduate student. | Visiting professor for the academic year. | Small Liberal Arts College | Minneapolis College of Art and Design | Fine arts | I didn't file a complaint. | None. He was an accomplished artist who subsequently won numerous awards and continued guests teaching for decades. Much later I found out he had a history of doing this to students as he made the rounds at various institutions as a guest lecturer, and it made me feel sick that I never reported the abuse to my university. He is now deceased. | None. | At the time I was a naive and quiet 19 year old (I am 49 now, so this was a long time ago). At first I was excited to be singled out for after class meetings and, eventually, dinners. I was upset and confused when he threw himself at me but went along with it. For several months, we had a strange relationship that I was unhappy with but felt unable to get out of. | Less than two years later I went on to intern at a feminist arts cooperative.That was life changing. And now I have a PhD. | Male | ||
1155 | 12/7/2017 1:50:01 | Post-doc in a lab talked about me and other women in our lab as sexual objects, always behind our backs and often to our face. Statements like "[Grad student x] is okay, but I mean, she's so ... not feminine. I would never sleep with her." were common and it almost felt like he said it so that it would pit us against each other. He would make comments about my outfits and my body often. There was a lab get together where we were at a bar for happy hour. He ran into some friends who were leaving the country the next day and he suggested, in front of the group, that I sleep with his friend as a goodbye gift. When I uncomfortably said "no", he started to laugh with his friends that I was uptight and I need to relax. He was considered a charming, funny, well liked, smart guy, and I was so insecure with myself that I was drawn to him. I became friendly with one of his friends and his friend ended up raping me. I never told anyone because I thought it was my fault. | First year masters student, mid 20s | First year post-doc, mid 30s | Other R1 | Engineering | I did not report or tell anyone. | Nope. His career is going well. He's still a popular, well liked researcher. | I started a PhD in a different department to get away from him. I lost confidence so all the research, presentations, papers I did during my PhD are subpar. I ran into him but I didn't have to work with him. | Depression for 3.5 years | I lost confidence and entered into a series of unhealthy relationships for a few years following that experience. | Male | |||
1156 | 12/7/2017 2:06:06 | Several incidents of sexual harassment, inappropriate touching (hair, hips, chest, thighs, arms, hands, face...), forms of stalking and controlling, asking for sex, promising that if the female student is willing to sleep with the male professor, he will keep it a secret since he is aware that this would be detrimental to her career; many acts of sexual harassment (and gender discrimination) usually in relation to the threat of otherwise failing the exams, not getting certain jobs, or not finding an advisor at this department; three female students left in 2017. Some (of many) examples: A woman was told that she is stupid but attractive, another woman was advised to wear shorts and skirts more often (due to her "pretty legs"), it was suggested to female graduate student that if she (specifically) wants to learn French she should not bother with a language class in Paris, she should just sleep with a French guy; during a departmental reception a tenured male professor put his hand at a female graduate student's chest, claiming she was wearing "glitter," another female graduate student was asked to come to office hours at night; inappropriate messages and sexist statements (often with sexual content), open statements about the ridiculousness of Title IX and sexual harassment claims... http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2017/11/elite-degrees-but-at-what-cost http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2017/10/u-launches-title-ix-investigation-into-german-professor-amid-student-complaints | graduate students | tenured professors | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Princeton University, German Department | Title IX allegedly found one professor responsible, he still teaches at the institution (due to further reports another investigation is pending), because this Title IX case allegedly had no complainants (the university felt urged to investigate), the written outcome cannot be distributed, which protects him (in comparison to the Princeton Engineering professor who was found guilty - similar deeds - and was not able to hide behind confidentiality; "inclusivity workshops" for the department; presumably more investigations (less is known about that) | the one faculty member who was found guilty (as mentioned) still teaches at the Princeton German Department, no consequences for other faculty members who harassed or discriminated based on gender (or even race) | severe impact (on many levels), retaliation attempts for some of the people who spoke out, threats (in relation to the career of the student) | many women report to have sought therapy, women transferred to other departments, and even other universities, some quit the program, depression, other mental issues | Male | ||||
1157 | 12/7/2017 2:34:27 | One faculty member, who is no longer with the institution, constantly pushed the boundaries of acceptable conversation, hosted wine-soaked parties that were highly inappropriate, and made every conversation somehow turn sexual; he would gossip about other professors' sex lives with graduate students. Another faculty member, also no longer with the department, was the subject of numerous sexual harassment complaints. But, somehow worse, is the male professor who still holds a treasured post there and who, despite his plummy tones, is a deep-seated misogynist. He constantly undermines female graduate students (myself and others), tells them that women need easier treatment because they can't handle serious work, and accuses them of being hysterical/mentally unstable/sensitive. | Graduate student | Tenured professor(s) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale | History of Art | Hah. Google Yale's Spanish or NELC departments if you want to see how the institution responds to such issues | None | It was mainly my contact with the last of these men that hurt me the most. He made me doubt everything about myself, my capabilities, and my research. I now just feel so much anger and rage. | As this spreadsheet shows, all departments and disciplines have serious issues. For my own field however, art history needs to take a hard look at itself and ask why in a discipline with one of the highest numbers of female graduate students, faculty/museum curator makeup remains relatively equal between genders. This imbalance between student/faculty gender makeups speaks pretty strongly to the impact of the pervasive misogyny in the field. | Male | |||
1158 | 12/7/2017 3:34:36 | I was cornered, alone, in my shared office space and berated/intimidated by a male faculty member. I felt threatened and told him so. I told him to leave or to let me leave. He refused, so I told him if he didn’t leave I would call campus police. He wouldn’t leave until I had campus police on the phone. Leading up to this incident, I had requested a change in my office location due to a conflict with this particular faculty member. I was fearful of future conflict, though I didn’t know it would be this bad. When I went to my mentor, she advocated on my behalf to change office space, but it was turned down by the division chair (who happens to be female). | Grad student | Tenured faculty | Regional Teaching College | English | I had emotional support of female faculty members who where familiar with his bullying behavior. I was allowed to change my office location. but there was no official support from the institution and unless I was willing to take it further, nothing would happen. And no one offered a path to resolution. He seemed to leave a wake of intimidation and it seemed that many people’s hands were tied. | None. | I changed future decisions based on this event. Long term, nothing obvious. | It was quite damaging. This happened in the last few months before graduation. I changed where I held my office hours, changed where and when I was available. I had to make an effort to avoid him. I was afraid to be alone on campus. This past year has brought up reminders of this. | I changed some future plans based on this event. | Male | |||
1159 | 12/7/2017 4:17:34 | At my discipline's flagship conference in 2013. I presented for the first time, it went really well, I celebrated with friends. A few grad students from other institutions joined us. Very late at night, one of the grad students from another school drunkenly followed me around, and propositioned in a desolate corner of the hotel. He was a very tall and big man and blocked the only way out. Then some stranger walked by and I pretended to know them and walked away with them. | second year phd student | fifth or sixth year phd candidate at a different school | Elite Institution/Ivy League | music | none. didn't report. | Didn't know there was any until that person came to my school/my program to give a talk, and I was triggered AF | Male | ||||||
1160 | 12/7/2017 4:39:58 | High ranking member of the college made sexual comments about my pregnant body. | Part-time professor | Upper Administration Role (one of my superiors) | Other Type of School | Algonquin College | Felt uncomfortable with my pregnant body at work. Felt like I had to cover up and wear even baggier clothing. Felt demeaned and embarassed. | Male | |||||||
1161 | 12/7/2017 4:52:36 | I was very upset about the election results and crying in my office. My male postdoc came in and attempted to comfort me. Even though I told him to leave many, many times, he proceeded to hug me and even kissed me. I was upset and finally got him to leave. The experience left me shaken and I realized I was really freaked out to have him in the lab the next time I saw him. | Tenured faculty | postdoctoral researcher | Other R1 | Physics | I didn't realize it was harassment at first and went to the Ombud's office. They told me it was sexual harassment, and I needed to go to the diversity equity office. I did. They launched an investigation after I gave a statement. My dean supported me with the diversity office and the campus police to remove the student while the investigation was ongoing. He was even removed from my grant and placed on a special budget until he finally quit - before the investigation was complete. | He had a hard time getting another postdoc, but finally did get one. He targeted young faculty who didn't know to call references. | Slump in productivity for several months. I was lucky to be more senior and the one the university wanted to keep. | Depression for several months. | Not sure if I will rehire postdocs for a while. | Male | |||
1162 | 12/7/2017 5:08:42 | Was inappropriately touched and propositioned by the offender at a conference | Graduate student | The offender was a faculty member at another institution | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Offender is faculty at Evangelisch-Theologische Fakultät Mainz | Bible | none | Male | ||||||
1163 | 12/7/2017 5:32:45 | A professor grabbed my breast at the closing dinner of a conference I co-organized. | graduate student | Tenured faculty | Other R1 | Comparative Literature | n/a (he was from another institution) | Male | |||||||
1164 | 12/7/2017 5:33:23 | I was propositioned by a senior faculty member while I was a graduate student. I needed to take his class in order to graduate and he also was on my thesis committee. He continually sexualized out of classroom interactions and took advantage of my vulnerable state when I was undergoing a health crisis. | Graduate student | Thesis committee member, senior professor in the program | Other R1 | UMass Amherst | English (MFA in creative writing) | Was told 20 years ago it didn't make sense to press charges--and given my health, I agreed. It would only have made my life harder. | None | Serious--I did not send out my work or believe in my writing for years. | Serious | It made pursuing an academic career harder. It eviscerated my confidence. | Male | ||
1165 | 12/7/2017 5:36:36 | A professor I was a research assistant for insisted upon holding meetings later at night when we were the only ones in the building. He graphically described his sexual history, including his relationships with previous research assistants. He then informed me that the university had tried to revoke his tenure when he punched a student, but he sued them and won, clearly implying that no complaints I might make would matter. He tried on several occasions to get me to deliver things to his apartment rather than his campus office and I refused. | Master's student | Tenured Faculty | Other R1 | Humanities | He was not an academic advisor, but I was working for him and he provided a necessary source of income for me, so I was unable to quit the job in response to his behavior. | Male | |||||||
1166 | 12/7/2017 5:37:24 | While I was a PhD student, my advisor and I were planning to go to a conference. He wanted to book one room, but I felt very uncomfortable. This made him very angry - because there were budget restrictions. Instead he invited another female student to stay with him, she accepted. When we got back from the conference there was a shift in the dynamic that was I was too naive to understand. Effectively this PhD student was allowed to bully me and slowly their influence over the lab grew. My ideas were taken away from me, and given to other students. I was laughed at in lab meetings and my work was largely ignored. In 2008, I took a research internship at Harvard University (I applied largely to get away from my own lab) but this must have elicited some jealousy because the day after this internship was confirmed, I was suddenly accused of data falsification by my advisor. He didn't approach me, he went straight to the dean of Research. My PhD was put on hold while I underwent a 10 month investigation. There was no basis to his claim, and afterwards I was fully exonerated. Turns out the university was also investigating my advisor at the same time for a potential affair with his other student. When the university questioned him - he initially lied, to keep her as a student. But half way through the investigation into the veracity of my work, he left his wife and proposed to his other PhD student. They married later that year. While under investigation he took it upon himself to tell everyone at my university that I had falsified data. To this day I think my reputation in my home country is questioned. When I finally wrote a formal complaint about the way I was treated during my PhD, my university discovered that he had "unofficially" been strongly advised to leave his previous position (as an assistant professor at another university) because he had a reputation for sleeping with his students and had subsequently accused 2 of them of falsification. My university also strong armed him into leaving but he works at another university now. | PhD student | My advisor (association professor) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Psychology | They handled my complaint well because there was a long official history between us at that stage. The parallax across incidents had already raised some serious concerns. My complaint made it official, and gave my university permission to investigate further. | My advisor was asked to leave the faculty. However, this was handled in such a way that it was possible for him to find another position (at a smaller regional university). At the time this was a relief but I see now the problem with village justice. | Huge. I have not been able to work in my home country since. | Large. At the time and to this day. | Its driven me in new and unusual ways - forcing me to work in the US and Europe has given me a wide range of skills. Also I am driven to stay in science because I really feel the need to protect as many students as possible from similar experiences. Thus, the impact has been both good and bad. | Male | |||
1167 | 12/7/2017 5:38:37 | I was asked out by a colleague in my division on the first day of a new job as a professor. He later followed up with an email and talked about how a bedroom should only be used for sex and sleep (when I had mentioned I had had trouble sleeping-- anxiety over annual review). | new assistant professor | 3 years or so in, assistant professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Marymount Manhattan College | English | None. | None | Later he was acting Chair and observed me and wrote a mixed / negative classroom observation. I asked for him to not do the observation b/c he had asked me out and I had turned him down a few years earlier, but was told he's just awkward and it was a long time ago. a senior female colleague dismissed my concerns. ultimately this did not help my case-- when my contract was not renewed prior to going up for tenure. | it made me feel unprotected at work. and more stressed out. | I eventually left academia (not because of this but because of other issues at work) | years later he was suspended without pay for a semester or year after a student complained about his inappropriate remarks and behavior toward her. they should not have dismissed my concerns but when a paying student/customer complained, they listened. | Male | |
1168 | 12/7/2017 5:47:36 | Retired senior administrator made comments to another male faculty member about me of a sexual nature (or that could be interpreted that way) that had no basis in reality. I had had minimal interaction with this senior administrator, and none outside of formal meetings with others present. I don't want to describe them specifically as they would clearly out the incident to my colleagues. | Junior faculty, first year. | Senior, retired adminstrator (Dean) | Other R1 | Inter-disciplinary | None, I discussed with another Dean who dismissed as the other ex-dean being a gross chauvinist. | none, as emeritus faculty. | none, I don't think my colleague/Deans thought of his comments as relevant. | Culture of this institution is highly competitive anyway and often combative. | Head down, carry on. | Male | |||
1169 | 12/7/2017 5:54:20 | Pregnancy discrimination/harassment. 6 weeks pregnant doing my second masters degree, in teacher education. Proactively approached the program coordinator, a male associate professor, to ask to move up my student teaching so it was complete before my delivery. He told me to quit the program - a very competitive program. I proceeded to negotiate with the support of my supervisor at my GA position. Had multiple meetings. Things were said like - we won't be able to find a school to take you in your condition, you won't be able to do a good job, you won't come back... The real reason was he didn't want to go through the process of working with the state to grandfather me in to the new licensure program b/c I would need a summer extension after the laws changed. It took my boss having a secret conversation with the dean of education and the dean then telling him to cease and desist before I was able to get my placement and work out a schedule to complete all my requirements. | master's student | associate professor, coordinator of the program | Other R1 | Education | off the record told him to cease and desist | I completed my degree and received my license but ended up not going into k-12 teaching. Was bitter about the whole program and how I was treated. Have used license to sub. | It impacted my ability to get recommendations from my program. I planned to teach k-12 before returning for my phd. I skipped that step. I'm now a professor but without much k-12 experience that would have benefited my eligibility for other jobs. | At that time it was quite stressful and depressing. If not for the support of my supervisor, I would have quit the program and left the university. There was no other way out of it besides a law suit. | None. I have followed the same path as I wanted. | Male | |||
1170 | 12/7/2017 5:58:32 | Was asked to have lunch with male tenure committee member. I didn’t feel comfortable doing so. | Tenure committee member | History | After 2 years of good teaching letters, 3rd year he decides I am not a good teacher. | Stress, anxiety | Stuck with process, replacement chair when first chair left university (not the harasser) shores up my position and I received tenure. The harasser was in science and I was able to avoid him in future. | Male | |||||||
1171 | 12/7/2017 5:58:58 | female colleague in my department stated loudly that I "looked sexy" as I entered the room for a department meeting. Our department is mostly male and only guys were in the room. I was immediately upset and asked her not to sexualize my body. I was an assistant professor, she was associate. It was an underhanded "compliment." I was wearing a harvest gold pencil skirt (that I loved) and a loose black sweater that covered my butt. Boots and tights. I am a curvy girl and I made sure I was dressed appropriately. | assistant prof | associate prof | Other R1 | education | none, did not report | none | Compounded with other things, I eventually resigned from the institution | none, but didn't wear that skirt again, and didn't build any further colleagial relationship with that woman who should have served as a support in a department that lost women regularly. | Female | ||||
1172 | 12/7/2017 6:01:55 | As the first and only tenure-track faculty of color to be hired by my ex-department, I experienced racism, sexism and prejudice based on national origin for eight years. In particular, from September 2014 onwards, the former chair, a popular and influential personality on campus, engaged habitually in inappropriate, predatory and disrespectful conduct. During this time, I received numerous emails (even during my summer breaks in India), text messages and voice mails asking me to join him for either lunch, coffee or go kayaking with him. Once he had unexpectedly entered my lecture room, minutes before class was to begin, and asked me out for drinks; another time he wanted to go grocery shopping for me. Over the years, I endured his 'bad behavior' that included being intimidated by him twice on the road to work, and being pointedly informed by him that his brother was a parole officer. He also delayed the publication of my monograph, contracted with one of the leading international publishers in my field. The times we did go for lunch, they felt like dates more than meetings. He would also make flirty, suggestive comments; stare at certain parts of my body; and manspread in his office. | It started when I was officially untenured, but knew it was coming through, through tenure in 2015 and till my resignation in June 2017. | Chair of my department | Other Type of School | University of North Carolina Wilmington | Film Studies | Incredulity, derision, condescension at even an informal complaint. Made me feel completely insane. Never took it seriously, either because of my race or nationality, or both. Harasser was protected by upper admin (white, male associate dean), and a complicit, deferential HR comprising basically of one white, southern woman. | No consequences. It was all hushed up. His tenure as chair ended on the day of my departure from the States - he received a plaque for service to the department and university, a standing ovation at the departmental commencement ceremony, and served as Faculty Marshall at the main university commencement. Currently on a sabbatical for serving as chair for 6 years. Continues next semester as Associate Professor. | Resigned from tenured, associate professor position, and returned to my home country of India. Huge sense of loss after working so very hard for six years to make it permanent. I was the first faculty of color to achieve tenure in my department. At the time I left without another job in place. The publication of my monograph is still delayed, five years after it was contracted. I took a six month break and will be joining a relatively unknown liberal arts university in India. Huge salary gap. It's no wonder women don't speak up. Devasting, almost-career ending impact! | Permanent issues relating to anxiety and panic attacks, mental health issues I never had. Took emergency medical leave while the harassment was ongoing. Went to ER, wore a heart monitor for a month due to palpitations, and was misdiagnosed by a psychiatrist who turned out to be a close friend of my harasser. He never divulged a conflict of interest. Currently, I have symptoms of PTSD and recurring nightmares. On bad days, overwhelming sense of loss, anger, and sadness. | I have to start from scratch in a new city, in a new job. Anxiety controls my thoughts and actions. I don't like going out, meeting people. Feel betrayed, and unable to trust anyone. Never thought I'd one day have to give up a job and the reasons would have absolutely nothing to do with the work itself, or my performance! | Male | ||
1173 | 12/7/2017 6:29:25 | I have three instances to report. I was a clinical social worker in health care at a top university in Canada. I did individual, partner , family and group counselling. I was considered a leader in my field of end of life care. The first incident was with a surgeon I worked with. After 2 years of powerful work with clients and their families, my colleague, a married man with several adult children, asked me to meet him for lunch and said he would "no longer take no for an answer". He had never asked me for lunch before nor been anything but professional in his behaviour. That should have been my first clue that he felt I was part of his secret life. We went to lunch and I have to say my concern was for his health and well being. I thought he was struggling with something and needed a compassionate ear. At lunch he proposed to me that he buy me : a hospice building and licensing so we could continue to do this work of end of life care. He also offered to pay all the hospice expenses, buy me a condo , a car, and anything else I needed. I was shocked. I asked what he would expect in return for all this generosity and he said :"only that you make yourself available 24/7 to speak to me". I had been a model in my younger years and was quite familiar with the world of what men and women can get themselves into without occupational boundaries. I was single at the time, having left my husband. I said : "what if I am with someone and you call to talk". He said :"you will ask them to leave". I told him that I was flattered by his wish to access my mind at such an expense to him but that even though he was offering me everything I needed, I was a woman who needed her own independence and so could not agree to this. He then refused to work with me, went to the organizations CEO and tried to discredit me. I was taken off this cancer service and placed in another service , less enjoyable to me. I felt threatened and at risk. I was told by my supervisor to stay in my office and become the best clinician I could become. Security was notified. The surgeon then began an anonymous letter campaign to threaten the surgeon who headed the service i worked on. The surgeon who began this was eventually let go but I had experienced violence and intimidation and coercion in the workplace. I was strong enough to say no but suffered occupational harassment, personal threat, sidetracking of my career and I felt a sense of public shaming by his rife comments when I passed him in the hall. The second incident was a senior neurologist at the university I worked at. He was seeing me as my physician in a dr-patient relationship. I saw him over years. I choose to switch my care from him to another physician when he began to make suggestions that I was sexualizing the relationship ( I have severe pain from a motor vehicle accident and was seeking his opinion on this. it is hard to sexualize anything when you have that level of pain). I was shocked by this, and simply left after an incident where I felt he had said something to his secretary about me that was sexualizing of me as patient. Some ten years later, after I left, he was brought up on charges of sexual harrassment by another client, and these charges resulted in his being fined and having him retire. I think I was witness to this old man loosing his filters....and it went on for some time before someone else called him on it. The third incident is another misuse of power by men. My medical director in end of life care wanted me to support his efforts to bring in a change in policy at a federal level for end of life care. I beleive in the right to your own ideas and freedom of speech in my academic world. I told him I could not support him. I was then head hunted to an international agency in oncology and palliative care in Europe. It was a think tank for cancer care. Upon my return from meeting with the UN about pain managment being a human right, and meeting with this think tank in Switzerland, my elite program on family care was collapsed by this physician-because I would not do as he asked. My program was income generating and a top clinical program. He was trying to silence my voice as its leadership was well recognized. He was a physician and a medical director. I was a director of a psycho-social-spiritual team or family therapy team. We were both top notch players-but I had the international reputation more than he did. He collapsed my program, fired my team, kept on those he could control , hired some of my students who would end up leaving for the same reason I did ( his determining of their practice). What was most interesting was that he asked me to write a paper for publication. I did and heard nothing back. I then asked about it and he said he had lost the paper. 10 years after I wrote that paper, 5 years after I left him employment, one of my medical students ( graduate level) found a published curriculum which gave me second authorship. The first authorship was his. He had taken my paper and published it under his name. I would never have found it unless my student brought it to my attention. All three men, tried to cull my career and use/misuse my presence and abilities. | Assistant Professor moving to Associate Professor. | Doctors : surgical oncologist, neurologist ( top neurologist), family physician | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Social work, theologian | In the first case, I was moved to another service, protected but very much felt an attempt to discredit me personally ( they could not do this professionally) . The incident was viewed as a personal issue when it was not. It was oppression, sexual oppression. Second case, I did not complain but in retrospect i should have said something so others would not be hurt. I did not speak out because the neurologist was the best in his field and I felt it was me who was inspiring his interest as I felt he had heard ( misheard) about the (non-) relationship with the surgeon . Both worked in the same institution. Even if the first incident/case/episode had been real and mutual, it would not have and should not have led to an assumption by the second physician that i would be open to turning my need for health care into a sexual relationship. Third case, it took a lot of work. MY work was severed and I received a package from my employer at the hospital. I was retained by the University but I did not receive my Associate professorship as all the documentation for this process was thrown out by the Medical Director. I had no recourse and no fight left in me to pursue this. I continue to work with the University. I took the surgeon to the College of Physicians and Surgeons who usually only hear complaints from consumers. I knew the physician in this third case was unwell as I used to sit with him in the emergency department when he was brought in by ambulance after an episdoe of wandering. After his insistence that I support legislation and policies I did not feel I could support, I identified my concerns about his judgment and use of power. He was removed from his Medical Directorship but placed in a key position in a center for ethics. My concern about his behaviour had gone to this centre in writing. I feel he went there to destroy any evidence of my concerns. I do not know this for a fact...but I hypothesize this. It took me 10 years but I got first authorship on the curriculum published by the DFCM at the university. This physician would die a few years after the original incident. I think I lost close to $500,000 .00 in salary as I never found the strength to place myself back into a top level job because of the co-ercision I experienced from these 3 physicians. I went on to be purposeful and a leader in my field-but suffered deeply for their behaviours and solicitations and mis use of power. | The first case, the surgeon , was fired but allowed to continue with his work. He has since died. The second case, the neurologist, practiced until someone took exception to his behaviour and filed a complaint and won with the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is now retired as a result of the successful complaint. The third case, the physician was promoted, then died.No discreditation or repremend. | Significant loss of income and status, demoralization, hesitation to continue building my career in such a sexually harrassing and controlling environment as the "Boyz club". | I am sure it has taken its toll-but two of the physicians are dead and I am still alive. I did have two strokes during this time ( 2001,2005) and I would say this had an impact on my longevity. I am 66 years of age now, still working , partially by choice but partially because I have to as my career trajectory went sideways because of these situations cited and I want to continue to maintain my own lifestyle so small amounts of work help. | Quality of life changed dramatically with loss of income ( I was very well paid). Stress in the family. Strokes effected me deeply. | I am not wanting to give you my name and my institution as I am a public figure and still continue to teach-but mostly because these incidents left me with such a level of distress I am concerned any further opening of this will cause me another stroke.This is a real consequence for me. I hope you can use this information . I am not a victim-I stood strong in these scenarios-but I would have rather put the effort into helping others than protect and defend myself. In my day, at the Jewish Hospital I worked at ( I was not Jewish) the men would say that non-Jewish women were the women you "practiced on" before you went home to your wife and had great sex with her. It was in this climate I worked and all three men were Jewish by culture and religion. I was shocked by the pervasive sexualization in the first two cases....and the misuse of gender and power in the third. I hope you will understand I have had enough of living in this soup of deception that was created by the men involved. I hope your work brings change for the next generation. I am so proud of your call for people to speak. | Male | ||
1174 | 12/7/2017 6:33:03 | Director of a Asian study abroad program kept harassing my coworker by phone, personally requesting meetings that only she had to attend, and forcing her to go on a trip abroad for ten days just the two of them. He’d call drunk and email saying she had to go with him so he could show her many things and of course “strengthen the program”. This had gone for about six months. She was in her third year in the TT. The guys’s boss was another Asian like my friend from the same country and she was the provost wife. So my friend thought she cloudless it say no to anything to the guy as she would tell his boss and she would get in her bad side. My friend opened up to me as we are the only two foreigners in our department and confided in me. She was scared and the trip abroad was in two months. She said she was afraid of what he would do to her as he had already tried to kiss her and kept drunk calling. I told her she needed to report this and save all emails and voice messages. We downloaded an app to record phone calls too. She did not want to bring attention. Maybe Asian culture but threatened to go to title IX office of she did not report it. She hated me for that. She said people my culture are agresiva and passionate but she is not. So I said to let me report it for you. I gave her three days to report it. She did to our faculty mentor. She was removed from those projects that were assigned to her and she no longer had contact with guy. However, there was no prosecution punishment or anything. There was no scandal. I couldn’t believe it! | I was a first year in TT. My friend was a 3rd year in TT. | He was a director under another director of a bigger center who happened to be provost wife | R2 | None | None | On my friend. She doesn’t not have a study abroad project. This weighs heavy for tenure purposes | She had to go to counseling and she had to call security to escort her to her car almost every night | Male | |||||
1175 | 12/7/2017 6:51:13 | White guy at major conference in my field approached me saying he appreciated the comment I made at a session. He asked me for coffee to continue the conversation. After talking about our research, he asked me if I was multiracial because he thinks multiracial women are hot. He then proceeded to tell me about his exploits with African women in his fieldsite. I promptly ended the conversation and left. I was a graduate student at the time (2nd or 3rd year) and it was my first time attending this conference. | graduate student in 2nd or 3rd year | either advanced grad student or junior faculty | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | I don't remember his institution but he was from a different institution than I. it happened at the AMerican Anthropological Association conference | anthropology | didn't report | none | none | annoyed and disillusioned | more guarded about meeting new men at conferences, even when it seems professional | Male | ||
1176 | 12/7/2017 6:56:14 | I interviewed for a tenure track equivalent position at a museum. One of my individual interviews was scheduled with the 60+ year old senior man whose office would be beside mine, should I get the job. The male search chair went into the interview with me, which seemed odd. Then within minutes, the senior man mentioned how he thought it was "strange" that his female research assistant didn't like when he put his hand on her thigh. Why did he bring that up in an interview? Why did he bring that up at all? The search chair went into the room to protect me I guess, but it was still creepy. | Postdoc interviewing for faculty equivalent job | Senior faculty equivalent | Other Research Agency | The search chair must have known something was wrong with that man, because he went in the room with me. But he did not warn me specifically. | The senior man is still there. | I didn't get that job, but I don't think it was for that reason. They did hire a woman, but I have never met her. | Male | ||||||
1177 | 12/7/2017 7:17:21 | Regularly, in class, this professor would make comments to the class about female students' bodies (breasts, butt, etc.) and how we distracted him and how males couldn't be expected to focus. He also implied that there was something wrong with female students in graduate school, because we weren't married yet. | PhD student | Tenured faculty | R2 | Bowling Green State University | Psychology | none, this behavior continues and is known by the department | None | Stopped working with him, thus learned less about that skillset. Tried to report and and was told it was my problem and that "some students just can't handle graduate school" | Depression, drinking | Changed my career focus, made me less prepared on tree job market | Harrasser's name is *** | Male | |
1178 | 12/7/2017 7:24:22 | A person occasionally sunbathed alone and topless on the roof of a University building, Campbell Hall, and was visible to anyone that went there for the view of the campus or to visit the astronomical equipment. | Graduate Student | Administrator | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Astronomy | None (?) | None (?) | None | None | None | I submit this example for the blogger or the reader to consider, or for debate: hostile work environment? What should be the responses of any witness, Department Chairperson, Title IX officer, or public opinion? For context, I never witnessed anyone else sunbathing there, and the behavior was not hidden nor was it obvious. I believe topless sunbathing was/is legal in Berkeley but don't know whether the University policy specifically addresses this behavior. | Does it matter? | |
1179 | 12/7/2017 7:27:06 | As an undergrad, I dropped out of the big state school to recover from cancer. I married and transferred to a smaller, more (physically) manageable campus to finish my degree. About a year into my marriage, I was a full time student working two jobs and supporting a husband who had quit his job, who told me he did not support my goal of graduate school. I opted out of that situation for my own good, but did not have family support. I sought advice / legal referral from an undergrad professor. He offered me a paid position in the writing center (my third job) which helped me with expenses. During that time, I was propositioned repeatedly by this professor, who clearly knew I was in a vulnerable spot. Later I heard of his proclivity for dating students. I was uncomfortable asking him for a recommendation letter for graduate school, so ended up taking an additional course, post-graduation, with a different professor to get the third recommendation. Five years later, while in graduate school in a different state, I heard from another student the rumor that everyone “knew” I had dated this professor. Fast forward twenty years, that rumor is alive and well in this small town. From what I can piece together, it likely originates from this professor. He is tenured and still teaching. I have been isolated and survivor-shamed in my best attempt, twenty years ago, to extricate myself from under the thumb of two controlling, manipulative men. It is disappointing. I think it is a huge reflection of this community’s values. | undergraduate | tenured professor; supervisor | Small Liberal Arts College | English | none | none | recently, I have been denied work in this community because of this situation | none | I learned to dig in and figure it out on my own | Male | |||
1180 | 12/7/2017 7:30:53 | Junior female faculty driven away, physical assault on female chair, multiple emails sent to grad students and other faculty "exposing" women in departmental power as "dictatorial", flaming emails sent to multiple female faculty members, female grad students harassed, female undergrad and grad students slept with, concerted effort to undermine promotion, name calling, sexually explicit language in the classroom and at departmental functions. Undergrad student reported relationship to chair but handled by discussion with professor and no repercussions. We have been told we are not covered by any employment laws because this is not considered sexual harassment; although it was all directed toward women, there was no sexual touching (except the students who did not report further up the line). Then, institutional retaliation for reporting. | this happened to multiple women at all levels | always more senior | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Vanderbilt | Complaints filed by 2 grad students and 4 faculty members over the years. After an "inquiry" we were informed that nothing could be done because the EAD office had lost the student complaints (they acknowledged that they existed and were lost) and because they felt the men were also unpleasant to each other (which was not true). So, long term there was inquiry but NOTHING was done. For the physical assault, the police were called at the time so it was impossible to ignore. The perp was given 2 years of *fully paid* leave to think about his actions. | absolutely none | one left tenure track, change of advisors for grad students, delayed promotion, serious and long-lasting damage of careers | severe - depression, anxiety and multiple physical problems from the stress | very little concern for the good of the institution, a turn inward, but also perhaps a bit of perspective about the importance of devoting time to people and not institutions | Male | |||
1181 | 12/7/2017 7:32:59 | During our first class of the semester, we went around the room talking about our research interests. We are in a criminology PhD program. My two colleagues and I study violence against women in various forms (sexual assault, violence against indigenous women, intimate partner homicide). When we each said our research, the professor loudly said "I hate to think about what awful things happened to each of you to make you want to study this stuff." He did not comment on anyone else's answers. | A second year PhD student. | A visiting assistant professor and professor of the class. | Other R1 | University of Illinois Chicago | Criminology | None | He had no consequences that year and has since left to go teach in Texas. I heard he did not apply for the TT job that recently opened up in our department and I think it is because others have complained about him. I did not name him but have let our department know about his comments. | None | Nothing significant...but it made me much more cynical about academia | I don't want to work with men. Ever. | Male | ||
1182 | 12/7/2017 7:33:11 | To me: MA supervisor at Concordia University Canada (***), in private meetings would constantly ask about my 'status' (ie if i was with someone or not,) and would not let the question go if left unanswered. Often pursued this line of questioning, asking about how the relationship was going, if it seemed like it was going to end.... This pales in comparison to what happened with this same supervisor (also her supervisor), to my good friend "L": he asked about her status, she ignored it. Conversation changed to how to pay bills... she said she worked in a bar to pay the bills, he hit on her, said something along the lines of 'women like you' and asked her about going to conferences because 'he and his wife had a deal that whatever happens at conferences stays at conferences'. He also normalized student-prof sexual affairs by saying 'he'd done it before'. L called me in absolute panic - neither of us had defended and still had to work with him for roughly a year afterwards. He was later discovered to have plagiarized from a student's PhD defence for his book, and somehow, never lost his job despite that blatant breach of ethics, despite his sexual harassment. I went on to unfortunately have to have him supervise my PhD for a time (he was the dept's only specialist in my field at ConU, i was basically forced to unless i wanted to change institutions, which i couldn't bc there are no other Translation PhD programs in ENG in MTL) until the minor plagiarism scandal. I had a miscarriage during my PhD (two, actually) and when he found out he told me that "well, you made your choice and waited too long." I have a two year old now, and fuck you, *** is married to a sweetheart, has two beautiful little girls, and a successful career as a filmmaker, and fuck you, ***. Oh yeah, he has daughters. I really hope they can get out from under the horribleness of their father. | L and I were both MA students who had yet to submit our MA theses. | *** was our MA Supervisor and tenured faculty. He even is a *** Institute for African and African-American Research, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Great eh? | Other R1 | Concordia University, Montreal Canada | Translation | None whatsoever. We hadn't yet defended so we said nothing; now we don't want to go anywhere near the topic bc he's clearly bulletproof somehow - he blatantly plagiarized and no one cared!!!! | None whatsoever. He was only mildly tut-tutted when he plagerized from a student whose PhD committee he was a part of (sorry for the horrible grammar, I'm really f-ing tired; I have a non-sleeping 2 yr old) | I refuse to associate with *** at all, in any way, shape or form, which means that I now have one less reference I can use - not a horrible deal but a def inconvenience. I also am constantly paranoid that he'll steal and publish under his own name, some of the ideas that I established in my MA (I don't have illusions of grandeur, I just feel like he'd rather use someone else's brain than his own). L left academia entirely and would love to be able to completely forget her time in academia. She also learned to box.... coincidence? Nope. | Honestly, for L and I, this was just one incident in a life of shitty sexual harassment, like all women. #Metoo. | I'm definitely a lot angrier than I'd normally be, and certainly disillusioned with the fact that he seems to be bulletproof somehow, yet remains such a disgusting individual. | Male | ||
1183 | 12/7/2017 7:37:18 | Associate Prof in my subfield cornered me at reception, pinched my nipple through my shirt and said how attractive I was. Followed me into the coat room when I was leaving and blocked the door. | Graduate student | Was on the council of my disciplinary subfield but not at my institution. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | SFSU | Sociology of Sexuality | I never reported it. | none | At the time I dropped out of the sexualities section of the American Sociological Association, but because of a lot of reasons: it was a white gay men's club organized around cults of personality. It changed and I came back. | Probably none. Thinking back on it has been gross as part of #MeToo because I have never thought of myself as having suffered sexual harassment, but this did bother me. As a guy, however, I dealt with it by telling everyone how gross he treated me. It felt like badmouthing him, being petty. Now I realize it was just good policy. | Male | |||
1184 | 12/7/2017 7:41:50 | Something Happened between a male graduate student and a female graduate student. We were never allowed to speak about it, close friends who knew what happened couldn't/wouldn't speak of it, but we knew whatever happened was terrible. He was exiled--his advisors helped place him with other senior advanced sociologists in New York, she disappeared from the program. Friendship groups dissolved and people didn't speak to each other. They both eventually finished. | Fellow graduate students | Peers. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Sociology | There must have some institutional response, but there was clearly also informal departmental responses that shielded him from any long-term consquences. | Delay | It was toxic and contributed to the atomization among graduate students | None on mine, lots on friends and colleagues | Male | |||
1185 | 12/7/2017 7:47:04 | My advisor would let anyone wander in and interrupt virtually all meetings, even important technical ones. During multiple such meetings, he allowed a male labmate to interrupt and regale us with sexually explicit discussion of his experiences in the dating scene. I said these conversations made me uncomfortable, and I was told I could leave. Even though we were having meetings about technical aspects of my research project (usually these conversations ended unfinished). | Postdoc | Postdoc advisor and labmate | Other Research Agency | I didn't report | None | I never received the attention from my advisor that the male group members did. We did not work well together due to this and other reasons. We no longer collaborate. | Male | ||||||
1186 | 12/7/2017 8:01:39 | I was attending a CADDRA conference (Canadian ADHD Resource Alliance) in Vancouver as a healthcare professional and as female with ADHD (I was diagnosed when I was 6years old...and at the time this happened I was 30) . For the first time in my life decided to stop being ashamed of my ADHD and learn as much as I could, so I attended this conferee. The keynote speaker was a brilliant researcher and MD from Dalhousie University, and I spoke with him after his talk. He said he'd be available to answer more of my questions and invited me to meet him for a drink later (which I perceived as a great honor!). Since the conference was taking place at a hotel, I later met him on the main floor in the restaurant. After shaking his hand he invited me up to his room to talk (which I thought was really strange) and I declined, saying that the restaurant was fine. He resisted saying "oh it's so loud down here" (It wasn't), and again, I said I preferred to stay there. He looked disgruntled and said OK and we sat down. SO I started asking him questions about his research, and he finally interrupted me and said "Look I'm old and my ears don't work like yours. Lets just go talk in my room. Just talking....Look, I'm married and have kids! I'm not going to bite! It's just quieter up there." At this point I felt bad...like why was I making such a big deal about it. So I reluctantly agreed and we went to the elevator. Complete silence. As we rode the elevator, I had a bad feeling, and wished I had never agreed to this. We get into his room, and I sat right down in a chair next to the window. He sat across from me. He then said "This is better. Now, tell me about your childhood" (Why he asked that...I'm not sure). So I started telling him my history of diagnosis, etc... and then he asked to take my pulse. I gave him my wrist and he held it, starting to run his fingers on my skin. I jolted my arm back, stated "I need to go", got up, and walked to the door. He started saying "What...why are you leaving? Don't you want to stay"? I opened the door to leave, and he said "Well at least give me a hug". When he hugged me he started kissing my neck. I ran into the hallway and straight to the elevator, and started frantically pressing the button....wishing the elevator would hurry up. I felt like prey. I got into the elevator completely shaking. | conference attendee | Keynote speaker, Doctor, researcher | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Dalhousie University | healthcare provider | I didn't say anything...I didn't want him to ruin my career and they wouldn't believe me anyway. | nothing but I felt unwilling to further participate or attend/support CADDRA or ADHD research of any kind..... | Male | |||||
1187 | 12/7/2017 8:02:21 | A male colleague, another graduate student in my department, had apparently been talking to others in the department about his fantasies concerning me and his girlfriend. I am gay and was open about it. On a class field trip that required a stay of several nights in a hotel he was put in charge of making hotel reservations. He attempted to manipulate the hotel rooms so that it would put me in the same room as his girlfriend where I guess he thought we would inevitably act out his fantasies. No one told me about any of this until we were in the airport about to leave for the trip. His girlfriend ultimately did not come on the trip because he assaulted her and her advisor pulled her out of the trip. The previous year he had assaulted another grad student he was dating. He had also followed another female graduate student around a party trying to show her his penis. A few minor incidents - being warned away from working with a certain professor at another university because of his behavior with younger women. Numerous rumors, or more like open secrets, about important professors and directors of institutions and their younger female students. Gay male friends have told me about being propositioned by older male professors. | Graduate student | Graduate student the year below me | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Based on the response of the university to previous incidents I did not report the issues directly involving me, although I did end up giving evidence after he ignored the restraining order against another student (see below). The two violent assaults did not receive much response from the university. For the penis/party incident there was new staff at the relevant office and he was given a university-imposed restraining order to maintain distance from that student, which he completely ignored. She made a further complaint and the results of this were never disclosed to me. His advisor (also my advisor) supported him throughout, but then he had always had a better report with the male students anyway and once made a comment about how all the women in the discipline were some sort of nasty cadre. | Had a temporary university-imposed restraining order against one colleague. Lost a few friends. | My relationship with my advisor was always difficult. I suppose I just learned I could rely on him even less than I thought. I more or less left campus after this and had only sporadic contact with him via email (also true today now that I am out of grad school and employed - I just bother him for the occasional reference letter.) I avoid the harasser and we don't speak. I've skipped a few events or not talked to various professors and such because he was already there talking to him. | Further added to the stress of my graduate studies and general depression I was already struggling with. I withdrew socially almost completely from my department as I had learned that everyone had been talking about the gossip concerning me without actually telling me that there was a colleague I should be wary of, and I didn't think I could trust anyone there at all. | Ultimately fairly minimal, but only because I chose to pursue work in another country anyway. Otherwise I would probably have to deal with him and my advisor a lot more. | I wish I could tell people about this incident without sounding crazy or vindictive. He's a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen and a liability to every institution he's affiliated with. Professors who know about and condemn his behavior still write him letters of recommendation. He knows how to please people in power and pal around with all the older male professors, so I think it's only a matter of time before he is in the position to do real damage to younger women in the field. | Male | |||
1188 | 12/7/2017 8:06:29 | During my Masters I was required to program an experiment using Matlab. I had no experience with this whatsoever and very little time in which to write the code, but my supervisor insisted that it had to be done this way (I was hoping to have him as my advisor for the PhD program the following year so I wanted to impress him). I was approached by a PhD student who had offered to help me write the code, in exchange for authorship on a future paper that would arise from the project. I agreed, and we also negotiated payment from my supervisor to write the code. It started out well, with the student assuring me that he could write the code in one week. However, he then began requesting that I sit with him whilst he put the code together. I desperately needed the code so I could conduct my research work (which formed my dissertation project for the year), so I would come in and sit with him (sometimes this would be in the middle of the night as he said he could only code then). During this time, he would make lots of sexually explicit comments about me, which I laughed off and ignored in the hopes that he would finish the coding. He would then guilt me into going for drinks with him at the end of the day, and threaten to stop writing the code unless I went with him. I went along with this, trying to act professionally in the hopes that he would just do the work. This ended up going on for the best part of 2 months, which was absolutely emotionally exhausting. Eventually, I had enough of his behaviour and began to hint at him that I was in a relationship in the hopes that the inappropriate comments would stop. This led to him berating me for "leading him on" and suggested that I let everyone know about my relationship status when I first meet them so that I don't confuse people in the future. He then started to belittle me in the lab in front of other (male) researchers and suggested that I was too emotional to be a scientist/shouldn't bother because as a female I would never be as good as my male colleagues. He then continued to harass me for about 6 months, showing up randomly at my house/my office/events I was attending. Eventually I had to finish writing my thesis at home to avoid him. My colleagues suggested that I should make a formal complaint against the student, but as a masters student I didn't feel like I had the authority to make such a complaint and was worried about how it would make me look. So I didn't say anything. | A Masters student | PhD Student | Other Type of School | UK institution (Russell Group) | Neuroscience | I did not submit a formal complaint. | None. | The student made my life hell for the best part of 8 months, and I look back on my masters degree with terrible memories. I lost a lot of confidence that I didn't begin to get back until I was a couple of years into my PhD program. | At the time I felt incredibly low and anxious, and thinking about it now makes me feel sick. I'm embarrassed that I put up with his behaviour for so long. | Since then I have not collaborated with another male researcher, and I am very particular about who I work with. But it has pushed me to work more independently, rather than rely on others for help. | Male | ||
1189 | 12/7/2017 8:11:37 | As a freshman English major, I received the opportunity to work as an intern with a non-profit organization. On my second day at the internship my supervisor coerced me into a sexual situation--fondling, groping, some clothes off. I was too young and inexperienced to see how his conversation was manipulating the situation until it was too late. As soon as I could, I got dressed adn left. Never went back. Never told anyone who could do anything about it. | College freshman | He controlled a rare (for the time) writing internship for English majors. | Other R1 | English Literature | n/a | n/a | I never sought out an internship again, which undoubtedly limited my options for grad school acceptance. | depression | Hard to say--I have gotten my PhD and had an academic career. I hope the incident has made me more supportive of students and a stronger advocate for their voices. | We all have several stories we could tell, don't we? | Male | ||
1190 | 12/7/2017 8:11:45 | [Removed] | Assistant professor | Chair of Department | R2 | prefer not to mention | Political Science | None. Even if I was the third ethnic woman (out of a department of 7) leaving or having issues within 3 years. | None | Terrible. I had to take medial leave - which I am sill on | I was diagnosed with PTSD and major depression - placed on medical leave | I am very worried that I will not be able to find another job in the academia. | Male | ||
1191 | 12/7/2017 8:19:19 | A professor wrote me a letter of recommendation for the job market and then stuck his tongue down my throat | grad student | full professor at another university | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | English | none--I didn't report it | none | I have kept a wide berth from him ever since | made me question my abilities (did he write the letter just to set me up?) | none, fortunately | Male | |||
1192 | 12/7/2017 8:27:53 | (1) A professor invited a student over to her house after she asked for feedback on a presentation. He opened the door wearing his underwear and didn’t change the entire time she was there. (2) A fellow grad student anonymously sent naked photographs of a student in another department to her employers once she graduated and started her new job. Told them she had various STDs and couldn’t be trusted. He was her ex. (3) A fellow grad student stalked and harassed another grad student for 8 months, alternating between begging her to give him a chance and threatening her (or suicide) if she didn’t. She had to call the police on more than one occasion and eventually she left the town our school is in to finish her PhD. (4) Apparently, he did this to several other students as well - begged for sex and lashed out with various threats if they weren’t interested. (5) Another grad student was known to harass women; several of them filed a complaint in our department. | Graduate Student | (1) Professor, (2-5) Other grad students in our department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Top-10 Public R1 | Sociology | None for all except 3&4: the female students involved filed a disciplinary case against the harasser and he was suspended for a semester. No one was ever told about it, though, not even his committee and his advisor only found out the day of his defense. He still graduated with a PhD from our department and goes to major conferences. In (5) the faculty met to discuss the case and decided to do nothing because the student involved was close to finishing his PhD. | Temporary suspension for (3&4) but because the consequences were kept secret, even from his committee, no real consequences in the long run. Has a job now. | Not my stories, but one of the women in (3&4) left our town to finish her PhD and I know she struggled to make it through and remain connected to our department. She got a good job in the end. | N/A | N/A | Male | ||
1193 | 12/7/2017 8:52:48 | At a conference, I sat down next to a male professor at a session. He looked over and down at my name tag around my neck. When I looked over at him, he said "I was just looking for an excuse to look at your boobs." | Asst. Professor | Assoc. Professor | Other Research Agency | Media | A general code of conduct was written up as a result of several instances of problems, but I don't believe it was ever formally adopted, published, or enfored | None | None | Increased sense of belittlement, anger, and fear. | I fight harder for equity and inclusion. | Male | |||
1194 | 12/7/2017 9:27:36 | This is currently happening to me. I am not being sexually harassed, but I AM being harassed and receiving death threats and threats to end my career by a colleague. He sent me a list of samples to pull at the last minute (and 8 months late). When I told him I would not be able to do this in the short time frame he requested, total freakout ensued. Its been a terrifying past couple of weeks: I've had to get my department to increase building security. | Assistant Professor | Non Academic | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Anthropology/ Earth Sciences | My institution has offered to help me deal with him and my chairs have stood up for me. I have asked for silence for now, because I am frankly terrified this guy might come to campus and shoot someone (he has suggested the former) | While my chairs and university have reacted appropriately, the PI's of the project have not. They continued to beg this individual to remain on the project even after the harassment had begun, up until it he suggested they themselves have a lobotomy. | I've been unable to focus on work since this began. For a week I was unable to go into my lab because I was scared for my safety. This impacted the work my postdoc was carrying out as for her safety I had to relocate her to another room to work as I didn't want her to have to run into this guy. We are weeks behind our work because of this incident. | I was so terrified that he would show up at my home or work place, I was unable to sleep properly for a week and to focus on any of the tasks I had to carry out. | You can email me at ***email redacted*** | Male | |||
1195 | 12/7/2017 9:36:56 | Was harassed, intimidated, stalked by student who failed a course for basic (administrative) reasons. Angry outburst in my office, demands for grade change. Enrolled in my course the next semester, even though there were upwards of thirty sections offered, taught by a dozen other instructors. There were clearly other options. My attempts to report illuminated gaps in actionable policy. I took the brunt of the blame for this situation for following existing policy. I spent the term dealing with a lot of projected anger, manipulation, and other bad behavior, in a spatially-isolated location on campus. I was afraid for my physical safety. Other students picked up on what was going on, and contributed to the orderly functioning of that class. It was more support than what I was able to garner from administration, at all levels, at that time. | adjunct instructor | student | Other R1 | rhetoric and communication | Initial situational response: hands in the air / nothing can be done / how did you let this happen? | Passing grade | Wrote actionable policy that was implemented after I left the institution | Sleeplessness; knot-in-stomach; general exhaustion; fear and helplessness, transmuted to action | I chose to demonstrate that yes, something can be done to facilitate better communication of institutional expectations of student accountability and engagement. I continued teaching for seven years before leaving academia. | Male | |||
1196 | 12/7/2017 9:39:12 | I was at a conference, in a bar, when a Famous Anthropologist began talking to me. There were other Famous Anthropologists in the bar. The Famous Anthropologist after about an hour grabbed and kissed me. | 2nd year Masters student | A Famous Anthropologist at a different institute | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | ANTHROPOLOGY | I was afraid to discuss the matter for fear of consequences | I confronted the person later, but that was the only consequence | None, since I did not report | I did not sleep for two days, worried that the other Famous Anthropologists in the bar saw the male kiss me | When I run into this person at conferences now it's incredibly awkward. | Male | |||
1197 | 12/7/2017 9:41:32 | Halfway to tenure (2009) I suspected something was amiss in the process. Repeatedly I was winning praise from external reviewers but very negative comments from my department or anyone the perpetrator volunteered as a reviewer. I went to the Associate Dean to ensure I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing in regards to research, teaching and service. Her response stunned me: "Oh are you in X department with So & So? Yes, I am. I responded. She said: "Oh I know all about him and HE is never going to support a FEMALE FACULTY in HIS department." I felt like I had hallucinated for a moment--"I'm sorry, what?! Are you saying this kind of thing pre-dates my arrival? She nodded. "Then I will now ask the University to intercede in my tenure case." They did. Apparently HE had been asked to hire a female because of the dept's horrible track record. It was an arduous year of statements and hearings and middle of the night stomachaches. It was horrible. I won the case. The EEOC slapped the hands of So & So but he wasn't stopped. I was "re-instated" but declined and instead accepted payment. I refused to sign a non-disclosure statement however. | Tenure Track Faculty (later I would learn I was the only female faculty that had lasted longer than one year.) | Had been in the dept since 1978, got a Guggenheim, had been Dept director, generally seen as the leader. No one went against him. A bully. | Other R1 | Indiana University Bloomington | It set me back years; I found it difficult to move on. | I was saddened and discouraged for some time. | Male | ||||||
1198 | 12/7/2017 9:58:55 | I was taking an art history class on the conceptualization of the archive and its many possibilities. The faculty member teaching this class spent the last third of the course talking about the sexual nature of the archive, how semen and ejaculate have a particular place in art history that is often forgotten, and referenced his own experiences with "sexual rejouissance." I found out later that he had a reputation for sleeping with female students. | Graduate student | Tenured faculty member | Small Liberal Arts College | Prestigous art school in midwest | Visual studies | I talked to colleagues in the class who agreed that the class had not only gone off course but was very uncomfortable. I confronted the faculty member outside of class towards the end of the semester and said he made students uncomfortable with the nature of his lectures. He laughed at me and said we were too sensitive. He said that he would not change his classroom discussions and that he was untouchable. I did not report it otherwise. | None. He left the school. He is currently faculty at Goldsmiths. | This class was taken in the last semester of my graduate career. I avoided the faculty member on campus, and finished the semester with as little effort as possible. | Class was hugely triggering and impacted my mental health very negatively during the semester. | This was only one of many offenses done by tenured, male faculty members that negatively impacted my life. They are often protected when students, staff, and non-tenured faculty members, especially women/people of color/non-binary suffer. | I'm happy to answer other questions as well. I am a staff member at this school now where this happened and the gender based discrimination and abuse are rampant. There is another entry on this sheet from a colleague from our School. I will likely add my other experiences as a staff member but figuring out how to word it. | Male | |
1199 | 12/7/2017 9:59:16 | A job candidate came to our institution. During the course of his interview, dinner and job talk he made numerous sexist comments about women, was handsy with the junior female faculty members (hands on arm, touching back, etc) and not with male faculty members, and made all of the junior female faculty feel uncomfortable. When we expressed this, as a group, to the rest of our department several people still advocated for hiring this person. | Junior TT faculty | Job candidate / Senior TT faculty | R2 | Biology | I spoke with our VP of inclusion and equity and filed a report. To my knowledge, there was no response and no follow up with me. | He did not get the job. (thankfully!) | none. | none. | none. | My department is 75% male and most female TT faculty are not yet tenured. | Male | ||
1200 | 12/7/2017 10:44:04 | My tenured department chair made sexual comments to me and another contingent female coworker when no one else was around—primarily on our chests and how we looked in our tops. He was also ableist and sexist: he gave me a great performance review but later spoke to me in private claiming my disability made him uncomfortable and he didn’t know how to talk to me. He had recently asked me to take on a new class I’d never taught before 2 days before start of term and I (calmly, professionally) explained this was something I’d prefer not to do. He “pulled rank” and assigned it to me anyway and I took the class and did the work I was required to do without further complaint. Later though, he suggested that I had “nearly fainted” at being “asked to teach a class” and said I’d gotten so upset I’d had to go lie down in my office. None of that was remotely true. | Full-time instructor, contingent | Tenured chair of my department | Small Liberal Arts College | [Redacted] | English | None, when I tried to share I realized no one would believe me | None, but I hadn’t shared officially | I left the school, claiming I was moving but really I just wanted to get away from him | I was upset and hurt for months after I left, thinking of how I should have handled it and whether I should have taken it further | I doubt I will return to academia after my experience with him | Male | ||
1201 | 12/7/2017 10:44:12 | A male graduate student in my graduate professors lab boasted of grabbing and kissing an undergraduate student (female) while they were setting up stations for a lab section. He also had sexually explicit photos on his lab computer. | Graduate student | Peer | Other R1 | Biology | I was to worried to report for fear of retaliation. | None known | Left the lab because of how uncomfortable it felt. | Distrusted the supervision and awareness of those in charge. | Minimal | My graduate advisor also provided funding and hotel rooms for male students at conferences but not females. | Male | ||
1202 | 12/7/2017 10:46:34 | I am usually one of the few staying late in the lab. A certain male collegue is usually also staying late. When i once made a comment that it's most of the times the same people, and asked why he usually stayed late, he responded suggestively that 'maybe he stayed late because of me..' with a wink. Needless to say I do not feel comfortable staying late on the lab alone (when he's there too). | PhD student 1st year | Senior PhD student | Other Research Agency | Europe | Biomedicine | None | None | Less working late | Minimal, but annoyed | None | Male | ||
1203 | 12/7/2017 10:57:30 | On a conference of our consortium with the senior prof and 'end boss/coordinator' of the grant. we all had a drink with all the participating PhD students and professors. We all had fun and drank quite some. Later that evening the 'end boss' started to get too close to me and other girls: putting arms around us and touching our ass etc. I got very infuriated and decided to go home early because I did not want to bring myself in a bad position. Other students and professors continued the party. Other students told me he got even more touchy. At the end of the night, he was masturbating with his hand in his pants in front/near the students. I'd like you to remind he is the senior coördinator/end boss/leader of the whole grant/consortium. Very established name. We still have to work and meet with him multiple times a year. | PhD student | Senior prof, PI, head of dept, grant leader | Other Research Agency | Europe | Biomedicine | None | None | I avoid him and therefore his institute | Very uncomfortable every time we have to meet him | Avoidance of his institute | He's a bastard and uses his power over young PhD students. With the other PhD students in the consortium we have now made an agreement that if he does this again, we're gonna document it and bring him down. | Male | |
1204 | 12/7/2017 11:18:37 | My story is pretty mild compared to some of the experiences shared here, but I wanted to add it anyway as a data point. I was admitted to a highly regarded PHD program in my field straight out of college in my early 20s. At the time, I was admittedly quite naive and more than a little pollyannaish about the world (and academia in particular). My first semester, I befriended a fellow grad student in a class we both took. We shared similar academic interests and even though he was quite a bit older than most of the rest of the students (he had already been active in the industry/business side of the field for years) he seemed cool. We connected on social media and messaged back-and-forth a bit, including after the class had ended. Apparently, he interpreted what I thought were just friendly chats as something more, and proceeded to use that forum to hit on me, ask me out, and then would not take no for an answer until I finally laid down a pretty severe boundary. Keep in mind that although technically a colleague, he was still 15-20 years my senior, and already an active professional in the field. The interaction was incredibly creepy and weird, though fortunately he never escalated it further than the social media messages. | Grad student | Another grad student, though much more senior | Other R1 | Never reported, I'm sure they wouldn't have done anything even if I did. | None as far as I know, and I would not be surprised if he continued this pattern of behavior with female students and colleagues where he is now an instructor. | Luckily not much, if any. We never really saw each other in person again after that semester (he was nearing the end of his program anyway), I defriended him on social media, and no one was the wiser. I have since left academia for unrelated reasons and am happy with where I am now career-wise. | I wouldn't say this is the only incident or even the main incident that finally drove me to therapy, but I have since put in a lot of work on setting boundaries and most importantly, not feeling bad about them. | It made me much more cynical about working with and befriending men (especially straight, single men) a cynicism which has only increased over the years since. | Male | ||||
1205 | 12/7/2017 12:13:10 | My harasser has a long history of sexual harassment in our department--a history of inappropriate comments and touching women without their permission (including, I have heard, laying his hands on a pregnant woman's stomach and telling her how sexy he finds pregnant women). Here's what happened to me, specifically: I was scheduled to observe his teaching as part of our peer teaching observation procedures. At the end of our pre-meeting, he asked if he could answer a question. When I said he could, he proceeded to ask me about my sex life. He asked, since my wife and I were both females and "had the same plumbing," how does that work? Does one of you take on a more masculine role in the bedroom?" After reporting him, he turned up at my office agitated and upset with me, and didn't leave until I shut the door in his face. Since he is a white male gun owner, I was scared, and my department chair walked me to and from class for a week in case I ran into him in the hall. | Assistant Professor | Adjunct faculty | R2 | English | I reported the incident to Title IX. He was given a warning for "unprofessional behavior." He denied the allegations, calling them "absolutely false." | None. | None | I took the back staircase to my classes and office to try and avoid him. After dark, I requested to be walked to my car. I had nightmares for weeks. When I heard a motorcycle in my neighborhood, I would get scared, thinking he knew where I lived. After he showed up at my office, my department chair walked me to and from my classes and meetings for a week. | I thought about going on the job market, but I decided to stay. I'd like to point out that the only reason I was able to do this is because I had several women colleagues who supported me unconditionally. One of them texts me to this day when she sees him in a meeting or in the halls to warn me where he is so I can avoid him. | Thank you for doing this! | Male | ||
1206 | 12/7/2017 12:16:49 | An emeritus professor cornered me at a holiday party while my partner and our infant were elsewhere in the room. At first, I was very excited to talk to him, because I had long admired his work and even cited him in my thesis, even though he'd always rebuffed my requests to meet via email. But now, in person, this very old frail-looking man grabbed a hold of my hand, petted it gently but firmly, while talking. When I tried to grab my hand back, he smiled gently and said "I know you're keen to leave to talk to other people. But I don't want you to. I'd like to keep looking at you. So you're staying here with me." I did the usual thing, which was to smile and try to make the situation less weird, while on the inside his response was absolutely chilling. I can't imagine what it would've been like to be alone with this man, particularly in earlier years when he had more physical strength. | graduate student | emeritus professor in my field | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia | English | None (I didn't report it) | None | Small but significant, I'd say - I'm employed but much less confident in my research than in my teaching. | Not bad long-term, but in the short-term, I was incredibly uncomfortable, and felt really stupid that I'd thought he'd like to talk to me about my and his own work. | It was part of the reason why I stopped revising my thesis into a book - he's such an instrumental figure in that particular sub-field. | Male | ||
1207 | 12/7/2017 12:29:29 | At my first meeting with the course director of the class I was going to teach at my new institution - at my first academic job after a one-year postdoc - the male course director addressed me and the other new lecturer (a male grad student with no experience in the material or even in teaching at all) as if the male grad student would know what to do, and as if I was brand new (I had taught the material in three courses in the past). He ignored me, except when he turned to me to complain that the course was going downhill because "nowadays there have to be black lesbians on every syllabus" because of political correctness. This course had no black lesbians on the syllabus (in fact, no women writers at all, and hardly any modern texts). I am a white, straight, middle-class woman and was surprised at this remark. He then went back to ignoring me, addressing all his comments about teaching the Iliad and classical literature to the male grad student entirely. Until he suddenly focused on me, exclaiming: "what am I thinking, we have a woman with us today. We should talk about Helen of Troy and her sexuality!" I wasn't sure how to respond, but it was clear he wanted me to talk about sexuality in some form, which I didn't. After that, he went back to ignoring me, which he continued doing for pretty much the entire semester. I'm not sure he ever realized that I had some teaching experience with the texts and had resources to share, and that the poor grad student had no experience whatsoever. | Non-tenure track full-time faculty in my first year | My course director | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale | English/Humanities | None (I didn't report it) | None | I have stayed away from teaching that course ever since, which is a shame. | At the time, I felt really unwelcome at my new institution. | I've tried to ensure that I don't have to teach with him, which limits my teaching choices somewhat. | Male | ||
1208 | 12/7/2017 12:33:55 | Rape. 2001. | Undergraduate Student, second year. | Graduate student. First year. (Later assigned to do group work together in graduate level course, at the time had mutual friends.) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia. He was a grad student at JTS | English/Modern Jewish Studies | Used Barnard's rape crisis center for hospital visit. Didn't have a followup (they may have called, I don't recall anymore), did not file charges or file an official report with either school. Dr at hospital encouraged pressing charges and said she'd testify on my behalf. WHEN I disclosed 2 years later to the head dean, she was not helpful, supportive or a resource at all. | Not reported | He had a relationship with my first place of employment out of graduate school. Staff retreats became stressful etc. On the one hand, it felt at the time that the place of employment (which had equivalent of morality clauses for full time staff, which I was and he wasn't.) | PTSD | Didn't apply to PhD programs because of grades which were impacted by the devastation I felt due to PTSD. | Male | ||
1209 | 12/7/2017 12:35:52 | The head of the department was known for having sexual relationships with students and was caught kissing a student in an elevator by the dean. The head of the dept was always making sexualized comments about students and topics in the classroom. He was later promoted to Dean of Grad Studies. | PhD student and TA | professor, head of department | Other R1 | University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music | music theory | none directly | They promoted him to Dean of Graduate Studies! | I transferred to another school to finish my program | Horrible. I never knew what he would do everytime I saw him | It took me longer to finish my degree. | Male | ||
1210 | 12/7/2017 12:48:32 | At my field's annual conference some years ago, I was told that if I wanted a year-long appointment working for this professor, I would have to dance with him (the conversation took place at a bar). After I refused to, I was not only not given that year-long appointment, but my existing RA hours suddenly were cut to zero. A large number of his female advisees stopped working with him in year 2 or 3 of the program; I cannot relate their stories here, but they were a lot more inappropriate than what happened to me. | PhD student | tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Sociology | none | none | changed advisors and subfield, which also meant abandoning two years of research | Feelings of failure and incompetence (would he behave like this if I was worthy as a scholar?) | The described was but one instance of harassment and assault by male mentors over the years. I no longer work with senior male colleagues for fear of the inevitable happening again, and no longer solicit feedback on my work from male colleagues because I am afraid they will use the pretext of reading my work to harass or assault me. | Male | |||
1211 | 12/7/2017 13:41:27 | 2016. A friend of mine who at the time was a PhD student endured harassment and outright destruction of her research (another grad assistant intentionally destroyed her research because it was occupying space he felt should be his, setting her research back by weeks), and another friend had her advisor quit her for objecting to the gendered, biased and outright bullying behavior of the department toward both of them. The department also refused to help either with placement. | The victims were both PhD candidates -- 1st year and final year | Advisors/department heads to the victims and fellow PhDs | Other R1 | Penn State | Entomology and Biosciences | None that I can discern. The students were compelled to push through -- there was no discernible authority to appeal to. When they complained about the destruction of their work, they were told not to make excuses and that there was a clock ticking. | None. They hold eminent positions. | The victims were forced to in one case seek new advisors, and work extraordinarily hard to find employment. One is employed as a post-doc by a woman who prefers to hire women (and I connected her with a second laboratory which is interested specifically in hiring women in these disciplines, which may provide her an entry-level tenure track job at some point). The younger of the two is still enrolled with a new advisor, having been delayed in her academic progress. | Seems substantial -- the older of the two sought counseling. | Both seemed determined to continue despite the opposition. | Male | ||
1212 | 12/7/2017 13:41:27 | Male colleague inappropriately touched me underneath the table at multiple department events or gatherings with our other colleges. | Graduate student | Graduate student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Political science | Did not report | After some people found out about the incidents, he tried to undermine my credibility in the department. | Did not feel welcome or safe in IR spaces, so did not pursue these opportunities or connections in this subfield though necessary for my work | Felt devalued, increased anxiety, and increased frequency of panic attacks | First of many incidents where I felt unwelcome in my department and realized how conservative my field was. | Male | |||
1213 | 12/7/2017 13:59:35 | At a conference a tenured faculty member in my department- who also served as my dissertation advisor and was an assistant prof in my department where I did my undergraduate training - texted me at 10p to ask if I wanted to meet for drinks (I declined). The next morning as I was leaving for the airport, he asked if I had time to meet. After speaking with him in the lobby of a hotel he professed how much he cared for me; hugged me very tightly and began caressing my neck with his thumb. I released the hug, but he continued. I felt so uncomfortable and upset I escorted him outside to ensure he wouldn’t try to follow me to my hotel room. | Adjunct lecturer | Tenured Faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Pennsylvania | Ombudsman (female) told me it was not a transgression because we were colleagues, that I should approach him directly but in such a way to not threaten him and risk retaliation; my (male) chair said he thought it was likely a misunderstanding and that he couldn’t protect my identity if he discussed it with the faculty member; the Dean of our division said that we could do nothing and see if the problem went away; or I could approach him, or the chair could. Not trusting my chair, I decided I had to address the harasser myself. | None. | Unclear | Frustration at the institutionalization protectionism; stress and anxiety of having to confront him myself. | Trying to leave the institution | As frustrating and uncomfortable as my situation with the harasser was, the institutional response was and remains far more upsetting. Knowing that the university’s primary goal it to protect itself and it’s image rather than vulnerable women is repugnant. I worry every day that he is victimizing other women, women more vulnerable than I. Thank you for checking pledging these stories. I hope you blow the lid off of the academy’s deliberate sheltering of predators. It’s akin to the Catholic Church. The story needs to be told. | Male | ||
1214 | 12/7/2017 14:01:18 | Advisor refused to supervise my thesis. Lectured me on "taking grad school seriously" by a. quitting my job (in a professional program) and b. wearing more modest clothing, which he seemed to think was an ill-advised attempt to seduce him. Long discussion about women and their ill-advised attempts to use sex to get their way. | Grad student | Associate Professor | Other R1 | Historic Preservation | None. Head of program advised me to petition for an advisor change/new thesis supervisor, but I discovered that he had discussed his opinion about supervising me with others, who would not supervise me, either. The head of the department and another professor were willing, but health problems required them to remove themselves relatively quickly. | None. He's been promoted to full tenure. | I dropped out. Could not find anyone to supervise my thesis work and moved to pursue employment before I could secure a new advisor. | I'm fine. My primary job became more lucrative. | I did not complete that degree and do not work in that field because I could not complete my degree. | Male | |||
1215 | 12/7/2017 14:06:03 | 11 years ago, there was a party thrown at a graduate student house and a few professors came by. One arrived with his friend and graduate research assistant. He was the only faculty member for there for a portion of the party. While students were drinking, this faculty member starting making comments to one of the women in the graduate program about her looks, the shape of her body, etc. She ignored him, she went to the kitchen to get more wine. He followed her and continued to make comments. She was trying to open the bottle of wine and was having trouble getting the cork out. He started laughing and made a sexually suggestive comment about how it looked as she tugged on the neck of the bottle. All the students were stunned, there was some uncomfortable laughter. This same professor made comments publicly in his classroom about the attractiveness of a female colleague. He was an associate professor, she was a new assistant. He pulled up her ratemyprofessors profiled in class, she had a hot pepper rating for her attractiveness and he put a picture of her up and said that her body was attractive but not her face. He also frequently visited college bars and clubs in downtown College Station claiming it was for his "research" and he always went with his grad assistant who was complicit with his behavior. He would take pictures with young blonde undergrads, print them out and post them outside of his office door. | student | Associate professor | Other R1 | Texas A&M University | Sociology | he went on to have invited visits to Ivy League schools, including Harvard | just the memory of how gross he was and how he treated women students and colleagues | just supporting what an old boy's network it is | do not like to interact with some folks at the top of my field | Male | |||
1216 | 12/7/2017 14:18:45 | I worked for more than 15 years with one senior male professor (I am female). We were always friendly, in the sense that we worked quite closely on various research and writing projects. Over time, his attention became inappropriate, particularly by leaving clippings from newspapers about how colleagues could "be more than friends" etc (he liked to leave clippings in general, he also left a bunch on our research topic, etc.). He liked to hug/touch more than was appropriate, although he kept it on the edge of acceptable (such as hugging when you haven't seen someone in a while). Finally, he invited me to lunch and then grabbed me as we were leaving and kissed me, sticking his tongue in my mouth, and telling me I was the woman of his dreams. Eeeeeech. Any attempt to tell him that his behavior was inappropriate (there was an incident where he tried to stroke my hand and tell me how much he liked me) resulted in prolonged sulking and veiled threats not to support my work. | Junior status to him, although eventually I was promoted to same rank. | Senior rank. | Other R1 | Political Science | None, my colleagues thought it was funny. | None, although they knew and the attitude was "oh well he just a sexist and he does that with a lot of the younger women" | None discernible -- my colleagues didn't like this guy and thought I was 'his' if you know what I mean so a certain lack of respect. There was little respect for women in general -- I was only the 2nd woman ever appointed and there were about 15 guys. But fortunately they were not responsible for my promotion -- the unit above them was and kept promoting me. | I felt that I could never have worth as a scholar, that I was only someone's flirt. It took me a long time to wake up to it. | It accelerated my departure from that particular university although there were other reasons that led to my move. | My current university helped me a lot and provided counseling. I confronted the guy and he apologized, although he clearly had no freakin' clue. I think everyone needs to play a part in combatting this -- yes, the people who do it are the most at fault but if you enable it by not fighting it -- particularly if you are in a position to do so -- you are continuing the problem. He had to retire due to ill health and I don't need to fear retribution as he is no longer active. But I told enough people in the field about what had happened that I felt confident that they would know if sudden glowing references turned to bad ones. | Male | ||
1217 | 12/7/2017 14:31:03 | When I began teaching a mature male student (he was a first year / freshman, but 50+ years old) made constant inappropriate comments in front of other students, when I called out his behaviour he stopped but began seeking out reasons to be alone with me - in the dining hall, office hours etc. He would sit too close, make comments on how I looked, smelt and sounded. He tried to regale me with stories of his exploits and current problems with his wife. When I told him this was not appropriate or made me uncomfortable, he turned it into being about him and said I was risking driving him to suicide. I reported it to senior staff (all male in the dept.) and was told to tell him to "f___ off". Somehow this student got my private phone number and starting sending me vile, sexually explicit texts and telling me he was masturbating to pictures of me. I used the texts to report him again and he was removed from my class but allowed to continue the course (so I still had to lecture him and mark his essays). I changed my phone number and asked (female) admin staff to make sure he never got put in one of my small classes again, which they mercifully did. | Teaching assistant / PhD student | undergraduate student I was teaching. | R2 | Religious Studies | Initially none, but he was finally moved from my small teaching class but allowed to remain on the course. | None | Detrimental at the time in terms of confidence, body awareness and finally once the texts started feeling threatened, stalked and unable to escape. I have since gotten over those emotions, but still am very uncomfortable and uncertain of myself and my ability / knowledge / position when I have older male students in my classes (even though the rest have been the usual mix of students). I won't meet with them alone, I always work it so that someone else is in the room with me or I meet them in a social place, which is not necessarily fair on them and what they might need from their lecturer or supervisor. | Male | |||||
1218 | 12/7/2017 14:36:16 | In a biological research station, a colleague (I think he just started his tenure track) kept coming on to me (post-doc). That wasn't the worst, though he was annoyingly insistent. What was worse was seeing him doing the same thing to all the female undergraduate students that were there that he had just been teaching the day before, very unprofessional. What took the cake though was a good labmate of mine, female, who knew him from before was trivialising this unprofessional behaviour he knew him from before and said 'he's just like that after a drink'. I would have been horrified as an undergraduate to have this happen! | post-doc | assistant professor | Other R1 | Field Biology | None | None that I know of | Just general disgust and distrust for him, he was in a slightly different, so I was happy not having to deal with him | I know that 'coming onto' someone is not a bad thing per se. He just would not stop and become verbally aggressive after a put down. In remote field stations there will always be flings and romances , but it's not hard at all to fele the difference between genuine fun and power play. This guys behaviour to these students was power play. And others defending him was people fearing consequences. | Male | ||||
1219 | 12/7/2017 14:45:35 | 2015-present -- male faculty member is currently stalking me and spreading rumors to discredit me when i reported him; for the last year my department has pressured me to keep quiet -- i will leave the program next semester (prematurely) | PhD student | he is a tenured faculty member in my department and was my dissertation advisor but i changed when he started stalking me (though that didn't stop him) | Other R1 | unc system | social sciences | department dismissed my safety concerns but admitted that this faculty member had a history of inappropriate, unprofessional behavior. title IX didn't hear my case. graduate school and department of public safety dismissed concerns as well. | none | i had to change dissertation topics entirely so that i could avoid working with him; couldn't publish any of the work i did on his project; coursework and degree advancement stalled; failed courses; i couldn't hold regular office hours with students because i couldn't list my office location and had to keep switching | depression, anxiety, imposter syndrome; near complete isolation in the department (gossip travels far and gains credibility the more people repeat it) | not only am i leaving the program but i have decided to abandon academic goals (no PhD, will not pursue academic jobs) and to leave the discipline entirely | the stalking was terrible, but what destroyed me was the complete denial of my department and university - my situation was made out to be personal error or fault ("not cut out for academia") and my forced departure was a personal choice ("if that's what's right for you") - if i had a choice, i would get a PhD and no one is cut out for thriving under those conditions | Male | |
1220 | 12/7/2017 14:45:39 | professor in the department was making inappropriate comments abut women and their bodies from the first day I met him. The worst was that he was always joking about it, saying:"Ugh, people say I am so inappropriate, I hope you won't report me to HR for my comments, hahaha!". As if his comments about joining him in his private hot tub without a bathing suit were only ironic. | lecturer (equivalent to a assistant professor) | He brought it lots of money through some patents or so, and we were a small non-rich university, so he was a big fish in a small pond | Regional Teaching College | interdisceplanary biology | never reported it. It was well known, and he did it all openly | I left, but not because of him. | It's just a bummer when you start avoiding interactions. On the plus side, it has given me a keen eye/ear for the 'ironic sexist' and now call that kind of stuff out when I see it. | Male | |||||
1221 | 12/7/2017 15:02:28 | A guy who I met up with two or three times stalked me. He called me over 20 times in one day even though I repeatedly told him I wasn't interested. He would see me at the gym and follow me around the facility and out of the facility as well. | I was an undergrad. | He worked maintenance at the university. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | Mathematics | They told me what happened to me didn't constitute stalking. | None. | I don't work in academia, so none. | I was already suicidal and it drove me to start cutting again. | I had applied to graduate a year early at this time but was still waffling between doing it and not doing it. I decided to it and got the fuck out. | Male | ||
1222 | 12/7/2017 15:05:02 | A (male) student was accepted into my department's graduate program and began harassing other students (all female or nonbinary) with nearly constant unwanted flirtation and nearly constant unwanted touching. My department received several complaints but seems to have shrugged them off and the student's behavior continues to be a problem. I have witnessed him hugging women, drunkenly propositioning women, using equipment/labspace booked by women instead of letting them use it when they booked it, and arguing extensively on Facebook for various things men are supposedly entitled to that no one is actually entitled to. | Graduate student | Graduate student | Other R1 | So far, a bit of minimal discussion behind the scenes. | So far, none that I can see. | Minimal, but worse for others. | Minimal, but worse for others. | Minimal, but worse for others. | Male | ||||
1223 | 12/7/2017 15:14:14 | When we were at the office, one of our (male) administrative staff came in to discuss travel arraignments for one of my fellow (female) research assistant officemates who sits next to me. There had been a miscommunication about how to file aspects of her travel. When she realized what was happening, she apologized for the confusion, and he said "don't worry about it, I have that effect on women." Then he gestured to me and said "(name) even tripped when she walked by my dest the other day. Can't help it if I have that effect." | Witness and victim | Administrative staff for our lab | Other Research Agency | It was a military research lab | Psychology | When reported to the officer in charge, the report was sent up the military chain of command, and an intensive SHARP (Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention) Training was set up for the entire lab. The harasser was not there, but took a shorter make up training was set up for him. | None. | Frustrating, given the fact that the rest of us had to take the training and he was exempt/could take the shorter training. | Anxious, and wanting to avoid him and the lab. | I still want to work in psychology, but given the lack of support or equal/fair responce, I am not sure I would report things again. | Male | ||
1224 | 12/7/2017 15:16:59 | male student spewed virulent anti-feminist views all over a department, went to some lengths to make female students doubt their own perceptions and experiences, moved in with one of them and quickly moved away with her and then dropped out himself | grad student | grad student | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | received report and told reporters to do nothing and stop talking about it | a lot of anger and lost sleep | Male | |||||||
1225 | 12/7/2017 15:18:36 | I was given second-hand accounts of a well-known name in psychology (you read about him in intro psych classes) who repeatedly harasses young women in the field. He would have them sit on his lap and grope them. | N/A, was warned to stay away from him at conferences | Well know researcher | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Psychology | None. | None. | Frustrating, because I admire his research, and means for my safety I cannot interact with him directly and had wanted to meet and ask for mentorship before I learned of the incidences. | Male | |||||
1226 | 12/7/2017 15:20:04 | My advisor said things like "I adore you" and made jokes about taking my clothes off. He held up two left-over doughnuts in the direction of a student's lower body and said, "Allow me to apply these directly to your thighs!" He "playfully" bit one student in front of other people. He "playfully" bit another student in a private meeting. He told a student that after she left he "would still really be her advisor." | First year graduate student | Associate Professor, my advisor, professor for 2 classes I would be graded in, important writer of future recommendations | Other R1 | Music | Department chair was outraged, said she would speak to him, said she would see he did not grade my comprehensive exam, sent me to an administrative office that recommended doing nothing and gave me no options | delayed his promotion to Professor from Associate Professor? He is now full Professor and chair of the department | Left the school, delayed finishing PhD by 8 years, suspicious of professionalization, and academia generally, where as an undergrad I had thrived in grad classes. | Could not concentrate, had more trouble with school work than ever before. | Left the school, delayed finishing doctorate (at another institution), suspicious of conventional professional path, joined the precariat. | Male | |||
1227 | 12/7/2017 15:23:41 | I was accepted to Duke University in January of 2014. I matriculated in the Fall of that year. I had previously completed a Masters degree in American history, the field I intended to pursue with [Removed], who would have been my advisor. Within the first few months of working together, it became apparent that Professor [Removed] was not comfortable with my research topic, or with me. I have epilepsy, which has primarily presented as petit mal seizures and is controlled by medication. The first indication I had that my working relationship with Professor [Removed] was not going well occurred in a phone conversation. She told me that I should jettison my M.A. thesis for a side project that I had created in matter of weeks. She became irritated when, confused, I asked a number of questions. “If you want to bring sexual violence back in,” she said, “do that. People write about it because it’s trendy.” I was horrified. After a long silence, she said, “You know I am joking.” “Yes” I said, “I know you are joking,” not really able to understand the exchange we were having. A few weeks later, I told her I needed to talk about doing primary source research in Georgia. I had, in essence, written two MA theses, one of which I had graduated with, and the other I offered as my admissions essay. Since Professor X did not approve of my research on sexual violence, I tried to bring our attention to my work on local courts in Western Georgia. If this work was to be the focus of my dissertation, however, I was going to need on-site access to court records. I would need to drive. Even if, in the course of our work together, we decided a working with a more centralized archive was preferable, I needed her to make an informed decision. So I told Professor X of my condition, and informed her that I cannot drive. I asked her advice, strictly in regard to research. She was hostile. She would not have a conversation, and repeatedly suggested that in fact, I could drive. It was not until at least three meeting later that I flatly told her “driving is off the table, it will not happen.” She told me that she had “grown up poor,” that no one had believed in her, and that I should therefore find a way to make my situation work. I reiterated that I could not, in fact, drive, that it is illegal for me to drive, and that I wanted nothing from her except advice on how to successfully research in my particular situation. As is procedure, I spoke with our Director of Graduate Studies (DGS), who largely belittled me. In the spring, I was assigned (by the same DGS) to work as T.A. for a known harasser, [Removed]. This man sat next to me and sang songs about fraternity brothers impregnating sorority girls. He joked about an actress who was in a car accident, making comments about her breasts. On my first day in his class, when I (and my fellow T.A.) sat down, he said to the class “they sure look interesting, don’t they? But we will find out if they are. We will find out if they have anything to say.” He let (mostly male) students question my grades and my authority in the classroom to the point that I really was nothing more than his secretary. I complained, repeatedly. He was considered immovable. I went through much of that first year in Grad school essentially without an advisor. I should note that, while students often do not formally declare an advisor until their second year, most do have informal relationships with Professors, and all receive the benefit of some kind of mentorship. I went without this for nearly all of my first year. Midway through the second semester of my first year, I took a course with Professor Y [Removed], who agreed to become my advisor. This move entailed, however, a radical shift in focus, and with that, a huge amount of work. I changed my field from American history to European, and with the help of Professor Y, formulated a new research topic, specializing in 18th century France and the history of emotions. It began to look as though I was through the worst. Professor Y and I started to pull together a dissertation committee. My grades were flawless. I was genuinely interested in my new field. I missed my old work, and was still hurt and confused by Professor X's behaviour, but I wanted to move forward. Professor Y suggested that I enroll in Professor Z's seminar, and ask him to serve on my committee. I did. This was a terrible mistake. After about four class sessions, Professor Z expelled me from his class. I was the only woman in the class. He sent everyone out of the room except me, came back in, and began an argument with me, much of which, unfortunately, I don’t remember. I do know that he told me “You don’t need to be here” and told me that he would withdraw me from his course. He also told me he would not be on my committee, a statement, that, while it seems obvious enough, is, in the context of a small department, intended to convey that he will be do his part to see that I do not progress toward graduation. The only explanations he offered were 1) that I typed too loudly and 2) I had paused too long before answering a question. I believe that my disclosure to Professor X influenced Professor Z’s behavior. Even if evidence of this is lacking, the fact that, by this point, most of the department was aware of my health status made it nearly impossible for me to complain about what was happening. I was a pariah. I assumed, however, that the department would, at the very least, form a committee to investigate, or perhaps offer mediation. There was nothing. This is still the worst part of this situation to me. Absolutely no one, apart from my own advisor, cared about this in the least. It was a career-breaking move, and it was meant to be. The following fall, I enrolled in a required pedagogy course and (also required) methods course. Though I did well in both of these courses, I had to work harder than my peers, and was the subject of a good deal of mockery in my methods course. This was a direct result of the fact that 1) I had to change focus in yr. 1 and 2) I had been withdrawn from a course in yr. 2 and therefore been deprived of a research/writing opportunity. Therefore, in year 3, when I took our required grant writing/ portfolio preparation course, I was lagging behind my peers. The complaint here is that the department knew what had happened, knew they had not addressed it, knew that it was quantifiably slowing my progress to degree, and, nevertheless, placed the burden on me. They did this not only in the sense that they refused to change deadlines, there were also numerous subtle barbs in the classroom. For instance, when I offered my proposal for workshop, the professor, Prof Q, mocked the use of French text, saying “Now you are just showing off” and encouraged other students to do the same. Perhaps it does not need to be said, but the dissertation is about France. This is common practice. The underlying assertion of Professor Q's statement is that I am too stupid to be doing the work I am doing, and something is out of joint. Finally, I was pressured out because 1) it became clear that there would be no relenting on the timeline – it would remain the same, despite the fact that others had made mistakes, not me, and despite the fact that those errors had never been internally adjudicated. I was essentially forced to take a semester leave, because without it, I could not have passed Professor Q’s methods course. The reason I could not have passed it was that I needed a (pre-existing) research paper in order to do so. My peers didn’t have this problem, but Professor Z had thrown me out the course where I would have written this paper. So, in order to avoid an F on my record, I gave up a semester worth of funding. 2) My advisor let me know that the department had little to no intention of funding me any longer than they were contractually obligated to. That time was coming soon. He said, and I believed, that my work was very good, and could be funded. There is limited funding for French historians, however, and it is even more limited for those historians in the early stages of their careers. My choices were: a) fund myself for a while until that eventuality, and then let Duke take credit for my work or b) save the money and emotional effort. I chose b, but it cost me a lot of pain. | Graduate Student | [Removed by Karen] | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Duke University | History | Nothing except to pull my funding and force me out | nothing | I'm not exaggerating when I say that I will never again do the thing I dearly love and was extremely good at | On a scale of 1-10, 10 being total lack of connection to the world I am floating somewhere around a 5-6 most days. I have, understandably, almost no motivation. I'm also totally baffled. It is so wasteful. I was good at my job. And now I do nothing. At all. | I am not making actively bad choices, but if this is an indicator, I can no longer read books written in English at all. I get very frustrated when the joy of reading reminds me that I can no longer share this joy, or transmit my ideas to anyone. I need to distract myself from this, so I only read in French now. | I cannot thank you enough for doing this. I have been waiting for this. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |
1228 | 12/7/2017 15:24:39 | grad student | professor | Other R1 | Male | ||||||||||
1229 | 12/7/2017 15:27:49 | I worked for my undergrad advisor in the lab and at a remote field camp. While I was his student and after I graduated as his technician, he would do inappropriate things that I imagine were intended as flirting (once he put my sweaty field shirt on his head, huffed it, and said in a suggestive way that it smelled like me), send inappropriate emails (for example, he sent me a picture of a penis, though not his own as far as I know), say inappropriate things (once he said that if I wanted help with something then I should come by his office in a dress and makeup and try asking him for whatever it was), and occasionally tried inappropriate things like reaching across the breakfast table to put his hands on mine. He offered to help me publish research papers - he explained that this was the missing piece to my being a very strong grad applicant. He was the first academic to show interest in helping me build my career. I had a long term partner and felt that since I set strong, clear boundaries, I could handle his odd behavior. After I graduated, I worked for a grad student in the same department but a different lab. My grandfather got ill, and I left that field job early to come home. The grad student for whom I was working did not take the news well and was upset that I was leaving the project early. When the professor found out, he threatened to ruin my career. Despite this man's odd behavior, I had considered him a friend and mentor, and I was really upset that he completely turned on me. | undergrad | he was my advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | An elite R1 in the Midwest | Ecology | NA | NA | Ultimately, none. It turns out he's not as big a deal as he or I thought he was. Proximately, for years I avoided making some information publicly available for fear that he would find me and make good on his threat to ruin my career. | Male | ||||
1230 | 12/7/2017 15:29:39 | 1990-1994; sexual relationship with a member of my doctoral committee. | Graduate student. | Tenured Assistant Professor; member of doctoral exam and dissertation committee. | Other R1 | Indiana University | Music/Music History | Affirmative Action investigated, essentially did nothing; the investigator became too involved personally and stopped acting as an advocate. No report was ever completed or filed or a copy given to me. | Delayed my PhD completion by 20 years. | Now I'm subject to age discrimination when applying for tenure track jobs. | Feelings of anger and helplessness and not being taken seriously because I am a man (implication that I could not possibly have been harassed); resentment at the loss of many years of a career in my chosen field. | I ultimately persevered to get my PhD but the job market has been difficult because of my age. | Thank you for doing this. As you know, harassment can come from anyone who chooses to abuse their authority. From the teacher/student perspective, the person with the job is always the one with power and authority and students are usually the victims of the abuse. | Female | |
1231 | 12/7/2017 15:33:59 | I was coerced into sexual activity with a male professor and mentor earlier this fall (2017). The incident occurred on campus. I learned the next day that this professor had an STI, which I may have contracted. | undergraduate student | He was my professor and academic mentor. He would have written my recommendation letter for PhD applications. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | The incident was reported and is still "under investigation" by the university nine weeks later. During the course of the investigation I have been asked if I am "sure I didn't have an orgasm" and if I have ever been in a relationship with "another" faculty member. | none yet | I can no longer attend the classes taught by that professor and have had to make other arrangements for course completion. My former friends in the department (all graduate students) believe that I invented the accusations. They will not speak to me, and one (male) student has repeatedly instructed me not to attend university-sponsored academic events. Other faculty are aware of what happened, and I do not feel welcome or comfortable at departmental events. | Nightmares, panic attacks, unable to relax on campus because I am afraid of seeing one or more of the people who now dislike and shun me. I'm scared that I might have contracted an STI, but it is too early to know for sure. The uncertainty of what will happen with the investigation and with my health is crippling. | Unsure yet, but I want to get out of this city and university as soon as possible. | Male | |||
1232 | 12/7/2017 15:43:07 | My composition teacher was always touching me to adjust my posture, without asking. In private lessons, sometimes instrumental or voice teachers do need to touch a student to adjust posture, but they are taught to ask first, and I don't know why a composition teacher would need to touch a student at all. Composition wasn't my major (though another music discipline was), and none of the other professors could fit me in their studios, so I had to stop lessons. | grad student | professor | Other R1 | Music | I stopped taking composition lessons because none of the other teachers could fit me in their studios. | Male | |||||||
1233 | 12/7/2017 15:49:57 | Another grad student shoved his tongue down my throat onstage during performance that did not demand that kind of kiss. I asked him not to and he did it again during each performance. | grad student | grad student colleague | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Music | Male | ||||||||
1234 | 12/7/2017 15:56:04 | My friend was being harassed by a guy in our lab group. He'd mock her work and in general give her a hard time. It wasn't until later that I found out that he'd physically assaulted her in lab one night. Some time later he found out that she told me and got nasty towards both of us. I reported him to the department, but the adviser didn't take me seriously and encouraged all of us to sit down to talk it out as she thought it was just a misunderstanding. When he found out I had reported him, he told the department adviser that he wanted to shut me up and that if this continued he'd ruin mine and my friend's career by going to our adviser. I asked for and was granted a university restraining order against him, to which he responded by getting a restraining order against me, claiming that I was out to get him. Though the restraining order prohibits discussing circumstances with other members of the university who are not involved, he told my entire lab group some story about how I was a crazy person and making up stories to get him kicked out. I only found out when one of my labmates stopped speaking to me and told me I should have kept my mouth shut. I alerted the Title IX office as well as a university office that he was violating his terms of the order and retaliating against me for coming forward. University office didn't do anything. Title IX had a very intimidating and aggressive interview process for both me and my friend, who was scared about coming forward in the first place. Title IX concluded that they thought he was crazy but that he wasn't going to do anything and was going to be out of the country for the next couple of months. No action taken. We ended up telling my adviser because I was too scared to be in the lab alone with him. My adviser agreed to keep us separate until he left. The guy graduated, but he's still around. Pretty sure my adviser has forgotten the incident even happened. | Graduate student | Graduate student in the same lab and chatted with on a daily basis | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Engineering | Issuance of a restraining order and a Title IX interview process | None | None. I knew going into the PhD that I wasn't going to stay in academia | It destroyed my relationship with my lab group. We weren't super close before, but people don't interact with me anymore really. I don't know what stories my harasser told them about me. But whatever he told them, they clearly took his side over mine. It turned into a guys against the girls situation, as my colleague and I were the only girls in the group. It made the PhD process even more lonely, and I was depressed for a good part of the end. It was even worse for my friend. | It made me exceedingly angry about the power balance in academia and the way women are treated in engineering. In a way I suppose its a plus, because I'm now much more empowered to address this issue and to stand up for people. Ultimately I decided that I'd try to learn as much from what happened and not let it bring me down, to the best of my ability. | Thank you for doing this. I always thought I was alone, but it's shocking how common abuses like this seem to be. | Male | ||
1235 | 12/7/2017 16:06:19 | While in My Ph.D. Course at the University of Sheffield, I was harassed while in the East Asian Studies Department. My leg was groped under the desk by a fellow graduate student during a lecture. His hand kept moving over to my leg and sliding up even though I had pushed it away. This was someone I didn't know personally and didn't see outside of class. He later started following me on campus and entering into coffee shops and pubs that I was in with friends to watch me. One night after I had a few pints he approached me at the pub when friends were leaving and tried to walk me home. I, fortunately, was escorted home by my friends. This continued until he moved on to someone else. The next woman he harassed was an undergraduate voice student of mine and filed a complaint with campus safty. I don't know what happened after that. | Ph.D. Student | Fellow Ph.D. Student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Sheffield | East Asian Studies | Asked student to maintain distance. | None that I know of. | Dropped the Korean language class that the harassment took place in. | Significant. Afraid to walk home at night and encounter the student in department. | Not sure | Male | ||
1236 | 12/7/2017 16:18:04 | During my quals year, I TA'd for a male professor along with two other members of my cohort, one man and one woman. Throughout the semester, the male TA repeatedly made "jokes" in front of our professor and students about how I and the other female TA were unqualified to teach, knew nothing about the subject matter of the class, would fail our quals, were overly emotional or stupid, etc. Our professor never joined in on the joking and otherwise was very respectful to me and the other female TA (and gave us stellar teaching evaluations), but he also -- to my deep disappointment -- never reprimanded the male TA for this behavior. | 3rd year PhD student | he was also a 3rd year PhD student (we were in the same cohort) | Other R1 | English | None | None | undermined my authority in front of my students | heightened my anxiety regarding how I would do on my qualifying exam | Male | ||||
1237 | 12/7/2017 16:29:36 | My philosophy professor told me that he 'didn't understand' my essay / follow my contributions in class. Asked for follow up, he said "it just doesn't make any sense." Re-reading later, I don't see what's so opaque about that essay. But I did see that I was the only girl in the class, and the only one not to get an A in the class overall, other than the kid who never showed up. | Undergrad | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | USC | Philosophy | Didn't seek any | I moved out of philosophy for this and other reasons | I'm not a philosophy professor as I aspired to be | It was just one more thing that led me towards severe suicidal ideation in that year | Just one more drop in the bucket | Male | ||
1238 | 12/7/2017 16:40:58 | My advisor for my PhD let me know that I would never get my doctorate if I didn't have sex with him. This was somewhere around 1976. | PhD candidate | My advisor (Chair of the Department) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Political Science | None. I went to a Dean who was sympathetic and told me if any of the other women he had harassed (he was notorious) would come forward with me, the Dean could do something but nobody would. | None | I completed my doctorate in a different school. | I was devastated. | I decided I would never teach in a university setting. | Male | |||
1239 | 12/7/2017 16:45:09 | My first tenure track position, I was struggling with some work pressures and asked for additional mentorship. One faculty member stepped up and helped, but then began putting increasing pressure on me to spend more time with her and to talk about details of my personal life. I appeased her, but the demands and threats of retaliation increased. She isolated me from colleagues, spreading rumors about me, and threatening to withdraw her support in an increasingly difficult department if I didn't give her the time and attention she wanted. Finally she lured me into a meeting in her car, where she sexually assaulted me. I refused to let her into my office after that, and so she retaliated by stalking and harassing me at home late at night, threatening my wife and friends. When I called 911 they said that they couldn't come out if there wasn't an active threat (phone calls and text messages weren't enough). I reported to title IX who negotiated an agreement between us. She now regularly retaliates against my graduate students by refusing them normal assistance that other faculty members give to students. She has stuck to the letter of the negotiated agreement, though, and so I don't feel like I can ask for more help navigating this. Many department colleagues remain hostile and avoidant to me, and even those who seem supportive handle me like a delicate, broken object instead of helping me to do my work more effectively. | Assistant professor | Associate professor | Other R1 | Music | Negotiated agreement between me and the harasser | None | It's very hard to get the support I need to succeed on the tenure track. I'm terrified of seeing any colleagues or mentors alone. I got very little writing done for a year and a half while I negotiated the most significant PTSD. I couldn't take time off, so I had to learn, with the help of a team of three therapists how to cope. I'm on the tenure track, just had my mid-career review, and my teaching and research scores were lower than optimal. I still got reappointment, but my normal performance would have been better than this. I'm scared that I won't be able to get my output back up to normal levels in time for tenure. I'm desperately struggling with teaching, and having a hard time finding appropriate help. | I'm suffering from PTSD. I cry on the drive to campus and on the drive home most days. I struggle to sleep enough, and I'm very afraid all the time. I am suffering from depression. | I'm having a very hard time completing normal activities. I'm working many more hours than optimal just to keep up, and so my relationships are suffering. I lost one very important support relationship, am having a hard time with my family, who can't understand why I don't just get over it or go somewhere else, and I'm barely managing to hold my marriage together. I think I can still keep this from being a career ender, but I feel like I've lost two years already and I am very scared that I'll lose more. I feel like my life is on hold until tenure, and I'm afraid of what I'll lose in the mean time. | My institution considers this a successful resolution because no one had to be punished and we're both still employed here. I really wish they would make it clear to her that she did something really unacceptable, because I think this leaves her and perhaps everyone else thinking that this was just a personality conflict, and that I'm super sensitive. I'm not. She sexually assaulted me and harassed me for 18 months, and I'm not allowed to talk about it with my colleagues because of the terms of the agreement. I look like a basket case and the people I have to work with think that I'm just not very good at doing this job. I'm good at it. I'm way better than they realize, because I'm doing it despite this. | Female | ||
1240 | 12/7/2017 16:53:51 | I was teaching a writing course and checking in on group work students were doing. When I walked by one group, a male student leered at me and said "You have so many cute little outfits!" This same student was doing poorly in my class because he had a lot of absences and was not making up the work. He later came to my office for a conference and I felt so uncomfortable with this student that I asked my male office-mate to stay during the conference. The student proceeded to tell me that he didn't think anyone needed the course concepts I taught to do the writing projects. | PhD candidate / graduate instructor | Undergraduate student | Other R1 | Rhetoric and Composition | None. I didn't know what to do other than vent to friends. | None | No direct impact | Feeling unsafe in my own classroom and office. More worry about male students not viewing me as a professional. | NA | Male | |||
1241 | 12/7/2017 16:59:01 | My advisor got much too drunk at a scientific conference. He gave me smothering hugs and would not leave me alone, he kissed me on the cheek, at which point I demanded some distance. | I was a PhD candidate. | My acting advisor. | R2 | Biology | He would not sign my dissertation. It had to be approved by the dean. | Undetermined. | I keep my distance from people in professional settings. I don't want anyone to feel as uncomfortable as I was at that time. | Male | |||||
1242 | 12/7/2017 17:19:00 | In 2012 I was a postdoc and attended a national conference out of state. On the last day of the conference, at the conference dinner, I sat at a table of people I did not previously know. During dinner, I spoke at length with the man sitting next to me, who worked in a different area than I and who was at mid-career academic status. We talked about our research, our universities (we worked in the same state in different cities), and our families. As I often do, I mentioned my husband multiple times throughout our conversation-- partly because I like talking about him and I'm very proud of what he does but also to make it clear that I was married and not interested in talking to this person for any other reason than professional interest. This man also talked about his wife and family. I had no reason to suspect that our conversation was perceived by him as anything other than professional. After dinner, some colleagues that I knew were moving on with a group to a nearby bar, and this man I had been speaking with at dinner joined us to walk over. When we got to the bar, people ordered drinks then sat down at tables-- this man came and sat next to me, and many other colleagues were sat around the table. Shortly after we sat down, he discreetly moved his hand back to my rear end and began jamming his thumb between my buttocks. I was startled and jumped slightly, shocked that this was happening at all, especially in a crowded table full of academics. I reached my hand down and forcefully pushed his hand away. He then turned to me and said "are you going to stay here", and I said "yes, I am". He looked disappointed. He again touched my rear end and jammed his thumb between my buttocks. Again I pushed it away forcefully. At this stage he got up from the table. I was terrified and wanted to leave, but it would have meant walking back to my nearby hotel, and I was scared that he would follow me to my hotel. I looked around and realized that all of the colleagues in the room whom I knew well were male, and I didn't want to ask one of them to walk with me back to the hotel because I thought that would sound weird. I didn't feel I knew any of them well enough to tell them what had happened. I was scared. I leaned over to the woman (whom I did not know) across from me at the table and began engaging her in conversation about her research, hoping that the man had left, and I could wait a while then walk back to my hotel. Unfortunately, he came back with another drink and sat next to me. He discreetly tried to touch me on my rear end and jam his thumb up me a few more times. I pushed his hand away and kept talking to the woman across from me, trying not to pay him any attention. He got up and went to the bathroom, then came back, sat down one more time, and asked me again if I was going to stay there or if I wanted to leave. I said I was going to stay there. He looked visibly annoyed, and after another minute or so, got up, announced he was leaving, and walked out. My heart was racing. I still didn't want to leave on my own in case he was hanging around outside the bar. So I decided I would stay there and wait until some of the group that I knew headed back to the hotel where we were staying. I continued to try to engage in conversation with the people around me, but I was almost shaking with fear. I had never been assaulted like this before, and I was in shock that someone had tried to do this in a professional setting, in a crowded room full of colleagues. Eventually, people started to leave, and I walked back to my hotel with two male colleagues that I knew well, quickly locking myself into my hotel room to break down and cry. My flight was the next day, and I stayed in my hotel room until the last possible moment I needed to leave to go to the airport, terrified that I might see this man again. Once I was home, I broke down, hysterically crying, and explained to my husband what had happened. I felt so unsafe, so violated, and so discouraged for a long time. I purposefully avoided the city where the event took place for the next two years, avoiding going to any conferences or seminars there. The man didn't even live in that city or state, but I was traumatized by what had happened there. I received an email from the man about a week after the incident, sent to my institutional email address. He said that he had had too much to drink and he apologized for anything inappropriate that he said or did. I was disgusted even seeing an email from him, and immediately deleted it. I never told any of my academic colleagues about the incident. I was scared at the time that accusations might be made that it was inappropriate for us to be in a bar drinking, even though it was a group situation and I had started out the evening thinking everything was professional and above board. I didn't know what to do. I was scared people would not believe me or take me seriously. Also, he was at a different university, and the incident had occurred at an out of town conference. Even if I had wanted to report the incident, I didn't know if I should talk to my university, his, or the conference organization where the incident had taken place. About a year later, I did a university survey on bullying and sexual harassment in the workplace. I responded that yes, I had been sexually harassed, but I did not give any further details. The university did not follow up with me on my response. This is the first time I've recounted what happened at length. My heart is racing even now, 5 years later, as I write about it. I have never felt such helplessness as I did that night. And it has changed the way I interact with colleagues at academic conferences and in my academic workplace. I am wary of everyone, and I put up a wall so that conversations don't get too in depth about anything. That's a shame, because I'm probably missing out on some great opportunities to connect with new colleagues. It gets better with time, though, and I am slowly learning to trust again that I can have a professional conversation in a professional setting with a man in my profession without the possibility of being sexually assaulted. | I was a postdoctoral fellow (fixed term position) | He was a mid-career academic with a permanent position (more senior than I) | Other R1 | English | As mentioned, this incident of sexual assault at a conference has changed the way I interact with colleagues at academic conferences and in my academic workplace. I am wary of everyone, and put up a wall so that conversations don't get too in depth about anything. That's a shame, because I'm probably missing out on some great opportunities to connect with colleagues. It gets better with time, though, and I am slowly learning to trust again that I can have a professional conversation in a professional setting with a man in my profession without the possibility of being sexually assaulted. | In the immediate weeks and months after the harassment took place, I was scared, nervous, and dejected. I avoided traveling to the city where the incident took place for over 2 years, and I avoided attending academic conferences and seminars in that city during that time. Now, I still get slightly nervous at conference dinners or academic social events, and I am very wary of engaging with people for too long at such events. | I have since moved away from the country where the harassment took place. This choice was due to other factors, but I do find it reassuring that I am very unlikely to ever meet this person again. Thankfully, he does not work in my immediate field, and I am unlikely to run into him in my academic circles. | Male | |||||
1243 | 12/7/2017 17:24:19 | Forced kissing in a hotel lobby during an academic conference | assistant professor | full professor | Other R1 | political science | there was and still is no institutional mechanism for accountability at this conference | none! | Huge. I felt like I had to steer clear of senior men (this was not the only incident) but that made it difficult to network and shaped the friendships I made and the professional groups that I have worked in | Guilt, shame, fear | I seek women's company as I feel safer and more validated. Women are generally marginalized in my profession. | Thank you so much for doing this! I love your blog and have your book. You are an inspiration to me and the mentoring I have dedicate myself to doing every day. | Male | ||
1244 | 12/7/2017 17:28:16 | Just recently: A male graduate student who was working under my supervision pursued a female undergraduate. In an unrelated incident, a female graduate student was sexually assaulted by another graduate student. These incidents represent a pattern of exploitative behaviors that come to my attention on a regular basis. | I supervise graduate students | Employee/Advisee | Other Type of School | Prefer not to say | Prefer not to say | Institution took both incidents quite seriously. I participated in reporting/institutional response. | In the first case, none. In the second case, unknown. | None; reporting harassment is part of my job | Although our primary focus should always be on the victim, harassment is also stressful for those of us who are involved in the reporting process. I find myself feeling bewildered and angry that people engage in these exploitative behaviors, seemingly without regard to the impact on others. | I am feeling on edge with male colleagues and collaborators because of the number of incidents that I have witnessed or heard about. I know how quickly harassment can take place, so my guard is always up. | It's quite necessary, but inefficient, to focus institutional efforts/infrastructure on reacting to harassment incidents. Let's do a better job of teaching our colleagues not to be harassers! | Male | |
1245 | 12/7/2017 17:41:06 | A linguistics professor and language instructor I was studying with groped and forcefully kissed me in his office. When I rejected his advances he continued to pressure me and eventually said it would be impossible for him to continue teaching me or having any professional relationship with him if I wouldn't have an affair with him. Even after I stopped studying with him he sent me numerous sexually suggestive text messages until I blocked his number. | PhD candidate | Associate Professor | Other R1 | Addis Ababa University | History | There was none. I was a visiting foreign researcher and did not report it. He was head of his department and good friends with the university president. | Zero. | In the course of my dissertation fieldwork I had to continue to use the University library and other resources on campus as I was affiliated with a research institute there. I had anxiety about seeing him whenever I was on campus. I would do my best to avoid being in proximity of him and did not attend several academic conferences knowing he would be there. I avoided coming to campus for weeks after the incident which also impacted my productivity as I was supposed to be doing archival and library research. | I suffer from anxiety and ptsd related to an assault I endured and this incident certainly exasperated that. I suffered from panic attacks and did not want to leave the house. | I decided not to apply to a position at this campus knowing that I would inevitably run into him. He is well respected and very much loved by social science/humanities academics throughout the university and I had ongoing contact with many of his friends and colleagues during my time there and when his name would come up I did my best to be neutral as I knew reporting him or even indicating I did not have a positive experience with him would have negatively impacted my relationship with other academics and impeded my ability to do research there. | Male | ||
1246 | 12/7/2017 17:48:50 | This incident occurred during a thesis defense in a room full of about 100 people, including faculty, students, post-docs, and also the student’s colleagues, friends, and family members. Traditionally, upon graduation, the student’s thesis advisor will introduce the defending student prior to the research talk. I recently witnessed a graduating female student be introduced by her thesis advisor in the most inappropriate way. To provide a bit of background, a common technique in the field and that is commonly used in this particular lab is the use of light suction, typically applied by mouth into a pipette, to open and record currents in brain cells. His whole introduction of her revolved around how he knew she would be successful in his lab because she had an oral obsession. The slide he showed actually had a title along the lines of “orally obsessed” and showed photos of the student making sour expressions and playing a wind instrument. The entire room was detectably uncomfortable, people were visibly squirming in their chairs, uncomfortably laughing, and looking away. The student ignored the introduction and gave one of the most thoughtful and comprehensive talks I have ever attended, which was her only option given that looking visibly shaken would have thrown her off balance. It is unfortunate, though, that the expectation was for her to remain poised and unmoved despite the clearly sexist introduction. What was most saddening was the fact that this person, who has just earned a doctoral degree in a STEM field, had her family, friends, and colleagues there to celebrate her PROFESSIONAL merits and her advisor introduces her in a sexist and deeply unprofessional way. After that I only spoke about the incident with female colleagues and classmates, but I wish there was a way that this issue could be addressed at an institutional level, with this type of behavior set as an example of what not to do. This is a tenured professor that is close to retirement, so people shrug it off as “this is just one person and the problem will disappear when he’s gone.” But this is an institutional problem and many men in positions of power think that as long as they are not raping someone, they are falling in line with the rules of professionalism. As chronicled by this survey, sexual harassment in the workplace takes many forms and it deeply impacts a person’s sense of safety and ability to be successful in academia. | Graduate Student | Faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of California, San Francisco | Neuroscience | none | none, this is a tenured professor close to retirement that has a history with making inappropriate comments, usually directed towards women. While he has previously sent a letter of apology to the program for certain comments the "apology" consisted of: I-apologize-if-you-were-offended-type. Plus, given this more recent event it is clear that he did not fully understand what he did wrong. This does not surprise me given that the consequences have been analogous to a slap on the wrist. | I love the idea of pursuing a career in Science, but question whether academia is the right career track for me given that there is still limited acknowledgement that harassment is even a problem. | Science & academia has been built to be a boys club, and women in Science stand on this foundation often not attuned to the fact that academia as an institution was not built for us. And we think there might be something wrong with us because we don't fit the mold, which impacts our mental health. | For one, I'm much more interested in focusing on problems of social justice than scientific problems. It'd be possible to do both if I work within an academic institution, but I wonder how viable that is given the lack of attention to this problem. | Male | ||
1247 | 12/7/2017 17:51:57 | Working as grad researcher, although paid minimum wage, c.15 years ago. Prof leading project constantly stared at my chest and on one occasion brushed past my bottom, deliberately. Same happened (staring) when I started in my current institution 12 years ago - male staff member in permanent post stared at my chest every time we discussed anything including my teaching on his module. | Grad doing PhD then as postdoc researcher | Boss then more senior, permanent | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | History | I mentioned the first to my line manager who dismissed it, commenting on how the man's wife was ill (?) | None | I left asap which was an inconvenience; the second time, I couldn't so had to live with it. | As in both cases it was combined with overbearing and bullying behaviour I tried to laugh it off but it did have an effect on my sense of self-worth due to feelings of powerlessness. | I think in an awful way I had grown so used to boys/men behaving wrongly through going to a rough school where girls were blamed for boys' sexualised behaviour, that I saw it as same old, and so it has arguably cemented my feminism and choice to focus on women and gender in my work. | The first institution was Russell Group, the second post-92, in the UK. Neither elite nor other institutions were any good at identifying or dealing with this or having any way of educating women that this is not ok, and that they can therefore talk to x or visit x website for support. | Male | ||
1248 | 12/7/2017 18:39:45 | A now former chair and long time member of an art department (who is also an internationally known artist) consistently harassed and molested students and faculty within his department and in affiliated departments as well. He was most known for touching women without consent at the bar where he held his "office hours" and at department parties. The culture of the faculty and students in the associated departments revolved around whispering about the powerful professor's alleged actions. His reputation appeared to be decades in the making, and perhaps followed him from his previous teaching institutions. Though there are surely dozens of undisclosed cases that involve this individual, I am able to speak to two specific events that involved friends (fellow graduate students) and faculty members who are primary sources. In January of 2014, this individual molested two of of his graduate students at the bar during the first week of their second semesters in their graduate program. In both assaults, which occurred within an hour of each other and in public but hidden from view, he forced his hand into their pants and underwear, and in one instance repeatedly tried to grab the student's , When the incident was divulged to a senior faculty member and acting dean of students, a secret meeting was held with both of the students, the abusive faculty member, and the senior faculty, who proceeded to make list of rules that the abuser must follow as a resolution to the issue. The entire issue was swept under the rug and the abusive professor continued to teach for another year, advised students, sat on committees, and though his list of rules stipulated that office hours at the bar were no longer permitted, the abusive faculty member was unfazed and continued to regularly convene with students there. My friends, desperate to find justice, were advised to wait until they had solidified their degrees before reporting the incidents to the university. Neither of them shared any information about the abuse until Fall semester 2015, when one of them broke down after finding out that the abusive faculty member had When their degrees were signed in 2015 (one had to have her abuser's signature in order to graduate), they reported using proper channels. The HR representatives seemed as though they had been waiting for their statements, which led me to believe that they had been investigating the matter previously. After long and arduous plans were made by HR to file a university lawsuit against the professor using the accusations of my friends as a basis, the abusive professor was somehow allowed to disappear under the excuse of "retirement". He vanished from the department without a trace after decades of teaching and extreme influence. The case was dropped. No statements were made in regards to his sudden absence, though terrible misogynist rumors spread like wild fire amongst the departments, and his those who protected him before his removal became more adamant in their refusal to hear or admit to his indiscretions. I attended the initial HR meeting as a supportive shoulder for my friends, and my active participation in care, coupled with my vocal dissent of the abuser to other graduate students, landed me on a blacklist for my final year of my graduate program. Faculty members made evident their allegiances by committing conspiracy of secrecy after the abuser was "vanished" from the university. The majority of those who belonged to his camp- faculty who had once been friendly, cordial and actively engaged in my studies, including the chair of my committee, stopped speaking to me and refused to look me in the eye. During this period of growing disillusionment (with nearly every faculty member that I had worked with during my graduate career), I attended a spring semester (2016) gathering at the home of the then-Director of Graduate studies for the affiliate department in which I was a student. While casually discussing interdepartmental politics, the subject of sexual harassment and the unexplained absence of the abusive professor was broached by the DGS. As I began to openly and explicitly explain the details of the January 2014 bar incident (the students involved had asked for the story to be discussed factually and publicly at the time), the DGS looked startled. She spoke in a hushed tone to myself and three other students, admitting that the abusive professor in question had molested her in exactly the same fashion (groping her vagina) during a faculty party when she first started teaching at the University in 2009. Her take away had been to diminish the action as negligible, detaching herself entirely, and continued to assert that instances of harassment or abuse would not be something that she would not let affect her career or her reputation. . I begged her to see why her non-action had led to years of continued abusive behavior, and specifically asked, "If you had wanted to help a student in this situation, what would you do?" Her response indicated that she seemed to find my concern for the wellbeing of students to be naive and overly sensitive. Though the specific incident of student abuse occurred almost four years ago, and the complaints/reports were made during 2014-2015, and the professor has been "retired" for a year of time, there has not been any kind form of formal or informal public address from the department, university, or community members regarding this situation. It seems as though too many people are implicated in the web of lies and feigning ignorance, and if one were to speak, all of those who protected the abuser would be outed. | I was in the first year of a three year graduate program. | He was the chair of an affiliated department, and I took a course with him during the semester that he assaulted my friends (T about the assault until the following fall semester). | Other R1 | University at Buffalo | Media Study | 1)Perpetually sweeping it under the rug, 2)Advising students to finish degree before reporting, 3)Direct action from HR | 1)Pretend rules were instituted by the department that had no actual weight, 2)the threat of a suit by the university, 3)Unclear, but the harasser retired without any actual apparent consequences. | I was not able to work with any faculty that I intended to work with because they supported the abuser, I wasted money and time taking course work with the abuser, I regret having attended the graduate program | I am incredibly paranoid and traumatized by the deceit and pain caused by this professor, and am forced to continue to live amongst the toxic community of his supporters that was unveiled by his indiscretions. | Thank you for making space for this, it is a project that needs to be done. | Male | ||
1249 | 12/7/2017 18:41:42 | A series of events in which no particular event stands out as definitely crossing the line, but that when experienced together over time was extremely uncomfortable and confusing. I was an undergraduate and he was my professor, major advisor, honors thesis advisor, and one of my letter writers for my graduate school applications--so he had a ton of power and influence over me. It started when I was working with him on some research over the summer. Since it was summer, we met more often than we would have during the school year and the office where his building was located was even more deserted than normal. When we would meet, he would often sit next to me on the same side of the table rather than across the table or perpendicular to me. The door to his office was often closed. He sometimes offered me a coat or blanket to cover me up. This made me feel very uncomfortable because I was afraid he would try to touch me underneath the blanket. He once touched the hair on the back of my head when he was sitting next to me. He pressured me into going out to coffee or dinner with him three times that I can remember. On one occasion in particular he talked to me about how he had a crush on a professor when he was in undergrad. I don't remember the details, but that was described as a very positive experience and it very much felt like he was trying to draw a parallel between that relationship and ours. He often talked about his children but he never talked about his wife to the point that I remember thinking he must have been divorced. He was not. He once told me something like it's okay if other people thought he and I were dating because we had gone out to coffee and dinner. He pressured me into letting him visit me in my hometown. He did come to my house, but thankfully my parents were home. The rest of the visit was in public places. I remember hoping that this visit would be quick and painless but it ended up that he stayed for several hours. One day I finally got up the courage to stand up to him. I think I said something like I haven't always felt comfortable around you or something. I don't remember his exact response, but he kind of shrugged it off, like I'm sorry you feel that way or something like that. | undergraduate student | my professor, major advisor, honors thesis advisor, and one of my letter writers for my graduate school applications | Elite Institution/Ivy League | None, I didn't report it | None, I didn't report it | Not sure. He wrote me a very nice letter of recommendation for graduate school. | Very negative. This was extremely confusing, and I was constantly doubting myself as to his intentions, my safety, how big of a deal this was, and what I should do about it. | Not sure. | Male | ||||
1250 | 12/7/2017 18:46:23 | Fall 2015, I started my PhD in a new program in the same college where I need received my masters. I was at an orientation get-together for new and current grad students at a local restaurant/bar. Only one prof showed up, but he was drunk, high, and disheveled when he showed up. I thought he was another grad student. I didn't chat much with him because I felt his presence, especially in the inebriated condition he was in, was inappropriate. It wasn't long before he made small talk, we discussed the upcoming semester, he assumed I was taking his philosophy course, but I hadn't told him I wasn't because I'd already had philosophy in my masters program. He asked how I felt about the program and I told him I thought I'd have a good time. He smirked, grabbed his beer, chuckled a bit, and said "I'll make sure of it" as he took a sip. I was so shocked, I sat there for 5 minutes trying to decide if I heard him correctly. My 14yo daughter was there so I got up and we left. The professor said "see you in class" and I told him I wouldn't be there. He was shocked and we left. I come from tech and am used to off-color comments, but for some reason, this threw me. After a few days I started taking to folks. One, a grad student who was friends with the prof tried to blow it off, "he always says that, it is nothing!" And I kept asking myself, and that student, since when does that excuse the behavior? Another grad student, male, described a situation where in the philosophy class I was not taking, he witnessed the prof being affectionate toward the female grad students, who happened to be primarily Asian. Then the Prof boasted of his sexual conquests with female Asian grad students in the past to my friend while walking to the bar for class (he held class in the local bars all the time). I was going to let his behavior toward me pass, I ended up calling a prof friend in my program and described this whole situation to her. She said they've had suspicion this was happening but no one willing to report it officially. So she suggested I go to the department chair and grad director. I did and they were very supportive and understanding, suggested I go to the Title IX office and file a complaint. It's worth noting that by this time i started feeling depressed. I filed my report and the Title IX office kept losing track of it's progress. Nearly six months later and they finally determined that the words the prof spoke we're harmless, he admitted to speaking them, and there was nothing to address other than to have a talk with him about how his words can be misinterpreted and require mandatory sexual harassment training as part of the grad school orientation program for this college. When the grad director for sat down with me to go over the report, he want nearly as supportive. Quite the opposite. When the topic of the sexual harassment training came up, the way he introduced it to me was "now, because of you, we had to add an extra hour to the orientation program." I shot up and left his office without saying anything else, then informed him a week later I would not return to the program. More gender bias I did not need. | First year PhD student | Assistant professor | Other R1 | Mass Communication | See previous | He ended up leaving, though it was because he did not get tenure and knew that before this happened. | I'm loving in poverty, I can't get a job, people in that department look at me weird, I trust no one. | I experienced a bout with severe depression that required counseling and I couldn't take classes. | I had to quit the program, tried to get in a different one and was unable to do so. I tend to about situations where there are male bosses, which, in an academic town, means I limited my options very severely. I'm not even doing work in my field right now. | I'll email you | Male | ||
1251 | 12/7/2017 19:39:26 | The Ohio State University Hospital/Surgical Intensive Care Unit | Registered Nurse | Chief of Thoracic Surgery | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | The Ohio State University | Nursing | Head nurse of the unit told me to avoid him at all costs | None | Demoted from care of heart and thoracic patients | Depression and anxiety | Delayed career and personal love relationships | Male | ||
1252 | 12/7/2017 19:45:16 | I was good friends and then briefly dated someone in my field. During that short period, he made a lot of inappropriate comments about the appearance and bodies of other women in our field that he found attractive. He also would often describe women in more benign, but still sexist ways—he was particularly fond of calling women "intense" in a disapproving way. (He has crafted much of his reputation on being a "chill," fun person.) I've also witnessed him use his stature to intimidate women in social situations, as well as speak directly over them in professional settings. | Grad student | Postdoc | Elite Institution/Ivy League | digital humanities | I've never said anything | I've never come forward about his behavior; he's somewhat well-known and I've worried it would be dismissed as uncollegial. | I've considered relocating to avoid running into him in professional situations. | Male | |||||
1253 | 12/7/2017 20:13:11 | I was sexually harassed and groped in my research lab. | Graduate student | Undergraduate student | Other R1 | Psychology | My advisor told the department chair without my permission, who then told the college dean. The department chair made an announcement at a meeting that the incident occurred. The chair gave several recommendations for how females can avoid and/or handle such situations (e.g., get the name of the perpetrator). I was in attendance at the meeting and looked down and started crying because I was so humiliated. The dean had the Title IX coordinator meet with me, who encouraged me to make a police report. Everybody kept saying "we don't know what you want us to do" and tried to label the incident as one thing or another. One administrator in particular told me that my story "didn't add up", even though my advisor told the story the first time. So many people were involved so quickly, and everybody seemed to want me to do the same thing: be confused and go away. | None | In the short-term, I lost about a month of productivity. In the long-term, I decided that I cannot work at a college/university. I need to be somewhere with a HR department and clear policies for addressing such incidents. | This had significant impact on my mental health. I couldn't sleep for several weeks, not only because I was upset by the incident itself but also because I was deeply stressed about how my advisor, chair, and dean were reacting to me and the situation. I was made to feel confused and guilty. I eventually gave up on the situation because it was too painful for me to continue engaging in conversation about it. | I learned to caution others against Title IX and university involvement in managing such cases. The problem was not that my advisor, chair, and dean were mal-intended; the problem was that none of them had training or knowledge about how to appropriately handle the situation. They were constantly "shocked" and guessing at appropriate next steps. I ended up having to console them because the situation was so stressful for them. And in their innocent confusion, they created a lot of hurt for me and made it difficult for me to stay in the graduate program. | Male | |||
1254 | 12/7/2017 20:14:19 | Was propositioned for sex in November 2016 | Doctoral student (writing dissertation) | Chair of dissertation committee | Other R1 | Anthropology | Title IX office found him guilty of violating policy against sexual harassment and was imposed a fine and cut in salary as a sanction (by another office) | Resigned | Switched advisers late in my dissertation, but managed to keep everything on a need-to-know basis to minimize harm from gossip | Still need to find therapist to deal with what became a "trust issue." | Do not think I could trust men that proclaim themselves to be "feminists" ever again. | Male | |||
1255 | 12/7/2017 20:25:50 | After rejecting a male student in my major/friend group, he began to harass me with texts describing sexual things he wanted to do to me. He would try to get me alone in conversations or always stand next to me in groups so that he could whisper what sexual acts he wanted to do to me without being heard, and insisted I was being rude. He harassed my new boyfriend with racist casual racist comments. When he graduated i blocked his number, so then he proceeded to message me on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. even LinkedIn until I blocked him everywhere. After that I learned he was asking our mutual friends what I had been up to lately, etc. and I told them not to tell him anything. | Undergraduate student | Undergraduate student | Penn State | Geography | I didn't report it. | Didn't report it. | When I told friends what had happened most downplayed it, or already viewed him as a creepy asshole. It was mostly male friends that downplayed it and told me I had probably lead him on, and I was being too mean to them. I then told those male friends that they were being assholes. | It pushed me further into feminism and social justice. | Male | ||||
1256 | 12/7/2017 20:27:28 | South Africa - Health Research group in Social Sciences | Adjunct and PhD student | Departmental Chair and Thesis adviser | R2 | I | Sociology | I did not report | None | I got kicked out when I confronted him | I've been depressed and unable to talk about it | Loss of motivation | Male | ||
1257 | 12/7/2017 20:33:24 | I went on a date with a male friend I had been talking to for a few weeks. He was a new fraternity initiate and we went together to the celebratory frat party. After drinking for awhile he asked if I wanted to go somewhere more private. He lead me back into a large storage room(cement floor, bare wooden shelves used for storage), and then got a sleeping bag for us to sit on. We talk for a bit then he asks for sex. I find it appalling he thought we were going to have sex there & told him so. I made it clear that wasn't going to happen. He complained for awhile and then pleaded for me to at least give him a blowjob. Also, no. We walked home, separately. The next day he sends me angry text messages about how I'm an ungrateful bitch who won't put out for him, etc. Rude comments/angry looks whenever I would see him around. I replied explaining why he was an asshole. | Undergraduate | Lived in the same dorm | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Penn State | Geography | None | I'm sure it was a good story for his fellow fraternity brothers | It reinforced my belief that fraternities are hyper-masculine and they breed a culture where sexual harassment and misogyny is normalized, and often left unchecked. | Male | ||||
1258 | 12/7/2017 20:58:55 | It's ongoing. Everyone told me this professor had a reputation of being skeevy, so I was cautious. He made his first year class (I was underage at the time) read and discuss plays regarding bestiality and sex. He drove a number of students out of the theatre department, and was forced onto sabbatical all last school year, we thought to give him time to find a new job. We had 4x as many majors declared during this year, so he clearly was not missed. This year he's back and has started making comments about my appearance and taking pictures of me without my permission. | I'm currently a junior getting my B.A. and it's an ongoing thing. | head of department, instructor of half of my classes | Small Liberal Arts College | A small women's college in the south | Theatre | I can't report it because he's known as a very personal grader. Once it happens in a way I can safely report it anonymously I will do so. I'm only at this school due to a scholarship, and I can't afford to lose it. | Supposedly he was supposed to find a new job last year but nothing yet. Still 1 of only 2 full time professors in the department (his wife teaches part time.) I'm pretty sure he's not allowed to close his office door now, so the school is aware of the issue. | I can't report it because he grades (and will continue to grade until I graduate) half of my classes. I've avoided asking clarifying questions at his office hours. I've started policing what I say and what I wear to his classes. | It's driven me back to therapy, and affected my performance as a director (I've had to cancel rehearsals because I couldn't stand to be in the theatre.) I'm also terrified of graduation, because he's | I've thought about changing majors in the past, but I have a passion for theatre. It's made me scared to continue work in grad school, but I will try to do it anyway. Therapy is helping. | Male | ||
1259 | 12/7/2017 21:20:19 | A friend of mine was creeped on by a fellow undergrad who just WOULD NOT STOP TOUCHING HER. He'd spot her and go and grab her waist or poke her or stand closer and closer until he fell against her, or any of this, all the time. This was like TWICE A WEEK FOR A YEAR. Every single time either she was like "Stop it!" or she sharply moved away, and he never got the idea. She eventually went to the Women's/LGBT Resource Center on campus for help, but the guy was not even pulled into anyone's office for a talking to. | Undergrad | Undergrad | Other R1 | none | I began developing feminist sensibilities, I guess | Male | |||||||
1260 | 12/7/2017 21:25:33 | Early 2017: a fellow phd student I shared the office with got naked and jumped on top of me, trying to kiss me and groping me. I asked her to stop and told her several times that I did not want anything with her, that I did have a girlfriend (though she knew it) and I loved my girlfriend. This continued in the next days through sexual talk, showing naked photos, and touching. I was incapable of dealing with it, preferring to ignore it, men are never taught that they can be harassed as well, and mistake all with interest from the other woman. Eventually, I fell for it and sex happened. I was lost after that, I did not know whom to ask for advice except my harasser, who continued to harass me and driving me into sex. She used everything from blackmail me that she would made it public and I would loose my girlfriend, to shame me for the cheater I was, to make me believe I was the one hurting her by refusing to be with her. In conferences she also suggested me several times to have sex and eventually started spreading the rumours about us. I, and the people around me got out of this quite damaged, she got out of this believing she did no harm to anyone, oblivious to any pain but her feeling rejected. | PhD student | PhD student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Geosciences | None. I did not complain officially, but I complained to my supervisor who said he would pay attention in the future. | None - yet. I doubt the same behaviour will not be repeated with other people. | Demotivation and period of unemployment. | Depression. Suicidal thoughts. | I had to reset as I lost girlfriend, friends and reputation in the field I worked hard to achieve. I trust in people much less. | Female | |||
1261 | 12/7/2017 22:11:39 | The Dean greeted me at a faculty meeting by kissing me on my neck. He was aiming for my face but I flinched. About a week later I met with him and told him that this had made me very uncomfortable. I asked him not to touch me again. He apologized, but it was clear that he did not think he had crossed any boundaries. | Tenured full professor | Dean | Other Type of School | Religion | I talked about this with my women colleagues. They felt that this did not rise to the level of sexual harrassment so I did not report it. | None | I had been serving on several important institutional committees and I had earned a great deal of authority. The Dean removed me from all of them. He also delayed my sabbatical. I feel as though I have never regained my professional momentum. | I am fine. But I can still viscerally remember the feel of his mouth on my neck and my frozen, horrified, nauseated physical reaction. | It’s hard to judge. | Male | |||
1262 | 12/7/2017 22:13:23 | Multiple incidents of verbal harassment, including two at separate job interviews. I am also aware of even worse harassment suffered by two of my close colleagues during the doctoral program. | Ph.D/postdoc. | Tenured professor(s) | Theology/Religious Studies | Self-doubt, shift in research plans | Serious self-doubt, loss of confidence. | I have modified research plans in response to harassment. | Male | ||||||
1263 | 12/7/2017 22:36:42 | Several graduate students posed in front of a display of vibrators in a photograph, and then posted that photo on the official twitter account for the department. The photo was discussed in professional settings with a very inappropriate "raunchy", laughing tonality. Numerous sources told me that the exact same action in any professional setting would be regarded as harassment and creating a hostile sexualized work environment. | Student | Colleagues | Other R1 | University of Texas | sociology | No response to informal complaints | None | Professional discomfort caused a change in career | Trauma | I have become more focused on the specific issue of sexual harassment dominating academic spaces | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
1264 | 12/7/2017 23:09:18 | He slid his hand up my thigh during an afternoon social. We were talking about how much we loved our respective spouses. Then I found that he'd done this to pretty much every woman in my lab, and some of the undergrads. | Graduate Student | Lecturer | Other Type of School | San Francisco State | Biology / Botany | Spoke to my advisor - he refused to hear it because he'd then have to report it. He cautioned me not to speak to the HR person who would handle the complaint because that person was so thorough that I could expect retaliation from other professors. I wrote the dean - she never replied in any way. I spoke to another professor, who asked if maybe I could have made some mistake because Lecturer was just "so awkward around women". | None. | No direct impact, bless his heart. | Honestly the institutional response was a lot worse. | I got involved with the professional community, because if it happens again I want a louder voice and I want to be able to protect other people. | Male | ||
1265 | 12/8/2017 0:20:56 | It was several events that escalated over two semesters where a male student started out with making suggestive comments, asking me where I parked my car and if he could walk me. This eventually led to journal assignments being addressed to “my dear sweet journal” and went on from there. | Adjunct lecturer | Student | Other R1 | Social Work/Social Welfare | They talked him into lessening his courseload and getting some help but I fear that he will eventually cause harm to others. | He’ll be graduating with his master’s degree from there in 2018 | I was working on my PhD at the time. I didn’t finish. | Male | |||||
1266 | 12/8/2017 0:41:52 | At both conferences I attended my first year, a professor propositioned me at a post-conference gathering. (two different professors). | First-year grad student | Tenured, well-known professor; assistant professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Psychology | None | I was scared to go on the job market for fear that these men would be making hiring decisions, and I didn't know what the "right" response would be. Going to their hotel room = terrible idea for me. Not going to their hotel room = terrible for my career? | Fear that this is what academic life as a woman would be like. | Took a job outside academia. | Male | ||||
1267 | 12/8/2017 4:39:07 | In seventh grade, the teachers assistant/trainee spent a good amount of time staring directly down my shirt. I remember feeling a chill down my spine, looking up and seeing him starong down my shirt. I promptly shut my book, and he noticed the movement and looked at me in the eyes to ask what I was reading. | Single | Playboy, single. | Other Type of School | Cunard Junior High School (Halifax, NS) | Junior High | I ignored it and proceeded to teeat him coldly from then on. | Nothing. | A lack of trust in straight male teachers. | I was extremely on edge until the year was over. | More curt/mildly aggressive behavior towards male teachers when I feel uncomfortable in any way. | I don't think my experience counts towards your study, as it happened in Junior High, but I wanted to highlight that it happened so early. | Male | |
1268 | 12/8/2017 4:54:50 | I was told not to present myself as a victim. Comments were made on how to better use my body and voice to appear stronger (more male). | PhD student | Professor | Other R1 | an institution in Germany | Philosophy | Not regarding the specific people but: (delayed) implementation of guidelines. | None. | Delay in PhD research | Has added to anxiety and sense of not belonging and being not good enough. | I dread academia but I have also met a lot of good people along the way who are understanding, supportive, and outspoken, and I don't want to give up just yet. | Male | ||
1269 | 12/8/2017 5:20:00 | From 2007 until 2014 I was routinely subjected to comments that dismissed the idea of women as leaders and comments rife with innuendo. Many comments would occur during executive staff meetings and be heard by the entire executive team. I would routinely state in the meeting to the person that he cannot make statements like that. During this my male supervisor would just sit there. The other man was never asked to stop by anyone other than me. I was never asked to stop standing up for myself, but our mutual supervisor (a campus dean) also never spoke up. In our final encounter, the man asked me to stay after a meeting stating that he had a business related question. When everyone left the room, he commented that he wished he had sat across the table from me more often for the view, told me he almost texted me during the meeting to ask me why I had put my sweater on since the view was better before I put it on and told me I was sexy. | Director of a department | Director of a department, same level, same supervisor | Regional Teaching College | Enrollment & Student Services | ignore it. My supervisor made it clear that we weren't to ever speak with compliance (AA/Title IX) | none | unknown- I did not lose my job, but I believe it impacted my effectiveness with my colleagues | I always felt like I was the crazy, angry bitch that could not stop telling people to act better. I felt unsupported by my supervisor. I felt ashamed that I didn't go to HR, but also certain that no anti-retaliation policy would protect me. In enrollment, any down turn in enrollment or retention could be used to fire me. | I don't think it changed my trajectory because I have experienced harassment and/or remarks demeaning to women's abilities in many jobs prior to higher education. Having grown up in the 1970s, it just became a 'normal' part of life to feel this way and be treated this way; and to be the only one speaking up. | Male | |||
1270 | 12/8/2017 5:23:01 | Stalked, physically threatened with rape and death, verbally threatened by a male graduate student who repeatedly appeared at my place of work, home, and threatened my life in an outburst at the campus counseling center. | recent grad, staff member on campus | graduate student | Regional Teaching College | response was positive until it was discovered that the perpetrator's family was a major donor, at which point everything changed. I was questioned about what I had done to provoke his behavior, no support in my workplace or my home from my employing department or the dean of students (who was involved because the perpetrator was still a student). Campus safety was great, but they were the exception. I moved to another town. | none. | I left a position earlier than expected, moved to another town because I believed he would kill me. | Fearfulness, limitations on my mobility on campus, always looking over my shoulder. | Male | |||||
1271 | 12/8/2017 5:27:25 | Department faculty joked of an affair between me and my undergrad advisor. I was a mature student and we were close in age. | Undergrad, mature student. | Various ranks of tenured professors. | Small Liberal Arts College | In Canada | Environmental sciences | None. Not reported. | None, as it was coffee room slander between idle-minded faculty. | None. | I was annoyed and uncomfortable, and I think she was too. Our interaction was entirely professional. I would certainly consider this to be harassment of my supervisor as the comments were made directly to her. | None, but it disabused me of the notion that academic spaces were professional. This instance and later more severe events have left me sensitive to issues like this in the workplace, and the fact that a lot academics of either gender, and especially those of rank, are moral cowards. The might be able to make a budget add-up and write grants and papers, teach, but they are lost at best when people are being seriously harmed. Looking at this survey, some of the worst offenders come from the SSH, where social justice scholarship is found, which is shameful. | At the time I wouldn't have thought of it as harassment per se, more just awkward workplace joking about, but in the past few years I've come to see this as part of the systemic problem this survey so painfully describes. As a woman ECR without tenure in a male dominated department, my advisor would have been at the mercy of comments like this, which both questioned her professionalism and undermined her status as a women, as it implied she would not be able to work collegially with men her age without it being sexual. I imagine now that if the gossip had been taken seriously by someone or some administrator, it could have cost both of us quite badly. Small-minded rumours persist more so than any facts. As this survey makes so very clear that a lot of us fucking men can't work around women (or other men) without sexualizing things, either directly or indirectly. WTF do we do about this? | There were few women in the department at the time, so it is likely that most of the gossip was generate by the male academics. | |
1272 | 12/8/2017 5:41:45 | over one-on-one drinks my first semester as TT AP accused of "stealing classes" by a senior male colleague which he "used to teach because his ex girlfriend was [my race]"; same person sent dozens of unsolicited emails about "ways to make my book ms better"; later plagiarized my work, stalked and attempted to contact me long after being asked to cease communication. between fall 2013-spring 2016. upon conversation with dean of faculty and vp for institutional diversity and equity, it was revealed that this has been a pattern in this man's conduct toward young women of color--both students and professors--for more than a decade. no institutional response that I am privy to. he is still allowed to vote on my tenure case. | first-third year assistant professor | associate and then full professor, promoted DURING investigation | Small Liberal Arts College | literature | none, "conversation" among department senior staff for which the harasser was present. I was not permitted to attend. No censure, sanction, or material outcome. Apparently he is "sorry" and also "defiant" | none. | enormous loss of time, concentration, writing hours, sleep, weight. tiny department, tiny town also meant that I took on an enormous financial burden to be able to leave town for my sabbatical, paying two rents, and giving up multiple funding opportunities to avoid continued contact. | extreme. anxiety and loss of sleep during the plagiarism semester, ongoing panic about this person's outsized impact on my tenure vote, and possible harassment of new colleagues and students of color. Started therapy one month after above "senior staff meeting" (at $300/session, 25% reimbursed, so also enormously costly). | i spent roughly $50,000 on housing and travel after deciding I would have to relocate for the duration of my sabbatical. I am also currently on the job market for many reasons, including extreme disappointment about the institutional response, as well as the close conditions of the department and uncertainty about whether constant contact/shared students/incessant social gathering with this man (and his many friends and defenders) will be manageable for me. | this is the most discreet and egregious "incident" i have experienced, but the racial discrimination and sexual harassment go back to graduate school: minor incidents and comments, degradation of female professors, invitations for intimate conversations, etc number in the dozens just for me, personally. | Male | ||
1273 | 12/8/2017 5:45:55 | I received less of a raise than my married coworkers with kids, because I was single and childless. My supervisor admitted it but nothing changed. | Supportive professional staff | Supervisor | R2 | Northern Illinois University | Communications | None. Supervisor admitted treatment wasn't equal, but his director agreed that the married staff with kids should receive a higher percentage raise than the single woman with no children. | None | Left the field | Questioned why the institution stated it did not discriminate on basis of lots of identities, but clearly the institution did discriminate on basis of marriage and children. | Male | |||
1274 | 12/8/2017 5:48:24 | Got to know professor at gym. He told me that if I wasn't a student in his class he would want to date me. He also asked me to help him stretch. He's a creep - 15 years older than me. He also continued to leer at me at the gym and in class. | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Law | I had to sit through two dozen more classes with him, which made me sick and fearful daily. Though I received a high grade in his class I was not comfortable asking him for a recommendation. | Female | ||||||||
1275 | 12/8/2017 5:53:11 | When going through tenure I was told by a powerful professor (also on my tenure committee) that I should "make nice" with a colleague, also up for tenure at the same time, despite my repeated expressing of my uncomfortable b/c of his racist, sexually inappropriate behavior to myself AND to female graduate students. We were hired at the same time. After being pressured, I met him for a bite to eat. He asked me what TV shows I liked, and I said Buffy...his response: "You know girls who like vampire shows have rape fantasies." I got up to leave and he very aggressively suggested I go to his apartment (this aggression continued until I practically ran out of the restaurant). | Assistant Professor | Assistant Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Located in Colorado | Creative Writing | Nothing (some sympathy, but nothing was done). He was eventually let go b/c of sexually harassing an undergraduate student (4 years into his job. I began lodging complaints during our first year). | None | I was judged by my colleagues. Somehow this made ME seem "unstable" | Depression, anxiety | Depression, anxiety | Male | ||
1276 | 12/8/2017 6:26:51 | In 1979 when I was a sophomore in college a professor invited me to his office hours because I was supposedly struggling in a course. (However, when I would compare my exam and assignment answers to my male peers when we would study together for the next exam or try to figure out the next assignment, I discovered that they earned As and I got Ds or Fs. Our work was nearly identical and the answers the same; this really confused me.). When I arrived in his office he motioned to a couch and asked me to sit down. I thought he would sit in the chair at his desk. He closed the door, locked it, and came and sat beside me. He told me that he knew I was a "smart girl" and that I should not be earning a D. He said that I could take care of the grade "right now" if I wanted to. I asked if he meant by redoing assignments or retaking exams. He said, "No, by doing things with me in the office right now. The door is locked and no one will ever know." I said, "I don't know what kind of person you think I am, but I'll take the D." I then immediately went to my major adviser, and told him what happened. I said I wanted to file a complaint. He told me not to do it because I was going to be abroad the entirety of the following year and he was afraid that if I filed a complaint that the school would try to block me from going. He said that I needed to trust him but the situation would be taken care of by the time I got back. He also said that he didn't want to see me get "blamed" as a victim or to have my reputation tarnished as I would be dragged through the mud. I was very upset but trusted him. I went abroad. While I was away a friend wrote to me and told me that the professor who had propositioned me had been fired because two female students had brought him up on contributing to the delinquency of a minor and sexual assault charges. I'm thankful for those two women and think of them often. They were brave. I have no idea who they were. Now, I think I was a coward. I also wonder if my major professor did the right thing by advising me not to file a complaint. However, had I not gone abroad I don't think I would have been as well positioned for graduate school, nor would I have had a series of experiences that led me to choose the professoriate as a career. My resentment, however, is that I was many years later told by a professor at my undergraduate institution that the D on my transcript knocked me out of contention for Phi Beta Kappa despite the fact that I had a higher GPA than most of the other students who were inducted during my senior year. He had been a part of the deliberations, which were very contentious and made my case memorable because normally the committee saw eye-to-eye. He was outraged when he learned the reason why I had the D on my transcript. | College sophomore | Assistant Professor and the professor of a course that was for me a social science elective. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Social Science (prefer not to name the discipline) | "Trust me" (Other things are in progress and he will get his.) | Fired, because of similar incidents. As far as I know he never had another appointment at an academic institution in the United States. | It could have de-railed it. But I kept going. | Upset at the time. Had to shake it off. Even more upset when I found out that I was not inducted into Phi Beta Kappa because of it. Had to shake it off again. But its always there--a little kernel of outrage. | None, really, other than making me into a feminist scholar. | Male | |||
1277 | 12/8/2017 6:36:59 | a group of my friends and I were groomed by a professor of ours over a period of about 3 years. He pitted us against each other for his approval and attention, purposefully curtailed our friendships with one another, and eventually went so far as to get hotel rooms at the fanciest hotel in the city and invite a few of us to "visit" him, and took one of my fellow students (who was maybe 19 years old at the time?) on vacations to New York City and to Paris. He would invite us over to his home to watch films and drink (most of us were under age at the time) and smoke with him. He did his best to make us feel "special" and like "real artists" or some shit and then he used that to manipulate us. As I was about to graduate, one day he corned me and forcefully kissed me in front of a few of our friends, who laughed as I pushed him away. He did not try to kiss or touch me afterward, likely because I had humiliated him in front of our mutual friends. However, after that I was more or less "out" of our group and he ostracized me. | Undergraduate Student | non-tenured faculty | Small Liberal Arts College | Prefer to not say | Creative Writing | the institution itself did not renew his contract, but the other professors in the department and many of the students who were not in my harasser's posse blamed the victims of his harassment (myself included) for his behavior and have since refused a number of us letters of recommendation - in one particular instance this absolutely lead to a friend of mine not getting into MFA programs when she applied, as no one from our old department would writer her a letter. We were social outcasts by the time we graduated. | He did lose his non-tenured position, but has since found work at two other universities and continues to work as a professor of English/creative writing | I have made the active choice to not go into a graduate program of any kind, largely because of this situation. I also know that I would not be able to obtain letters of recommendation from anyone in my old department , making entry into a grad program extremely difficult. Also, this fucked up relationship was my one shot at mentorship in the world of creative writing. There are a lot of doors that can be opened and connections that can be made by a good mentor for their students, and instead my "mentor" has caused doors to be slammed in my face due to his reputation which has unjustly rubbed off onto me. He no longer lives in the same city as I do, but my place in the world of creative writing in this city was absolutely negatively impacted by his behavior and continues to be. It likely always will. | I've been depressed off and on as a result of this. I constantly doubt my ability to know who to trust and how to appropriately interact with people. I tend to have the knee-jerk reaction of wanting to please people and keep them happy with me at my own expense (this is something he strongly instilled in us - the need for each of us to please and appease him more than the others) | I've lost friends over this issue, I've chosen not to continue my education as a result of this issue, this professor also introduced me to and got me to trust a man who then proceeded to sexually assault me repeatedly over the course of about 2 years and continues to stalk me. | A lot of this harassment started in the institution, and then, because we were so thoroughly groomed, continued after we graduated. The professor isolated us and set us up with this "him and us against everyone else" mentality and managed to extend our abusive relationship outside of the institution. I think sometimes it's easy to believe that one escapes these damaging relationships after one leaves an institution, but once we were properly groomed, it took a lot for each of us, individually, to escape, and none of us are friends anymore. The whole idea of older male professor being extremely close with his students was also totally normalized at this institution. There was a professor in an adjacent department who was VERY popular and VERY well-loved who was on his THIRD student-wife. | Male | |
1278 | 12/8/2017 6:49:07 | Another female graduate student and I had drinks at the biggest national conference in our field with 2 esteemed male professors; these men were co-authors of a book with my advisor. They were from different institutions. After drinks we walked and talked, and split up; the older one (who I was with) told me that we should go up to his room and talk. Once there, we kissed. He took his pants off and pushed my head to his penis, and asked me to give him a blow job (which I did.) Then he asked me to leave. I had no intention of doing anything sexual; I idolized him and wanted to talk with him. He used me for an orgasm and threw me away like a kleenex. My self esteem was shaken for years. This occurred in 1982; I'm now 59 years old. | Second year doctoral student at my first academic conference. | Full professor at another university; the former senior professor and mentor to my (female) mentor,. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | It was at the Academy of Management national conference. | Industrial/Organizational Psychology | None, but then, I didn't tell anyone. | N/A | It took me 10 years to complete my Ph.D.; I had to leave graduate school to develop an identity as a professor before I could complete it. | Insecurity, self-doubt, feelings of worthlessness. | I moved away from research into teaching. I have since moved into academic administration. | Male | ||
1279 | 12/8/2017 6:50:21 | I witnessed a female undergraduate being verbally and physically harassed and demeaned in public with no regard for the student, myself or the female guest in the room who were trying to protect her | visiting assistant professor | tenured male professor in the department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Cornell | Art | An curriculum advisor in the college spoke to me after two other eye witnesses reported it and rather than investigating, covered for the professor | none, absolutely nothing done | It was the last episode in a pattern of debasement and misogyny against female students and faculty that forced me to leave academia--a safe haven for abusive personalities | anxiety and lack of self confidence in my capacity as an artist, mentor and teacher | I left academia after 25 years of teaching | Of all the institutions I have taught, the Ivy league is the worst with respect to abusive men. Their abuse of their power and the rampant institutional defense strategies to dismiss or minimize their behavior needs to be exposed. | Male | |
1280 | 12/8/2017 6:58:23 | I was a "mature" undergrad- older but very naive. I had dreamed of the small, get-togethers- My business law professor invited me to a gathering at his home. When I arrived, I was the only one there. He propositioned me, I declined, and he threatened my grade in his class. I left as quickly as I could. I was ever after avoiding him in the parking ramp. | Undergrad student | My business law professor | I don't know what R1 and R2 mean. It was a land grant university | Business - Accounting, then MBA | I never told anyone | None - Within two years he died when he ran off the road and hit a construction site and killed a worker. | It affected my trust of people. | I was afraid I would see him every time I went to the parking ramp. | Male | ||||
1281 | 12/8/2017 7:00:02 | I was manipulated by a predatory reader/adviser for my dissertation into a sexual relationship. My primary adviser, and hence first reader, was on family leave, so this second reader became the person I was dependent upon for guidance, mentorship, and affirmation of my work. (also, my marriage was going downhill at the time, so I was pretty vulnerable) This second reader invited me out for drinks on a weekly basis, began to "dis" my primary adviser and my third reader, and shared with me his marital problems and frustrations. I was flattered that he thought "highly" enough of me to share these confidences and to be so honest with me - and as a clergy person, I was easily drawn in to his need to disclose and share his "troubles." This ultimately led to a sexual relationship while at a conference in England - after my dissertation was turned in, but before my defense. He could have waited to screw me until after the defense - the fact that he didn't demonstrates the power play involved. I wound up utterly "smitten" (think Monica Lewinsky, here) and also became physically ill - developing ulcerative colitis. | As stated above, I was in the process of researching and writing my dissertation when the predatory, manipulative behavior began, and was awaiting defense of my dissertation when the sexual relationship began. | He was Associate Professor coming up for tenure review, and was my second reader on my diss and adviser. | Other Type of School | Drew University | US Religious History | Ha! I filed a complaint. The complaint was brought to hearing. Since the complaint was against a faculty member, the hearing committee was composed of 6-8 faculty members and 1 student. I had to sign that I would not speak of this complaint to anyone (my "witnesses", who were employees of the university, also had to sign and felt the intimidating effects of testifying on my behalf). When I filed, the professor resigned before the hearing even took place! He was apparently persuaded to not resign and it was switched to a LOA for the fall semester. He denied everything and his "witnesses" spoke of my inappropriate dress and flirtatious behavior. One of his witnesses was the dean of the graduate school! She attended the same church as I did and quit speaking to me there (including turning her back on me during the "passing of the peace") once I filed the complaint. The determination of the committee was that there was not enough evidence to warrant censure or any other action. I was told it would nonetheless be so difficult for him because he would carry this embarrassment walking around campus and when he encountered the faculty that were at the hearing. | At the initial filing of the complaint, his office was moved from a more isolated place on campus to the main building that houses the office of the dean and other offices of the Theological School's faculty. The hearing was held in early October, 2008; he was granted tenure in January, 2009. He became Academic Dean a year or two after that. | My marriage fell apart and my husband, who has his own set of mental health issues, became very vindictive. I spent the first two years of my visiting faculty position at Middlebury College having to focus on getting divorced and stabilizing the health and well-being of my three teen aged children. This meant I spent little time in research and publication as most newly-minted PhD's do. I spent a couple years in counseling to discover my work and abilities are strong on their own - and not because the professor was manipulating me. I gave up on pursuing academia, and am now in full-time ministry. | As stated above, my marriage broke down and my confidence sunk to all-time lows. I suppose a "positive" outcome was that I threw myself into counseling and am more confident than I was before entering my doctoral program. But it has also opened my eyes to the prevalence of sexually predatory behavior on campuses - and the belief that sex with students is simply one of the perks of the job. | Most of this was stated above. | Male | ||
1282 | 12/8/2017 7:00:40 | Professor looked at my chest instead of my eyes, inappropriately kissed a part of my body in front of others, & had a pattern of repeated unwanted behavior towards female students. I won't share their stories here, as they are not mine to share. | Graduate student | Professor, Thesis Advisor | R2 | liberal arts | Response from Title IX Coordinator was ineffective & unclear. I was told the professor would be talked to about his behavior, but I received no follow up about anything and no resolution about the situation. | None. He continues to harass current students. | Thankfully, none. | Indescribable - I think I was just in shock & denial, trying to downplay it in my head & not allowing myself to delve into how humiliated & disrespected I felt. | I had planned on continuing for a PhD, but my experience at this university (the harassment as well as just general ineffectiveness & disorganization) has made me almost totally certain that I will not continue a career in academia. | Male | |||
1283 | 12/8/2017 7:12:03 | Sexual tension and pressure used to barter promotion to tenure track | Post doc | Tenured associate professor | Other R1 | [redacted] | [redacted] | Remains to be seen. | I’m afraid to see him in the hallways. I feel powerless. May speak to a therapist. | May have to leave academia and ny. He knows everyone | [redacted] | Male | |||
1284 | 12/8/2017 7:12:05 | Professor took me to dinner with other professors from out of town and asked me personal questions about my sex life that I did not want to answer at the dinner | Graduate student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Brown | English | Makes me afraid of interacting with my advisor | Male | ||||||
1285 | 12/8/2017 7:13:03 | A so called "colleague" asked for my help with a computer problem. We walked together into his office where he had left a pornographic image of a naked woman with her legs splayed apart. He said he was having trouble with his mouse, acted like the image was ordinary, and put his hand on my shoulder. Before that, I had noticed that he brought his lunch and stayed in his office with the door closed and many times when I walked by his office there seemed to be images on the screen that he quickly clicked to close. | Research Assistant, completing graduate studies at a prestigious private university | He was a research scientist and had just been awarded funding as Co-Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation research grant | R2 | Psychology | Assistant Director of the institute talked to him and he promised not to do it again. He promised to keep his door open at lunch. My request to move from my office right next to his to an office in a different part of the building was denied. I had to walk by his office anytime I left to go to lunch, to get a drink of water, go to the restroom, etc. A year later I couldn't help but notice that he was closing his door at lunch and many times a day displayed the images of breasts and other naked women's poses on his computer again. I began to limit the # of times I left my office to minimize having to look at the images. | The assistant director was out of town at a conference when a university leader called the perpetrator to investigate the second time (a year after the legs-splayed incident) in response to an anonymous report from a different source (not me). The perpetrator and the department director (not the assistant director I spoke with) met in the university leader's office. The perpetrator admitted to viewing porn on his computer and was fired on the spot as a violation of university COMPUTER policy. I was not informed and was studying in my office over the weekend as graduate students often do (working on my thesis defense) ...when he came in the building to clean out his office. I feared for my safety and ran out of the building. I called the assistant director and he expressed his dismay that he wasn't informed - and that the director didn't prep/protect the perpetrator for the meeting with university leadership. He said that he had never told the director about our conversation or the incident that happened the previous year. | I was terminated after I completed my graduate studies. | fear, doubt, anger... | As I had worked in another department for some time, I knew that I would qualify for retirement within 5 1/2 months of the date I was informed that my employment would end. I talked to my director to ask for this short extension (the same man to whom I reported the incident initially - he was assistant director at that time and was now director of the department). He said absolutely not ...and told me that "anytime I needed clarification of my end date to come and ask him again, that his answer would be the same." | The director who terminated my employment continues as the current director of the department. | Male | ||
1286 | 12/8/2017 7:14:51 | I have been dealing with an overbearing and stalking man, who was my former Dean of Students when I was an undergrad, for many years. We worked closely when I was an undergraduate and he was the Dean of Students, as I was heavily involved in student government. But the harassment didn't really start until after I graduated and I was in grad school and he was no longer in a position of true power over me, at least institutionally. When I was in graduate school in abroad, he came overseas for an "official visit" to a study abroad institution his university in the States had a relationship with, but now I'm not sure it was really for official business or just to visit me. We met at a museum but I came down with a headache. He gave me a very strong painkiller and I started to feel sick from the drug. We were staying in the same hotel (when we checked in, he tried to get me to stay in his room, but I insisted on my own room). I ended up falling asleep in my room and when I woke up he was in the bed with me. I asked him to leave and he did without too much protest. Since then, he is very clingy through email and once came to my hometown while I was there to visit my family and got very angry with me when I couldn't make time to see him and wanted to instead spend time with my family. He often emails me angrily when I don't email him for many weeks. When I got my first academic job, he would often write and ask if there ways for me bring him over as a "consultant" or a "guest speaker," which I never did, but he would get a little upset with me when I wouldn't respond. He asked me for a letter of recommendation which I wrote, but because I was starting to recognize how his behavior with me over the years was inappropriate, the letter was sort of lukewarm. He wrote an angry email to me demanding that I rewrite the letter. I have since cut off communication with him although he occasionally messages me on LinkedIn. | Graduate student | Former superior, but when the harassment happened, we were not working in the same institution and he was not my superior other than age and experience, and I relied on him for letters of recommendation as I was entering the job market. | Other Type of School | political science | Because we weren't in the same institution, there was no where to report it to. | n/a | I have felt a sense that I owe him something as I went through graduate school and then to the academic job market, since he wrote me many letters of recommendation. And I think he exploited that. I probably relied on his letters far too late in my career when I should have been relying on more recent supervisors. | It is difficult to say, but it is likely that I was passed up for job opportunities when they saw I was using a letter from a superior from my undergraduate school. | Male | ||||
1287 | 12/8/2017 7:36:42 | When I was a freshman at a small liberal arts college I took a political science general education course taught by a 26 year old male professor, who was also the head of a local political party. I had befriended another student in that class and we were among the most talkative and engaged in the subject matter. While the class was still going on, the professor sent me a friend request on FaceBook. I accepted and he started chatting with me online, noting that he liked the same movies and music as I did. One day I was having a rough time with family issues and he started chatting with me online about it, then suggested I come over to his apartment to watch The Princess Bride with him. I went and he kissed me and called me a man-eater. I was surprised and disgusted and I left. That same semester, he had sex with the other student in my class. All of this occurred while he was still our professor and had yet to grade us. Later, I met and spoke to one of his graduate assistants, a young man. He told me that this professor had taught HIM how to spot which young women in any given class have the lowest self-esteem, and then how to sleep with them. | I was a freshmen student | My professor - teaching a class I was currently enrolled in. | Small Liberal Arts College | The College of Saint Rose | Women's Studies | It had not occurred to me that a professor was allowed to treat students like peers or sexual objects. Learning that this professor had, was trying to, and would continue to sleep with students was very disturbing to me. Above all, learning that he was teaching this behavior to other young men was sickening. I would say I withdrew socially for a few months as a result of this incident. | When I arrived as a freshmen I wanted to be a chemistry major. As a result of this incident and another incident where the head of the chemistry department said, "women can't make it through this program," (at a school that was 74% female), I decided to become a Women's Studies major. | Male | |||||
1288 | 12/8/2017 7:53:17 | What I expeirenced was not "sexual" harassment (that is, it was not sexual in nature), but gender-based harassment (bullying and harassment because I'm a woman). I was consistently bullied (yelled and cursed at in department meetings, chased down the hall while being screamed at) by one senior male professor in my department, and also strongly and consistently undermined by another senior professor in my department (which I only found out about later). I was not treated equally to the male assistant professors (similar achievements did not "count" for as much as me, similar weaknesses were counted more heavily against me). Although many younger male colleagues expressed sympathy and support in private conversations, no one supported me publicly (e.g., in department meetings) - I was on my own to defend myself, and therefore was considered "strident" and "unpleasant." | Assistant professor | Senior professors in my department. The most overt one was the former chair (and acting chair during part of my time in the department - specifically the time he chased me down the hall screaming at me) | Small Liberal Arts College | Trinity University | Biology | I submitted two complaints while I was there. The administration and a faculty committee acknowledged that "some" of the incidents I reported "seemed to be true," but offered only minimal and meaningless remedies, which were not followed up on (or even remembered by the administration two years later). | None | I left the institution. I am still in academia but not as faculty. | It took a heavy toll during my time there, and for several years afterwards. | I spent too long there and it took a lot out of me. My experience made me look much more closely at institutions and departments where I applied for faculty positions. In the end I found faculty positions to be less and less attractive every year I applied, and finally decided I needed to do something else in academia. I'm happy with that decision, I just wish I had come to it earlier. | Male | ||
1289 | 12/8/2017 7:54:32 | At a conference, I was sitting at a dinner table with 6 other academics, all male, all older/more advanced in their careers than me, and none of whom I knew very well. Two were prominent, older professors who are very well-known in our small STEM field. One of them said “So tell us about yourself” and before I could even open my mouth he said “Who did you have sex with to get here?” Only one of the men (the other prominent professor) said anything to indicate the inappropriateness of the comment, and the others just laughed quietly or were silent. | Post-doctoral fellow | Full Professor with Honors | Other R1 | Quantitative Psychology | No direct negative consequences that I’m aware of, but I have to see all of these men at conferences and it’s rather humiliating. | After the event, and every time I think or talk about it, I feel real rage and helplessness. | I feel I have to work harder than my male colleagues now to prove that I deserve the same respect. | Male | |||||
1290 | 12/8/2017 8:09:19 | There was a man in a higher up position in my program. He made it seem like we were friends and like I was his protege or something like that. He hired me as work study to work in his office. When I had boy trouble, he helped me and talked me through it, since he was friends with the other undergraduate student who I was dating. He often took me to lunch. He once told my boyfriend (mentioned before) that he was lucky to date me. He would comment on my clothes if something didn’t fit right. When I told him I’m bisexual, he made a joke of it because he didn’t believe me. Once, when I didn’t turn in an assignment on time and he over-reacted by criticizing me in front of my class, he texted me afterward and all he said was “it’ll be ok.” I looked up to him, and I took advantage of having someone higher up in the school’s administration by my side. He seemed to have a lot of faith in me. It took me a few years to realize how toxic it had been. It took until joining a program where the professors are professional to realize that what he was doing was wrong. | Undergraduate student | Faculty/ administration | Small Liberal Arts College | Tusculum College | English | I asked a member of staff what I should do, and she said she didn’t understand why I would do anything. | Made it very difficult to find a graduate school that wasn’t run by a man like him | Significant | Significant | Male | |||
1291 | 12/8/2017 8:10:05 | As a freshman, professor singled me out for special treatment because of my 'special' intelligence. Offered mentorship and support, but that only manifested in increasingly personal conversations, misleading information about his relationship status (married), and suggestive conversations on the phone including 1. that he was naked 2. that he had slept with other graduate students 3. personal questions about my sexuality. | Undergrad | Assistant prof. | Small Liberal Arts College | Oberlin College | N/A | N/A | Mistakenly thought this faculty member would provide useful advice and mentorship on my academic career (untrue), meaning that I was left largely without support in pursuing my academic career. After realizing extent of manipulation, I didn't trust mentors or seek mentorship again until the end of my phd. | Male | |||||
1292 | 12/8/2017 8:13:36 | He offered mentorship and support, invited me to speak, and during a moment alone said "If you were single and I were younger I would be flying to your city every week to pursue you." Also told me a long and threatening story about his aggressive pursuit of other younger women who had rejected him. | PhD Candidate | Senior library staff with doctorate. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Brown University | Literature | Had a conversation with his supervisor, who was very supportive. | Supervisor offered to keep me informed, but I chose not to be - it made me too uncomfortable and anxious. | None that I know of. | Months of anxiety and self-doubt | None. | Male | ||
1293 | 12/8/2017 8:22:34 | After choosing to do an honors thesis on how college students understand consent, my thesis advisor said he had to "introduce" me to the field of sex research by telling me stories about how his own advisor had breastfed her child in front of him, and how he had to prove he could talk to her about his research while her bare breast was exposed, and that I needed to learn to be similarly comfortable. He described a time he performed oral sex on his sleeping partner, who awoke during the incident and was so upset she locked herself in the bathroom. Once, when I wore an outfit (shorts with tights under them) that exposed the tattoo on my thigh, he reached out and touched it while remarking, "you know, based on my research, women with large tattoos like this generally have a lot of sexual partners" and continued to make comments about my tattoos, piercings, and sexuality while I was alone with him in his office. He the invited me to get Chinese food with him, which I declined. My thesis was already overdue and he had already caused me significant delays, and my admission to graduate school was dependent on me turning in my thesis, so I completed the work as quickly as possible so I could submit the thesis and never see him again. | Undergraduate student | He was my Honors Thesis advisor and a professor I had taken three classes with over the course of my four years of college | Other R1 | Psychology | Since I didn't feel comfortable talking to this man or being near him anymore, I lost someone who could have provided a really strong recommendation for me, which has hurt my ability to apply for PhD programs. | Male | |||||||
1294 | 12/8/2017 8:27:52 | There are too many microaggressions to even list- constant sizing up by male colleagues, comments on my clothing, weight, etc. Two representative incidents: A male undergrad became fixated with me when I was a TA. He would follow me to my office after class, tell me about his personal problems, anf finally, he begain following me on the train. I told the professor of the course and he said, the semester is almost over, it will blow over- asked that i didn't make a big deal and advised that a complaint would be seen negatively in the department. Another incident occured when I was a brand new asst. professor and I returned to my grad institution for a visit. When I saw a former professor he said. "Now that you are employed and don't need references I can finally try to fuck you." I was so uncomfortable I laughed it off saying "Good Luck!" He kept emailing and showed up in the audience at two talks I gave that were unrelated to his field. I have stopped going to national conferences out of fear f seeing him. I know many women that do not attend the AHA conference in order to avoid creeps. | Grad student (PhD)/TA and later as an Asst. Professor | a student when i was a TA and a professor/advisor | Other R1 | History | i was terrified to report it. everything told me I would be labeled as a troublemaker. I was told by a female colleague to avoid drawing attention to my status as a woman | none | i cannot attend the national conference for my discipline as the harasser is a well known and successful historian who regularly attends | It destroyed my self- esteem. I developed an eating disorder from the anxiety | Male | ||||
1295 | 12/8/2017 8:29:29 | I was a first-year grad student at my first academic conference, and I met a professor with some status in my field. I was star-struck. He invited me to join him for dinner. Yes, I really was naive enough to think it was purely professional, since we were both married, and we'd only talked about our work and studies. Then he started hitting on me. (It seems his wife had little or no interest in him and his work, and he didn't think my husband should be any impediment.) I made my lack of interest clear, and he backed off. When I've seen him since, he's been friendly, but not inappropriately so. | First-year grad student. | Full professor and editor of a journal in my field. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | This was in a field, rather than an institution. | Medieval Studies | N/A | N/A | It just alerted me to the fact that men of a certain age in academe may take a sexual interest in women who are half their age. In my situation, I'm scrappy and sometimes oblivious to power dynamics, and I'd had a long history of physical assaults, so I found the encounter more sad than intimidating. I can imagine that for another woman, the situation could have deterred her from submitting an article to the journal this man was editing or going on a job interview at his institution. | I definitely have imposter syndrome as an academic. So when I'm talking research with an esteemed professor and he takes my compliments about his work as flattery from an attractive young woman rather than intellectual engagement with a junior scholar, it doesn't help. | I think now I just keep it in the back of my mind that a professional relationship can go off the rails, because the other person might have romantic intentions. This is true, whether I'm dealing with a student or colleague, a man or a woman. (I've also been hit on by a male and a female student over the years.) I'm also mindful about my own comportment to avoid my intentions being misconstrued, especially since I've been a senior professor. | I had a classmate in grad school, a young woman, who decided to seduce a couple of older professors. As in, she said aloud that that was what she planned to do. She got expensive jewelry out of the deal. It was like watching a fifties movie in real life, and the rest of the faculty, fully aware, chose to ignore it. It was definitely consensual, but not great for the culture. | Male | |
1296 | 12/8/2017 8:39:32 | I was invited to work with five colleagues on a research project and I was the only one who was from a different department. The lead researcher kept telling me that in order to be a successful in this project, I needed to make myself more physically attractive in order to get tenure. He would stare at my breasts and ask me questions about them. It was unnerving. He said my research was brilliant and what the project needed to be successful. He never wanted to discuss my research, just my body and appearance. I was date raped in college and have experienced several negative experiences in my life related to working with men so I do not trust easily. It took a lot for me to agree to work in a group research project, but my department chair assured me this was key for me to earn tenure. | Assistant Professor | He was a tenured faculty member and my Department Chair's best friend. | Other R1 | University of Illinois, Chicago | Library Science | did not report | Did not receive tenure; only member of the project who did not receive tenure | Devastating | Still recovering | Still working on that issue | Male | ||
1297 | 12/8/2017 8:43:59 | From 2009-2010, while working for a professor as an RA/TA and also taking class with him he expressed an unusual level of interest in my family background. He displayed quotes from a book my father had written on the front door of his office. He texted me at odd hours of the night asking what I was doing. We were working on a book chapter together and near the end of my final year he asked to pick me up at my apartment and take me to a nature preserve to discuss our project. I declined and suggested we meet at his office. He persisted. I declined again. After speaking with another faculty member about the incident, I sent him an email saying that I wanted to keep our relationship professional. He then sent me an email stating that his behavior was "completely above board" but that I was right that there was something he wanted to ask me: to be an egg donor. He was in his early 60s at the time. I did not reply and he sent another email stating that I was immature. All of my friends know about this incident and I still have the email from him. | Graduate Student | Named Professor; Supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Emory University | Religious Studies | I spoke with another professor about the incident and she told me she would take it as far as I wanted her to take it. I needed the professor's recommendation for applications to Ph.D. programs so I decided not to pursue it. | None | I switched academic fields. I did not try nearly as hard as I would have on my GRE or graduate school applications. Fortunately, I was accepted into a Ph.D. program, but I believe I would have had more options had he not harassed me. | As a consequence, I routinely second-guess my intelligence and competence. I wonder whether there is an ulterior motive behind the praise I receive from faculty members. | Male | |||
1298 | 12/8/2017 8:50:26 | Another graduate student sexually assaulted me. Some other graduate students (previously friends) called my story into question because both my rapist and I had histories of sexual trauma. They refused my requests to stop inviting him to gatherings and parties, and said I needed to get therapy instead. Another graduate student (a woman) wrote an anonymous note to my rapist's thesis advisor (a woman) saying that I'd been spreading rumors about my rapist. Neither of these women said anything to me directly about this (I found out through third parties), both of them identify as feminists and claim to support survivors. My rapist told me that he respected me as a writer, and asked me to please not write about him. | Graduate student | Graduate student | Other R1 | Midwestern state school | Creative writing | None | None | I became isolated from many of my peers and at least one professor because of this, and can no longer network with those people or ask that professor for a reference. | Depression, anxiety, PTSD, isolation, panic attacks, etc. | I am now working in a different field. | Thank you for doing this. | Male | |
1299 | 12/8/2017 8:52:19 | From 1999-2001 I experienced repeated verbal sexual harassment - in the form of the professor often talking about his sexual escapades to me and repeatedly propositioning me. When I told the professor this intimate information and his advances made me uncomfortable, this talk only escalated. He also included me in numerous business dinners and "pretended" I was his date (I was and am married), introducing me to colleagues and even the restaurant hostess as his girlfriend. I avoided being with him on his own as much as possible, but he was quite public about these matters and we all "laughed it off." He was elderly at the time and I was 35 years younger. I was in a lowly secretarial position and he a major research star with a long history of federally funded research to his credit at a Research 1 University. | Low-level clerical staff | Highly regarded and federally funded professor at a major Medical Center | Other R1 | N/A | After gently confronting the professor on my own for a few years, I finally attended a mediated meeting with my administrator (supervisor) and the professor. During this meeting my administrator declined to serve as my advocate, taking on the role of a silent note taker. Retaliation ensued and after three years of stellar performance reviews, it became clear to me that the professor wanted me gone and could do serious harm to my livelihood. I had a large family to support and was just starting my career after raising my young children. Suddenly, everything I did was wrong and my performance was critiqued as inferior. I obtained a position on another campus at the same institution without references from my employer (the professor) or my supervisor (the administrator). I was simply lucky-this was virtually unheard of at my institution at the time. | None. When I left the position, having secured a promotion on another campus at the same institution, my administrator let me know that this professor had "a stack" of similar grievances against him that has never been acted upon by HR at the institution. He was a rain maker and highly esteemed researcher and the institution would not reprimand him, at least to my knowledge. | Despite this harassment, I have thrived at my institution and continued to be promoted until I reached a senior research leadership position, however I have always been afraid that this powerful professor could do me, my family,, and my reputation harm. Even though he has left the institution, and I have worked for several other powerful professors who can attest to my excellence, I am to this day in fear of this professor's reach. I never talk about my experience and indeed, even now writing about this experience for this survey causes me some anxiety. | It was an awful, stressful time when our family desperately needed my salary. I basically buried all of the anxiety of that time. Aside from a permanent dread of this man, milder now that I have a 15-year award winning record of work and reputation behind me, I have survived and indeed thrived at my institution. | I left a Medical Center environment to work at a less prestigious college campus. I have been repeatedly promoted, and increased my earning potential over the years, but I suspect the medical center salaries are higher than the college. | I have been in a position to interview numerous staff candidates over the years for various administrative positions. One always asks "why are you leaving your current position." I have been shocked at how many staff have been sexually harassed/abused by professors and doctors at the institution, and are trying to quietly move on, just to make a living, as I did. Low level staff are as vulnerable as students, in my opinion, to powerful doctors and professors. | Male | ||
1300 | 12/8/2017 9:04:03 | As a new Assistant Professor in my first month on the job, I was suddenly kissed by a tenured, male professor. He continued to flirt with me relentlessly. I was scared to rebuff him as I was a single mother and desperate to keep my job. I know this was a minor incident, but it turned out that he was acting much more aggressively sexually with his graduate students, who eventually filed agains him and he has been suspended from his position and may be fired. | Assistant Professor, untenured. | Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, tenured. | R2 | English Department | None for years, despite many complaints. The Chair was later quoted as having responded by saying "that's just the way he is." However, after several brave graduate students persisted with legal claims, the university put him on leave and it seems like he may be fired. | Placed on leave, may still be fired. | This man was just one of many abusive men in that department. Another colleague more directly in charge of my tenure process harassed me by belittling me at department meetings, sending me vicious emails criticizing my work, and yelling at me in my office. The work environment was so toxic that despite the fact that a) this was an excellent job, b) my students gave me glowing evaluations, c) the Chair suggested that I go up for tenure early, and d) I was a single mother with two children settled in the school district there, I decided to go back on the job market as the stress and anxiety of working there was crushing. I was very fortunate to find another position, but I took a pay cut and a course-load increase just to get away fro, that man. At least two women my bullying superior had hired in his discipline quit after just a few years there (one without another job lined up) as he was so difficult to work with. In my final department meeting, another senior colleague finally said out loud that I had been yet another victim of this man's abuse. Too little, too late. So, the impact for me was less money, more work, disruption of my home life, but maybe worst of all was the chronic stress I felt during the three years under him. | Enormous. I was fearful of losing my job every day. As a single mother, this stress was immense. I developed deep, chronic anxiety for which I am still being medicated. | Male | ||||
1301 | 12/8/2017 9:04:41 | A dated a fellow graduate student. When we broke up, he stalked me, threatened me, broke into my apartment, and tried to physically attack me. I got a restraining order and he got felony charges. I reported this to my department chair but they continued to offer him TA positions. He then groomed and brutally raped, assaulted, and stalked an undergraduate. After a 2+ year investigation, he was expelled, but his expulsion was overturned and converted to a suspension. He has taught at several small local colleges since then. | Visiting Assistant Professor (former grad student) | Graduate student | Other R1 | Michigan State University | English | None at first; after another victim came forward they investigated and suspended him | 2 year suspension while ABD | Left academia | Extensive | Male | |||
1302 | 12/8/2017 9:14:41 | At a neuroscience department retreat after-party, I was talking to a male faculty who I had never met but I knew I would have the opportunity to work with in my next rotation. I was drunk (I assume he was too). He kept telling me that he wanted me in different ways. I told him very bluntly and seriously that nothing was going to happen. At one point he told me he had an affair with a graduate student in his lab, while at his former institution. I told him that was wrong. I should have just walked away. Later that night when I was even more drunk, he walked us away from the party, he kissed me and fingered me on a chair outside of his hotel room building and kept trying to convince me to come in and spend the night. I continued to refuse to go inside and at a certain point, I think it was when he was about to perform oral sex on me (but it is all a bit fuzzy), I said I wanted to go and I left. I had not been saying no the whole time, I was very drunk and I think was just going along with it. However, I think back to how I told him in the beginning of the night that nothing was going to happen. I believe he should have known not to do any of it. A week or so later I had to see him at a 1st-year symposium where faculty give short talks to encourage students to join their labs. I avoided him, but afterwards he emailed me to ask if we could get coffee. I said no and he continued to email back a few times after. I did not respond and then he stopped. He has not contacted me since then (~3 years ago). | 1st-year PhD Student | Faculty / Professor / PI | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Neuroscience | None. I believe there would have been, but I never reported it to anyone above a graduate student in the department. I waited a whole year before I even told one other graduate student friend in the program. I did not want to become tied to the incident and have my reputation (within a small and relatively close-knit department full of people I respect) be affected. I want to be known for my intellect instead. | none. | Nothing significant. In my next rotation I had the opportunity to choose between two different projects, one of them was a collaboration with his lab and would demand weekly meetings with him. So, I chose the other one. I probably would not have joined his lab anyway, it wasn't as aligned with my interests. I have warned other female graduate students in my department away from his lab. However, his graduate students mostly come from a different department, so I probably have not protected all graduate student women from him. | Short term: I was distraught. It was during my first few months in the graduate program so I felt afraid and lonely. I went away for the weekend to visit an old friend in DC (the program I was at is in a nearby city) to talk about it. I cried every day for a while. I felt very guilty. Long term: It did not affect my long term mental health. However, it took me over a year to decide that I shouldn't blame myself entirely. And I have to remind myself each time I think about it. That he was a faculty member and I was a rotation student; it was his responsibility to stop/never start what happened. That I was drunk, and that even though I did not continue to say no, that I had at the beginning and he should have respected that. | TBD. I still feel guilty both for the incident and for not reporting it. Because he told me that this is a pattern of his, I am confident that he will do it again, and feel horrible that I can't protect those women. But I also really do not want to have to deal with anything that comes with reporting. I want to succeed in science. Someday, when I am a PI, or the head of a neuroscience program, I will run my lab/program such that there can be anonymous reporting by graduate students about any specific faculty in the program. | Male | |||
1303 | 12/8/2017 9:18:03 | While I was PhD student, the departmental administrative assistant would routinely comment on the appearance of my legs and body, especially during summers when I would wear shorts. | PhD student | Administrative Assistant | Other R1 | Chicago | Astronomy | NA | NA | I avoided her and had less administrative support from her. | I felt that this atmosphere was tolerated and treated it as one of the negative aspects of my field. | NA | Female | ||
1304 | 12/8/2017 9:22:26 | Senior professor and grad school advisor always questioned me about my love life and went it into lots of detail about his, which I never asked for. Every advising meeting became an hours long marathon of discomfort - I'd often text other grad students to have them come pop in to rescue me. | Graduate Student | Full Professor, Advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | None | Had to change advisors to someone less in line with what I study, but I was happy to. | Male | |||||||
1305 | 12/8/2017 9:23:11 | In a mechanical engineering undergraduate class the professor was talking about the rigidity of long rods. He looked at the four females in the class and said we would know all about that. The other female students put their heads down; I was an older student, so I just stared at him. Most of the male students laughed nervously. When I got home, I e-mailed my adviser immediately to tell him what happened. | Student | Professor | Other R1 | University at Buffalo | Industrial engineering | Supposedly they had a meeting to discuss, and I heard through the grapevine that it wasn't the first time they'd heard about inappropriate remarks from him. The undergraduate dean found out it was me who complained, and asked if the instructor had penalized me by lowering my grade; he had not. | None. He was an adjunct who continued to teach at that institution. | None, but I wonder about the other females in the class. I have no idea if they dropped out of engineering or persisted. | None; it was a little awkward at swim meets, because his children were in the same swim league as mine. He had to know I complained about him, because I refused to look away as everyone else did in the class. | None, really--except that I told my kids what to do if they faced similar situations, and I talk about it with colleagues when we discuss harassment. I have daughters and a son; I wouldn't want any of them to deal with this garbage in class. | Male | ||
1306 | 12/8/2017 9:31:19 | Gender based harassment. A full time professor whose class was scheduled before mine interrupted my class to search for something he thought he'd left behind. In front of my class, he accused me of stealing his missing item. (Which I didn't.) He said that women were "untrustworthy." I complained to the head of the program, who laughed. A few weeks later, our final exams were scheduled back to back in the same room. When I arrived on time, the harasser "tsk tsk"-ed me away, then yelled at me to "get out of his room!", calling me a liar when I said my final was scheduled at that time. While I was outside, trying to contact the department head, he sent my arriving students home, telling them that my final had been cancelled. It had not been cancelled. I had to hang a sign on the building door redirecting my students to an empty room to avoid him and hold my final. As you can imagine, many students were either sent home or were confused and did not complete the final. I complained to the department head again and was told that the other professor claimed that I'd fabricated the incident. He laughed and called me "crazy." One of worst experience I've ever had adjuncting. Nothing ever came of it. The harasser is still teaching there. | Adjunct | Full time | Regional Teaching College | Western Connecticut State University | Creative Writing | None | None | Psychological stress and despair. | Psychological stress and despair. | I am no longer in academia. | Male | ||
1307 | 12/8/2017 9:39:38 | During an interview for grad school in 2002, a faculty member made a comment about my appearance and tied it to his interest in me as a candidate for the program. | Applicant for PhD program | Full Professor, well respected in the field | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Pennsylvannia | Art History | I was not accepted into the program. I have had the occasional moment of wondering if I was being propositioned. | Embarrassment and shame. | Male | |||||
1308 | 12/8/2017 9:51:06 | While a student at the U of A, it was an open secret that several professors (female and male) were engaging in affairs with students. When deciding on graduate studies, I was warned by a trustworthy senior professor about who to avoid. | undergraduate | Associate Professors, Assistant Professors | Other R1 | University of Alberta | English and Film Studies | When confronted about engaging in affairs with students in a department meeting, I was told that a female professor involved claimed that the relationships had the effect of empowering students, of helping them come to greater confidence about their sexuality. As if. | none | Because of the dept's unhealthy environment, my years at the University of Alberta were lonely and stressful. | A professor in the U of A English dept is currently making a career out of advocating for survivors of sexual predation in university settings.The irony of this is frustrating. Maybe she should survey her place of employment? | female and male professors | |||
1309 | 12/8/2017 9:53:23 | For the most part, this was harassment-because-of-sex, and not of a sexual nature. My graduate assistantship was editorial and I reported to a male boss whose office I was often in alone. He teased and belittled me, making fun of my clothes for being too professional, and "trying too hard" (I wore the typical 'male' work uniform of oxford-style shoes, pants, a blazer, but apparently for women this wasn't appropriate), and my body language (he would get up and imitate the way I stood, then tell me I was acting insecure or childlike... perhaps because he made me feel those things). Whenever I mentioned or made edits related to sex, gender, race, or sexuality, he'd make comments like, "you and your girl-power thing again". He often told me I'd grow out of my naivete and idealism when I was older (I was 26). Male employees did not report having to deal with these attitudes. A year into the 2-year position, I came in to his office to find a screenshot of my face, from a music video I'd been in, as his computer background. I had told him I was in the video because it caused me to miss a day of work, and he bragged that he had tracked it down and was surprised how tasteful it was because he "thought it would be a bunch of half-naked women lounging on car hoods". I attempted to ignore this along with all the other insults. | M.A. student | Editor/direct supervisor of my graduate assistantship | Other R1 | Syracuse University | Maxwell School | A sympathetic ear from the DGS in Geography, advising me against filing any claims; no known actions taken | None | I worked hard for 2 years and can't ask for a reference | I came in feeling confident and skilled, but the constant belittling, imitating, teasing, and seeing my face on his screen did make me feel smaller and smaller... to the point where I was content being told by the DGS that I shouldn't take further action. Then after graduating, once there wasn't an option to file anything or get department support, the former employer sent me a series of long emails trying to re-write what had happened, argue his side, and remind me again that my concerns would seem trivial 'when I grew up.' Knowing that I didn't really do anything to stop it or report it then is what eats at me now. | I had a falling out with some feminist friends who were shocked and disappointed that I wasn't filing charges. The sympathetic outrage but support of how I handled it from my advisor (feminist geographer) was invaluable. Both reactions, coming from similar places, stoked my commitment to addressing these systemic concerns in academia. | Male | ||
1310 | 12/8/2017 9:56:07 | A very senior (both in rank and age) male professor happened to be in the field at the same time I was there for my dissertation research. At first, he demanded hospitality- cooked dinner, a tour, and company (it was more my geographic field than his). Then he crossed the line with a forced a hug and a kiss. I was paralyzed. The next night we met in a restaurant, which I had agreed to before anything happened. I managed to escape before the meal was over, saying I forgot I had made other plans. When I took him to the airport I got an earful about how rude it was for me to ditch him after he’d bought me a nice dinner and had a whole evening planned. When he got back to our university, he told his colleague (one of my advisors) that “one thing led to another” with me. 15 years later, I still run into him at professional events and even the grocery store, and still have to hear about him and his work from colleagues. | I was an ABD grad student (female) | Most highly paid full professor in the department. He had been on my quals committee but I didn’t put him on my dissertation committee | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of California, Berkeley | History | N/A- I knew that if I initiated a complaint I would suffer more than he would. | None | He was in a position to advocate for me professionally, but because of this I did not rely on him. I managed to do well despite this, but certain things like book publishing were very difficult because I didn’t have a senior advisor to advocate for me. | Can’t put into words. I’m still traumatized by this. It’s certainly not the only time anyone has done something like this to me, but it really taught me the gender, race, and rank power dynamics of academia. | I do not trust senior male colleagues. Whether or not they’re harassers, most are either oblivious to the power they wield or they abuse that power knowingly. These are the very people we rely on to make our careers, so it has been difficult for me to navigate certain aspects of the profession. | We need accountability. University administrators are allergic to admitting wrongdoing because they are afraid of lawsuits. We can not rely on them to hold perpetrators accountable. | Male | |
1311 | 12/8/2017 9:57:50 | A tenured male professor visiting from another university put his hand on my leg at a conference dinner and asked me "So why are you writing this bullshit dissertation?" | Graduate student | Tenured professor visiting my department for a graduate student conference | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | This person will likely be asked to write one of my tenure letters. | Male | |||||||
1312 | 12/8/2017 10:07:04 | A professor from another university took me out drinking, crudely propositioned me ("I'd like to fuck the shit out of you"), and brought a very drunk 23 year-old me back to his campus office, where he made out with me and tried to take off my shirt (but stopped when I asked him to). He later invited me to accompany him as a fake research assistant on an international trip to be paid for with research funds (I declined). | Graduate student | Professor from another university, prominent in my field | Other R1 | Male | |||||||||
1313 | 12/8/2017 10:09:12 | This is about the impact of a serial sexual harasser being allowed to stay in a department: I did not experience harassment from this person, but was told by multiple people that "any female in <my subfield> has to sleep with <person> if they want to graduate", and recent cases have been compared to him, e.g. 'I didn't know it was that bad, I thought it was minor, not as bad as <this person>'! All I know is that multiple female graduate students were involved over many years, there was an investigation at some point, and the problem was considered solved by the rest of the faculty because 'he's old' and they were able to limit his access to students in some ways. But he still had female trainees/jr colleagues from other departments, and I was still participating in the whisper network (warning students younger than me when I found out that <person> was trying to recruit them for collaboration) until he fully retired. | Graduate student | Senior tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Psychology/Linguistics | There was an investigation, I don't know the details. The primary official restriction on him is that he had to have his door open when he meets with students. (This is a really unnerving thing to learn about!) | No official consequences that I was aware of other than having to keep his door open when meeting with students, but the other faculty have worked to limit his exposure to students, not admit people he wants to work with, and steer entering female students away from collaborating with him | I got immediate notice about the priorities of my department: he was still here, some unknown number of female grad students were seriously impacted by his behavior. The one female graduate student he had at the time I arrived at the program seemed really isolated, and getting really poor mentorship (he did a bad job, and because his relationships were so strained she didn't seem to be getting any secondary mentorship) | Male | |||||
1314 | 12/8/2017 10:19:36 | As an undergraduate, I took several classes with a professor who taught on a topic I enjoyed. He regularly gave me positive feedback on my work. At some point, I asked him to become my advisor. At some point in my senior year, we went out to lunch. At the end of lunch, he told me his wife was out of town and asked if I wanted to come home with him for a martini. It was the middle of the day, on a weekday. Over the years, I think I began to discount that memory, or my interpretation of it. Surely this full professor had not basically propositioned me when I was in college - I must have misremembered or imagined it. Years later, as a postdoc, I ran into him at a conference that was being hosted at his institution (he had moved since I completed my undergrad). We briefly said hello, nothing more. Later, when I landed a TT job, he reached out via email to congratulate me, and asked if I would be at a large conference that year. I was planning to attend, and was flattered that he was following my career. I agreed to have dinner with him at the conference. We had dinner, and talked a great deal about my career trajectory. He talked about his wife, and I talked about my partner of (at that time) 7 or 8 years, so there was no misunderstanding that we were both in committed relationships. After dinner, he asked me up to his hotel room, which I politely declined. As we said goodnight, he acted as if he would kiss me on the cheek. At the last second, he turned and kissed me full on the mouth instead. | Undergrad, then postdoc, then asst professor | A full professor at my undergraduate institution, then later just a full professor at an institution unrelated to me. | Other R1 | Philosophy | n/a, never reported | n/a, never reported | He continues to email me to ask if I'll be at conferences he'll be attending. When I am planning to be at them, I actively avoid running into him and make excuses. He remains employed at an R1 where there is annually a large conference in my sub-discipline. It is probably the best conference for that area of philosophy. I have never again submitted to or attended that conference, after the first time I ran into him there. | For years I doubted whether I imagined or misinterpreted what happened. When it was re-confirmed later, it made me question whether any of the positive feedback he'd ever provided was genuine. | I am glad that I ultimately decided not to pursue his sub-discipline and went another way. I feel unable to attend a major conference in my subdiscipline without having to endure unwanted advances. | Male | |||
1315 | 12/8/2017 10:22:56 | I attended a conference in one of my sub-disciplines. After my presentation, several people stuck around to tell me they had enjoyed my paper. I ended up having dinner with a big group. After dinner, we all wound up at a bar. In the middle of a conversation about my paper, the person I Was talking to told me "I want to kiss you right now." I told him I had a partner, and basically ran away back to my hotel. | Postdoc | Professor at a different institution; in a position of some power with respect to a particular conference | It was at a conference, no institution relevant | Philosophy | The individual is part of the organizing committee of that conference. I have never again submitted to or attended the conference. | I wondered whether all of the positive attention I had received after my presentation (all of it was from men) was about my gender/looks/etc rather than the quality of my work | Male | ||||||
1316 | 12/8/2017 10:24:25 | I was aggressively harassed by my grad school prof at an accepted students open house. When I reported it, admins did nothing, and told me he was beloved among alumni and an important fundraiser for the program. Later he became my professor and penalized me academically, so I opened a title IX case with support from my advisors. | Accepted student, student | Tenured faculty | Other Type of School | Adelphi University | Clinical Psychology | None until I pushed for one. | None to my knowledge | I was allowed to take his class remotely (listening to recordings of the lectures) and have the final graded by someone else. I’ll have to avoid all of the classes he teaches in the program, which means I’ll likely pay for external coursework. | I’m stressed and depressed about this, but I’m getting better as the semester winds down. But so glad you asked this question, as a future psychologist! | See above re: additional coursework. | Thanks for doing this! I’ve also been harassed in myriad contexts but I think it’s fair to hold academia to a standard on this! Also was previously harassed briefly by a prof in my masters program.. . | Male | |
1317 | 12/8/2017 10:31:21 | Student submitted essay with sexually explicit language. | Assistant Professor | Student | Regional Teaching College | History | Minimal, was told by two women--the Title IX rep and dean of students--that it was not intentional. Worked hard to get my dean and department chair to give the student a zero on the assignment. Took a month for them to deal with it. Afterward, the student dropped my class. | Zero on the assignment | Misery, decreased interest in teaching and investment in my job | Higher stress, higher anxiety, less trust in my students and my university | This happened in fall 2017 (even in the midst of these revelations, my school still did not handle it well), so we shall see. | Male | |||
1318 | 12/8/2017 10:35:04 | PI entertained conversations on a regular basis with male lab mates about women in the scientific realm. Discussion would take place in the office area shared with female graduate/post docs, and these conversations sexualized women and outwardly judged women in the field about their relationships and desires to have children. | Scientist | Other Research Agency | Berkeley Lab | science and engineering | none | Increased awareness | Created a environment unproductive for work | Male | |||||
1319 | 12/8/2017 10:40:39 | For example, leering, staring, pretending *I'd* made sexually-suggestive remarks and then chiding me for these, and repeatedly coming up with embarrassing stories about women's sexuality (especially as it might pertain to one in my particular shoes) when that wasn't the topic of conversation. When it was clear I'd had enough and wouldn't brush it off as a joke anymore: diminishing my reputation through gossip with my co-workers, refusing to work with me while pretending to do so and yelling at me sometimes, and using a threatening body part to threaten me twice. Note that I don't want to be too descriptive, as I am terrified my abuser will recognize it is me writing this. | Graduate Student | Supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Too scared to say | Too scared to say | I didn't disclose non-anonymously. I disclosed anonymously to the two, Graduate Advisors then in place. One appeared to believe me, one appeared to not believe me. I was told I could make a complaint which the abuser would have a right to respond to, or that I could informally have a complaint held by the Chair in case any others came forward with stories-- but that that was not really a sanctioned option. After I'd found a way to make clear I was not happy with what had gone on in a non-threatening way to my abuser, I was yelled at by him in a way others could hear, and given a strange line which suggested he knew what he'd done was wrong, but that he had all the power. I feared losing my job. | He got to better control his students/play favorites more easily, by virtue of visibly ostracizing one. He may have been able to "blow off steam". He did not have any negative consequences. | Likely over in academia. Can't get an unbiased letter from this person, and did not have normal/equal opportunity to collaborate with him (which, of course, he made not safe for me to do). | Horrible. I was a foster child, have beaten cancer, and had extremely stressful jobs in the past: I am a mentally-strong person normally. But this has completely shown me that nothing I do really matters, since powerful people like this can do what they do with impunity, and ruin my chances at a healthy life and productive career. Their mere enjoyment trumps (usually) young women's rights to health and physical integrity, as well as their right to contribute to society. I have had to devote hours upon hours in order to attempt to recover, including many hours in therapy. Though my degree is over, I still have severe effects. | Now I feel lost, since my heavily-favored goal was to enter academia. My spouse is very upset, since he/she sacrificed so much so that I could take this degree and get a good job out of it. The stress was very, very hard on my small children and spouse. Likely contributed to a miscarriage, and not being able to become pregnant. This means, for me, that I likely won't be able to have any more children. At the time as well as now, I am constantly doing "damage control" for my career, because I know my reputation was damaged and I can't get an unbiased letter of reference. This, and the hours and hours of therapy, mean I have less time to devote to other things, such as family and career. | Male | ||
1320 | 12/8/2017 10:46:58 | early 2010s. Advisor talked to other graduate students about my body (along the lines of, "hasn't she gotten fatter?") and used it as pretext for not offering me potentially career-advancing field opportunities; my actual abilities were unchanged. Additionally, advisor historically gave preferential treatment to male students. | pre-candidacy doctoral student | Advisor; full professor | Other R1 | Anthropology | Some were floated (reimbursement for missed $$ opportunities; denial of step promotion opportunity for harasser) but nothing material came to fruition. Department chair did have her write a signed letter of apology. | None really, at least not because of this particular series of actions. | There were field experiences and opportunities denied to me. This individual is fairly well connected in our field and and we work in the same region, making our regional conferences uncomfortable for me. I switched advisors, but my current advisor does not work in the same area or topic as me, and could not meaningfully help me with networking or collaboration. | Increasing self-doubt; intense worsening of grad-school related anxiety and depression | Hard to quantify, but this (plus many other things) has contributed to me not wanting to pursue academia when (if?) I finish my PhD. | This all came out while I was in the process of switching advisors for unrelated reasons! | Female | ||
1321 | 12/8/2017 10:48:49 | We were at a conference in another province. He invited me into his hotel room, offered me wine, a bath, and ran his hands on my leg. | I was an associate professor. | We were co-editing a collection. He was a professor at another university, but had recently been named incoming dean of my faculty. | Other Type of School | This was in Canada, so the university categories don't quite line up. | History | I never said anything. I was too scared and shocked. I buried it so as to continue working with him. (My husband has always held this against me, suggesting I didn't level a complaint because that would have jeopardized my professional standing, so I took the moral low road, in effect. It would have been impossible to prove anything.) | See above. | #metoo brought a lot of this back. And as I suggested, it's a point of contention in my marriage. I did tell two female friends, who also worked at the same institution, whose support and understanding meant a lot. | Well, I've avoided working with him! | I'm torn; I feel like telling you in confidence would be a tiny, tiny step toward calling him out, as other (braver) women have done. He's now the president of the second-largest university in Halifax, Nova Scotia. But - yes, that is in confidence. Thank you for doing this. | Male | ||
1322 | 12/8/2017 11:06:27 | A number of years ago at an end-of-semester party hosted by a university-wide doctoral student organization I witnessed an older graduate student in the program grope the breasts of a first-year graduate student in clear sight of many colleagues | phd student | abd phd candidate | Other R1 | CUNY Graduate Center | English | I was friends with the student assaulted; she didn't want to report it in any official capacity, so nothing happened | Male | ||||||
1323 | 12/8/2017 11:07:22 | Our class went to the bar with a professor after class. The professor got so drunk a graduate student had to drive him home | First year grad student | Professor | Other R1 | I believe prof was no longer allowed to drink with students | Male | ||||||||
1324 | 12/8/2017 11:09:27 | A colleague told me her male advisor would make her go over to his house to discuss course matters. She never said anything explicitly happened but she did say he would ask/talk about personal love life in many different settings | Grad student | Professor/advisor | Other R1 | Male | |||||||||
1325 | 12/8/2017 11:18:34 | It started when I was at the end of the school year dinner for faculty and trustees. My husband died prematurely the year before leaving me a single mother with several young children. The trustee, who was married, invited me to come to his hotel room where he was staying (alone) and have a drink with him. On subsequent occasions when the trustees were in town and where there were faculty/trustee dinners he continued to invite me to come to his hotel room after the function and spend time with him. I never accepted his invitations. I just got better at avoiding him during these functions. Although I was a full professor with tenure, I did not file a complaint. Our trustees are a very tight knit group and I believed that I would be made to pay a price for lodging a complaint against one of them. I also had an experience where a married alumnus repeated told me he wanted to have an affair with me. The alumnus knew I was a widow and single mother. I didn't complain about it and just tried to avoid being alone with him at alumni functions. Other married men (not part of the college) tried to initiate affairs with me after my husband died. Do married men think that widows are so desperate for sex that they will welcome involvement with a married man? | Full professor with tenure. | One was a trustee. The other was a very active alumni donor. | Small Liberal Arts College | Not relevant. | Didn't report the harassment. | None -- I didn't report. | None that I know of. | It made me angry. But, I wouldn't say it affected my mental health. | It hasn't affected my life choices or my trajectory. As a full professor with tenure I felt that I had enough power to rebuff the repeated requests for sex with married men, but not enough power to file a complaint. | Male | |||
1326 | 12/8/2017 11:27:09 | June 2010 - At Workshop wrap party at offender's home. While about half of party was in another room listening to someone play guitar, Prof. __ approached me while I was perusing his library and started up a discussion. There were other people around, but not involved in our conversation. He asked me if I was married for the second time that night (I am), then asked if I have children (I do, and I had brought my still-nursing baby with me to the conference, but she wasn't at the party). I answered affirmatively to both, and out of nowhere, he put his hand under my chin and leaned in to try to kiss me. I immediately pulled away, shocked, and he grinned, then asked, "Oh, was that not okay?" I replied, "no, it is most definitely not okay." I was flustered and embarrassed, and continued talking to him so as not to call attention to myself. Then he said he had "something else to show me upstairs." I declined the offer and asked him to bring the book downstairs. He insisted, and went upstairs, telling me to follow. Instead, I looked for help. My advisor had left, but female Prof. who is a good friend of advisor and who I'd met for the first time at the workshop was still there. I asked her to come and look at the films Prof. ___ had been showing me so I could ask her opinion of how to try to deflect/distract him. From upstairs, we could hear Prof. ___ calling my name and saying that he had found what he was looking for and that I should come upstairs. I responded loudly from the staircase that I was with female Prof. and that he should bring whatever he had back downstairs, but he persisted. Even more embarrassed, and now sure that people could hear him, Female Prof. and I went upstairs together to find him in bed under the covers with his shirt off. Female Prof. shouted, "We told you you couldn't do this anymore!" Prof. ___, shocked, mumbled incoherently. I fled downstairs and found a senior student from my university, now a professor at a nearby elite university, and asked for her help and advice. She called a cab for me and told me to contact advisor immediately. Prof. _____ tries to approach me at any discipline event I attend, even though I have repeatedly told him I do not want him to talk to me. Most recently, he cornered me after 3 days of my successfully dodging him during conference in order to act chummy and force me to accept a copy of his most recent book. I repeatedly declined until it was starting to become a scene, then told him that it was clear he wasn't listening to me, didn't respect my wishes, and was going to do whatever he felt like, and I had no choice. I told him I would take it, but that I would immediately throw it away. He smiled, pulled it out of his LV bag along with a sharpie and asked, "should I sign it for you?" I said I didn't care. He was obviously going to do whatever he wanted. He signed it in the language of our area study, using the most familiar grammatical form to address me. A grammatical slap in the face. Another new acquaintance female Prof., to whom I told my story, expressed sympathy, but then indignation that she, as a friend of Prof. ___ had not been offered the book. She asked if she could have it. I told her that maybe he only gave his books to students he'd harassed and that she could take it out of the trash if she wanted it that badly. She did. It was a $10 novel. | doctoral candidate | Chair of department at host university, prominent scholar in field | Elite Institution/Ivy League | elite public institution | asian studies | Public institution - human resources told me I would have to file a public formal complaint. Advisors from home university were very supportive, but all female profs in attendance at the workshop (from other universities) strongly advised against ruining my career before it had even started. | None. He sent a non-apology apology along the lines of, "I'm so sorry if you misconstrued my behavior. I was drunk." | Fear of/distaste for any possible encounter has made me stop applying to conferences and workshops in field, prevented me from contributing to journals and edited volumes for which he is inevitably an editor or reviewer. | Rage, drinking, and debilitating depression whenever I have to encounter him or his work (which I am often assigned to teach). I continue to doubt my own account of the events even though I immediately wrote everything down so as not to doubt myself in the future. I blame myself even though I know I did nothing wrong. I blame myself for not filing a formal complaint. I berate myself for being a coward. | I am always on the verge of quitting academia, and was unwilling to apply to several positions that would put me in the same region/system as offender. | Currently an adjunct on the job market; still afraid to go public. Still asking myself if I can justify the intense feelings of shame, anger, doubt, and impotence about an incident that thankfully didn't end in worse circumstances. | Male | |
1327 | 12/8/2017 11:27:56 | I was harassed verbally and touched inappropriately on multiple occasions, including in public venues. | Administrative staff | Full (tenured) professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Academic Affairs | When I reported it to the dean of faculty, she told me I should take it as a compliment. | None | I left the college for a job elsewhere | Therapy helped | I'm more cautious at work and trust people less. | Female | |||
1328 | 12/8/2017 11:31:21 | I met with my thesis adviser after graduating with my MA to talk about my PhD applications. he made sexual advances and told me he'd "had a crush" on me the entire time we'd worked together. he still had to submit my letters of recommendation at the time. I learned he had a long history of such behavior. | post-MA | newly former thesis adviser, in the process of submitting recommendations for me for grad school applications. | Other R1 | English (Film studies) | I didn't report it - - he wasn't my adviser any longer, though we were still in a professional relationship | none. he's very well known in the field, and very very tenured. | nothing directly, that I know of | I almost quit grad school because I wondered if my work wasn't good enough on its own. | i avoid conferences I know he'll be presenting at | Male | |||
1329 | 12/8/2017 11:40:55 | A charismatic professor called me at home after a heated discussion in his class to see if "I was okay" leading to a mentorship that at first felt safe but then he started bringing up sex all the time: I mentioned emailing and he re-enacted masturbating while emailing in front of me, I mentioned worries about dual relationship at my internship, he asked if I wanted "to have sex with the client", etc. it escalated to him trying to talk to me about "all the sex" he was having with a particular person. The more disgusted I became the more he also started to comment about how unattractive I was and particular things about my body, face, clothes he did not like, at least once he sat there unapologetic after he made me cry and then later brought up sex again. I tried to break off the interactions but he would beg me to stay and then threaten my career when that did not work, if I called him on the threats, he would deny them even if he just said them. At the end, he refused to do essential paperwork for me to move on in my career for weeks until I finally told him that I would go public with his behavior since his refusal to do my paperwork would mean I did not have a career anyway. He did it but then told me if I did not keep meeting with him, he would tell the Board I was unfit and he had "initially felt bad for me but now knew better." Even after I stopped working with him and told him to leave me alone, he would send opportunities or other incentives to me to try and rope me back in. I once hid in the bathroom for an hour outside a teaching opportunity because I heard his voice and was worried about what he would do if we were alone in the hallway. I dont know what he told his wife, but she stalked me for a while ... The last thing he said to me at another teaching opportunity was that no one would ever love me and I should have been grateful for his attention. | Grad student | Professor | School of Ed | I never told because he has so much power. Another female student complained, they covered it up and she left the program | He lost his tenure bid but it barely impacted him bc of all his other connections, currently he has tenure and is up for Chair | Loss of important connections, inability to attend important conferences, | fell into a major depression, ptsd | I dont teach anymore, I dont pursue advancement in my field beyond a certain level bc it would force me to interact with him | The most upsetting thing to me so many years later, is if I said his name there might be many more women who said it with me ... I think what he did to me is his standard procedure and he has been given no incentive to change | Male | |||
1330 | 12/8/2017 11:42:04 | During a decade of graduate study, there were too many incidents to include here. Some highlights: - Propositioned more than once by different senior faculty members, at least one of whom was well known to have relationships with female graduate students. - Routinely denigrated by a faculty member for whom I TAed, who insulted me in front of the lecture hall full of undergraduate students and regularly encouraged them to consider me unfavorably in comparison to the other TAs. I was 25 and female. The other TAs were all at least ten years older and male. - Criticized on more than one occasion by more than one female faculty member for choosing to get married, supporting my husband in his return to grad school before I was done with my degree, and being, according to them, insufficiently feminist in my behavior, particularly in relation to senior male faculty. I was told on more than one occasion by fellow students that one female faculty person spoke of me critically when I was not present, focusing on my style of working with male faculty. | PhD student / candidate | Senior faculty in my graduate program, including at different times my advisor, supervisors in TA/RA assignments, and an acting dean. | Other R1 | religious studies | On the rare occasions that I tried to talk to anyone about the issues, I was either told I was overreacting or told not to try to report anything formally as that would essentially destroy my academic prospects. | None | I did not pursue a faculty position or other teaching because I did not want to risk ending up in a similarly toxic environment where I would remain vulnerable either as a junior faculty member or adjunct instructor. | I was in therapy and on medication for anxiety for more than half of my time in graduate school. | I changed my career trajectory entirely (see impact on career). Even before I completed grad school, I was strongly advising other women who came to me to discuss graduate school and academic careers to pursue other options, and/or to enter graduate programs based in large part on whether they get into a program where there is evidence that women are treated well. I also strongly advise people considering graduate school to know where outside of the academy they might be able to/want to use their graduate experience, both because of the terrible job market and because they might find the environment unappealing. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||
1331 | 12/8/2017 12:00:12 | One time he came into my office while I was alone there working, closed my door, talked with me for a few moments about something work-related or otherwise normal (can't remember what now), then said "you look stressed; would you like a massage?" I said no. He proceeded to put his hands on my shoulders and attempt a massage anyway. After a moment I moved out from under him under the pretenses of going to grab something across the room. After a social event at a bar, he offered to walk me back to my car, and asked me for a kiss. I said no. He said, "come on." I said no again. | PhD student | Professor and member of my dissertation committee | Other R1 | None; I have not told anyone | None; I have not told anyone | I felt extreme stress that he would come by my office again, that I would fail my dissertation defense because of what happened | Male | ||||||
1332 | 12/8/2017 12:02:50 | The (male) chair of my department and a (female) lecturer I supervised entered into a relationship. The lecturer began to harass me on a daily basis, with the goal of forcing me out of my supervisory position (possibly so that she could take over). The department chair colluded with her and dismissed my complaints as "bickering between women." HR advised me to inform the provost. HR further told me, however, that the provost was likely to send the matter back to my chair. When I mentioned that my chair was involved, she commiserated but offered no solutions. I was on a term contract with a renewal coming up. The harassment escalated after an undergraduate reported an incident to me of sexual harassment regarding a different (male) lecturer. Upon reporting that incident to the chair, I was demoted from my supervisory position, told to have no further contact with the male lecturer, and the female lecturer who had been harassing me was appointed my supervisor. | Senior Lecturer | Chairman of my department (full professor with endowed chair) and a lecturer I supervised | Elite Institution/Ivy League | HR didn't advise me to contact Title IX but, instead, advised me to inform the provost. HR further told me that the provost was likely to send the matter back to my chair. When I mentioned that my chair was involved, she commiserated but offered no solutions. Only a year later, after I had left my teaching job, did I find my way to the Title IX office on my campus. The Title IX office was supportive in every possible way. Why wasn't I directed there a year earlier? | The harasser was ultimately fired, for unrelated reasons. The department chair still rotates in and out of the chairmanship | After nearly two decades in teaching and research, I changed fields and job category | Depression due to powerlessness and harassment; therapy; medication | I adore my new career, but it could have ended so much worse. But continuing previous academic research is out of the question. The months of active harassment also took a toll on my spouse, who felt the same powerlessness I did. I also suffered broken relationships with former colleagues and "friends" who took the easy route and pretended they didn't see what was happening, but stronger relationships to two people — only two! — who offered support. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||||
1333 | 12/8/2017 12:08:17 | My dissertation chair threw mardi gras beads at me. | I was a graduate candidate (ABD). | Dissertation direction. | Other R1 | English | I didn't report it. There weren't enough faculty in my field. I had no one else to work with. I wasn't sure they would believe me or do anything about it if they did. If they did do something, who would work with me? Who would write me letters if I was perceived as a troublemaker. | I've avoided R1s for the most part, because I limited my access to him for mentoring. I didn't publish anything during my program, so I went on the market without pubs. I wasn't competitive for the positions that would make me happier. After I graduated, I had to seek out new mentors (there aren't any good ones where I am placed) to help me play catch up with publications. I feel uncomfortable going back to ask him for updated letters for job apps, so I have had to network fiercely to find new letter writers. | He's added to the long history of men who have made me feel like nothing more than a sexual object. He's one more man I spend hours of time talking about in therapy. | I surround myself with women, especially in terms of mentorship. I don't trust men to guide me through anything without treating me like an object or expecting some kind of favor in return for their help. | Male | ||||
1334 | 12/8/2017 12:12:44 | A school employee attempted to scam me regarding a parking lot "accident" and claim money for fixing his car. This went on for months and turned into harassment. It turns out he was never even given my name via my car / license plate, but instead discovered it by accessing the school's database inappropriately. He would email and demand money, show up at my building, and even texted me by phone asking "Are you on campus?". He insisted he must be paid in cash and that the appropriate insurance claim forms should not be filled out (because there was no legitimate claim, obviously). The school took months to respond to my requests for assistance and several school employees suggested that the perpetrator "had a crush on me" and was just "trying to get attention". I felt completely unsafe and unprotected on the campus for months which turned into debilitating anxiety. I've since left the PhD program. | PhD student, 4th year | Employee of school | Other R1 | INSEAD | Management PhD | Lackluster, gave employee a verbal warning. | Verbal warning | My academic career has ended, I left my PhD program and moved continents. I am forever an ABD PhD student now working in the private sector, hoping to forget this ever happened to me. | Terrible. I was incredibly anxious, I cried all the time, I could not focus on work, I felt unsafe and alone on campus, I felt like life was a horror movie I could not escape. | I'm now attempting to start over my career entirely at age 32. I never would have gone to INSEAD if I had known this would happen to me. | Male | ||
1335 | 12/8/2017 12:22:30 | A years-long pattern of mildly untoward but unprofessional comments about my clothing and appearance. | Adjunct instructor | TT instructor and my immediate supervisor | R2 | Large four-year | LA | Ha! | Honestly, a number of senior female professors openly "flirt" with younger faculty. (I know one or two male professors in our department that have been reprimanded for ignoring boundaries, but I can't imagine them being as public about things as their female peers.) It seems like part of the culture in our department. You just try to roll with it and hope for the best. It's clear that addressing the problem would effectively end my job here. | It's irritating to buy into a culture of respect, professionalism, and accountability, knowing that some of my superiors clearly don't feel similarly. | I enjoy my job and I'm good at it, but I don't let myself get too comfortable. There is a dissonance between our University's outward commitment to certain ideals and how these things actually play out. | Female | |||
1336 | 12/8/2017 12:25:26 | professor who had been known to sleep with graduate students propositioned me after a conference social function, inviting me to "go back to his crib" and "smoke weed" with him | PhD student | tenured faculty member in the department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | USC | film studies | not reported, though a tenured female professor observed this happening and later asked if I was ok | none | Male | |||||
1337 | 12/8/2017 12:31:27 | A famous scholar put his hand down my pants when I sat down to try to talk to him about an essay I had written; he had previously promised to give me feedback, as he was in a position to help my career. | graduate student at R1 | Faculty at much more highly-ranked institution | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Dartmouth | English | None | None | Well, he never did read my essay. I had wanted to get him to write a recommendation letter for me, per the advice of The Professor is In. That's obviously not going to happen, but I did get a job without that asshole, so. | I remember thinking "I guess this is what life is like for women privileged enough to attend fancy graduate programs." I had never had such an experience prior to this one, and I have taught at five higher ed institutions and attended three. I also regularly think "fuck this guy" when I see people lauding him, which is often. I find it ironic that the perpetrator is always going on--on social media, that is--about women's equality and autonomy, etc. | I only told a friend (who was harassed by the same faculty member) and another friend who was at the event where the incident happened. I still haven't been able to bring myself to tell my partner. I feel like, somehow, it's my fault even though I can't think of what I might have done to invite it. | Male | ||
1338 | 12/8/2017 12:33:04 | My advisor regularly made jokes about masturbating before our meetings. | Grad student | Associate Professor | Other R1 | Communication | I didn't report it because I was afraid of 'rocking the boat' | None | I'm less trusting and more anxious about one-on-one meetings with colleagues or supervisors. | Anxiety | None, I think? | Male | |||
1339 | 12/8/2017 12:34:34 | Problem with him alone in office (intimidation, sexual threats) Thereafter he got upset I wouldn't go alone to his office anymore - I used email and public settings. He called me uncollegial and widely criticized me during my promotion/tenure reviews. As a result I was singled out for additional review. | Untenured tenure track faculty, single, female | my Dept head | R2 | Biological sciences with some physical sciences | I filed complaint. Thereafter uni attempt to cover up, delay case review - constant denigration of me. | He was promoted | Lower productivity. Fighting back against harasser, who tried to fire me, took up energy, money and time. At end, I faced reviews at multiple levels and by multiple committees 3 years in a row. My relationship with dept and uni permanently damaged. At same time, many people across campus rallied to support me in my case for tenure. I was tenured. | I show symptoms of PTSD. | I want to leave but not at expense of career. I'm seeing signs I am excluded from opportunities such as group grant writing efforts because he is involved. He has small but significant contingent of senior men around him who protect him. And I suspect that group is also working to reduce prestige, productivity of accusers and detractors. (This dept head was also kicked out of my dept by majority of faculty who criticized him. Even that did not work in my favor. He was promoted and works in same college in another administrative role. ) | What do people like me do? I was treated like a criminal when I stood up and fought back. There is no incentive to stand against harassment and retaliation on this campus. | Male | ||
1340 | 12/8/2017 12:37:43 | I was an 18-year-old high school senior, at a prestigious R1 for a campus interview weekend for a merit-based full-ride scholarship to said institution. During a dinner on a boat cruise, which I believe involved alcohol for the faculty conducting these interviews, a senior member of the committee, who was also a dean of the college of letters and sciences, laced his finger through the belt loop of my jeans to pull me closer to him and draw me into conversation about my potential future at the institution. This occurred in front of other students, but it is likely that no one else really noticed. I physically recoiled, stepped back and maintained my physical distance from this man for the rest of the weekend. I did not receive the full-ride scholarship, but I did receive a lesser scholarship. In the intervening years, I have always wondered if the real reason was I did not seem "amenable" enough to this powerful man. | Rising high school senior, prestigious scholarship candidate | He was a Dean, I was a high school student, being groomed to be a high-achieving scholar. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Texas at Austin | Slavic | Did not report | None | The cost of my own success in undergrad, which would have paved the way for a much easier and more successful career in grad school, was probably considerable. | But then again, I could also have been subject to serious abuse and mental damage. As it is, I got off relatively unscathed. | It taught me to recognize predators such as him from a very early age. This has most likely cost me opportunities, but I imagine it has also saved me much anguish. | Male | ||
1341 | 12/8/2017 12:54:35 | During my first job ever as a research assistant, one of the graduate students on the project and I had to go to field sites together, just the two of us. The entire time we were in the car, he asked me about my views about child porn and kept insisting that the laws around child porn were too strict in the US. Whenever I tried to change the subject, he would change it back. He also at one point insinuated that I might be a prostitute because I was from Nevada. | Sophomore in college | Graduate student | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | I attended Westminster College. The graduate student attended the University of Utah. | Psychology | I never told anyone. | I have no idea. | I quit the project the next week. I think my immediate departure mid-semester strained my relationship with the PI. I also stopped trying to do research in the psychology department after that. | I was just grossed out. I felt super sexualized by someone who was supposed to be a mentor to me. I was upset by it. | I changed my major from psychology. I don't think I ever even took another psychology class after that. | Male | ||
1342 | 12/8/2017 13:01:16 | Professor preys on and dates students, mentees, and younger colleagues, particularly vulnerable women--one was hospitalized and he continued to try and have a relationship. One night observed him throw a plate at a woman's head. This woman was a former student of his. | Adjunct lecturer at another university in the area. | Older colleague | Other Type of School | never reported | none except the whisperings of women to steer clear | stopped attending events where I knew he would be, which is difficult because the community is small. | Male | ||||||
1343 | 12/8/2017 13:04:58 | My male professor would hold “closed door” offices hours, where he would position his chair directly next to mine (knees touching) while we would edit my paper (this was clearly his testing ground for female students). Later in the term, we got happy hour drinks. Happy hour drinks turned into him buying me pints of IPAs at which point me came onto me, asked if I’d like to talk with him “in private.” Stupid me, I thought us going to talk over tea st my apartment actually meant talking. After brewing him a cup of tea, he pushed me into the couch and started making out with me (and eventually having sex, mostly consensual). After the fact, he told me I came onto him and urged me to agree that the whole night was consensual. His casualness and directness talking about the nuances of a professor-student sexual relationship made it clear that this wasn’t the first nor last time he would do that with one of his students. | Graduate student (22 years younger than the professor) | Professor from prior term | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Michigan | Professional degree program | None, did not pursue | N/A | Minimal, although I never further pursued getting a strong paper published because he had been my primary advisor for it | It has taken years to heal from the trauma of being taken advantage of by a professor who claimed he had my best interests in mind. I still have to see him in the hallways and it is very triggering. It was like a slow, drawn out assault over many months of the school year. | I have trouble trusting partners, as if I always have to be on the defensive because I worry any prospective partner might manipulate me the way this professor did. | Male | ||
1344 | 12/8/2017 13:22:17 | PhD supervisor repeatedly called me at home, over and over and over again (sometimes 20 times in a row). Also insisted on hugging me every time we met. | Graduate student | Supervisor | Other R1 | None | None | None, because I put up with it. | Negative! | Male | |||||
1345 | 12/8/2017 13:25:20 | In 2016, I started a new position at the university I'd been at for 11 years. After weeks of abusive and demeaning behavior from my supervisor, he told me I was just like all women in academe: overbearing and out to get men. He regularly assigned me extra work that he never did to my male colleagues. He called me naive and uneducated in a meeting with superiors. When I tried to talk to him about his behavior, he reported to the Dean I was insubordinate. I learned later, after I reported him to our Title IX office, that 4 women in the past 7 months reported him for similar behavior. He's been found not guilty in my case and all others. | Senior Lecturer with 3-year contract. | My Director and Senior Lecturer with 5-year minimum contract. | Other R1 | Vanderbilt | Writing Studio | 13-month investigation for a position I held for 2 months. Investigation finished only after I resigned. They moved me from the position and my office during the investigation, so I spent a year unable to do my job. | None | I resigned from my university of 11 years and have not been able to find another job in my field. It's has been 5 months. | I was diagnosed with PTSD, has chronic nightmares, and was put on anti-anxiety medication. | I left a university I had planned to be at for my entire career, and if I can't find a job in the next 3 months I will have to leave academe. I will never trust a university again to see through Title IX complaints. | The Title IX office investigation and Deans tried to intimidate me for over a year, and I have reason to believe they buried the case like they did with the others. | Male | |
1346 | 12/8/2017 13:44:05 | I was a senior working as a student worker in our academic department, with fellow seniors. Over the year, each of us female workers experienced some form of lewd comments from one or more of the male faculty. The following is my story. I was making copies at the copy machine. A male faculty member walked into the room and said, in front of other student workers, "I'd like to eat that with a fork," staring at my body. I froze in shame and hoped the floor would open up underneath me and swallow me whole. I just stared at the floor, my face burning, until he left. No one said anything. (In case anyone is wondering, and as if matters, I was wearing jeans and a cardigan.) | Undergraduate student | Tenured Faculty | Regional Teaching College | English | The other female student workers and I were talking together in the office and discovered we had all had one or more of these types of moments. Another student worker (female) urged us to unite and complain to the department chair. I still admire her for this. Her urging worked. I was reluctant, but agreed. The group of us went into the chair's office together, closed the door, and told him about what happened to each of us. The chair of the department told us he would have a meeting talking to the offending faculty and make sure they knew this was not appropriate. But, he said, this was really in our hands. If we didn't like what a faculty member said to us and wanted him to stop, we really should just say something right then in that moment so they knew it was not ok. We left the chair's office very unsatisfied, but did not complain further. We were working in the office when the chair had his closed door meeting with the offending faculty. We could hear laughter in the room. | None | None | Lingering feelings of embarrassment, anger, self doubt, shame | None | Male | |||
1347 | 12/8/2017 13:44:19 | End of semester teaching evaluation forms: one of the written comments (in a stereotypically male-looking handwriting) included "Nice tits. Nice legs. More professors should look like her because then male students will come to class more often so they can look at her." Seemingly meant to be a compliment. | sessional instructor (freshly minted PhD) | undergraduate student | Other R1 | History | n/a | n/a | None (comments only read by instructor) | Instantly undermined my confidence in standing at the front of the room to teach, made me hyper-conscious about my wardrobe choices (which were already very conservative), and made me nervous about teaching male students. It took at least six months for this not to the be the first thing I thought about when I entered my classrooms. | Ultimately I got past it in practical terms, but I still remember the bottom-dropping-out sensation in the pit of my stomach when I first read the comment. I suddenly felt very vulnerable as a woman professor, and that feeling has never entirely gone away. | Unfortunately it isn't just people with power over us who can make us feel vulnerable. | Male | ||
1348 | 12/8/2017 13:45:36 | As a PhD student I needed some advice but was indirectly but clearly offered a meeting with a very different purpose | PhD student | Professor | Other R1 | Psychology | None as I did not report the incident | Male | |||||||
1349 | 12/8/2017 13:58:29 | When I was a first year graduate student, I started dating another student in my department who was a year ahead of me. The emotional abuse started early; assuming that I could not handle the problem sets on my own, he gave me all of his from the previous year. He constantly invalidated my feelings, suggesting each time I got upset that "that's such a rich white girl thing to get upset over." When I made comments during conversations, both one-on-one and in larger groups of physics grad students, he would frequently invalidate me, suggesting that I had seen nothing of the real world, and that I was nothing more than a wealthy sheltered child. Over time, he became increasingly controlling, and I feared retaliation when I wanted to end the relationship. I remained in that state for three and a half months. When I finally did, serious harassment ensued. He would drive by my house repeatedly, wait at the end of the bike path where he knew I liked to ride, and occasionally sit on my front steps and wait for me to get home at the end of the day. One day, he chased me out of the gym and screamed at me on the athletic quad. During departmental coffee hours and other social events, he would glare at me, shifting his position to maintain his line of sight. He texted me a death threat, and spread rumors in the department that I cheated on my problem sets and exams. He also circulated the rumor that I was only accepted into the program because of my gender identity, and that I only passed the first year because I am pretty. When I told my close friends about the harassment, many abandoned me, saying that it was my fault for breaking his heart. Since there were virtually no female faculty members in my department, and certainly none with whom I had ever conversed, I went to the administrative coordinator. She put me in touch with the Title IX office. The possible paths forward included an on campus no-contact order (which would not protect me in my off campus residence or neighborhood), or a full on restraining order. The Title IX office suggested that if I feared further retaliation, I should not press charges. I was extremely fearful of retaliation. For the remainder my my second year, I only went to campus to attend class. I would arrive five minutes late to the class that we were both enrolled in, and left five minutes early to avoid possible interaction. For the rest of the time, I worked from home. After year two, I left physics. | Graduate student. | Graduate student in the same department. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Brown University | Physics | None | None | I left physics. | I had a series of panic attacks, and still experience severe anxiety when my peers mention him or when I think I have seen him, even though I have since moved away from Providence. | I am far more wary of men and people in power, and extremely sensitive to gender-based discrimination and harassment. Ultimately, I went into teaching. Perhaps my ultimate teaching goal is to empower underrepresented and marginalized groups. This is in no small part because of my experience. | Male | ||
1350 | 12/8/2017 14:01:35 | I was an undergrad serving on a faculty-student committee. One male member of the committee would frequently comment on my body and my clothes and say things like "you like to play games with me, huh" apropos of nothing. Another time (unrelatedly) I was asked to participate in an alumni homecoming mixer event thing. A man (I was 18, he was probably forty) followed me back to my dorm "to take a nap" -- I left him in my bed while I hung out in the common room. Previously a fellow student (male) who I was trying to avoid climbed through my first floor window while I slept -- no one took any action when I reported this. This campus culture was just very amenable to this kind of objectification of women, in hindsight. | student | professor, alumni donor, fellow student | Small Liberal Arts College | I actually forgot about all of these incidents until now. I had intended to fill out this survey to say that compared to my non-academic life, academia had been rather harassment free! Just goes to show how much of this stuff we internalize. | In the case where the student snuck through my window, it did impact me. I couldn't sleep. I changed dorm rooms actually. | not at all. | Male | ||||||
1351 | 12/8/2017 14:06:23 | Pervasive, well-known sexual harassment. | Fellow | Faulty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Law | None | None | I left the academy. | I sought counseling. | None | There were more than five perpetrators at the law school. | Male | ||
1352 | 12/8/2017 14:09:28 | My MA advisor continuously made lewd comments and "jokes" both in class and during one-on-one meetings. There are too many to count, but they range from comments about my weight, offers to give me rides, explanations about how sex gets better when you're older, etc. Basically if there was any way he could fit sex and/or women's bodies into conversation or lectures, he did. I had already learned from previous experiences with sexual harassment that what he wanted was a shocked reaction from me. So I just always stared at him blankly and gave him zero reaction, and changed the conversation back to my work. Later I heard that other students eventually came forward with allegations of sexual harassment and now this professor cannot teach undergrads, but still teaches grad students and advises grad students, as far as I know. | Graduate student | Tenured Faculty; MA thesis advisor | Other R1 | Linguistics | He never really like me or helped me, because I did not want to talk about sex, and I wouldn't give him satisfying shocked responses to his remarks, so I think he tried to sabotage me. I applied to the PhD program in the same department and barely got in because the letter of recommendation from him consisted of "faint praise." I learned this from my supervisor in another department (another faculty member). Because I was "barely" let in, I did not get funding through my academic department, but rather worked in a different department. This isolated me from my cohort, and I never really made friends or felt that I belonged. I studied for a few semesters, and then eventually applied to a better PhD program elsewhere, using other faculty members as references. I got in, fully funded, and never talked to him again. | Male | |||||||
1353 | 12/8/2017 14:19:48 | I was a first-year MA student standing in the hallway of our academic building (looking at a bulletin board) when one of my professors came up next to me, asked how I was doing, and put his arm around my waist/hip and pulled me close to him. I froze, then came up with an excuse to slip away. There was no one else in the hallway at the time. | First-year MA student | Tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | College of William and Mary | History | I did not report it. I did mention it to some friends shortly after the fact. | None. I did not report it, though looking back I wish I had. | It did not have an effect on my career. | It bothered me and made it uncomfortable for me to interact with that professor, but I bounced back pretty easily. It did make me more wary of being alone with male professors. | I do not believe it has had a significant impact. | Male | ||
1354 | 12/8/2017 14:29:52 | I started taking college classes when I was 12. My Algebra II professor repeatedly stopped class to tell me that I looked like Sandra Bullock. I wore a hijab one day for a class project about multiculturalism for the class before Algebra II. He stopped class to tell me that I could be "one of bin-Laden's wives" and asked the class if they agreed. | A middle school student taking college classes for credit. | Faculty. I don't think he was a full professor, but he wasn't a TA. He was older than my parents. | Other Type of School | Delaware Technical Community College | Literature | None | None | None | I have CPTSD. This wasn't the cause, but it can cause episodes, and did contribute to the belief that there's nothing I can do to stop men. | I'm afraid a lot. I started smiling in classes more so no one would see me not smiling and take it as a challenge to try to make me laugh. I leave classes immediately after they're finished, try not to show up early (less small talk), and don't take advantage of chances to socialize with faculty. | I failed his class. I was afraid all of the time. I still remember the smell of his cologne when he'd lean over to check my work. He knew I was 12. | Male | |
1355 | 12/8/2017 14:36:23 | Shortly after I arrived in my new job as a single woman, a married senior colleague started treating me like a very close friend, presuming I would have weekly lunches with him. Soon that turned into treating me like his girlfriend -- insisting on taking me to dinner alone on special occasions, buying me flowers and gifts, and complimenting me on my appearance. Then he told me his friends were calling me his girlfriend. Once on the way to a dinner that he was buying me, he pressed against me on public transportation. I was pretenure and had many years of uncertainty ahead so I never reported anything, but I told my friends from grad school and one of them kept a record for me just in case... Eventually, I slowly distanced myself from him, and of course offended him in the process. | pretenure | tenured | Small Liberal Arts College | I didn't report it. | I didn't report it. | It made department life miserable for me. I didn't report it and eventually I got tenure. But I didn't develop confidence about my intellectual abilities (as opposed to my looks). | I was miserable -- I hated my job and my life. | I did the only thing I could have done under the circumstances (put up with it until tenure), but I wish I had somehow seen how to extricate myself from the situation. | Male | ||||
1356 | 12/8/2017 14:39:19 | President of my university, after giving me my first FT job offer, took me out to coffee and proceeded to interrupt me repeatedly, tell me we needed to meet regularly so he could “mentor” me, wanted my schedule and my personal contact information so we could meet outside work, and kept telling me he would help me “succeed at this university” if I followed his instructions and met with him regularly. I left, cried in my car, told my department chair, and he told me, and I quote, if it was anyone but the president I’d tell you to report it to HR. | Just received my first full-time job offer. Had been an adjunct at this school previously. | President of the university | Other Type of School | Theology | I did not report because I was advised not to | Of course none | I wonder about advancement at this university. I have looked for jobs elsewhere. | Seeing him is triggering. Especially because he is beloved at or university. | Male | ||||
1357 | 12/8/2017 14:41:24 | Around 2007 or 2008 I started taking grad classes at 18 and began graduate school at 19 with 12 credits completed in literature. My advisor (who knew my age) asked me why I only had a 3.2 GPA. I told him that I had a 3.7 within my major. He told me he was surprised they accepted me into the program. I told him how the previous year, I was date raped by one man, and kidnapped and repeatedly raped and hit/choked by a second man, and was recently getting out of a sexually and physically abusive relationship. He told me "everyone has excuses." | Graduate student | Faculty, advisor. He was more than an adjunct. | Other R1 | VCU | English | None | None | I dropped out of the program. I have to avoid this man professionally as he runs Fail Better, a literary magazine. | I attempted suicide and his response contributed to CPTSD. I got back together with the abusive man I had just left. | I've had to take years off to try to work on CPTSD. I had to find a new graduate program. I expected the same treatment there. I don't trust male professors. I have passive suicidal ideation right now thinking about this. | Thom Didato. He also knew I'm Native and queer. I'll never know if any of this was used against me. | Male | |
1358 | 12/8/2017 14:54:02 | I was teaching at an arts school, and our new chairman put his hand on my butt. I asked him to not touch me-- he got very offended. A week later, the chairman made a display of fondling a female coworker in the mail area-- she gave me one of those fakery giggles. I stared and made no comment. A month later, I was fired -- after 8 years there | Full time faculty | Department Chairman | Small Liberal Arts College | Columbia College Chicago | English | I was fired | None | Disastrous | Very debilitating | Totally changed my life-- I ended up sacrificing my established career and moving across the country | Male | ||
1359 | 12/8/2017 15:07:03 | I was made to feel uncomfortable by a professor who thought she was "helping" me prepare for a job interview. She commented repeatedly on my clothing, my appearance, and my bearing. it was clear that she was using her "counseling" guise to justify her demeaning comments about looks and my sexuality. | grad student | adviser | Elite Institution/Ivy League | anthropology | It made me feel so ugly inside. | I had to leave academia to get away from people like her. | Female | ||||||
1360 | 12/8/2017 15:08:00 | Dept chair sleeping with grad student | 1980s | Very senior scholar | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Duke | Musicology | N/a | Student dropped out | This was a habit with this professor | Male | ||||
1361 | 12/8/2017 15:11:45 | Professor put hand in my knee and said nothing short of buggering the bishop on the Palace Green would get him fired. Also kept trying to invite himself to my apt. | Grad student overseas for first time | Professor sponsoring me abroad | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Durham University, UK | Musicology | Couldn’t understand why I wanted To leave | None—everyone knew what he was like. | People thought we were a pair! We definitely were not. Ashamed to go to conferences where he was, switched direction in research. | Really strung out—acne, eating, depression. | Male | |||
1362 | 12/8/2017 15:14:36 | A female employee walked into my office while I was typing on my computer. Suddenly a pair of hands was massaging my shoulders--and I flinched, looked up and saw who it was, and told her to stop. I've long had a 'no touch' rule at work--a handshake is fine, but hugs, etc. are out as I am a male and have always been concerned that any such actions can be misconstrued. I politely explained this and the woman went quiet. Unfortunately, I later noticed her flirting with, standing very close to, rubbing the arms of and otherwise coming on to other male faculty members. And administrators. And suddenly I was the enemy. This continued for a few years, until the director of the department who had become very close to the young woman 'sat me down' and told me how unfairly I had treated the young woman! I told him I simply asked her to not touch me, as I am happily married and don't need a shoulder rub at work. I was so disgusted I left--and the place became a nightmare. | I was a faculty member. | An equivalent faculty member. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Zero. And ditto to female reports of a male professor who would go into prolonged and threatening RAGES resembling the zombies in Will Smith's "I Am Legend" movie. In our dean's suite. The women finally called me, terrified, and reported that our male dean and associate dean went into their offices and locked the doors (and one actually hid under his desk) when the male faculty member raged, leaving the women in the out office to fend for themselves. | Zero for both. | I left. My harasser literally turned the place against me. | None. I have met assholes before. I just walk away from such situations. | I left academia for a while. Just decided I'd had enough. Teaching again now at a great institution with far more mature professionals. And great students. | Thank you for doing this. I've devoted my life to advocacy and helping the oppressed--be they bullied, threatened, or whatever. I hope you will encourage everyone to stand up for justice. | Female | |||
1363 | 12/8/2017 15:20:23 | An associate Dean who's charged with outreach, as well as the former head of a department, harassed most of the women within his functional areas into quitting -- as far as I can tell for his entire career, but I was only around to observe it for the last decade or so. His dean is a strong woman, known to be one of the senior Deans -- she is one of the first and most respected women in her discipline, and she/her HR have refused to do anything about him for decades. His behavior is generally somewhat within the bounds of his professional duties, but he treats women radically differently than he treats men. For example, by micromanaging them, by criticizing them (with after hours emails to their superiors, weekend phone calls, etc.), and by openly advocating to pass them over for promotion and such because he assumes that as women they should be at home/would have family obligations that preclude their being good employees. He has harassed most of the staff and many of the female faculty, particularly PR and writing staff, many of whom have quit. He's technically retired in something called "phased retirement," but in this process he has an office and draws a paycheck to "help" with certain areas of the operation -- and he shares that office with staff, usually young women. All of the young women who have been assigned this office have complained about him, because he treats them like secretaries and makes inappropriate comments to them about hotels and such. | Colleague | Senior faculty with some oversight of my work -- but spared such behavior because of a personal relationship that precedes my employment there. | Other R1 | Penn State | Humanities | None. Multiple women complained to HR and were told "it's a small town. If I were you I would drop it." | None. | One who complained had her contract terminated. Two who complained quit after receiving no change in behavior and heightened scrutiny. | The women involved have reported panic attacks, trouble sleeping, etc. | Male | |||
1364 | 12/8/2017 15:22:46 | For the ten years prior to his death, a major donor to the institution made inappropriate racist. homophobic and sexually suggestive comments to employees and students of the university to which he donated. | Observer | Indirect benefactor | Other R1 | Business | None. He eventually died. The university, meanwhile, tried to minimize opportunities for him to speak inappropriately to students/faculty/staff. | None | None. | None | Unknown | Male | |||
1365 | 12/8/2017 15:25:24 | I knew a professor over the course of six months while conducting research at his university. Professor frequently flirted with me. I never felt uncomfortable until I mentioned a new love in my life. He lamented he could not "have me." He began to act hostile and dismissive in subsequent encounters, including a meeting where he was meant to serve as a critic of my work. | PhD student | Full professor, temporary adviser | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Stanford | Sociology | Did not report | None | Uncertain (certainly didn't help) | Concern about further retaliation | Loss of recommendations | Male | ||
1366 | 12/8/2017 15:25:50 | Attending my first national conference, went to dinner with a group from my department. After dinner, male prof took us (both female/male students) to strip club. I was the only one who walked out. Prof later asked with a sneer if my reaction was a "feminist thing" or a "Catholic thing?" | beginning MA student | tenured associate professor, I was working with him on a research project. | Other R1 | never reported it | none | everyone in the department thought my reaction was hilarious | Male | ||||||
1367 | 12/8/2017 15:27:13 | Groomed for sex, pressured to have a sexual relationship, raped. | Student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | San Francisco Conservatory of Music | Music | None -- unreported | He "resigned for family reasons" without further information provided several years later after two seperate students reported similar things simultaniously. | I stopped practicing for several years. | Severe | Changed the way I relate to all partners since then, made me dislike myself and unable to fully embrace my career. | Male | ||
1368 | 12/8/2017 15:37:17 | I was asking for a recommendation a few years after I had graduated. The professor asked me to come to his house to have lunch and talk about my plans, which we did. Then he asked me to take my shirt off, which I did because I needed the recommendation, as I had had a rocky time grade wise at my university. | I was a recent graduate. | He was a professor. He had works of art in major museums. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Arts | I did not report it. | None. I got into graduate school. | I am at worst uncomfortable that I was put in that position, and didn't have many choices other than to take my shirt off. | None. It's made me aware of that gray area--he felt he had asked and I said yes. Of course, I didn't feel that's what I wanted to do at all, but I needed that recommendation. | Male | ||||
1369 | 12/8/2017 15:38:38 | A male professor made a female student's life hell after she broke up with one of his star male students. The harassment was so terrible, she left the program and transferred elsewhere. | First-year MFA | Professor | Other R1 | Creative Writing | None | None. He was recently accused, on Twitter, of rape, and to my knowledge is still teaching in the program. | I already had little faith in the writing world, but it certainly prevented me from professional opportunities that I might have had if I had chosen to kiss this professor's a**. | Male | |||||
1370 | 12/8/2017 15:50:39 | In the summer of 2015 I attended my very first academic conference as a graduate student. Three men, also graduate student presenters from programs/universities other than my own, got drunk after the first dinner. Two of them groped me. One of them found the location of my room and hammered on the door and wall trying to get me to let him in at 2am. I was terrified. | First year graduate student | Also graduate students but significantly older and more advanced than myself. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | History | None. I didn’t report it to the organizers. One of the harassers was a student of one of the organizers and I wasn’t sure i’d be believed/taken seriously | None | I’ve never seen any of these men again but am likely to do so because of our shared subfield and am very afraid of what may happen when I do. | I am paranoid every time I attend a conference. | Not clear yet. | Male | |||
1371 | 12/8/2017 16:14:59 | When I first entered my PhD Program, I heard a rumor from a female student that the (male) Dept chair had hit on another female student in the program and that I should be careful. Later that year, I was out at a bar with a group of doctoral students and a few faculty members following an end of semester holiday party, and the Chair kissed an entirely different female doctoral student than the one he was rumored to have hit on right next to me. (I never discussed it with her). At a national conference university sponsored party, the chair introduced me to to his friend/colleague (notably another department chair at an elite institution), and then the other department chair acted very lewd and disgusting towards me in front of my Dept Chair. My Chair did nothing to intervene. | doctoral student | My Department Chair | Other R1 | Social Sciences | none that I know of | none that I know of | I would say this was significant. This was my department chair, and funding decisions went through him and he was also influential in the field. So, after hearing that he hit on female students, seeing him kiss another female student at the bar in front of me, and realizing that he did nothing to protect me from his friend/colleague who was acting inappropriately towards me at a conference, I really kept my distance from him. And some other female doctoral students also felt awkward around him for similar reasons, and so didn't develop close relationships with him. And again and again, I saw male doctoral students who needed funding extensions secure it over female ones, even in cases where the female students had clearly out-produced our male counterparts. I think this was due in part to the fact that women in our program were scared to get too close to him, and so we were overlooked for opportunities. | It didn't impact me mentally. | It would have been really helpful to have my Chair in my corner as he was influential in the field. But, given the rumors and things I had witnessed, I felt too uncomfortable around him and didn't become as close with him as I might have if the circumstances were different. He was one of the reasons I selected the program, but then I didn't feel I could include him on my committee or work with him. | I'd also like to add that this same man, the Dept Chair, posted "me too" articles on social media. I was thinking, oh man he doesn't even realize that he is part of the problem. I don't think of my Chair as a predator, I think he believes that we are all consenting adults and is completely oblivious to how his behavior impacts female graduate students. He would never make the connection between how the culture he creates means women are not comfortable with him and then, because we feel we have to steer clear of him, face even more structural barriers to obtaining funding as our male counterparts happily head off with him to the bar after class to talk about their new research project. I don't think he is a bad person, I think he just has no awareness of how the climate he creates impacts all women in our program. Karen, thank you for taking the time to do this. | Male | ||
1372 | 12/8/2017 16:18:50 | During our return from the AWP conference, a colleague who had agreed to drive me to my car after our flight got drunk on the flight. I had to drive both of us to his house and wait for my husband to pick me up. In the meantime, the colleague read me a poem that ended with a kiss between the personae. At this point he said that he read me the poem in the hope that we might kiss. I told him that was not going to happen and then I waited for my husband very uncomfortably. | I was visiting faculty. | He was an administrator. | Small Liberal Arts College | Creative Writing | I didn't tell anyone because I was certain he would get fired and I felt guilty about it. | He later quit and moved out of academia. | None. | Overall, it was minimal but for a good amount of time, it made me extremely anxious and angry. | I avoid being too close with male colleagues. | Male | |||
1373 | 12/8/2017 16:20:46 | At the end of the year dinner for a seminar, a student who had been singled out as a favorite by the professor was talking about learning a foreign language. The professor responded that the language was best learned in the horizontal, and then proceeded to do some pelvic thrusting. | PhD student | Endowed professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | NYU | Art History | none | none | none | Mostly annoyance, but also disappointment that no one else seemed to be upset about the incident. | Probably none, except general cynicism about the academy and its devotion to the preservation of the system than the lives and work of those in it. | Male | ||
1374 | 12/8/2017 16:24:28 | December 2013: I was an undergraduate with a male professor from the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies (AAADS). He mentored me throughout the previous academic year after a formal introduction from one of his colleagues. He helped me with my research paper. During the Fall semester, we had friendly dinners to discuss my academic future as I was applying for PhD programs. During one such dinner, it was raining hard and I had not brought an umbrella. He offered to share his and walk me to his car so he could drive me to mine (the parking lot was large and connected with a nearby mall). Once we left the restaurant into the open night, he forcibly pulled me to his side. It was aggressive. When we reached his car, he forced himself on me. Pulled the back of my head toward him and forcibly kissed me, tongue and all. Later, touched and exposed my breasts even as I told him no. When I revealed to him that the month before I was raped and in a numbed/vulnerable state, he insinuated he could not mentor/write a letter of recommendation for grad school/connect me to other professors without sex. | undergraduate | Tenured Professor | Other R1 | Indiana University - Bloomington | Did not report | Retirement from IU but teaching in South Africa and still a minister | Additional mental scarring from previous sexual abuse I disclosed to him | In combination with another abuser at the University, I had to take a two year break because of PTSD | Male | ||||
1375 | 12/8/2017 16:54:33 | In 1994 I was a sophomore at a junior college studying music. A teacher who I had had the previous semester started coming into my practice room and sitting very close to me on the piano bench, telling me how talented I was. One day he invited me on a hike. I did not know how to say no, so I went. On the hike he very suddenly turned to me and kissed me, sticking his tongue in my mouth. I pulled away and walked down an embankment and sat on a log. I wanted to get away, but I was afraid of making him angry. I didn't know what to do. He followed me and sat down next to me and kissed me again, simultaneously grabbing me between the legs and then said "I can feel how wet you are for me". I jumped up and demanded he take me back to campus. He was angry and stormed past me. He took me back, and never spoke to me again. I avoided the music department for the rest of the semester, then transferred out. This was hard, I was studying music and there all the time. I lived in fear of running into him, or of him coming into my practice room. | Undergraduate sophomore at community college | He was a teacher in my department, I had him the semester previous. | Regional Teaching College | Cabrillo Community College | Music | I reported it a little over a year later. I was told the statute of limitations had expired and there was nothing they could do, other than talk to him about it. They said my letter would go in his file. | Zero. | Unknown | It was a sexual trauma that took me years to understand and unpack. I was very confused and ashamed, but now understand I shouldn't have been. He abused his power and he was a perpetrator of sexual violence. What had the most impact on me though was that the school did nothing to protect me, to punish him, or to protect future students from him. Essentially, they told him he could do this without consequence. | Unknown | Male | ||
1376 | 12/8/2017 17:00:01 | Was subjected to repeated lectures on the inappropriateness of me having a relationship with another woman and being seen around/near campus together, and such relationship would be okay if we were married.... This in CA during Prop 8 when same-sex marriage wasn't allowed. | Lecturer | Immediate Supervisor/Program Director | Other R1 | UC Riverside / UCR | Humanities | None-- too afraid to report due to retaliation | None--- continued until retired | Not able to have recommendation on job market. | Anxiety | Left institution next year for another lecturer position, in part due to lack of confidence in recommendations | Female | ||
1377 | 12/8/2017 17:18:11 | At academic conferences, powerful, well-known tenured professor (also in relationship/married) regularly propositioned and slept with his own female students (Master's & doctoral) while they were his students, and female doctoral students and junior faculty from other labs and universities, most of whom were from his academic field. Usually met and joked with them over drinks and then texted them asking them to hook up later that night. He would then cut off contact with them and deny that anything had happened. He sometimes told other people in the field that they were crazy. It has been damaging to many women. Some left their programs, some left the field, some had a lot of trouble getting academic jobs. He is connected, publishes a lot, and has a lot of power in his field. | Assistant Professor | Senior to me | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Psychology/OB/Marketing | Don't know if anyone reported any of it, but hard to believe that people don't know about it. | None to my knowledge. | Some ostracism as a result of "knowing too much." | Very hurtful. | Affected major decisions about my career. | Male | |||
1378 | 12/8/2017 17:23:42 | This is about gender discrimination and bullying. I was bullied by sr male colleagues over a 12+ yr period, beginning right after tenure, continuing for the 12+ years that two men were dept chair. I stood up for women colleague being driven out of dept, which instigated bullying me. Both chairs constantly belittled me to others, behind my back and occasionally to my face. I had higher teaching load than everyone else one semester, I almost never got raises, I didn't get internal grants (which everyone else got), I was never on a search or tenure committee, I taught larger lecture courses than others. The worst part is I began to take on their critique of me, that I was not competent, unprofessional, not a research scholar, etc. My situation is far better now, but I never fully recovered. One of those bullying chairs also had an affair with a graduate student in dept at the time, paid her a settlement of some kind when the affair ended. | just after tenure | senior tenured faculty (full prof) | Other R1 | history | I spoke to univ harassment counselor, who was sympathetic, and said she could not help me. | none; they both flourished | I did not publish much over a 12 yr period, because I was so demoralized and undermined. | depression for a while. I'm still angry at them, and think of one of them with hatred. | I never recovered professionally, although I have been a very active researcher and publishing scholar in recent years. | Male | |||
1379 | 12/8/2017 17:24:10 | 2013, meeting to discuss the status of my qualifying exams. Advisor was in her office in her slip with legs open and suggestively touching her thigh. Repeated on other occasions. | About to take qualifying exams | PhD advisor. Chair of department. | Other R1 | English | Didn’t report | None. Laughed it off. Dropped out of program after exams. | Little to none. Knew if it went further I could stop it. | Pushed me one step closer to quitting. | Rumors had floated around about her being in a relationship with her advisor in her days, so I kept thinking “and the cycle continues.” | Female | |||
1380 | 12/8/2017 17:33:07 | The first time I was sexually harassed I was an undergraduate student at Pomona College who went on a study abroad with the School for Field Studies, when it was a new organization, working in a remote location in Panama. The professor for the trip who was from a Wisconsin, R1 university, made sexually explicit comments about me to the rest of the group of students. He also groped me and tried to get me to drunk. Although I did not report it, i learned later that he was arrested and imprisoned for some period of time for raping a later student. I felt guilty for not reporting the incident when I learned about the widespread pattern of his behavior. | undergraduate, studying abroad with School for Field Studies | Professor and only group leader from the USA; there was a Peruvian woman, co-leader who I think was also being harassed by this man. | Other Type of School | School for Field Studies | Biology and Environmental Studies | I did not report but a student was raped by him later and he was imprisoned for some time. | Loss of position, jail, he seems to be living in Panama now so you might include loss of ability to live comfortably in the US (given he became labelled as a "sex offender") as a further consequence | I've kept quiet about this for more than 30 years, not wanting to be labelled as an accuser | Hard to say. I have compartmentalized the damage, I suppose. | None apparent to me. | Thank you for doing this. | Male | |
1381 | 12/8/2017 17:33:19 | A male professors commented on a sweatshirt I was wearing in his office in an one on one meeting. My sweatshirt had a statement written on it that he disagreed with. He let me know he disagreed with it and made me feel like I couldn't defend myself because we were meeting about a final paper that had a huge percentage of my grade. I felt accosted by a male professor in power because of an article of clothing I was wearing. | 1st year Master's student. | Tenured Faculty (associate professor) | R2 | Brigham Young University | Sociology | I told my advisor, she talked to the graduate coordinator. The head of the department talked to the male professor. | None. | When the professor told me the "Future is not female" it made me feel stupid and I wondered what I was doing in graduate school. It has made me doubt myself in various career/academic settings. | I was emotionally upset for a few months to the point where I couldn't walk in the same hallway this professor's office was in. | I still to this day question whether or not I should get a PhD or work in Academia because of that experience. | Male | ||
1382 | 12/8/2017 17:39:22 | The second time I was sexually harassed was when I was a graduate student and peer grad student stalked me and harangued me in an attempt to get me to date him. When I rebuffed his advances, he tried to undercut my status with professors organizing the teaching assignments for graduate TAs. | Graduate student and teaching assistant at R1 university | Graduate student and teaching assistant at R1 university | Other R1 | Biology | I told fellow graduate students about the situation and they attempted to help me, so that he could not bother me so directly. | None. | Made me more cautious towards peers and less likely to express friendliness of any sort. | Stressful at the time but no longer term, obvious impacts. | None that I am consciously aware of | Male | |||
1383 | 12/8/2017 17:39:32 | I reported a threat to a campus doctor who put me in touch with the campus police. The police ignored me but contacted the dept chair who had made her negative feelings for me known. The dept chair read my work email and harassed me for not voting for her to be chair when the dean solicited our votes. She then forced me to sit on a graduate committee with my harasser. she asked him for any incriminating evidence in private gmail communications. He gave her information about my oncological fertility preservation treatments. (we had been friends before the threatening behavior began, so the school tried to call me a liar). I was harassed by the dean and the dept chair about my fertility treatments. It was disgusting. I complained again and was demoted. | Assistant professor | male colleague with help of the dept. chair and the dean | Other R1 | Virginia Commonwealth University | Art History | Retaliation; termination after positive review and seizure of external research funds that I won. | nothing | terrible | i have no life choices | Retaliation by universities is terrible. It will be more difficult to obtain justice for public school administrators or offending faculty than a Hollywood executive because the public school has the backing of the state Attorney General. | Male | ||
1384 | 12/8/2017 17:40:19 | I was walking to class with the professor and the other TA when he decided to tell us about his sexual exploits at a different university. (He loved the concrete walls because it meant he could have sex in his office.) I said EW, the other TA said nothing. I think it was a test to see if either one of us was interested. | PhD student/ TA | Tenured professor/“boss” | Other R1 | A Canadian school. My field is too small. If I name the school it might be too obvious | Linguistics | I never told anyone up the chain. Didn’t think there would be any point. | None but I didn’t tell anyone who could dole out consequences | None really. I avoided him as much as possible until I was far enough away he couldn’t say gross things to me | None really. Lots worse happened to others involving even worse profs | None | Male | ||
1385 | 12/8/2017 17:42:26 | This happened to one of my undergraduate students in my department's major. Our university has a program that allows senior citizen members of the local public to audit classes for a small fee. The student confided in me that an elderly male auditor in one of her classes in our department was repeatedly asking her intimate questions, making invasive comments about her looks, and texting and calling her repeatedly at night (she showed me her phone to prove it). | Harassed student was undergrad. I was (young female) assistant prof whom she felt comfortable talking to. | Fellow student/auditor | Other R1 | History | The student and I both approached the department's academic advisor, who was sympathetic but did not have a clear solution. The advisor told the student to set firm boundaries with the harasser and ask him to simply stop his behavior, which she had been afraid to do up to that point for fear that he would retaliate. | None that I know of. | Did not affect the student's academic progress. | Comments about the student's looks triggered her eating disorder, and the harasser's presence in her class made her extremely anxious about attending. | Institutional Title IX enforcement tends to rotate around the assumption that harassment, assault and rape happen between traditionally aged students (i.e. 18-22, or 22-35ish in the case of grad students). Our university, at least, seems poorly equipped to deal with cases where a much older, wealthy male student harasses a very young female student - in other words, where both parties are technically "students" but there is actually a massive power differential. | Male | |||
1386 | 12/8/2017 17:43:29 | professor groped my body in two bars in one night before finals were over during the first semester of my phd at the same time that he groped and forcibly kissed my colleague and friend, another first-year phd. in full view of other colleagues of ours. | new phd student/his student | my professor | R2 | ohio university | english literature | after a lengthy title ix investigation he was scheduled for a faculty senate hearing and subsequently resigned. the institution accepted his resignation without a fuss. | he resigned before facing a hearing of his peers | i was forced to switch advisors after my phd advisor, the one person in my department in my area of study, told me in a meeting that she supported my assaulter. i have since had to switch my committee around in ways that have been detrimental to my publishing potential and my comprehensive exams. my book lists were finalized late, i have no one with whom I can meet about the first year and a half of my phd work, and all the time I spend in my masters program writing on one area is now a thing of the past. i have lost countless hours to the investigation process that should have been spent professionalizing, publishing, traveling for conferences. additionally, I have spent my entire phd so far, since my first semester, wondering if i really am as smart as the professor who put his hand between my legs told me i was. i have doubted my mind, my abilities, and my degree. | unfathomable...and far too painful a subject to approach at this time. | I am moving from my university town despite the impact it will have on my networking, professionalization, and teaching possibilities. I just cant be in this small college town where everyone knows what has happened, everyone knows who reported him, and everyone has an opinion. it is unlikely i will attempt a career in higher education that isn't administrative of some kind. | the assaults on my friend and i didn't happen in a vacuum. they were the result of over 10 years of enabling and willful denial on the part of not only the english department at ohio university, but the institution as a whole. our assaulter was eventually substantiated by the title ix office to have assaulted 4 women out of 6 that accused him on the complaint filed by my friend and i. he was never fired. he was allowed to resign with full pay for many months, and continues to exist in our small college town with relative ease and respect. | Male | |
1387 | 12/8/2017 17:46:04 | The third time I was sexually harassed at work was when I was a visiting assistant professor at Davidson College. A colleague who was a tenure-line star grabbed my body while he and I were alone, working on a document together. | I was a visiting assistant professor. | He was a tenure-track Assistant Professor and was regarded as a star of the Department, on the fast-track. | Small Liberal Arts College | Davidson College | Biology | I did not report the incident. My position at Davidson was quite precarious, as a visiting faculty member, and he was widely regarded as a star faculty member on the fast-track to tenure. | None, given I did not report. | Has made me even more leery of alone time with male colleagues | Stressful at the time but not much impact beyond that, I think. | I wanted to leave Davidson for a lot of different reasons and this gave me yet another. This helped me advance to a tenure-track position at a different school as I was very motivated to move. | Male | ||
1388 | 12/8/2017 17:46:24 | A professor serial harassed and assaulted women on an overseas Tibetan language course. Grabbing them, luring them into rooms. Clear this happened at least half a dozen times, no doubt many more I do not know about directly. | Undergraduate | Non TT Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | Reported it to EOAA several times. And Ombuds office. And other faculty in the field. Documented many cases. No response. | None as far as I can tell. | Switched fields. | Switched fields. | Great work you are doing! | Male | |||
1389 | 12/8/2017 17:53:36 | My prof pursued a sexual relationship with me. I was young and stupid. When I realized it was wrong (and I didn't want it), I broke it off and he retaliated by giving me a bad grade. | undergraduate | Assistant Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | I didn't report it. | None that I know of. | I was scared to go to conferences, I didn't trust my judgment, I thanked god that my graduate mentor was an awesome woman who gave me a new way to think about power dynamics. | I went through a deep depression | I became a (more successful) professor, thanks to hard work and some fantastic mentors. I treat undergraduates with respect. I stand up for undergrads and graduate students who are being abused. | thank you for doing this - I fear the problem is widespread. | Male | |||
1390 | 12/8/2017 18:12:33 | I went to a colleague’s apartment to help him set up his VCR as he was blind and said he couldn’t do it himself. While there he started to grope me and kiss me. I was able to get away from him and leave, perhaps because he was blind. He continually over the next few weeks tried to corner me at work to say I misunderstood his intentions. | I was an instructor, full time, but ABD, so could not be considered an assistant professor yet. | He was an assistant professor, we were hired the same year, 2000 | Small Liberal Arts College | Ashland University | Communication | I never reported it, I thought it was a personal issue between me and the harasser, not anything to do with the university. | None as I never reported it | None | I had to work to stay away from him until he left at the end of that year, it was somewhat nerve wracking | Since he left, none | The perpetrator has passed away since this occurred, so I hear | Male | |
1391 | 12/8/2017 18:23:25 | My undergraduate advisor made suggestive remarks, called me late at night, etc | Undergrad | Tenured faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Literature | Not reported | None | Initially avoided conferences in fear of him | This was pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. I eventually forgave him but never contacted him again. | Male | ||||
1392 | 12/8/2017 18:25:16 | First semester PhD, students in my program have to complete a big "qualifying exam" in their first semester. If you don't pass, you basically wash out of the program. As part of the exam, we had to meet periodically throughout the semester with the three members on the exam committee who would evaluate the essay each student eventually produced. The only male professor on the committee was a total creep and a jerk. He spoke to my breasts for the entire conversation every time we met. He would often wander around his office as we talked, pausing mostly behind me to "look over my shoulder" and I suspect down my shirt. The whole thing made me feel dirty, but also trapped because I knew this guy had a lot of power regarding whether I continued in the program or not. So I ultimately didn't report anything. What was I going to say anyway? Professor So-and-so looks at me wrong? He left the university for another academic job after that year, and since he's left I've talked to probably six other grad students who had the same experience with him. All he did was stare at your tits. Of course, the male grad students had nothing but great things to say about his insights for their research and his mentorship. They were scholars to him. We (the women) were objects. | PhD student | Assistant professor, key member of the committee evaluating my qualifying exam | Other R1 | English | None/no report filed | None, as far as I know he got great references when he moved on | Nothing career-wise, thankfully. | I realized later on that his treatment of me really shook my confidence. If my supposed mentors didn't think of me as a colleague or a scholar, and only thought of me in a sexual way, what did I have to offer the academy? And I became very guarded and aware of my interactions with male professors. | I think it happened so early on that it hasn't had a lasting impact on my trajectory. Probably took about a year to feel comfortable in the building after he left. | My experience is so mild. Unfortunately there are a handful of WAY worse stories from my doctoral institution that I can't go into any detail about, even anonymously, because of either the fear of retaliation, or because it's currently under investigation and I don't want to jeopardize the outcome of that investigation. But man, if people knew half the shit that went on in my department, they would burn the place to the ground. | Male | ||
1393 | 12/8/2017 18:58:51 | I didn't consider this a form of harassment exactly at the time, yet my thoughts have returned to it many times in recent weeks; the degree to which we all took it as more or less normal seems to me illustrative of how bad normal has been. A fellow graduate student was working in the department's main research center (a title VI funded area studies center). He was always an arrogant, somewhat unpleasant, self-righteous type (and evangelical Christian no less, relevant because of the hypocrisy). One day the (female) director entered the center, a space always open to the public and students (both undergrad and grad), not at all a private office, and there was the grad student in question, on the clock supposed to be working, but instead masturbating to porn right there at his work computer in a public university office. The box of tissues he was careful to keep by the computer took on a whole new connotation, as did the crusty stains on the chair that other grad students were forced to sit in as well as they worked their shifts in the center. The director then found that the computer was filled with porn; it seemed that this is what he did for most of his 'working' hours. He was dismissed from his work-study job in the center BUT that's absolutely all that happened. No other form of rebuke or consequences at all. He continued in the program, continued to work with undergraduates, continued in his seminars with all of us, while several of his fellow graduate students continued to have to sit in the weirdly stained chair he left behind in the center. He took the rebuke so lightly, had so little shame, that he asked for his job back at the center the next year, apparently thinking that his perpetual masturbation in a public university office while on the clock really wasn't such a big deal. They didn't give him the job back, but that's the extent of negative consequence. He graduated and now holds a tenure track position at a different university. I see him at conferences regularly and often wonder, how does he interact with his undergraduates? And how is it that none of us thought to question whether this was a person who should be in a position of power vis-a-vis young vulnerable women? Or, rather, of course we questioned, but it never once occurred to us that we could do anything about it. After all, the administration knew already and did all but nothing. The fact that I'm still questioning, was this harassment? As if there should be any question that we all had a right to not be exposed to this guy's masturbation practices while at work, to not worry about seeing his erect penis while going about our work day, to not have to sit on the crusted remnants of semen he left behind....I write this and it sounds graphic, but in fact it's merely descriptive. | PhD student | PhD student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Middle East Studies | Work-study position revoked | None | None | Just further proof of the difference between my place in the academic world (as a woman) and the place others (men) hold | Nothing specific from this particular incident, yet the larger pattern.... | Male | |||
1394 | 12/8/2017 19:10:39 | I was in a computer lab in a university library when one of the other students in my doctoral program came up behind me and said he wanted me to "suck on his throbbing member until all the creamy white stuff comes out." Another student, a man, heard this and did nothing. | Ph.D. student | Another Ph.D. student, about two years ahead of me | Other R1 | Rutgers-Newark | Criminal Justice | None, I did not report it | None apparent | None apparent | Caused to avoid this person during the rest of my time in graduate school and even now, almost 20 years later, at conferences and the like | Male | |||
1395 | 12/8/2017 19:14:41 | My major advisor told me that eventually all female students end up having affairs with their advisors. | 1st year undergraduate | Professor, my assigned advisor in my major | Small Liberal Arts College | Saint Mary's University (Nova Scotia) | Philosophy | None, I did not report it | None apparent, I ended up with the Ph.D., though in a different discipline all together | I changed majors right away. This led me to avoid working with male faculty until I reached my Ph.D. program. | Male | ||||
1396 | 12/8/2017 19:15:05 | I was a first-year graduate student still deciding which lab to join. The postdocs in one lab (all male) repeatedly talked about how it was a lab tradition to go to strip clubs when at major conferences. One senior postdoc crawled across the floor imitating a particularly memorable stripper. I decided not to join that lab. | Junior graduate student | Senior post-docs | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Neuroscience | Decided not to join that lab even though they did interesting work. | Male | |||||||
1397 | 12/8/2017 19:24:50 | a colleague and his student were writing demeaning, sexual, and gender harassing remarks about a number of women in the field, and shared those emails | assistant professor | same level | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | psychology | none | i can't estimate but enjoyment decreased | traumatic | changed areas to avoid them, as there were 2 | Male | ||||
1398 | 12/8/2017 19:28:24 | advisor would touch my thighs and said he had lascivious thoughts, asked me out, try to see me at his house | phd student | famous full professor | Other R1 | Psychology | there have been complaints but nothing happened. i did not complain. | none | doubts about my capacity as my advisor's interest was mixed | not much | none | Male | |||
1399 | 12/8/2017 19:30:34 | at a conference, invited to sleep with a former faculty member, who was married | assistant professor | full professor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | he had a reputation of doing this at the university but nothing happened | none | none | none | Male | |||||
1400 | 12/8/2017 19:32:49 | faculty sleeping and harassing students and colleagues | junior faculty | there were several faculty | Other Type of School | Universidad Autonoma de Madrid | social psychology | none | none | slowed down | anxiety | Male | |||
1401 | 12/8/2017 19:44:25 | A classmate falsely accused me (female) (via several emails to professors and administrators) of spying on her at the behest of a male faculty member at another connected institution. She identified times in class based on book suggestions and created a situation where I was unable to speak up in class for the majority of a semester and a half lest another accusatory email be sent. She brought me into accusations that I had no knowledge of and that were never spoken about to me by faculty or administration leading me to feelings of harassment and created a major block in my ability to navigate the program and faculty based on concerns about what they knew or believed. | First semester of PhD program | cohort member | Other R1 | At the time I spoke to the Ombuds Officer who advised me to not say anything and let the situation play out, which it did and she eventually left the program. Did not hear anything from any of the faculty or administrators involved. | Unclear circumstances of departure. When I finally spoke about it to a mentor four years later my issue of being swept up and accused was dismissed as unimportant and something that they had no knowledge of. | Failed first comprehensive exams and stalled a lot of progress toward the dissertation because of a fear of speaking to faculty members without knowing what they knew/did not know about the situation. Additionally I was ostracized from my fellow classmates because of advisement to not speak about any of the ongoing incidents. | The incidents caused significant distress, exacerbating anxiety disorder. | Continuing the PhD but time to degree has been extended and it took another four years before I was able to speak to one mentor about the situation. | Female | ||||
1402 | 12/8/2017 19:51:26 | Graduate students were sexually harassed. They left feeling terrible. I hear they still struggle. The profs? Still here. Still heading thesis committees and teaching classes. As if nothing. They got to take sabbaticals (not kidding) to "recover" from what they (the profs) "went through". | Staff bystander | People I work for as staff to a department. | Other R1 | Humanities | Legal office talked to everyone. Told no one the results but I can see. | A note in their file. I hear. What note? What file? No one will ever see it. | Like being a kid in an abusive family that's not the one getting the abuse but having to witness and not be able to say anything because then my job would be in jeopardy. But also I didn't see or know anything until they came forward (good for them!!) | N/a | Thank you ❤ | Male | |||
1403 | 12/8/2017 19:54:02 | A senior faculty made advances on numerous students and some female faculty, including me. Usually, these incidents would entail excessive touching, and sometimes putting his hand below one's shirt or down one's pants in public (at parties or at a bar, usually drunk). The faculty member also kissed students on the mouth regularly. | untenured faculty | chair of the department | Other R1 | humanities | he was asked to leave the school. | less productivity; fear for my job; fear for my students | anxiety, stress | loss of faith in academia. | Male | ||||
1404 | 12/8/2017 19:56:51 | I had spent a fair amount of time (a couple of hours) speaking with the chair of a different department at a social event at a university faculty retreat. I had no sexual or romantic interest in him and I made that clear by verbally telling him so at one point in the evening when I felt he crossed a line when he stated that he and I both seemed to have unmet needs. He backed off immediately so I let it go, especially since I believe he had been intoxicated at the time. I am not one to hold a grudge so we became Facebook friends, and that friendship stayed well within what I felt were appropriate boundaries: no more unwelcome advances from him, just mundane liking and commenting on each other's posts, and some good-natured trash talk about sports. Then a few months later our Dean asked me to take on additional responsibilities regarding program level assessment within the college, since that is an interest of mine. In addition to having me advise [the dean] on assessment related matters, she also made me available to the chairs of all the departments in the college so that they could consult with me on implementing best practices for assessing student learning outcomes in their respective programs. The individual in question sent me a private Facebook message telling me that the dean "gave" me to him and said that that I have to do whatever he said, and he then suggested that we meet up at the airport Holiday Inn every Friday night to "talk assessment." This disturbed me quite a bit, but because I didn't want to make waves I chose to pretend I didn't understand his implication and answered him in earnest that I would be willing to meet in the library with other staff members to talk about assessing his program. He responded by saying that he actually had no interest in talking about assessment and really just wanted to hang out with me, and that regardless of my answer he would still write a favorable letter on my behalf for my upcoming third-year review. This last part was particularly upsetting, because while I knew that I had nothing to fear about my third year review, I felt intimidated and disgusted that he felt so free to imply that he had any authority over my third year review and would dare to link that to his holiday inn invitation. At that point I stopped responding and deleted him as a friend. About a week later he emailed me to say that he had all but forgotten that exchange but just realized that it might have rubbed me the wrong way and that if it did he apologized because he had been drinking, he didn't mean anything inappropriate, and that he hoped we could still be friends. I responded saying that I appreciated his apology, but that I did not feel comfortable interacting with him in any way beyond the most professional capacity. I also told him that I would give him the benefit of the doubt and that I would not be discussing the incident with human resources. I said that last part mostly to make it crystal clear to him that I would be well within my rights to do so, my hope being that he would consider the severity of his actions and resolve to refrain from behavior like that in the future with other colleagues. | My third year as assistant professor | Full professor at the University and chair of his department | Regional Teaching College | Counseling | I did not report | None | None that I know of | None besides questioning myself and invalidating myself. Telling myself, "it's really not a big deal, and the fact that you feel this violated means that you are blowing this out of proportion." The fact that I even feel the need to go there is upsetting to me because I know what happened was wrong and out of line. The fact that I feel the need to downplay this and excuse him makes me disappointed in myself and disillusioned with our society in general. | None except that I make sure to avoid my harasser. This is not difficult to do because we are in different disciplines, but I make sure to avoid him at University level faculty meetings and at the department chairs' meetings when I go in my own shares place as a proxy when she cannot make it. | Male | |||
1405 | 12/8/2017 20:00:40 | I was explicitly told by a well-known Department Chair that the "only reason they wouldn't consider hiring me was because you are a woman and young." Further comments were made about my inability to handle older male faculty. This was a second interview. | Job applicant for a production position in an academic theatre (with more years of experience than specified.) | Interviewer | R2 | The New School | Theatre | The other person in the interview room looked shocked. | None. | I moved in a different career path in the non-profit world. Chose to come back to academia as a graduate student many years later. | Not much at the time, though obviously the incident has lingered. | It was part of what being a female technician always meant at most institutions. This and the many other incidents are part of what drove me back toward academia in the hopes of changing that environment. | Male | ||
1406 | 12/8/2017 20:57:22 | A senior professor started a sexual relationship with me when I was untenured | unitenured | full prof | Other R1 | History | The harassment officer tried. My department chair was a friend of his. | None of consequence. | I, who was 100% involved in my dept (my harrasser had been ABSENT from all departmental obligations for some years...until he wanted to intimidate me after I broke up with him), avoided department meetings and holiday and end-of-tear parties. | Not good | Male | ||||
1407 | 12/8/2017 21:10:15 | After taking several classes from a respected senior male professor and expressing interest in majoring in Foreign Policy with the idea of entering the foreign service, the professor invited me to join him for lunch. After appropriate professional conversation, he began to ask about my personal life. He indicated that he and his wife had an "open" marriage. Being young (I was not yet 20) and naive, I didn't fully understand what he was suggesting, but the whole conversation made me uncomfortable. After several other suggestive incidents (generally subtle comments and looks), I changed my major within the department so I wouldn't have to take any additional courses from him. | Undergraduate Student | He was a full tenured professor with a national reputation for his scholarship in the foreign policy field. | Other Type of School | Prefer not to name, but it was a M1 regional state university | Political Science | When I had previously reported sexual harassment/discrimination I had witnessed to the Dean of Arts and Sciences (about a friend who had been raped, in part, due to the attitude perpetuated by the coach of an intercollegiate (nonathletic) team), he brushed my concerns off as being inconsequential. I therefore choose to say nothing in this case. | None | I completely changed career goals, changing from a field that was at the time dominated by men (foreign policy) to one dominated by women (education) although my undergraduate degree is in political science. | I have struggled with weight most of my adult life (something I never had trouble with previous to these incidents). I have finally realized that the weight created (and continues to create) a protective barrier against men's unwanted "attention." | Although it was not my original intention, I choose to become a stay-at-home mother rather than pursuing a career. When my children were older, I returned to school to became a school teacher and, only now after thirty years, have I returned to school to complete my long desired PhD. | About fifteen years after I graduated, I was attending a seminar where there were individuals from the same department/institution. We got to talking about professors. It turned out the professor was still employed despite having a reputation, at least among the women students in the department, of sleeping with undergraduate women. | Male | |
1408 | 12/8/2017 21:26:43 | I was told my department “only hired the pretty [women].” It was these kinds of comments over years and years. It was using the word “pussy” in a meeting as a synonym for weakness. Telling people that I had good relationships with that I “threw them under the bus” and not telling them what that meant. And then when they pressed him, and he explained what he meant, it was clear it was a ploy to divide. It was telling me he was sick of learning about gender inequality. And that I used the “inequality card” again and again. And on. And on. And on. And then it was the administration allowing him to characterize other people’s experiences instead of talking to other people. And allowing him to characterize what he said about me in meetings- which he denied- instead of asking the people that were actually in the meetings. And him telling people he couldn’t work with them anymore because they stood up for me, but they were going to have to figure out a way to get them out of their position because he wasn’t allowed to retaliate. And him telling others that they didn’t want to be the type of woman- like me- who reports things. Baseless things. And other people believing him even when they saw a piece of what he was doing to me. And they supposedly know about inequality. | Assistant professor | Associate professor | Other R1 | Sociology | Denial. Minimization. Seeing things through the eyes of the perpetrator. Not following own rules. Trying to put me off. Pass me around. Trying to cool me out. Administrators have admitted to me that when they hear that women have issues they tell the department heads. And NEVER put it in writing. Or only email that they want to talk with them. They’ve told me that there are three sides to every story. One person’s, the other person’s, and the truth. | Zero. He did seem to overly defend himself and announce that he was such a champion for diversity all the time. | People calling me “unreasonable.” We’ll see when I go up for full professor. | Exhaustion. Anger in waves. Reliving it whenever I have to do anything with my department. Fearful now that he’ll read this and figure out it was me. And go on another public relations campaign. | Stopped engaging in the department beyond minimal. | Male | |||
1409 | 12/8/2017 21:42:51 | I was drugged and raped by a professor in my department at the beginning of this semester. | grad student | Other R1 | university of arizona | keep it quiet, pretend to investigate, and cover it the hell up | tbd, but probably nothing. | this has ruined my life. | i sincerely wish i had never been brought into this disgusting world. | tbd, but i know it will change everything for me. | Male | ||||
1410 | 12/8/2017 21:53:00 | A colleague made suggestive comments about my appearance in front of a large audience. | Assistant Professor | Tenured, very senior | Other R1 | Humanities | none | none | Nothing, other than the time I spent (wasted?) wondering if I should report it. (I didn't; so many people had already witnessed it that it didn't seem that there was anything to "report," and I was too embarrassed to call more attention to it. I still don't know if I made the right decision.) | It was humiliating and made me (even more) self-conscious for quite a while. | Male | ||||
1411 | 12/8/2017 22:02:39 | About 20 years ago I was assaulted in a car and asked if I wanted to have sex by a college professor I was taking a summer workshop with. He actually grabbed my pussy, trite as that sounds now. We were alone together, on a professional errand outside the institution. I was a student paying to be in his class and making great personal sacrifice to be there at all, and I assumed everything about the situation was strictly professional. He must have thought my interest in joining the errand was a come-on? I said no and he left me alone. 2 days later, another young female student approached me with her own report of his inappropriate behavior. The next day another young female student confided in us that she was returning the teacher's interest in her. Student #2 and I reported what was happening to the administration. I had never bonded so intensely and so quickly with another co-student as I did that week. He knew we were on to him and ridiculed us in front of the other students when he could for the rest of the workshop. | An early-20's student, between undergrad and grad school | Professor at a small private college | Other Type of School | Arts | I and another student together reported to the school administration our experiences of being harassed almost immediately after they occurred. We also explained what was going on with the professor and our other friend and how toxic the learning environment was by then-- just 3 days into a weeklong workshop. We were told to make sure we wrote our thoughts down on the class evaluations, and that was it. So we then told our teaching assistant, as she also worked full-time as a colleague with him at their home institution. Her reply was that because she hadn't seen any harrassment happening, she couldn't do anything about it. | Can't say for sure. Previously, it seemed this teacher taught regular summer workshops (every 2-3 years) at this school. After this occurred and we reported it, he wasn't asked back to teach there for another 10 years. I know this because he made the point to gloat to me about it. I have reported the harrassment I experienced twice to my institution (where we both teach now) and the first time the administration just seemed relieved that I was aware of the predator in my department. The second time I reported this I also was addressing his bullying and retaliation, and HR told me there was no retaliation, to not talk with anyone about this, and they did not investigate the report I filed about the original sexual harrassment incident. | It's complicated. Ironically, a few years after this occurred, I began working with him directly as a colleague. Then a few years into that teaching job I was promoted and I became his supervisor. Then a few years later, he began bullying me. The bullying began at about the same time I fully realized he had no sway on my career and never really did. The toxicity of his predatory behavior is widely known in the field and many, many people have taken me aside to speak about it. Some were worried about me and wanted to warn me, others told me they were hesitant to work with me because I work with him and he causes trouble. and others criticized what they perceived to be as my "loyalty" to him during my first few years of teaching. | I work in an environment that ebbs and flows with toxicity and feel betrayed on multiple levels by my institution. There are many good days, days when my only concern is my classroom and obligations to the magic that is there. This is what I cherish and focus on in my work. And there have been some bad days, days when I don't know what to say and cannot believe I'm still dealing with his shit. | In some ways this situation has been a gift. I understand now how our culture is changing from within each of us--- 15 years ago I told another colleague I would kick ass if anyone came to me with a complaint about this former teacher and now-colleague. Now I realize that for many years I was overlooked my own complaint and didn't value or expect anyone else to value the awful experience I had already had with this teacher. I see things very differently and more clearly now and am able to behave differently in my own academic roles. I champion the women in my field, I am especially watchful of classroom dynamics and I am outspoken in meetings with my colleagues. I embrace and brazenly celebrate all of my achievements -- as an academic, a professional in my field and as a mother-- to model for my female student especially, what is possible in life. | Male | |||
1412 | 12/8/2017 22:09:40 | Professor said I would fail class if failed to sleep with him | Master's student | Assistant Professor | Other R1 | Communication | Fired for sexual harassment | He is now teaching at a regional teaching college | None - I didn't report it at the time, but another brave soul did a year later | Intense anxiety/depression/guilt for years! | I kept quiet about it because I was worried about career outcomes. Another victim came out years later... I feel guilty I didn't say anything earlier. | Male | |||
1413 | 12/8/2017 23:08:37 | Upon leaving the post room together, my senior colleagues, who was behind me, made a noise so I (male) looked over my shoulder. She looked me up and down and then focused on my butt while making approving (vaguely erotic?) noises and the accompanying facial expression. I let out an embarrassed giggle and left swiftly. | Early career - first year in my first permanent job (in the UK). I was 30. | Full Professor (female) and a leading researcher in the university. She would have been at least in her mid 50s. | Other Type of School | University of Worcester (UK) | English Literature | I didn't report it. | none | I was always wary of working with this former colleagues. | No long term impact - but I evidently haven't forgotten about the incident. | I kept away from her - she also used her power and influence in other ways (e.g. Skewing things in her favour behind the scenes). | I know anecdotally that she also behaved inappropriately towards (female) some of her PhD students. | Female | |
1414 | 12/9/2017 4:32:04 | Inappropriate comments about my ovaries, tried to get women to have sex with him in a variety of manners; inappropriate texts | PhD student | Advisor | R2 | Social work | Title IX Office substantiated, but there were no consequences. He’s still in an endowed, full professorship. As part of the Title IX investigation he wrote a several hundred page tome denigrating my character and other womens’ characters, lied about us. He also said that “we wanted it” because of how we dressed, because we wore makeup, and because we wore our hair in pony tails. | None | Transitioned to a different discipline. He also denigrated my work and character in the field which limited opportunities for me and led to the discipline change. | Stress on my marriage. | Male | ||||
1415 | 12/9/2017 4:40:27 | Repeated touching (shoulder, arm, hand, back) and many phone calls (after hours) that none of my female colleagues seemed to get | Adjunct | Department head | Small Liberal Arts College | I didn’t want to lose my job, so I only told this person to please not touch me. I never reported it. | I left the institution and found a job elsewhere. I am wary of older male academics and suspicious of their intentions following this experience. | I respected this person and I finally realized that I could no longer ignore the pattern. I loved this job, but I was so uncomfortable that I made the choice to leave it. On the day I decided to leave, I called another female academic and cried. She understood. I miss this job, but it was the right choice for me. | Male | ||||||
1416 | 12/9/2017 5:17:47 | I was a TA and one of my students told me that he hated women. This was many years ago, but he said something along the lines of, “Women shouldn’t be professors. I hate them,” on the first day of class. He glared at me throughout the semester, interrupting lecture constantly, to be counterproductive to the discussion. This description is important because it sets the scene for what happened later in the semester. The student came up to me after class one day and standing very closely to me, he quietly told me about how he loves a particular, remote location and how, “if you dumped a body there, no one one would ever find it,” and then he walked out. At this point, I became genuinely fearful. I don’t typically rely on intuition, but the way he said it felt like a threat. I told my superiors about what happened. They were unable to help because he had not explicitly threatened me or physically assaulted me. I was encouraged to meet with this student one-on-one in order to draw up an informal contract of student conduct. I felt sick the day leading up to the meeting. I photocopied the contract, labeled it, and told a few people where to find it if something happened. I was assigned a male colleague to supervise the class. I also began carrying a knife (and felt ridiculous in the process) but I was genuinely afraid and didn’t know what else to do. | Graduate Teaching Assistant | Undergrad Student | Other R1 | The department on campus that handles these types of incidents told myself and my superiors that nothing could be done unless the student had assaulted me or made an explicit threat of bodily harm. Intimation of harm did not warrant an institutional response. I asked whether the department could approach the student and offer counseling resources, but they declined. The students in this class noticed I was uncomfortable and regularly came to my aid during his repeated interruptions. They lingered after class and waited until this student left and would often walk out with me—keep in mind, I hadn’t told my other students anything about this. A few even told me that they were worried about the student’s behavior toward me. Even they seemed to understand what was going on, but the institution wouldn’t listen. Thankfully, my immediate superiors took this pretty seriously and assigned a male colleague to sit in the classroom with me for a few weeks. The student behaved in the male colleague’s presence and then never came to class again. | He had to sign a non-binding contract with me, but otherwise nothing | That was the last semester I TA-ed. I became an RA in another department | I was fearful and that is terribly unusual for me, as I refuse to live my life afraid of anyone or anything. I tried my best not to walk around campus alone, particularly at night when the campus is deserted, but grad classes take place in the evening so it was nearly impossible. I always carried pepper spray prior to this semester (I refuse to be afraid but I’m not naive—single young woman living alone means society tells me I could be a target). However, I carried a knife that year. I scheduled my office hours so that I would always have other people with me. The student never found me outside of class. Every female academic has war stories. This was one of mine. Many years later, I can still remember that fear. | I left the department and began a job in another department | Male | ||||
1417 | 12/9/2017 5:24:19 | A married male tenured faculty member kept telling me how attractive I was, how easy it would be to have a sexual relationship, told me he had sexual fantasies about me, kept asking me out, and showing up at events I would attend, where he would insist on talking to me or just watch me. | Visiting graduate student fellow | Tenured in another department | Small Liberal Arts College | Smith College | English | None | None | I have distant relationships with cis-gender males, make sure I am never alone or with a door closed, etc. | I had been assualted and raped before. Made me more wary and vigilant. | Feel compelled to help others and make sure institutional structures are in place so my situation is not repeated | Male | ||
1418 | 12/9/2017 5:28:58 | The teaching assistant in charge of the Intro to Modernism class at CU Boulder’s English department would stand in front of me in class, say my name, and then say “You should see me naked.” He would also mention he was married and his wife was pregnant, so he would run 10 miles a day to stay in shape. Then he would make suggestive comments about my appearance or body in front of other students in class and then tie these to whatever text we were reading. This was 1990. The semester after I took that class with him, there was a fire drill in the English department building and he came up to me while I was outside with my classmates and started groping me and kissing my neck. I was stunned. My peers asked if he was my boyfriend—I told them he was my TA from the previous semester. | Sophomore in college | PhD student in English | Other R1 | University of Colorado at Boulder | English | I did not report it officially—I didn’t know who to tell. | It was humiliating during class and when he groped me in public, but since none of the other professors or instructors treated me that way, I stayed in the major and had no negative repercussions. | I would say the negative impact on my mental health was limited because I next took several feminism classes which helped me understand that what happened was his problem and not due to anything I had done. I also felt bad for his wife and child, but decided that it was not my place to tell them. | Well, honestly, it affirmed my desire to stay in the academy and make learning safer for students of all kinds. As a professor at a R1 university, I have sought to challenge sexist and/or abusive or demeaning paradigms when I learn about them and to empower all my students to advocate on their own behalf. I also mentor my grad students to be respectful and not too familiar with their own students so that there is no misunderstanding or blurring of their professional persona and the students’ emotional autonomy. | Male | |||
1419 | 12/9/2017 6:20:50 | lewd comments, discrimination, unwanted touching, and sexual advances | Graduate Student | Associate Professors | Other R1 | FSU | History | None. | Male | ||||||
1420 | 12/9/2017 6:21:50 | A professor was looking for co-presenters for an international conference. I asked if I could join the presentation, and the professor said we could talk about it over drinks at a local bar. I went, ordered a beer, and started talking her through my proposal. About 15 minutes in, she asked "Is this a date?" I was really startled, and said no, it wasn't. I told her I was interested in someone else. She told me that the person I was interested in was getting married (this was not true) and said that I should hook up with her instead. She made it clear that participation in the conference (and funding) required that she "get to know me better". I needed the money, so I said yes. We dated for two months before she broke it off, because I wasn't ready to get married yet. | Adjunct faculty | Associate Professor, member of the Adjunct review committer | Other R1 | English | None / never reported | Promoted | My harasser never disclosed our relationship to the Adjunct review committee. When I came up for review, she tried to get me fired. After a closer look at my teaching record, the rest of the committee voted to retain me. | I lost sleep and fell into a depression over this. I still haven't told most of my friends and colleagues. I'm so embarrassed - how did I not see that coming? | I left that school and moved to another state. I quit teaching for two years. There were several reasons, but this was a major factor. | Female | |||
1421 | 12/9/2017 6:36:59 | For my sister who refuses to discuss: circa 1999, she was an undergraduate researcher (she was about 21 at the time) who was hired to do data samples at rural location about two hours away. She was working "for" [international/male] doctoral candidate. They checked in at hotel and he insisted they share a room with twin beds. She awoke middle of the night to him standing at the end of her bed, possibly masturbating. She told him to go away, called me and I managed to contact a nearby family member who immediately went to pick her up middle of the night. | undergraduate researcher | doctoral candidate | R2 | Guelph | agroforestry | she reported to doctoral candidate's supervisor but no action taken that we know of. | none that we know of | not clear. She eventually pursued graduate studies in gender issues | significant. | Male | |||
1422 | 12/9/2017 7:02:08 | Kissed in lab by supervisor, was invited to his house for sex, he constantly told me things that turned him on, etc. | Undergraduate intern | On-site supervisor/medical professor | Other Type of School | ATSU/KCOM | It should be a learning lesson for me. | Fired for other behavior | Fear, anger, flashbacks | I brought it up to my home institution, who ignored it and later said I can't expect them to read between the lines. | Male | ||||
1423 | 12/9/2017 7:02:11 | 1. Constant and public commentary about my sex life, my husband's sexual abilities/status/preference in front of colleagues and my students. I learned after two years of this that similar behaviour was also directed at another (male) pre-tenure colleague. 2. Repeated implicit and explicit ("I have lots of power over your tenure application...hahahaha") commentary on his influence on my career trajectory. 3. When I pushed back and said 'that [sex] comment is across the line' I was told that I "didn't have a sense of humour". 4. Gossip that I was "difficult hire" and wasn't as committed because my husband "makes a lot of money" and because my "children are obviously a priority". 5. Lots of low level gaslighting about a range of issues (I quickly implemented a system of everything goes in writing via email) His behaviour was entirely about power over me/us and lessened almost immediately after I received my tenure decision. He still tries to pull rank/power tricks on me but I've since said everything except "get the fuck out of my office" (stopping short only because of collegiality and all of that....) | Assistant Professor - female | Full Professor; Dept Chair - male | Elite Institution/Ivy League | somewhere in southern Ontario (not UofT) | 1. when I raised my concerns with a (female) senior colleague, her response was "that's just X being X, don't take him seriously" 2. when we raised our concerns with a (male) senior colleague he was appalled and suggested we put everything in a private letter to the Dean. 3. in the department, there was an internal movement to replace the Chair when his term was up but senior faculty members expected us to report his behaviour during review to generate the momentum for his replacement. We had discussed our options and sought advice from external mentors but did not feel that we were ultimately "safe" to do so. Despite acknowledgement of his behaviour (and there were other known problems unrelated to the issues raised here), he was "re elected" for another term. | n/a | I received tenure but I sometimes wonder how "enthusiastically" he argued my case during the faculty level review. I don't let myself think about this because pointless. | significant. Grateful I have benefits that cover talk therapy. | I stuck it out and am still here, now tenured. I try not to think about how is snide/side comments have impacted my reputation in department and the faculty. I try not to think about whether my annual review scores (influencing merit pay...) might have been different if he hadn't been head of review committee. I took great joy in being on the committee to identify the new Chair. I'm deeply committed to increasing tenure-progression transparency, support/mentorship for our junior faculty members (they will go up with a different Chair). | Male | |||
1424 | 12/9/2017 7:02:26 | During my first year of my MFA program, I came to the studio late at night to work. I needed to use the computer in the photography studio but found that the studio had been taken over by a photo shoot involving a g-string clad woman grinding on a motorcycle, provided over by two of my male grad student colleagues and the building custodian. I was stunned and backed out as quickly as possible. There's a lot of pressure in art school to be down with this kind of thing, and I knew the sexism of the whole scenario would be couched as ironic. Nevertheless I reported it - it pissed me off that my colleagues were using the state equipment for any private business, let alone one that objectified women's bodies. The grads got a slap on the hand. The custodian was reassigned, but only after my female colleague revealed that he had repeatedly pressured her to participate in the photo shoot. Reporting the incident permanently alienated me from these two grads and the entire clique of male students and professors that they were a part of. I was largely excluded from the social networking they engaged in - lunch discussions, time with visiting artists, etc. I can't help but note that one of the professors in this clique (who had not been present at the photo shoot) is now married to a former undergraduate. | grad student | other grad students | Other R1 | Art | Reassigned the most vulnerable worker to another area | None | Excluded from career opportunities and networking | The MeToo moment has made me realize the cumulative toll of living for decades in an environment where messages are ubiquitous that women are valued most for their bodies and not for their intellectual or artistic contributions. I haven't had a single horrifying story of propositioning or assault but lots and lots of incidents like this one, or slimy hugs that go on too long, or whispered rumors in hallways telling me (or me warning others) to stay away from someone who is widely, but unspecifically, known as a creep. | Male | ||||
1425 | 12/9/2017 7:09:05 | As soon as I joined my department as a doctoral student, I began being attacked for my gender and sexual identity. I was called a "mean girl" for being confident and outgoing by female graduate students. I was told by another female graduate student when discussing an essay on relationships that we were teaching that no one understands gay relations and I shouldn't talk them. I experienced an attack from another female graduate student after I attempted over the course of several months to get back books I had lent her, so I could continue with my own work. During the attack, I was called a "bitch-ass cracker" and "faggot" several times--both statements aimed at my gender and sexual identities. When my fellow graduate students wrote a letter in favor of safe spaces and inclusion after charged racial and queerphobic incidents on campus, I critiqued the letter because many of my aggressors has signed onto the letter, which I argued undermined its credibility. Then, I was told--and I am paraphrasing--to shut and get in line or to only contribute if I had solutions to the problems I was pointing out in the department. When I eventually reported this to my DGS, she tried to excuse away some of the behaviors and ultimately did not handle the situation. She did organize a mandatory workshop in which she used to of my personal examples nearly verbatim. After my critique of the graduate student letter and the mandatory workshop, I was targeted by mostly female graduate students and became almost completely ostracized from my department. I have also be cyber stalked by female graduate students in my department and harassed in-person before, after, and in-between the classes I teach. My aggressors are mostly female, but represent a diverse cross-section of class and ethnic identities. | Doctoral student/candidate | Graduate students | Other R1 | University of Kansas | English | None from my department--but the Title IX office is currently working on it | None--she continues to be put on panels and promoted and supported by the department | The incident has slowed my progress to degree, and while I am sad to admit this, it has probably impacted my teaching, which is the part of my career that I love most. I am also looking to leave my institution before completing my dissertation. | I have been seeing a therapist for the last five years to process what has occurred and continues to happen, so that I can be a solid teacher. | I have chosen to leave academia as soon as possible, but hope to finish my dissertation from a distance. | Female | ||
1426 | 12/9/2017 7:20:36 | After completing my BA and MA at an institution where students and professors did not socialize together, I did my PhD in at an institution that was very informal. It was a bit of a learning curve adjusting to a world in which professors and grad students hung out together, but I found the informality of my new school refreshing. At the orientation, my soon to be harasser walked by a group of new students and said "are there any [students in my field] in here?" and then instructed us all to call him by his first name. I loved that. My harasser was irreverent. He swore, wore jeans, and in general shook things up. He drank with his students, spent his free time outside of classes with us, and read my whole MA thesis to learn more about my research. I thought he was exactly what I wanted in a dissertation supervisor: someone invested in me and my work. He was a father to two young women, and I found him incredibly paternal. He looked out for grad students and would often pay for our meals and drinks. He agreed to be my supervisor. I went to Italy the summer of my first year, and when I came back, he took me and my friend for drinks. I remember that night he asked me how to say "will you @#$%^& me" in Italian. I brushed it off. That semester, I was applying for fellowships. I asked him if he would write me a letter of recommendation, and he agreed. He asked to meet to go over my CV, but I was worried that if we went out he would pay for everything again (like he always did), and I wanted to show that I was grateful for his time, so I invited him over to my house for dinner. I lived close to campus and couldn't drive, and he didn't have a car at the time, so it seemed like the best option. (I couldn't very well suggest we meet somewhere neither of us could get to without difficulty; my PhD institution was in the middle of nowhere). Also, the culture of the program was so informal that I didn't see anything wrong with this gesture. My roommates were home, and I had a boyfriend at the time. I wasn't worried about him. That night, he came over with a two-liter bottle of wine and proceeded to get very drunk. We talked about my work over dinner, and at the end, I got up to do the dishes. I felt him come up behind me and wrap his arms around my waist and start rubbing my hips. I moved to break away and pretended it never happened. Then, as we sat down, he said "I'm going to be bad," and leaned forward to kiss me. I moved my head away. He tried again, and I remember his lips made contact with mine. I got up and suggested we go somewhere else--perhaps bike over to a bar. We agreed to bike to the one bar on campus and I went to grab a jacket and change my pants to ones I could bike in. When I came back into the room, he said he was just going to go home. At the time, I didn't quite understand what had happened that night. I know—first and foremost--I felt bad for him. I was sure that because he was a father, he would wake up sober and feel terrible. I called my father, sister, and former supervisor, and we all agreed that keeping quiet and my head down would be best. But he spent the next six years terrorizing me. I dropped him off my committee, because I realized I could no longer work with him, and he told other professors in my department that we were no longer working together because I had plagiarized his work. (We work on completely different things). He went out of his way to make me feel small and pick on me as I made my way through my exams and prospectus phase. Then, things got much worse. Since I no longer had a supervisor, I began working—in name, at least—with the soon-to-be retired professor in my department who was in my field. When he retired, they hired someone new--a woman--and my harasser began dating her. Before I knew they had started dating, she and I chatted about my work, and she agreed to be my new supervisor. It made sense: she was the fancy new professor, and I couldn't keep working with someone who had retired. Also, she was a good and careful reader of my work, and I became quite fond of her. I dreaded that she would find out what her boyfriend did to me years ago, and at some point it did come out. I asked her to keep details of my job search from him, and to keep him away from me when she could. She didn't treat me differently, and I was grateful for that. But my last two years of grad school were deeply traumatizing. My harasser, probably emboldened by his relationship with my new supervisor, made my life a constant hell. When we were doing mock interviews for the job market, he volunteered to interview me. Multiple professors intervened, and he allegedly went around the department accusing me of slandering him. He showed up to my dissertation defense even though he was asked by multiple professors not to, glowered at me, grunted throughout, and then left in the middle. The worst came when I got a job offer at an excellent school (where I am now). I gave them--over the phone--my intent to accept, and asked them to send me a contract. At the same time, I emailed a school at which I was still under consideration to tell them of the offer. At that time, they told me I was first in line for their job as well. (Apparently, they made an offer to a woman, who, although originally accepting, had rescinded her acceptance. I emailed my supervisor and our university’s job placement committee chair to ask what to do. It was late at night, and I wanted to know if I should negotiate with the first school, and whether or not I could recommend my friend to the second school. Before I even had a chance to write back to the second school, my harasser had written to them about his own student. He had found out the search had reopened, and wrote to them that night. This was extremely embarrassing for me, because nobody but me knew the search was back open, and it was obvious that the information had come from me. It was also horrible that I didn't have the chance to tell school #2 that I was accepting another offer before he wrote to them on behalf of “our school”—so I was told—and for his student, whom they hadn't even interviewed. This was the last straw for me. I went, crying, to my supervisor's office, and then to the DGS, who told me that everyone knew my harasser was a sociopath, and that he wouldn't direct any more graduate students if he could help it. Nothing happened on this last point, of course. He is still directing graduate students. | Graduate student (early twenties) | Full professor | Other R1 | They were all very sympathetic, but nothing was done (to be fair, I chose not to make a formal complaint because I didn't want that to be my life for the next 6 years) | ZERO | major. | major. | Unclear. It has made me fiercely protective of my own students, now that I am a professor, but it also made me fight like hell to get a job in spite of him. | Male | ||||
1427 | 12/9/2017 7:28:49 | I had just interviewed for a tenure-track job and was sending out thank you emails to everyone who had met with me during my campus visit. It was late at night and a senior male professor wrote back to me immediately with message expressing how nice it had been to meet me. There was something indescribably 'off' about the syntax. Within the next twenty minutes he sent me a series of cell phone photographs of oxidizing bananas in which someone (presumably he) had cut a series of inscrutable but vaguely suggestive messages. It was creepy and I had no idea how to respond. I eventually wrote back "I am not sure how to interpret these images," and he responded something along the lines of "your presence delighted me and I wanted to share something that I thought would delight you." I got the job and tried studiously to avoid this person, but there were a number of other incidents (which I will relay separately) in which he was creepy, inappropriate, and bullying to me in the extreme. | job applicant and assistant professor at another institution | tenured professor | Other R1 | Art | None - I didn't report it | Male | |||||||
1428 | 12/9/2017 7:49:26 | I am shy. There is a drinking culture in my department. I got drunk. For once, I felt comfortable sharing my views on a topic in an honest way. A fellow grad student "felt a connection with me" and kissed me, without my consent. I moved away and he did it again. There was no implied consent. I was frozen, and terrified, and I couldn't speak or move. I have past trauma so maybe this seems small to you but it greatly affected me. | Grad student | Grad student | Other R1 | philosophy | Against my feelings of wanting to remain silent, I reported it out of concern for possible future victims. My university found him guilty. He was sentenced to a training on sexual harassment. I never heard another word. | I don't know. I wasn't really told if he got anything other than the training. | Nothing concrete, but I feel it damaged my reputation based on gossip I heard about "exaggeration." I also no longer feel safe and comfortable at departmental events where alcohol is present. Which is a big part of the culture here. I'm now missing out valuable networking. | Closed me off more than before. I already have mental health issues. But before I was better able to separate them from my work. | Probably will leave the academy after phd. Not just because of this but my whole experience has been shit. I don't feel welcome or like I belong here. People care about these issues in the abstract but when it's real people they just.... slip through the cracks. Go unnoticed. I have to leave the academy, if I don't, I think it will kill me. I'm too "sensitive," I know. My sensitivity is part of what led me to a research career. I have a deep sense of caring and curiosity. Ironically that is why I came here, and also why I need to leave. I know I might be able to do some small part to help the culture if I stay. I just don't know if I'm strong enough. | Male | |||
1429 | 12/9/2017 8:00:30 | About 20 years ago a woman in her early 30s came to me because she didn't know what to do or who to go to. A man who was chair before the chair who hired me was still on the faculty. The previous chair had spent months in the early 80s "seducing" her while she was an undergraduate which included having sex in his department office. At the time she was flattered and considered it consensual. It was several years before she realized how abused she had been. We went together to the equity person (can't remember the name of the department but it was not "equity" until later). Apparently nothing had been done with the prior reports because it had "only" been 2 reports by different undergrads at different times. This time he was FINALLY fired. | untenured assistant professor | full professor in the same department | Other Type of School | It was a relatively large university at the time. Now it is R1 | Psychology | We started getting memos every fall about the university having no tolerance for sexual harassment and giving descriptions of different levels similar to research use at the time. However, there were no real changes for about 15 years except for VERY egregious behavior. Women reporting harassment usually got sympathy and told they'd look into it. I only know of 1 case that was actually "looked into" & the full professor in another discipline was warned. | fired because it involved intercourse in campus office and she was the 3rd former student reporting it. | Made me much more aware of the issues and, after tenure, I worked hard to let students know they could talk to me about it. | I'd already found my research area but it reinforced the importance of physical threats, violence & sexual aggression as well as psychological abuse in adult relationships. | Male | |||
1430 | 12/9/2017 8:02:46 | A male graduate student in my department would routinely hunt for a new unsuspecting female graduate student every new student orientation. He especially liked single mothers in our department. He would be charming at first and then ridiculously controlling. I could write pages regarding his bad behavior and how stressed and upsetting he would make our female students. His behavior got worse as he progressed through the program. Yet faculty still wrote recommendation letters for him. He got a job as a tenure track faculty member and his behavior didn’t change there. He went on to ‘date’ numerous female undergrads and grads in his department. Till he got so obsessed with one student he ‘dated’ that he stalked and harassed her when she broke it off. Without revealing names, he eventually got fired by his university. Sadly it didn’t end there. He ended up going to the student’s house and shooting her dead and then he killed himself | I was a faculty member where this student was a Graduate student | He was a student in our department | Other R1 | Old Dominion University | Psychology | At ODU practically nothing. He was talked to but his behavior never changed. At Idaho he was eventually fired but as you see from above it was too late | He eventually got fired | Made me more aware of how this behavior can impact many and that an institution has an obligation to get involved and protect their students | Was stressful because I could only speak out so much, this was a ‘well-respected’ student in his field | With tenure I feel more empowered to speak out when i see behavior such as this | This incident made national news. I do wonder though if it had any impact on schools revisiting their Faculty/student relationship and sexual harassment policies. | Male | |
1431 | 12/9/2017 8:05:49 | I was an assistant professor and had organized a discussion and exhibition around a new arts publication in an off-campus gallery operated by some alumni of my program. Very few of my colleagues came, but the banana-incising senior colleague (reference to my previous post) did. During the course of the discussion, he said, apparently out of the blue, "I am guided in everything I do by the breasts of [name of mutual female student, also present.]" The room had a spasm of discomfort as everyone looked to the student he had named. She initiated some anxious laughter and I tried to steer the discussion back on track. A couple of days later, I spoke to the student who minimized the comment. It apparently was a reference to a performance artwork that she had recently made in his class, but it was not in any way germane to the discussion. I pointed out that I had a legal obligation to report harassment and that his bringing up her breasts publicly, without the context of the performance, was inappropriate and could have a chilling effect on female students. She was adamant that did not want to pursue a complaint. I sought the counsel of my faculty mentor, who was furious and told me she was going to report it. She wanted to keep me out of it because the senior colleague had a reputation of retaliation. An investigation ensued, which the senior professor easily traced back to me because I was the only colleague present and the only one who had a responsibility to report his inappropriate comment. The senior colleague then proceeded to place ads in the alternative arts newsweekly in which he used hand-drawn comics to explain away his behavior and portray me as a worthless artist in league with the nefarious administration to end free speech and free artistic expression. The student whose breasts had been discussed publicly did not want to participate in the investigation, and the investigation became politicized, as the department administration was pushing very hard to paint him as unstable to get rid of a professor who had long been a thorn in their side. I was not involved in any of this, but it's my analysis from afar. Eventually, this strategy backfired, and my senior colleague was cleared of the harassment charges. He celebrated his exoneration with a Facebook post calling me and the chair of the department out by name for our unsuccessful attempt to destroy him. A couple of years later the student whose breasts he had discussed publicly told me that he had pursued and harassed her after graduation and that she wishes she had pursued the investigation. | assistant professor | tenured professor | Other R1 | Art | Title 9 investigation, but no response that I could tell to his retaliation against me. They advised me to avoid him and wait out the ads and Facebook posts. | He was always in conflict with the administration - it was part of his self-image as a bad boy artist. He never was promoted to full professor, but I really think that is how he preferred it. | One of my colleagues voted against me for tenure, which I was subsequently granted with an internal commendation/award. I was given strong indications by colleagues that he was the only dissenting vote. | I was put in a really awkward situation with mutual students. For whatever reason - likely because we both were perceived as 'outsiders,' though for very different reasons - he and I often worked with the same students. I was worried that the students would be persuaded by the comics in the alt-weekly, and I was somewhat concerned about the impact on my tenure. | Male | ||||
1432 | 12/9/2017 8:10:17 | Department chair attempted to groom basically every new female faculty member, and some graduate students as potential new sexual partners. His wife was also in the department, and by all accounts, was aware of his attempted exploits. It would start with public touching, and accelerate from there with anyone who didn't aggressively rebuff his overtures. | Assistant Professor | Professor & Chair | Other R1 | Arizona State | Family & Human Development | none known | none known | avoid projects he was involved in, which otherwise would have been great opportunities for my research areas | stress, questioning place in the field | Male | |||
1433 | 12/9/2017 8:16:56 | When I was in my second year of College, in Virginia, my English professor spent a huge amount of time in class talking about "women's rape fantasies". He spent several class sessions talking about it and explaining how all women have a "rape fantasy". He even quizzed us on it and made us write about it. It was humiliating for me and the other women in the class. But when a professor has power over your grade and your reputation and your ability to move on to the next course or fail, most people don't want to rock the boat or cause problems. It seemed like all the women were afraid to say anything for fear of getting a bad grade. He was a very intimidating man. | I was in my second year at a College in Virginia. I later graduated with honors. | He was an English professor | Small Liberal Arts College | None - to my knowledge, no one ever reported. | Made me somewhat resentful and untrusting of men. | Male | |||||||
1434 | 12/9/2017 8:21:28 | It was common knowledge that a professor would make a point to ogle female students' breasts and make gestures referring to their cup size and cleavage. The first time I heard this was from an upperclassman and later I also experienced this myself. | College student | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Austin College | Social Sciences | None, the college doesn't tolerate harassment complaints from students. | None | It made me feel objectified and my accomplishments less worthy. | It contributed to the perverse normalization of sexual harassment from college professors who are the gatekeepers to fellowships and opportunities after college. | He suggested that I become a professor but I thought if being a professor meant putting up with harassment then I wanted no part of it. | I am sad to see my school listed but not surprised. This is an institutional problem that the administration will not solve. | Male | |
1435 | 12/9/2017 8:27:05 | Female peer made inappropriate and unwanted sexual advances toward me over an extended period of time—3 semesters. Touching, standing too close, online stalking. I repeatedly expressed non-interest but the behavior continued and worsened. As a male, it was nearly impossible to get her to stop without seeming like a jerk. I wanted to yell at her to leave me alone, but it doesn’t look good, you know? A guy yelling at a girl in the middle of class. | Grad Student | Fellow Student, also my TA | Other R1 | Arts | Disbelief | None | I eventually dropped out of program to get away from the individual (online stalking continued). | Severe. Suicidal thoughts, anxiety meds, therapy. | I left the program mid-semester and still haven’t finished. I avoid spaces I think I might run into her. I basically left the discipline. | Female | |||
1436 | 12/9/2017 8:29:54 | * After my masters defense my advisor offered a celebration get together at his place. At the end of the party, my co-advisor (who got drunk) grabbed me and started to try to kiss me. I kept trying to push him away. He only stopped when my advisor interfered. At that point I thought the incident was my thought. I was wearing a dress. I was extremely embarrassed afterwards. It was 2010. Co-advisor never said a word after that. Never apologized. Rounds of manuscript review came with extra harsh comments that were not directed at improvement, but humiliation. **In grad school again for PhD, grad student fellow from the same lab and office space harassed me during my entire first semester. Everyone commented about how in love he was and how harsh I was on him. Once, he sat on my lap and put his arms at my shoulder. I remember wanting to disappear while that happened. The entire situation made me extremely uncomfortable to the point I would avoid going to my office when I knew he was there. I remember repeatedly stating to colleagues I wanted nothing to do with lab mates in that regard and how inappropriate that situation was. The behavior ceased to give rise to rivarly. It caused me a major depression episode. ***when I was a GTA, undergraduate student wrote me a letter with inappropriate content on the back of his exam. I reportedly it to the university. They “registered the offense”, but said it was my responsibility to communicate to him that his behavior was not appropriate. I also had to make sure I’d communicate it to him in a way that wouldn’t cause him to withdraw from the course. I had to have that conversation with the student using the course supervisor (male) as a witness. Course supervisor offered a lot of support in the situation. Finishing the semester after that was dreadful. The same student kept enrolling in my course sections after the incident. I had to ask campus police to walk with me to my car several times. | Graduate Student | Co-advisor was a senior research associate in a prestigious institution; second incident was from a grad student peer from my cohort. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Ecology | None; None; Registered the case “for their own records” - harassment wasn’t included in the students academic record | None | difficulty collaborating with male colleagues | Anxiety and depression | I changed my perspective on the code of conduct of faculty and students. | Thanks for doing this! | Male | ||
1437 | 12/9/2017 8:33:25 | As a first-year grad student, I and another female cohort member were attending a sponsored party at the field's annual meeting. One of our professors introduced us to his PhD advisor, a preeminent scholar from another institution. The advisor immediately congratulated our professor for having arrived at the party with two gorgeous women, and insinuated that our professor should consider "sharing" us with him. | Graduate student | Full professor at another university | Other R1 | Anthropology/Archaeology | Our professor was appalled and immediately apologized for his advisor's comment and behavior. We did not report the event. | None - I assumed (and still do) that this is how the man interacts with all women he meets for the first time. | I had been considering working in the harasser's geographical area (the American Southwest). His comment was a contributing factor to my decision to conduct research in a different part of the world. | None | None | Male | |||
1438 | 12/9/2017 8:58:01 | I was harassed by a senior professor on an airport shuttle at the annual meeting. He leeringly suggested that he "help" me gain entree to a position in my field at an East Coast university, and when I brushed him off, he angrily told me "nobody hires blondes anyway." | Doctoral student | Tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Boston University | Sociology | None | None | Negligible | Moderate, and of course I still remember it. | Formative, in that I stayed away from East Coast universities, and I also vowed to "toughen up" while working toward greater equity for women. | Male | ||
1439 | 12/9/2017 9:04:21 | I was told I could find "better pants to show off my figure" and it would "make me that much more attractive". I was doing field work at sea and wanted pockets to put my tools. | PhD Student | Science support crew | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Research vessel | Oceanography | not reported | I avoided people on an already small ship | Male | |||||
1440 | 12/9/2017 9:37:33 | Public massaging of shoulders | Graduate Student | Tenure-track professor | Other R1 | University of Pittsburgh | Philosophy | Investigation but no real consequences | Unclear | Male | |||||
1441 | 12/9/2017 9:38:29 | Stalking, unwanted visits to home at night | Graduate Student | Tenure-track professor | Other R1 | University of Pittsburgh | Philosophy | Investigation but no real consequences | Unclear | Male | |||||
1442 | 12/9/2017 9:41:31 | Repeated questioning of reality of trans people, personal questions about sex life | Postdoc | Tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Southern California | Philosophy | Contributed to (already existing) disillusionment with philosophy and decision to quit. I had already observed a lot of misogyny, sexual harassment and racism before these incidents, so this was just one grain in a pile of sand. | Felt vulnerable and lonely as this person was supposed to be one of my mentors and I had just arrived at the institution | Quit academia | Male | ||||
1443 | 12/9/2017 10:26:35 | MA student in another cohort raped a coworker (not in the program) and had a sexual relationship with undergraduate enrolled in his courses. Student had a part-time job off-campus and raped a coworker he had been harassing, and this woman recounted the assault to a number of women in his program. He also had a habit (something he bragged about, in fact, even when I was still a student there) of dating undergraduate freshman and sophmores, and had at least one sexual relationship with a student while she was enrolled in one of his classes. He also wrote graphic rape scenes in his "creative" writing and often showed up to departmental functions belligerently drunk. He was allowed to enter into a PhD program where he will continue to teach and, I have no doubt, only continue in this behavior. | I was a masters student at a different institution with very strong ties to this man's program (I had recently completed my undergraduate degree there and it was a smaller department, so most of the women were quite close, and remain so). | Was a masters student, has since gone on to a PhD at an R1 | R2 | English | To their credit, the Dean of Student Life and Title IX officer investigated this to the greatest extent they could without any of the women involved filing a formal complaint. The DGS and faculty who wrote letters for him, however, protected him, and later advocated for him to be included in departmental events with women who were friends with the woman he raped. | None, passed a defense and was allowed to graduate, and continue teaching. | I lost whatever tenuous faith I had in the academy because of this. It made me more reluctant to enter into the profession and constantly question the depth of my professional relationships, especially with male faculty. | Thank you for doing this. | Male | ||||
1444 | 12/9/2017 10:28:55 | Male professor would frequently ask about my & other female colleagues' sexual history, number of partners; often made sexual jokes & comments, caused general discomfort/power relationship. Also verbally abusive. Shared other students sexual histories when they were not present. This was 1998-99 | Master's (M.Sc.) student | My major professor | R2 | Biology | None (not reported) | None | None | Allowed more people to get away w harassment and verbal abuse | Bad choices w men | I think often whether to name him. I hate that he's very likely done this to others. Saw him at a conference this past summer and he started telling me about the history of one of his recent students. I was so disgusted & yet didn't say anything. When the #MeToo hashtag went viral this fall, it opened all of these, and other wounds, including my current marriage... which I may be ending as a result. I have a young daughter and don't want this cycle perpetuated. Thank you for bringing these stories to light. My mom used to say "light is a disinfectant." Indeed, it is. | Male | ||
1445 | 12/9/2017 10:37:48 | I have never experienced sexual harassment in the workplace in academic work. Bias against women, but not harassment. | Linguistics | ||||||||||||
1446 | 12/9/2017 10:43:48 | I was sent sexual emails from a student. He also sent explicit texts to other students in my class and intimidated me through out the semester for reporting him. | Graduate Student ( instructor of record) | Student in my class | Other R1 | Communication | File a report, have a meeting with the student, place him in our aware network. It turns out multiple professors had similar experiences with him but he stayed in my class. | A series of warnings | None (other than feeling like others believe I can’t handle my classroom- sparked conversations about how grad students dress even though I am always professional in the classroom). | Significant stress. The two female students in my class also had an unbearable time. They chose not to report (I filed a report with our University but they had the option to as well). They felt intimidated because he was an older (30ish) student who was still in our class. | Lesson learned - I’m an Assistant Professor now | Male | |||
1447 | 12/9/2017 10:58:15 | As an adjust faculty member about to defend her dissertation (at a different institution), I was told by a full professor in front of the department chair to stick my chest out in order to help sell more books at my then-partner's book signing. Everyone laughed and I was mortified. That same professor argued in a faculty meeting that I should not be given full-time work simply because of "who I'm sleeping with" (referring to my fiancé at the time with whom I shared a home and who was in the department). I filed with HR and received an email from this professor threatening my job because he had heard that I was suing him. I was not, simply trying to stop the harassment and denigration via appropriate HR channels. This faculty also laughed when I indicated that I was going to publish my monograph, which I did the following year. I was eventually not rehired in the department because of mounting tensions. | adjunct | full professor | Other Type of School | History | I was traumatized and had to find other employment, which is no easy task. | Male | |||||||
1448 | 12/9/2017 11:18:21 | During my first year of graduate school, I was getting drinks with all the other first year graduate students at the student union. I was wearing a skirt and sitting around the table with everyone else, when one of the other graduate students put his hand on my leg. I move my leg away from him and moments later he put his hand on my leg again and quickly moved his hand up towards my crotch. I quickly jumped up and moved away from him. When I told others, they shrugged it off. From that day forth, I refused to be alone with him and changed plans to avoid being near him. That was the most direct situation. Not to mention the number of times I had to hear my fellow TAs and graduate students talk crudely about women or tell sexist jokes. | graduate student | graduate student | Other R1 | Physics | It made me anxious and changed how I interacted with men. | I stopped wearing skirts. Trying to overcome that one now. | Male | ||||||
1449 | 12/9/2017 11:33:55 | I was learning a lab technique from a visiting scientist who previously worked in the lab group and had recently moved to a faculty position at a different institution. As we were working side by side we started talking about something benign that was related to our shared area of research. He made a lewd comment related to a sexual act in reference to our benign topic of conversation. I told him it was inappropriate. He didn't even backtrack, just reiterated that it was true and said that this was a common phrase in another language and that he was just translating. I told him that was bullshit because he'd lived in the US for more than 10 years. I learned later that the same person made inappropriate comments to others in the lab group. He told a lab manager that he knew she was pregnant because her boobs looked bigger. | Postdoctoral fellow in a new position | Professor at another institution, formerly a postdoc at my institution | Other R1 | Neuroscience | Didn't report because he was just visiting; previous people had reported and he was supposedly reprimanded by his PI, who is not a particularly confrontational person and who has also made borderline inappropriate comments. | None | The person who harassed me is someone I would like to collaborate with but will never because I cannot stand to be in the same room as him. | None | None. Thank goodness this person is not at my institution. | Male | |||
1450 | 12/9/2017 11:42:31 | I was at a reception for conference attendees while attending a small conference on the topic I was wanting to study for my PhD. A senior scientist in my field who was very well known was introduced to me and responded with, "Oh I know XX, I left my cufflinks in her room last night," while laughing. I thought it was strange. Later I was a PhD student and was collaborating with this same senior scientist. I was visiting his country for 3 weeks while learning new techniques. We were supposed to get together for dinner to discuss science and ideas for research. He suggested I come to his hotel room to have dinner with him there since he had recently moved to a more distant city and would only come to town once per month. Much to my relief, it happened to be snowing (in a place it doesn't usually snow) on the day he was in town so I didn't end up meeting him at his hotel. | PhD student, 1st year | Senior (famous) scientist, very well known in his field and outside of his field | Other R1 | STEM | Not reported | N/A | None. I have not seen him in person since yet have included him as a collaborator on publications. | None | Minimal. Luckily he is not nearby. | Male | |||
1451 | 12/9/2017 11:51:23 | The (female) chair of my (feminist studies) dept had everyone come to her house for a dinner party. I took my then-wife (I'm a queer woman) and the chair had everyone put their coats and bags on her bed in her bedroom. I asked her where her room was and she led us down the hallway to show us both where to go. When we were all in her room, the chair disclosed to us out of nowhere that she once watched lesbian porn during a period of "experimentation." It was obvious she was randomly bringing this up because we were queer. She had/has a reputation of constantly microaggressing grad students according to whatever marginalized identities they have. | Ph.D student | Dept chair, well-known scholar in her field | Other R1 | UC Santa Barbara | Feminist Studies | None; it wasn't reported | None | None directly but it was one of thousands of incidents that made me question academia | It was definitely startling and uncomfortable, but I don't think I processed it as sexual harassment per se until very recently. It was part of a larger hostile and toxic environment. | None directly, but it was part of a larger pattern on the chair's part that definitely made me not trust her and made me paranoid for her to know information about me (as she would often inappropriately disclose information she learned about people to others, including outing and dead-naming a trans grad student) | Female | ||
1452 | 12/9/2017 11:56:03 | Over a few years, after undergrad and before graduate school, I was in some kind of relationship with my undergrad advisor. I worked on his field project abroad, so he was also my boss and only source of income. He told me things like "you're the smartest person I've ever known" and then "you don't have what it takes to get a PhD." I later learned he was in an "exclusive" relationship with another professor at the school, and tried to sleep with multiple other undergrads. I was in therapy three times for this: once during my first year of grad school when I 100% cut off communication with him and he began to stalk me at school (in another state), once with my current partner due to related panic attacks, and most recently after realizing symptoms of PTSD. Now, mostly recovered. | A few months after graduating undergrad, and into graduate school. | Assistant professor, degree from top ivy league, wealthy | Small Liberal Arts College | I later learned he gained a reputation for hitting on undergrads, trying to make out with them at bars out of town. Other faculty members in the dept knew. In graduate school i saw a lawyer about the stalking (part of what we got for paying semester activity fees), and he said I had a legal case, but nothing he could do because it crosses state lines. It would have cost me a ridiculous amount of money. | None - he decided undergrads are unworthy, never published anything, and decided not to go up for tenure. | For a long while, focus on graduate coursework and going to class was all I could do to stop crying. Severe imposter syndrome. Now I use this experience in my teaching to look out for young women and speak openly about sexual harassment, especially in field schools. | Extremely traumatic. Lots of $$ in therapy. Big issues in subsequent relationships. Crippling imposter syndrome. Strained relationship with my parents. | Motivated me to make things better for young students and women. | What can we do about grey area cases? I was old enough to consent and no longer a student. This still should never have happened. | Male | |||
1453 | 12/9/2017 11:56:36 | A grad student tried to rape another grad student in a hotel during a conference. He disregarded the fact that she already had a partner when he was coming on to her as well as the fact that she is queer and had no interest in him for multiple reasons. The department took no action against this student. He went on to win an award and get a tenure-track job. One of the most disturbing parts is that his research is about doing ethnographic research on incarcerated juvenile girls, so who knows what kinds of disturbing access he has to this vulnerable population and what types of things he may have tried to do. Also, the chair of the department was female yet was complicit in allowing his attempted rape to go completely unchecked. Meanwhile, the woman he tried to rape suffered severe mental health repercussions. | Ph.D student | Colleague (also a Ph.D student) | Other R1 | UC Santa Barbara | Sociology | None | None | Didn't happen to me so I won't speak for the victim | Didn't happen to me so I won't speak for the victim | Didn't happen to me so I won't speak for the victim | Male | ||
1454 | 12/9/2017 11:59:08 | I was sexually assaulted my two professors in my field of study. The first is a known predator and I hope that his many years of hiding in plain sight will soon be over. The second is internationally renowned and excessively admired. I simply would not be believed. His assault was so violent that I had bite marks all over my face and had to teach the next day. | Early-career academic (28-29 years old) | Older male tenured professors in my field. I considered one to be a good friend and mentor.. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Leeds and Royal Holloway, University of London | English Literature | I didn't know where to go, since neither professors were employed by my university. One assault occurred in a country I wasn't living in at the time. | None | I lost all confidence in my area of scholarship; not only were both assaults were committed under the pretexts of being interested in my work, but I felt very let down by the immediate community; they gave the impression of caring about me, but I felt I was treated as a toy, disposable. | Significant. I have become very cynical and bored with academia when I know I had promise. Now I am an adjunct professor and a poet, but constantly wonder how my life would have worked out if my confidence hadn't been destroyed. I struggle with sexual dysfunction and intrusive thoughts. | I left my tenure-track job and have struggled to identify what my career trajectory even is any more. | Male | ||
1455 | 12/9/2017 12:11:36 | Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) conference in Puerto Rico in 2008. | PhD student | Professors at another school | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | SSSS conference | Sociology; theirs is sex research | N/A | I never attended another SSSS conference. | Minimal if any now that I avoid that conference | Minimal if any now that I avoid that conference | Minimal if any now that I avoid that conference | Two white cis gay men basically fondled me in front of my former undergrad advisor. They started by commenting on how well I was dressed, putting their arm around my neck. Then, they rubbed my chest several times. The unwanted physical contact was bad enough, but doing so in front of others made it even more humiliating. I never attended that conference again. | Male | |
1456 | 12/9/2017 12:18:27 | Harassed/stalked by teacher | undergraduate | graduate instructor | Other R1 | University of Oregon | English | none | none | none | I was afraid for a time immediately after the incident | none | I think I only told my RA, but I didn't officially report it | Male | |
1457 | 12/9/2017 12:20:43 | repeated comments on the dress, bodies, and dispositions of female students in a public, common space designated for graduate teaching assistants, often in the presence of undergraduate non-majors | graduate student | tenured professor | R2 | Duquesne University | English | no formal response despite repeated reporting of the harassment by many women over many years | absolutely none (now retired) | minimal | minimal | I had initially intended to specialize in his area of study. After witnessing his behavior on too many occasions, I changed my specialization. | Male | ||
1458 | 12/9/2017 12:23:26 | I had befriended one of my current instructors, who was a gay man (I am a cisgender queer man). He was about 10 years older than me. One evening he and I and another student were hanging out having dinner. At one point we were all sitting on a sort of porch swing drinking wine (I was underage). He and the other student started fooling around next to me. I was uncomfortable with this, but then he put his hand on my knee. I got up and walked away. We talked about it later. I just said that it made me uncomfortable and that I wasn't interested. He dropped it. He never tried anything again with me directly, but was always dropping hints and flirting. He made it clear that if I changed my mind, he would take advantage of that. | First year, second semester undergraduate | Graduate assistant instructor of record | R2 | Information science | I never reported it | None | It made me feel like I always had to be on guard when around older gay men, particularly those I interacted with at the university. | I often avoid interactions with other queer men in institutional contexts now. This leads to me feeling isolated often. It's not great. | Male | ||||
1459 | 12/9/2017 12:24:10 | Repeated public negative comments about my pregnancy; including remark that I was excusing motherhood as “an excuse not to be a scholar.” Remarks in emails ccd to others that I should be able to drive to a student defense two days after a c-section. I am mentioning only a few examples; I suffered two miscarriages during this period. | Tenured but pre promotion | Senior colleague with a vote on my case | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Literature | None: I brought this to my chair, dean, and associate provost responsible for equity issues | None | Much gossip behind my back but my career is on track | Serious; especially because the institution did nothing. Worse impact on my physical health especially pregnancy | Female | ||||
1460 | 12/9/2017 12:24:45 | At a class sign-up session at the beginning of term, an advisor joked that I should avoid any 'extra-curricular activities' over the coming semester since it would be a busy one. He meant sexual activities. That semester, my computer was key-logged by either the faculty, the university or a third party. I know this because for that entire semester, two separate tutors, including the one who made the remark about my sex life, quoted or responded to specific things that I had typed into my laptop over the course of the intervening week. The things they were referencing and weaving into their general seminar teaching script were parts of e-mails I had written to friends over the course of the week, sometimes specific google searches. I still don't know exactly what happened to me that semester except that male members of faculty violated my privacy in order to bully me. There were many examples, but one which stands out was how in the final class of that semester, Dr Extra-Curricular slammed a pile of photocopied readings onto the table next to me and whispered 'I hope you get the hint now'. That week, in an attempt to make dark humour out of my situation, I had e-mailed a friend from home (who I fully knew wouldn't believe me if I told them what was happening) that I would photocopy all of next term's readings so that I'd never have to leave my room. The professor had never produced photocopied readings for the class before. | Undergrad | Tenured professors teaching classes I took | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Univesity of St Andrews, UK | History | Told a university counsellor that my computer was being hacked. She asked: "What evidence do you have?". Short of technical proof that I had been hacked, which I obviously wasn't in a position to obtain, I'm sure she wouldn't have taken my story seriously. Why would a comfortable university employee believe their institution would nurture that kind of behavior? She was also actively feeding the contents of our sessions directly to the tutors reading my keystrokes and bullying me in class without notifying me. It was clear that institutional accountability would be non-existent and futile to pursue. | None. | I had to take a couple of years off, extending my undergrad career. The culture which enabled these sorts of abuses to happen had contributed to mental health problems long before the hacking started but obviously these particular abuses only increased the time i needed to recover my emotional stability and confidence. | I probably lost a stone or more in weight over this semseter. My periods stopped for months. I ate a meal every couple of days. I stopped leaving the house except to go to these classes where my private correspondences were made the subject of a public mockery that only I knew the meaning of. | Now a proud anarchist, pursuing a career in academia, waiting for the opportune moment. | Male | ||
1461 | 12/9/2017 12:26:59 | Company that hired my lab group as consultants sat across from me at a business meeting. During the meeting he readily referred to me as "honey" while trying to pay footsie with me under the table and rubbing his foot up and down my inner leg. | Undergraduate student | He was with an engineering firm that had hired my PI and two undergraduate students as contractors to preform plant surveys for a project. | Small Liberal Arts College | Biology | Never reported | Never reported | At the time my PI was very supportive of helping women develop a strong presence in science. She did not know what had happened, but her generally strong support and openness to discussing the reality of being a woman in science helped a lot. The incident made me feel the need to prove my value and I just worked harder and harder. In the short term I found a plant species with protected status and shut down the project which felt like a win. But long term I think it, and other situations, has reinforced imposer syndrome that continues to make me doubt my value and makes me very sensitive to any perceived gender based bias. | I have never considered pursuing a career in industry (like that of my harasser) which limited my options. I think I did not negotiate as hard for promotions, job tasks, raises ect. but it is hard to measure the impact. | Male | ||||
1462 | 12/9/2017 12:30:45 | A professor in my department was sexual intimidated and harassed. | The chair of her tenure committee forced her to attend off campus meetings and beyond. I don’t know the exact scope of what happened. | A professor currently in my department | Other Type of School | Pierce college | History, humanities, sociology, and philosophy | He was taken out of his chair position until he sued the school and won because none of the people she told ever took her story above their own heads. | Loss of chairship of the department | She’s ok but terrified | Stresses me out because the guy is conniving and clearly knows how to use the system | Not sure yet | Male | ||
1463 | 12/9/2017 12:32:52 | A very well respected, internationally known senior faculty member propositioned me at a conference and offered me money for sex. We were at a reception that was being held on a boat so I had no way to leave for several hours after the incident. | PhD student | Senior faculty | Other R1 | N/A | N/A | I later refused to give a talk at his lab due to this incident (without reporting the incident). | N/A | N/A | Male | ||||
1464 | 12/9/2017 12:33:54 | A non-tenure-track faculty member nearly 20 years my senior started writing overtly sexual emails to me (including one where every sentence ended "in your body," e.g., "I am putting my daughter to sleep in your body") and addressed me in person and in email with a fetishistic racist name. | First-year and sophomore (undergrad) | Preceptor in Expository Writing | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Harvard | undeclared | I did not report it. I felt flattered by it but also creeped out and scared. There wasn't really anyone else being kind to me in my life but the predator. Thank god I didn't wander further into the evil out of despair. | None. His career didn't skyrocket or anything, but this person is still friendly with some people I know. I'm always shocked when I have to ask them to stop mentioning what a great guy he is to me. He was a predatory fetishist loser. | None yet! This is awfully specific, though, so we'll see! | Extreme. I was lonely, an abuse survivor, struggling with a separate abusive relationship in a new adult world, and learning how to inhabit my strangeness. I believe he targeted me for these reasons as well as for my ethnicity. | Though this is not just the product of this instance of harassment, I still struggle with boundaries and am only learning how to be better with them now that I am further along the food chain and in danger of being inadvertently harmful to others. | Thanks to everyone sharing their stories. This is hard but helpful, I think. | Male | |
1465 | 12/9/2017 12:44:23 | I am not sure if this would technically be considered sexual harassment, but when I was meeting with a potential adviser on a campus visit he told me I would not be allowed to get married while I was his PhD student. From context I understood that this was not because he had any sexual interest in me, but because he presumably believes only single women can be successful academics. | prospective PhD student | tenured professor | Other R1 | History (Medieval) | I did not report the incident. | I chose to attend a different program. | Male | ||||||
1466 | 12/9/2017 12:55:11 | My first office in my department was across the hall from the most senior male member of the department. He loudly farted in his office when he knew I was in my office. | tenure-track faculty member | Most senior member of the department. | Regional Teaching College | History | I told the chair. He apologized and told me to tell him if anything more serious happened. | None. | None. | Stress | None | Male | |||
1467 | 12/9/2017 13:01:53 | A graduate student of mine chose not to pursue her PhD at Yale because it was very well known in the whisper network that they person who would be her advisor there was a serial, habitual molester. | Her status was a potential advisee | He was a potential advisor. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale | History | I heard that a couple of students had complained but had not received any support. | None. He's retired and living in France. | I don't know how different my student's trajectory would have been if she'd been able to study with him. But he was the undeniable titan in his field. So his support and connections would have been substantially beneficial. | Male | ||||
1468 | 12/9/2017 13:08:42 | I applied to do my PhD at Oxford. In the application, I was asked to choose which colleges (top 3) I wanted to be in if I were accepted. I was accepted but I was assigned a spot at St. Hilda's, the women's college, because I was interested in studying gender history. I hadn't put that college down as one of my choices. St. Hilda's was and is a much poorer college than all of the others I'd listed. They therefore have far less financial support to offer their students. | Graduate | Institutional | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Oxford | History | It was the institution itself. | They lost me as a student | It's impossible to know what path I would have followed if I'd been able to study at Oxford. To be clear, I was accepted. But as a second class student because of what I wanted to study. | This kind of anonymous, institutional belittling of women's interests is hugely insidious as well as the more inter-personal forms of harassment. | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | |||
1469 | 12/9/2017 13:24:34 | professor used explicit sexual references as examples for content in our class and referred to one of our classmates by sexual terms/nicknames several times. professor also refused to acknowledge the existence of trans or nb students in our class. | graduate student | tenured professor | Other R1 | info sci | terrible class, learned nothing. was my first class in my degree program and immediately made me feel unwelcome in a field largely male. | at the time made me feel unwelcome and unsafe in my discipline but w/ help of other mentors, continued in my program. | Male | ||||||
1470 | 12/9/2017 13:51:06 | Three major incidents: (1) well-known professor at elite school touching my thigh multiple times in choral conducting class; phone calls to me at home where I lived several states away when I wasn't in school; (2) visiting international scholar stalking me on campus; (3) doctoral advisee vilifying me on Facebook: campus protected him despite threat assessment team's and campus police being involved. Male colleagues blew it off: "Why didn't you call the police immediately?" "Now you're one of the team." And this are just the major incidents, not the quotidian micro-macro aggressions. | Master's student; PhD student; assistant professor. | Internationally renowned choral conductor; international scholar; doctoral student TA/advisee: ALL male. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Music Studies: Music Education | Incident one: I told no one and have still told relatively few people. Incident 2: I told my adviser who informed the visiting scholar to steer clear of all female graduate students. Incident 3: next to nothing. A female colleague (head of my promotion and tenure committee) swooped in and took over--more worried that the grad student would go after her. I reported it to the director of my department who blew it off. The only one who really "cared" for me on campus was a wonderful detective with campus police--she gave me phone numbers for a self-defence course and the campus assault group. They listened and arranged for me to FINALLY meet with the Title IX contact on campus who informed me that I indeed could file a DOJ complaint. I didn't: tenure was coming up. | Not a goddamn thing. HE fired me as his advisor, and the head of my promotion and tenure committee--a woman--took him on as her advisee. He left the program at the end of the academic year with no suspension, expulsion, nothing. | I struggled through the remainder of my tenure, which was already difficult for a number of reasons: unclear expectations and the deaths of both my parents within 9 months of each other. I'd been sexually harassed in graduate school AND the military AND as a child (assaulted), so PTSD kicked in big time. I vomited before going to work, couldn't sleep (I once went 3 days without sleeping), lost a huge amount of weight. I was seeing a therapist before this happened because of tenure bullying--she literally saved my life. Now, I'm much stronger but deeply embittered and distrustful: I have to work every day with so-called colleagues who through me under the bus years ago and can't figure out why I'm embittered and distrustful. It was so difficult to focus on writing, publishing and at times, still is. | I continue to see a therapist each week, treatment that is entirely out of my own pocket. | I was fortunate to have a husband partner who didn't leave my side, but it was tough: I thought I was going to lose my job, my home, my marriage, my everything. And...he didn't entire get it, what I was going through. But he doesn't quit, and neither do I. | I'll send an email. Thank you for doing this. It's a dirty not-so-secret secret, and especially so when women colleagues do nothing but stand by and wring their goddamn hands. | Male | ||
1471 | 12/9/2017 13:53:00 | I was a student assistant in the department of a "hot shot" professor, at the time president of the national association of our field. He and his team of (all male) research assistants would sexualize any conversation. Continuous stream of comments on my looks or those of other female students and how much they would like to fuck them. No interaction with any of them was impossible without drawing comments like "oh, she must really have the hots for you, if she is talking to you again." One of the research assistants shared his sexual fantasy involving one of the other (female) student assistens with the group over lunch. The professor had continuous affairs with several other students which he would even invite to the departmental summer party hosted by his wife. He would ask me to fetch something from his desk so I had to look at the pornographic films that were still running on his desk monitor. I was continously questioned for details of my sex life and that of others. | student | my professor (graded my papers and my master thesis, had my final exam with him) and work supervisor (as a student assistant and tutor) | Other R1 | Munich | None. | None. | It may have resulted in a lesser grade on my thesis (he suspected me of sleeping with one of this doctoral students that he disliked), the second supervisor considered his grade an insult and tried to have it overturned. I refused a PhD position in his team and left academia for a while. When I finally started my dissertation at a different university, I tried to stay clear of his "territory" as much as possible and managed to achieve a credible academic career (and tenure). When I mention at conferences with whom I did my master thesis, colleagues have openly asked whether I was one of his "girls". | For a while it made me very insecure what kind of interactions and conversations were "normal" between colleagues. | It threw me off the academic career path for a while. But in the end it made me more determined to succeed despite of it all. And to contribute toward turning academia into a better work environment. | Male | |||
1472 | 12/9/2017 13:55:39 | 1. A direct supervisor propositioned me and promised me tenure. He also frequently came tocampus drunk, berated female colleagues in meetings, and made inappropriate remarks daily (e.g., “Do you want to photocopy my ass?”). 2. At another institution (where I went after fleeing the harasser), my most senior colleague watched porn loudly (you could hear it in other offices even with the doors shut) with his office door open on weekdays. | 1. 3-year contract 2. Tenure track | 1. Dean and direct supervisor 2. Most senior colleague in the college; had previously been provost of the uni | Other R1 | History | 1. HR opened an investigation based on my complaints. Seven women came forward with similar reports. Nothing happened after that. He has since been promoted. 2. The dean of the college refused to confront him directly about the porn, and did not even ask him to shut his door until I threatened to go to HR within 24 hours. | None for either. | 1. I fled the first institution and was prepared to leave academia rather than stay there. 2. I was asked not to report, while at the same time serving on a committee to address sexual assault on campus. I felt like a fraud. | 1. Such heavy stress I considered leaving academia altogether. I stopped going to campus except for class and meetings. I lived in fear that he would come to my office, which was down a back hallway and had no windows. 2. I felt like a fraud and could see very clearly the hypocrisy of the institution. I started advising students to report publicly, rather than through official channels, where their complaints would be buried. | I left the second institution a year later. | Male | |||
1473 | 12/9/2017 13:59:23 | A member of my PhD cohort has garnered a serious reputation for inappropriately touching (and more) female colleagues when he's drunk. This began my first year when it was rumored he had sexually assaulted a drunker and younger woman in our cohort. While he has never been inappropriate with me, multiple other women I'm close to in the program have told stories about him inappropriately touching them/groping them at parties or bars. Most people excuse it because he's drunk when it happens. | Graduate student | Graduate student | Other R1 | Never has been reported to my knowledge | Male | ||||||||
1474 | 12/9/2017 14:10:34 | I was outside of the U.S. doing PhD research. I went to a conference in the country where I was doing my research, and the cost of the hotel rooms were covered by the organization planning the conference. At the end of the conference, the very large and tall conference organizer knocked at the door of my room, and when I opened the door, he stepped so close to me that I stepped back and he came into my room. He made lame small talk, and I immediately grabbed my bag and told him I was going out and left the room. So, he did not assault me, but he certainly made me feel uncomfortable and I could tell what he was after. When I came back to my room later, I sat in bed with the lights out. I heard several knocks at the door but I did not answer them. I was so furious I could not sleep that night. | graduate student/PhD candidate/conference presenter | A senior colleague/head of professional organization/conference organizer. | Other Research Agency | Film/Cultural Studies | I didn't report it, as and he was the head of the organization that planned the conference. | None. (At another related conference, I found out he had died. It was a strange feeling.) | None, fortunately. It was not an institution that had any authority over me; It was not really even that well-known of an organization, although theoretically it would have been a good professional organization to support as it had to do with a lesser-studied field. I didn't do anything else with the organization after that. But I did feel sorry for his students. | I couldn't sleep that night and felt a slow-burning fury that I remember whenever anything similar happens. But no serious long-term impacts. | None. I realize that I am very lucky to have not experienced sexual harassment in my graduate program, and I am grateful for my male PhD supervisor, who was never inappropriate in his behavior with me, and, who since I graduated, has been very kind and supportive. I have experienced groping in non-academic temp jobs, public transport etc. But this is the worst thing (that I can think of at the moment--actually I've thought of other uncomfortable moments with colleagues now, but this was the most threatening) that happened to me in an academic context. So, compared to some of the other experiences here, this is a fairly mild one, which has had little to no impact on my career. | Male | |||
1475 | 12/9/2017 14:15:01 | Quid pro quo | Undergraduate | Professor | Other R1 | STEM | Did not report | Male | |||||||
1476 | 12/9/2017 14:21:16 | At a large party thrown by a textbook publisher at a major conference. I older and more established scholar (woman) I had politely rebuffed the day prior came up to me, interrupted my conservation, grabbed my penis through my pants, and made a loud comment about its size. I know she her posting dozens of #MeToo and #BelieveWomen things, and it really makes me feel like this whole movement is grossly disingenuous. | Graduate Student | Professor, tenure track. Not a huge name but well-respected enough to ruin my career with anonymous smears. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | It was at a conference but we were both at large R1s at the time | English-Rhetoric and Composition | Well some of my profs were watching. One--an ardent feminist--got mad at me for getting mad at the woman. Another agreed that was a crappy thing for her to do but advised me to not do anything about it. | She's made quite a career out of Wokeness, so nothing. If I tried to make an not-anonymous complaint she'd probably use it as proof of her being somehow victimized. | I've grown disdainful of the deep hypocrisy of my field. | Dunno. | This was one of many incidents that shattered my belief that the academy was somehow less awful than the private sector, and honestly it's been a relief to not take this shit seriously. | Female | ||
1477 | 12/9/2017 14:33:58 | Love notes and gifts from a student in my class. | assistant professor (brand new) | undergraduate | Other R1 | Humanities | I reported the incident to my chair, who spent a lot of time discussing the situation with me, and who directed me to the appropriate campus offices. The student was encouraged to meet with someone in the counseling center (and told to limit contact with me to matters concerning class) but was not officially disciplined. | none, other than being asked to talk to someone in the counseling center | I was forced to waste a lot of time (which could have been better spent) dealing with and worrying about the harassment. The stress also exacerbated some health problems I was having at the time, and that definitely affected my productivity. | The student had indicated some potentially violent tendencies, so I felt pretty unsafe on campus for a while and very self-conscious in class. I also worried that he would retaliate on his course evaluation (I was very junior at the time), although he didn't. Once the term was over, I was very anxious about the possibility that he would enroll in another one of my courses, so I made a habit of checking my enrollment lists kind of obsessively for the next few years. | I was completely satisfied with the way my chair handled the situation, and the one silver lining was that the experience taught me, within my first two months on the job, how seriously and sensitively he dealt with these issues. However, I was dismayed to learn that my university doesn't have better system in place for dealing with students who harass faculty. It's not that I wanted the student to be punished, but I would have liked to know that his behavior was on record with someone at the university who was in a position to act if he did something like this to another faculty member (or staff member or student). Apparently no such person exists. | Male | |||
1478 | 12/9/2017 15:49:57 | Happened to a friend. He was being harassed and molested by a male administrator. My friend reported it to HR, and was fired. | My friend was junior faculty. | administrator | Other Type of School | My friend was fired. He can't afford to sue. | none | my friend is unemployed. | pretty heavy impact for him. | Male | |||||
1479 | 12/9/2017 16:06:20 | My undergraduate advisor sent me suggestive emails, tried to start a relationship. | undergraduate | professor | Small Liberal Arts College | liberal arts | I was phoned about it by the dean of students, but I covered it up. | none | Depression and anxiety made it hard to focus, almost failed my first year of grad school and took 10 years to finish. | 10 years of chronic depression and anxiety. | I wouldn't currently want to teach at my undergraduate institution. I am on the job market and a little old compared to most recent PhDs; this hurts my chances of getting jobs, especially in Europe. | Male | |||
1480 | 12/9/2017 16:06:37 | I was his phd student. He 'fell in love' with me. Wife, 2 kids & a long term mistress. Offered to dump the mistress so I could be top mistress. Wife found emails. We shifted his supervisor status to secondary. He sent me more emails, she found them. He forced me out of the department. Never apologised | PhD student | Tenured professor & my primary supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Psychology | Didn't report | None | Changed departments 2/3 way through phd to less prestigious department | Panic attacks, depression, substance abuse | Left academia permanently after graduating | Male | |||
1481 | 12/9/2017 16:09:16 | Department Chair went out with all the students for drinks after graduation. Made sexual comments about almost every female student there. Commented on the size of my breasts in front of all my classmates, and propositioned one of my friends in private. When I showed my discomfort later, he implied that the only reason I had been given a scholarship was because he thought I had the greatest financial need. (Not true. I confirmed several years later that it was a "merit scholarship" decided upon by committee.) | Graduate student | Department Chair | Other R1 | The New School | n/a | None | Years of self doubt and feeling like I was admitted out of pity rather than based on merit. | I don't believe in collegiality and I feel alienated in academic social spaces so I avoid them. | Male | ||||
1482 | 12/9/2017 16:22:34 | It was my first year at an American graduate program. I was pursued by a professor from a department other than my own. I was in my early 20s, he was 15-ish years older. We first met in a formal setting, I made an appointment to ask about American academic culture. We also kept running into each other in town. At some point, months later, he asked me out. Being from a different culture (both social and academic), I did not find it strange that an older guy who happened to be a professor openly expressed interest in me. He often told me how obsessed he was with me, he ''complimented'' me using rather explicit language. It was a consensual on and off relationship. I was an adult, and I took (and still take) responsibility for my actions/choices. However, he always insisted on keeping this relationship a secret. He would say "don't tell anybody, or I will get in trouble". I never really understood that: there was no conflict of interest... being from different departments, our professional paths didn't really cross. I told my friends about him. I felt the need to have witnesses, so to speak. I didn't feel safe, emotionally. He often said how he was obsessed with me, how he wanted to posess me. I thought- it's weird, this guy seems to be really into me, but yet he doesn't want to be seen with me in public. Emotionally and sexually, I felt used, disrespected. I knew l was being treated as a sex toy in this situation. I was lucky I wasn't in love with him. Several times I broke it off, then he would beg me to spend time with him again, using the same possessive language. At some point, the interactions stopped. I've always wondered if he had a full-time girlfriend, and I was a side-chick. I also wondered if he had been simultaneously dating other students. I can only hope that I am wrong, and no other students/young women were groomed for a relationship with this man. | First year graduate student | Professor (maybe tenured, I don't know) in a department different from my own. | Other Type of School | It was at a State University | Theatre | N/A | This individual was let go from/or left the school. I don't know the details. His departure had nothing to do with my experience, since I never spoke to any officials about it. | N/A | For some unknown reason, I'm still scared to talk about this experience openly. I feel truly ashamed for agreeing to this relationship. Every time I travel, I worry that I will run into him at an airport. It's an irrational fear. | It didn't influence my career path, but it left a gross stain on my personal life story. | THANK YOU for this project. | Male | |
1483 | 12/9/2017 16:29:24 | I was sexually assaulted by a subject during my RA research. I had previously spoken with my PI for several months about safety concerns due to the subject population, working alone with subjects, and isolated study sites. Once I returned back to the lab, still bloody and bruised, I told my PI what happened; he dismissed the incident and belittled me. | Phd student | PhD supervisor and tenured full professor | Other R1 | University of Washington | Environmental and Occupational Health | The department turned a blind eye until other departments and the university Title IX administrator forced an official response by our department; the official response was a memo from the department chair to my PI attempting to constrain his insulting, sarcastic, and sexually inappropriate comments to me, especially with regards to the assault. He blatantly ignored the memo and when his violations were reported to the department chair, the chair had no further official responses to my PI's behaviour aside from moving me from my PI's lab so I would not be exposed to his comments on a daily basis. | None | Significantly impaired my ability to collect my dissertation research and graduate | I experienced significant anxiety and found it necessary to receive counselling, which was a financial hardship due to limitations to the graduate health insurance plan. I'm still bitter over how I was treated by my PI and the department. | I chose to leave academia and currently work in industry. | Male | ||
1484 | 12/9/2017 17:25:27 | I was 1. raped by a professor; 2.spent the night before my graduation from college with another professor’s finger up my vagina | Undergraduate | Full professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Swarthmore College | English | None | None | I have to remember some one’s invasive fiber instead of a landmark life achievement | Depression and shame | Male | |||
1485 | 12/9/2017 18:02:36 | Inappropriate comments at conference (alcohol was involved) | Grad student | Senior | Other Research Agency | None | Male | ||||||||
1486 | 12/9/2017 18:35:16 | My leg was felt up and down in a public meeting by a colleague sitting next to me. I had on pants, so it was above the pants, but he grabbed my leg at the knee, rubbed it all the way down to the ankle and all the way back up to the knee again. | New Assistant Professor (first 6 months at the institution) on the TT | Full Professor in a different department but closely related research field | Regional Teaching College | Located in Texas | Education | I reported to their Dean, who questioned me as to whether or not I had interpreted the gesture correctly to which I replied that I had. I took 2 weeks to report because I wasn't sure anyone would believe me. This Dean told me that I had better prepare for what I would do next time, because being a woman in academia it would happen again and again. :( I did not report to my Dean because I knew he would not believe or support me. | Supposedly the Dean put a letter in his file with my name on it and the nature of the incident in case any students ever came forward with similar accusations. | I've been unable to make connections in my field in this region due to the popularity and connections of this full professor in my area. I lose credibility by not working with him, and it has definitely impacted my career due to the loss of connections. | I struggled for weeks on what to do, then for even longer on how I did not stand up to him face to face when this happened. I was so shocked that something like this had happened to me, in a public meeting yet somehow no one had seen anything. | I continue to avoid working with his close colleagues at all cost so I won't run into him. I definitely avoid sitting near male colleagues at meetings if I can help it. | Thanks for doing this. | Male | |
1487 | 12/9/2017 18:36:34 | A male co-teacher wanted to date me. I said no. Later he told other teachers I must be so loose ‘down there’ from having 3 children. (FYI this isn’t a thing that happens). He made comments about my hair being too long and skirts too short. | Teacher | Teacher | Other Type of School | EGUSD | Education | He ended up replacing me in my classroom. | I left the school. | I don’t trust any male teacher alone in the prep areas. I get out fast. | Male | ||||
1488 | 12/9/2017 18:42:57 | I was taking a summer course as an undergrad (summer 2000), and had found I liked to come to professors' office hours (how fitting that I ended up getting my PhD eventually)! I went to see my lit professor that summer in his office, to discuss a poem I didn't understand. He kept getting closer to me during the meeting, till he was sitting next to me on the sofa in his office, with his hand on my leg, then up my skirt. I was very naive, but also realized he shouldn't be touching me. I told him I was late for another appointment and bolted. | Undergrad student | Tenured professor | Other R1 | University of Michigan | English Dept | I never reported it, but a female friend told me I "should have asked around about him" before being alone with him in his office, as the English Dept was known to be a place where male faculty got away with coming onto female students like me. I was very ashamed. | None, but I don't follow his career and have moved to a different discipline. | I don't sit next to male faculty / colleagues if I can help it and I avoid any events where drinking is involved. | I lost some trust in people in general, but also learned about the whisper network of women in academia. This has helped me immensely to just avoid men who are trouble. | I tried to have my entire PhD committee be women (and almost succeeded! It included one male faculty member who is wonderful and a trusted mentor / collaborator, and I was thrilled). | Male | ||
1489 | 12/9/2017 18:49:39 | Colleague exposed himself to me repeatedly. At work. In my office | Associate & Full Professor | A few years behind me. Currently the same rank. | Small Liberal Arts College | Chemistry | None | None | I can never be department chair of my department. | Stress | Mostly avoidance. | Male | |||
1490 | 12/9/2017 18:52:23 | I don't know exactly, but I know at least two female grad students were affected. | Undergrad in the same department | Associate Professor, then full, director of undergrad studies (not sure if he was at the time of the incidents. He could have been associate only at the time) | Other R1 | Spanish & Portuguese | I was meeting with the chair about neglect from this prof when she pulled out a file at least 3" thick and she told me that inside were all the complaints against him, and that the admin would do NOTHING. She said we could not imagine the horrible things in there. | He is now chair of the department. | None on mine, but rumors are that at least two female grad students left the program because of him. He also sabotaged one of his advisee's careers when he applied for the same job she was a finalist for in order to try to get a raise for himself at our institution. | N/A | I chose not to work with him, so I ended up with a female advisor who was emotionally and intellectually abusive. | Male | |||
1491 | 12/9/2017 18:57:52 | Professor assaulted me after threatening to commit suicide | Undergrad | Major director | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Religion | Fired professor | Male | |||||||
1492 | 12/9/2017 19:11:13 | In my second year as a PhD student, a senior colleague got me alone at Friday night drinks, aggressively kissed me, then asked if I wanted to go and have sex with him in his office. At a similar occasion on a separate night, he dragged me into the men's toilet to try to kiss me. He's married with children. I thought he was interested in my research when we first spoke. | PhD student in my second year | Tenured academic working at a prestigious institution | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Australian university | Media | None (I didn't report) | None (I didn't report) | I am wary of any one-on-one meetings with academic men. | I went home, cried for an hour, and was terrified my male PhD supervisors were also only interested in me as a sex object. | I don't trust academic men one-on-one anymore. | Male | ||
1493 | 12/9/2017 20:26:41 | I was forcibly held down and orally raped by a member of my admit committee during my campus visit to an Ivy League school. | Ph.D. admit | Senior graduate student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | I decided for a school on the West Coast purely to get away from the trauma I experienced. Little did I know that the department had severe rape/harassment problems of its own. | A decade later, I'm still in therapy. | I left academia for the tech sector because I felt like there was more psychological safety there. I was right—it's a much safer environment than the academy (despite its well-publicized problems). Still, I feel a bit sad that I felt I had to make the choice to leave my teaching and research behind me. I would have been an excellent professor. | Male | |||||
1494 | 12/9/2017 21:05:29 | A professor in our Department began dating a first-year MA student in my cohort. Their relationship ended. The professor began stalking her. He parked his car on the street in front of her residence and waited in it for hours on multiple nights. The professor suspected that the student had begun dating another graduate student who had also entered her program in our Department that year. The professor spoke violently about this student, who was female. He said that if she were a man, he would punch her in the face. | Graduate student | Assistant Professor in our Department at the time | Other R1 | The University of Oregon | English | The student he threatened reported it to the Department Graduate student advisor. This professor told her not to pursue any institutional response and to try to handle it in house. The Graduate student advisor had a stern conversation with the stalker. | None. He has advanced to Full Professor in that department and is the director of a Minor Program in it as well. | Male | |||||
1495 | 12/9/2017 21:41:24 | Inappropriate touching during office hours | Student | Professor | Other R1 | University of Maryland | Biology | Professor XXX, chemistry department | Male | ||||||
1496 | 12/9/2017 21:48:38 | Verbal harassment, lewd comments and lewd questions, comments about my appearance every time, stereotypical and sexualized comments about women behaviour, inappropriate hugging, ignoring my request for respecting my personal space. It's been happening during all my PhD program. | PhD student | Professor on my committee | Other Type of School | Research Center in Mexico | Environmental Science | None, It's not been reported yet | One of them has been reported before in other Institution and expelled for similar causes. | anxiety and decrease of motivation | I avoid doing some activities in the lab and attending some Academia events. | Male | |||
1497 | 12/9/2017 22:21:44 | When I was a graduate student, another graduate student began heavily flirting with me. This included time during observing runs, when we were both alone together in an isolated location. Eventually we began a relationship, which she insisted we keep secret. After a month she made it clear that she still intended on seeing her ex-boyfriend, and ended things with me. | graduate student | graduate student | Other R1 | astronomy | none | Female | |||||||
1498 | 12/9/2017 22:27:04 | I had an undergraduate research student who constantly felt the need to engage in personal conversation with me. At the time I was fresh out of graduate school and didn't really know what appropriate boundaries were for student/faculty interactions. We were friends on facebook, and one night she got drunk, and sent me her phone number and told me to "use it." She also told me about her past sexual history in detail. It made the rest of our time working together incredibly uncomfortable, including having to see her at conferences. It also was very difficult when she asked for a recommendation letter. She was a poor student, but I felt like I couldn't say no, as she hinted that she would accuse me of trying to harass her. | temporary faculty | undergraduate | Small Liberal Arts College | astronomy | none, currently a graduate student at a prestigious university | Female | |||||||
1499 | 12/9/2017 23:51:24 | I was in the pre-architecture after degree program at the University of Manitoba preparing for the masters of architecture. When I began it was the 1970s and I was the only woman, with the exception of one other who was just finishing her dissertation. Near the end of the year, one of the engineering profs approached me and said that he would pass me if I didn’t return the following year. I didn’t ask him if I had a failing grade on the final and he didn’t mention what my marks were in his course. I said nothing in response. What do you say to that? I didn’t return the following year because he had somehow convinced me that the degree was beyond me when I should have known that I was targeted for being a woman in a principally male field. I also should have known that if I had made it into the program that it was very likely I would succeed. | Post Secondary pre-masters student | A professor of one of my courses | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Manitoba | Architecture | I did not report it | Decided not to become an architect | A lifelong disappointment that I didn’t accept the challenge, which I should have known was based solely on my gender. | I moved on to a career in a challenging field that interestingly enough is dominated by women. | Male | |||
1500 | 12/10/2017 0:16:25 | I'm including this here because my harasser, although this occurred when I was in high school (around age 16), is (or was? not sure if he is still employed) a professor; this happened after a summer program in which he was my teacher. I enjoyed his teaching, he said he was impressed by my intellect, and we kept in touch via online chat after the program ended. He also offered to write me a letter of recommendation. Over time, our conversations became less platonic on his instigation, and he moved from complimenting my smarts to complimenting my looks; I was initially flattered by what I naively thought of as romantic interest, then increasingly creeped out as he became more explicitly sexual. At one point he asked to call me on the phone, then during the call described the size of his penis and talked about it growing erect, asked me if the description made me aroused, and asked me to talk dirty to him. He also asked whether he could visit me after I went to college; I politely deflected that. We stopped talking a little while after that, which was a huge relief for me. I didn't hear from him again until I was a grad student, out of the blue: the institution I attended for my Ph.D. was the same one he'd gone to for undergrad, and I suppose he must have visited for an alumni reunion. I didn't see him, but he somehow located my departmental mailbox and left a note asking how I was and whether I'd like to get back in touch. I did not oblige him. | High school student | Teacher/former teacher (postdoc at the time) | Other Type of School | Classics | None. I'm ashamed to admit I did not report this—I felt complicit and guilty about it, since I'd initially had a crush on him. I did mention it to my parents, who concluded that I'd encouraged him and just told me to stop talking to him. There was also no untoward physical contact or face-to-face interaction; it was all online or over the phone. | None. | I still ended up pursuing my interest in the field; the sad thing is that he was genuinely a good teacher and helped to encourage that interest in the first place. In the end, I felt I was able to separate what happened from my intellectual interests; I have been lucky in that respect. If anything, it made me more determined to excel in the field. But I still feel guilty for not reporting him. | It's hard to say. I was a very insecure teenager, and in an odd, terrible way the whole thing was reassuring in its initial stages: it helped me believe that someone (whose intellect and judgment I respected) could find me attractive at a time when I felt I was hideous. I think my feeling of complicity in what happened was the most damaging aspect of the whole occurrence. I do have difficulty saying "no" to people, and I don't think this helped. | Again, hard to say. I did end up going into my chosen field, and hope to succeed in it; if it's had any impact, it's that I've been extra-nervous at big conferences, wondering if he'll unexpectedly turn up. I haven't run into him yet, thank God. I'm honestly not sure if he's still in the academy, as I've tried to avoid news of him, but I know that as of a few years ago he'd been (visiting) faculty at a couple of institutions. | Male | |||
1501 | 12/10/2017 4:11:49 | I overheard multiple female peers talking about a professor who would give out a higher grade in return for flirtation/dates/other favours (no explicit details were mentioned but it was not difficult to deduce what was meant). | Student (end of first year & throughout second year) | Professor | Other Type of School | English Literature | None | None | I refrained from seeking any support from my male professors and avoided one-on-one situations with male professors throughout my entire academic career. I already had a fear of being alone with men in a situation where there was a power dynamic involved, but this added to that anxiety. I have continued to avoid any possible confrontation with any male bosses I have had since then. | It added another trigger to an anxiety problem I already had. | I feel I would have flourished more, academically, if I had felt safe receiving feedback and asking for help from all of my professors. 70% of my classes were taught by men, and I did not engage as much as I would have liked to with the professors because I was afraid my intentions would be misinterpreted. Given the word that was going around I felt that I would be blamed if anything bad happened, because I "ought to have known". | I am sorry if this is irrelevant to the survey seeing as nothing actually happened to me. I thought I would report it here in any case, since I never mentioned it to any professors or other people in power at my university. I was scared I would be drawn into the public eye for reporting other students' stories and I didn't want that. I hope this makes sense. | Male | ||
1502 | 12/10/2017 6:22:15 | The first year of my graduate program in Geography (2010), another graduate student in my cohort would stare at me (especially at my breasts) every time we were in the same room together, even if we weren't near each other and I was talking to someone else- from across the room he would be staring at me. This would happen at social events, in seminar, in department meetings. It was pretty constant. | 1st year PhD student. | Another 1st year graduate student. | Other R1 | Geography | None, I didn't mention it to anyone aside from fellow grad students. | None, he seems to be doing fine. | Made me incredibly self-conscious that first year (more than I was already). I avoided going to events if I thought he would be there, would leave conversations if he came over to join in. When I told other students about it they were generally dismissive or told me I should feel complimented. | Male | |||||
1503 | 12/10/2017 6:28:37 | High school 1984, 1985 | Junior in high school | My teacher | Other Type of School | Camden Central High | Student | None | None | Afraid to speak up. He was the department head with a PhD . Made it difficult to trust anyone. I used humor to deal with it for years. | Lost my confidence. Lost sight of my goals. | I can be reached at ***email redacted*** | Male | ||
1504 | 12/10/2017 6:41:07 | On of my graduate advisors sexualized every conversation. I mean, every conversation-- found and had me write on passages that were about sex or the body. He made meetings with me late at night. Once, I went to his hotel room to meet him for dinner "with his students" at a conference out of state-- this was a long time ago and such things were common--- , and he opened the door in a silk bathrobe and he was naked underneath. I was in my good girl suit and sat at the edge of the chair until I could flee. No one else was invited. He constantly comment on my appearance and that of the other women grad students, even undergrads. He "come on" to everyone. I took him off my committee and made the excuse that I was doing another period and text. I changed from early Jewish thought to early Christian thought to escape. | grad student | very senior professor, key person in the field, my advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Inter- testimonial thought (early Jewish and Christian Scripture | all the women professors told us not to work with him. But they never reported him | None. He is still there. | I still have to avoid him at conferences in a small field. | I felt very guilty, like it was my fault. Until a few months ago. | I shifted out of Jewish thought, and moved to Christian sources | He was married, and a rabbi, and he implied his wife did not mind. He was and is very famous. But I can not read his (many) books without remembering how he made every academic conversation we ever had about sex. | Male | |
1505 | 12/10/2017 8:12:16 | A senior professor repeatedly grabbed my breast at a bar and kept asking me to go back to his apartment, even after I said “no” several times. It was a corner of a crowded bar but it was right in front of my friend and fellow student. He finally said, “I know you’re a lesbian. You know my daughter is a lesbian. Just pretend I’m her and come home with me.” He finally gave up and stopped; I left the bar. He was already being investigated for some sort of sexual misconduct. This was in 2004. | Graduate student | Current professor and DGS | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia | Humanities | I never officially reported this. He was already under investigation for some other sexual misconduct, the full details of which were unknown to me, though I had other evidence of his sexually predatory behavior. I did not see any point in reporting it because I had reason to believe the institution would not respond in any good way, and it would just make my life more difficult. | He was not able to serve as DGS. There may have been other confidential consequences, but he did not lose his job, or endowed chair. | Nothing direct that I’m aware of, but he has bad-mouthed me to some people. His work is now considered irrrelevant in the fields I work in, and I have tenure. | It did not have any significant impact beyond the impact that institutionalized classism, racism, misogyny and so forth were already having on my mental health. | None | Male | ||
1506 | 12/10/2017 8:33:00 | A professor from another department and I had decided to co-edit a book together about food. It didn’t strike me as odd that we would talk about the book over dinner - it was a food studies book and dining was part of the research. At dinner he proceeded to drink a bottle of wine (I had one by-the-glass serving and refused to join him in the bottle). He put his hand on my leg; I moved it. This repeated many times, maybe ten. He tried to hold my hand as we left the restaurant. Invited me back to his place because his wife and child were away. I refused. Said I had to get my bike from my office which took me back into a building on campus. He decided to come with me. Tried to kiss me. I was so freaked out that I decided to skip trying to bike in Manhattan and just get a cab. He followed me out and when a cab stopped for me, he tried to push me and himself in. I braved myself against the doorframe and pushed him off. The next morning he emailed to say he had a great time and we should do it again. Years later I filed a report against him. The only reprimand that the EOE office had for him was to stop drinking with individual students. He was extremely uncomfortable but relaxed when they recounted the details (a sign that he had done something worse with someone else, perhaps?). He said he wouldn’t be able to do his food studies job, be himself, without being able to drink with students. The EOE office agreed and suggested he be more careful when drinking with individual students. That’s where it ended. Needless to say, I never got to co-edit that book with him which would have helped my career. | PhD student in another department | Tenure-track professor in another department at my university | Other R1 | NYU | Sociology | The EOE office talked to us both, decided to recommend that he stop drinking with individual students. As I understand, he pushed back on the recommendation due to his field (food studies) and the EOE office left it at his discretion. | He got a letter in his file. I think. I’m not really sure, didn’t seem like there were any consequences. | I was unable to publish a book chapter or co-edit the book we were supposedly working on together (maybe he never intended to do anything of the sort). I also stopped collaborating with anyone else in food studies because I was afraid to run into him. | I developed impostor syndrome - maybe all I thought I had achieved was due to men wanting to sleep with me? | I ended up recovering from this and several other instances of harassment fairly well. Now I try to help others who are dealing with the same types of issues, both would-be harassers and those that might be victims. | Male | ||
1507 | 12/10/2017 8:46:24 | When I was a PhD student in a science field, I was working many hours per day (as many as 16) as a construction contractor. I realized that a smarter way to pay for my education habit would be to be a faculty member. I was told about an employment opportunity in the university in which I was a student. I went to an office to speak with the Secretary to the Director. She scheduled an appointment with the Director. I arrived for that appointment, sat across the desk from the Director, and noticed a "Post-it Note" (signed by the Secretary) on the Director's desk. Reading the note upside down, I discovered that (in Spanish) it said, " ________ __________ 01:00 p.m. Hire him. He is a stud." The Director was ~ 31 years young. I was ~ 26 years young. She scheduled an interview with a committee (but, told me that the job was mine. Nobody else would be interviewed). After I had been hired, she told me that my first day on the job would be spent flying to San Luis Obispo to participate in a conference. When we arrived and were carrying our bags into the hotel, she told me that I did not need to occupy a separate room. Oh yes I did!!!!!!! That comment certainly made me uncomfortable. As the weeks of the job went on, she would introduce me to other women telling them that she had hired me because of that note from the Secretary. If I had been pale-skinned, I know that one could have seen that I was blushing. Those comments certainly did make me uncomfortable. When I arrived in that major research university (during the 1970s), I was told by male faculty members and by male students that the unwritten rules of dating were such that; when a man took a woman on a date and paid for a meal in a nice restaurant, the woman reciprocated by inviting him into her body. I never, ever would consider such disrespectful behavior. However, my boss consistently would tell me. "Your taking me to dinner." I would take her to "Taco Time" and pay for her meal. No matter how flirtatious she was, I would not respond in any unprofessional way. I did not want any relationship with her other than our professional one as administrative, student-services faculty members in the same program. I was invited to apply for a faculty position in another institution of higher education (which desperately needed somebody who could teach Mathematics in Spanish and in English). I did not remain two years in that first uncomfortable job. I probably was helped (in dealing with the boss who wanted me for my body) by being married to the most beautiful woman in the world. Those many experiences with that person did not give me any PTSD. I did not lose sleep because of them. I did not report them to any university administrators in levels of more authority. I finished a B. Sci., M. Sci., and Ph.D. without ever accepting one penny of financial aid, scholarship funds, fellowship funds, student loans, etc. I finished with no debt. Those male faculty members who advised me on how to "get some action" and the female who briefly was my boss, probably are dead, now. | That information is provided, above. | She was my boss. | I did not report the person to the institution. | None | It did not constipate my career. | It did not constipate my mental health. | It did not constipate my life choices. | Female | |||||
1508 | 12/10/2017 8:47:06 | Women on campus decided to form a chapter of the AAUW as a first step in dealing with rampant gender discrimation on our campus. A number of men on campus called the group the "Angry Association of University Women," as a way of dismissing the group's concerns. This was one of the first signs I recieved on campus that there were going to be a number of incidents ahead. Since then, the list has been enormous, and the instition continues to ignore the issues. | Assistant professor | Senior men | Small Liberal Arts College | redacted | redacted | None | None | I have spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to educate those in positions of power; this time would have been better spent on writing and publishing. | Often feel like I am losing it. | Actively on the market every year. | Male | ||
1509 | 12/10/2017 8:48:15 | I was invited to a prestigious workshop on a topic that my work is *unquestionably* at the heart of, but the framing of the workshop gendered it strongly male. I am in the humanities, but I imagine a parallel from STEM might be a conference organized around "Improving Radiology's Approach to Chemotherapy," and my work is precisely on making chemotherapy more effective, but I take a biological approach to it (my understanding is that Radiology is gendered more STEM-lord male and biology is gendered female?). I am one of only 3 females in the 18 person workshop and the other two work in much more classically male-gendered areas. I am also 1 of 2 graduate students involved; everyone else has at least one award-winning book out. The group went out for dinner the night before the conference. Drinks were had; I am an outgoing person and had a lot of fun chatting with those around me. One person from the gendered-male framing field I had never met before or read any of his work. We got along really well and when he mentioned that his daughter was a year younger than me I felt assured that nothing creepy was going on. The next day at lunch, he again sits next to me and asks me if I want to go out to a sports event after the conference concludes the next day; because he is one of the conference organizers, he knows my flight leaves the next morning and I am spending another night in town. I start to get wigged out by how he is isolating me from the group, and the fact that he seems to not want anyone else to hear this invitation, so I blow him off saying I think I need to be conducting research in the local archives, I need to check the holdings, etc. The next day, the final day of the conference he asked me over breakfast again about accompanying him to the sporting event and this time I firmly declined and just said I couldn't. He ignored me all day and except to be dismissive of my paper while everyone else was positive/constructive. Months later, I hear through another one of the editors of the volume that "they just can't have a whole chapter on [my topic]" with no other explanation given. Other workshop participants I see at conferences occasionally follow up with me and ask how my chapter is going, reiterate excitement about my work; they are amazed and confused when I tell them my chapter was cut. I have *no* proof that it is because I declined this guy's invitation, but my advisor confirms it's the only thing that makes sense, as does the other graduate student who was at the workshop, with whom I have become good friends. I have stopped being involved in that circle of people almost entirely from a combination of embarrassment and anger that the other co-editors wouldn't advocate for me. | Graduate student | Tenured professor, featured talking head on major network news stations, director of the academic center funding the workshop I was participating in, and co-editor of the published volume expected to come out of said workshop. | Other R1 | Ohio State University | History | Never reported -- nothing concrete enough to report. | None. | Negative. Missed an important early publication opportunity. | Spent a lot of time and tears wondering if I could have been brilliant enough, would he then not have been able to deny me my chapter? Questioned everything. Left chapter unrevised for almost a year. | More timid about networking with older males in the profession now. Actively avoid military historians and other male historians who work in male-gendered topics and who don't seem to have a network of professional female friends one or more of whom I know personally. | Male | ||
1510 | 12/10/2017 9:04:16 | He jokingly speculated about other male grad students "gang banging" me and regularly asked me inappropriate/uncomfortable questions (e.g. how large my bush was, what my cup size was, whether I was a virgin, etc.). He would occasionally touch me on the back or the arm, but thankfully never had an opportunity to really feel me up (probably because I was constantly making an effort to keep a safe distance away from him). | 1st year MSc student | Postdoc in the same department as me, but different lab group | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Physical Geography | I never reported it and was too shy at that time (being brand new to the university and the city) to confront him myself, so there was no institutional response. However, a male colleague (fellow grad student) of mine DID tell him off for making a lewd joke once, which I sincerely appreciated. | None. | Since the individual was not in the same lab group as I was, I (thankfully) did not have to work closely with him on a regular basis. I avoided going to a conference that I knew he was going to (since I did not want to give him any opportunities to come on to me), but other than that, my career was unaffected. | Again, since he was not in the same lab group and I did not have to work closely with him, it did not affect my mental health very much. I was a little afraid of being in the same room alone with him, but I managed to avoid it. | Since my own lab group and my supervisor were all awesome people, I stayed in academia. I sometimes think about how difficult it would have been if the individual who harassed me had been in my lab group. Conducting fieldwork would have been a nightmare since we often collect data as a group in remote regions for upwards of 3 months at a time. | Male | |||
1511 | 12/10/2017 9:21:19 | Two separate occasions of the American Historical Association. As a younger PhD student (23), I went to my first AHA and was introduced to professors at other universities. One man challenged my on the thesis of my diss, picking apart every answer I gave him. Then, when I mentioned to the group that the heater was broken in my room he handed me his key under the table and said it was hot in his own. At another AHA, this time as a full-time faculty member, I was having a conversation with two male professors from a R1 outside of the conference hotel. It was later in the evening and I was trying to make it back to my room and they hailed a cab and physically tried to put me in it. I had to break free to get back into the hotel, the valet helping me get away. I received an email from one of them the next day (I had not shared my contact information) asking me on a date. | grad student and newer PhD | established R1 professors | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | I am wary to go to social events at conferences, especially with male colleagues I do not know well. | Male | |||||||
1512 | 12/10/2017 9:36:34 | On my first day of graduate school, my new phd mentor invited me into his office and shut the door. He sat right across from me and ran his hand all the way up my thigh. A year later, at the APSA meeting, he and a colleague engaged in sustained ogling, sexual banter, and grabbiness for several hours. It was excruciatingly humiliating and enraging. | First/second year grad student | Dissertation adviser, professor, mentor | Other R1 | Rutgers University | Political Science | None. There were a number of predators in the department and, since this was a while back, no one to report to. #rapeculture | None | I had to be careful around him after that. I avoided his office hours as much as possible and avoided him altogether at conferences. I kept my distance in the classroom. I managed to finish my degree but it was very difficult without any real support or mentorship from my harasser. He did not help me on the job market at all, except to write a letter. | I still feel traumatized by some of the specifics in these incidents, and I'm sure they've contributed to my depression and ptsd. | I wasn't ever able to build a real and trusting relation with my dissertation adviser and sought as little help from him as possible. Who knows how things might have been different without the harassment. | Thanks for doing this. If anyone else from Rutgers PoliSci wants to come out, I'd like to talk to them. (via the email above.) | Male | |
1513 | 12/10/2017 10:08:10 | Groomed and seduced by a respected high school teacher in the 1980s who exercised a guru-like control over his students; he was widely revered and feared by us, and an object of fascination. He started casually touching me inappropriately and giving me extra attention including after-school conversations over a period of several months, then proposed we meet to discuss my work at his house near the school, where he sexually assaulted me. It happened so quickly there was no question of my giving consent, much less informed consent (I was 16 years old, though he waited until after my 17th birthday to break my hymen). He was 34 at the time. I later learned that my relationship with him hadn't been as "special" as I thought; he seduced a number of girls at the school, some of whom I later met. Fun fact: he "didn't know how" to use a condom, so he didn't. Because of course it was crucial to keep "our secret" a secret so he wouldn't get fired, I isolated myself from friendships with others my age, such that he was my only "friend." | High school student | High school teacher | Other Type of School | New Orleans Center for Creative Arts | Writing | None | None | Significant psychological fallout over the years | Male | ||||
1514 | 12/10/2017 10:18:30 | Referred to as 'ladies' alongside my female co-instructor by male adult student; referenced diminutively by a dismissing hand gesture by same student; all this done publicly and in clear view of rest of the classroom. | Part-Time Professor | Student | Other R1 | Concordia University | Community Organising | Individualising - this is one perpetrator, not systemic problem; referenced to teaching union (after the fact) if choose to take this up; no clear channels of communication or support for professors in these instances. | None. | Undermining authority-respect in front of other students. | Anger and defensiveness when confronting now this classroom dynamic. | Questioning teaching such content in institutional settings i.e. with lack of support. | Male | ||
1515 | 12/10/2017 11:16:05 | I was working in a research lab in 2004 for a tenured professor--an older male and a self-proclaimed "maverick" and "well-respected pioneer" in his field. I also came to learn quickly that he was temperamental, verbally abusive to others in the lab, and prone to outbursts. The morning of the lab's holiday party, he threw one of his legendary verbal tantrums, and I happened to be the target. I was furious. That afternoon at the party, still enraged, I simply ignored him. I refused to engage with him or even look in his direction. But I could see in my peripheral vision that he kept looking across the crowded room over in my direction, trying to catch my eye. I continued to stare straight ahead. He walked toward me in my direction and I continued to stare straight ahead. And then walked behind me, slowly dragging his knuckles across my backside as he passed. He said nothing. All these years I've been embarrassed that I did nothing in response -- I didn't call him out on it, I didn't report it, I told no one at the time, for fear I would lose my job, my health insurance, and prospects for future jobs. I also knew it was a "he said/she said" situation, and I believed a tenured professor's word would trump an employee's word. | University Employee | Tenured Professor (and my boss) | Other R1 | UC San Diego | Neuroscience | N/A | N/A | Even before taking this job, I had heard negative stories from others about university culture--the way post-docs, grad students, and employees were mistreated at the hands of tenured professors. I've always found it ironic that academics often fancy themselves progressive and cutting-edge and yet operate their labs in such a parochial fashion, running them more like fiefdoms. My experience here simply sealed my opinion. I left the following year and have been working (much more happily) in the corporate and not-for-profit sector since. | Male | ||||
1516 | 12/10/2017 11:30:20 | was on a search committee, and this member of the committee repeatedly referred to his favored candidate being his favored candidate because "she gives good after-dinner talk [wink]". | assistant professor | full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Harvard | Visual Art/Cinema Studies | none | none | I resigned. It wasn't because the this incident per se, but I came back to the experience repeatedly as a major kick in the pants to get out, as I couldn't cope, and didn't have the nerve to call him on it. | Male | ||||
1517 | 12/10/2017 12:02:25 | (1) a senior professor planted his mouth on mine in an area outside our offices that was technically public, but because of complicated labyrinthine architecture, nobody was around. (2) the university's handling of my complaint involved aspects of insensitivity, incompetence, and humiliation that were a form of secondary victimization and perhaps retaliation (3) at a major conference of my professional organization, I attended a session at which the prof. from incident 1 had been scheduled to present; he was removed from the program at the last minute because of additional complaints against him. I was approached by a senior colleague in my field to say that some people were concerned that I had attended the session, and were worried I had done so "to cause trouble"; I learned that I was further criticized. it still is not clear to me exactly what the criticism was, since the harasser was not even there. | a visiting lecturer in (1) professor in another institution in 2 & 3 | senior prof in (1) emeritus but still teaching in 2 & 3 | Biblical Studies | see above | after other complaints, he was finally banned from the institution | I've had this survey sitting in an open window in my browser for over a week... I would like to answer these open questions.... too heavy, right now... | Male | ||||||
1518 | 12/10/2017 12:45:16 | Various incidents at conferences. One guy got angry with me when I wouldn't have sex with him after we had a friendly drink together. Another walked with me to my room when I went to get cigarettes and tried to kiss me, even though I'd told him before that I wasn't interested in him. Being in a private space like that when it happened was really worrying (and I was very drunk, so it was doubly creepy). Another was an older male prof drinking from my glass and not giving me enough personal space at conference drinks. | Lecturer (= asst prof) | All older than me. One was a grad student, the others were profs | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Occurred at conferences rather than an institution | Film Studies | Not applicable, as happened at conferences | None, as I didn't report anything | None that I'm aware of | These incidents have contributed to ongoing anxiety and made me very wary of talking to men I don't know in professional contexts. | I'm far more careful about socialising with men I don't know well at conferences, so I tend to stick to groups and prefer if other women are present if I'm drinking with men I haven't met before. This potentially limits networking opportunities and forging new friendships but it's easier than the alternative. | Male | ||
1519 | 12/10/2017 12:56:01 | I attended an MFA program in writing where harassment of female students was rampant. It wasn't helped by other students, who would assume that if a student was being hit on by a given faculty member, that she must have been sleeping with him. I personally experienced harassment from a number of faculty members, but the most problematic was from the director, who attempted to kiss me on the mouth. | Student | Teacher, as well as director of the program | Other Type of School | Well known MFA program | Creative Writing | None, obviously. | None. | My writing suffered during the period when this man was supervising me, but I got back on track after. I do not approach him for recommendation letters. | I am appropriately angry. | I avoid events hosted by the MFA program, and keep a distance from other alumni. | This behavior isn't limited to MFA programs. The entire creative writing community is full of it. A number of these men edit literary journals, judge contests, and serve on award panels. | Male | |
1520 | 12/10/2017 13:25:02 | I was in the pre-architecture after degree program at the University of Manitoba preparing for the masters of architecture. When I began it was the 1970s and I was the only woman, with the exception of one other who was just finishing her dissertation. Near the end of the year, one of the engineering profs approached me and said that he would pass me if I didn’t return the following year. I didn’t ask him if I had a failing grade on the final and he didn’t mention what my marks were in his course. I said nothing in response. What do you say to that? I didn’t return the following year because he had somehow convinced me that the degree was beyond me when I should have known that I was targeted for being a woman in a principally male field. I also should have known that if I had made it into the program that it was very likely I would succeed. | Post Secondary pre-masters student | A professor of one of my courses | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Manitoba | Architecture | I did not report it | Decided not to become an architect | A lifelong disappointment that I didn’t accept the challenge, which I should have known was based solely on my gender. | I moved on to a career in a challenging field that interestingly enough is dominated by women. | Male | |||
1521 | 12/10/2017 13:35:38 | When I was a first-year undergraduate I sang in a choir associated with a university chapel. There was a party for the choir and chapel staff; alcohol was provided by the staff, and we were all encouraged to drink a lot. I was clearly very drunk: slurring my words, off balance, confused. One of the assistant chaplains, a lecturer in the university, aggressively and single-mindedly tried to chat me up and take me home: we were sitting on a sofa in the middle of the room and no one stepped in, even though they could see he was touching me extremely inappropriately and I was incapable of consent. When he went to the bathroom I ran away; he refused to look at me for the rest of his time associated with that chapel. | 1st year undergraduate student | Lecturer, assistant chaplain | Elite Institution/Ivy League | None | None; he was (and is) notorious for this sort of predatory behaviour, known to both students and administration | About three months of severe anxiety, especially around social occasions with compulsory drunkenness and around senior male figures of authority, and minor anxiety lingering to the present | Male | ||||||
1522 | 12/10/2017 14:25:46 | Repeated sexually inappropriate insinuations made to me (and to my advisor) by a professor in another department. I had a friendly and close working relationship with my (gay) male advisor. This other professor often saw us walking together on campus, and he assumed that must mean we were sleeping together. When he saw me with my advisor, he would remark on us being together and how close we were; he didn't outright come out and say it, but it was obvious by his tone of voice and body language what he was insinuating. My advisor and I mostly laughed it off. But a few weeks later, I saw the other professor walking past my apartment as my (also gay) male boss was dropping off a 'duty'/on call phone (I worked for the university) at my front door one morning. The other professor later cornered me at the campus center when I was getting food and asked who the guy at my front door had been. I sort of awkwardly responded that he was my boss and started to explain that he was dropping off a phone for work when he interrupted me and said, "so he's *also* someone you work for?" The implication that he thought I was sleeping with both my advisor and my boss was pretty clear. I think I stammered out an explanation of some sorts, but it was apparent he didn't believe me. I told my advisor and he told me that this other professor had made inappropriate and sexually explicit comments to him (about my advisor, not me). | Graduate student (in a master's program) | Professor in another department (Counseling) | R2 | San Francisco State University | Psychology | My advisor and I didn't report it. We didn't discuss it as such explicitly, but the implication was there that this other professor could cause problems if he claimed that we were involved (which again, we weren't). But the risks seemed to outweigh reporting it. [To be clear, I place zero blame on my advisor for this; even factoring him out of the decision-making entirely, I would have been too concerned about being seen as causing trouble.] | N/A | Probably nothing quantifiable. It made me extremely hesitant to work with another male advisor. I chose a female PhD advisor in part because I was concerned of the reputational consequences of someone implying I had slept my way up the ladder. I am absolutely passionate about my research career; the idea that someone would assume I've gotten to where I have because I was sexually involved with any of my advisors makes me feel sick. I feel like I have to over-state that my MA advisor is gay whenever I describe my relationship with him to make it crystal clear that he and I were never involved. | Mostly just self-doubt, and feeling like I have to monitor my behavior more closely to make sure nothing is misconstrued. I do wonder if it has made me more cautious about getting close to people at work. I worry that if I'm friendly or affectionate toward someone (consensually only, of course) it could be misconstrued by an outside observer. | Other than affecting my decisions to work with women for my PhD and now postdoc, I think the biggest impact it has had is on my willingness to be out about my sexual orientation at work. I'm bi/queer, and do fear that if this is more widely known, then my relationships with female colleagues could come under scrutiny as well. | Male | ||
1523 | 12/10/2017 14:33:54 | The Director and the Executive Director of the research unit I worked in created a terribly sexist and toxic work environment. The first thing the Director said to my co-worker and I (we were both new hires) when we met him was "Nobody's pregnant right? You're not pregnant?" We shook our heads "No" and he said "Good. I don't need anybody else getting pregnant." His assistant in his home department had just had a baby, and he made frequent remarks like this. He was not often around, but during meetings he would make sexist jokes or jokes about feminism/feminists. His relationship with the ED made everyone uncomfortable (from the way they behaved together to what she did on company time for him--including making personal appointments for him, buying him gifts, cleaning his personal home on work time, etc.). The way he talked to some of the women and a student worker made us uncomfortable. He and the ED were always together when he was in the office and she was the gatekeeper to any interaction with him. Backstage during a public event, myself, colleagues, and several volunteers saw her kiss him and call him "Papa." Another colleague whose job duties required her to be in close contact during events mentioned that he was very handsy with the ED and would often touch her butt. People in other departments expressed concern to me about the nature of their relationship. One asked me, "Is she a starfucker?" I hadn't even initiated the conversation, but people offered up their thoughts. Donors referred to us, an all woman staff, as the "[Director's name] Girls." It was embarrassing and demeaning. I had issues with my direct manager that I frequently had to address with the ED, but when I brought my concerns up she chuckled and brushed it off saying, "Well, we are an office full of women." This is someone who had previously been in leadership roles with university women's programs. I was also verbally chastised whenever I put any of my work concerns in e-mail or any other trackable form, which made it harder to address issues because she was never in the office to speak with. She was allowed to do whatever and come and go as she pleased, often staying unresponsive so long that everything became one ongoing fire to manage. I was usually vocal about this -- even speaking to the Director about it. As a result, I was marked off on my performance evaluation for "having a tendency to air my grievances to the group," and my direct manager accused me of creating a toxic work environment (even though all the staff had the same issues with the leadership team). My direct manager--who had just openly accused me of toxicity--then held a private meeting with me, asked me to promise not to tell anyone what she was about to say to me, and told me she also had issues with what was happening there and that I should definitely go to HR. "Promise me you won't tell anyone about this meeting," she said. The amount of gaslighting was unreal at this place! | Staff | All three were part of leadership and middle management, managing me in various ways. | Other R1 | Arizona State University | Public Science Outreach | None, I went up the entire chain of command within the department and was made to feel toxic and out of line. I finally made an appointment with HR to discuss a few minor issues first and didn't feel comfortable enough to bring up the actual issues for fear of retaliation because even though my co-workers agreed and experienced equal frustration, most of them also feared retaliation and did not want to go on record. I also didn't have much hard evidence to give because I was specifically told not to put these things in e-mails by the ED. I had a Dean approach me early on in my employment at one of the events and say, "Is it as bad to work here as I've heard?" I said, "Yes," but I never saw anyone do anything to help. The Director is a high profile professor who is still highly regarded at the university as far as I can tell. HR finally reached out to one of my remaining colleagues on their own because of the high rate of turnover and talked with her privately. I mentioned to her that myself and another colleague would be willing to talk to them since we were still at the university. They never reached out to us, that colleague also finally left, and all the same people in leadership remain. That killed any motivation for me to try reaching out again. | None. In fact, based on public salary information, they all got raises. | I made a lateral career move into a position I'm overqualified for out of desperation, and I'm not doing work at the same caliber or that I care as much about. I am currently on the job market, and I also worry what kind of review I'd receive from any potential employers who call them, even though I did excellent work. | I developed prehypertension while I was there and dreaded walking into that office every morning. My friends and family told me I was angry all the time. It took me many months to re-acclimate to a new working environment and to not expect to be attacked or criticized out of nowhere. Those first few months I felt like I had left an abusive relationship. I am still working on the same campus, but in a different unit. I still have existing, mutual professional relationships with some of these people that I still have to manage, and it is difficult. When I see any of them walking on campus, as I occasionally have, I actively avoid them. | It has left me with a much more negative/pessimistic view of the university as a whole, and it has segregated out some of my career options at ASU because I will never apply for a job that works adjacently with them for fear of having to work with them again in some capacity. I don't know what that means for my career yet. | We had an awesome, talented core team of staff -- honestly one of the best teams I've ever been a part of -- but something like 80% of the new hires and the Assistant Director left within 6 months of each other. This unit also has never replaced the momentum we had with our team and they still haven't replaced some of the staff. It makes me so sad and angry that just a few people are allowed to carry on this way to the detriment of several staff members and the ability of the university to put on some potentially stellar programming. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |
1524 | 12/10/2017 14:45:23 | Oh boy, where to start? The most traumatizing experience for me, personally, was being threatened with some sort of vague legal action after I posted a facebook comment about gender discrimination in my department. I was called into my Chair's office and berated for what felt like an hour (called a "trouble-maker," "mean-spirited," wrong, etc.). Other female colleagues had similar experiences. This year a sexual harassment claim was filed against the (now former) Chair; most of us are entirely unsurprised by this. In fact, we're surprised there's only one (though another student has apparently come forward). The reason I post my experience, though it wasn't a sexual one, is that an abuse of power and an underlying misogyny were the consistent factors in a range of the perpetrator's harassing behaviors. | Tenured Professor (Associate) | Chair of my Department | Other R1 | English | When the Chair was up for renewal, a number of department faculty wrote letters of complaint to our Dean. Those were disregarded and apparently thrown away. After the sexual harassment complaint was filed, he was removed from the position of Chair. Now, he's on leave with pay while a Title IX investigation is pending. The Title IX office took nine months to even issue its findings. As far as I know, the case is still pending. Everyone involved has been instructed not to talk about the case. | Unknown as of yet | None for me, but the student who filed the claim lost a good year's worth of work on her PhD plus the expense of having to hire a personal lawyer because of the incompetence of our university's Title IX office. | Things have been very difficult for the student who filed the claim. She has felt isolated and vulnerable, and those feelings have been exacerbated by the institution's injunction not to discuss the harassment claim or even acknowledge that it exists. The silence on the issue means, of course, that rumors are spreading like wildfire with no opportunity to set the record straight. | Male | ||||
1525 | 12/10/2017 15:17:20 | My advisor said he decided to mentor me—including offering an independent study—because I have such a "nice smile." (During the independent study, he never said anything inappropriate: he has told me the smile thing maybe twice since then. He means it to be a compliment.) | Undergraduate | Full professor, department chair (however, not from my department) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Harvard | History | NA | NA | Positive! Because he liked my self-presentation/physical appearance, I was able to take the independent study that launched me into graduate school in his field (not history). | There is this annoying nagging question in the back of my head if I would have "deserved" some of those opportunities if I didn't have a "pretty smile," or if those smiles were coded as so positive because I am white and femme and pass as straight. What would I be doing if he hadn't decided to offer the course? (Probably something I still enjoyed, but not the same thing I am doing now.) | Positive | Male | ||
1526 | 12/10/2017 15:48:10 | Rape | Grad student | Alumni donor. I was his intern | Elite Institution/Ivy League | An investigation that was even more damaging to me than the rape itself & was effectively a trial of me, rather than of him. | He has been quietly barred from the campus, but his name continues to be celebrated. | Constant need to worry about retaliation | Devastating | I've had to factor it into every decision | Male | ||||
1527 | 12/10/2017 15:49:43 | As a graduate student in a master's program at a large state school in the South, I was assigned as the GA for a large general education literature course (225 students). The professor maintained all of the grades in a program on his home computer. (This was in 1987, so prior to networked computing or even commonly available on-campus computing.) 2-3 times per week, I was expected to go to his home (which he shared, as roommates, with my major professor, with whom I took as many as 2-3 courses per semester) and enter attendance, quiz scores, exam grades, type up study guides, exams, etc. Because of my own class and work schedule, I often had to go in the late afternoon, when the two of them were already pretty soused. They generally left me alone, but once they tried to pressure me to let the work sit for a while and go out with them to happy hour. I declined and stayed behind to complete my work. As they left, my major professor said he "had something for me" and would "see me later." That night, the doorbell to my apartment rang at 2:00 in the morning. (I lived alone.) It was my professor, who was completely soused. I let him in. The something he had for me was a massive bag of weed, which he wanted to smoke with me. I declined. He sat down on the couch and rolled some joints. I sat at the other end of the couch while he got high. He stayed all night, occasionally dozing off, waking, talking moderately coherently about his marriage, his wife, other things. When the sun came up, I told him I thought he should go so that we could both get ready for class, which was at 9:00 a.m. He left. | Graduate student | Tenured faculty member with whom I needed to take most of my courses for degree completion | Other R1 | English | I don't think anyone thought it was unusual that a grad student would be required to work at a faculty member's home to complete duties, so there was no reporting or institutional response to that. I did not report the incident at my own home. Months later, the chair of the department called me in (along with several other graduate students) because someone had reported inappropriate behavior on the part of this professor. I did not disclose. | This professor left the institution where I received my degree to accept a position at a more prestigious university. | I did not learn what I needed to learn in my master's program, mostly because I was focused on threading the needle with this professor--to stay enough in his good graces to complete my degree without being subjected to even more harassment. He was also a terrible teacher, so I was very behind when I began my doctoral studies. | See next question | Shortly after this incident, I re-connected with my college boyfriend, who relocated to move in with me. Not long after, we got married. He was a womanizer and an alcoholic who did not support my educational attainment and career goals. I realize now that I sought him out as a buffer against future harassment, which in some ways he did provide. It took years and money I didn't have to extricate myself from that marriage and resume pursuit of my Ph.D. | I feel fortunate that I escaped these few years relatively unscathed and that, in general, I have gone on to have a very successful career and a comfortable life, financially and otherwise. But I know that others in my program were significantly de-railed and that, at least in one case, a settlement was made to a student who did not complete her Ph.D. At least one of these professors was named in the case; the other one had left the university by that time. Not surprisingly, the settlement was nowhere near large enough to offset the emotional distress and loss of earnings she experienced. | Male | ||
1528 | 12/10/2017 16:23:16 | My physics lab partner of two years groped me and put me down verballys. A elderly visiting professor (history) kissed me in my car when I gave him a ride home. A fellow student was told she should change her thesis subject from military operations to mothers of soldiers because she was a woman. | undergraduate student for the first, MA student the second and third. | lab partner, visiting history professor, political science professor | Regional Teaching College | University of Calgary for the first 2, University of Glasgow for the third | Physics for the first, History the second, Political Science for the other student. and Political science for | not reported | none | I have a History PhD, not a Physics BS. | Depression at the time. | My events were in the late 80s and early 90s. I have gotten, as a military historian, sometimes, a reaction of "wow, the bear dances". | Male | ||
1529 | 12/10/2017 16:25:24 | The faculty member pretended to have an interest in mentoring me. Instead, one evening he propositioned me, groped me, and forcibly kissed me. | Doctoral Candidate, ABD | Assistant Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | 10-week investigation resulting in No Finding (neither innocent or guilty) | None, officially. | Fell behind on my dissertation and research agenda, which took years to catch up on. I still fear attending conferences and networking events that happen in hotels. | I suffered from severe depression and generalized anxiety disorder. | I intend to leave academia | Male | |||
1530 | 12/10/2017 16:37:30 | Sexually harassed during and after lecture. Asked to wipe chalkboard and he pressed himself against me from behind. Looked down my blouse. Commented on my size, saying I was getting bigger. | Graduate student, MA/ pH.D | Full Professor | Other R1 | York University | History | Nothing, told to ignore it because it happens to other female students. Act like it was a right of passage. | Eventually replaced with another male professor, and forced into retirement | More self conscious about my appearance, less likely to speak during lectures, avoiding male professors | Depression | Male | |||
1531 | 12/10/2017 16:39:12 | These incidents took place within the current century; I prefer not to be more specific. I and several other untenured women in my department were subjected to unwelcome sexual comments and jokes by a male full professor. The same individual used degrading sexist and sexualized language in public settings and yelled at and belittled female colleagues, especially those junior to him. Reporting drew further aggression. | Assistant Professor | Male senior colleague in same department | Small Liberal Arts College | Humanities | Insufficient | None that I know of | Prefer not to share publicly. | Stressful (concern about impact on my career advancement), humiliating (I was stigmatized for reporting). | Prefer not to share publicly. | Male | |||
1532 | 12/10/2017 18:10:20 | My grad program (late nineties, early 2000's) had a culture of constantly accusing people of having affairs. WIth the possible exception of undergrads, people at all ranks participated, including support staff. Sometimes these accusations were within the bounds of moral condemnation, I.e., people claimed to have uncovered abuse of a subordinate, but often they were just a sort of malicious slash fiction, with political allies or even people who worked in similar areas accused of having sex with one another, with their grad students, with their famous dissertation directors, etc. It was never clear to me as a student what sparked a particular story; after a while, one simply expected a new one every semester. As I think on it I realize that the accusations always hit those who could conceivably move on from the department--successful grads, junior fac, and the few minor stars among associate and fulls--never the deadwood, and never the rooted locals among students. So it was a kind of accusation of treason or disloyalty, really: how dare you desire more than this. The situation was particularly grim because the city was small, and many faculty and grad students lived and drank in a particular neighborhood only about three-quarters of a mile in diameter; one was literally surveilled in one's private life. This gossip was spread in person, in e-mails, and I have heard reports that there were (implicitly homophobic) allegations against a man (associate prof) in the men's room, as a graffito that was not removed for a long time. At least one person who was a target of what I knew to be false (and again homophobic) rumors spread similar rumors about a colleague, in apparent good faith, and rather carelessly, as an item of mild entertainment. I think perhaps they were not aware of the comparatively more vicious accusations that had been leveled against them, and did not perceive a broader culture of abuse-by-slander. We all lost our moral bearings utterly, I think. Eventually, I was accused of sleeping with my director, or rather...not accused directly but suddenly treated as an object of ridicule, with the obvious inference being continually re-drawn. There was zero basis for the rumor other than the fact that we had a congenial relationship, but there were many occasions when I was suddenly asked loaded questions by smirking people I didn't know well, and one memorable incident when I waved hi to some acquaintances (an ABD woman and a full professor man) at an MLA, only to have them pause, glance at eachother, laugh loudly and incredulously in my face, and walk away. ; The worst part is, even while being aghast at my own mistreatment, I didn't question many of the rumors I heard about others; I merely congratulated myself on a relative lack of prudishness, or occasionally felt superior because I had good evidence that a particular story was false. Since the ones I knew were false were also the ones that would have been serious abuses of power (involving students), I was complacent. Today, I recognize someone that I believed false stories about in this spreadsheet, and I feel terrible for not being more careful about what I accepted and did not accept as true. I don't think I ever met or spoke to that person except in passing, but I offer her my apologies nonetheless. It seems obvious that her career was profoundly damaged by this situation, and while I couldn't have prevented that, I could have substituted empathy for facile cynicism. | Ph.D student, ABD, recent grad. I cut contact with nearly everyone from that program relatively quickly after leaving. | All ranks. | R2 | UNiversity at Albany, SUNY | English | NOne. The diffuseness of the offenses--which came from everyone and no one, and which were often cloaked in facile feminism, an acceptably mild homophobia, and cheap moralism--militated against even articulating it as a problem, much less finding an institutional solution. I think that this sort of culture, which I have since encountered in a slightly different form elsewhere, is under-recognized as a form of gendered oppression, because no one harm can be attributed to any one actor, and the abuse itself does not follow gender binaries. Men can be attacked, and women can be attackers, and attackers can be attacked. BUt it is always women and queer people who suffer the worst consequences. That's whose reputation does not recover, and that's who (in my experience) feels worst about it. | Department imploded catastrophically through general mismanagement and contentiousness, and not directly because of the rumors (though they certainly contributed to the mistrust). Many people who were subject to false rumors have since left the department, either by graduation or changing jobs. Those individuals who only accused others, without ever being accused themselves, have suffered no harms that I know of. | The rumor that I had had sex with my advisor was personally devastating around the time of my graduation and across the next 2-3 years, both because it implied general, public doubt of my capacities, and because it besmirched a good relationship that I was and am grateful for. I did not share the rumor with my advisor, out of a desire to protect them from ugliness, and I have reason to suspect that they never knew. I can't tell if there have been professional consequences for me. I am employed in the profession and relatively well-published for someone with a high teaching load, and given the employment crisis in my discipline, that's a win. | Surprisingly little--unlike so many on this sheet, I don't and have never felt traumatized or betrayed, and I have never doubted my own talents or right to be a member of the profession. As noted above, I did feel great sadness and confusion for a few years, but these strike me as appropriate and proportionate feelings to the circumstances. | Well, academic politics don't really scare me anymore, because what (short of outright criminality) could be worse than what I've already seen? | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
1533 | 12/10/2017 18:54:58 | A full professor, Chair of the Department, married, commented on the photo included with my application file (I believe it was on a copy of my passport, but I do not remember), when we looked at my file in the departmental manager's office together. I do not remember why we did that; only that it was for some administrative purpose. He said I looked like a Swedish actress. (I am female and had short, blond hair in the photo.) I did not make anything of it at the time. - Yet, months later, we discussed my seminar paper at his temporary summer apartment in Berlin, in Germany. I disagreed with his critique of my approach and defended it. Suddenly, in developing/repeating his counter argument, he drew a comparison involving the lamp next to the table we were sitting on and my hair color. I remember very little about what happened next. I remember that I left his apartment as fast as possible and felt afraid (I was shaking), confused, shocked, surprised, disappointed, and ashamed, all at the same time. | 1st-year Graduate student | Department Chair | Elite Institution/Ivy League | German | I am nor sure I would call the behavior I remember as harassment, but it was definitely inappropriate and scared me. Only looking back I think that it may have been an attempt to flirt with me. My visceral reaction, my fear, especially to the second incident tells me that I have at least some reason to suspect that it was an attempt at flirtation or even seduction. | None, I believe. | Since my memories are so vague that I prefer not to give any name also not anonymously, to you. But I do know that I had these two experiences with the same person. (I know more about the person, from hearsay, but need to talk about that more with friends.) At the same department, there was a known perpetrator of sexual harassment who harassed my friend. I do not know all the details of what happened. I think she was also approached sexually by a visiting professor. - I can only say that I felt rather immune to all this, as I was focusing on my studies. Also, for better or worse, never felt I was less intellectually capable or less powerful than any other male or female graduate student or professor. | Male | |||||
1534 | 12/10/2017 19:45:30 | In my first year I was openly told to remove myself from courses that I was struggling with after I asked the professor leading the class for additional resources to help me keep up. This type of commentary continued when I took another class in the spring with another professor (a good friend of the first). At the end of the spring semester, I confronted the latter about potentially needing an exam deferral due to my mother being diagnosed with cervical cancer. The second professor responded, "Don't worry, she'll be okay. My Mom had breast cancer and she's boobless now. It'll all work out." I found out days later that they had granted an exception to a male student to have the exam emailed to them as they would be out of the country the day it was scheduled. Days after the exam, I received an email from them wishing my Mother well without actually apologizing for what was said. After a year of repeatedly being told I wasn't good enough to stay in the course sequence , I abandoned working with those faculty and turned my work in a different direction. When reminiscing about this experience with a peer this Fall, they told me the faculty member for the second course had openly admitted that they didn't believe their female students were as smart as their male students. | PhD Student | Full Professor/Assistant Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Social Sciences | None. My peer told me that I couldn't tell anyone else about what she had heard. While I vocalized some of my experiences to my peers and a few professors, I was largely told to suck it up and work harder. | None. It's renowned that these faculty have issues promoting women in their subfield by students but they remain universally respected in the discipline for their work. | The experience has left me wanting to leave my PhD almost since I started, despite wanting nothing more than to pursue this work before starting. I hate that a pair of people, and a department/institution unwilling to check such sexism, have made me hate what I do. The pair of professors in question tarnished my reputation with my initial advisor, and their colleagues, with a series of emails about my "performance" in their classes. When I tried to explain, I was told I wasn't working hard enough. At the same time they humiliated me in front of my peers by telling me to drop the class while others were still in the classroom. | I had regular anxiety attacks in the Fall and Spring of last year. I started sleep walking in the Spring while having night terrors that my room was on fire and I needed to escape. I sought mental health services on campus and was referred to a private clinic for weekly sessions. It's helping, as has avoiding these faculty and their courses but it's proven difficult. I've divorced myself from socializing with a lot of people taking their classes, which is most of my cohort. | I'm strongly considering walking away from my program at the end of this year - far more than most people know. After working towards attending a PhD for most of my university career, I'm honestly not sure what comes next or whether I can find a way to build a community in my current program that would leave me to wanting to stay. | Male | |||
1535 | 12/10/2017 20:34:33 | A tenured faculty member in the social sciences created an extremely hostile work environment for me while I was a tenure-track assistant professor. He constantly engaged in highly inappropriate behavior, including graphic discussions about sex, pornography, and his own fantasies about raping various women. He was obsessed with any new woman who was hired on the faculty, and he repeated this pattern with me and others, including attempts to insinuate himself into my personal life, and attempts to alienate me from other colleagues with lies and other manipulative behavior. He thrived on his attempts to gas light me and various other women, including faculty, staff, and students. He practically lived on campus, there all hours of the day and night, seven days a week. It was impossible to avoid him on such a small campus. He was a popular and charismatic instructor, and made sure you knew of his “power” on campus because of it. This man is a serial predator and abuser. After I left, I heard from former students who had horrific stories to tell about how he had abused them (many offenses for which he should be terminated). All asked me to keep their confidence, and I have, but it is an awful burden to bear. | Tenure-track assistant professor | Tenured faculty member | Small Liberal Arts College | Austin College | None | None | I left Austin College with no regrets. The harassment on that campus is rampant, and the sexism is systemic. The administration was not willing to tackle the problem. A few senior women were sympathetic, but all suggested that nothing would ever come of complaints about this man. Ironic given that another tenured faculty member was fired for repeated sexual harassment, yet everyone has turned a blind eye to this situation, which is even worse. | My time at Austin College left many emotional scars. Time has yet to heal them, and I still feel violated. | Male | ||||
1536 | 12/10/2017 21:06:47 | My professor propositioned me for sex after an evening of grooming (ex. telling me that I was really smart and attractive). I adamantly refused his propositioning only to have him try to persuade me against my wishes. I continued to push back, but remained polite so as not to ruin the evening or the friendly, professional relationship I thought I'd built with this person. When I asked for him to drive me home, he proceeded to try to push me for sex again, which I refused. During the ride, he remarked how his girlfriend wouldn't have approved if we'd chosen to get to together (his girlfriend was a former student of his, somehow even younger than myself). | M.A. Graduate Student | Professor | Other Research Agency | Decline to answer. | Philosophy | I was well-supported in what I wanted to do regarding this incident of sexual misconduct. Unfortunately, this professor switched institutions shortly after this incident (unrelated) and the incident could not follow him, which has caused me a lot of grief and discomfort because I wanted to be able to support any future victims. | N/A | N/A | I no longer trust people as easily. I believed that this person respected me an was even my friend and he betrayed me. | Nothing, really. I'm disappointed in the system for being unable to track this misconduct between universities - the staff responded so compassionately and so well, even my department chair, and it still wasn't enough. | Male | ||
1537 | 12/10/2017 23:07:02 | sexual harrassment at a field site as a recent post-graduate | post grad- Prior to grad school | professor, employer | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Biology | Filed anonymous complaint to university with another woman. They filed the complaint, but no actions were taken as far as I know. | I withdrew my grad school applications after the experience because he was successful at not only taking advantage of the situation, but used the opportunity to try to convince me that "skirts" (as he called women who worked for him) weren't cut out to be in science. | Set back a year because I withdrew my grad school applications fearing that all men in academia may be like him. | I see through some men's insecurities now, but it took me a long time since to trust a man in science. | see above | Male | |||
1538 | 12/11/2017 0:22:46 | I was lucky enough to be spared sexual harassment. I have been a postdoc & PhD student in 4 different institutions with 4 different white, high status, heterosecual male professors. Some of them were more supportive then otheres. I have seen good and bad research practices. With one of them, who had a particularly "difficult" character, I did end up having an interpersonal conflict and I did feel bullied and intimidated fir a while. Eventually the working relationship fell apart as we felt it wasn't working for us. Some (but not all) other people in the group had a similar experiences with this person. Nonetheless there was no sexual harassment over the 10 years. I do sometimes get harassed on the street etc. but not at work. I'm also aware about gender bias in academia and I do think being female has stalled my career progress a lot. However I'm now in my first faculty position at a very good institution and I feel happy and safe. There are no harassers here and not even bullies (Phew!). Perhaps I got lucky? Or perhaps social psychology is more civilized than other fields? Maybe my demeanour at work conveys that I won't put up with shit from people? Maybe it's because everyone knows I'm in a long term relationship? Who knows... Anyway... I'm not trying to deny that sexual harassment exists. It does exist and is terrible and unacceptable, but some of us are lucky enough not to face it that much. I count my blessings. There are both bad and good places and bad and good people out there. | 10 years in academia | I have had 4 different mentors -- all of them white, high status males. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | in three top research countries | social psychology | no sexual harrassment happened to me in academia | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | Male | ||
1539 | 12/11/2017 0:26:25 | inappropiate behaviour (flirting, explicit language, hugs and touching) onboard research vessels in various instances. Genereal attitude of the whole ship-based team that such behaviour ould be normal/ok. | masters and PhD students | senior scientists and professors | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | onboard research vessel Polarstern | Oceanography | none | none | None except unease when participating in research cruises | I found ways to deal with it | I approach colleagues with a different mindset and work situations a lot more careful than before. | Male | ||
1540 | 12/11/2017 5:50:50 | 2014-2015 school year over two semesters when he was teaching two required courses for my first year of graduate school. Professor in my department sexually harassed me and a number of other female students. In my case, he would insist that I meet with him (instead of the TA for the course). When I would get to his office, he would insist that I close the door, even though I said I was fine with it open. Then he would insist that I sit right next to him on his side of the desk (instead of sitting across the desk from him like I originally did). When I offered resistance to that request he insisted and implied that he wouldn't help me unless I moved. Once I was sitting next to him he would then put his hands on my back and/or shoulders while explaining concepts to me. I had been warned he was "handsy" in his office and so I always sat so that he couldn't touch my thighs like I had been warned he did to other students. When another student filed a complaint against him, he attempted multiple times to intimidate me into not providing testimony against him. | First year PhD student | Assistant professor (and instructor of two required courses I had to take that school year) | Other R1 | Sociology | Another student filed claim with Title IX office. Despite being found in violation of the policy, nothing happened as far as we can tell (they claimed state law prevented them from telling us any sanctions he faced). I heard he told someone else he was just required to do a training seminar despite 7 women coming forward in some way to tell their stories. It took 6 months for me to convince the department/graduate school that he needed to be removed from my comprehensive exam committee. They kept telling me it wasn't necessary to remove him despite the history of sexual harassment. | None. When he was supposed to go up for tenure the next year, I was explicitly told that his history of sexually harassing students in the department would NOT be taken into account. He declined to go up for tenure because his publishing record was insufficient but was allowed to stay another year after that and so is still in the department. | Several other faculty members worked hard to defend him and by extension worked hard to discredit all current students who were coming forward. This made some faculty begin to have negative interactions with me when they had previously been positive or neutral. For example, two of these faculty members were on one of my comprehensive exam committees and one even made up a rule to claim I was ineligible to take the exam (though thankfully I fought it and was allowed to take the exam because that rule didn't actually exist). I don't know how it might impact me when I go on the job market if he or any of his faculty allies have connections in the departments I am applying to--it is something that worries me sometimes. | I experienced depression and anxiety as a result. I also severely suffered in my interpersonal relationship with a man I was dating because of the trauma (eventually leading to us breaking up). At its worst impact on my mental health I struggled to work even 20 hours a week for several months. | Made me severely question whether this is what I want to do with my life. Especially when I was told to stop speaking up even by faculty who were my allies because they said it could ruin my career. I hate the idea of going into a field where my career could be ruined by speaking up against sexual harassment while sexual harassers face no punishment. However, I do plan to try to get a job in academia--just at a teaching-oriented college that hopefully won't be as status oriented and would (hopefully) be less likely to tolerate this kind of behavior. | Male | |||
1541 | 12/11/2017 6:31:15 | I was TA for an undergraduate who wrote a very sexually explicit poem directed at me, "a goddess in business attire," and attached it to his paper "because he was a creative writing major and was so inspired by the visual analysis assignment." The professor of the class dismissed it, saying "You remember what it was like when you were 19..." HR couldn't help me because "they've never had an undergraduate to graduate harassment situation before and weren't sure if I was a student or an employee in this situation." | PhD student | Undergraduate | Other R1 | Washington University in St. Louis | Art History and Archaeology | Department didn't know what to do, Dean didn't know what to do, HR didn't know what to do, finally a woman in the University Judiciary committee was able to come up with a plan to handle it; I was not to grade the student's paper or final exam, but he would remain in my section since there were only two sections left, and he was not to speak to me directly except for class participation. | None. | I cannot trust superiors, both academic and administrative to stand up for me in harassment situations | Nearly a month with hours of meetings with university personnel who did not know how to address the situation had a severe impact on my own work for months after. | I'm in an alt-ac position now and can avoid "ambiguous" situations with respect to teaching status and power dynamics. | Male | ||
1542 | 12/11/2017 6:34:12 | When I enrolled in a required graduate course, a female faculty member warned me to lay low in the course as the male professor had made sexual advances on female students in the past and then was vindictive afterwards. I began the course and just participated normally. The professor drew a LOT of attention to comments I made in class--even when I was absent, making me feel uncomfortable and causing many students in the course to recognize it as strange. To avoid interaction with the professor, I sat in the back of the class and refrained from participating for the rest of semester, limiting my own benefit from this core educational requirement, in order to avoid sexual harassment. | First year MA/PhD student | Tenured professor teaching a required graduate course | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Wisconsin-Madison | Sociology | I have still been successful, but was put at a disadvantage in this course. | Male | ||||||
1543 | 12/11/2017 7:03:45 | About 13 yrs ago, I shared an office with a well-known, middle-aged professor, who occasionally taught in the department. It started with complaints about his marriage. And I was appalled by overtly sexist things he would say to female undergraduates during office hours, eg "did your boyfriend help you with this?" By Feb, he began to kiss the top of my head when exiting the office. Then, one day, he kissed my neck with an open mouth. Many other grad students told me that they felt similarly harassed by him. | Grad student. | Adjunct prof, but well-known in the profession | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Sociology | Case was sent to university ombudsman who brought professor in for questioning. Ombudsman was concerned about professor's reaction, but no further action taken. | None | Essentially lost access to my office; still feel incredibly awkward in professional conferences | Exacerbated a stressful period in graduate school | None | Male | |||
1544 | 12/11/2017 7:27:00 | inappropriate touching at end of semester party | tenure-track assistant professor | tenured professor | R2 | removed individual from my tenure-review committee at my request | none | isolated from department, not supported by leadership, lost opportunities to show leadership and/or take on positions of responsibility, still got tenure | felt alienated and lonely in department | none at this time | Male | ||||
1545 | 12/11/2017 7:30:23 | inappropriate touching at conference despite the fact that I considered the person a friend and he knew that I was married | tenured associate professor | professor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | none, not reported | none | none | questioned my own ability to be responsible at conferences | none | Male | ||||
1546 | 12/11/2017 8:59:16 | A professor made comments upon the attractiveness of me and my fellow female students. This became a pattern, even past graduation. Female students joked about how they knew not to arrive late to his class, as they would end up sitting next to him and he would habitually stroke or touch the arms of any female students sitting beside him (never male). After an event with wine which both students and faculty members attended, numerous female students shared stories of this professor placing his arm around them and giving them a squeeze, stroking their faces flirtatiously, commenting upon their age in a jokingly flirty manner, and referring to them as "sweetheart." | Undergraduate | Tenured professor at a senior ranking | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Drama | None. The only indication that they were aware of it was when the professor in question commented that I was looking particularly attractive, and the Head of School (standing behind him) rolled their eyes. | None to my knowledge. | I never felt comfortable around this Professor, and made it a habit to avoid being alone in his presence (on the advice of other students) | It taught me the dubious habit of attempting to defuse the discomfort of inappropriate comments by laughing them off or changing the subject. Because there was no clear awareness or response by the university, it felt as though this was tacitly endorsed (or at least allowed) because it was an arts department. It never occurred to me until I became a teacher myself that there should have been a university policy regarding appropriate behaviour between staff and students (and staff and staff), with clear guidelines and reporting structures. | Male | ||||
1547 | 12/11/2017 9:05:19 | As a student, PhD candidate taught undergraduate courses that I was in. I was in 2nd year (19 years old). He was well known to have dated students in the past and attempt to pick up students who had just finished his courses. He added me on Facebook while still being my prof and communicated with me only through this medium. During the class, he had shown a film that had an explicit rape scene in it. He presented this as a "competition" to see how long individuals could stay in the classroom without being "triggered". He suggested we put a list on the door of students who leave first and ridicule them later. All female students left the classroom. I had gone to the chair of the department but no follow-up was done. When I had graduated, I ran into this prof again and he had begun messaging me on Facebook with explicitly sexual messages, stating that he had thought about me in this way when I was his student. I connected with a few other students who had similar experiences. One student had reported escalating stalking behaviour, constant texting and calls, writing of elaborate love letters, sending of porn and screaming at her in public university spaces for ignoring his requests for dates (again, as soon as she had finished his course). He stated that he would think about her sexually when she gave presentations alone in his office and spoke in class. He had a long history of female students feeling like he was "just everywhere" they went. I had once seen him walk past my apartment building and ran into him constantly also. Reported this to a conflict resolution person at the university and external investigator was brought in. His contract was terminated but no canvassing was done to evaluate the harm he had done despite his reputation over the last five years being made very clear. Myself and other student were told that we had no right to speak of these incidents and that if we were to go public, there would be consequences, despite no signing of any non disclosure agreements. The investigator found him guilty of harassment. | Student and alumni. | Professor. | Other R1 | Termination of part time contracts and request of victims to be silent. | Termination of part-time contracts. | He was incredibly manipulative and also prone to stalking behaviour. I witnessed him walking past my apartment and so had concerns being home alone or walking to my car pre- and post reporting. His aggression at the other student made it obvious he was capable of anything. | Male | ||||||
1548 | 12/11/2017 9:12:05 | (looking back on it) inappropriate conversations about relationships and one-on-one get together's at my adviser's apartment. He would frequently talk to me about his interest in certain women. and my rocky relationship with my boyfriend at the time who was an alcoholic and increasingly becoming abusive. During one of these one-on-one talks in his apartment, he revealed that he was having a relationship with a student in the class he was teaching. I strongly advised him not to do this, and asked if it was against the school's policy since she was a current student. We argued about it back and forth. I was in the midst of writing my thesis. He never again invited me to his apartment. After the class was over, he never responded to my emails--from drafts of my thesis, to signing papers ensuring I would graduate. I finally kept pestering the department administrator to get him to sign things until all documents were completed. Now, looking back on it, I know that he was ghosting me--using his power as my adviser, to make it known that he pulled the strings. A kind of silent threat for me not to report what he was doing to anyone. | graduate student | My MA thesis advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | did not report him | none that I know of | I never again went to a professor's house alone. | I was very near not receiving my masters because of him ghosting me. | Male | |||||
1549 | 12/11/2017 9:40:40 | I was at the 2013 national meeting of the American Nuclear Society in Washington DC. In the evening, I went to a bar with many colleagues for an LGBTQ+ mixer (I am a bisexual female). I dressed for going out: simple black satin shorts with pantyhose, flats, a blouse and a blazer. After a couple of drinks I decided to take a cab back to the hotel and, since everyone was staying at the same hotel, I invited my close colleagues to share the cab if anyone was also ready to leave. Only one person joined me. In the back of the cab, we didn't have much to talk about at that late hour, so I closed my eyes and crossed my arms. Although he knew I was in a long-term committed relationship with someone, my colleague reached over and slid his hand up my shorts. Without opening my eyes (why wasn't I surprised by his action) I reached down, moved his hand back to his side of the cab and we never spoke of the incident again. | I was a 5th year PhD student. | He was a 4th year PhD student, a direct collaborator in my research group, and subordinate to me. | Other R1 | University of Wisconsin - Madison | Nuclear Engineering | I never reported it officially. I told my romantic partner that evening. I also told a small whisper network of women in my field who knew the harasser well. | none | We were in the midst of co-authoring a paper together when this happened and I was constantly agitated. It delayed the paper. | I was angry. I kept wondering : did he think I was asleep or did he think he could seduce me into cheating on my long-term partner? Which was worse? Did he think I was drunk enough not to notice his hand? | I am currently avoiding any collaboration with the institution at which he works. | Because I shared this information with a whisper network, I have become aware of two other women who were also sexually harassed by this man. None of us made any official reports. Also, the harasser had the same PhD advisor as me. Every time I think about this, I consider telling my story to our PhD advisor so that this behavior might someday be reflected in recommendation letters that the PhD advisor might write about the harasser. | Male | |
1550 | 12/11/2017 10:18:08 | My professor asked me to have sex with him while we were alone and working on processing tissue on a Saturday. This proposition followed months of him taking me out for coffee under the guise of mentor ship, where he increasingly positioned himself on a pedestal relative to me, and tossed in questions about my sexual preferences and past in the context of a burgeoning friendship. He was in an unhappy marriage, didn't have many friends, and described his personal life with her at length to me. I answered his questions by carefully skirting around them and re-directing the conversation to neutral ground: he didn't seem bothered by my lack of engagement in any of it, and seemed relieved for an opportunity to share his thoughts and feelings freely (he should have just gone to therapy). When I rejected the proposition to have sex with him (which shocked me) I stammered that I wasn't comfortable mixing business and pleasure. He became defensive and embarrassed. I attempted to play it off, and in the moment, believed that I had done so, and left the incident behind me. Two weeks later we met in his office to go over the things I needed to begin my next set of experiments. He closed the door and told me I didn't deserve any of it, had an arrogant and entitled approach to science, and that unless I mended our relationship, would never have a future in science since he held all power over my future. Further, he reneged on a previously arranged agreement to allow me flexibility to TA for additional semesters to make my financial ends meet. He forbid me to find external employment, and told me just to deal with it - knowing I was under financial duress. I reported it to my department head, who made a note in a file, and asked me if I wanted to switch labs. I was asked if he touched me, if I had any proof of explicit messages, or if anyone had borne witness. Of course, I had none of these things. Since this was the only lab in the entire school doing the kind of work I was interested in, I stuck it out. My supervisor didn't speak to me for an entire year, and I completed the remainder of my experiments alone. | Graduate student. | Supervisor and Principal Investigator. | Other R1 | Dalhousie | Neuroscience | Made a note "on the record", and was required to meet with the Director of Graduate Studies for several months afterwards to ensure the incidents were not ongoing, and that I still wanted to continue my line of experimental work. | None | I was provided no support or guidance from the PI for the remainder of my degree. | Stress, anxiety, loss of sleep, depression, self-blame. | I dropped out with a Masters before completing a PhD. | Male | ||
1551 | 12/11/2017 10:28:53 | Summer 2017: colleague at conference dinner said that he admired a famous professor who was ousted for harassment, said that he would have raped the students as opposed to just "playing footsie". when I objected, he said that I should expect to feel something brushing up against my leg under the table, and that it might not be his foot (implying that it would be his penis). Spring 2017: more senior professor joined younger colleagues and grad students at a bar after a conference, talked about sexually explicit behavior, encouraged us to drink more, groped a previous student of his. Spring 2017: individual at conference came to my poster and took pictures of me without my consent, followed me around, would not leave when asked, asked me personal questions. | PhD candidate (but already hired to faculty position, so fairly secure) | More senior to me in two of the cases | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Social Sciences | n/a | one of them was later exposed as being a serial harasser | none so far | novel feeling of vulnerability, some anxiety | Male | ||||
1552 | 12/11/2017 10:32:53 | My advisor constantly tried to sleep with me, and he constantly told me he loved me. I never slept with him, and I never said I loved him. He got made at me every time I refused to do those things. He interpreted my rejection of his affection as an indication that I was not a good student and was not passionate about the research that we did together. | Graduat Student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Biology | An investigation is in process. | TBD. An investigation is in process. | It is too soon to tell, but I am skeptical of all male PIs now, and I have no intention of pursuing a post-doc working with a male PI. This incident makes me only want to collaborate with females in science. | This sexual harassment lasted for multiple years, and I kept it a secret the whole time. That had a bad effect on all relationships in my life. Now that I have started talking to people about it (a colleague, a counselor, friends) I better understand what happened (e.g. that it wasn't my fault) and why I coped the way I did. | I no longer have an interest in pursuing a career as an academic professor. I am much more interested in advocacy for science and education. I want to work to help change the system rather than suffer more from the system. | Male | |||
1553 | 12/11/2017 10:49:34 | It was widely known that a supervisor would approve any request (even those against college policies) if one wore a low-cut top to meetings with him. Rumours abounded of other incidents which I cannot recall and was not directly subject to. | Undergraduate | Personal Advisor/Supervisor | Small Liberal Arts College | Women's college in SE | Arts and Humanities | N/A | N/A | The impact for me was positive as I "got away" with things (multiple degrees at once with a "too-heavy" course load) with minimal interaction | Male | ||||
1554 | 12/11/2017 11:07:15 | First year on the tenure line another male faculty member entered my office and shut the door and asked me to have a sexual affair with him because his wife wasn’t doing it for or with him anymore. After getting rejected he tried several additional times to send me obscene emails to my personal account and Facebook. | Tenure track assistant professor | Tenured associate professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Psychology | Zero | Zero | Zero except that I left and never got a tenure track job again. | Hard to say | Hard to say | Male | |||
1555 | 12/11/2017 11:14:19 | I was harassed by an external collaborator on a field project when I was a graduate student. The project involved many hours in the field working with specialized equipment (on which he trained me). While working together, he would constantly ask me questions about my relationship status, my sexual experiences, and what the inside of my bedroom looked like. When we were working together on the equipment, he would also stand so close behind me that he was literally breathing down my neck, and would also try to rub my shoulders until I objected verbally. The most memorable incident happened when he was driving me out to a field site. He was eating a fast food hamburger, and some ketchup dripped into his lap. He handed me a napkin and ordered me to wipe the stain off of his crotch (which I refused to do). I eventually complained to my adviser, and he told my harasser that the behavior had to stop or the project would be cancelled. It did... for about a week, then gradually the behavior crept back in. Fortunately, the project ended soon after, but the harasser kept calling me every few months on my personal cell phone for about five years afterward "just to chat." | M.S. candidate | He was an external collaborator, provider of some specialized equipment we used for the project. | Other R1 | University of Oklahoma | Meteorology | My adviser confronted the harasser and threatened to escalate the issue to the NSF (which was funding the project). | My adviser elected not to collaborate with the harasser again the following year. | The project did result in my first peer-reviewed publication. However, whenever I look at it I see the harasser's name, and I feel like the work is tainted. | I dreaded working with the harasser, but kept focused on the project because I was genuinely interested in it. The rush I got from my first peer-reviewed publication helped to erase and diminish the discomfort that I felt. | Fortunately, these were minimal. I simply elected not to work with him anymore once the choice was mine. | Male | ||
1556 | 12/11/2017 11:21:00 | 2014 | Postdoc in other department, AP now | Senior Faculty in Ph.D. Department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Wisconsin - Madison | Sociology | Senior member of my department who had been my mentor early in graduate school. I saw him at the departmental party at the annual meeting. He was drunk and kept coming up to me - too close. I moved around so there was a table between us. He held out his hand and grabbed my wrist between his second and third finger. He looked at my wrist, stroked the inside of my arm with his fingers, and said "You were always one of the special ones." As I turned away, I noticed that another sociologist who had been an AP in the department but was now elsewhere was watching us. I felt ashamed. Have mostly avoided both of them and that event ever since. | Male | ||||||
1557 | 12/11/2017 11:47:30 | Over the course of ten years as a postdoc and research scientist, I have received repeated, unwelcome stares and comments about my looks from my advisor (such as "I REALLY LIKE that skirt!"). On multiple occasions, this advisor has also reallocated funds that were intended to support my salary, to other uses, citing my pregnancy, childbearing, and child rearing activities as justification to dock my pay. | Postdoc and research scientist | Distinguished Professor, advisor | Other R1 | Stony Brook University | Don't feel comfortable answering. | None (I have never reported it). | None. | A major loss in my self-confidence has had far reaching negative effects, including dissuading me from pursuing funding and alternative positions. This, coupled with my advisor directly interfering with me receiving funds or recognition for my research, has completely derailed my career advancement. Knowing that my advisor frequently gives unsolicited, negative opinions on female scientists as a rule, likely impacts his ability to provide fair, positive reference letters on my behalf. Excluding a letter from him on job applications would be conspicuous, as he has been my advisor for many years, and would likely be interpreted against me. I also waste countless hours worrying about my looks on a daily basis, on which I am clearly, constantly being judged. | The major loss in confidence, an unmanageable level of stress over financial instability, and worry over a career path that seems poorly chosen because it is stacked against me, have all negatively impacted my health. | Continually being treated in this way over many years has completely derailed me from my intended career trajectory. I feel like a ship adrift at sea with no clear direction forward. | Male | ||
1558 | 12/11/2017 11:53:00 | Perpetrator sent email at midnight after department event at his house saying how he was in love with me, how I always brightened his day, how if he wasn't married and I wasn't married, he would be interested in pursuing a relationship, how beautiful I had looked at the event. I did not respond. The next day he emailed saying he had been drunk and that he had said too much. I emailed and said that I was thankful for his support. He distanced himself from me in every way and was a committee member in name only. I do not even think he read my dissertation. | 4th year graduate student. | Committee member, full professor. | Other R1 | Sociology | I did not report. The current chair was not trustworthy and the dean was also a member of the department. I did not believe that I would have been protected. | Did not have the opportunity to work with him in a professional, intellectual capacity. Other students who worked with him (mainly men) all had the opportunity to co-author peer reviewed publications. However, I forged my own path and have a TT position. | I still struggle with feeling like I invited this somehow. I was sexually abused as a child and date raped in college, and while I know that these events are not my fault most of the time, I struggle. I am on high alert around male colleagues all the time. I feel like I miss out on opportunities to just be an intellectual. | Male | |||||
1559 | 12/11/2017 12:01:43 | Sexual harassment from a senior graduate student who was supposed to mentor/train me. He pressured me to have a sexual relationship with him. This pressure continued for months despite my repeated declarations that I was not interested. Unfortunately, despite my best judgment, I eventually gave in and started dating him. It quickly became evident that this was not a relationship that would work for me. He was emotionally abusive and unbearably narcissistic. I tried to break it off with him multiple times, but each time he made life at work a living hell, and eventually I would succumb to his advances just to quell the non-stop barrage of verbal and emotional abuse (although obviously it was still abuse to be coerced into a relationship like this). When I finally ended it for the last time, he of course made my life a living hell again at work...as I had feared. This was a problem because he was specializing in an analytical technique I needed for my research project and he was supposed to be mentoring me for that component of my research. But it wasn't just that he refused to help me. He took it a step further and was a cruel bully to me in the workplace. For example, he regularly told me I wasn't smart enough for the program. Any time I had a question, any time I made a small mistake, sometimes out of the blue for no reason at all. He would remind me of my inferiority. He even went as far as to spread horrible rumors about me to other graduate students in our program. Some of the rumors were sexual in nature. Others were about my "incompetence" in our field. These rumors socially isolated me from the rest of the group. | Ph.D. student | more senior Ph.D. student | Other R1 | Engineering | It had been months after I ended the relationship and he was still making my life hell. I told him one day that he could not treat me like this. He responded that there was nothing I could do about it. Something in me just snapped and I decided it was time to tell someone. I had not told anyone before because I was apprehensive about being perceived as "a silly girl causing drama in the department." I didn't care anymore. The abuse needed to stop. When I approached our two advisers about the issue, I was told by his adviser that academia is the "wild, wild west", essentially I was told to just deal with it and not bother anyone else with this. My adviser agreed to remove me from any project collaborations that included the harasser (at my request). Over a year later, one of the other graduate students who was aware of the issue spoke to the chair of our department. He requested a meeting with me where I described the events that occurred and what the adviser responses had been. The chair expressed sincere apologies to me and assured me he would implement policies to combat this behavior (both from my harasser and the adviser response) in the future. The chair has since created a sexual harassment committee in the department. The members of the sexual harassment committee give a presentation to all incoming graduate students and operate as a first point of contact for any students experiencing harassment. They are there to help the students understand their rights and explain their options. | No impacts on his career as far as I know. | At my request, I was removed from collaborations with my accuser so I would not have to work with him. This drastically limited the scope of my research from what I had originally intended to do. At the time, it was the only solution I could come up with, and it was at least a short-term solution to get me out of the hostile environment. Thinking back on it now, I should not have been forced to compromise my research just to keep myself safe. My harasser should have been kicked out of the program for his behavior. I ended up doing fine on my own. I published four first-author papers from my PhD research, landed a great postdoc position, and have now been hired as a tenure-track assistant professor at an R1 institution. But this was all much more difficult than it needed to be. | I nearly quit graduate school. I sat in my car in the parking lot most mornings with tears running down my face while I worked up the will power to go into the lab and face my harasser. This entire experience (from before dating, to abusive relationship, to post-dating hell) lasted over one year. One morning while I was still dating my harasser, I decided to drive away from work with the intention of driving my car off a cliff I knew of ~20 minutes away. I was suicidal. I couldn't see a way out of this mess. My suicide attempt was put on hold by a serendipitous phone call from a close friend. I pulled over and spoke to my friend on the phone for almost an hour, and then headed back into work. This was the incident that led me to finally end the relationship for good. My work environment improved slightly after I was removed from any collaborations with this individual, but it took me years to work through the stress and anxiety of this harassment. | Now that I am an assistant professor at an R1, I am more committed than ever to stop this type of abuse in academia. This never should have happened to me. I never want to work in a department that would allow this to happen. | Male | |||
1560 | 12/11/2017 12:14:43 | I was a Research Assistant for a famous older male professor who visited my R1 university each year. A few weeks into the quarter, he asked me to get him a stack of books from the library, and then requested I bring them up to his hotel room. Once I was there, he asked me what I was doing that weekend and invited me out to dinner on Saturday night. I immediately felt profoundly uncomfortable being alone with him in his hotel room. I left as soon as I could and rejected the invitation. After this encounter, he no longer showed any interest in my research or in mentoring me. | PhD student | Eminent professor | Other R1 | Political Science | None. I didn't report | None. I didn't report | I lost the opportunity to be mentored by this eminent member of my field. | It made me feel insecure. I blamed myself for not having acted more assertively. | What to say. I vow to be a better mentor. | Male | |||
1561 | 12/11/2017 12:16:36 | Sample prep while visiting lab, was spoken to in questionably appropriate terms by managing lab tech. Brushed it off, as I was really focused on learning the procedure - was going to be doing tens of thousands of dollars worth of sample prep on this trip - needed to do it correctly! Proceeded to continue with what would be several days of sample prep, but was physically touched, held down on the floor and against machinery, the male lab tech requested I kiss him "just a little." He knew I was married and had an infant child. I fled, grabbing my backpack and cell phone on the way out the door. The tech phoned me repeatedly after I left. | Ph.D. student | lab tech | Other R1 | Earth Science | Response was immediate, and excellent. I was told to find a safe place (the female colleague's house I was staying at during my visit), write down what happened, and email my account to my advisor at home institution, lab director, professor I was visiting, and my partner. | He was immediately placed on leave and after formal institutional review, was removed from his position. | I have never done field or lab work alone or in comfort since. My advisor changed his policy to not allow his female students to do so either; the undergrads I supervised also were never permitted to work alone - I have been clear as to where and why my policies stand. It became a huge millstone - I was no longer able to do my own work - I needed a 'buddy' at all times. In some instances, this is very safe and a good idea - in others, it's a huge hinderance to productivity. | Constant paranoia and discomfort working in laboratory facilities with men I am unfamiliar with - I just can't concentrate on doing science while with alone another unknown man of any position (scientist, student, custodial worker, etc.). | I have left academia, and it has taken four years to come to terms with this. I have worked hard to cultivate a different career trajectory, which I do love, but is very different from original thought. | Male | |||
1562 | 12/11/2017 12:41:35 | A senior faculty member would (and probably still does) stare directly at women's breasts while speaking to them, avoiding eye contact entirely. This was well known in the department; graduate students would warn each other that this was a common occurrence. | graduate student | Senior faculty (at Associate or Full level) | Other R1 | Psychology | None that I know of. I'm not sure if anyone brought it to the institution. | He's currently the Dean of the Graduate School. I guess there haven't been any consequences. | Luckily, I didn't work with this faculty member so could avoid him. | I mostly felt annoyance and disgust. The fact that the graduate students warned each other (indicating a pattern of this behavior) enraged me, but I assumed that the department wouldn't do anything about it even if reported. Just one more thing to deal with as a woman in the world. | Male | ||||
1563 | 12/11/2017 12:44:42 | I met an older colleague in my field - a retired academic from an extremely prestigious institution - he got in touch with me saying they would be in my city and he desired greatly to meet me he liked my work. (My field is quasi-academic, but I'm independently based, although also pursing a degree in a different subject). After about a year or so of pleasant, occasional, and exclusively collegial acquaintance (mainly through email or the occasional meeting), I began receiving emails from this older colleague telling me he had 'reviewed my work' and he was 'aggrieved' to tell me that he had found it to be 'horribly inadequate.' There followed an exegesis of several pages attacking some of my previously published work. The attacks involved very minor details. There were veiled threats if I refused to prove receptive to more of these diatribes. I immediately informed him I was not interested in receiving these 'critiques' and asked him to cease contact altogether. A few months later, we were both at the same conference, and he followed around (stalked me). I knew he would also be at the conference, and strongly considered not attending, but there were many other old friends I wanted to see there. After this conference he wrote me another email rebuking me for ignoring him. I wrote back saying he had crossed a boundary I had set and that was unacceptable to me. I blocked his email. | Well-known in my field (which is rather narrow - prefer not to be more specific). Mid-career, with a number of significant recognitions to my name. | He introduced himself as a well-wisher, a friend, and a great admirer of my work. (He is very prominent in the field I work in [as a retired academic], although he is relatively inactive now. ) In relation to him, I am a relative 'newcomer', but in some regards have done more. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | prefer not to say | literature - humanities | none | none | I wouldn't go to another conference if he were there. Which actually isn't good for me, as I tend to work in relative isolation. We have certain friends in common and I've had to explain why I am compelled to make sure I don't come into contact with him. | Bad. I felt extremely traumatized by these emails. I tend to struggle with a lot of self-doubt as it is. I should add that my field is academic, but not an 'exact science.' The emails I received (which were deeply manipulative and creepy), as well as being stalked at that conference, made me feel sullied by his horrendous behaviour. I blame myself: why didn't I see this coming, why was I too quick to trust his intentions as good, why didn't I just tell him to get lost at that conference. | It's made me not want to meet with any other male colleague in person. Ever. My trust in men - never high - has just dipped to an all-time low. I doubt it will ever recover. As I mentioned, I probably will feel compelled to avoid any professional gatherings where he would be present. | The academic angle to this is that he taught at an extremely prestigious institution for decades. His prestige, stemming from the vast prestige of the institution where he taught, was, I felt, instrumental in his harassment and attempted manipulation of me, in addition to the gendered aspect. | Male | |
1564 | 12/11/2017 13:24:37 | Not directly related to me, but male students in my PhD cohort decided as a group to look up the newly admitted students and preceded to judge each of the new female admits' appearances based on the pictures they could find of each of the women on social media. This is just one of many similar experiences. Additionally, one of my friends in the department was locked in a room and forced to listen as a colleague described all of his sexual exploits to her despite her requests that he stop. | Graduate Student | Graduate Student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Social Sciences (not noting more for anonymity purposes) | The department is working on trying to make the environment much better. I've heard rumors of a survey in the works. We also have close to yearly presentations by the employees in charge of Title IX at the university discussing the nature of sexual assault and how to prevent a hostile work environment for minorities.(That said, these are usually limitedly attended and lead to uncomfortable discussions by a small group male colleagues about how each example of discrimination or harassment were not actually good examples and that those types of situations are fine to say to a colleague.) | The first incident was not reported, the second led to an office reassignment for the harasser in a less desirable location. | None as of yet | Some, but fairly limited. As a result of these types of incidents, most of the women in my cohort do not hang out with the large group of men that are the primary organizers of social events. I and many other women didn't have a strong social network for much of the beginning of grad school. I already struggle with mental health issues so this exacerbated existing problems. | Male | ||||
1565 | 12/11/2017 13:41:44 | Major professor constantly lured young women in (particularly women of color/first generation students and otherwise marginalized women in the academy) with promises of being a "father like" figure. Part of this relationship was built on young women's willingness to confide in this mentor, including private information about sexual relationships and assertion to these graduate students that they could only be successful with the support of this mentor. Mentor often referenced his own sex life with his wife, made flirtatious comments to women mentees about his desire to pursue a relationship with them, and commented on the physical attractiveness and bodies of these mentees and other women in public spaces. Upon graduating, and realizing how inappropriate this behavior was, I shared my story with other women in our department who were generally aware of these patterns, and many of whom shared the same experiences. | Graduate Student | Full Professor, Dissertation Advisor | Other R1 | Big 10 School | Sociology | I never shared my experiences institutionally given the length of time the harassment went on, and because of my own fears that I was complicit because I did not establish healthy boundaries early on in the relationship. | None that I am aware of | I am currently lacking a strong mentoring network since my previous mentor emphasized working with him and him alone. Anytime I tried to connect with others, my mentor would state that I could not trust others and that I should work only with him. When I tried to move on and publish on my own, this mentor told me that I was not prepared and needed to continue writing with him exclusively. Fortunately, at that point, I had moved beyond the brainwashing and was able to get some articles out on my own and with other researchers. However, I do still find it difficult to trust male mentors due to this experience. I often called in sick and/or "worked from home" for fear of interacting with this faculty member on campus. I am also overcome with fear at any of our national conferences and have considered canceling presentations to avoid confrontation. | For a long time, I thought I was not smart enough and/or qualified enough to have a Ph.D. I questioned whether I was granted my Ph.D because my mentor was physically and sexually attracted to me, not because of my own merits. I was in counseling for 6 months working through some of these issues. | Male | |||
1566 | 12/11/2017 13:46:40 | This prominent history professor had started to take me under his wing and we would meet frequently to talk about my research ideas. There was a barely noticeable sexual vibe during our meetings, so I just brushed it off. I was just starting my PhD program and getting the support from this man meant a whole lot. One time we met to discuss my summer research plans and I told him I needed to get funding. He proceeded to ask how much money I needed and offered to pay for it. I was completely shocked and confused, not knowing how to respond. A red flag went off in the back of my mind because I felt that accepting his personal money would move the relationship in a more personal direction. I quickly thanked him but said that there was no need because I was applying for department funding. Something told me to stay away from this man and I eventually changed my research topic (not necessarily directly related to this). I always felt weird about this incident and there was no one I could process it with. Was I just really lucky? Should I have taken the money? Was he just that vested in my research? Would his wife (also a prominent professor on campus) know about this? Would it be a gift coming from both of them? I haven't processed this with any of my grad program friends because they all work with this man and they all see him as an academic father figure. Its a small weird episode, but I share it because this man is a powerful force at my institution and this is the only place where I feel safe sharing it. | First year PhD student | Full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Humanities | Never reported it or shared it with anyone at my institution. | Just made me very paranoid. Because of the position of this man and his wife in the department and institution I felt totally silenced. I feared sharing this with classmates because I wasn't really sure what his offering meant. I also didn't want others to question why this man was offering research money to me and not others. Or did he offer it to others? Again, just don't know. | Male | ||||||
1567 | 12/11/2017 13:49:43 | Playing musical chairs at a department party, my PhD advisor grabbed me by the waist and forced me to sit on his lap. | Graduate student | Professor; my major advisor | Other R1 | Ecology | Did not report | None | Compounded with other incidents, this contributed to anxiety and depression. | Male | |||||
1568 | 12/11/2017 13:53:54 | Over the course of a year or so, a white male co-worker at the university department where I worked sexually assaulted and harassed multiple women, while claiming it was "okay, because he [was] gay." These incidences included grabbing of breasts and buttocks, shoving his hand in between our legs, poking our vaginas with broom handles, and constantly making comments or asking about our sexual exploits. If a woman dared to bend over or anything, he would make a suggestive comment. The worst for me was when he took a broom handle and forcefully shoved it between my legs and nearly into my vagina from behind when I was not looking. When he was reported to the department manager (a woman) by several of us, he claimed psychological stress due to his sexual orientation, and was given the highest promotion in the department. So we got to spend the rest of our employment working under him. | A junior employee | A fellow employee | Other R1 | Promotion | None | Chastised by manager after he reported me for "poor work ethic" in retaliation | Lower self worth | I distrust men almost implicitly in the workplace and avoid being alone with them (I had other experiences that occurred at other jobs not in academia) | Male | ||||
1569 | 12/11/2017 13:54:02 | Two incidents, one in my MA program and the other in my PhD program. First, a professor currently under investigation for sexual harassment and rape, whose inappropriate partying with students was an open secret, joked about running me over because I “wasn’t fun” when I went home from the bar instead of back to his house with the other students, both male and female. I got disgusted by the drunkenness, sexual aggression, and belittling/shutting down of women when they tried to talk about their ideas and walked home rather than ride with my friends to his house. Glad I did, because he has numerous allegations of assault. Second, a member of my dissertation committee in my PHD program “joked” with a male grad student at a university event where we were all conversing at the after/social event. They were talking about a famous scholar who got divorced and married his female grad student. The professor, married to another prof, said that if his wife didn’t stay in line he could always hook up with one of his grad students (I was his only female grad student in this discussion). All the men laughed and I got infuriated. It felt demeaning to both me as his student and to his wife. I responded that since his wife was also a professor, she could do the same. He later apologized, but I always felt after that I had to chase down this professor to get his feedback and letters of recommendation. Now that I’m done and in the job market I wish I had just dropped him from my committee as his support is still minimal. But it’s never that easy, as there wasn’t anyone else in my department that specialized in what he did, I didn’t want to rock the boat, etc. | Grad student | Professors. Second one on my committee | Other R1 | UCSC, UNM | Literature | None. Didn’t report. | None. | It’s contributed to my decision that academia is broken and not dealing with its problems. I’m on the job market now, but if nothing happens this year I’m pursuing a different career. | Made me doubt my worth as a scholar. Both incidents made me feel objectified. | Contributed to the serious questions/doubts I’m having about continuing in this field. | Male | ||
1570 | 12/11/2017 14:01:10 | At a biological field station in 2016, I was a introduced as a new faculty member to the former station director by the current station director. The retired director shook my hand with his right hand, and grabbed my behind with his left hand. The current station director just laughed hysterically. | PhD student about to defend, hired as tenure track faculty | Retired faculty | Other R1 | Ecology | laughter | none | Chose to decrease my research at field station and interactions with acting director | Contributed to anxiety stemming primarily out of concern for safety of female students at this field station given acting director's reaction. | Male | ||||
1571 | 12/11/2017 14:19:34 | I was a grad student taking classes at a biological field station in 2014. Two female students were assaulted by the same individual that summer. One was reported to the station Director immediately, the other was not reported until the following year. Rather than acting as a mandatory reporter, the response of the station Director to the delayed report was to contact multiple other students that were on site at the time to inquire if they remember if the interaction was consensual or not. | The victim was an undergraduate | also an undergraduate | Other R1 | Ecology | Initially the station director did not report the incident. I learned about it through him in casual conversation - he felt that it was appropriate to divulge details of the situation because he did not believe the victim. I contacted his superiors and reported the interaction. | I don't know what happened to the undergraduate perpetrator. The station director's contract was not renewed, though I don't know if it was directly related to this incident. | None | I did not feel safe or protected at the field station; I felt that if I reported my own harassment, I would be humiliated in front of my peers. | Male | ||||
1572 | 12/11/2017 14:27:09 | In 2008 my genetics professor would repeatedly send me sexually explicit emails addressed to his girlfriend. First I ignored it; the second time I politely responded that he had the wrong address; the third time I confronted him after class. He explained that my name was next to hers in his address book and it was a mistake. The next time it happened I confronted him again, and his creepy response was "curiouser and curiouser". | Undergraduate | Professor | R2 | Florida International University | Biology | I did not report it | Male | ||||||
1573 | 12/11/2017 15:27:05 | I was a first year undergrad. I took a philosophy course by a prof who was also the head of a very prestigious publishing house. After a successful exam he approached me to invite me to get involved with the publishing house, which I was really excited about. As soon as I got my first couple of assignments (reviews, social media) he started to flirt with me, invited me to his house "to see his library" and said he could make me meet Umberto Eco if I went to the Frankfurt Buchmesse with him. As soon as I understood the threat I felt humiliated and frigthened, wrote an email to him and left the job, never took his class again. Later I learnt that at the time he had a gf in Germany who was his former grad student and an ex-wife he left as soon as she got pregnant. He was around 60 at the time, I was 19. | Undergrad student | Full professor | Other Type of School | was the best state university in an Eastern European country | philosophy | none | none | none, luckily | It was not the first time, it made me very insecure about my achievements. I was frightened that any recognition/opportunity I'd receive was for the looks. | Quit philosophy, not academia. Later, during the PhD I had lots of non-sexual harassment and bullying. I am now quitting academia. | I hope the fact that this story is from Europe is alright, I was not sure about the scope of your inquiry. Good luck and thank you for doing this! | Male | |
1574 | 12/11/2017 16:06:59 | A senior (full) professor repeatedly made compliments about my appearance (hair, skirt, boots), both in front of others and when alone. For example "I couldn't focus on the research talk because I was so distracted by your hair." (I later heard this person had had relationships with graduate students before) | graduate student | full professor in same research group | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Mathematics | I didn't know who to report such an incidence. | None. | When wanting to change advisor later on he would have been the obvious choice (and academically a good fit). However I ended up switching fields because I did not want to be dependent on this person. | See above. Switched field not only, but also because of these incidents. | Male | ||||
1575 | 12/11/2017 16:18:24 | In the senior year of my undergraduate degree, a professor who mentored me (I was doing an independent study with him) sent me an e-mail while he was drunk saying that sex is a great way to destress and that he could help me with that. I didn't know what to do, so I just didn't respond. A week later he sent me an e-mail where he was mad and he blamed me for giving him the wrong idea. | undergraduate student | professor (not sure if he was tenured) | Other R1 | Florida International University | English | I stopped working with him/receiving his help | I felt weird going into the department, so I either didn't or took different routes | Male | |||||
1576 | 12/11/2017 19:00:10 | Over the course of several years, I was harassed by a senior colleague who was tenured and also directed an academic program on our department. Several inappropriate comments were made, there was inappropriate touching and suggestions that we should meet alone in inappropriate places. | Assistant Professor | Tenured Professor | Other R1 | UC Davis | None | Male | |||||||
1577 | 12/11/2017 19:00:31 | Over the course of several years, I was harassed by a senior colleague who was tenured and also directed an academic program on our department. Several inappropriate comments were made, there was inappropriate touching and suggestions that we should meet alone in inappropriate places. | Assistant Professor | Tenured Professor | Other R1 | UC Davis | None | Male | |||||||
1578 | 12/11/2017 19:21:27 | A fellow graduate student stalked and harassed me, asking me on various dates. I found out he had done this with every single female in the department! The faculty were aware but chose to take no action and decided to just sweep all our complaints under the rug. | Graduate student | Graduate student | Other R1 | Northern Illinois University | Industrial/Organizational Psychology | The faculty were made aware but chose to sweep these incidents under the rug. | Years after multiple offenses, he was asked not to attend weekly research meetings, but has not been kicked out of the program. | Thank you so much for doing this! | Male | ||||
1579 | 12/11/2017 19:23:50 | A professor made unsolicited contact during a study session. He later asked me to sleep with him and told me he cared deeply about me. | Master's student | Associate Professor | Other Type of School | Linguistics | Male | ||||||||
1580 | 12/11/2017 20:30:02 | I sexual harassed me in my old lab by a medical student who currently graduated. | Single | Single | R2 | University of Illinois | Pharmacology | Sat down and talked to him. | None, just a slap on the wrist. | I had to switch fields. | I now have PTSD, anxiety, and depression. | I'm still going to get this PhD. | Male | ||
1581 | 12/11/2017 20:46:46 | Thighs and breasted groped by professor when I was an undergraduate after a field trip | Undergraduate at big prestigious research university | Professor and Instructor in Course | Elite Institution/Ivy League | a UC | Biology, but Professor was in different department | I didn't report it | I didn't report it | Nothing, I just think of it now and then | Nothing, I just think of it now and then | Nothing, I just think of it now and then | Thanks for giving me a space to share this | Male | |
1582 | 12/11/2017 21:19:03 | In June of 2006, at a pub near campus after conference event. Senior professor, a man I was going to ask to be my supervisor, shouted at and verbally harassed me on patio full of people, in front of an amassed group of colleagues. He made fun of me and speculated about me sleeping with the male student I happened to be sitting with, and then worse, go on to accuse me of being no good at my work, tell me that I shouldn’t start a reading group because my language skills – in a class he had never taught me – weren’t good enough. He publicly humiliated me and plenty of people, male and female colleagues alike, sat there and said nothing. | 21 year old, first year Ph.D. student | Head of my graduate department, senior scholar in my field I was going to ask to be my supervisor | Other R1 | University of Toronto | Medieval Studies | None - from other faculty and mentors: skepticism, excuses, apologia- phrases like ‘I wasn’t there, I can’t comment’ or ‘oh but he’s such a good scholar’, and , the worst, ‘but you should still work with him because he’s such a big name.’ | none | I had to switch major and minor fields and change dissertation direction | Anxiety, depression, humiliation, shame | I completed my Ph.D. and avoided the hell out of him - but it was socially very difficult and I was judged by colleagues and fellow students for refusing to work with him. | Male | ||
1583 | 12/11/2017 22:54:02 | I was working as a research tech while applying to grad school. Jokingly, I said I'd take on any project to publish a paper to make my application better. My advisor called me a "slut" in front of another tech. Said tech (male) later brushed it off as "non-sexual" when I vented to him. This was the beginning of a very, very bad relationship with my advisor. | Research Technician | Tenured Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Biology | Did not report | None | My application to grad school had already been submitted by the time my relationship with my mentor went south. After I got into a few good programs, I quit the job early. However, by this time I was depressed and extremely disillusioned with research and academia. I took the position in my program because I didn't want to waste years of hard work, and I thought I had no other options. I performed poorly my first 2 years because of this outlook. Luckily, things are getting better. | I still carry deep shame about quitting, and about my utter lack of productivity in lab (while my male co-worker was getting publications). I still have great insecurity about my intelligence, research skills, and work ethic. I look back on that year with deep shame and regret... I even feel guilty for the way it ended. I tell myself that if I had been less sensitive and more resilient, it could have worked out, and I'd still be on speaking terms with my former advisors... | I am currently in a good program, and "recovering" from the emotional insecurities brought on by my former advisor. After years of swearing I'd never work in academia, I am beginning to re-consider it. | Male | |||
1584 | 12/12/2017 1:02:56 | A). A respected professor invited me and a number of other females grad students to his cabin for "mentorship" purposes. He also hit on his undergrad students. B) A grad student sexually harassed female graduate and undergraduate students. he was accused of exchanging grades for sexual favors. | graduate student | A) tenured professor, B) grad student | Other R1 | University of Wisconsin | Sociology | None, cover-ups | None | Male | |||||
1585 | 12/12/2017 1:31:19 | Treating a professional conference like a week-long singles bar experience is an all too common attitude. On public transit, I once overheard a chat between senior researchers from another field where one said "it doesn't count if it happened at a conference." For a more personal story of sexual misconduct, I attended a conference as a Ph. D. student. During one of the breaks, a full professor from another institution introduced himself to me. Within a few minutes of this introduction, he suggested we skip the afternoon talks and "go explore the city together." I declined and spent the rest of the conference avoiding him. | Ph. D. student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Mathematics | Where does one even report harassment that occurs at a conference? | He trashed his opportunity to collaborate with me, but otherwise none. | As this was certainly not an isolated incident, I started to dread attending conferences. I would have to be constantly on guard and self-conscious of my behavior. I would want to be friendly enough to be able to interest colleagues in my research, but not be mistaken for being "available". "Am I smiling too much? Does he think I'm flirting with him? What will be the consequences if I'm put in the position of having to reject him? Etc, etc." All the energy spent on this meant less to spend on networking and learning, the intended objectives of a conference. This became yet another obstacle in the attempt to find collaborators, viewing male colleagues initially with suspicion in this male dominated field. | It was a drain. | While there was a confluence of reasons for my decision to leave academia, the discomfort I felt from being viewed as a sexual opportunity before being viewed as a mathematician and researcher was discouraging. | Male | |||
1586 | 12/12/2017 1:47:06 | Systematic harassment of (usually depressed, vulnerable) female MSc and DPhil students. Dating and sleeping with some of them, getting others drunk. | DPhil student | Sole DPhil supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Oxford | Area Studies | Very little. College were keen to pursue a formal complaint, the Centre was not, and preferred to (on two occasions) have two senior members talk to him. He was removed as my sole supervisor and I was told that there was an informal policy that he was not allowed to supervise female MSc students. Nothing else was done unless I was to make a formal complaint. I was strongly advised against doing this because I might become known as a 'troublemaker'. I was also told that because he was 'a rising star' it was likely that he would get a job elsewhere soon and then it wouldn't be a problem anymore. Finally, I was told that the informal complaint was anonymous, but within days it was clear that the harasser knew my identity and that of my friends (and co-complainants). | None. The following year he was promoted to Head of Centre. A few years later awarded a Professorial Chair by another prestigious university. | None really, just a burning sense of injustice and resentment that this type of behaviour is allowed, even rewarded and dismissed because they are 'a rising star'. | None. | None that I can see. | Male | ||
1587 | 12/12/2017 4:49:17 | Upon commencing work I became aware that a married colleague in his 60s was openly dating a 20-something Masters student from the department - apparently the latest in a long line of affairs with graduate and undergraduate students, who were gifted with extra resources such as money for conference trips, opportunities to co-write papers and (it was rumoured) great marks. I was shocked by how accepting everyone seemed of this. I spoke to the HoD, asking - are these rumours true? He said they were, but wrung his hands, saying, "there's nothing we can do." I was devastated! He said if confronted, the colleague would simply lie, subtly pointing out that the man's wife was head of HR for the whole University. He said - what I will do is move the student out of his office, which they were sharing(!). He got her her own office, and that was meant to be that. I looked up the University's code of ethics governing staff-student relationships and you could drive a truck through it. It turned out he'd written it. I felt sick about it all but couldn't see any action to take, particularly given other colleagues were turning a blind eye. One who worked in feminist philosophy remarked that the students concerned were over the age of consent and she didn't hold with 'seeing women as victims'. A few years later a complaint came in from the high schools where we taught Ethics and guess who was super-keen to go out there and deliver it? The complaint was about inappropriate contact after hours (texting) with a 16 year old girl. I was so upset. The University only investigated after certain people pushed hard from inside. I never found out the results, and the colleague remained in place until he died of alcohol-related illness. What I want to comment on re. all this is that given the colleague was employed for over 30 years, how very many female students must have been caught up in the behaviour - and what happened to their educations? (If any are reading this, please consider that you may have been abused, even if you thought it was consensual.) Also, the wife who was head of HR for the whole University knew all about the behaviour, protected him for years, and even today she is still in place. I consider that appalling. How does she look herself in the mirror? | Teaching Staff | Departmental Colleague | Other R1 | University of Waikato, NZ | Philosophy | Extended cover-up | Protected until he died of liver cancer. | Because I said that what was going on was not ok, I attracted hatred from certain colleagues for years afterwards. It actually seems to me that the whole department / program suffered a profound moral degeneration through their collective choice to ignore the abuse and corruption. But that's a story for another time... | Massive stress, depression, feelings of hopelessness | still being determined | Male | ||
1588 | 12/12/2017 7:03:26 | I was invited to give a talk by a London University along with two other panelists, among which I was the only academic. After the talk the first person to come up to me (a senior academic himself), rather than comment on the topic, felt it right to comment on my "charming accent" and "lovely gesturing". Shortly after, at the drink reception another member of the audience literally grab by ass and smiled. When I reported it to the department head who organised the talk her response was that she will consider banning alcohol from these events from now on, as if the wine was responsible for some people being ******. | post-doc | Senior Academic, member of government or other public governing institution | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Social Sciences | No more wine. | none | I decided not to attend dinner afterwards and 'network'. Now very wary of accepting such invitations | lingering anger. Now being much more aware of my own image. Stopped putting make up and always carefully picking my outfit not to reveal my figure. | Male | ||||
1589 | 12/12/2017 7:38:30 | Committee member and professor for the class I was TAing called me into his office a few days before my qualifying exam to tell me he found me attractive and his marriage wasn't that great, and that he'd been flirting with me all semester. He thought that because I smiled at his jokes in lecture, I must like him back too. I told him I wasn't interested and he swore several times and asked if I had a boyfriend. He still assumed he'd be my dissertation chair and got upset when I took him off the committee a few months later. | grad student | Assistant professor; advisor; potential dissertation chair | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Cornell University | Linguistics | I was allowed to take him off my committee | He got tenure | Minor; had to switch directions with my dissertation and it has taken me longer to finish | Panic attacks when I had to interact with him at all | Male | |||
1590 | 12/12/2017 7:46:39 | Member of staff had a sexual relationship with a troubled undergraduate student (not me). She was very mentally unstable. This person had multiple sexual relationships with other undergraduates, but this relationship was the most troubling. He helped her through her degree program. | student | Permanent member of staff. | University of Reading | Archaeology | None | None | I was a student, but he never bothered me; None | Male | |||||
1591 | 12/12/2017 7:48:36 | Discrimination and harassment because I am a woman; bullying; name-calling | Faculty | University of Utah | History | None | None | Poor productivity | Depression | Decided to leave academic study | Male | ||||
1592 | 12/12/2017 8:26:14 | 2012. I was TAing for a professor who I had heard awful things about and had avoided working with formally, even though he would have been instrumental to a large part of my research. I decided to sign up to TA for his course because I figured it would allow me to meet him and network without having to run the risk of dealing with a lot of his notorious behavior. There were 4 TAs, and he singled me out as his favorite. Over the course of the semester, he made comments about my clothes and my body (I had lost weight and was going to the gym a lot), looked me up and down a lot, just general skeeviness. At the end of the semester, after the last TA meeting, he asked me (in front of everyone) to stay behind. He closed the door, blocked it with his body, took my hand in his, held it firmly, and went on and on about how he would do anything he could for me, that anything I needed I should ask him for, etc. etc. I saw him at events after this and he ALWAYS made comments about my body. Despite all this, I asked him to sit on my dissertation committee--again, he is a giant in his field. But after my first chapter defense I quietly dropped him from my committee and never spoke to him again (he retired). He has a history of this. I spoke to other faculty members--men--who know him and are in positions of power, about how uncomfortable he made me feel, and how I felt like I did something to bring it on and encourage it. They've expressed disgust but I know for sure nothing was ever said to him. | Graduate student in my 4th year; post oral exams. | Named Full Faculty Member, Director of an important academic center on campus | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale University | History | I've told people with the power to do things here and while they expressed sympathy I'm pretty sure nothing ever happened | Besides his awful reputation nothing. | None, unless I try to anticipate what it would have done for my career to have had a workable relationship with him | Significant. I've spent a lot of time wondering if I'm complicit-- if I should be ashamed for putting up with it because I needed something from him (letters of recommendation, his networking resources and contacts). As though that's how power works. | Moderate. I would have positioned myself as a historian and he was the strongest Historian with a capital H on my committee. | Male | ||
1593 | 12/12/2017 8:32:50 | In my first year of undergraduate, I was sexually abused for months by my language professor and boss while working for him in his office. I was desperate for a father figure, but he told me he loved me and needed to express that physically. I said no, repeatedly, but felt powerless. I was barely 18. He was in his late 50s. | Freshman in college | Professor and Work-Study boss | Small Liberal Arts College | Middle Eastern Studies | After speaking to all levels of the administration about it, the President of the college told me that I should take it as a complement, because I am not beautiful enough to be a model and so clearly he was attracted to my intellectual ability. | He was eventually let go, although the college President assured me that it was only because he received poor teaching reviews. He now teaches at another university. | Every time I received an A in any male professor's class, I attributed it not to my hard work or ability, but that the professor must be interested in me. Still today, after 10 years of higher education, I struggle to accept any praise from a male professor or meet alone in his office. There's a feeling of inevitability, and vulnerability. Even after years of therapy, there is an intractable part of me that simultaneously feels that I must be beautiful and attractive in order to succeed and gain the approval of the many male gate-keepers, and that when I gain that approval it is not because I actually deserve it. | It broke me. It took me years to even start working through the shame and understand that it wasn't my fault. And still now I'm sobbing as I write this. | Male | ||||
1594 | 12/12/2017 9:05:14 | An instructor bullied and said inappropriate things to a student via email. A department chair brought female students into the restroom with him at an off-campus event. | visiting instructor | the department chair was much higher than me, the instructor was senior to me. | Small Liberal Arts College | Humanities and Media Studies | the instructor was dismissed, the department chair stepped down privately. | one instructor was dismissed and barred from campus | the students who these events happened too both left the community, where they now had jobs. They left those jobs without having new job. Both still suffer ptsd. Personally, I am also giving up a job at this institution because I no longer wish to spend so much time in this atmosphere. | I am constantly on-guard and am leaving a stable full-time job. | I am giving up my stable, full-time job to work from home as a freelancer. I am giving up a lot of perks and stability to reduce my exposure to people who condone sexual harassment/ commit soft harrassment | Male | |||
1595 | 12/12/2017 9:08:01 | Prof had class do an voice over exercise where the point was to speak from the diaphragm. He proceeded to wrap his arms around only the female students to check we were doing it correctly, groping at our waists. A week later, an exchange student from Denmark told me the professor had told him Danish women were the prettiest and invited her to his house for dinner. | MA Student | Professor | R2 | Media | It wasn't reported. | None. | Loss of respect for institution and authority figures within it. | Less likely to choose to pursue my PHD. | Male | ||||
1596 | 12/12/2017 10:11:22 | The sexual harassment I encountered was not as bad as it could have been and many have encountered. The harassment I encountered was much more passive. I was told my first day I was getting my desk assignment because I was a woman and my PI was trying to support female engineers (not because I was a PhD candidate who outranked the person sitting there before me). I was told later in the semester, after working to improve lab relations and culture, that my work / pace of research was being judged more leniently because I was a woman. When I was introduced to research assistants and undergraduates my looks are often referred to - even though the comments are meant as compliments no introductions of my male colleagues start with the new members of lab being told to focus on their looks. There are also repeating comments about my diet/ the lunches I bring to lab and weight, as well as if I look tired and need more rest. It often feels creepy and when I talk to my PI it is difficult and I sometimes leave feeling worse. He is disappointed in the other lab members' behavior (especially since one is a postdoc) but he makes excuses for them because of their culture. Lastly, I feel conflicted about reporting because I then ask him to not address it in lab meeting because I am the only woman in lab so it will be clear who complained and I worry the treatment will worsen. | PhD first year | a senior PhD and a postdoc - both in my own lab and both supposed to be in a position of mentorship | Elite Institution/Ivy League | [removed] | Mechanical Engineering | None so far. An offer was made to talk directly to the person about the complaint but I feared it would have negative consequences since I must continue to work with these people for several years. A comment was made about general training, but those are already happening and not resulting in behavior change. | None so far. The postdoc is applying to jobs and my PI said he would address his mentoring 'style' with him. | It has makes me uncomfortable in lab, which makes being productive at work difficult. It also resulted in me changing projects during my first semester to minimize interactions, which put me behind my peers and delayed my application to several fellowships by a year. | It makes me doubt my worth as an intellectual. It is already a difficult transition to graduate school with high expectations and, for me, no local support. That lab (the reason I moved across the country) is so difficult makes it much easier to fall into periods of depression. | If this is persistent, which I was told when discussing the incident that even women professors have these complaints, I question whether or not I will continue with academia after my PhD. I may still choose to but after a positive undergraduate experience I feel extremely disheartened to feel like I've taken a step backwards. | Male | ||
1597 | 12/12/2017 11:09:22 | Verbal, emotional, misogynistic, and intimate partner abuse for myself and many additional female graduate students. Faculty and graduate student members of the department supported and contributed to the behavior, including a co-advisor who was also abusive. | Graduate student | Graduate student | Other R1 | University of Minnesota | Geography | None | None | Great - loss of committee members and addition of time to degree; abusive department environment led to no feeling of trust or collegial cohort or department relations | Great - suicidal, social and professional isolation | Great - time to degree, loss of trust of committee members | Male | ||
1598 | 12/12/2017 11:10:39 | A longtime senior ABD made a habit of serially preying upon vulnerable incoming young female graduate students, physically cornering us in vulnerable environments and coercing us into sex. His behavior towards all women in the department was demeaning and manipulative. During his final year in the program, he was involved in a 'grades for sex' scandal with a young undergraduate woman in his class. Department leadership was aware of all of this but lacked courage to take any meaningful action. Not only was the creep allowed to graduate, he was hooded by his advisor in a public ceremony in the presence of many of his victims. The message was clear: this man was graduating with the full support and esteem of our prestigious department. | Entering PhD student | Senior PhD student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Wisconsin Madison | Sociology | Disinterest, minimizing, coverup, outright denial. | Absolutely none. The perpetrator somehow got a job at a children's hospital! I shudder to think about who he is preying on there. | I have struggled to regain confidence in my ideas and ability to succeed in the academy. I have avoided interaction with those complicit in the abuse: this man's advisor and other faculty leaders in the department. | I developed a panic disorder. | I am much more conscious about carefully choosing the kinds of institutions I work in, even if these constraints may not be the best choice for my professional outcome. I have lost a significant measure of respect for the discipline of sociology. | Male | ||
1599 | 12/12/2017 11:34:46 | Colleague tried to kiss me on the lips and tried to sit on my lap at a department function. He had a history of harassing fellow students in graduate school. | Visiting Assistant Professor | Visiting Assistant Professor, but he had already been in that department for a year | R2 | Miami University | French and Italian | None (I reported the harasser to the EEOC office but did not pursue further action for fear of retaliation) | None, he stayed in that department for a few more years | My contract was not renewed at the end of that year. | My non-renewal was not directly linked to the harassment, but the harassment caused severe depression. | Male | |||
1600 | 12/12/2017 12:27:25 | While I was an REU student, another student's advisor would stare and me and make comments about my appearance. Things escalated over the course of the summer and culminated with a series of encounters where he would show up in undergraduate social events and make suggestive comments toward me, including asking me to spend the night with him. At one point while hanging out with other REU students, he spanked me several times. He then proceeded to grab my butt, pull me against his body, and whisper something to the effect of, "those eyes...I'm going to fuck the shit out of you." When I tried to get away from him he grabbed my arm and asked for various sexual favors. | Undergraduate student | Professor, friend's advisor | Other R1 | Kansas State University | Biology | None, I did not report it | None | I lost my confidence and ended up taking several years off between undergrad and grad school. | Loss of confidence and anxiety. | After taking a couple years off, I decided to return to academia. I still find it intimidating and difficult to meet with male faculty on my own. As such, I avoided applying to work with male faculty and have made my research choices based on support from female advisors. | Because I was an REU student and quite young, I didn't know or understand how to report this type of behavior. Students and professionals that are not actually employed by an institution have very few ways to deal with harassment in an official manner (and those set in place for them are confusing and difficult to find). | Male | |
1601 | 12/12/2017 12:53:58 | A visiting professor grabbed me at a party and kissed me. | Second year PhD student. | Visiting professor, collaborating with my advisor. | Other Type of School | Oxford | Mathematics | Never reported. | None. | Male | |||||
1602 | 12/12/2017 13:43:47 | professor started playing footsie with me, at a group dinner, part of an academic event (I had no relationship with him before or after. As it is, he repelled me...) | I was an undergraduate | senior | Other R1 | CU-Boulder | Philosophy | none | none | reconsidered a career in academia | shame, disgust, fear during future encounters with professors | Male | |||
1603 | 12/12/2017 13:52:47 | After I started my PhD studies, my undergraduate advisor and the Chair of the department began sending me emails about working together on a research project. The emails and our meetings gradually started feeling icky, with him for example bringing wine to a meeting we'd scheduled for 2pm and him insisting on sitting next to me rather than across the table. I thought I was being sensitive and instead kept turning the conversation back to business, hoping it would help. Finally, he sent me an email telling me he'd had dreams about me and would like to share them with him, using my recent break-up as an additional excuse to offer to "comfort" me. I told him his comments seemed inappropriate. He backed off and later apologized. We remain in professional contact, although infrequently. | PhD student | Former graduate advisor, (then) current collaborator; Full Professor and Chair | Other R1 | Classics | none, because I did not report it | none, because I did not report it | Who knows? I have collaborated with my harasser, so I guess good things came out of it; on the other hand, as I'm perceived of as "his favorite", I've been ostracized by some others (who do not know about the harassment). | It caused me a lot of stress, but mostly briefly. Since then, I have always felt the need to be careful around male professors and worry about their motivations to support me. | Not drastic. I have decided to leave academia, but not because of harassment. I guess my harassment seems like one more symptom of a field largely run by favoritism and personal connections, which is one of my least favorite things about academia. | Male | |||
1604 | 12/12/2017 14:21:25 | During grad school: A professor made a lewd joke about my body in the middle of a seminar. I overheard countless transphobic and sexist remarks, from both faculty & grad students. A grad student suggested to me that the fact that a faculty member liked my work somehow had something to do with my looks/gender. All w/in the last 10 years. | grad student | senior faculty and grad students | Elite Institution/Ivy League | New York University | philosophy | none (I didn't report) | none | I quit the seminar | just another reason to feel anxious around male philosophers | Male | |||
1605 | 12/12/2017 14:59:42 | Group of male fraternity students sent an email to me about needing the hottest teacher on campus to attend a party. There were many references to my appearance. | Lecturer | Unknown Students | Other R1 | The University of Texas at Austin | Science | Investigated but nothing was done | None | None | I began showing classic signs of assault. | I saw someone in EAP. Their help with this and other things has been a great support for 17 years. I’m fine now. | I had forgotten until today even though I still see someone in EAP. | Male | |
1606 | 12/12/2017 15:17:20 | A professor asked me to come to his office. He asked me to read from his book of poems, while he stroked my hand and said "Delicious, darling, delicious." He told me that if I stayed with him I "would go far." | Advanced undergraduate | Professor. | Other R1 | Auburn University | English | At first I didn't report because I had to take a required class from him. After he began harassing another young woman in the class, though, I talked with the Chair. | Unsure. But he thereafter glared at me. | Minimal. | Hard to say. | Minimal. | Male | ||
1607 | 12/12/2017 15:28:18 | A professor asked me to stand up and show my outfit to the class. | Graduate student. | Professor | Other R1 | I never reported this. | N/A | It made me aware that professors, even those you admire, can think about you not as a student or colleague, but as someone they are interested in physically (sexually). | Male | ||||||
1608 | 12/12/2017 15:28:20 | A male student and I were working with an endowed chair on a national conference, which was my idea. The professor began an affair with another PhD student (whose committee he was on) and brought her onto the project. | PhD student | Professor | Other R1 | LSU | English | None | None | I changed my subfield of study so that I wouldn't be working with this professor. | The episode made me deeply anxious and fearful around other faculty, who knew what was going on but did and said nothing. | I finished my PhD, got a tenure-track job, and eventually became chair, where I was forced to mediate any number of sexual harassment cases. I hope nobody in my department ever felt the way I did as a graduate student. | Male | ||
1609 | 12/12/2017 15:52:32 | I was at an American Astronomical Society meeting, waiting to talk to someone I know when a male approached me, who I did not know. We talked about science for a few minutes, and when he went to leave, he put his hand on my hip and whispered in my ear "I hope to see you later". | Graduate Student | Peer | Other Research Agency | American Astronomical Society Meeting | Astronomy | I did not report | The yearly AAS meetings upset me | Male | |||||
1610 | 12/12/2017 16:01:08 | Attending a conference at the Space Telescope Science Institute. Discussing my work with a very senior scientist and right before he left he kissed me. | PhD student | Senior | Other Research Agency | STScI | Astronomy | Did not report | Male | ||||||
1611 | 12/12/2017 16:04:47 | The president of the college has been having an affair with a subordinate faculty at my work for some time. He knew her before and he used his powers to hire her from another area. She was not nearly as qualified as the other candidates. She now gets special treatment from him. He is always in her office behind closed doors. The Board of Trustees pretends to not know, but everyone knows. Its obvious but you have to pretend like its not happening or the president will use his power to discredit and marginalize you. He also makes inappropriate demands of other females that work under him. He told the VP to make specific female subordinates wear skirts to work. The VP said no. He also asked her to sign off on his travel expenses for when he went to conferences with his girlfriend. She said no. She no longer works there. The other VP that eventually signed for the travel expenses...she got a huge raise and a new title...and there are a lot more female subordinates wearing skirts. | Faculty | I reported to the colleague | Other Type of School | the refuse to deal with it | Its very difficult to work in this environment. Its hostile. They are abusive with their power and it is traumatizing to watch other people lose their jobs and credibility just for doing the right thing. | They try to make you feel crazy. They try to crush your soul and break your spirit. You have to be strong, but its hard. | I want to quit but my colleagues tell me that they only win if I quit. | Male | |||||
1612 | 12/12/2017 16:26:56 | A professor sent pictures of his penis and him engaging in sexual activity. | PhD student | Peer (from the same field) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | sociology | Reported. Received an email saying that I was too sensitive. | None. | Unclear. | Important. | Leaving academia because of this climate (not the only occurrence of harassment) | Male | |||
1613 | 12/12/2017 17:45:40 | When I was an undergrad (last year) my thesis advisor harassed me for the entire year. It started with compliments and gift-giving and other grooming tactics, then he began sending me romantic emails asking me on dates. Lots of requests for dinner and drinks too. His comments then turned explicitly sexual and he would talk about my body and what I was wearing. He also made very possessive comments about “not sharing me” etc. After rejecting his advanced for quite a while he eventually turned hostile and repeatedly told me I was acting moody and bitchy. All the while, he never helped me with my thesis. Whenever I asked for help he would brush me off and tell me that it “looks great.” I didn’t feel like it was great at all. I was struggling through Aristotle’s Metaphysics alone. My secondary reader recommended that my paper get a C- but he ended up giving me an A anyway (because all year he told me it was great). My grade is so illegitimate. | Undergrad senior - 2016-2017 | Chair of Department and thesis advisor | Small Liberal Arts College | Philosophy | Still ongoing investigation by external investigator. It’s been 9 months since the investigation began. | Pending | Ugh. I wrote an awful thesis about a topic I was so passionate about. I had been considering grad school for philosophy but now I wonder if I’m even a decent philosophy student at or if I was just begin given As all along. I don’t have confidence in any of my academic achievements anymore. | I was in denial for a very, very long time. I wont be fully able to accept what happened until I read the report and the professional investigator confirms this experience. I did suffer some anxiety from this issue and my confidence is certainly shattered, but overall I’m grateful for this experience because of how eye-opening it has been. Also, I’m sure my reaction will hinge a lot upon how the College decided to handle this and whether or not justice is served. That will be the most telling part of all of this. | Definitely not pursuing higher ed now in philisophy. Too rigged with harassment and dominated my males. The process of getting a PhD is hard enough on its own, adding in harassment makes it impossible. | Male | |||
1614 | 12/12/2017 18:02:55 | Hit on by research mentor in summer undergrad program (REU) | Undergraduate | Research mentor and faculty | Other R1 | University of Hawaii | Astronomy | None | None | Thankfully none (besides a shitty summer and the year it took to snap out of it) | A lot at the time | Told other women students to avoid institution | Male | ||
1615 | 12/12/2017 18:07:09 | At a departmentally sponsored graduate student party, at a private residence, a fellow graduate student said "Let's hug it out" and when I said no, he forcibly grabbed me | Graduate student | Also a graduate student | Other R1 | Rhetoric and composition | None | None | Limited my engagement in department events thereafter | Male | |||||
1616 | 12/12/2017 18:08:31 | Coerced into going on dates with faculty member who was 70yrs old (not that age matters but clearly a mismatch of both age and power) -- he exhibited some stalking behavior afterwards | Finishing grad student/ starting postdoc | Tenured Faculty | Other R1 | U. Hawaii | Institute of Astronomy | Stop wearing revealing clothes to work | Happy retirement? I.e. None | Lost nearly 2 years of productivity, almost didn't get a new job because of this | Had to see a counselor for a year | Choice was to get the hell out of there and life got much better | Male | ||
1617 | 12/12/2017 18:57:21 | Two incidents: one as a staff member at a university, in my third semester of pregnancy. My boss, a full professor of engineering, grabbed me from behind when we were in the office alone and forcibly dry humped me. I asked him to stop the first time it happened. I was shocked and very upset. He laughed it off and told me he couldn’t resist my « comely posterior » His words were cruder. I did not know how to report the incident and I was afraid, even, to tell my husband. This was 1983 and I was young. He did the same thing two more times to me although I tried to avoid and outrun him after the first incident. Ultimately, although I needed the job, I never came back from maternity leave and resigned because of the incidents. I felt ashamed he had chosen me to do it to and feared no one would believe me because I was pregnant. This same professor routinely required me to insert nudie photos of women into the a/v materials for his engineering class lectures to « wake the (predominantly male) students up. » Second incident: as an undergraduate student at the same university in 1988, full professor of botany who taught the botany class in which I was registered. The lab for the class involved each student being assigned a garden plot. He gave me a plot far away from other students and visiited me while I worked my plot, all the whlle making appreciative and graphic comments about my body. He told me his wife was away and invited me to come with him to his house. I rebuffed him, saying I was married and the mother of two small children. As the semester went on, he continued to visit me when I was wording my isolated garden plot and comment on my body as I worked. I was so uncomfortable that I decided my only option was to drop the class. He refused to sign the drop paperwork. I didn’t know how to report the incident, and when grade reporting time came, he recorded an « incomplete » and wrote me, asking me to come to his office. I was afraid to be alone with him so I ignored his letter. Eventually the « incomplete » turned to an F. In a couple of years, I graduated with high honors. That F is a blot on my academic record, and a shame I have always had to bear when furnishing my undergraduate transcript. I have never told the story of that sole F. | 1. Staff member, 2. Undergraduate student | 1. Boss, 2. Teacher of record | Other R1 | University of Texas at Austin | 1. Engineering, 2. Natural Science | These incidents occurred in the 1980’s and I didn’t know how to report them at that time. | Both eventually retired as full professors with no consequence | An F on my undergraduate record which was otherwise a record of high achievement | Loss of self-esteem, feelings of shame, depression. Eventually went to therapy to try to cope with feelings of being victimized, mistrust of others and depression. Lingering distrust of powerful men is probably permanent. | Chose to become an advocate for other victims and to learn how to report; still at a university, working with students, supporting them and helping them report such behavior. | It is all still happening. It has been 30 years since my experiences and I am not sure much has changed except the internet makes it easier to find out how and to whom to report. | Male | |
1618 | 12/12/2017 18:57:27 | I was an English major who graduated in 2008. In 2006 or 2007, I wanted to take a Russian Literature course on Dostoevsky taught by a Russian Dpt professor but my friend A warned me that the professor preyed on students. Her friend B had been approached by him sexually in his office. B (who self-identified as a less confident person) told A that I shouldn't be nervous, because he only preyed on students who were insecure and wouldn't feel strong/confident enough to resist him. He was known for doing this to a number of students. His tactic was getting them in his office during private meetings, sitting next to them instead of behind his desk, and starting his sexual advances by putting his hand on their knee. I did not take his class because I was disgusted and infuriated by this behavior. I am so grateful to finally be able to share this story about him, which clearly devastated many women's experiences at Wellesley. | Student | Tenure or tenure-track professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Wellesley College | English | I did not report | None, I believe he still teaches there | I did not feel comfortable taking his course | This is not even close to what the women he assaulted experienced, but I wasn't able to study Dostoevsky and Russian Literature in-depth because I felt so uncomfortable with the idea of taking his class. | Male | |||
1619 | 12/12/2017 19:02:04 | I am very traditionally feminine in my gender presentation which has made me an anomaly and a target, specifically of one (female) coworker in the lab. She come to stand behind me when I’m at my computer and looks down my shirt. She also periodically makes sexual comments to me (example: “the reagent you need is on that shelf, but if you try to reach for it, I’ll be able to see up your skirt” or “you’re wearing a tench coat that’s longer than your dress so I’m going to assume you’re not wearing clothes”). I’m from a more traditional religious background and I’m definitely more conservative than other people in the lab, but this makes me feel humiliated and disgusted. (Hilariously, I am actually no longer religious because I’m bisexual, but that means I feel like I need to stay in the closet or risk more harassment). | Masters and PhD student | lab manager | Other R1 | University of Illinois | Computational biology | I mentioned it to a mentor who is in administration and she seemed to be suggesting it wouldn’t go anywhere if I reported it. | None | I work from home as much as possible, but I don’t have a proper desk, so I’ve actually developed back problems/carpal tunnel that make it harder to do my job. | I feel uncomfortable and unwelcome at work. I also feel like I have to protect the other grad students and undergrads, but I’m not sure how to do this. I also feel ashamed for not standing up for myself (I was verbally and emotionally abused growing up so it’s very challenging to me to try to deal with this). I totally freeze when it happens. | It makes me less inclined to go into academia. I want an HR office where I can report stuff like this. | I haven’t reported it or even stood up for myself. The lab is small and I don’t think my advisor would understand why it’s upsetting to me. | Female | |
1620 | 12/12/2017 19:57:03 | This incident took place at the yearly American Astronomical Society's meeting. I met someone slightly more senior than myself and he bought me a beer as we discussed my work. We parted ways about 30 min later. A couple weeks later I received some letters in the mail via my university address. They all revolved around a common theme of his large penis size. | Graduate student | Postdoc | Other Research Agency | American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting | Astronomy | Not reported. | Hell will freeze over before AAS would ever punish someone for unacceptable harassing behavior. | Every year I return to AAS, I check to see if the individual's name is on the list of attendees. | I have saved all the correspondence. Just in case it is ever needed. | Male | |||
1621 | 12/12/2017 20:04:30 | I was with a group doing physics homework. Someone grabbed my pages and refused to give them back. At first it was like a funny joke, but I confronted him about it after about a minute, and then he picked me up and said he wouldn't put me down until I kissed him. I struggled for a couple moments until I gave in and kissed him. Everyone else (~6 more people) in the group stared at us during this whole incident. I was so humiliated; I grabbed my stuff and just left. | Undergraduate | Undergraduate | Other R1 | University of Colorado - Boulder | Astronomy | Not reported | There wouldn't have been any | I did drop my physics major | To this day, I greatly dislike that guy. And my supposed "friends" in the room. | Male | |||
1622 | 12/12/2017 21:32:00 | I was repeatedly sexually propositioned by someone with institutional power over me. She would not take no for an answer, but would plead. She engaged in repeated non-consensual and unwanted touching, much of it sexual. She made sexist remarks about me (I'm male) while hiring me for the job. | Grad student/adjunct | Department chair | Regional Teaching College | Philosophy | None | I report this despite the fact that I have little hope that other men who have been sexually harassed by women in the profession will step forward in serious numbers or be believed. | Female | ||||||
1623 | 12/12/2017 23:11:19 | After being encouraged to collaborate with another early career colleague in another department who had similar interests (and who I had already been in a few meetings with), this colleague suggested we get together for dinner to talk over our ideas. At that point something should have clicked--why dinner and not coffee, lunch, or even a beer after work? But I went, the dinner was fine, I went home without incident. The next time I saw him, we had chat in my office and at the end he said he had been surprised to learn I had a husband (who I had mentioned over our meal), because he thought he had felt something between us (keep in mind this guy is also married). I affirmed I was happily married and not looking for anything but a professional relationship. Later that day I got an email apologizing but also digging the hole deeper, "I thought I felt a spark between us", etc. | I was a lecturer on a permanent contract | A senior lecturer in another department | Other R1 | Geography | None because I did not report it (feels difficult to classify) | None because I did not report it. | Made me question how I interact with male colleagues--am I overly flirtatious, etc.? | Agonized over whether to tell my husband (I did) | So I later ended up working with this person on a project, but haven't been all that involved with the project. I feel I did this as part of an effort to take back control of the narrative, but have often questioned why I decided to work with this person and now feel like it was a weak choice. I wish I had cut all ties. | Male | |||
1624 | 12/13/2017 2:21:10 | parties, department, phd | single | colleagues | Other Research Agency | STEM | uneasiness when around certain people | more conscious about who I put myself near | Female | ||||||
1625 | 12/13/2017 3:12:38 | in an empty hallway outside of the professors office (who was also department head), the professor grabbed both ends of my scarf, pulled me toward him and planted a kiss on my lips with tongue. He then smirked and let me go. I ran away. This happened in 1976. That was the most overt example of male faculty abuse. | Senior in university | my department head | Regional Teaching College | University of Wisconsin La Crosse | biology | did not report it. Who would I tell? | none | I have always been suspicious of older male faculty and am very sensitive when it comes to gender issues. | It cemented my resolve to succeed and to realize how easily men can be manipulated. I also swore to myself that if it happened again I'd kick them in the gonads. | I always feel that I'm in unfair competition with men and that it's pointless to try to succeed in any administrative position dominated by males (and all have been male dominated). | Male | ||
1626 | 12/13/2017 3:20:03 | Final semester of my masters degree program, after classes had ended (during final exam week). I was majoring in music. My professor came to the final rehearsal of my grade recital. I went to his office the next day for feedback. He told me that my performance was not sufficient and that I would fail the recital, thereby not earning my degree. I had a 3.9 GPA, no grade lower than an A- in any of this professor's classes, had given performance awards by this professor, and had a full assistantship to coach others in my performance area (awarded by the same professor). When I sat down on his office sofa, in shock, to process this information, he sat next to me, placed his hand on my inner thigh, and said "but there is one way you could still pass." I stood up, left, and performed the recital. He left a message on my phone later confirming that I would not receive the degree. I did not. I never told anyone. I was in therapy for four years afterward, medicated, and hospitalized for suicidal ideation. | Graduate Student | Full professor and probably the world's leading figure in my field | Small Liberal Arts College | Music | I eventually earned a master's degree in a related field | Years of therapy, medication, and hospitalization for suicidal ideation | Male | ||||||
1627 | 12/13/2017 3:22:52 | The incidents that happened to me directly were (fortunately) milder than those experienced by many of my peers at the time or by others responding to this survey, but the cumulative effect of all these microaggressions combined with the knowledge of worse situations for my peers played a significant part in my departure from academia. I personally encountered many off-color jokes, complaints about individual "feminist" scholars or feminist approaches in general, comments on personal appearance, and the expectation that female graduate students shoulder the burden in setting up spaces and catering for events. (Graduate students in the program were responsible for setting up for most of the lectures and receptions, involving everything from moving tables and chairs to making cheese plates and setting out reception tables. Unsurprisingly, the brunt of this work fell to the female students.) My advisor, whose students were mainly young, attractive women, once jokingly referred to us as his "harem." After I had informed him of my decision to leave his institution and go elsewhere, a conversation that went relatively calmly, he later sent me a (probably drunk) email late at night with personal recriminations about my leaving and about the professors at the other institution to which I was transferring. (At no time did he address one of the main reasons for my departure -- an institutional environment openly hostile to queer students and scholars.) In general I encountered a "boys club" feeling, especially in certain departments. A different senior professor once sent an email addressed to a number of female graduate students and a junior, untenured professor, in which he had composed a poem about us; I think he intended it to be flattering, but it was definitely very weird and creepy, especially as he included a reference in one line to one student's six year old daughter, and also a reference to his genitalia. While I was at this institution at least one friend was sexually assaulted by a classmate; another friend was threatened with the loss of their stipend for being gay. | PhD student | Senior, tenured professors and senior, tenured advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Medieval History | To my knowledge, there were no consequences for anyone. | I spent several years crying a lot. | I did not see a happy future for myself in academia, and left entirely. | Male | |||||
1628 | 12/13/2017 5:03:20 | My partner (also a junior lecturer at the time) was stalked and sexually harrassed by a more senior fellow in her discipline at the college where she worked. At the time we were both on temporary contracts and the stalker/harrasser was on a permanent contract. It culminated when she broke into our house in the middle of the night; I had to force her out. After the break-in we reported her to the senior administration of the college, and they took no action. She has since been promoted; my partner and I have found jobs at another institution. | Lecturer | Senior lecturer | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Oxford | It was reported to the college, who took no action. I believe this was due to the seniority of the perpetrator. | Absolutely none. She's since been promoted. | We left that university; if I ever discovered that the perpetrator was moving to a job at the place where I currently work, I would leave. | A bad impact, of course. | Some ongoing issues with anger, contempt for my discipline, hatred towards college administrators for their collusion in harrassment and abuse. | Female | |||
1629 | 12/13/2017 5:18:51 | I was a grad student in a lab at Yale, and the PI would consistently come back from conferences, kiss me on the back of the neck while I worked at my bench, and then go over to the men to talk about the new science he had learned about at the conference | grad student | My chair and PI of the lab | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale | Genetics | did not report | none | eventually left the field in part because of this | doubted my capacity as a scientist | i completely changed disciplines and went into a woman-dominated field | sometimes it is big things like rape or stalking, but sometimes the continual erosion of day to day sexism is just as toxic | Male | |
1630 | 12/13/2017 5:30:55 | In a department where sexual harassment, race-, sex- and age-based discrimination, and highly questionable relationships between male professors and female students was rampant, what stood out was one person who complained about the situation. I was actually banned from taking a class in my discipline, in my specific subject, at a public institution and program into which I had been matriculated, owing to my complaints. I was denied employment opportunities for which I was not only qualified but the only candidate who was qualified. I am blackballed to this day in the local employment market. I became severely depressed. My advancement opportunities were severely curtailed. My entire personality changed and I have continued issues of trauma and depression now. | I was an MA candidate and graduate teaching assistant. | An assistant professor who became an associate professor. My MA advisor. | Other R1 | The University of South Florida | Art History | The University hired *its own* attorney to "investigate" the complaint, a firm that specialises in "employer-side litigation". Naturally the findings were in the university's favour. | None. | The logistic and financial situation has been exceedingly difficult. I have had to travel literally to the ends of the earth to finish my studies and get funding. I still cannot work in the Central Florida area which is where most of my friends and family are. | I became very depressed and anxious and have never recovered from the trauma. I have a difficult time trusting advisors and senior scholars even when they clearly are very well-meaning. Entirely outside of a specific mental health issue, my entire personality and outlook on life has changed. | I just graduated with my PhD and six years on some of the effects have subsided, professionally. | On the category now listed above as "gender," please change it to "sex." Women are protected as a biological category under Title IX and theoretically through the EEOC. Changing the language to obfuscate this to accommodate trends erases women and conceals harassers. We have some kooks like Laura Kipnis in art history but overwhelmingly the perpetrators in both art history and art studio are men, which is significant given the vast majority of students (and high achievers) in humanities are women. | Male | |
1631 | 12/13/2017 5:59:58 | He touched me inappropriately at the dinner table during a dinner with a faculty candidate. I confronted him the next day and told him not to ever do that again. He did not, but has spent the intervening years saying disparaging things about my work and putting down my ideas in meetings. | Assistant Professor | Senior Faculty | Other R1 | History | none | none | I am much less happy in my workplace than I should be. I am great at my job but I feel under-valued by my institution, in part because there is little support for my ideas in every meeting that includes this colleague. | I am always looking for another job-- difficult in my academic field. | Male | ||||
1632 | 12/13/2017 6:09:43 | After two major presentations to the board of trustees, at which males also presented, the VP of Academic Affairs (CAO) walked in front of the board of trustees and all in the room and learned down and gave me a big hug without asking and said great job sweetie. This same response was not given to the men who presented at the very same meeting. | Associate Professor and Chair of Accreditation Steering Committee | Chief Academic Officer - VP of Academic Affairs | Other Type of School | Community College | Biology | After five similar complaints, the issue was discussed with the harasser by the president and it did not happen to me again, but did to others. I personally was told, even though I said I was uncomfortable going to this gentleman to discuss what happened, that if it happened again, I should first go directly to the harasser. | none | I did not apply for positions that would have additional contact with this individual. | mild to moderate, mostly was offended professionally. | I have become a stronger advocate for this issue at my institution. | Male | ||
1633 | 12/13/2017 6:33:59 | retaliation for reporting student complaints under Title IX | department chair | junior colleague | Other Type of School | ongoing investigation | ongoing investigation | The case damaged my reputation because the person who was under investigation for Title IX complaints circulated pernicious allegations about me within my department. Because I wanted to protect the confidentiality of the student complaints and to uphold the procedural integrity of the investigation, I was unable to effectively respond or counter the allegations. In essence, I just had to "take it" for the greater good. We will see if that greater good ever comes. I was incredibly disappointed in colleagues who knew or should have known the context (a pattern of student complaints about predatory behavior) in which this person was making allegations against me. My perspective is that it was a clear case of retaliation. | This experience has been traumatic. Having to deal with this pattern of complaints and predatory behavior for years made much of my professional life hell. Obviously, these traumatic work experiences have bled into my personal life. | The experience has utterly disillusioned me. I used to think I might consider exploring opportunities to work at the level of a dean. After this experience, I can't imagine working at any level of administration in a context when the rules and culture have seemed stacked (at least historically) in favor of predators. Whatever happens with the outcome of the case, the experience has fundamentally altered my ability to work productively and constructively in my department. I have lost respect for colleagues. | Male | ||||
1634 | 12/13/2017 6:44:29 | My dissertation advisor made suggestive comments, engaged in excessive physical “social contact” and stated “you’ll be called ‘doctor ‘ WHEN I SAY you’ll be called doctor and not 5 minutes sooner”. When I expressed concerns about my ability to continue indefinitely due to financial constraints I was told “ with you it’s a Bloomingdales argument...” | ABD | Director of my program as well as my advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Rochester | Psychology | Not reported | NONE | I abandoned my doctoral studies | Shame/fear | Career trajectory changed dramatically. And there are serious differences between the options open to a psych PhD vs a psych MA | Male | ||
1635 | 12/13/2017 6:48:51 | In the early 1980's I was an intern at the University of Michigan counseling center. A senior psychologist at the Center, with whom I had only marginal contact, asked if I wanted to go see a big movie that had just come out. I was surprised that he would ask me, but assumed it was just two colleagues going to see a movie we were both interested in, and so I said yes. After the movie, he asked if I wanted to have a glass of wine and talk about what we had seen. I said yes, and we went to his place. After pouring the wine, he suggested that it was time for us to have sex. I said that I was uncomfortable with that, and didn't want to have sex. He berated me for being a "tease." He said that I shouldn't have agreed to come to his place if I didn't want to have sex. And then he pointed to his crotch and said, "What am I supposed to do about that?" And he unzipped his pants and masturbated in front of me while I sat, frozen, on the couch. I don't remember much of anything after he began masturbating. I was very frightened that my refusal of his advances would somehow be turned against me in my internship in the Counseling Center--especially since he had called me a tease. We didn't have any further interactions after that night that I can recall. | Graduate student | Full time staff, but not my direct supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Michigan | I did not report | He is still employed at that institution | No direct impact, other than to make me unwilling to ever engage in social activity with a male colleague. | It's an incident I haven't successfully shaken off. | Male | ||||
1636 | 12/13/2017 7:14:13 | Harassment coupled with severe slander and defamation over several years. I started a course in History at UCL and the lecturer in question seemed like a very nice and dedicated individual whom I greatly respected and admired. He started staring at me (pretty much systematic behaviour), being rude to me, spying on me and other weirdo and inappropriate behaviour. When I started questioning his behaviour and eventually complained, he simply passed me off as crazy (on the basis of my medical condition- I technically suffer from depression) while persisting with his behaviour. | Graduate student | Senior Lecturer | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University College London, London, UK | History | Total collusion the university with the lecturer. The department and university did everything they possibly could to silence me; from the head of the department telling me that the lecturer in question was 'an asset to the department', threatening me and trying to intimidate me to the 'student mediator' doing her best to diminish my allegations and HR/the university doing everything possible not to enforce their own regulation (or the law), keep a lid on things, and sweep everything under the carpet. Nothing whatsoever happened to the lecturer despite his unlawful behaviour. | He actually received a nice promotion. To my new university. And my current department (UCL was fully aware of where I was now a doctoral student but I trust they did not pass on my complaint on to my new university). | I was vilified, ostracized, slandered by the lecturer and his lecturer friends. I am pretty sure I am unemployable in many parts of the UK now. | Personal devastation at realizing that people could do whatever they wanted to me and no one would move a finger and that when I dared to stand up for myself, it was I who was attacked, denigrated, slandered and vilified. | No longer sure I want to join academic world; disillusionment with academic/university world supposedly filled with left-leaning progressive individuals most of whom in reality are all friends who help each other out and cover for each other. | Male | ||
1637 | 12/13/2017 7:24:35 | 2006. I was at a get-together in the hotel room of a prominent scholar in my field after a conference. As a graduate student, I kept my own drinking to a minimum around colleagues. By the time I had arrived at this party, it was clear that just about everyone had had one too many. I was chatting with my advisor's inebriated partner when she reached out and rubbed my groin. I felt humiliated and feared who might have seen it, so I rushed out into the hallway. She tried to apologize, and when I wasn't having any of it, she said that if I reported it, no one would believe me and she would sabotage me with her husband. This is literally the first time, I'm writing about this. | Graduate student | Advisor's partner | Other R1 | University of Texas | English | None, didn't report | None, didn't report | Immense. I noticed shortly after that my advisor, seemingly from nowhere, became much less supportive, even hostile at times, which always made me wonder if he had found out. | Even under the best circumstances, graduate school can be mentally exhausting. Not being able to trust anyone or seek support compounded that. | I managed to finish my program, but the utter lack of support I had likely contributed to my not landing in academia. | Female | ||
1638 | 12/13/2017 7:31:10 | I was at first sexually harassed by a colleague and friend. He was in a more senior position than mine and he constantly told me that he wanted to date me, thought I was hot etc. I had constantly explained he was just my friend. I had no other friends-- i had just moved to the university from western Canada and he had become my only friend. I continued to try to maintain a friendship because he was a work colleague but i stopped spending time with him. Finally I caved to his requests to spend time together. He knew I was struggling with studying for classes so he offered to help me study and explain some concepts to me. That night he sexually assaulted me in my residence when I fell asleep when I was studying (He was there to help me study as he had done similar grad school work). I had said no several times but he just still did it. After he got off me I walked straight into the bathroom and turned on the shower and started sobbing. He just left the apartment without saying a word. I tried to make sense of what he had done. Tried to make it ok for me. So I flirted with him and it drove him crazy. but I never ever let him touch me again. I am ashamed of all of that. I wasn't sleeping or eating and I knew something was wrong. I had a grad student in my class who worked with survivors. She said something in class one day and It just clicked that I should ask her. So I asked her to go for coffee. I told her what had happened but she had to say to me "how many times did you say no?" And I explained that It was 4 or 5 times. And then she asked "How many times do you thinj you should have to say no?" That is when I finally understood. And that was also when I understood that when I was 14, my first boyfriend also sexually assaulted me. I had always just said he had "forced me." But it then made sense why I wouldn't recognize someone not respecting my boundaries. That was weeks later that I figured out what had happened to me. I hadn't understood what coercion meant. He called me and I asked him how many times I had said no. And he acknowledged that I had said it several times. I didn't record him unfortunately. I tried to hold him accountable with the university for sexual harassment. But he had never written any of his comments in emails. And I included the sexual assault in my testimony. But when they found out that I flirted with him after the assault, then they turned down my case. I appealed to the university president and he also turned it down. I left grad school. I couldn't work with that man. I couldn't sit through staff meetings looking at him. My work on campus (it was an assistantship) was part of our grad studies. I couldn't afford grad school without the job. I was suicidal. But one professor stood up for me. He got me a new assistanceship in another part of campus and convinced me to return to grad school. I managed to finish my second year and graduate. I wrote an article in our graduate journal about survivorship. | Grad student and part time employee in residence (a grad assistantship) | Full time employee in residence | Other R1 | University of Vermont | Higher Education Adminstration | They put him on a paid leave then let him return to work when they didn't find merit in my testimony | Paid leave | I ended up leaving residence life work for good. I managed to graduate though I wouldn't say I remember much from that first year. A lot of my colleagues didn't like me I think because I was struggling so much that I didn't seem dedicated. | I became suicidal. Who wouldn't? | Ironically I was targeted by a professor at the University of British Columbia later when i was a full time staff member. I was one of several staff members who he targeted to "help him with a lab." Turned out he was trying to videotape us changing our clothes so he could masturbate to the images. Because of my previous experience Idecided (unlike all the other targeted victims) to join the only other colleague who would do somethint about it and we made them.charge him criminally. The police hadnt wanted to charge him despite his numerous attempts to videotape people. The university did nothing to support us. Laughingly they recommended thst i speak to a counsellor on campus-- she was someone i worked with! We won the case and he has a criminal record went on probation and lost his job. He was only a couple years from getting his pension which he is now enjoying profusely. So really not much consequence for him... We on the other hand both had to leave that department. She got fired for talking openly about the incident. I left for another job because I felt so uncomfortable. We had sat through staff meetings listening to faculty talk about how much they would miss their good colleague!!! Feel free to look up that situation-- there's a good article on the CBC. The university did a damn fine cover up-- never was it mentioned that he actually targeted staff members. | Thanks for doing this. I never talk about what happened at uvm. And even though the situation at ubc I know I had no fault in, I really feel embarrassed by it and I also felt somehow that there must be something about me that makes these men target me. I mean who has this type of thing happen twice? I'm.hoping your stats will tell me that in fact there's way more women like me. That it has nothing to do with me. And that it's about higher ed and these men. Because I can't quite believe that at this point. But I want to. | Male | |
1639 | 12/13/2017 7:40:10 | Fall 2013. At a major intl conference, I (a first year TT Asst Prof) and a first-year graduate student (this was her *first* conference) were unexpectedly invited to go to a casual dinner with the luminaries (all male) of this subfield. One asked me about my research and barely let me get in a sentence before moving closer and telling me that "if we spent a little bit more time together," he could make sure that my book was published. He put his arm around my shoulder and I shrugged it off and said, "I don't know about that." After the dinner, another scholar asked me and the grad student to come back to his room for a bottle of wine. I knew this was a bad idea and tried to indicate it to the grad student, but she was already intoxicated and wanted to go, so I was worried for her and said we'd come for one drink. Unsurprisingly, he wanted us to sit on the bed and literally rubbed the spot next to him and asked questions like, "how far do you want to go in this field?" He continued to try to push alcohol on the grad student, telling her "we could all have more fun." She was *very* drunk. He asked us if we wanted to dance. She was drunk enough that I was able to essentially drag her to her room after awhile and he was getting angry: "we didn't even finish this bottle of wine. I could've invited other people to come up here and talk about our research, but now it's too late." The next day at the conference, he would not look in our directions and refused to call on me for a question on a panel, even once I was the only one left. He asked the conference bus back to the hotel to leave without us. I haven't seen him since. | 1st year TT w/ a first-year PhD student | Top 5 scholars in subfield | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | conference | English | Didn't bother to report—he is the President of the organization that hosted the conference. | Nothing huge. I am no longer a member of that scholarly organization and do not attend their conferences. I now make an effort at conferences to seek out young women to attempt to keep them from being targeted by senior men, even though it would be more advantageous to my career to network almost exclusively with later career scholars. | I recognized this grad student's vulnerability to a predator because I had experienced so many things like this as a grad student myself. It brought up a lot of anger for me about what it took to get a PhD and TT job. | Male | ||||
1640 | 12/13/2017 7:43:59 | I was stalked (followed, stared at, etc.) and made to feel uncomfortable even in the Library, which was "my space" by two different adjunct faculty member at two different times. The women who worked for me and several female students also complained about the same problem with them and several of the female adjunct faculty members also complained to me about them. I accidentally discovered that one of them was was on probation in another state for sexually assaulting a student. The second one even followed me around a staff Christmas party, including following me to the bathroom. I reported the behavior of both to the Dean. The one who was on probation, I originally reported to the Assistant Dean because the Dean was away. | Librarian | Adjunct Faculty | Other Type of School | Warren County Community College (NJ) | Library Science | The first one (on probation) was spoken to the Assistant Dean, who had promised me anonymity with my complaint. The Asst Dean revealed that I was the one who complained and gave the adjunct a contract for another term, even though he had told me that he would NOT bring him back again. When discussing the problem with the the Asst Dean admitted that he was aware of the problem at the other college, but didn't think it would happen again. I pointed out that it already was happening. Asst Dean promised to talk to him. I had to put up with it for another semester. (This Asst Dean was pretty much useless when it came to protecting anyone.) When I realized the stalker was back, I complained to the Dean who assured me that he would keep a close eye on things, promised he would not be back, and banned him from the Library. The Dean DID keep his promises. When the second one followed me around the Christmas party, I made a beeline for the Dean and his wife (Same Dean as above) and explained what was happening. Both of them could see that I was very upset and the Dean was furious with the stalker. The Dean arranged for someone I trusted to walk me to my car (I was ready to leave anyway) while he went to talk informally with the stalker. Stalker #2 also never returned to campus. That Dean was fabulous at looking after his staff! | Initially, the Assistant Dean continued to give them new contracts for another semester despite promises to full-time staff to not rehire the stalkers. Neither stalker was rehired once the complaint was given directly to the Dean of Academics. | Initially, increased stalking from the first one because he was told I complained. But generally, my career remained on course because of the Dean of Academics. When that Dean left for another position, I chose to start looking too, and eventually left for another position. | Huge stress levels because of the worry for myself AND for my staff, students, and other women on campus; constantly looking over my shoulder to see if I'm being followed | When I changed jobs, I went to another state. Fortunately, I did not live in the state where the stalking happened so it didn't follow me home. It did follow me mentally though. I still find myself wondering if I am being followed or questioning compliments from male co-workers. Since I now live very close to work, I am careful of how much I say about where I live. | As a related comment, I can only say that I am glad that the next president of the college was not yet there when these incidents happened. Had he been there, I doubt that much would have been done, since he sexually harassed a number of women (& one of them sued). All of the women, that I was aware of the president harassing left the college to pursue other careers. I was subjected to workplace harassment by him and that also contributed to my decision to seek other employment. | Male | |
1641 | 12/13/2017 7:54:32 | I was stalked by a male student. He wrote papers about romantic relationships between professors and students and wrote me several emails complimenting me personally which had nothing to do with the work at hand and broke all professional boundaries. He tried to walk me to my car at night (I was teaching a night class at the time.) I asked him to stop repeatedly and he didn't until I told him I would report it if he didn't stop. | Adjunct | Full-time student | Regional Teaching College | [redacted] Community College | English | redacted | None | None that is visible | Fearfulness about what to wear and how to act while teaching or walking around a campus. Suspicion of male-initiated contact via email or in person. PTSD and OCD behaviors when staying alone at home. | I can be extremely self-conscious when I meet in offices with male students and male professors who have confided in me too many times about personal life matters and I am suspicious when male students or professors try to maintain contact outside of class. | Male | ||
1642 | 12/13/2017 8:07:39 | A male professor who was mentoring me began meeting with me at a local coffee shop to help me with graduate school applications. The conversations slowly moved to topics more and more personal until I found myself spending an hour listening to personal stories and details about his family and offering advice. Although these conversations began to make me feel uncomfortable, I continued meeting him once a month in order to get help with my application to graduate school. I was comforted by the fact that his wife knew about our meetings and she was also helping edit my statement of purpose, but I never met her or saw them together. I felt forced to hug him goodbye due to the personal nature of the conversations even though I didn't want to. He continued emailing me personal details about his family life and personal life, asking for advice about a potential extramarital relationship that had been developing at a different campus since he left his old position. The whole thing brought back creepy memories and I adamantly advised him against pursuing it. I suspect that the woman involved might have also been made to feel very uncomfortable. | Independent Scholar | Full-time professor | R2 | Florida State University | English | None | None | I am overly cautious about developing friendships with male colleagues because my offer of platonic friendship is often seen as an opportunity for a sexual relationship. It is as if any friendly contact is perceived as potentially sexual, which it is not. There is no reason for anyone of any gender identity to believe my friendship has sexual undertones, but I'm very cautious about developing friendships with male colleagues who seem to always think "more" is a possibility. | Diminished self-worth and low self-esteem because I was forced into a personal friendship while trying to get strictly professional guidance. I experience a general and pervasive feeling of being disempowered in all professional interactions with men (especially male advisers) in their office hours and feel exploited when the conversation turns toward personal matters. | Trust issues, basically, especially when it comes to male advisers. | Male | ||
1643 | 12/13/2017 8:12:31 | Our institution/dept was one of the bastions of queer studies and a lot of shady stuff happened with that as an alibi. Here's just one example. A tenured faculty member took graduate students out for drinks on the last day of class. He bought rounds and rounds of shots and pressured everyone to drink them. PRESSURED. My friend and I were in our first semesters of the PhD and he said that this wild overdrinking is how academia works. (Sort of right, really.) I had never been that drunk before. As the night wore on, he came up with the idea that she and I should kiss in order to get the one straight guy among us turned on. He presented this as some kind of radical act. The prof got other grad students egging us on. After a bit, we did. He made a big deal about how mesmerized the straight man was and "probably so hard right now." That was over a decade ago and I still feel nauseated and creepy about the fact that I went along with it. | graduate student | tenured (and beloved) professor | Other R1 | Felt guilty and too humiliated to report. | I came to find out that this was very typical behavior for him and for a lot of other people in his orbit. I also found out that a lot of straight women and gay men in the department cheered him on and loved these kinds of stories. Again, people acted like he was some kind of sex radical. | He was renowned for his parties and lots of professional connections were made there. I was afraid to go. | As a queer woman, I was horrified that my friend's first kiss with a woman was under those circumstances. I was horrified that I performed a kind of pseudo-queerness that I ordinarily find offensive. It made me feel shame about my sexuality that I hadn't felt in years—maybe ever. | Male | |||||
1644 | 12/13/2017 8:15:20 | An adviser would often tell me that I was special and unlike the other students, looking at me with -- for lack of a better word -- a "knowing" glance and acting like I belonged at the school as a PhD student, not as a Master's student. While this was perhaps meant well, it was hard to tell because he was sitting so close to me when he said these things that it made me feel really uncomfortable. He also made personal comments about my person and my appearance that made me uncomfortable. His feedback was always very positive and encouraging, for which I am grateful, but I wondered if I was getting "special treatment" rather than a professional engagement with my ideas. I stopped going to his office hours and tried to avoid direct contact for fear he might try to hug me. | Full-time graduate student | Full-time professor | Other R1 | The Graduate Center, CUNY | Liberal Studies | None because it was unreported | None | None | Fear of running into this person on campus or at a conference. Constant alertness and anxiety. | I now have a female adviser. | Male | ||
1645 | 12/13/2017 8:15:44 | It was widely known that a senior, tenured professor in my department would pursue new graduate students. While I was his graduate assistant, said professor had a (consensual, but since he was on all the fellowship committees, etc., still not really OK) relationship with one of my friends. As a new graduate student I did not know that this was his MO, and he had asked my friend to keep it a secret, so it was a weird and stressful year, compounded by him making inappropriate comments throughout the year. At the department holiday department, he and another one of my professors who I was chatting with started to talk about how hot they think Asian women are literally over my head (as an aside: I am short, and while it normally is not sexual harassment, men often start to talk about something else literally over my head instead of shifting positions to directly speak to each other when I'm in a group, and it is infuriating). Later on I found out that this happened basically every year or two. | Graduate Student | Tenured Full Professor | Other R1 | History | Male | ||||||||
1646 | 12/13/2017 8:22:14 | I had an internship at National History Day, which was run by two female faculty members but had other staff. I usually used the computer in the main office, as I was generally not there when the administrative assistant was. One day they had me use the computer in the office of a male colleague, who was not in the office that morning. On his computer, every time I started to type in a web address, it auto-filled with a porn site. It did not matter what letter I put in, a LIST of porn sites would come up. Porn pop-ups also kept coming up. I was supposed to be finding open source photographs for teaching materials, but it was pretty impossible. The guy came in while I was finishing up to grab something, and I was mortified. He saw that I was on the computer but did not appear bothered by it. | Undergraduate | Full-time at internship (but not faculty adviser) | Other R1 | History | It made me not want to continue the internship and caused stress - I was an undergraduate and afraid to bring it up, but I also did not want to have to interact with this person or use his computer again. | Male | |||||||
1647 | 12/13/2017 8:41:54 | When I was a young new faulty member my supervisor destroyed all boundaries between us, began massaging my shoulders in the office, became increasingly demanding of my time, monoplized my office space, denegrated my appearance, and ultimately took his penis out of his pants and asked me to suck on it as I sat in my office chair. Later, in the course of a professional disagreement, he reached across a desk and slapped me "upside the head" for making a sarcastic comment. | untenured subordinate | my direct supervisor | Regional Teaching College | Library | When I warned another colleague away from him she came to me for advice after he began harassing her. We both filed official complaints with the university, mine was dismissed as not timely (i.e. too old) but hers was investigated. So many women came forward to report similar behavior from the perp that they ultimately stopped taking complaints on the guy. He was put on leave, and paid to resign. I think he got a year's salary as his settlement package. The entire thing took over 2 years to resolve. | he was found responsible, and resigned an hour before the faculty review panel was set to meet. | my confidence was destroyed, many relationships in the organization were damaged, a shroud of silence fell on the entire organization and many people felt frightened since they did not know why the perp had left. Upper administration changed their opinion of me to that of a whiner and someone to avoid. | I was on antidepressants for 4 years, in therapy for a year. I considered and applied for other positions. It was the single most stressful experience of my career. | I would still not suggest that anyone in my institution use the procedures in place to report harassment. The path to resolution was Byzantine and the staff charged with investigating the issue were incompetent. One male was charged with investigating every single accusation on a campus that has 2000+ faculty and probably 3000 staff. | Male | |||
1648 | 12/13/2017 8:52:56 | I was taking a course in my major. Several women in class had endured hugs, "goosings", sexual comments, and innuendos from the professor, in full view of classmates; others treated it as just in fun, but many were uncomfortable. He also had a collection of suggestive pet names for some of us. He grabbed me hard once, and shook me to illustrate 'passion' in a reading passage. At least once a week he touched or made a sexual comment to one of the women. The final straw was when I was walking to class, holding hands with a boyfriend, D. The professor came up behind us, reached around me from the side, grabbed my breast and then squeezed my waist. He kept walking, D. and I stopped in shock. I am still embarrassed to admit that it was D. and not I who insisted we go to the dean of students immediately. | Undergraduate, B.A. program | Professor in the department for my major, and faculty advisor | Other R1 | Foreign Languages | When we met with the Dean of students - a priest - he treated the situation very seriously. He listened to me about the immediate incident and also what had been happening in class. The next day he invited me and D. to his office, with the professor attending. The dean asked the professor to explain his actions; he was crying, nervous, and commented that he was from a different culture, and it was a misunderstanding, and any disrespect was unintentional. He apologized and received a warning, and my request to be reassigned to a different professor was granted. The dean then confirmed to me that a written notice would be put in the professor's file. | He did not receive tenure the following year, although I cannot say it was specifically on account of this incident. I am certain there were others. Today he is still a professor, at a college in the same city. | I continued in the major, but took my courses with female instructors when possible | At the time it upset me greatly, but I did not seek counseling. I was more disturbed at my lack of follow through afterwards, that D. was more proactive in reporting the incident. Over time, it has made me a more assertive woman when I encountered similar situations later on in my career. | Little impact | Male | |||
1649 | 12/13/2017 8:56:52 | My good friend was a physics major at a state university in California which was quite rare in the 1980's. She was doing undergrad research in the lab of the Physics chair. Chair began touching my friend casually from the day she started working in his lab. He spent more and more time in the lab that coincided with her hours. Within a couple of months, Chair was physically trapping my friend behind lab benches and in corners. He continually made sexually suggestive comments to her. The touching advanced to 'accidental' brushes against her breasts and laying his hand on her behind. I encouraged my friend to go to the dean of physical sciences. She did. Thus began a humiliating experience with the male dean insisting that she bring in witnesses to the abuse. She did. Every one of the other students and the lab assistant were male. They witnessed many of these incidents and never interceded. Still, they did support her claims that Chair did single out my friend and most had seen him touch her inappropriately. The dean had no choice but to discipline Chair and the decision was to remove him as chair of the physics department. The dean told my friend she should avoid Chair. She had already withdrawn from working in the lab. In fact, there was no way for her to avoid Chair since he taught all of the upper level courses she needed to complete her degree. My friend changed her major to accounting and shut the door on her love of physical science. Because a man insisted on viewing a female student as a sex object, we lost a budding female physicist. We still talk about what could have been. My friend carries a great sadness. | undergraduate | Dept Chair and lab PI | Other Type of School | California State University, Long Beach | Physics | Removed perpetrator from department chair position | None. I continued in science at that university for 4 more years (including MS). There were rumors about his behavior, but career-wise, no impact. | My friend left the sciences completely. | It's been 40 years and she still regrets the loss of her potential life in physics. | Accounting as a career was dismal for my friend. She's retired now and never stopped regretting the loss. | Male | ||
1650 | 12/13/2017 8:59:51 | I was a newly hired female administrator with many years of successful administrative experience at other universities before coming to this branch campus in fall 2015. In my first few weeks, female staff and faculty flooded into my office to complain about sexual harassment. One male faculty member in particular was named but there was a small pocket of his cronies who engaged in inappropriate sexual, intimidating, and threatening comments. I reported this to HR (as did another female administrator) and over the next 2 months, several females were interviewed about their experiences. By the end of my first semester, I was able to have the main harasser reassigned to the main campus but HR said his behavior wasn’t sexual harassment. His group of cronies immediately began their campaign to drive me out of my position. In spring semester, one of male faculty was overheard by a male student referring to me as a “stupid cunt”. It was reported by myself and the male student to HR but they refused to take any action; HR’s explanation was that HR would be embroiled with the union and the harasser would claim freedom of speech. This same harasser screamed at me during a faculty meeting saying that he had more respect for rapists in prison than he did for me. During my first year, two IT department staffer (males) on this branch campus hacked my emails and confidential files supplying information to the harassers. After 7 months of my insistence that hacking was occurring, the main campus IT department was able to track the branch campus IT hackers; one was arrested and the other was fired. The university refused to investigate who was receiving the information and hacked emails/files from the staffers, but the suspicion was the faculty harassers. After 1 year, I stepped down from my position and quit (retired). The university refused to address the ongoing harassment and I feel very sorry for the females who are unable to leave and must exist in that environment. It would be some small comfort if I could believe that the university wasn’t aware of the environment, but many female administrators are aware and, for whatever reason, will have to live with their refusal to root out the harassers. My experiences sound bizarre and if I hadn’t lived it, I wouldn’t believe it. | Dean, Tenured full professor | Nontenured faculty and staff | Other R1 | Florida State University Panama City | Art Education | No institutional response to address the environment of harassment | Reassignment of one faculty harasser, arrest of one staff harasser, firing of one staff harasser | Resigned and retired | High degree of stress that resulted in back pain (verified by my doctor) and, ultimately, surgery. | Early retirement resulting in a diminished retirement portfolio. | Male | ||
1651 | 12/13/2017 9:00:36 | An employee stared at a fellow employee's breasts and touched her on the back. | I was the supervisor of the supervisor of the employees involved | subordinated | Other R1 | I submitted a report to in house counsel. Counsel recommended no action even tough the perpetrator admitted to the act. I disagreed. | Perpetrator suspended for two days over the objection of university counsel. I insisted on some action be taken. | I was the supervisor. I am disgusted with university counsel and do not value their advice | deep frustration as a supervisor, unable to provide a safe work environment | n/a | The victim quit employment at the institution. The perpetrator died a year later of a heart attack. | Male | |||
1652 | 12/13/2017 9:08:39 | A sustained attempt over four years to carry on an affair. | Doctoral student and a teaching and editorial assistant in the department | Department chair and director of my dissertation. Roman Catholic priest. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Theology | Some privately-voiced support from several other professors in the all-male department. No institutional support. | The harasser's reputation may have been slightly diminished but he continued in his position. He had already been known for some years as an active alcoholic and a womanizer, and the department had taken no steps to intervene. He continued as full professor to retirement and was the recipient of several Festschriften written in his honor. He died at age 70. | No impact structurally -- I achieved tenure at an institution in a different country. But my motivation, energy and initiative to pursue groundbreaking research diminished within two years after the doctorate. My publications have been sufficient to maintain a modest research profile, but I have not been able to live up to my original potential as a researcher. It is like a type of long-term depression. I could have applied for promotion to full professor ten years ago but I did not. | See above. I struggle even now with low energy and sometimes cloudy thinking. I was on anti-depressants for a number of years. During the time period of the harassment I lost a good deal of weight, had trouble sleeping, cried easily and was, I think now, in a more serious depression. But I told very few people what was going on because of a sense of shame, and the fear that I would lose everything I had worked for. I never sought treatment. | In the past twenty years I have become even more active than before in the effort to secure full human rights for women in the Roman Catholic Church, including ordination. At my present institution I served a term as president of the professors' union, and three rounds as chief negotiator in contract bargaining. The anger has given me energy to do the work of justice. | Male | |||
1653 | 12/13/2017 9:26:34 | Female faculty member would have discussions about sexual matters in her area. Was very graphic and detailed in her words and I asked her to stop. As the only male in the department it made me very uncomfortable. After a few months she came into my office and closed the door saying there were "issues" we had to discuss. She then began to make suggestions of a sexual nature. I asked her to leave and she didn't. I got up opened my door and walked out. After that I made sure all contact and conversations were in an open area with other witnesses. Shortly after that she began interfering with my work and stated that she could get me fired. After a few months I was called into my bosses office and notified that I was "harassing" the employee. I tried to defend myself but I was told I could not gather any evidence nor present any witnesses and that I needed to stop my "aggressive male tendencies". After a few weeks the same women filed another complaint, even though I hadn't been in contact with her during the period of time. She alleged I was still harassing her and that I was saying things about her to other people. She told people that I had come on to her and that she refused my advances. After being released I learned that the same accusations had been made against at least one other employee by this person. She also complained about other people harassing her in non-sexual ways. | Staff | Faculty | Other Type of School | Southern State Community College | Prefer not to say | Refused to investigate. Told me that my harasser had complained first so I had to be guilty. Told me I was a male and therefore I had to be the aggressor. | None | Due to the allegations and the rumors I had to wait almost six years before being employed in my field again. | Devastating. I felt like a failure because I couldn't support my family. What was worse is I had done nothing wrong. I withdrew from life in many ways. If I encountered one of my former colleagues they treated me differently and tried to end the conversation quickly as if they were tainted by my presence. | It has made a significant difference in how much I trust people. I am much more suspicious of compliments. I am less open about who I am. I no longer have real friendships with anyone other than my wife and children. Not because I don't want to, but because I don't feel I can trust people nor can I trust the system. | Female | ||
1654 | 12/13/2017 9:34:46 | My professor/mentor/thesis advisor called me one afternoon and told me that he was attracted to me. He was married -- to a former student. I told him that nothing could happen between us, but over the ensuing months he pursued me. I admired him and was flattered by his attention, and I eventually acquiesced. We had a brief love affair. When I tried to end it, he stalked me, threatened suicide, and used the pretense of an 'Independent Study' with my best friend (also a philosophy major) to get her drunk and solicit information from her about me. He eventually ended up sleeping with that friend, as well. | undergraduate student | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Linfield College | Philosophy | I eventually reported the relationship. An investigation ensued and was dropped. I was not notified of their conclusion. No one contacted me after I made the initial report. I heard from friends that the (female) Human Resources director gossiped about me to other students and staff, referring to me as "heartless" and explaining that the professor "had just been in love." | None | As soon as he professed his affection, I stopped enrolling in classes with him, even though he was the only professor on campus who dealt with the kind of philosophy I was interested in. His stalking became so extreme that I moved to another city and commuted several hours to and from campus. Also, I left the field. I couldn't read philosophy without feeling tainted by his presence. And because he had been my mentor and the one who encouraged my intellectual ambition, I began to wonder whether his praise had stemmed from romantic feelings rather than an honest assessment of my abilities. | Profound. Alcoholism, drugs, self-loathing, depression. | I left the field and spent roughly a year in a self-destructive state. | Male | ||
1655 | 12/13/2017 9:43:58 | I am a black queer woman. Straight out of my PhD program, at my first job (an English department) I was assigned a faculty mentor who was an older tenured white straight man in the department. We had a mutual friend so I thought that was perhaps why we were paired. Two months into the job, we went to attend a film screening of our mutual friend. He drove us to the train station an hour away. He was late picking me up and when he arrived he smelled like alcohol. He told me he had had a late night partying celebrating the release of his most recent book. As we drove he behaved erratically, shouting about how beautiful the sky and trees were, sometimes not staying in the lane on the road. It became clear to me he was more than drunk, likely under the influence of another drug. Multiple times he asked me personal questions about my status as single, what bars I go to, etc. Three times he reached over and touched my thigh in the car. At one point he told me it must be hard to be a single woman at the bar because when he goes to the bar as a single man, people don't assume he's there to get laid. I was texting a fellow black woman colleague in the department about it the entire time, half laughing half scared. We parted ways once we got to the location of the film screening, but met up again at the after party. He was drinking and kept trying to get me and my friend (another black queer woman) to dance with him, grabbing and kissing our hands and pulling on our arms. My friend disclosed to me that she had met him a few times before and recalled him getting in a fight with her girlfriend at a birthday party because he would not back off aggressively flirting with her. I slept at my friend's place and traveled back with my mentor the next day. He was sober and acted like nothing strange had occurred. He even asked me some of the same professional questions he asked the day before, as if he had no memory of asking me before. At work the next week, the black woman colleague I had texted told me she was sorry, she had heard he had an alcohol and maybe drug problem before, but thought it was pure rumor. My mentor stopped speaking to me entirely, never scheduling any other meetings nor a teaching observation for me that semester (nor the following one). After a few weeks of feeling panicked about running into him and not sure who I could trust I told the director of diversity and inclusion (another black woman). She was upset and said that my department should never assigned me to him as a mentee because there was a history of known problems with him. She encouraged me to tell my chair, but I was too scared. I was in my first semester and didn’t know who was loyal to this person, who I could trust. After no interaction (and no mentoring) with him for the rest of my first year, the chair e-mailed us both asking for a report from my mentor about our meetings and my progress in the first year. I agreed to meet my mentor for the first time in over seven months on campus during the day so I could give him some information on what I had been doing for his mentor report. He no-showed to the meeting, e-mailing after to say he had confused the time. He asked me to simply e-mail him my CV and he would write a report from that. At that time, we had just elected a new incoming chair who was a black man. I met with him shortly after this and told him in cautioned, vague terms that I had had this interaction in which he seems intoxicated or otherwise under the influence and then he stopped speaking to me or mentoring me the rest of the year. I did not mention the sexual nature of parts of that interaction. The incoming chair listened to my story and then said “So that’s still a problem then. I didn’t know.” He wouldn’t say more, but promised to assign me a new mentor. No one followed up with me or reported what occurred to HR. The following year I tweeted at a student protest and received online racial and sexual harassment, including hate mail sent to my campus mail. My department and university provided little assistance or support. I went on the market the next year and have since left that university. They did not do an exit interview to find out why I was leaving even though I was a diversity hire and my former department has a record of losing the majority of the faculty of color it hires. My former mentor has been promoted to full professor. | Brand new assistant professor | Associate professor in my department and assigned new faculty mentor | Other R1 | University at Albany, SUNY | English (at the time), now Gender and Women's Studies | I was re-assigned to a new faculty mentor | None | Delayed research | Extreme anxiety and paranoia within my department, eventually needed therapy | I left the university and made the choice to avoid English departments as much as possible | I don't want my name published now, but would be willing to go public if there are others reporting this person (***) or this department or school | Male | |
1656 | 12/13/2017 10:13:17 | As a junior faculty member, I was always more or less ordered by the men to do things like take notes, order refreshments, reserve spaces for events --in other words, everything they considered "female" grunt work. When I became chair, the outgoing/previous chair (in response to a decision he was less than happy about) told me outright that he had only supported me because he had assumed that he would still run the department and I would just do all the reports and paperwork. After I became dean and the department went back to male leadership, there were two male faculty members (both married), including the chair, blatantly having sexual relationships with grad students: one ended up raping a student while she was knocked out on meds, leaving her pregnant. Already emotionally fragile, she terminated and then spent time in a psych facility trying to deal with the issues. The women themselves would not come forward because of the power pressure, but their peers came forward, both to voice their concerns and to complain about their perceptions of preferential treatment in the grad program. Both men ultimately felt that these relationships were "justifiable" or "ethical" because they ended up marrying their grad students, the most fragile of whom (the one who had been raped) gave up her graduate education, entered a marriage full of emotional and physical abuse, became a stereotypical version of the "barefoot and pregnant" cliche, and only recently divorced her husband (who, no surprise! was fooling around with grad students). Neither of those faculty members are still employed here, but it took forever to get a policy in place that addressed faculty/student relationship issues. On a less sexually charged front, it is still frustrating to feel virtually "voiceless" among otherwise decent men who are not even intentionally sexist (women can come up with a great idea and nobody "hears" it until a man says the same thing). | From new Assistant Professor, through tenured Full Professor, Chair and Dean | Usually more senior, tenured professors, but also peers. | Regional Teaching College | Languages and Literature | Eventually policies were put into place about faculty/student relationships. | No longer here, but that is unrelated to this behavior. | I am a stronger advocate for women facing similar situations, but that sometimes earns negative anonymous administrative evaluations from men who feel threatened by support given to women. | Before I became more thick-skinned, it was significant. Constant stress. | It made me even more committed to applying for positions where I could make a difference. | Male | |||
1657 | 12/13/2017 10:15:39 | I had this professor for a lab course and he on multiple occasions would comment on how good I looked in a dress. | undergraduate | tenured professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Astronomy | none | felt uncomfortable being around him | I had terrible depression | I withdrew from the school | Male | ||||
1658 | 12/13/2017 10:20:50 | I got romantically involved with a grad school professor. | grad student | professor | R2 | guilt, cynicism, self-doubt | not worth it | mild | Male | ||||||
1659 | 12/13/2017 10:39:21 | Met a professor visiting my campus (we had met at a conference in Europe). We went to dinner out of town (he wanted to visit a specific historic site) and after dinner, insisted we stay overnight in a hotel. | PhD student (single) | Full professor (married) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale University | Computer Science | Did not report | None | Gossip and innuendo | Initially flattered, then saw it as a serial pattern of predation - he named past conquests who were women I knew and respected | Strong advocate for women in technology | I work in industry, so no impact on plans for tenure. | Male | |
1660 | 12/13/2017 11:18:09 | A professor in another department routinely would proposition me when he ran into me on campus. I declined, but he was persistent. I was out one night for a drink with one of my friends (who was an undergraduate student), and this same man, drunk this time, approached us on the street, grabbed my friend, tried to put his hands down my friend's pants. Made many harassing comments. | Graduate Student. | A visiting professor in a department where I was taking some supplemental coursework, though not from him. | Other R1 | English | I told some instructors who I knew, and they warned me that the administration would be unsympathetic, as other faculty had engaged in similar activity. | None. | It made me feel very insecure about questioning the behavior of faculty. It was also kind of isolating. | Basic anxiety about it. | I spent a lot of time second-guessing my feelings about it. It made me less sympathetic to other people's experiences. I feel very differently about these things now. But I think that a lot of the harm of this behavior is that it can force an kind of emotional disconnection from others. As a first generation college student, I have always felt like my cultural sensibilities are out of alignment with my peers. Naturally, I wondered if I was the one who was wrong, if I was being priggish or uptight, and that if somehow this was how people were supposed to interact professionally. Thankfully, I never behaved in this way. But it took me a long time to get my head around this. And since doing so, I have had much better understanding of what so many people endure in their lives, much of it far worse than verbal harassment. | Male | |||
1661 | 12/13/2017 11:22:17 | Sent emails by my major professor asking me to do sexual things. Also saw/heard same professor make sugesstive remarks to others in class (in front of whole class, we just laughed uncomfortably like idiots) | PhD candidate | Major Professor | Other R1 | Louisiana State Univeristy | Geography & Anthropology | HR told him not to talk to me again; All but two professors in the department treated me like a pariah for reporting it because it was an "open secret" and not a big deal. Some faculty members tried to intimidate me into leaving the program. A brave faculty member who had also be harassed by the same senior faculty member years before reported her harassment to HR after I did and apologized to me for not reporting it when it had happened (I understand after reporting it why she didn't & in no way do I blame her). | None; just told not to talk to me anymore. | Where do I begin? It took me a while to put together a new committee that would work with me since I was a pariah in the department for reporting him. Many faculty members suddenly suggested "this program isn't right for you" to me after 3 years of successful course completion and receiving over $40k from the department in stipends over those years. I doubted myself. I had anxiety anytime I was around my cohort or department members. I was an emotional mess. It was a major blow to my self-confidence and it took me longer to complete the program (as I had to find a new committee, etc), costing me extra time and money. (I did find two wonderful faculty members who were willing to advocate for me.) | Awful. At one point, I seriously considered ending everything during the height of my position as a pariah. I saw a psychologist and sought help. I had the worst episode of depression for about two years. I spent lots of money (and credit card debt) on therapy. | All of this has changed the career trajectory I saw for myself, as my lack of confidence and social anxiety has hindered my desire to apply for many jobs. I am still uneasy about male coworkers and find myself just waiting for it to happen again...and wondering what I could do to prevent it. I don't think if it did happen again, I'd ever report it given how I was treated. I still have pretty bad social anxiety, which isn't helpful as far as being a good colleague. I decided not to pursue R1 tenure track jobs because I just didn't have the self-confidence & I knew my social anxiety would be a strike against me. I'm also worried that those who treated me like a pariah would tell others in my field things to persuade them to think less of me because I reported it. I am still fearful of reprocussions from people in that department as they have a lot of contacts in our discipline & professional organization. My harasser has since passed away and some people make me feel like I'm destroying his decades of contributions to the field & legacy if I bring it up...like somehow I, the victim, am to be responsible for not victimizing my harasser's legacy. It sucks. You can contribute important things to your field and have done good work yet still be a harasser. It isn't that black and white. | Thank you for this. | Male | |
1662 | 12/13/2017 11:24:37 | I was kissed at a bar by a senior visiting professor. The kiss was witnessed by other grad students who taunted me behind my back afterwards. | MA student | Visiting professor. I was his RA | Other R1 | Anthropology | I didn't file a complaint | none | It has always made me feel uncomfortable that he might somehow disclose this, or that the grad students who witnessed the sexual advance would spread a false story that it was consensual. | Male | |||||
1663 | 12/13/2017 12:06:30 | My outfit choices and manner of walk were routinely commented upon by a senior faculty member, sometimes from all the way down the hall; I was called into a senior professor's office where he apologized for coarse language used by another colleague ("I wouldn't want my wife to hear that language."); a senior professor sang a Bob Dylan song to me in the hallway as I walked with two other colleagues ("What's a sweetheart like you doing in a place like this?") | postdoc | Senior faculty | Other Type of School | West Point | History | "Some of the things you're describing sound very close to harassment... " | None | I was deeply depressed, constantly on the defensive, and angry for the year I was there. | It temporarily, possibly permanently, torpedoed any motivation I had to try to stay in academia. I left after one year of a two year postdoc. | Male | |||
1664 | 12/13/2017 12:11:20 | I was sexually assaulted multiple times. | doctoral student in combined MA/PhD program | Full Professor | Other R1 | Anthropology | None. | I am fearful this person will destroy me, my family and my career if I identify him or the school, because of the stakes he has in maintaining his reputation as a family man and researcher. | Male | ||||||
1665 | 12/13/2017 12:18:45 | I went to graduate school straight out of college when I was 22. The chair of my department liked to pretend he was Jesus Christ. He had evening parties at his house on a regular basis that he invited students to, calling them his "Disciples." At these parties were a lot of drugs and alcohol, and predation upon female students by him and other male professors. I refused to attend any of them. I had a 4.0 GPA, including being the only one to earn an A in advanced statistics. During a meeting with various professors about how I was doing in the program, I was told by the department chair that he was 1) proud of my academic performance, but 2) disappointed he would not be able to give me a positive evaluation because I was not willing to come to his "discipleship meetings" (where he would hold forth, get his ego stroked, get girls drunk and have sex with them, along with other male professors.) Every other female student went along with the harassment but me, and most had sex with him and/or other professors, so I guess it really bothered him that I refused and thus I became a target. He put me on the spot in front of other professors about why I refused to "socialize" with him at his private home. I said some version of, "I'm married and have other friends outside this department." He said I was therefore not fully participating in the program. I went to my (female) advisor to complain, and she came down on me harshly, and said, "You have to go along to get along. Don't come to me complaining when you suffer the consequences of your own actions." I then went to my next class, taught by the professor/department chair with the Jesus complex. In the middle of class, it hit me that I just couldn't take it anymore. I stopped taking notes, shut my notebook, and at the end of class, left the building and never went back. | In a Masters program. | Professor/Department Chair | Small Liberal Arts College | Clinical Psychology | None. My advisor (female) threw me under the bus when I complained. | None that I know of. It had been going on a long time, involving other female students. | It forced me out of the program, so I had to change careers. | Made me very angry and anxious at the time, but I did pick myself up, gain admission to another program, and go on to have a fulfilling career, albeit different than the one I'd always planned. | As I said above, I had to change programs/careers. | Male | |||
1666 | 12/13/2017 12:48:34 | From about 2010-2013 I was routinely called "kiddo" or "sweetie" by my department head. Once he called me "kiddo" while I was working in an adjunct area in the main part of the office, where students often passed through. I ignored him and he had to repeat the question using my name. I resisted the urge to say, "I didn't realize you were talking to me" because I didn't want to lose my job. | Adjunct | Department Head | Small Liberal Arts College | Music | None-I didn't report it or tell anyone working there until after he left. | None | Complete and utter disrespect for my boss at an institution that otherwise treats adjuncts very well. I taught there again, later, under a different department head, which made me certain that not reporting it kept me in good graces. | Anxiety and annoyance at a job I otherwise loved. | Left adjunct teaching eventually, only to realize what an otherwise great school it was and find myself, now that the department head is a woman who I really respect, wishing they would hire me again. | Male | |||
1667 | 12/13/2017 12:52:41 | Back in the late eighties at a state school, I had a professor run his fingers through my hair during an office hours meeting (I froze! Didn't know what to do, so unexpected. I was 19). Same school, same department (Theater), a professor, again during office hours, interrupted my question to ask my if I had a sun tan. Your legs look so nice and tan, he said. Ugh. Suffice to say, I transferred schools to study the same subject at another state school. | undergraduate students | first one was an assistant professor, second was full professor | Other R1 | University of Georgia | Film studies | never reported | first professor was fired (or something like that) for having an affair with an undergraduate student. Nothing for second, full professor, who had a reputation for harassing students in the department. | transferred schools | hard to know exactly. Made me feel gross and weird, insecure. Especially at that young age (19), you feel like it might have been something you did to encourage the behavior. Certainly didn't make me feel good about myself. | Again, hard to know exactly. But I think it makes me look out for others (young women) more. | Male | ||
1668 | 12/13/2017 12:54:54 | A senior voice professor had the audacity to suggest that male voice teachers are able to teach students of all genders but female voice teachers are only qualified to teach other women. | Adjunct | Assistant Professor TT | Other R1 | Vocal Performance | Support of his claim. Female teachers were only assigned female students. | None | For several years, I had no experience teaching male students at the performance major level and felt, although before teaching at this institution my male students outnumbered female, that I was being disingenuous by advertising myself as a voice teacher with experience teaching both male and female voices. | I constantly felt as though anything I said around this person would be used to validate my dismissal. Working with students was a joy but maneuvering around the department was fraught with anxiety that I would have to talk to a colleague and that whatever I said would be used against me. | I became more and more certain that I would eventually leave higher ed. | Male | |||
1669 | 12/13/2017 13:08:44 | I was pulled into a meeting with three senior faculty where outright lies about my teaching and interactions with faculty and students were told about me, including accusations that I didn't communicate with other faculty over the course of the previous academic year. I had an entire binder with me holding print-outs of all written communication with all other faculty members from over the course of the entire year that proved all of what they were saying was untrue. I sat there and took it because what they were really saying was, "we don't want you to work here anymore." I was the only member of the entire program faculty to have a PhD and was even a graduate of this very program--the female faculty members seemed to feel threatened by me (we were getting new department head and it later occurred to me that they felt their security depended on putting me in my place). I was offered a semester of unpaid observations so we could later revisit my continued employment. During the entire meeting, the male professor, with whom I had spoken on the phone AND in person for an average of 60 minutes/week for the entire academic year as well as had extensive email communication (documented in the aforementioned binder) repeatedly winked at me and called me "sweetheart." when I left. | Adjunct | Two Assistant (non-TT line) Profs (female) and one "Super Ajd" (Adj with administrative duties)(Male) | Other R1 | Music | Support for their claims, even though my course evaluations were above department, program, and school averages (across the board) and I was well-liked by professors in the program with higher academic ranks | Zero--I suppose having the only member of the faculty with a PhD resign rewarded them with the ego-boost and power trip they desired. | I resigned the next day. | The entire year I was plagued by the fear that this would happen. Needing to discuss my work every week with the male faculty member took extra time I was not paid for. He even called me once while I was in the middle of a very stressful move and insisted we discuss some minor communication he'd had with a student. Working with the students was great but being part of that faculty was one of the most demoralizing, anxiety-provoking experiences of my academic life. | I resigned and am pursing a career outside of academia. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||
1670 | 12/13/2017 13:16:26 | I was grabbed by a male student in a movement class (not sexually), with no advanced warning and with such force that it reactivated a previous injury and I was in pain for days. He apparently needed help getting up (although he'd gotten up from the floor without assistance every week and we were about 11 weeks into the semester at this point). He grabbed my shoulder from behind and put his full body weight on it, like I was a piece of furniture. | Graduate Student | Graduate Student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Religious Studies and Psychology | Nothing. I wrote to the professor of the course and she told me that I "didn't understand his needs." When I complained to her that this male student interrupted the female students in class with such regularity that we could barely speak a complete sentence in class discussions, she told me that he was "a tangential thinker" and that we needed to support his way of thinking by listening to him whenever he had something to say. I told the female students in the class that I was going to the dean and they told me not to because "it might make her upset." I wrote to her anyway and my email was not answered. I wrote to the psychology professor for support and she told me she didn't think she should get involved. I told a (female) friend what happened and she criticized me for how I responded. | Zero | I quit the program after feeling like my female colleagues and the female faculty at the school believe that it is appropriate for male students to touch and use female bodies as they please. | Intense anger at the entire institution and the people who I thought were my friends there. | I quit. | Male | |||
1671 | 12/13/2017 13:17:33 | First, let me say that I'm a male. While I know that around 10% of all sexual harassment incidents involve men as the victims, I think it is important for all to know that this happens to people of all identities. While I was in graduate school at a major, private university, one of my male, professors would regularly make physical contact with me (kissing me, sticking his tongue in my ear, etc.). He was openly flirtatious with all but would become much more aggressive in private. I felt as if I had no choice but to allow this due to his status and power over my career and, at times, I felt like it might be something that was allowing me to remain in the program. This continued even after I concluded classes as I felt like I needed him as a reference. I look back now in disgust at what he did but I fully remember the feeling that I had no choice but to submit. I think about this every day now that I'm a professor myself and wield the same power over grad students at a major university. We have to stop this. | Graduate student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Theatre | I never complained. | None. | It made me a better professor for remembering the awful way he made me feel. | Unsure. | I now serve in Title IX hearings at my university to help put an end to this type of behavior. | Male | |||
1672 | 12/13/2017 13:37:58 | When I joined my advisor's lab I quickly noticed that I was being treated differently from my other male colleagues. I was often asked to make copies, go pick up coffee, and other secretarial duties. Then it progressed to comments on my attire and long nights alone spent in his office because I required, according to my advisor, extra attention. From there, the conversations escalated to questions on my sexual preferences and needs and casual touching of the shoulder, hand, or thigh. If I avoided the conversations or tried to leave the situation I was accused of not taking my work seriously. This was the first time I reported him. I was told that to make a formal accusation would mean I would lose the time and work I had put in and would have to leave the program. We were encouraged to hug it out and work out our differences. This was fuel for the fire. After my first report things moved quickly. Soon after I was raped and felt stuck in an abusive environment. I did everything I could to graduate as quickly as possible and start a new job away from my abuser, but it took years to actually break free. | Graduate Student | PI | Other R1 | Neuroscience | Not enough substantial evidence, either party could be lying, so no further action was pursued. | None | I have worked very hard, and with the help of very strong female faculty, to press on towards my career goals and not let it affect my trajectory. | The harassment has had a strong impact on my mental health. There was a lot of verbal negative harassment that I have worked very hard in therapy to replace with truths. Even now, as I run my own lab, there are many days I struggle with his voice in my head telling my I will never succeed as an academic. I am thankful for good therapists who have helped me in this area. | I have worked very hard to break the ties with my abuser while continuing to pursue my passion for research. It has empowered me to be a voice for those who cannot speak for themselves and be a safe source for those who need someone to believe them. | Male | |||
1673 | 12/13/2017 13:38:18 | This is the story of a friend who never entered the field, but was likely the most brilliant undergraduate I have seen. She caught the eye of a very senior full professor in the department where I was a PhD student. He started inviting her to one-on-one tutorials and reading groups. And then one day he forced a kiss on her while groping her. She was devastated and barely graduated, and gave up her plans to go to graduate school. | She was a senior undergraduate | He was a full professor of significant professional standing | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Classics | Never reported, but the faculty knew about it | None. He has since retired. | The student in question left the field. | Male | |||||
1674 | 12/13/2017 13:42:46 | I was stalked by a professor in my department | Ph.D. student | Permanent lecturer | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Chicago | Near Eastern Languages | Chair of department listened to my complaint but nothing (that I know of) was ever said to the stalker | General feeling of powerlessness and devaluement | Who knows | Increased anxiety and depression | Not sure | Male | ||
1675 | 12/13/2017 13:44:38 | I was assaulted during work in the field by another participant on the excavation. | Ph.D. student | Ph.D. student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Chicago | Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations | Reported but no response of which I am aware | Male | ||||||
1676 | 12/13/2017 14:08:21 | At a conference in the last two years, a male Professor approached me over the lunch break just to say 'hello, how are you?', but at the same time put his hand on my shoulder and ran it down my back to my waist. | An Early Career Researcher | Professor at another institution | Other R1 | Law & Criminology | Not reported. | None. Not reported. | None. | This is difficult to answer. None, in a direct medical sense. But the impact of behaviours like this, is that at professional conferences, I have to be on my guard and it makes me anxious, and its exhausting. I have to walk a fine line between being professional, and seeking to make connections with new colleagues in my field, which is after-all the point of conferences - but at the same time, I have to take are not to be 'too friendly', 'too conversational', 'too smiley', or 'too enthusiastic' about working together, in case these normal interactions are taken as some kind of invitation to touch or proposition me. And this is just during the daylight hours of normal conference conversations. I take care only to go out for drinks afterwards with friends/colleagues whom I know well and trust and feel like I can be myself with. | This example is just a small example of the 'everyday' banality of sexual touching/comments that as a one-off might well appear to be inappropriate, but not 'complain-worthy'. However, these types of incidents are not one-offs. It is the cumulative impact of these everyday touching/comments that has an impact on my behaviour, my anxiety at conferences and in other professional settings. To be fair, I've never experienced sexual touching/comments in my own workplace or out socially with my immediate colleagues. But the so-called 'networking' at conferences makes clear to young women that there are senior men in our field who do not take us seriously as scholars to collaborate with - only as sexual objects. | Male | |||
1677 | 12/13/2017 14:13:22 | I was an undergraduate, in my first year. I was super enthusiastic, going to lots of events, evening talks, across disciplines but particularly in Latin American studies. I happened to meet a professor when we were both late to a talk and slipped in the back together. I then saw him again at a later event, and he looked me up. We exchanged a few emails, mostly about the upcoming speaker series, when he changed the tone entirely and invited me to lunch. But not in the university city, in a city a good 40 miles away, away from where people would see us together. He emailed a few times after I stopped replying, and I avoided the speaker series after that. | Undergraduate | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Cambridge University | None | None | Increased wariness? | Male | |||||
1678 | 12/13/2017 14:24:33 | Group of drunken male students cornered the only female attendee of an off-site, overnight student/post-doc retreat in her room and pressured her to do keg stands with them (I personally witnessed one of these students drinking during my 9am presentation, they were there to get hammered, not for science) She refused and hid in a room with the one sober male student. Group of students then went and did keg stands on her car! Later that night they put porn on the borrowed department projector! I skipped the overnight because I was uncomfortable with the drinking I had seen in prior years, but I had no idea it would get that bad. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect my friend and witness it personally so I could have filed a complaint. When behavior was later brought up in a student-only meeting, the lead harasser defended himself by saying that the group was treating her like a sister and denied any problem in the group behavior, I confronted and disagreed, but there were no formal consequences as only the students handled the issue. | PhD candidate, 3rd year | All students | R2 | Microbiology | Primary witness never filed a complaint, no institutional response at all | None | Could not socialize with any of the male students in my departments or remaining 2.5 years of studies, as I lost all trust and respect. Did not attend any department retreats after this event. Left academia for industry despite multiple post doc opportunities, would not work in environmental where my peers consider that behavior acceptable. | Stress of dealing with fellow students I knew to be harassers, anger that no action was taken and that there were no consequences. | Left academia, have reported any and all harassment I have witnessed since, have a 0 tolerance policy | Male | |||
1679 | 12/13/2017 14:31:42 | Sexual harassment (proposition to engage in a sexual relationship) in March 2010 | Staff member in a collegiate unit | Full professor, Center Director | Other R1 | University of Minnesota | Communications | I didn't file a complaint | None | Unclear | Stress, questioning self, anger, disillusionment | Unclear | Male | ||
1680 | 12/13/2017 14:41:35 | A student sitting in the back of the room asked for my phone number at the end of a class, a faculty ejected every non-white non-male student from his research working group and created a racially and gender exclusive space for the white men in the department, during the hiring process the dept chair commented about running a maternity ward, other phd students forged a departmental letter saying I would lose funding because the gender ratio was off in the department, I got yelled at when I questioned how only men taught theory as both faculty and teaching assistants while women were relegated to methods and intro, etc etc and these are only my personal experiences! | Phd student | Ranged from undergrads to grad students to faculty | Other R1 | Binghamton University | Sociology | None, they don’t care, they bounce us from office to office when we have complaints until we are exhausted and quit, they economize they use this strategy | None; other grad students tried to prevent the white man research group professor from getting tenure... he got it anyway | Mental distress, eternal imposter syndrome, paranoia I won’t be able to get a real permanent job, I can’t work in the subfield of the research group prof even though I am amazing | Severe and permanent | I take what I can get and keep my mouth shut | Another student was elected Vice President of the grad student org on campus (female Chinese) and the white man screamed at her and another elected member when the two women wouldn’t do what he wanted, When the story came out in the organization meeting, they feared for his career and not their own future in higher ed :/ | Male | |
1681 | 12/13/2017 14:44:57 | I was an undergraduate and the professor involved was both my advisor and department head from the time I arrived on campus. He started his harassment small, then continued to escalate it. Lots of assault, anger, violence, lots of controlling behavior (I should say that he never actually raped me, though he did try.) I could barely believe what was happening, and he used to excuse his actions by saying that lots of 'contact' was normal at small institutions. I didn't believe him, but I felt my future was dependent on his opinion of me. My grades dropped (though actually I have evidence that he deliberately gave me lower grades in his classes as leverage. E.g., there were fill-in-the-blank tests where I would put one answer and be marked wrong while classmates would but the same answer and get the problem right -- that happened quite a lot). I was anxious all the time. Prior to starting college I'd been a top student, national merit scholar, etc. He told me that if I tried to leave he'd ruin my career. Eventually I left anyways. I transferred and it's the best thing I've ever done. He only tried to make me come back once. I have excellent relationships with the professors I work with now and have been able to continue on in academia -- research always was my ruling passion or I never would have done it. I'll be damned if I let that man control the rest of my life. He already took three years of it. | Undergraduate | Department Head | Small Liberal Arts College | Midwestern School | Biology (then) | Ignored it; received messages against reporting the incident. | None | I switched schools and fields. | PTSD | I switched schools and fields -- and basically ended up redoing undergrad. Things are good for me now, but it's something that's forever in my past. For example, when I applied to grad school I couldn't give my real reason for having low grades at my first institution. Luckily the excuse of being immature and then growing up is somewhat common, but I *hated* having to lie about it. I hated knowing that I was going to have to be judged harshly for something that wasn't my fault. But there wasn't another option. The culture of academia reinforces silence. | I thought about leaving academia after this happened, but this is not a problem that can be solved by running away from it. It also isn't a problem that can realistically be run away from. | Male | |
1682 | 12/13/2017 14:53:28 | My Program Chair (PC) had always been a little creepy, making comments about how tiny I am or asking if I'd shrunk over the summer (I'm really petite). Men and women seem to think it's fine to make comments about my body all of the time so I just kind of tolerate it and move on. After he transitioned out of the PC role, however, into the "Director of Global Studies" joke-type position, he apparently felt free to let lose about being attracted to me. I am a 30-something woman who has been in a relationship with my attractive now-husband since I've known the harasser. He is a 60-something man with a wife and grown children. After he was no longer my PC, he would constantly ask me for hugs while in his office, make comments about my appearance, with me one time running out of his office to avoid a hug. He talked negatively about his wife and would imply that she wasn't any fin compared to me. He wasn't discreet in front of my coworkers, talking about my appearance to my office mates, and once in front of my office mate said that "I'm still married to my wife because XXX hasn't left her husband yet." Our work relationship ended when he dropped the ball on a study abroad project I was organizing and called me screaming and then hung up on me. I reported him for that (not the harassment) and haven't heard from him since. I see him at professional development trainings or whatever and just run. His successor would make comments about my appearance as well and walked into my office once and said "Well, aren't you the little hottie?!" in front of everyone. Praise Jesus he's moved into a regular professor role and I don't have to see him, either. And now I have a nice, normal, non-creepy, gay PC who just values my actual work. | Assistant Professor | He was my former program chair but had moved out of that role to become the head of Global Studies | Other Type of School | Ivy Tech Community College - Indianapolis | Communication | None; I know that the only other female Comm faculty at the time (for a long time after she left I was the only female in a department of 9) had made complaints to human resources before she finally left. | None | I don't get to lead study abroad because I literally run from the man every time I see him. | I'm not sure if there has been any, other than I have a coworker who I have to run from. I've been debating going to HR just in case there are others who have reported (I'm sure there are), but have heard they are generally uninterested and so don't know if I want to put myself through it. | It has impacted me in that I am highly motivated to GTFO of there as soon as I get my PhD. | I would like to know how much same-age harassment there is for the >40 crowd. It seems like a lot of us are harassed by "creepy old men." Are there like 30-something assistant professors out there harassing their grad students? | Male | |
1683 | 12/13/2017 15:16:02 | A dissertation committee member french kissed me in the stairwell after I defended my thesis. She was drunk on champagne served at an earlier defense | I was a PhD candidate | tenured professor and director of an externally funded institute | Other R1 | ASU | Justice Studies | her colleagues said she didn't mean it, she was just tipsy | none | none | none | I do not drink with colleagues under any circumstances | Female | ||
1684 | 12/13/2017 15:33:58 | I can't count the number of times I was harassed by my former department chair. He is older than my father. The first time I walked in his office as a faculty member candidate, he looked me up and down, commented on how nice I looked, and asked about my marital status. This was his greeting. I was so uncomfortable. It should have been a red flag. Over the years, he asked me my opinion on threesomes and shared that he and his wife have an open relationship. He once hosted a mandatory department meeting/party at his home and billed it as a "pool party." When I didn't come with my swim suit, he said he was really disappointed in me because he had been looking forward to seeing me in a bathing suit all day. After wrapping up a faculty meeting, he once asked me when my husband was going to "knock me up" and mused on how my body would look when I was pregnant. This was in front of another male colleague who laughed and agreed. Theses are just a few instances....there was something EVERY TIME we saw each other. I actively avoided him. | Prospective faculty member and then a faculty member | department chair | Small Liberal Arts College | Education | "That's just him!" He was given a total pass. He was a darling of the school. | None | I felt like I had to put up with it to remain in my position. | I had anxiety any time I had to spend around him. I was always working on my comeback in my head and how I would call him out. | Male | ||||
1685 | 12/13/2017 15:36:55 | A person with whom I was doing a problem set tried to force himself on me sexually, even though I tried to politely say no. Ultimately, I had to stop being polite about it. He then started following me after class and tried to apologize by saying 'in my country, no doesn't always mean no.' (He was from Argentina.) | first year grad student, pre-phd program | classmate, phd student | Other R1 | UMass Amherst | mathematics | I reported it and he was given some sort of a 'talking-to' by someone in the department. I told a female professor about it and she told me I should wear a fake engagement ring to avoid unwanted advances. | none | none | It's still very scary for me and I spent a lot of time being afraid of men and blaming myself. | Fear and feelings of inadequacy, ended up leaving a PhD program later for unrelated reasons | Male | ||
1686 | 12/13/2017 16:22:51 | I got involved in a sexual / romantic relationship with a staff member who was also using their position at the University to benefit their own private business (a music festival). When I declined to participate further in their private business activities, I was told 'they would burn me to the ground.' I was followed, parked next to, faced discrimination in my student affairs, and other non provable problems in my life. I filed police reports with the university. Nothing was done. I anonymously contacted the ACLU. | Student | Staff | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Gag, No contact order, separate mediation which did no stop any subtle intimidation. Years later it appears the harasser was fired, left, or forced out by the university for other reasons. | lost lots of friends, colleagues - they somehow manipulated others | Moved out of country | Female | ||||||
1687 | 12/13/2017 17:30:46 | Sexually Assaulted November 4, 2013: Over the summer, a staff mentor approached me. Through email, he invited me places around the city but eventually asked for my cellphone number. Once we exchanged numbers, he began inviting me out late at night to drive his 6 year old son around so he would sleep. We grew closer. He advised me on applying to grad programs and shared private, vulnerable things with me. We grew close and he became the first man I kissed. He wanted me to erase texts between us two but I did not. In these texts, I specified how I was a virgin and wanted to stay a virgin after we began to make out at his place. I was very clear every time we met up about my boundaries. But in November, he violated me. He took off my clothes and when I objected to him taking off my underwear, he used his body to hold me down and force off my underwear. I told him no three times. He ignored me, performed oral sex on me, and then partially penetrated me while I cried. I cried after and vomited when I returned home. I took a shower and I called the sexual assault hotline. I did not report it until February when he approached me after being told to never talk to me again. I had a panic attack and broke down and turned to the school for help. | Undergraduate | Director of Recruitment and Retention for Underrepresented Students of School of Education and part time phd student | Other R1 | Indiana University | I was sent to the office of student ethics. They wanted to investigate him as a student even though he fully acted as a staff member. I then turned to the associate dean of students, a woman, for help. She told me to just move on and not attack a man's livelihood. | Nothing. He is still a mentor and works with students. Both our names are in the Title IX office | It is hard for me to function in every day life at times. | PTSD. I had panic attacks almost every day for a year and a half. | My studies have been interrupted. | Male | |||
1688 | 12/13/2017 17:47:58 | I was raped by a named chair of literature at a prominent liberal arts college. Over time I learned he had exploitive relationships with many students, ordered some to have abortions, and had raped or otherwise physically harassed over 20 others. | Undergrad, 1 semester to graduate | Chair of literary award program I had won 2 yrs in a row, Watson Fellowship chair ( I was applicant) | Small Liberal Arts College | Literature | I was told to write down my account and put it on a safety deposit box (my dean) Dean of students at the rapist college believed me and told me there were others. He told me the rapist was too powerful for him to intervene. | None at the time. An academic proceeding 4 yrs later where I saw over 1 dozen other young women making testimony resulted in the rapist being sent to France for 2 yrs. | It kept me out of academia over 10 years. I lost my opportunity for a Watson Fellowship and Rhodes Scholarship and declined acceptance to the Iowa Writers Program and UC Irvine writers program. | I tried to commit suicide twice. It was the first of 3 incidents that led to my diagnosis with complex PTSD in 2007. | I married my 1st husband because he made me feel safe. I stayed out of academia over 10 yrs. I was a 4 year National Merit Scholar and 1st female editor & publisher of the 5 college newspaper + 1st intern from my college at the LA Times Book Review. Now I am a community college teacher. I have out published the rapist by far. My undergrad school has NO recognition and a similar event occurred there last year, but the student took her own life. | It has to stop. | Male | ||
1689 | 12/13/2017 17:52:27 | After getting hired for a new tenure track position at an R1 university in 2014. It began at a conference immediately after I had accepted the job offer. The most senior member of the area of the department I was hired into (an older man), responded to a top paper panel I was presenting on. In the midst of that panel, he not only called into question whether my research about breastfeeding was "something women cared about" but he also embarrassingly denigrated the top student paper (which was written by a woman of color and discussing institutional racism at her university). I publicly criticized him for his responses. Following the panel, he told me he hoped I wasn't "one of those women" who would "cut off his balls"--he said this like a joke he expected me to laugh at. When I didn't laugh, he told me he almost didn't hire me because I was "too smart and precise" in my initial interview, but after my campus visit he thought I was "dainty and nice." Following these comments and into my first semester, he forcibly intervened to "appoint" himself my mentor in the department, made comments about my breasts and frequently referred to how much he "could not resist women with red hair" (I have red hair). After a meeting with other faculty members where I made a small suggestion and barely spoke, he cornered me and my department chair at a departmental party and turned to my department chair and said "Today in our meeting she (meaning me) was a real ball buster, she sat us down and told us what to do and I was like 'heil Hitler'" (making the gesture of the Hitler salute). I accepted a new job a week later and left after that spring. | New tenure track faculty | full professor, faculty mentor | Other R1 | Communication | None | None | Had to switch jobs | terror and uncertainty | Male | ||||
1690 | 12/13/2017 17:54:53 | I was standing in the crowded lobby of the hotel where my disciplines annual convention was held in 2013.. I was waiting for a representative from the school I was interviewing for a job at to come and meet me. I didn't know what he looked like, just that his name was Jason and he would find me. I stood, smiling at every man who walked by or towards me. Each man who looked like he would walk towards me, I would put on my best professional and awkward, "we don't know each other but if you are the one meeting me HELLO! Look see I'm so friendly don't you want to work with me" smile. Finally, after about 15 mins, a man came straight for me. I thought to myself, surely this must be him. I smiled. He had his name tag loosely tossed over his shoulder, so as he got closure I still couldn't tell if it was the Jason I was supposed to be meeting. He continued to tumble straight for me, I thought this must be him. He got incredibly close to me -- about two inches from my face-- and said "hey pretty lady. You've got a pretty face." "Thank you?" I replied, still unsure if this was in fact Jason and this was part of the job interview? He said "Do you want me to kiss you?" I said, "no thank you" realizing this man was clearly wasted, and not Jason. This man would also not leave--literally hovering two inches from my face-- as I was desperately praying my job interviewer would not arrive to find a drunk conference attendee slobbering on me. He said "I'm gonna kiss you." I said once again "no, please leave me alone" as I backed away from him and he continued to advance forward to stay inches from my face. I placed my hands between his body and mine and pushed him gently away. He said "okay" mockingly but proceeded to grope my ass and then stumble away. I tried to collect myself. Not even really fully grasping what had just openly happened in a room filled with hundreds of colleagues. Several minutes later Jason arrived and apologized for running late. | ABD phd student on the job market | unsure, but member of national organization | Other Research Agency | Communication | Male | ||||||||
1691 | 12/13/2017 18:13:03 | I don’t know if this story counts as harassment, but it involves sex-related behavior in the workplace that had different consequences for the man vs the women involved. A former colleague who was a serial flirt caused drama in my department for years. He engaged in behaviors that most women would interpret as being hit on: flattering appearance, dropping by the office to chat for no reason and asking personal (but not too personal) questions, even touching that was not clearly sexual but beyond what one usually encounters in a professional setting – a shoulder or a wrist. That is as far as it progressed with me; I don’t know if it went further with others. When I mentioned it to a female colleague she told me that this man was a “terrible flirt” and cautioned me not to take him seriously. She told me about a woman had taken him seriously and had been badly embarrassed when her crush on him became the subject of office gossip, while the man acted befuddled and made sure everyone understood the crush was unrequited and that it was she who pursued him, not the reverse. The woman was no longer in the department when I arrived. I don’t know her and don’t know if the incident affected her departure. But over the next few years, I observed the man following the same pattern with new hires who were pretty young women. Others observed as well and gossiped about it, but the gossip always put the woman in a bad light while sparing the man. People would speculate about a woman’s interest in the man, often in unflattering ways that approached slut-shaming or implied she was pathetic for not realizing this was just what he did. To my knowledge, no one ever told him to stop, but I know that on at least one occasion he was told that some women considered him flirtatious. He feigned ignorance and innocence and protested that everyone knew he was married. And then the behavior continued, for years. I doubt I am the only one who felt it was problematic but it was hard to pin down. After all, many women are attracted to men. But I don’t think his behavior was irrelevant and I don’t think it was innocent. Too many women were subjected to ugly gossip and workplace distraction while the man got a pass for toying with people and causing drama. | Assistant professor (untenured) | Full professor (tenured) | Other R1 | Social science | None known | None known | Speculative only. I have avoided working with him & he might have been a helpful colleague. | N/A for me personally; I believe other women were harmed | None | I’ve identified my field broadly because the universe is too small in my specific discipline and I don’t want to be identified. Thank you for collecting this information. | Male | ||
1692 | 12/13/2017 18:17:40 | During my 3rd year review interview with my dean (a man), my Dept Chair (also a man) called me his prize cow | Asst Prof | Dept Chair and Dean | Regional Teaching College | History | The Dean thought it was hilarious | Zip | None | Irritated | None | Male | |||
1693 | 12/13/2017 18:19:28 | After I told my adept Chair that we were adopting, he asked me if I was quitting my job after the baby was born | Associate Professor | Dept Chair | Regional Teaching College | History | None | None | None | Anger | None | Male | |||
1694 | 12/13/2017 18:23:44 | Having read other entries, this incident is much less serious than my undergrad rape. However, it fits and I've often thought how frightened many female grad students were of this full tenured faculty member. As a Lit/MFA grad student, I received several opportunities including grad assistant to faculty governance. Toward the end of my program I was teaching and had a special seminar with the offender. He was known for yelling at students and making inappropriate comments. The subject of the seminar visited campus and we were able to work and study with him. The subject and I discovered many common interests and after observing us talking, the senior faculty member became enraged, and after our guest was gone, screamed at me until I left. Considering what I'd been through, I just thought the man was deranged with anger issues. He yelled again at me during a class observation. Finally, his recommendation letter for my hiring and interview packet contained the sterling line "She will present an excellent appearance in the classroom" - he also demanded my poetry reading be cancelled in favor of his guest, the world renowned "noise making poet". | Grad Student + teaching asst | Named chair in program | Elite Institution/Ivy League | MFA/literature | None - he was a terror and still is | None | I'm just a part time faculty now | Not much | I was already older and stronger so nothing except irritation | Male | |||
1695 | 12/13/2017 18:58:45 | I was working as a counselor at a summer camp that taught competitive public speaking to high school students when I was sexually assaulted by a fellow male counselor. He and I had known each other since I was a freshman in college. It wasn’t obvious. He wasn’t awful to be around and there were many points in my life where, if you asked, I would have called him a friend. He didn’t make rape jokes, or call women “bitches.” He was a successful competitor and coach in an activity that prides itself on holding a mirror to the world so it can see all the injustice. We worked a few camps together, which usually involves late nights cutting scripts and drinking. Over the years he kept pushing the line. He would befriend whomever I was dating or had just broken things off with to create an illusion of safety. I started to get really uncomfortable when we would go out in groups, because I would always feel his eyes on me. He started to act like he was entitled to me. He started to unhook my bra in public places as a “joke.” When I told him I didn’t want to do that, he called a group of guys over to tell them how lame I was being for not playing along. So I was complicit, and played along. I had a drinking problem, and he knew it. I hated myself, and he knew it. He always waited to try something when we were out in a group drinking, because I had a party girl role that I played well. It was almost too easy to write me off if I ever said anything. That night. Yes there was drinking. Yes he bought me drinks. Yes, I felt weird. Yes, I drank them. No, I wasn’t in a blackout. Yes I left. Alone. Yes, I woke up later in my dorm bed with him in it. No, he was not invited. Yes, I asked him to stop. No, he did not. Yes, I screamed. Yes, there was another person sleeping in my room that he didn’t know about. Yes, they witnessed the whole thing. Yes, he was interrupted. Yes, he left. I did not go Camp Director the following day to tell him what happened, but my teammate who was in the other bed did. The Camp Director found me and asked what had happened. I recounted all the events out loud while staring at the carpet. I looked up after I was finished. He stared at me, thoughtfully, before tilting his head to the side and asking: “And you sure that’s what happened?" “Yes” “ Ok. Do you want to press charges?" I remembered that day with my dad a decade earlier, and started picturing in my mind how this would play out. "No" "I will talk with him. Let me know if anything like this happens again” He worked the remaining 2 days of the camp. I had to do an improv scene with my attacker the next day. | I was a contracted employee for a summer camp for a University | He was also a fellow contracted employee for the same summer camp | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English/ Minor Communication Studies | I declined to file charges at the time | He is currently the Director of one of the top Speech/Forensics Competitive Programs in the nation. He is celebrated. | Long term- none | Long term-none | Long term- none | Male | |||
1696 | 12/13/2017 19:07:14 | In 1986 I found a hand written letter (several pages long) in my campus mailbox from my advisor which specified in great detail his sexual feelings for me and what he wanted to do with my body. I was his teaching assistant in a grad level methods course at the time. He had made other comments in the past year indicating his interest in me which I always deflected. | Second year grad student and teaching assistant | Tenured faculty and my advisor | Other R1 | University of Minnesota-Minneapolis | Sociology | The Grad Advisor heard my story, escorted me to the Department Chair, who informed a campus office that dealt with harassment. I was immediately removed from the teaching assignment and replaced by a senior male grad student. I was provided with a research internship instead. I was advised as to my options and eventually I filed a formal complaint. | There was no public announcement. It took several months for the complaint to be resolved. Because this was the first formal complaint against him, he was forbidden from having female students as advisees or employees for some period of time. However, he went away on sabbatical the following year, so this restriction was not consequential. Several women privately confided about his harassing behavior with them but none were willing to come forward with a formal complaint. As part of my agreement with the institution, he was to apologize to me in front of the department chair. He botched the delivery, making it sound like he was apologizing for me complaining against him. | I failed my statistics exam that quarter, dropped the class and did not pursue further training in that method. It took me an extra year to complete my master's degree, and the department supported me for that year. It took me three years after that to regain confidence to return to graduate school for my PhD. I started over in a whole new field, at a new university, so it took me even more years to complete the PhD. It made me highly cautious of close relationships with male faculty. Although I eventually found supportive decent male human beings to serve on my committee, I kept an emotional distance and did not receive the mentoring and support offered to students who closely aligned their research with their advisor's. I did not view faculty as sources of career support and they have not been. My career has succeeded because of network connections I made in my field of study. I am not in a tenure track faculty position. | I was devastated at the time. I was not referred to counseling. I was scared and angry and uncertain of myself and how my removal from the course assignment would be perceived by my peers. I became deeply depressed. It was a bleak Minnesota winter, which didn't help. I saw the harasser years later at our professional meeting where he had been honored with an achievement award. He was sitting in a circle with my husband who was in the same sub-field. I was traumatized at seeing these two people together and at knowing this harasser kept his career while mine was floundering. My husband had no idea who this man was to me at that time. | I was a first generation college student and had no idea how to navigate the system or understand my place within academia. 31 years later, I recognize both negative and positive impacts of this experience on my life. Negative impacts include ongoing struggles with confidence in my ideas and writing and ability to make a significant contribution to my field - the "impostor syndrome." Positive impacts include moving to another state, discovering critical politics and feminism as lenses to understand how power and gender work in the academy. I was lucky the harasser hand wrote the letter as it was clear evidence of his behavior and not a he said/she said situation. I married a feminist man. I maintain and reinforce clear relationship boundaries in professional situations and am a staunch advocate for victims of harassment. I recognize harassing behavior and have developed some skills to address it. I stayed in my field, got my PhD, but never made it into the 'club' so to speak. | Thank you for doing this work. | Male | |
1697 | 12/13/2017 19:51:03 | Duke University, the early 1980s. My director would not return written work to me. He insisted that I come by his apartment near the East Campus in the evening. I brought my husband, as I was wary. The professor told my husband he could not come in but instead, would have to sit out on the steps of the dark, unheated hallway. When I entered the apartment, I saw that the lights were dimmed and there was only candlelight. On the coffee table, there was was a bottle of wine and 2 wine glasses. We talked vaguely about my research paper (I was sure he had not read it). He kept inviting me to come to the back of the apartment so that we could look over his file cards together in search of sources for my project. I declined. I left. I knew he was gay (he was "out," even in that era) and so I could make no sense of that evening. I knew, nevertheless, that something was very wrong. That limited discussion was the last feedback I got on my work during those two years. Whenever I turned anything in, asked for a grade or feedback, he would say that he didn't have time for office hours. Instead, I should come to his apartment. After the first semester working with him, I did go by his office to pick up my graded final (which he would not give me). Instead, he pulled out a student's course evaluation and accused me of writing it. (It wasn't mine, but I could have written that very negative evaluation of the course.) He screamed at me, told me he would "get me" for that evaluation. I told the DGS (a female at that time) that I was not comfortable working with this professor and that he would not return my work and refused to make office appointments. Yet I did not have the words to explain what was happening, especially because everyone knew he was gay. The DGS was dismissive and said that all advisee-director relationships were difficult and that it was up to me to make it work. When it came time for my exams, my director was still refusing to meet with me and then told me he would fail me. When a new DGS, a complete mensch, heard what was happening (my work had completely stalled, I was getting no feedback, had no direction...), everything changed. I quickly was given a new and better adviser and the offender was taken off my committee entirely.(He later was denied tenure.) So I did come out of it OK. BUT, only after 2 years of confusion, frustration, and fear, and an extra year of tuition, additional exam prep, a change in fields, and additional research because I had to make up work that had gone ungraded and unsupervised. | beginning graduate student | assistant professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Duke | Dismissive at first, and then finally a new (male) DGS intervened, horrified by what had happened to me. | Removed from my committee after 2 years and then denied tenure because his research was not moving along (his tenure denial had nothing to do with me). He left academia - again, related to the weak quality of his research, and not related to how he treated me. | An extra year of exam prep and research papers to make up for the lack of supervision and training for the two years I had worked with this director. I did have a good replacement director, whom I admire greatly, and with whom I was lucky to work. But I had to change fields and work hard to catch up. | Stress, loss of confidence, anger. | I came through OK, and am more resilient. But the time lost was hard to recover. I have been vigilant in the institutions where I have taught and had been helpful to a few victims who came to me. | Male | |||
1698 | 12/13/2017 20:04:54 | I was an assistant professor at an R1 university in the early 1990s. I invited friends over for a party, including a colleague in a different department with whom I had had a date a week before. I had told him I wasn't interested in dating him, but that we could be friends. As people were leaving the party, I encouraged him to leave. He kept hanging around. Finally, after the last guests left, I insisted that he leave. I was angry and tired, and had only had a little food all day and then a glass of champagne that evening. I threw up and he rushed to the bathroom to "help" me - with me telling him to leave, that the party was over, and I did not feel well. Instead, he pushed me into the bedroom, insisting that he only wanted to "help" me. He raped me, then acted as if this had been a romantic start to a relationship and asked when we could go out again. I disagreed. He left. I emailed him a few days later to tell him to stay away from me and that it had been non-consensual, rape. He has stayed away since then. I also told some of the women in his department and one male colleague right away. They were appalled and made sure that he was never again in my presence. They have watched his behavior carefully around women since then. | second-year assistant professor | associate professor in a different department | Other R1 | A top-20 R1 institution in the Southeast | Huimanities | None -- I did not see anyway to report it. His colleagues, however, were very helpful in keeping him away from me and were vigilant around him. | None, except the disrespect of his colleagues. | It made me feel more vulnerable as a female assistant professor just starting me career. | Added to the stress of being an assistant professor. | Greater awareness of what is happening around me, more alert to any dynamics around my female colleague or me that seemed "off." | Male | ||
1699 | 12/13/2017 20:32:18 | Unwanted kiss about 1984 | undergraduate | Professor, teacher in earlier semesters, whom I would go talk to | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Cornell | None | None | None | Wariness -- still remember it | None | A minor incident, but one that should not have happened. | Male | ||
1700 | 12/13/2017 21:13:33 | My advisor had a history specifically with his female students. When I started school, immediately I heard rumors about his actions in the past, how he fraternized with undergraduates in his classes, how his female graduate students continually had to endure harassment while his male graduate students did not. He would frequently take us out for drinks in the hopes of getting us drunk, at which point he would always become handsy. I remember being on a conference trip with him and several other graduate students, and we were having dinner. I was sitting at a table next to him and he leaned over and whispered in my ear that he thought my tongue was "pretty sexy". I was eating my dinner and I felt his hot breath move my hair next to my cheek. Repulsion doesn't begin to cover it. Another time I walked into my office, which I shared with several other graduate students, and the lights were off. When I entered the room, he walked quickly up from behind me and put himself flush against my back. Basically we were touching shoulder to knees all the way down--I felt everything. Fortunately there was an office mate of mine who had been working in the back corner in the dark (just her computer light on), and when it all happened it was right in eye sight of her. I was startled and must have made a noise because she looked up and he bolted. The worst one though wasn't physical, it was verbal. I was in a small conference room working on a talk I was about to give with a colleague from overseas that I had met only two days before. My advisor walks into the room, sees me and this other gentleman working, we're the only two in the room, and says "oh, hello, nice quarters you have here. But then again, Sara (not my real name), knows what it's like sharing tight quarters with me, don't you, Sara." By now the other gentleman has stopped working and looks over at me. I am frozen, I have absolutely no idea what he is talking about, I had never shared a room with him in my life. The other gentleman goes "Uhhh, what do you mean, Steve (not his real name)?" And my advisor goes "Oh, Sara and I have plenty of stories we could tell. There have been plenty of times I came back to the hotel and Sara is just laying in bed naked. I always have to cover her up." And then he just laughs like its a joke and walks out the door. I look at my newly-met colleague and try my best to assure him I have absolutely no idea what my advisor was talking about. All while feeling like I wanted to throw up, punch a wall until my fingers bled, run until my legs gave out, and cry all at the same time. It ebbed and flowed throughout my PhD. However, the conference trips were never negotiable among his graduate students, he fully expected you to attend each one with him. The pressure to do so at times was intense. I felt that if I didn't go on trips with him and take part in these "outings" that I wouldn't get a letter of rec, or that he'd start ignoring me in favor of his male or other female graduate students, or that he'd make the rest of my time during my degree hard. There are many, many more stories just like this with my advisor, and some other female graduate students of his may have had it worse than me. But honestly the worst part is the reputation that has followed me. Even before I came to work with him, Steve had earned a reputation regarding his female graduate students. I am in a STEM field and needless to say there have been plenty of times where I've heard "ohhhh, you're one of Steve's grad students, huh?" always with a smirk. It's like the four years I worked my ass off to earn my PhD was for nothing, because peers in my field think I slept my way to it. I must always defend myself in those situations to set the record straight, which probably confirms any suspicions they may have had anyways. | PhD Student | Professor, he was my PhD advisor | Other R1 | Univ of Tennessee | STEM | None. He is a tenured professor now. | None that I know of. | Being a woman in STEM is hard enough, having to fight extra hard for every opportunity, but this additional layer compounds the problem. Anytime I meet a new peer at a conference, or in a meeting, and they learn of my educational background, I must always defend myself. "No, I earned my degree on my own terms, thank you." | It's impacted me in two primary ways, the first being that I struggle to trust authoritative males in my life. I'm always wondering if my department chair has an angle, or I'm always hesitant if a male colleague is alone with me in smaller room now. Secondly, I'm always concerned--probably too concerned--about how peers in my field (which is admittedly very small within the umbrella of STEM) think of my graduate education, if I got off easy because Steve [not his real name] thought I was attractive, or if I passed exams because of sexual favors. It makes me question my right to be an assistant professor, like I really didn't earn my PhD, that I was given an easier road because I was a female in Steve's [not his real name] research group. Basically, it has amplified my already high imposter syndrome. | None thus far. | Male | ||
1701 | 12/13/2017 21:40:20 | Multiple inappropriate sexually oriented jokes/discussions comments | Tenure-track faculty | VP Academic Affairs | Other Type of School | Title IX investigator completely minimized the experience | None | Hard to concentrate on work, fearful of being alone with harasser | Immense stress | Considering stepping down from leadership role to avoid interacting with her | Female | ||||
1702 | 12/13/2017 23:30:43 | A professor in my lab who is married and old enough to be my father propositioned me multiple times. When I refused and later tried to end our friendship, seeking space, he cornered me in the lab after hours and demanded to know why it was so bad for him to let me know his feelings. He was a trusted mentor but he broke all of my trust in him. I was terrified this would ruin my career. | Graduate Student | Professor, Vice Chair (not on my committee) | Other R1 | UCLA | STEM | (Empty) support from my department. They support me in spirit but their hands are tied from taking any real action. I reported to Title IX and we have an alternative resolution, because the formal investigation seemed to take too long and I was afraid the academic senate would not sanction my harasser. | An informal agreement not to contact me and to avoid me in general. | This happened while I was in the midst of applying for postdocs. I want to stay in academia but this almost derailed my career. Thankfully it did not. | I had mental breakdowns daily for over a month. I had to increase my antidepressants and am dealing with low-level PTSD. I still go through very dark periods related to this. | I stopped online dating because I'm mildly afraid of men right now and very un-trusting. | Talking about it helps a lot. I've found many wonderful supporters, both on and off campus. Having people believe me completely changed my ability to admit that it wasn't my fault. Also UCLA has an incredible service called CARE. They are confidential counselors trained to deal with sexual harassment and sexual assault. The CARE advocate came with me to my Title IX appointment and continues to check in with me. | Male | |
1703 | 12/14/2017 1:54:15 | When I was a PhD student, I thought I had a good relationship with my advisor. Then, about 3 months before my graduation, he told me he was in love with me. He was married with kids and grandkids and 29 years older than me, and I was absolutely horrified. After that, there were a series of incidents where he found excuses to give me hugs that were uncomfortably intimate, or ask me to come in his office to discuss something and then closed the door and it became clear I needed to get out of the situation. I made it clear to him that I was not interested and that what he was doing was not okay. After such a conversation, he would be contrite and apologetic and tell me how disappointed he was in himself. I desperately wanted to believe him and restore the mentoring relationship I had thought we had.....but then, the next week a similar incident would reoccur. After I left the lab for my postdoc in another state, he sent me an inappropriately emotional email, and I clearly told him that this needed to stop, that he needed to respect his wife and that he needed to respect me and what I wanted, and that these incidents could not ever reoccur. After that, the situation changed. It became clear from our interactions at meetings that he now really disliked me and was not at all supportive. He called me just to tell me I wasn't doing well in my postdoc and claimed that other members of my PhD committee were very disappointed in me, and to tell me what a terrible advisor my postdoc advisor was (actually, he was great). When I got my first faculty position, he told me I would never be promoted (I was). I was quite concerned that if he were asked to write a letter for my promotion, that it would not at all be favorable as he seemed to really dislike me. More recently, he has simply been apathetic as opposed to purposely discouraging. | PhD student | Full Professor with tenure, PhD advisor | Other R1 | Physiology | I never reported this. | Early on, I was worried that if word of this got out I would be seen as the girl who slept her way to her Ph.D (even though this never happened). Later on, I spent a lot of time worrying and strategizing about whether he was making the negative comments about my career and abilities to others as well as to me, and what I would do if he was asked for a letter for my promotion and wrote a negative one. | The biggest impact on my mental health was when this first happened, I completely questioned my abilities as a scientist. I thought that I was ready for my postdoc largely based on my advisors faith in me, but when he told me he was in love with me I immediately questioned whether I actually was any good at all, or whether he was just infatuated. This completely killed my self-confidence at a critical time, as I was convinced that he had only supported me as a student because he was interested in me. | I seriously considered leaving science, because the idea of seeing him at meetings every year or needing letters from him was scary. However, this incident happened so late on my PhD that I already had a postdoc lined up....so I decided to give the postdoc a try for a year and then make a decision. Luckily, my postdoc experience was fantastic and I slowly decided perhaps I could stay in science after all. | Male | ||||
1704 | 12/14/2017 2:26:16 | I was at a conference dinner sitting with two male friends of mine. They were discussing the sexual things they would do to their female advisor. After a few minutes, they turned to me and asked me if I would fuck my male advisor. | Undergraduate | Peer | Other R1 | University of Colorado Boulder | Astronomy | Never reported | Those two guys are still in the field and they are very vocal about their "support" of women in the sciences. I'm sure everyone believes them. | Male | |||||
1705 | 12/14/2017 2:30:36 | I was observing at a telescope, but my schedule time wasn't until the second half of the night. I dozed off on a couch and woke up with the other observer stroking my genitals. | Undergraduate | Peer | Other R1 | University of Colorado Boulder | Astronomy | I did not report | No one would have cared? | Why travel to a telescope if you can just remote observe? You won't be sexually assaulted by the other observer that way. | When I see his name, I get strangely sad. | Male | |||
1706 | 12/14/2017 3:41:12 | I was hired as a PhD student abroad, along with one other PhD student to run a very ambitious project in a remote part of Africa (countries left out for anonymity). We were very dependent on each other because we were regularly going between countries, thus experiencing 3-way cultural shock, had minimal other support on this project, etc. Early in the relationship he let me know of his strong attraction to me, despite having just been married at home (wife there), and the "tug of war" relationship began. I always said no and he always pressured me. It got to the point where I was scared to stay late at work if he was around, and I locked my office door. About 9 months into our PhD, I gave in. I had been pressured to drink at work (pretty common, and I usually said no because I didn't like drinking with my male colleagues, although I like drinking). It was pouring rain (cold, winter rain = suffering for a tropical man) and we both missed the last bus. I lived about halfway between his house and school, so we walked to my house, and I said he could crash (I only had one futon). I don't remember having sex, I remember specifically leaving on my underwear to prevent any intercourse, but a month later I was pregnant. This came as a total surprise as I had not had sexual contact to my knowledge in over six months. [Note: I am sharing this story to show how complex and nuanced harassment can be. I consider this story one of cross-cultural relationships gone wrong coupled with feelings of isolation and depression, and I think it is very common. In retrospect, I do not consider myself a victim and him a perpetrator in the classic sense. I find it empowering to think about how I could have prevented the situation. I also think about what academic communities and institutions could do to prevent this story from happening this way, because it was and still is a huge burden that hinders my academic productivity, and I doubt that I am alone.] | PhD Student, 1st year | PhD Student, 1st year (same) | Other R1 | more specificallly, instute of technology / polytechnic | engineering / geosciences | 1) When I went to the Social Services office, the first social worker that I saw told me that it was my fault for being so isolated and that I really should have joined singing groups (note, I am an awful singer). She made an appointment for me with the psychologist who proceeded to explain to me how this situation was a product of my relationship with my parents. They said that unless I had documented example of harassment or mobbing, as it is called in French, for examples emails, there was absolutely no way to bring it up officially. 2) When I told my project manager, he just laughed and told me that he suspected this could happen and that he thought I shouldn't tell anyone else. Somehow, I imagined him congratulating my perpetrator later on. 3) Years later, I went to the university presidency's office and told them that I thought the University should put in place a diversity training that would help prevent this sort of story and support for people who experience harassment. They told me that the University didn't want any bad press around the issue. That this isn't Canada or the U.S. and that in this country, these are domestic issues, and should be dealt with at home. The university cannot interfere in personal issues. | I believe he has a psychological burden not unlike my own. He burdened a guilt from me terminating a pregnancy due to his religious beliefs that I don't have because of my own beliefs. | I terminated the pregnancy, but had to delay my departure for our huge field campaign/deployment until 3 days after the procedure. The field season immediately following the incident, there were so many decisions to make and so much to do, and he just kept blaming me for everything. After two weeks they left, and I was alone in the village for 3 months. My colleague and I alternated time in the village so that we would never be there at the same time. This created huge gaps in our data set and inconsistencies in our method. A few years later we arranged things so that we were never in the same country at the same time. Eventually though, we had to be in the same country and defend our dissertations. There were still some moments where he came into my office, at night, with pent up range and yelled at me and punched things and expressed too much emotion. Sometimes I felt threatened, more often I felt accused. I started never staying late without a friend with me. It made finishing my PhD quite hard. Now however, we've developed good professional relationship, that I'm very proud of. However I try to avoid staying late at work, drinking, or acting like myself around most colleagues. I rarely become close to colleagues like before, which is unnatural in my field. Also, I could have written this phrase any season of the four remaining years of my PhD and the four years since: "My goal for this summer is to publish these papers that are the basic chapters of my dissertation. It is really hard for me because in part, by working through them, I have to relive all the ups and downs of my phd to work." I have received so much training and have so much good data, but I have huge writing blocks. Every day, I debate whether to continue facing my demons for the sake of science. | I have lost a lot of confidence in myself, my ability to trust myself, and my ability to trust other people. When I look through my data now, to write these papers, I see every problem as an interpersonal conflict. I often feel nauseous when I try to work on paper from my dissertation. I have a physical response to the writing black associated with this burden. | I'm realizing that the parts of my job I liked were field work and working with students, and those are gone. I've realized that talking to people and about my work is a key element in my motivation and that is gone. I've decided to take a break from Africa, which means I've lost my specialty and my scientific edge. I am basically starting over. | Male | ||
1707 | 12/14/2017 4:48:59 | I was an undergraduate student on a nationally competitive speech team. I was romantically pursued by one of the graduate assistant coaches on the team, and willing began dating him before the school year began (aware of the power dynamics but believed they wouldn't matter). A month into dating, he was acting very controlling and his behavior was making me uncomfortable (he would demand that I break plans to hang out with him, would call and text me at all hours, was acting jealous about me hanging out with my family). Shortly after this behavior began, he sexually assaulted me at his house during our first sexual encounter. Confused and traumatized by the situation, I ended the relationship several weeks later. I didn't report it to the director of the speech team (I was afraid it would hurt the program), but requested to him that he not have any contact with me. At our first competitive tournament of the year, he stalked and followed me despite my request that he leave me alone. He went so far as standing outside of the window and staring at me while I was performing. After the tournament, he confronted me at school yelling at me and accusing me of sleeping with a man I barely knew that he saw me speaking with in the hallway at the tournament (I did not have sex with that man btw). I had to continue traveling with him for a year to tournaments despite concerns for my own safety. I continually tried to be nice to him, but had to eventually be cold and sometimes outright angry to him publicly in an effort to protect myself and get him to leave me alone. If I showed any niceness to him he would often take that as an invitation to contact or engage with me. I suffered social consequences because our mutual friends/colleagues did not know what had happened and believed my attitude and coldness towards him was because I was being "a bitch." At the end of that year, I publicly posted something vague on Facebook about the situation and him, he messaged me to scold me (while also creepily saying "you want me admit it hahaha") and I decided to cave into his demands to remove the post. He blamed me for my own trauma and called me "emotionally troubled" and said this was a "witch hunt"--at that time, I did not know how to respond, was unaware of how the pattern of abuse he had and continued to display was completely not okay, and ultimately his emotionally abusive behavior convinced me it was my fault. I removed the post and even apologized to him. | undergraduate | a graduate teaching assistant and the coach of the speech team | Other R1 | Communication | none | none | had to leave that area and still have individuals in the community who believe he was treated unfairly by me | Self loathing, problems in relationships after, lack trust of authority. I feel an immense amount of guilt for not holding him accountable for his physical and emotional abuse. | Male | ||||
1708 | 12/14/2017 5:11:17 | I worked in a sociology graduate department. A professor invited me, and other graduate students, to a party. As a designated driver I was sent to get more beer. When I returned he was alone having sent everyone home. He assaulted me and while doing so talked about how he was considering failing me. I had mace but couldn’t use it in the face of losing my whole future. I lost ten pounds the first week after. I couldn’t go anywhere alone. I kept my mouth shut until I heard him trying to get an undergrad to meet him off campus. I reported him. The professor I worked for refused to work with me after that. Even after he admitted what he’d done other professors would trap me on the stairs and talk To each other about how I was ruining his life. The guy running the grad program urged me to consider his career. He wasn’t fired but had to have an escort to classes and his contract was not renewed. The faculty worked to find him a new position. I gave up my academic goals. This was in the 1990s and a Sociology Department | Graduate teaching assistant | Assistant Professor | Other R1 | Sociology | Mixed - his contract was not renewed. I needed a lawyer to deal with the department and school | Colleagues found him a new job and several published with him to help make up for it | It ended that career as it was beginning | Overall I lost 25 pounds in two months. It still gives me nightmares. | I gave up all my goals but have found new ones. | The assault was bad. The attacks by the rest of the department were worse. Even male students stopped speaking to me. Fortunately I had friends who went with me everywhere to protect me. Predictably they too left academics. | Male | ||
1709 | 12/14/2017 5:29:40 | PhD student | Prof and PhD Supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Male | ||||||||||
1710 | 12/14/2017 6:12:15 | Throughout my career as a successful woman in higher education (Bachelor's degree, Master;s Degree, PHD, and more than 50 years as a faculty member at a major University where I was the minority woman) I NEVER experienced inappropriate advances from my male peers or students. I held them in high esteem and they reciprocated with respect and friendship. My behavior toward male (and female) associates set the tone for our relationships. These were (and are) often intense friendships but do not involve inappropriate sexual encounters. | My above comments refer to my statuses as student, young academic, and and seni | Other R1 | Sociology | Although I hate to "blame the victim," and clearly do not refer to all cases of sexual harassment, it is my observations over more than 50 years in the Academy is that many young women do in fact encourage sexual advances by their dress, speech, and actions. Social norms persistently teach young women that "getting ahead" requires being sexually attractive and (often) provocative in dress, makeup, and actions. As successful women, we often fail to teach them that respect for their themselves is most important. | |||||||||
1711 | 12/14/2017 6:23:36 | I studied and started my PhD at an Austrian university. When I started, I did not know what would be the international standards to present doctoral thesis at international conferences etc. Me and other female PhD students were held back a lot, whereas a male and politically active PhD student who started later was pushed to present at these conferences right from the beginning. This was even harder as I and other female PhDs were buried with more administrational work than the male colleagues and my PhD supervisor started to use ideas from my thesis as his. I experienced this afterwards, too, that he would do this with his other female PhD students. He would work with us intensely and if some other male professor said something against it, he started to say he never knew what we were doing and that it's bad and irrelevant. These things piled up during the PhD and afterwards he would push the new head of the department into the same direction telling that I wouldn't do interesting stuff. This person then said that someone like me cannot work in such an exotic field and he took up some ideas himself - and told me, that he expected his PostDocs to kneel in front of him as he did 20 years ago. They tried hard to get me out of my contract and when I tried to go to higher instances at the university, some people started to mutter that this might come out of a former sexual relationship that I might have stopped. Such nonesense! In the end, I got no help, so I quit my position. There were quite a few more in a similar situation, 3 quit, others worked until they reached their habilitation without any help of their male supervisor, on the contrary, many of them tried to make this way as hard as possible for them. One thing I have to add that 20 women got this tenure position to push females in university position, but it seems that especially those had the hardest time. 4 years later the new head of the university gave an order to do a study on the problems, I was interviewed and all interviewers were shocked what happened to me and most other women in this cohort. But in the end, nothing happened and the study was not even made official. | PhD, then Assistant Professor | Doctoral supervisor; head of the department. | Other R1 | Social & Economic Sciences | There's nothing that could be done. | None. | I left academia. I started to be extremely insecure about my work and about my achievements and mistrust grew rapidly. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||||
1712 | 12/14/2017 6:31:44 | Master's level | Associate Professor | Other R1 | Male | ||||||||||
1713 | 12/14/2017 8:22:05 | I originally sent detailed information to the owner of this survey, but have decided to make that content public. In the last 3 years of my career at this institution, I was subjected to numerous incidents of harassment, some sexual and some violent. I will list some of those here: I interviewed for a faculty position in the same department as an internal staff candidate three times before landing the job, and that was bittersweet. In the first interview, I was told that I lacked experience. I went back to school in order to have the full credentials in case a similar position opened in the future, despite the fact that the individual hired into the job had fewer credentials than I did when she was awarded the position (she was older than I was, didn’t have her degree, and had no teaching experience). When the position opened again, I applied and landed an interview. The day before my interview, I learned that my then-boss had been seated on the hiring committee when he called to make sure that I “wanted to go through with it.” He insisted that, were I to participate in the interview process, he would ensure that I was forced to discuss any job dissatisfaction publicly. He said he would make sure that I had to face him to do it, and he would not recuse himself from his vote to ensure I didn’t get the job. I heard that I was not the committee’s choice because I did not seem interested in the position in the interview. I was terrified of retaliation for interviewing right in front of my current supervisor. On the third opening, I interviewed and was offered the position but was told by another male member of the faculty that the male administrator in charge of the hiring decision did not want to place me in the position because I had small children. He feared I would turn it into an online-only position so that I could be at home with my children. Thus the rationale for the issues with the first two applications. When he called to offer me the job, he made it clear that I was not his first choice. They had split one position into two, and he hired his choice into the other position. She had no children and was openly lesbian. When my replacement for the position I willingly (and enthusiastically after the first interview experience) chose to leave was hired, she began to approach my office, which was next to hers, for advice. She was continuously complaining about how badly she was being treated by the staff in the new department, and I genuinely believed her and felt sorry for her. However, after several months of coming in late in the evenings to do her job for her (she also complained that no one would train her and she lied on her resume about her experience and was trying to cover it up), I had had enough. I was pregnant, and my pregnancy had been upgraded to extremely high risk so I decided to fall back to my work and my work only. The threats started immediately. She would come into my office, close the door, and tell me how she knew “how to get people” because HR “always believes the person who files first.” She said she had made friends with the new HR director, who didn’t know how to do her job, so this woman had kindly allowed her to borrow some of her textbooks so she could learn how HR in higher ed really worked. This meant she had a friend in the department who would believe anything she said. She told me that she couldn’t have children, and that I was an irresponsible parent for not staying at home with mine. She told me a story about beating an ex so badly with a baseball bat that he was sent to the hospital and said she wouldn’t hesitate to do that again if anyone “got in the way of her professional career.” I believed her- I actually tried to look this up in arrest records to see if there had been anything documented but couldn't find that information. I was absolutely terrified of this woman. I stopped using my office. Her staff used it as a thoroughfare (there were two doors- one into the department and one to the hallway). They would disrupt my work constantly, even in meetings with students, to open one door and walk through with their mail cart. This was an extremely tight area- the office itself was essentially a storage closet- so anyone in chairs in front of my desk had to stand up and move a chair when they were hit by the door. The staff called it their “easement” and said it was their right to walk through whenever they wanted. I begged campus admin to install a lock only accessible from the inside to keep them out of my area. The request was initially denied. In that case I got the union involved, but the grievance officer told me that I “shouldn’t start too much trouble because they didn’t want to hire me in the first place.” I guess I had been warned. It took several weeks to have the lock installed, and the installation only served to further anger the people in my previous department. As the co-worker’s behavior continued to escalate, I feared violence because things were clearly getting worse. I went to campus admin first and begged to relocate my office. The request was denied, despite ample office space on campus, and I was told to “stop starting trouble” when I explained that this was due to harassment. I then went back to the union grievance officer to explain the harassment, and he told me that there was nothing in the situation that could be grieved- it was my own fault for continuing to expand my family, and I should expect that people would treat me badly because of that. He complained that we women felt “entitled” to things and that we just needed to leave well enough alone. After the grievance was denied, I walked into the faculty lounge to hear him discussing my status as “a breeder” with another faculty member. One commented that I must be addicted to sex because I was having so many children so closely together. At that point I knew my job was short-lived. I had no union support. I privately messaged another female faculty member through Facebook, and she confirmed that this was a pattern for this individual as he did have issues with some of the female faculty. Unfortunately most of the other female faculty worked on other campuses, so I was isolated. I had been warned in the beginning that I was not to send emails complaining to anyone- ever- and if I put anything into writing the union would see that my position was eliminated. I had nowhere to turn, and I kept my mouth shut. Shortly thereafter I was called into HR and confronted with “evidence” that I had been harassing this woman. She had been filing complaints on me almost as soon as she started, as I was working long hours with her- for free- to help train her because she told a believable sob story. I was not permitted to see anything. They pulled two Facebook posts which she stated were threatening her. One post was random song lyrics to a song I was listening to while on my computer at home. They were in reference to my treatment through the union, though I did not mention this in the post, but I was presented with nothing else so beyond “this isn’t about her” there wasn’t much of a defense. How can you even disprove that? I was told that I couldn’t talk about the situation with anyone to build my own defense, and I couldn’t see any of the other evidence against me. I was told that I deserved to be threatened and treated so badly. I was stunned into silence. I’ve never been treated so cruelly, and I was 7 months pregnant at that point, told them I was high risk and the stress of it alone could be too much, and they shrugged it off. No one cared. No one. When I left the HR office I didn’t even know they had spoken with staff- only a select few people my accuser had named and who I believe she threatened because they reported directly to her. I was told that the grievance officer had already provided evidence to the administration that I was the person being harassed and had been trying to get away from her, and that the union handled it and it would “all be over soon.” I went home and immediately to bed. I was so devastated, and terrified that I might lose the baby under the stress of the situation. I had two days to come up with a defense without seeing anything in the evidence file, and for those two days I was house-bound. Beyond “I didn’t do this” I really had nothing to go on. I did not know until the second day that the complaints had continued in my absence because this woman believed me to be on campus. Additional charges were filed that I was “bursting into tears” in my classes and that students were coming into the department to confront the individual responsible. I had not been on campus, nor had any contact with my students. My classes were formally canceled and I had submitted sick leave, but none of that was even checked. The head of the union called me that evening, through clenched teeth, to tell me that I had “driven the final nail into the coffin” of my career at that institution and that, if I did not come back to work and do the remainder of my job, the union would ensure I never worked in higher ed again. | Full time faculty | Original accuser was staff (subordinate), union leadership was senior tenured faculty | Other Type of School | Southern State Community College | Prefer not to answer | I was in the process of being terminated when the union finally decided to grieve the matter, but the same male grievance officer told me that he intended to file the grievance with the statement that it was my “pregnant woman hormones” causing all of the issues. I again stressed the violent threats and harassment, and he laughed at me and told me that he knew how “women like me” worked. I second-guessed wearing a wire to that meeting, and I deeply regret that I did not do so. When the head of our union became involved, he pushed very hard for me to resign so he didn’t have to deal with it. The calls to my home were constant and threatening. He told me that I should stay at home and be a mother to my children. That I was doing them a disservice by working and he was sure my place was really at home anyway. I was completely devastated. Only after I was officially released, as my contract was ending, was I permitted to meet with anyone to address the charges. Only after I was officially released was I able to see the full file against me- full of lies which some have later admitted they told in fear of retaliation for their own positions. When I received that file I cried for weeks. How can you possibly defend something you've never even seen? I was the first, but I wasn’t the last. Most people connected to this situation were either marginalized, forced into retirement, left for other opportunities, or terminated. This experience was financially devastating. | She was promoted from staff to faculty. As far as I know there was zero disciplinary action taken on her. It seems like she was rewarded for her role in this. | Finding new work was relatively easy, which is why I chose not to fight harder for the job I was losing. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses. I will say that I still fear further retaliation, however, and I therefore stay completely away from all campuses and anyone who I know still works there. I avoid any conferences or other professional gatherings where I believe this woman will be in attendance because if the burden of proof really is on the accused, unless there are cameras present all the time she can say whatever she wants and get away with it. She has already proven that she knows how to work the system. | I changed almost all of my usual patterns- where I shop, events I would ordinarily attend, etc. I had panic attacks for years when the phone would ring because for a while they were only union calls and they were always threatening. Some of the individuals participating in the harassment have showed up at my home. I've considered moving many times. To this day a certified letter causes an instant panic attack. | I am far less trusting of everyone, and coworkers in particular are kept at a huge distance. Most don't know the names of my children. Still others don't even know I have children. No one knows where I live. I do not socialize with colleagues at all outside of work. I'm certain that this has hurt me professionally, as I do work with some amazing people now who have formed a "work family" around each other. I'm always on the outside. It's the only way I can keep a handle on the fear, but I also know I can't share that with anyone because once the seed of bias is planted it has no choice but to grow. Had they just said "we are eliminating your job" I would've been upset but it didn't have to come this. Questioning my integrity and professionalism was intentionally hurtful, and that's something I will never get past. | There are a few select individuals who are to be held responsible for the actions here, but I want to stress that the institution as a whole did try to make this right once the female faculty took over the union leadership. It was just too little, too late, and it wasn't worth pursuing. I was treated so differently because the lies were initially all that people knew. I couldn't go back to that, despite a decade of loyal service and a perfect work record. My accuser had only been there 10 months. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |
1714 | 12/14/2017 8:26:16 | I had set up a meeting with a professor to discuss doing a summer research project with him. During the meeting, he asked me inappropriate questions: whether I had a boyfriend, was he was my "first love", things like that. I remember feeling so uncomfortable. I don't remember him talking about his research at all. After the meeting, I told some friends, and I learned that there were all sorts of rumors about this professor and inappropriate relationships with female undergraduates. | I was a sophomore in college. | He was a tenure-track assistant professor in my major department. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | chemistry | I didn't tell anyone in the department, but after I told my mother, she was so disturbed by it that she called the chair. My understanding is that they told him to leave quietly and the incident would remain off of his record. | He was forced to leave a TT position at a prestigious school, but he ended up in a permanent position at another SLAC in the region. I've always felt sort of responsible about foisting him on another institution, where maybe the administration didn't know. I recognize this is irrational. | I've always had a bit of impostor syndrome, and I think anytime something like that happens, it just reinforces in your mind that maybe you aren't good enough, maybe you don't deserve to be where you are. I ended up getting my doctorate but left academia. I think that experience was gave me my first understanding of academia as sort of a rotten place. | It would say it had a relatively minor effect on my mental health | same as impact on my career | Male | |||
1715 | 12/14/2017 8:29:42 | Several female graduate students in my department were harassed by a professor | First year graduate student | Professor in required course | Other R1 | UNC Chapel Hill | Sociology | EOC and University reviewed the case and found compelling evidence to support claims from multiple graduate students | Apparently the decision was left up to the department, and the faculty member is still employed | Negative - those students whom the harasser did not like were mislabeled as unskilled in his area of expertise | Negative - low self-confidence thereafter, causing me to do poorly in this area of the field for an on-going time | Considered quitting the program immediately, and on-going thereafter, mostly because of the completely inadequate departmental response, which devalues female victims and sends a message that we should continue to work in an environment which could become hostile whenever this person decides to attend a departmental event. | Male | ||
1716 | 12/14/2017 8:38:56 | Senior male colleague slapped my ass, in front of his wife, at a party at his own home. This 'friendly' scholar was known to do the same to others, namely another Assistant Professor, a woman of color. | I was in my first year of serving as an Assistant Professor at a new institution in a liberal city on America's left coast. | He was senior and perhaps the most distinguished member of our department: I was an untenured Assistant Professor. | Other R1 | History | None pursued, though many women Assistant Professors knew of his reputation (and kept their backsides away from the perpetrator). | None. | Eighteen years later, I am a senior, tenured scholar who holds an Endowed Chair. The incident did not hold me back in any palpable respect: however, I continue to be furious, guilty (for not reporting), and ashamed. | None. | None. | Male | |||
1717 | 12/14/2017 8:44:47 | A professor in the department only mentored female, asian phd students. He would dominate their personal lives, telling them when they could and couldn't eat dinner with their husbands and not to have children. He expected them to work in his office with him alone, often late into the night. And he told his mentees to dress 'business sexy' for conferences and pre-approved their outfits. All of these behaviors were so mundane to this professor that he would behave this way publicly, in front of other faculty and students. The professor went even further with one mentee and appeared to have a physically intimate relationship with her. He was witnessed carrying her over his shoulder out of an MBA party and repeatedly sitting too close/leaning into each other's bodies/touching each other, all in ways that professional colleagues do not do. As, all of this harassment was out in the open, and easy to see for anyone caring to look, it appeared that the department and the school condoned the behavior. | Ph.D. student | Associate Professor, and direct mentor of his vicitims | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Michigan | Social Sciences | Eventually, due to a random set of events, an investigation was opened. Despite multiple faculty and phd students sharing their experiences of inappropriate behavior, the perpetrator was found not to be culpable. | zero | Witnessing the dynamic drove home that exploitation of women, particularly women of color, was completed accepted in academia. I have yet to experience an academic environment that contradicts this lesson. There is no place for the dignity of women in academia. | Male | ||||
1718 | 12/14/2017 9:27:49 | During my PhD program, shortly after I married, my major professor brought me int a room, closed the door and informed me that since I was now married, I should no longer pursue my PhD. After that, he isolated me from the rest of my committee, informed me not to communicate with them, and then told them that I was a failure in maintaining information professional relationships. He moved to expel me from the doctoral program, and was successful, giving reasons that were false (such as claiming I did not complete requirements of my program by the deadlines). Even though I presented evidence that proved him false, to my department chair, a committee of professors, the Dean of Graduate students, etc.), I was told that I must have done something wrong and that I should move on in life. | Doctoral candidate | Full professor and my committee chair | Other R1 | University of Hawaii-Manoa | Botanical science | None, except for university administrators to state that I must have done something wrong to trigger the harassment. | none | PhD was never completed. I moved into an administrative career in academia. | I entered into clinical depression; took me 5 years to climb out. | In my administrative position, a PhD would greatly enhance my stature and would broaden my grant options. | After this happened to me (getting kicked out of the PhD program because of getting married), I discovered several other women at my institution who had had similar destructive experiences (professors who deemed that their life style did not warrant them obtaining a PhD). None of us were able to recoup from our losses and regain the academic stature that was taken from us. | Male | |
1719 | 12/14/2017 9:32:57 | This is ultimately complicated and it is too long, detailed, and confusing for anyone to bother reading, but I need to share this because this story has ended up being one of the most traumatic events of my life and I have received no formal support or sympathy from my institution and I just need to state it publicly. When I was an associate dean at my liberal arts college several years ago we did not have formal designated Title IX officers, so several of us ended up being the staff to deal with this on an ad hoc basis. I ended up being the person that adjunct faculty and some students came to because I was in the Dean of Faculty office and dealt with curricular matters. The students who came to me had complaints primarily about other students so I moved them onto the Dean of Students, but I sometimes knew the outcome of those cases: nothing. In one case, one of our star professors (and another dean) had a son who stalked his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend and roommates and made threats against her. The school did not intervene until he started to destroy campus property--throwing rocks and bricks through her windows while she was there, and even then it was hushed up and he was not disciplined as would be a student whose father wasn't a faculty darling. In another case, while at a campus concert, a female student had been punched and physically attacked by a male student. This male student was well connected; of course nothing happened despite the evidence she had (black eye, numerous witnesses). Most galling to me, the male student who punched her ended up being allowed to go on an international trip to country X with, for which I was the female faculty/staff member chaperoning. When I threatened to quit the trip because he was going to be allowed to go, I was reprimanded. As for the female student who had been punched, she was threatened with disciplinary action because she had been smoking pot at the concert..... The school would not support her or represent her when she took the assault to the local police and local DA. And though the DA initially wanted to pursue the case, a few weeks later he informed her there was just not enough evidence.... The worst case was the same year with two international teaching assistants on (Ms. A and Ms. B) who were being stalked and repeatedly sexually harassed by one of our longer-term adjuncts (Professor Y) who had been given informal supervisory powers over them. Professor Y was good friends Professor Z who ran the division and had seemed to be the one to suggest that Ms. A and Ms. B needed supervision because they were from traditional countries. Professor Z insisted that they could not leave campus (one was married and wanted to visit her husband on the weekends); when I told her that of course she was allowed to leave and yes she could fly back home on a Friday, Professor Z confronted me inappropriately and angrily and explained that both women were "evil snakes under rocks, slithering, biting" and so forth. It seemed pretty clear that Professor Z--who at that time was a friend of mine--was also involved in the harassment. I led Ms. A and Ms. B to HR and to the Dean of Students. Once we proceeded with the case, I found that Professor Z's wife, an administrator, threatened Ms. A and Ms. B with deportation; HR and the DOS were entirely doubting of these women--I sat in the meetings and was shocked at the racist, sexist, demeaning questions the female HR director asked of them as if they were too stupid to grasp American life and as if they had tried to seduce Professor Y. My dean told me I needed to stay out of it because I was going on the trip to Country X with Professor Z. I am assuming that both Ms. A an Ms. B had been told by somebody to not talk with me any further. They left campus the last day of classes and I really have no idea what happened to them. I have always felt so angry and upset that I could not do more to help them. It was the trip to Country X with Professor Z that was my undoing. This was about three months after my trying to help Ms. A and Ms. B. I had believed that Professor Z and I had been good friends for years and initially we got along well. Once in Country X, Professor Z immediately complained that certain female students on the trip were insulting him and he refused to allow them to take part in certain activities--he made me intervene and insisted he would only speak to them again if they apologized to him personally. (None of us had any idea what exactly they had done, but for the sake of the trip, I told them to just play along and apologize to him, that I knew they had done nothing intentionally wrong and that it must be a cultural miscue that we just didn't get). But everything involving gender became a problem for Professor Z. There were female and male faculty from Country X who served as our guides; Professor Z stirred up problems between them and complained formally to their university about the women. In the mean time, the male students on our trip were behaving like rude Americans. I talked to them many times but I finally blew up at them (I was highly inappropriate here, which I admitted.) At that point, Professor Z, all the all the male students, the local male faculty and staff then isolated me entirely and worse. When we got back to the US, I later found out that nearly all the students, Professor Z, and his administrator wife went to my Dean and others and attempted to have me fired. I was eventually shown the written comments the students had reported about me; I've never read more upsetting and devastating comments in my life. They were cruel beyond recognition. I was so distraught and anxious--wondering if the comments were true and how horrible I must be--that I left campus and did not return for another 16 months. Professor Z has never spoken to me since three days into the trip. It has taken me many years to realize that perhaps the strange turn against me was related to how I tried to support Ms. A and Ms. B and how I supported the female student who had been punched by the rich student who was allowed on her trip. I just don't know. It's always been a mystery to me, but completely devastating. Once in a while I hear stories from other faculty and staff that stories circulate about him sexually harassing female students and staff. But because of his politics and professional stature in his fields he is widely beloved by most other faculty and many admiring students. I have no idea what happened to the women in Country X he attempted to get fired, but I have never been able to get over all of this and what a central role he ended up having in the Title IX sorts of cases I was involved with that year. He was somehow always intertwined, but here he remains. I now suspect that the reason he and his wife came to our campus from a far more prestigious institution is that he may have behaved inappropriately before. | Small Liberal Arts College | Nothing for any of these harassers | Devastating. | I never attend any campus events, never eat on campus, never go into other office buildings, very rarely have social or professional contact with any colleagues outside my department. | Male | ||||||||
1720 | 12/14/2017 9:37:54 | It was the summer before the second year of my MA. I had come home from my graduate institution, and I was in touch with my favorite professor from undergraduate. He had just retired, and he told me that he was getting rid of a lot of his books, so he was sort of holding a giveaway event at his house. A lot of these books were materials I would need on my upcoming master's exam, so I was eager to get what I could so that I didn't have to dip into my stipend to pay for these materials or lug them to and from the library. I was under the impression that other former students of his would be coming in and out of his house that day as well. When I went over, I was the only one there. Fine, maybe I was just in an off period and missed the other students coming. He made me some tea, and we spent a little bit of time catching up before we went back to his library to sort through some books. I had my reading list with me, and I took what I needed. Finally, when I was done, I wanted to start loading up the books in my car so that I could go home - I was living with my parents for the summer, and I was eager to get home so that I could make dinner. That's when things got weird. The professor didn't want me to leave his house; he tried to get me to sit longer with him, he tried to put me in a reclining armchair and lay it all the way back. When I protested and told him that I needed to go home because traffic would get bad and my parents were expecting me, he replied, "What? You want to get home so that you can hang out with your MOMMY?" He was 70 and I was 25. He was old enough to be my grandpa. His face contorted and got ugly, and he grabbed my arm and tried to hold me down. I'm not entirely sure how I got out. Nothing aside from that happened, but the adrenaline kicked in - I knew that if I didn't get out of that house now, I was probably going to be raped. I don't remember what I said, but it was enough for him to let me out of the house. I also left with the books. I did use some of them on the exam, but most I haven't touched. They're still sitting in my garage because I can't look at them without immediately being sent back to that armchair, eyes wide, fearing what was going to happen next. This was a professor who used to be my favorite, who was my undergrad thesis advisor, who had been a recommender of mine, who I had kept in touch with all those years as a mentor, but nothing more. He did email me after this and asked me out, but in my response I lied about having a boyfriend and made comments that pointed out how old he was. He left me alone after that. I'm planning on going through all those books and getting rid of every single one over the winter break so that I don't have to be reminded of his face anymore when I see them sitting in my garage. I'm very lucky that I got out of situation. It was scary, and I can't imagine what it would have done to me if I had gone any further than it did. | Grad student - MA | Professor. Undergraduate professor from my undergraduate institution, and formerly my favorite. | Other R1 | French | I didn't report it. | None that I know of, though I did hear stories later from other former students and friends that lead me to believe that this was not an isolated incident. | Luckily, none. But I do work at my undergrad institution as a staff member now, and I worry about him finding me on campus one day now that I'm back in town. | I'm not entirely sure, other than it is something that haunts me occasionally. He's definitely on the list of one of the scariest encounters that I've had. | I decided not to pursue my PhD and not to go into academia. This wasn't the only reason, but it did play a part in my decision. Now I work in university administration in a very positive environment with a zero tolerance policy, and I appreciate it all the more that I have the support of my two bosses, because I have also been harassed as a staff member on several occasions, I've reported it, and the harassers have been dealt with. | Male | |||
1721 | 12/14/2017 9:39:41 | I heard from the other students that my professor was telling certain grad students in the lab how handsome they were and taking photos of them on her phone. I saw it happen one time. The men didn't mind. I found out later that my supervisor gave one of them a large bonus for a task similar to something I had also performed. However, I was rejected when I asked for a bonus. To make things worse, my supervisor's husband is a senior staff scientist in the lab. He is in charge of most of the young women in the lab. My supervisor thought it was funny that most of the women in the lab work with her husband and most of the men in the lab work with her. I heard that her husband pesters the young women about their love and sex lives. He says inappropriate things like asking a female grad student to treat him like her gynecologist. I caught him joking about how young women, naming one of the undergraduate women in particular, should take drugs and have as much sex as they can while they are young - this was in the middle of the day in the lab, surrounded by male postdocs. I told him I would report him to HR if he didn't stop. But he thought I was joking and laughed. | Postdoc | My professor and her husband | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Ivy Medical School | They ignored it because I was the only one who reported it, I had no email or photo evidence, and I was not the victim of the harassment. | Nothing. | I confronted my professor about title IX violations in the lab when I was transferring to a new lab to continue my postdoc. She sabotaged my career and intimidated my next employer into retracting the offer. I've spent the last half a year unemployed, without a visa, and without health insurance. Other labs I applied to admitted that they knew of my professor's misconduct but they dare not cross her because she sits on too many award and grant committees. This forced me to leave the field. I am now applying to labs outside of my expertise, without a reference letter from my postdoc. | Mostly frustration that this is still how it is. So few people report. Even fewer people are taken seriously when they do report. And an even smaller fraction get justice. | Working for a person who has courage and integrity is now my greatest priority. I will not work in a lab or department that has high tolerance for harassment or sabotage. | Both | |||
1722 | 12/14/2017 10:01:00 | This is gender harassment, not sexual harassment, but it speaks to the climate that does not take women seriously as professional and intellectual persons. When I arrived on my liberal arts campus over twenty years ago, I was one of the very first tenure-track professors to work on gender and sexuality. My own department has always been extremely supportive (after all, they chose me out of a pool of more than 400 candidates!). But I was surprised, having taught at other institutions, how cold other faculty were to me, and how few students I had. At the end of my first year, the conservative student newspaper published an expose of my department--gasp! all FIVE of us were registered democrats and could we be trusted?--but there was also a little satire about the problems my department had hiring, including a satire of me (unnamed) that I had done my dissertation on menstruation and what sort of evidence could possibly exist for that? (I did not do my dissertation on menstruation by the way, but reproduction.) I was confused, upset, and went to my dept. chair. He knocked on the other colleagues doors and said "it's time to let her know what has happened." We all met and the chair grabbed a big, giant file and said if I wanted to see it I could. Apparently a year earlier--when I gave my job talk--faculty in another department found my work so threatening (!) that they went to trustees and some number of them (I've never looked at the file) went to the president to try to get my job offer rescinded or buy out my three-year contract. The dean at the time was intertwined in all of this, and suddenly my inability the year before to get a contract out of him for months made sense. It also made sense how on the phone he told me things like "I'm not sure we'll find an office for you; I'm not sure whether we can provide moving expenses." There was no campus housing available for me (I was moving across the country)--I am the only faculty member in all these years who was not offered campus housing as far as I know. It made sense why I was paid in the high 30s, and how my salary remained in the 50s well into the 2000s. The thing was this story never seemed to go away. The story that the student paper had run about me got picked up in national conservative sources, including a college guide (that used the satirical material)--three years later, the director of PR got up at a faculty meeting boasting about how fantastic it was that our campus had such a great write up. For years, students would come tell me how their professors in another department joked about me and students would tell me how there was a joke that as I was doing book revisions, maybe they should put used tampons on my door for my research, etc. Despite the fact that my book and articles have ended up winning prizes, that I have earned all sorts of professional accomplishments outside my field, etc. I remain marginalized on my campus. I do get along with my colleagues--including some of the ones who were most hostile to me when I have arrived--and so I believe I am respected as a congenial, easy-going, hard-working colleague and I am a very popular professor among students, but my work on gender, sexuality, etc. is itself dismissed and not of interest to the academic community here. This is not sexual harassment, but it is part of a larger institutional problem where anything that has to do with gender, sexuality, and power is not considered as important as other fields and topics. | Assistant Professor | Professor, Dean, Trustees, students | Male | ||||||||||
1723 | 12/14/2017 10:32:42 | PI made judgemental comments about appearance every day. Called me a whore for wearing a miniskirt on a day I wasn't supposed to be working but came in anyway. Refused to provide training due to gender. | Graduate student in research lab | Graduate mentor (primary investigator) | R2 | Texas State University | Biochemistry | None | None. The university has settled numerous sexual harassment suits out of court for this professor. | Ended it. | Almost committed suicide when unable to finish graduate degree due to professors refusal to meet with committee or provide training and resources. | No longer working in field | The entire Chemistry department knew he had a history of being sued and settling out of court for sexual harassment and discrimination yet vocally blamed me for the problem. | Male | |
1724 | 12/14/2017 10:49:11 | After the first year of my PhD program, my MA thesis advisor, whom I planned on working with further, pursued me for a whole summer. I was 25; he was 45. I kept telling him I just wanted to be friends, and he seemed to get it, but then he'd show up at my apartment with flowers and champagne. Although I wouldn't let him touch me, and never indicated I wanted more than friendship, he wanted to formally "declare" our imagined romance to the department. He'd decided I was going to be his next (3rd) wife. Finally, I told him to leave me alone, and he responded, "you have no idea how much power you wield over other people." Ugh. But he did leave me alone. | First-year PhD student | Full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | None. | It forced me to find other people to work with, which was awkward. And it made me question the quality of my scholarship. Looking back at the grade and comments on my MA thesis, it could not have been as great as he said. There was not a single negative comment. That is absurd. | It made a stressful program much more so. And to this day, 25 years later, I still feel super guilty, like I led him on. I also feel badly for him, because he was lonely and I don't think he meant to harass me. | None. | Male | ||||
1725 | 12/14/2017 11:02:57 | A series of disgusting comments to me about other women's appearance. general toleration of a boys' club. undue, rude comments about women's scholarly work. hostility to feminism overall. watching him be a condescending and gross person to his secretary- calling a sixty year old woman a "girl." | ABD | He was tenured, had given me grant money | Other Research Agency | Research Library | History | lol none whatsoever. Silence. | None. He's still a big deal. | Made me feel crazy, made me hate where I was living and the work I was doing there. | I felt totally unsafe in my place of work and residence. I wanted to not be around this person at all, which made me look "lazy" because I wasn't in the office all the time. | I'm still doing my best, but because he thinks of me as a "troublesome" person because I became chilly to him after these events, I can't use him as a reference, or depend on him to give me a reliable letter of rec. I worry that, if someone on a hiring committee asks him about me, he will not be a supporter, and could endanger my candidacy. | Male | ||
1726 | 12/14/2017 11:24:23 | A student in my cohort ramped up a pattern of inappropriate sexual comments and behavior, culminating in sexual assault. Over time, she showed me her breasts and crotch, talked about the size of her vagina, and touched my breasts. At a bar one night, she repeatedly groped me and pushed up my skirt while I told her over and over to stop touching me and leave me alone. She grabbed my pussy from behind. She only quit after I screamed at her that I would punch her if she didn't stop. | Graduate student | Graduate student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Anthropology | None. She had a habit of accusing other students of "violating" her or making her uncomfortable. I felt that I couldn't report her, because I suspected that she would make a counter-accusation to muddy the waters. | None. | I left the field. I kept running into her at conferences, and my friends still work with her, even though they know about the assault. It was too much. | I have been angry and traumatized for years. | Same as on my career. | I think the reason I've been unable to move on from this assault is precisely because of its invisibility as assault. I felt my peers didn't take it seriously because the perpetrator is a straight cis-woman. The fact that some still work with her seems to confirm that invisibility. | Female | ||
1727 | 12/14/2017 11:25:02 | Professor held a speach at a collaboration dinner in front of about 40 people and suggest that people from small genetically distinct groups (his and mine) should breed together. (The collaboration group was looking at the first population stratification maps available an hour earlier. ) There were only 2 people from my group, both women. Also other less shocking stuff. Everyone knew he meant me, when I asked about this confusing event. No-one did anything. | PhD student | Established tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | He was from Harvard, I was from a small European nation university | Genetics | 20 professors in the room did not do or say anything. He was in another institute from another country. What do you think they would have done, when they don't do anything about worse stuff than this? My career would have ended there, but in hindsight that might have been a good thing | None | Hard to say, I have done ok, but I haven't been able to do as much as I wanted, because I have been exhausted from small scale harassment, gender discrimination on top of the usual academic and life pressures. | I doubt myself, don't want to talk to male professors in fear of experiencing inappropriate comments, boob staring or other, one contributing factor to my depression and anxiety issues. | Played a role in me opting out of the academic track after postdoc | Male | ||
1728 | 12/14/2017 11:41:37 | I dated a fellow student briefly and then we broke up. I ran into him months later at the campus library. He said he'd been checking by my carrel to see if I was there. I hadn't told anyone where my carrel was. We got on the elevator, and once inside he pinned me against the side and tried to forcibly kiss and grope me. I was choking him but couldn't get him off me. He stopped when the doors opened and I was able to get away. | Graduate student | Graduate student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Northwestern University | Anthropology | The office for handling sexual assault complaints helped me document everything and walk through my options. | None. I didn't report. | It was difficult to finish my dissertation because I found the library triggering. | I feel uncomfortable with men on elevators or in other small, enclosed spaces. | None. The support I received at NU helped a lot. | Male | ||
1729 | 12/14/2017 12:14:27 | Is this harassment? Just before and after I finished my PhD, this academic celebrity from my PhD institution (not in my department but a related field) began pursuing me romantically, despite the fact I was married and he was in a long-term relationship. I suppose I responded positively to some of his attention because I was super stressed out in my first year in a tenure-track job, which was causing depression, anxiety, and mania; I was isolated; and I had gotten very little mentoring on my scholarship in my PhD program. He read my work and praised it. It felt so great finally to get recognition for my ideas. And he seemed interested in my thoughts on his work--or at least he pretended to be. It was all long-distance, so it was not physical, but I did become emotionally attached to him. He emailed and called *relentlessly* with increasingly sexually charged messages. When I felt overwhelmed and tried to stop contact, he pleaded with me to continue. I was not emotionally strong enough to stop. Then, after several months, he suddenly dropped me, pretended like he had never done anything, and accused me of only liking him because he was famous. I guess this is not technically harassment, because I participated to a certain extent, but now, looking back 15 years later, it was certainly an abuse of power. He was a celebrity, I was vulnerable, and he played me. It's a little Clinton-Lewinsky-ish. | Final year of PhD program/new PhD/first year tenure-track job | Full professor/academic celebrity/public intellectual | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | Didn't report. | None in the sense of punishments. He did change institutions shortly after and find another young intellectual woman to pursue. Some of this might have been fleeing the scene of his misbehavior with me. | This definitely made me question the quality of my scholarship. I realized that I couldn't believe anything he had said about my work, and I suspected that he had been holding back criticisms and not really challenging me on my ideas. I felt used and devalued. The only "good" thing that came out of it was that after it was all over, I submitted his name to my publisher to get a blurb on my book. It was a little bit of blackmail that I don't feel proud of. Because I don't believe the blurb. But at least I could prove him right and use him a little in return. | This devastated me and made me feel very ashamed on many levels, not the least of which was because of this emotional attachment to someone not my partner. It took me a couple of years to feel balanced and in control again. It didn't help that I had to see him all the time on TV and in publications I read. Or that he entered the Obama administration at a high level. He was everywhere. | I don't know. It was big, but I don't know whether it actually changed anything except to make me jaded. | Male | |||
1730 | 12/14/2017 13:25:48 | Myself, and a number of women in my graduate program, were subject to sexually explicit jokes and commentary from a male faculty member. I was shown graphic sexual imagery. I was called sexist and derogatory terms, e.g. "bitch." I received unwanted touching of a non-sexual nature, but that was definitely unwelcome in the context of this person's sexualized everyday discourse. | graduate student/TA | visiting assistant professor/the person whom I TA'ed for | Other R1 | anthropology | I reported to the dept Chair (a woman), and the Title IX office. As far as I know, they took no action. | None. He went on to secure a tenure-track job at another institution. | Lost research time while dealing with the reporting process. Lost energy spent avoiding the harasser around the dept and now at conferences. Distraction from my work while in grad school. | At this point, a decade of guilt, doubt, discomfort, and embarrassment, instilled by the harasser but even more so by the institutional response. | It strengthened my desire to reach a place of power in the academy, where I can protect others from these situations. | Male | |||
1731 | 12/14/2017 13:34:11 | This is a very well-regarded and respected older academic who began corresponding with me after a few interactions on Twitter. I was a little surprised as I was a nobody PhD student, and he is considered the father of an academic subfield, but grateful for the opportunity to have someone of his stature look at my work and possibly give me feedback and guidance. He is not from the university I was at, at that time. Three distinct occurrences: 1. He traveled to the city I lived in for something, and suggested we meet for a coffee. I didn't see anything wrong with this. Coffee and snacks were without incident, but then he suggested we take a walk to the nearby park as it was such a nice day. I agreed. As we walked there, he reached out to take my hand. I was shocked. He held if for a little while, and then I pretended I needed something from my handbag and disengaged my hand. After that I made sure to have my handbag on the side between us so he couldn't hold my hand again. We sad on the grass in the park where he lay down and opened a few of his shirt buttons. 2. During a separate conversation, or maybe during a conversation when he was in my city, he told me about how his wife and him went to nude beaches. 3. At AoIR in Denver, I ran into him near the escalators and we were chatting and catching up. A young Southeast Asian woman was coming up the escalator and he stopped in mid-sentence and said something like, "Oh wow I need to get to know *her*!" in a creepy desperate sexual way. I was just staring at him, and he suddenly realized where he was, looked at me and said, "You didn't hear or see any of that." And then he walked off. | Graduate Student. | Tenured Professor, head of his own lab, respected senior academic. | Other R1 | University of Toronto | Sociology (his field, not mine) | I did not report this - I did not know who to report it to since it was not at my institution, nor did any of the events take place at an institution. | None. | Nothing significant, I don't think. It does reduce the number of people I would contact and work with, given that he is quite well connected. | I stayed away from him/warn others about him when I can, which is always met with incredulity. I am more wary of and nervous around male academics. I didn't want to cite his work, but I had to, which feels really gross. | Nothing major. But I am considering alternatives to academia, and definitely staying far away from him and his research. | I think he once alluded to something happening at his institution, but he didn't specify, but it sounded like he was pulled up for inappropriate behavior, and they did something to him, but it didn't sound like it was very harsh and they didn't take away his job or anything. | Male | |
1732 | 12/14/2017 13:47:32 | I was sexually assaulted by my MA thesis/former diss. chair in 1995, just after my second year in grad school. Forced to perform oral sex in my advisor's offices as well as in offices he had given to me and other graduate students working on his grants. Worst time occurred in an office he had assigned to a fellow graduate student. I was so ashamed that I begged to be taken elsewhere. My advisor took me to his car and continued this enforced oral sex on the roof of a campus parking structure. I again begged to go elsewhere. My advisor then drove around the roads right around campus, forcing me to continue oral sex while we drove, until we almost got into an accident. He then dropped me off at my church choir rehearsal. I felt paralyzed and unable to move. My arm wouldn't work to open the door. It was as if I had had a stroke. This was repeated multiple times in the enusing year (the year I was ostensibly getting ready for my qualifying exams) when he would drive me home. Once he drove me to a remote canyon and forced me to do the same. Two times this practice was nearly stopped by others (by an old lady with a flashlight and a police officer who rapped on the window) but I did not resist. I dissociated instead. My abuser called these events a "cancer on our relationship" and tried (successfully for many years) to convince me that this was my doing. | Grad student in combined MA/PhD doctoral program. | Tenured Professor and also PI on large multi-year grants I was paid to be a researcher for | Other R1 | public US university | Anthropology | Did not report to university admin. Did not disclose to other committee members or faculty members. Several of them had had affairs with/married their female students and I was convinced by my advisor that they would see "our relationship" through that lens. | None | The assaults, which occurred in the academic year leading up to my qualifying exams, derailed me terribly. Made me unable physically and emotionally to go through with the exams at the last moment. I had to forfeit my dissertation research grant because I couldn't proceed without having passed the qualifying exams. I had to cancel all the arrangements I had made to do a year of overseas ethnographic fieldwork. I became very ill with an auto-immune disease, got into debt, and stopped attending school altogether. Finally, two years later, because of the chagrin I felt at receiving a notification of non-progress from my department, I decided to take action. I got a full time research job at my university (in a different dept.) and was able to cobble together a committee (with a different chair), pass a modified set of qualifying exams, and use research conducted in my new job for my dissertation. In so doing I achieved my Ph.D. but I lost the opportunity to undertake the kind of in-depth ethnographic work that indexes symbolic capital for tenure-track job seekers and that would normally be a sound foundation for a junior anthropologist's articles. | I struggle with PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, disordered emotional eating, and depression. The feelings of anger have gotten stronger with therapy but my feeling of futility has not lessened. Up to now, I have chosen stress-inducing silence over stress-inducing disclosures of what my advisor did to me. | I have abandoned all original plans to be a research-oriented scholar. I have chosen to remain at an MA regional comprehensive university where teaching has become an important end-in-itself, rather than a means to an end. I have taken inspiration from my students, many of whom are first generation college students. I persist some days just because they persist. I continue to marginalize myself from my field because of an unabated fear of my former advisor, but bit by bit I am carving out a new research specialty. Next step is to start to engage with others in that specialty so that I don't feel so isolated and alone. Looking to the future, I feel some sense of hope. The #Metoo movement may finally galvanize me to act, and at very least it will give me some information that I can share with my own child. I pray that somehow my ability to share wisdom coming out of the movement will somehow serve to protect her when she goes to college in a few years and joyfully begins research herself. | Male | ||
1733 | 12/14/2017 14:45:39 | Professors in the music department ganged up on a transgender professor and drove her away from the department. As part of that, they (including the department head) targeted a student of hers who had a disability and invented extra tests the student had to pass in order to obtain her degree, which was designed to aggravate her disability. Other students did not have to do these tests, and the tests were unusual at that stage of her degree anyway, which was a writing and research-based stage. The student was eventually forced to take a lesser degree and she also had immigration problems as she was on a student visa, which limited her ability to use legal mechanisms to protest. At the same time these events were happening, one of the professors in the department (who did not participate in the bullying of the disabled student) was dating and eventually married his own student. There was also a rape outside the music building in about 2011-2014, which is poorly lit with lots of bushes, and students often leave the building after dark when practicing. A male grad student approached the department head (who bullied the student with the disability and the transgender professor) and proposed improved lighting and clearing the bushes. He was rebuffed and cost was the reason. The male student then proposed the students perform a benefit concert to do this. The male student was then forbidden from putting on the concert. | Advocate for the student with disabilities | Faculty | Other R1 | University of British Columbia | Music | Faculty discussed in emails excluding the student with disabilities specifically by targeting her medical condition - which could have resolved if she had been left alone | None | The student did not receive her PhD and narrowly avoided having to leave the country | Male | ||||
1734 | 12/14/2017 16:02:26 | It was the early 2000s. I was still very young, just turned 21. I am trans (f-->m), and was publicly identifying as male but not at all passing as such, and thus super visibly queer. A student the year below me, an army officer who came t to class in uniform, started with inappropriate comments after class, at social functions, etc. Comments about what he imagined my sex life to be, about how much he knew I would enjoy "a night in the locker room" with him and his "buddies." He got more graphic and threatening over time. | early grad student | another grad student | R2 | History | I didn't tell anyone. I believed then, and believe now, that if I brought it to anyone, they would at best give him a "talking to" and advise me to toughen up. It was a Catholic school that very pointedly had no protections or resources for LGBTQ students at the time. My advisor seemed to think that handling harassment was just part of a woman academic's job, and I doubt she would have felt any differently about my case. | For the first time in my life, I couldn't focus or finish anything, although I didn't connect it to the harassment. I just thought I was stupid/lazy/couldn't hack it. I dropped out of the program at the end of the semester. | I was deeply depressed and anxious for months, although again, I thought it was all just me recognizing my inherent stupidity and not a response to harassment. | I eventually applied to another program, still in progress. I don't think I ever recovered my momentum or self-confidence. I'm not sure I'll finish. | Homophobic/transphobic sexual harassment happens to both women and not-women. | Male | |||
1735 | 12/14/2017 16:15:01 | My prof., who was my tutor as an undergrad, then my advisor as a graduate student, spent ten years gradually getting close to me: getting me drunk, emailing in the middle of the night, telling me in depth about previous sexual relationships, commenting on women's bodies, complimenting me in an insidious way. Eventually we were very drunk one night when he put his arms around me and suggested we go to bed. Feeling like this man had been the souce of my entire self esteem for 10 yrs, I agreed. He waited until I was maked in his arms, then rejected me. I could deal with that - it was consensual ane I fully believe ppl should be allowed to change their mind during sex - but he then ghosted me. Totally froze me out of his life when I thought we were friends. I thought the explanation must be that he never thought I was any good academically and that he only wanted me for my body. Six months later he did a similar thing again and I have since witnessed him behave the same way with undergraduates and my friends. It's the same MO over and over and it sickens me. | doctoral student | tenured professor, former tutor and advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Oxford | I didn't rept it because - perversely - I still cared too much about him. | none | I left academia and went into an adjacent field. My confidence was destroyed, I think irrevocably. | Absolute annihilation. Nervous breakdown, depression, insomnia, borderline eating disorder. | Changed career and social life. Go the long way home to avoid this person. | Thank you for doing this. It is both comforting and disturbing to see how many ppl are gong through similar things. I thought I was the only one who was broken but the solidarity here is helping me to mend. | Male | ||
1736 | 12/14/2017 16:17:29 | I was stalked/harassed for about a year as an undergraduate student. The harassment mostly consisted of emails and notes, but in one incident someone stole my underwear from the laundry room and returned it with a note explaining how they'd used it for masturbation. I was also aware of some other incidents on campus, including two different graduate student or postdoc T.A.s who had sexually coerced / assaulted female undergraduate students in their classes, a professor who had sexually assaulted a female R.A., a rape, and another case of email harassment which took place in another dorm. | Undergraduate | Unknown in my case, but probably an undergraduate | Elite Institution/Ivy League | California Institute of Technology | Computer Science | Essentially none. The university had a policy of not investigating sexual harassment claims at all unless the person making the claim could name the perpetrator. In my case, I could make a reasonable guess, so I was able to get the university to do at least a cursory investigation, but they determined there was not enough evidence to punish anyone. The other email harassment case wasn't investigated at all because it was too difficult to identify a perpetrator. At least one of the graduate student T.A.s who had sexually assaulted a student was given a restraining order that prevented him from going near the undergraduate dormitories, but that was the strongest response I know of. None of the T.A.s were expelled from their labs/programs or even prevented from T.A.ing future classes. Which is why I knew about them -- the female undergraduates kept track of which T.A.s had a history of assaulting students so we could inform each incoming freshman class. The incident which involved a professor was not reported. | As far as I know, none of the harassers faced any career consequences. The T.A. who got the restraining order was unable to attend most of the on-campus parties because they were too close to the dorms. | My harassment didn't have a major effect on my career, but the other cases I knew about -- the assaults by T.A.s and professors -- discouraged me from ever doing an R.A., which had an impact on my grad school search. | Not great | None? | Unsure about the email harassers, but the T.A.s/professor were male | ||
1737 | 12/14/2017 16:41:01 | During an on-campus interview for a tenure-track position, the department chair suggested we take a walk rather than meet in his office. As we walked, he put his arm around me and told me that he was sure I was wondering about the dating prospects in the small town in which the college was located. He went on to say that he had met both of his wives in the town. He left me with the clear impression that he considered me a possible choice for wife #3. | recent PhD | tenured professor, department chair | Small Liberal Arts College | Anthropology | I didn't report it. | None | I didn't get the job, but I had decided to refuse it if I received an offer (partly because of the incident but there were other factors, too). | I still remember the situation clearly even though it happened 17 years ago. Reading all of the entries in this spreadsheet reminded me how very uncomfortable it made me feel. | None--I left academia years ago to pursue an alternate career path, but only after I realized that I really didn't want to be a professor. | Male | |||
1738 | 12/14/2017 16:47:56 | When I was an undergrad at the University of Chicago and in the early years of grad school at Penn, I was sexually harrassed by a mentor. He put enormous pressure on me to respond to his desires and I resisted. When he and I moved to Penn, there was a moment when, in a sick moment, he stuck his tongue inside my mouth and I let him feel me. | undergrad and grad student | He was a professor. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania | Anthropology | I told no one about it. | I struggled in graduate school, to find my place, to write, to finish. He mentored me into intellectual life (at all -- I am the first in my generation to go to college) and it was forever tainted by the duress and enormous pressure he placed on me sexually. I suffered through graduate school. | I was depressed, angry, unable to write. | I stuck it out in grad school and ended up in academia. | Male | |||
1739 | 12/14/2017 17:11:46 | Inappropriate comments on my papers. Example: "Your volcanic liquid burns me." | Undergraduate (third year) | Professor | Other R1 | University of New Hampshire | English Department [Was not my declared major] | 1. Asked another male professor in his dept. to read several of my papers and the professor's comments. After reading the papers and comments, the reviewing instructor stated: "From what I have read, I am now required by law to report to the chair of my dept. What would you like to happen?" 2. My request was that he simply stop writing comments of this nature, that I stay in the class and be treated fairly. I also asked that he not approach me outside of class as he had once touched my shoulder on the street. 3. I was granted my requests. He stopped writing intimate responses to my essays on Early American Literature. I received an A as I should have. | I am not sure if it impacted any future cases. I later heard from a friend that this professor had previously harassed his girlfriend (comments on papers and forcing a kiss in private). | There was none as it was outside of my department. | There wasn't any because I was supported by other faculty and his department. | For me, personally, it was not as harmful as other forms of sexual harassment I was experiencing. | Male | ||
1740 | 12/14/2017 17:53:29 | This could be an answer as long as my dissertation. In a nutshell, several of the male faculty used to make bets on what kind of underwear I was wearing. I didn't know for the first year or 2 and I don't know how they ever expected to learn the answer to settle their bet. The dept head, overhearing a conversation between myself and another student regarding ear piercings, asked me out loud in an auditorium just prior to a guest speaker's talk, if I had my labia pierced. My boss, a Chinese male, regularly told me women shouldn't be doctors. Work didn't have a place in science. They should be in the home. Another faculty member used to asked me how I liked sex. Others took bets on if I was wearing thong underwear or not. | PhD student | Department head and one of the 6 members of my graduate committee, my PI, and the associate dean of my dept | Other Type of School | LSU | Comparative Biomedical Sciences | Zero | None. Department head & tenured | None | Anger. An anger different from any I'd ever experienced. I was the only white, American female in the department. I am not unattractive and am outgoing and social. I didn't fit their mold of what they thought a scientist should be/look like, so they reduced me to my gender. The comments that were made on a not infrequent basis over my time as a grad student wreaked havoc for those 5 years. I was depressed, my spirit died a little every time I drove into the parking lot at schoo because I dreaded what I might face that day, and my self esteem and confidence absolutely tanked. | If cynicism and distrust are outcome measures, then tremendous. | They knew they could do this without fear of penalty. They probably didn't see it as wrongdoing because they never saw me as a person (much less an intelligent candidate who earned the right to be there), only an object. They also knew I had no recourse since 2 of the biggest offenders were the #1 and #2 of my department. I had to essentially eat it everyday if I wanted my degree. My choices were suffer, endure, and get my PhD or quit and let them win. I was never going to let them beat me. | Male | |
1741 | 12/14/2017 17:56:49 | I was sexually assaulted in 2014 while attending an international scientific conference. The perp was an employee at the conference center. | Prof | Employee at the conference center | Other R1 | The assault didn't happen at my institution | Ecology | I didn't report until recently. Upon reporting, my institution did everything they are supposed to (offered to meet with me, offered mental health support, offered confidential consultation). The assault happened 3 yrs ago, in another country, by someone I can't name or ID, so there wasn't anything legal they could do. The piece that was missing, however, was someone who actually seemed to care--it very much was a formal process with check boxes to be sure they had done all they legally were supposed to. And, the time between when I reported and had my meeting was ridiculously long (month). I felt like my experience was minimized by the process. | I was so shocked and disoriented and a wreck when it happened that I didn't report it to anyone at the conference or the conference center before I left. So, nothing has likely happened to him. | I can only guess that I'd have been more productive these past years...nothing tangible has resulted in terms of my career. I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing. | I've experienced anxiety attending conferences, during conversations about sexual misconduct and mandatory reporting, when alone in unknown places, etc...I didn't tell anyone about the assault for 2 years, and keeping it in negatively affected my relationship with my partner. I was pretty depressed for about 6 months, starting in fall 2016 when sexual misconduct began being talked about almost daily in the media, then our current Pres was elected, and so on. But, I've sought help and am doing better. I'll never be the same, and know that experience will come back to haunt me at times, but I'm working through things. | The assault probably has strengthened my desire to contribute to institutional change. I have spoken out many times during the last 6 months. I'm trying to raise awareness, increase training and support services, and shed light on problems. Some days, I can't bear it (why does it have to be me? This makes me remember my experience more!), but most days I am determined that my junior colleagues (faculty and students) NOT have similar experiences, or if they do that they might feel supported to report and get help right away. | Male | ||
1742 | 12/14/2017 18:04:28 | I was sexually assaulted in 2014 while attending an international scientific conference. The perp was an employee at the conference center. | Associate Prof | Employee at the conference center | Other R1 | The assault didn't happen at my institution | Ecology | I didn't report until recently. Upon reporting, my institution did everything they are supposed to (offered to meet with me, offered mental health support, offered confidential consultation). The assault happened 3 yrs ago, in another country, by someone I can't name or ID, so there wasn't anything legal they could do. The piece that was missing, however, was someone who actually seemed to care--it very much was a formal process with check boxes to be sure they had done all they legally were supposed to. And, the time between when I reported and had my meeting was ridiculously long (month). I felt like my experience was minimized by the process. | I was so shocked and disoriented and a wreck when it happened that I didn't report it to anyone at the conference or the conference center before I left. So, nothing has likely happened to him. | I can only guess that I'd have been more productive these past years...nothing tangible has resulted in terms of my career. I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing. | I've experienced anxiety attending conferences, during conversations about sexual misconduct and mandatory reporting, when alone in unknown places, etc...I didn't tell anyone about the assault for 2 years, and keeping it in negatively affected my relationship with my partner. I was pretty depressed for about 6 months, starting in fall 2016 when sexual misconduct began being talked about almost daily in the media, then our current Pres was elected, and so on. But, I've sought help and am doing better. I'll never be the same, and know that experience will come back to haunt me at times, but I'm working through things. | The assault probably has strengthened my desire to contribute to institutional change. I have spoken out many times during the last 6 months. I'm trying to raise awareness, increase training and support services, and shed light on problems. Some days, I can't bear it (why does it have to be me? This makes me remember my experience more!), but most days I am determined that my junior colleagues (faculty and students) NOT have similar experiences, or if they do that they might feel supported to report and get help right away. | Male | ||
1743 | 12/14/2017 18:19:44 | In 2009-2010, I was a committe member for a graduate student who came to me repeatedly complaining about her Adviser/major Prof sexually harassing her. He would say awful things to her like 'all the pretty ones cry' or 'why don't you become a nurse?'. She cried in my office and considered quitting so many times. | Assistant Prof | Associate Prof | Other R1 | Michigan state university | Ecology | I reported the problems verbally to my Dept Chair, as did another female Associate Prof. We asked for the perp to be disciplined, the grad student to be supported, etc... what happened? A slap on the wrist for the perp. We were told 'he's just like that, he's hard on all of his students...he's missing some social filters'. I supported the student the best I could, but to this day still feel awful about the situation. I'm so glad times (and policies) have changed--now I would report right to OIE and he wouldn't get away with it. Unfortunately, though, he could still be doing these sorts of things--since this woman, I have distanced myself from that colleague and his lab. | None. He got promoted to Full Prof shortly after | Well, for the woman harassed--she spent a lot of time questioning her ability or interest in science, and to be honest I don't think she stayed in the field. She did finish her MS, but it took way longer than it should have and was a horrible experience. For me, I lost any sense of trust or fairness I had in my Dept Chair. He obviously did not have the back of any women in the Dept. | For the student harassed--she spent a few years questioning her abilities, and in fear of her adviser. For me, it solidified my sense of insecurity and lack of support in my field and at my institution. | I don't think the student stayed in science. | Male | ||
1744 | 12/14/2017 19:01:28 | A male grad student / colleague was interested in me romantically. After I night out a bar, I rejected him by way of not answering my phone when he wanted to hang out. He came over to me house, shirtless and drunk and fought his way into my doorway and at the top of his lungs called me a dirty whore and a fucking bitch. He grabbed me by my wrists and I pulled away with all of my might. He let go suddenly and I fell back and injured myself and limped the next day. He finally stepped out and I quickly closed and locked the door on him and he continued to call me a whore and broke the handle off of my door. My partner at the time, also an academic, blamed me for being “too flirtatious” with this man. Other colleagues who knew about this remained very friendly with him. That was the worst part. I felt abandoned by everyone I knew. | Grad student | He is now a professor and administrator at a university | Other R1 | Depression, self doubt | Depression, self doubt | Male | |||||||
1745 | 12/14/2017 19:07:38 | When I was an undergraduate I was 'courted' by an older, married male professor. He was someone I admired deeply as a professor, and had asked to be an advisor to the backpacking club I started. He orchestrated a few hikes alone, held my hand, invited me for a drink, arranged to have dinner out, told me how smart and attractive I was, made vague and confusing comments on my papers, and eventually professed his 'crush' behind the closed door of his office. I was confused, terrified, horrifically upset by all of it, and profoundly embarrassed and ashamed. I was a first generation college student, and it took me years to regain my confidence and to believe that I might have genuine aptitude for a career in the academy. | Undergraduate | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Santa Clara University | English | never reported | none | I chose this incident because it was the first, but certainly not the last! Like almost every woman in academia I know, I have stories from every phase of my training and career -- graduate school, assistant professor, and now tenured professor. | Male | ||||
1746 | 12/14/2017 19:25:51 | To me | Student | External faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Biology | Questioned my self worth | Male | |||||||
1747 | 12/14/2017 19:49:21 | After meeting a senior male colleague once he began to make inappropriate (and odd) comments over email and phone "I can't stop thinking about you" "you are just amazing" "meeting you blew me away" after calling my office, "I just had to talk to you again". I told a male colleague friend about the comments and showed him some of the emails and he was creeped out, too. A few months later at a poster session, in one comment he managed to simultaneously disparage my research area and the fact that I was a women (I have too much testosterone to do those behavioral studies; um, wft dude?) | Assistant professor | Senior to me | R2 | Texas Tech Health Sciences Center | STEM | I never said anything | none | I just avoid this person | Male | ||||
1748 | 12/14/2017 19:52:19 | Inappropriate staring and treatment by a senior male colleague/collaborator. After meeting with the inappropriate person and another male colleague about a project, my male colleague and I left the room and my colleague says, "I don't like the way he looks at you" I said, "I know, this is why I wear my coat and zip it all they way up for meetings". The inappropriate person always seems to brush me off and treat me like I'm dumb (could be because I'm a female or just that dude's personality) | Assistant Professor | Director | R2 | Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center | STEM | Nothing was ever turned in | I avoided working in this area | Male | |||||
1749 | 12/14/2017 19:57:40 | Professor tried to force me to give him oral sex | Graduate Student | Full professor, 15 years older | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Rutgers University | Philosophy | N/a | N/a | Lack of trust in professors and others | Damaging | Didn’t let it stop my career but has affected personal feelings of self worth (was it my fault, etc) | Male | ||
1750 | 12/14/2017 19:58:42 | The (now) chair of our department is on film giving a roast at a retirement party for a senior male scientist. The roast is sexist (makes jokes about sleeping with students, being proficient in sexual harassment, and sex with minors). It is disgusting and appalling. The video was recorded willingly by the department and the talk had slides. This incident was covered by the Verge (you can watch the video in the link: https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/24/13359794/smithsonian-sexual-misconduct-investigation-miguel-pinto) and TTU "investigated" the incident. Nothing happened. see coverage here: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16262722/texas-tech-sexual-misconduct-investigation-sexism-biology The above link also shows an extremely sexist satirical journal article that was handed out at the retirement party - undergraduate attendees got copies. The university has made no response. | Faculty | Chair | R2 | Texas Tech University | Biology | Chair stepped out of chair role during investigation, at least on paper. No official university response. It seems the effort was to protect TTU and sweep the issue under the rug. | None | I lost so much time and productivity to this issue | It makes me want to leave this university | Male | |||
1751 | 12/14/2017 20:05:02 | A senior professor in my Faculty suggested that I should us my "assets" for career advancement. When I asked for clarification he stated that he would support my aspirations for promotion and provide a support letter if I would go out with him. When I declined he started negative rumours about my professional reputation and abilities. He became more aggressive and threatened to report me for misconduct. He said he could get me fired. Now I try to avoid him but I feel stress every day. I reported it. I was told the problems in my university are so systemic I should just try to find another job elsewhere. | Professor | Colleague | University of Calgary | engineering | This is the reason I post here. Because at University of Calgary women who experience these incidents have no voice. There are options for reporting but this is a facade. How many claims are processed? None for any women I know. I reported to leaders in engineering and they did nothing except suggest I was mistaken. The university speaks of compassion and caring and they have no intention of confronting any of the systemic problems. | Nothing I know of | Significant | Stress every day in the workplace. There is no safety and no support. | I want to find another career | Male | |||
1752 | 12/14/2017 20:38:51 | Professor groped me. | PhD student | Assistant Professor in my department but not on my committee | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Chicago | Anthropology | None/Not reported | None/Not reported | Continual wondering about the worth of my work | Insecurity about the worth of my work | Male | |||
1753 | 12/14/2017 21:20:50 | I was applying to a tenure line job at a Canadian University. The Chair of the search committee responded to my application with a note acknowledging that my application was received and (with a slight reprimand?) that the recommendation letters I had sent were not needed at that time. And then there was an attachment. The attachment was not mentioned in the note. The name of the attachment: rear pussy. And yep, that's just what the attachment was - an incredibly lewd, perhaps underage, clear view r.p. jpeg. | ABD PhD student | Senior faculty | Other R1 | Anthropology | None. I told a few mentors, including committee members. My chair laughed it off as one of those things, who knows what's on your computer, you make an error, etc... I definitely told my peers, but we all didn't have a sense of what to do other than make jokes in disbelief. | None | A bit wiser for the wear | Unsettling | I have become much more outspoken. If this were to happen today, I would definitely not remain silent (institutionally or interpersonally). | Male | |||
1754 | 12/14/2017 21:31:58 | I heard from male peers about a certain celebrated male professor who only bonded with students over a smoke and drugs in the late evenings. While he did not make advances towards me or anyone I knew, we knew as women that we would never be included in the inner circle of the department, where opportunities for grants, co-authorship of papers etc, available teaching positions were discussed and given out because we were not deemed attractive or flirtatious enough to be included. It was an almost exclusively male circle, and the only women who were included by this prof and his junior male colleagues were either their partners or soon became their partners. Most of them did not go on to pursue serious academic work. | Graduate student (still in coursework) | Associate Professor | Other R1 | English | It was too pervasive and embedded in the culture of the department to be thought of as wrong in any way. | He is not held in high esteem by many of his colleagues. But there have been no tangible consequences. | I didn't have it as easy as the men and women in his circle, and never heard of several opportunities for funding and publishing. But I soon sought mentors elsewhere, and was lucky to find them in my department. | I was just recovering from the loss of a parent, and this did make me question myself, and wonder if I was/ would ever be good enough to be included. I wondered if my not getting invited to these soirees was a reflection on my performance as a grad student. | I did consider changing myself to "fit in," but thankfully had a circle of friends and a spiritual practice and community that allowed me to look beyond this. | Male | |||
1755 | 12/14/2017 21:45:36 | I needed three letters of recommendation for several highly competitive post-graduate funding programs. Cultivated a senior faculty member in one of my departments (I doubled-majored). Had heard rumors of sexual relationships he'd had with former students. He began to request I come to office hours, once or twice each week, during which he'd stand up from his chair and come around to the edge of the desk, perching on the edge, close to where I sat in a guest chair. Gave me extracurricular reading for out-of-class, one-on-one discussion (on the grounds that I was "very gifted" and "doing superior work"), hugs at odd moments, nicknames/endearments -- all verbally, nothing via e-mail. I felt like I was being groomed. Didn't feel like I had any material complaint to take to the Chair (who was also writing me rec letters), and was afraid to alienate this person since the app deadlines were approaching and I had no replacement rec letter writers to call on. I changed my schedule in order to avoid his office hours (immediately after lectures) and rearranged spring classes and senior thesis topic in order to avoid him. | Undergrad, junior year | Endowed Chair, senior faculty in my department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | Literature/Writing | None | None | Hesitated to develop useful working relationship with thesis advisor (different institution), who was also an older man and senior faculty with important connections to the community in which I did field research. This resulted in minimal guidance and no professional preparation for pursuing a career in the academy. | Self-doubt, loss of confidence, contributor to serial major depressive episodes. The effect of tying the quality of my work to inappropriate behavior and its implicit threats has been especially insidious. | Completed PhD program, left academia. Now pursuing non-academic career. Leaving this career track required that I forfeit both predictable income and any kind of health insurance, which has led to a slurry of other problems (untreated or undertreated medical/mental health conditions, financial problems, strained family and romantic relationships, delayed child bearing, etc.). | Male | ||
1756 | 12/15/2017 4:13:01 | I have witnessed the chair of my department bully and harass many of my colleagues and me for years. He tried to use a non-existent “maternity leave” to load me down with extra work the year after I had my child, he is aggressive and dominating over email, and threatens his employees (some of whom are tenured faculty) with termination should they not behave the way he wants them to. He has said sexist, racist things in faculty meetings and in emails. | Assistant Professor | Department chair | Other R1 | Arts | Several faculty have tried mediation, and others have filed title IX complaints, but nothing has been done. At this point, most are scared into silence and submission. | None that I know of | I’m trying to leave the institution. | Constant stress and anxiety. I have sought help from a therapist and try to stay away from this man. | I’m trying to leave. | Male | |||
1757 | 12/15/2017 4:30:25 | My professor and supervisor started using my private phone number (that I had given him for emergencies) to send me messages. He was asking what I was doing, recommending me some songs. At first I did not say anything. Then he asked me to have lunch with him, and a month later during a commission, he started calling me "mon bijou" in front of other professors, and ate in my plate during a commission lunch. He kept coming into my office to talk, invited me to his, to listen to music or to chat. He was always making compliments about my body. I went to see a mediator from the university who basically told me that I should change the way I dress. I finally told my supervisor to stop using my private number, and he stopped talking to me. I finished my master thesis with almost no supervision and he got me the minimal grade to get my master - my other supervisor gave me a 5.5. | Master student | Master supervisor, ordinary teacher. | Other Type of School | University of Lausanne | Geosciences | The mediator told me to wear different clothes and to respond with humor. I wanted her to take his name so any other complaint would go in the same file but she did not. | None. | My master thesis has a low grade. | I felt guilty for months, almost break up with my boyfriend. | I am doing a second master, and I have to find a supervisor. I am really afraid of having a man as a supervisor. | Male | ||
1758 | 12/15/2017 6:31:50 | 2015-2017 relentless pursuit followed by a brief affair that ended with a threat to my career | Grad Student | Tenured faculty member at R1 institution different from my own | Other R1 | University of Virginia | English | Report filed with Title IX at my institution, but requested no action be taken due to concerns about negative impact on my career | None | Difficult to say -- job market is terrible, so unsure if difficulties finding a job are linked to him and his threats or if it's simply the state of the market | Severe anxiety and depression: unable to work on dissertation for months | Considered (and still considering) leaving academia | He is habitual predator -- acknowledged that he had (and was having) affairs with multiple graduate students from different institutions. Mostly he meets them (us) at conferences. Some are former students that he pursues once they leave his institution. | Male | |
1759 | 12/15/2017 7:02:59 | I ended up leaving the field after completing my Ph.D due to the cumulative effects of bullying that began only after I became pregnant. When it became so severe that my degree was in danger, I filed a complaint with our campus Title IX office as a last resort (I tried resolving it within my department, but my chair and the rest of my committee would not stand up to my adviser, despite telling me how wrong they thought all of this was). I had substantial evidence of discrimination in e-mails, so the issue was resolved quickly, and I received my degree. | Graduate Student | Professor Emerita and chair of my dissertation committee | Other R1 | Humanities | Unclear, but the Title IX office let it slip that there was swift intervention by the Provost | None | My career is over for the foreseeable future. | I have a great life with a decent job in an unrelated field and a wonderful husband and family, but the total loss of professional identity has been so much harder to deal with than had I ever imagined. I'm usually good at pretending everything is fine, but I'm really not well. | I loved my work, but I can't subject myself to more of this - this is not the first time that something like this has happened to me. | Female | |||
1760 | 12/15/2017 7:20:30 | After working late one night preparing lectures, I ran into a male colleague on the empty train platform, waiting to go home. He had been drinking excessively and was nearly black out drunk. He spent the 15 minute wait for the train trying to convince me to sleep with him. When we boarded the train, as we walked down the empty carriage, he told me that he "could rape me if he wanted to." Then laughed it off as if it were a joke. I spent the remainder of the train ride trying to avoid being touched by him, fending off additional sexual advances, and being regaled by stories of his current and past conquests. | junior faculty (first year in my new tenure track job) | junior faculty (also first year in a new tenure track job) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Political Science | I never reported it | none | none | minimal because of the support of friends and another colleague | I began avoiding social engagements where he would be drinking heavily, unless I could bring my partner. | As myself and the male colleague in question are now supervising PhD dissertations, and I have seen him out drinking with PhD students, I am now growing concerned about our female graduate students. | Male | ||
1761 | 12/15/2017 7:33:53 | After a consensual encounter that turned into sexual assault/rape, he told colleagues in my department and in at least 5 other departments about how I was "crazy" and how I wouldn't leave him alone, and that they shouldn't work with me on grants and proposals because I was a "manipulative slut" who "wasn't even that good in bed." | PhD candidate in an interdisciplinary department | PhD candidate from another interdisciplinary department | Other R1 | Oregon State University | Public Policy and Environmental Science | Not Reported | None, Harasser got a prestigious job at a museum on the East Coast | Directly linked to mental health, unable to look for work | PTSD and Major Depression intensified | Not looking for work, working part time at a gym, unsure if I should return to career workforce | I felt betrayed by my friends and colleagues who knew about this, but didn't stick up for me, or continued to work with him despite this situation. | Male | |
1762 | 12/15/2017 7:55:08 | When I asked a professor that I was RAing for what I could do to help (I meant in regard to my professional duties) he replied "you can get on the table and strip naked". He said this within ear shot of 3 of my colleagues, I was stunned and didn't respond to his request, pretty much acted like it didn't happen. I was a graduate student at a state school when this occurred. In three other incidences as a post-doc at R1instituitions, one of which was Ivy-league the following occurred: 1) my advisor at the time starred at my breast while I talked to him in his office, 2) a professor responded when I made a sarcastic comment in a lab meeting "oh, how cute you are with your blonde hair" - I know this was meant to demean me (i.e., dumb blonde) and 3) a prof I was working with made comments about my looks and "how lucky he was to have such a pretty research assistant" as well as innuendos such as "what a lovely pussy you have" when my cat appeared in the background on a skype call. All of these comments made me incredibly uncomfortable...I will leave out the demeaning comments and behaviors I have received/witnessed from my male colleagues over the years. | graduate student and post-doc | professors | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Neuroscience | NA | NA | of course this has negatively impacted my career, being treated like my thoughts don't matter and not being promoted/considered when others with less qualifications get ahead due to gender, boys club. I have also been maltreated/verbally harassed/bullied in my last position as a post-doc seemingly because I was female but this person was abusive in general and I have no direct evidence that it was sexually directed, just a track record of this individual demeaning, verbally abusing and manipulating females in his lab. I resigned from this position. | severely impacted my mental health | I am on the verge of leaving academia for good | I forgot to mention (actually just remembered) in regard to the prof who asked me to get on the table and strip naked, he also invited me to his house, I declined his invitation. | Male | ||
1763 | 12/15/2017 8:30:27 | My advising professor asked me to sleep with him, and when I said no, he quietly retreated from his adviser roll. I had no backup as he was the last of the discipline in the department. His behavior was well known: he had an open string of girlfriends drawn from the graduate pool over the years. He had one when he hit on me. Presumably she was wowed by trips to France and fine wine. But his contempt for women was obvious. By that time he was in his 60s. I took my qualifying exams and left the institution to scratch out a study site on my own to complete my dissertation. I fought hard - without meaningful letters of recommendation - for a career in academia. Even still, 20 years later, I do not have a network of invested academics 'who raised me'. The response of the institution - a female chair at the time- was cliche. "Oh that's just how he is and we can't legislate love". LOVE?? It easily set my career back 10 years, but I guess, after having read so many stories of women "hounded out" (excellent terms, btw), I should consider myself "one of the lucky ones". At that time in the late 80s and early 90s, several women were harassed in the short time I was there. The climate at the time gave both senior and junior male profs approval for selecting partners from the grad pool with impunity. | ABD graduate student. | Full professor, white male | Other R1 | [Removed] | Psychology | "Oh well. You can't legislate love". | none | Behind 10 years, easily. | Strong. | Strong. | Male | ||
1764 | 12/15/2017 9:21:09 | At a conference when applying to Ph.D. Programs I met my first choice mentor. He invited me and my research assistant friends to dinner, and after asked if I minded dropping off his laptop at his hotel before meeting up with others at a bar. We were talking about my research interests and I didn’t want to cut short the conversation, and agreed. In the hotel he touched my leg, tried to kiss me repeatedly, and even laid on top of me while encouraging me to reciprocate. I was stunned and wanted to get away without leaving a negative impression. He had/has a lot of status in the field and was worried about upsetting him. I eventually left at 2am, ashamed of not being braver. He emailed me repeatedly after that, as if we had a romantic connection. When I declined the spot in his lab he was clearly emotional and upset. Going elsewhere was a great decision. I still dread running into him at conferences. | PhD applicant | Tenured professor | Other R1 | Psychology | Told my immediate supervisor a short version of the story. He was skeptical and thought maybe I misconstrued things. | Altered research field somewhat | Affected my self esteem as a scholar (do people like me for my mind or for my body) | Selected different Ph.D. Program | Male | ||||
1765 | 12/15/2017 12:56:59 | Unwanted touching in faculty meetings from a colleague I barely knew in August and October of 2017 | Associate Professor | Full Professor (and I hear he’s one of the highest paid faculty members on campus and good friends with the president) | Small Liberal Arts College | American Studies | I documented the events in an email and met with the Title IX officer. It took more than two weeks to meet with the (interim) officer because she was traveling. | An informal complaint was filed (my preference), the incident was noted in his file, he met with the Title IX office to review the sexual harassment standards | None so far | It occupied my mind and my time for more days than it should have. I’m angry about that. I’m also suspicious of our Dean of Faculty who, when alerted to this person’s inappropriateness, expressed her worries about his career (he’s applying to be an associate dean). | I’m happy I reported it, but I am sadly glad I didn’t trust the institution and turned to close friends first. | Male | |||
1766 | 12/15/2017 12:57:01 | As part of my assistantship, was welcoming guests to a departmental gathering. A man, who I had never met but turned out to be my dean's husband, came up to me and put his hands on me as he said, "How'd you get your job, sweetheart?" I pulled away from him and loudly said, "Why are you touching me?" Instead of backing off, he stepped forward, pushing me against the brick wall behind me, and put his hands on me again. To get away, I had to push through a crowd of people, who were all paying attention to their conversations with each other, as it was a reception. | Graduate student with TAship in the department | Husband of my school's Dean | When I risked telling the dean of graduate students about it later, he expressed doubt that this even happened ("you were in a crowded place") and suggested I "misinterpreted" what happened. Professors told me "oh yeah, the dean's husband is known for being weird." No one did anything. | None | The dean tried to reassign my graduate assistantship to be her personal assistant about a week or two after her husband had groped me. There was no reason to do this and it was all very strange. Thankfully a higher adminstrator stepped in and saved my assistantship by ordering her to reassign me back to my advisor, but I almost had to resign my assistantship in order to be able to stay away from her and her husband. | Anxiety, depression, lack of trust in my department | I am very cautious now in professional settings. In receptions and other crowded spaces I am constantly scanning the room and try to make sure I am always with a friend and never alone. | Male | |||||
1767 | 12/15/2017 13:21:20 | I was newly arrived at my field site and the director of the research institute I was affiliated with invited me to lunch, where we spoke about our shared research interests. I was pleased that such a senior scholar found my work interesting. Then he pushed me against a wall and forcibly kissed me, shattering the illusion that he cared about my scholarship at all. | PhD Candidate | Director of research institute at my field site | Other Research Agency | Anthropology | None - I did not report | None | I realized that I would never, ever work at that institute. He made it clear that he could hire me, but the offer would be conditional on us having a sexual relationship. | Yet another incident where I was reminded that a senior male scholar saw me as a sex object, rather than a colleague. These incidents are undermining and induce self-doubt. | None | Male | |||
1768 | 12/15/2017 13:43:39 | One professor repeatedly held my arm whenever I met with him as a graduate student, even though I tried moving away. Another professor proposed marriage to me three times (I am already married and told him that and he was persistent despite the fact that I only talked to him about academic matters). The second professor was quite old. I told myself he didn't know better because of his age and tried to laugh it off. He still tries to meet with me whenever he is in town. | Graduate student | (1) Tenured professor; (2) Visiting Emeritus Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | None. I did not report it because I have heard of much worse happening. | None. | I chose not to take classes or interact anymore with both men. | Shame and embarrassment | Actively avoiding parts of town/campus | Male | |||
1769 | 12/15/2017 13:48:26 | #1: in grad school Dissertation committee member invited me to dinner at his house, however I thought that he was still married. When I got there, it turns out his wife had recently moved out. The guy was friendly, but the set up was creepy. It was me alone at his house, for dinner. #2: as a VAP I worked at a department that was fairly divided. I hung out with the folks who’d done the hiring. The VAP position was going to become a TT. In the five-person group, there was one guy who flirted openly and it was the kind of thing his women colleagues tolerated with humor, telling him jokingly to stop harassing me when they noticed that it was affecting me, but that I was afraid of putting him in his place. One time, this guy, who was the chair of this department, greeted me as they do in Latin America and in some parts of Europe, with a kiss on the cheek, but as he did this, in front of my colleagues, he whispered “mmm, you smell so good.” It was disgusting. I froze. It was done in the open, yet no one heard him but me. I felt paralyzed. I then heard that he had also harassed women grad students. This guy made life difficult for me in my last few months there by soliciting comments from students in my classes to create a hostile work environment. This creep is still there, at University of Illinois at Chicago. | I reported it to HR in the UIC case. They appeared to take it seriously, but nothing came from it. | Assistant professor (the dissertation committee member) & chair (at UIC) | Other R1 | Cornell & University of Illinois at Chicago | Modern Languages | None | Emotional anguish took energy away from research and made being in the building stressful. His office was next to mine. | Taking this job at a clearly unhealthy department with a harasser was one of the worst decisions I made. Taking it in the first place distanced me from my larger goal of working in academia in Europe. It was a step backwards. I was relieved when I left. | Male | ||||
1770 | 12/15/2017 14:16:33 | Inappropriate touching and comments by TA in class. Because the class was being offered remotely as part of a biocenter, did not even know how to report. | Grad student | Postdoc (TA for course) | Other R1 | Biology | None | Very upsetting | Made education more of a priority, as women deserve non-creepy educators. | Male | |||||
1771 | 12/15/2017 15:02:49 | 1. At the institution were I earned my master’s degree, a graduate TA took his penis out of his pants and “showed” it to me while we were walking down the hallway talking. 2. At the institution where I earned my PhD, a professor called me at home during the semester (I have no idea how he got my number) and asked me out on a date. His intention was very clear that we should see each other outside of class. 3. At the same institution (where I earned my PhD), I was hired by my dissertation advisor’s husband for a short period. The husband ran an office in development at the same institution. I was called into the spouse’s office and told directly, “I desire you.” | 1. Master’s student 2 & 3. PhD student | 1. graduate TA not in my department 2. Full Professor 3. Spouse of my dissertation advisor | Other R1 | 1. I told my department chair. He told me in a second meeting that this was an “object lesson” for me. I declined to have that conversation because that was a nonsensical thing to say. He told me that he spoke with the graduate TA’s advisor but I don’t think he really did and I doubted it at the time. I avoided the graduate TA. 2. I did not report it. I asked a friend in class to always sit between me and the professor no matter where I was seated in the class. I continued to participate fully in class discussions but never looked directly at the professor and directed my comments to my classmates. The professor never bothered me again. He provided thoughtful comments on my final paper. 3. I walked out of the office and ignored and didn’t speak to the harasser. I was asked back into the office about a week later and was told, “When I said, ‘I desire you,’ I was speaking abstractly about desire.” I asked if the conversation was over. He talked then at length about what a powerful and astute woman his wife was and that he had come to her defense when a womanizing professor was giving her a hard time during her PhD studies. The message was clear: my wife has power over you and I will always protect my wife. On the way out of the door, he blocked the threshold, got in my face and complemented my eyes. I pushed past him. I told other people at the office but did not report it to his supervisor or to HR. I stayed in the position for the duration of my contract (3 months). | None that I know of. | These incidents made it clear to me that at any time power can be used to manipulate and to damage women. I continue to see how power is taken away from women and POC in higher ed and how fragile our gains have been. But I also see faculty connecting with one another and protecting their own and others’ rights. Although I didn’t use institutional structures much in response to the incidents of harassment, I did speak about what happened with friends and family. At the time I saw (and I still see) all three men as amazingly scared and pathetic creatures albeit abusive and oppressive. | My dissertation advisor was pretty hands off so I didn’t rely on her much for advice and guidance. That made it easier for me. Had I been more dependent on her, I probably would have felt more fearful. Sadly a lot of these behaviors seemed normal to me at the time because of the ways that I had already encountered abusive and oppressive male behavior in my early life and had been normalized for me. | I certainly lost any romantic notions I might have had about “the life of the mind,” by the time I experienced the second and third incidents. But sexual harassment was just part of that loss of innocence in higher ed. If anything, I saw anew how disconnected academics are from their own and others’ lived experiences. Perhaps this helped me focus my teaching and research toward understanding how power works. I was able to finish the PhD successfully and got a tenure track job and achieved tenure at a small liberal arts college. Years later, I work as a faculty developer and relish the work I do supporting faculty and graduate students as they negotiate the institutional power games in an R1. Have I come full circle? Perhaps! Maybe I am making some of the changes that I wish someone could have made for me. | Male | ||||
1772 | 12/15/2017 15:03:14 | As a straight male PhD student, I chose my advisor (also male) early, as he was the only one working in my field. At first we worked well together, but he became overly "supportive." He would first email me, then later texting me, asking me if he could call me to discuss some important opportunity or matter after hours. When I said yes the first few times, it was apparent he'd been drinking, was drunk, and would often comment on my appearance or attractiveness. It made me uncomfortable but I brushed it off. I had moved my family across the country for the program and was worried about jeopardizing my chances in the department. Eventually he began asking more intrusive questions. On one occasion he asked to talk to me on the phone one night after I attended his class that focused on sexuality studies. I did so, and he was drunk and kept asking me if I was circumcised. On other occasions he asked similar questions, at times in his office when he was not drunk. At this point I ended the phone calls but continued to work with him. Eventually I decided to switch fields based on both new interests and a desire to escape the toxic mentorship relationship. When I informed him, he flipped out, told me he'd never work with me on anything again, and accused me of being homophobic. I reported nothing and moved on, wanting to wash my hands of the incident and focus on my grad studies. Eventually he got in trouble for similar behavior with undergrads and was lightly disciplined by the college. I was part of the inquiry into it and spoke with counsel. I felt like it was handled somewhat well, but the college was not very transparent about the details of actions taken to discipline him. I had to ask through the grapevine. | Grad Student | Advisor, Tenure-Track (not yet tenured) faculty | Other R1 | English | Discipline from college | Not entirely known; couldn't mentor graduate students or teach grad classes for a short period of time | N/A - thriving now, but careful and aware of abuse in academia | Was very stressed | Changed specialties | Male | |||
1773 | 12/15/2017 15:08:45 | I was bullied, demeaned, and defamed by a senior member of faculty who had created a boys' club atmosphere in the department. All female members of faculty were routinely discussed by senior male faculty--either assessed physically or denigrated intellectually. Teaching assignments, reviews, pay etc were all affected. In my case, this senior member of faculty actively attempted to get me removed from the department, skewed my reviews, circulated a document defaming me, and made me feel physically unsafe in the department. This person also had a habit of calling up female adjuncts late at night and being extremely inappropriate; he was chastised by other members of faculty for inappropriate behavior with students; and he made homophobic comments about faculty members. | untenured junior faculty | very senior | Other Type of School | English | "Could not be disciplined because tenured." | None | Unable to move past his roadblocks | Years of stress and anxiety | Left academia. Life's better now. | Male | |||
1774 | 12/15/2017 15:30:54 | At "Visit Day" in 2014, where accepted graduate students come to the department to learn more/meet colleagues and professors, a seemingly drunk male tenured professor approached us and told an age-ist and sexually explicit joke to me [female grad student] and a female prospective student, and another tenured male professor. He walked away afterward and everyone was shocked and silent. | Graduate student - dissertator | Tenured Professor and Director of his own research center | Small Liberal Arts College | University of Wisconsin - Madison | Sociology | I reported the incident to the chair, but I am unsure of any consequences for the faculty member. | Unknown, doubtful if any | None for me - but may have made prospective student decline to enter program | Anxiety/fear | None | Male | ||
1775 | 12/15/2017 16:12:44 | I was in grad school in the early 80s when these things happened. I was one of the few women in my cohort, so I was often one of the only women in small seminars. One of my professors would regularly comment on my appearance as our meeting started -- things like, "We are going to have a lot of trouble concentrating on our discussion today with Miss X's legs distracting us." In that particular case, I was wearing grubby hiking shorts -- they weren't remotely provocative, and even if they were... Another professor was a notorious womanizer -- I was warned by the female grad students ahead of me that most of them had slept with him because he was influential in the field and that if you wanted a career, it was part of paying your dues. Just a couple of weeks into starting the program, I went to his office hours because I was having some trouble with one of the readings -- he told me to shut the door, then he pulled a bottle of liquor out of his file cabinet and invited me to have a drink and discuss with him the "sex appeal of ideas." That kind of creeped me out. The following year I was in a small seminar with him -- five women, and one of them really having trouble because she wasn't very good in the foreign language of the readings. But she was sleeping with him at the time, and it was ridiculous in the discussions how he would favor her and dismiss the rest of us. But he ended up ditching his wife and marrying her -- and she was only a couple of years older than his son. The bisexual wife of one of my profs regularly hit on me at department parties. One of her girlfriends used to hit on me too. Another of my profs was having an affair with a grad student. She got pregnant. Her father was a grey eminence in the field at another institution, so he told the prof (who was on the tenure track, but not tenured yet) that if he didn't divorce his wife and marry his daughter, he would make sure he was blackballed. (I had heard the rumors but had them confirmed by the sister of the woman who got pregnant; that is, another daughter of the influential professor who I got to know at a summer program at another institution.) | grad student | professors | Elite Institution/Ivy League | German studies | I quit grad school -- I decided I didn't need this shit | It depressed me at first -- made me feel like I was no good, that all these guys cared about was using women as a perk of the job; also, that they were so insecure about their own intellectual abilities that they had to try to belittle others. My mental health improved greatly when I decided to get the hell out of Dodge and find a new career where I didn't have to deal with such shit. | It made me quit grad school, but I'm glad I did. I'm still working in higher education but as a staff member at an elite institution -- and I never had to put up with any harassment in my 30 years on the staff. | mostly male, but also female | |||||
1776 | 12/15/2017 18:17:36 | This particular supervisor was notorious for befriending students, from undergraduate to graduate, and inviting them to his house for late-night drinking binges. I politely declined his persistent invitations until he convinced me that we should get to know each other on a more casual basis, away from the dissertation and on neutral territory. I agreed, reluctantly, and he proceeded to feed me enough booze to floor any sensible person. After the conversation had become slurred, he held my foot with a coy smile and said he liked my socks. Very soon thereafter I was on my feet and calling a cab on my cellphone, with him following behind me saying that it was too late to go, too cold outside, and that I should sleep in his bed if I was tired. I kept saying "No thanks!" and "See you at the next meeting!" And I never mentioned the incident. But he wrote me a followup email that evening saying one thing: "You should learn to relax." | phd student | Full professor, 35-40 years older than me | Other R1 | University of Alberta | N/A (The University of Alberta has a particularly potent problem with student/professor drinking buddies) | N/A | Constantly question the subtext and meaning of his questions/comments. | Mild but persistent. | Male | ||||
1777 | 12/15/2017 18:23:14 | I was star-struck by this Distinguished Professor and readily accepted his offers to help me get into grad school. When he subsequently began to flirt with me, I was beyond flattered. His charisma blinded me to the power imbalances that made the notion of consent between us problematic. This imbalance only intensified once I followed him to his department and became his advisee. He knew that he was the only faculty who had overlapping interests with mine, and that I based my decision upon my understanding that our relationship would become more professional by necessity. He only stood by this promise for two weeks before requesting oral sex (that surprised me by being unreciprocated). A few days later he notified me that he had had a change of heart and that our relationship would need to become strictly professional. He listed a number of reasons behind this decision, such as the negative consequences that would befall me if anyone were to find out. Lurking behind these seemingly concerned words was a clear threat: he would continue a professional and supportive relationship with me IF I KEPT QUIET. This threat was obscured by his insistence that I had power too, that if his family found out they would leave him. I didn’t realize he was my abuser, my captor, until a year and a half later, when I called a crisis hotline to get help with my self-diagnosed Stockholm Syndrome. This happened two weeks into my PhD program. He continued to function as my teacher and my mentor, but he withdrew the warmth that I had come to depend on, within an otherwise hostile department. I was worried that he would lose professional interest in me now that sex was off the table. I obsessed over ways to get that warmth back, to rekindle his interest in me. I spent copious amounts of my mental energy on my appearance on days that I would see him, reasoning that it was in my professional interest if he thought I was pretty. I found myself in uncharted emotional territories that consumed me for years. He is still my adviser. | PhD student, advisee | Adviser and professor | Other R1 | Sociology | I finally began to tell trusted individuals at the end of that semester, when I felt like I was headed towards a nervous breakdown. However, I framed these disclosures as though I had been a consenting party. The following year, I began to realize how misleading that framework truly was, given our power imbalance, not to mention our age difference. I realized that he should have known better and probably did know better, but chose to enact his sexual fantasies through me despite the harm it would do to me. I was not a person to him. A year and a half into this turmoil, I confided in a feminist studies mentor, without revealing his name. She suggested I confide in a colleague of hers within my department, who she thought might serve as a valuable ally for me. I followed this advice, again refusing to disclose the name of my abuser. I gave her a quick summary of what had happened, this time framing myself as a victim. She was visibly shocked and beseeched me to report it to the Title IX office. I explained that I was too afraid of the damage it would do to my career if I came forward; besides, I still cared about this person despite their abuse of me. The next day, I received an email from this professor, telling me that she wished I hadn’t told her if I was not prepared to report it. She had conferred with a mentor of hers who agreed that the burden I had placed upon her was unfair. She concluded by informing me that at her mentor’s behest, she had reported the incident to the Title IX office on our campus. When I read this email, my entire career flashed before my eyes. The secret and safety I had worked so hard to preserve disappeared in an instant. When I panicked in a response, she assured me that she did not provide my name nor the name of the professor who she suspected. Minimally reassured, I was left grappling with the betrayal that I felt at the hands of this so-called ally. I replied at length, explaining how severely she had violated my trust and disregarded my very real concerns about my safety and in response, she withdrew her agreement to serve on my dissertation committee. I shared this episode with my feminist studies professor later that night, so she would not send students like me to this person in the future. Instead of apologizing or sympathizing, she insisted that her colleague’s decision to withdraw from my committee could have been due to any number of reasons. Without skipping a beat, she added that she did not want to have any further conversations with me about the matter. A few months later, I turned to the Graduate Student Director for professional guidance, with no intentions of repeating my mistake of disclosing this matter. She informed me that her biggest concern about me had to do with my personality. She went on to tell me that I had alienated everyone in my department throughout my time there. Struggling to hold back tears, I acknowledged that I had a lot of personal problems to work through and that I was seeing a therapist. As an impulse, I added that I had experienced sexual misconduct within the department when I first arrived, and that I relive that trauma every time I am on campus. Her face blanched, but she did not ask for details and she never followed up with me about the matter. To this day, we both pretend I never said anything. | none | I learned a painful lesson that semester: if I was not prepared to sacrifice my career, as well as this man’s reputation, I was a “bad victim” who did not deserve emotional or professional support. I remain shell-shocked by the hypocrisy of these so-called feminists and allies, who would turn their backs on me when I reached out in pain and fear. Their decision to revoke their support of me left me dependent upon my abuser, as the only mentor I had left. Of course, this only intensified my anxiety about regaining his affection and contingent attention. | social alienation in my department, anxiety, Stockholm syndrome | I looked into switching schools, but I would have lost too much time. So I stayed put and minimized my involvement with my department. This has resulted in weaker ties to important people who might have helped me professionally | If this is how faculty respond when graduate students come forward about episodes of sexual misconduct, then there must be scores of unreported cases lurking within graduate studies departments throughout the country. There are so many reasons we remain silent. I could not afford to lose my only professional mentor. I could not afford to start over at a different school. But perhaps most significantly, I could not justify destroying this man’s legacy, which is all about advancing gender equality If I outed him, he would be exposed as a hypocrite. This is an additional consideration that students in other disciplines like STEM do not have to deal with, when they struggle with the decision to come forth. Only antifeminists would want to believe me—all of my potential mentors and colleagues within Gender Studies would struggle, and perhaps refuse, to believe me. It’s too hard to lose such a hero. I do not know what the solution is, to this problem. But I am not shocked by any of the recent headlines about progressive celebrities’ sexual misconduct. Sexual predation heeds no boundaries, be it political or departmental. None of us are safe. However, faculty allies and the academy as a whole could help us victims feel a lot safer. For example, perhaps faculty could prioritize a victim’s safety over their own comfort and sense of righteousness. Perhaps the academic system could allow students who have experienced such abuse to transfer without further penalizing them by making them start from scratch. The academic system, as it is currently structured, traps students such as myself in unhealthy situations wherein we remain dependent upon our abusers. The academic system as a whole keeps us silent, while bloated giants sleep easy. | Male | ||
1778 | 12/15/2017 18:29:58 | A senior professor who led a large research group hugged a series of women inappropriately and routinely made inappropriate comments to women members of the research group. His creepiness was the subject of frequent jokes among undergraduates working with the professor. On several occasions I heard rumors of serious inappropriate behaviors. My understanding was that the behavior was recurring across many years. This professor knew the name of every female in his group, no matter how junior, but rarely remembered or payed attention to any of the male students, no matter how senior. As a male in the group, this was welcome at the time, and I felt I could skate through the experience protected by his disinterest in me. Nonetheless, even I felt deeply uncomfortable in the professor's presence. | Undergraduate | Academic advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Toronto | Political Science | None that I am aware of | None that I am aware of | I sharply turned away from research in this professor's field. I work hard to avoid conversation with this individual in professional settings. | Male | ||||
1779 | 12/15/2017 18:38:35 | I know of an incident involving a female graduate student, and a male assistant professor. The professor used a social media chat platform to make sexually explicit (very explicit) comments about the student, and other female students in the department. The student's spouse found the chat, and emailed it all over campus. The student said it was mutually consensual, and nothing was done about it. She left the program. | Faculty | Assistant professor | R2 | Michigan Tech | None. | None. | The student left the program. | n/a | n/a | Male | |||
1780 | 12/15/2017 19:07:06 | Fall 2015. In a phone advising session this person became angry/frustrated that I wouldn't apply to the graduate programs he demanded. I told him it was because of a bad graduate experience in the discipline and I wanted something more theoretically rigorous. He told me I as like a "17 year old girl that got dumped by her first boyfriend and decided she was a lesbian." I stopped speaking on the call. It wasn't the first time he'd been domineering and attempted to control my decisions in our advising calls (we never met in person). I didn't say anything else on the call except to mumble affirmations, wait for the call to end, and I never spoke to him again. He emailed me back from his @gmail account and wrote a brief apology for being short with me, which he attributed to overwork. | Graduate student (masters program) | Tenured faculty member in multiple departments. | Other R1 | CUNY Graduate Center | Social Sciences | NA (not reported) | None | None, I left the program and was accepted to a doctoral program at another university. I didn't use him for recommendations and I never spoke to him again. | None. | None. | It would be unfair to say more about consequences for others, though I expect there were others and there were serious consequences. When he spoke to me this way--I felt an immediate and sharp a realization that he probably did the same or worse to other people. I knew I never wanted to speak to him again--his admonishment of me, involving a sexist/homophobic analogy, was so wildly unprofessional that I knew the safest course of action was to ghost him. It was clear to me then that he would do it again, and worse, that he was willing to take risks to get what he wanted. The call was the culmination of a progression of controlling conversations. He wanted me to do exactly as he advised, anything else was unacceptable. | Male | |
1781 | 12/15/2017 19:38:22 | A few years ago I was introduced to a senior academic, twenty years older than myself, in an interdisciplinary field closely allied with my own. My four-year contract at the R1 university in town had just ended with no prospect of renewal and no hope of being turned into a permanent position. I was a single mother of a toddler about to go on Employment Insurance. The senior academic works at a nearby university and is the head of an important research institute. He is very well-connected and is well-known for helping young academics in their careers. A mutual friend connected us through email and the senior academic looked up my web site at the university and read about my work, quickly inviting me to an academic party at his house. When I met him he was very interested in my work and asked to see my latest project. After reading my work he admitted, somewhat grudgingly, that I was a good writer and didn't need his help with the article. He asked if I would submit it to a journal he is affiliated with. I did so and the paper went out for review. Shortly thereafter he invited me over to talk about the paper, which I thought was odd as it had already gone through the submission process and was under review. He asked me to dinner at his house, where he expected me to do some of the cooking because he didn't know how. After dinner he asked me, quite openly and with no innuendo, whether I would enter into a sexual relationship with him in exchange for career mentoring. I was horrified but merely said I was not ready to enter another relationship so soon after my divorce (which was true). Although my paper, which had already gone out for double blind review, was published, I understand that he now gives very mediocre reviews when asked about my work. He has asked me out on more than one occasion since that time and appears to keep tabs on my status. I recently had to ask a friend to pose as my boyfriend at academic events that the senior academic is likely to be at. After the first such time the senior academic questioned me very closely about the nature of my "relationship" and whether it was serious and whether my "boyfriend" was local and what he did and so on. He hasn't bothered me since that time, but I no longer get invites to academic events at his research institution, and thus an important networking opportunity is lost to me - although given the way he has sabotaged my connections since I turned him down, perhaps this isn't a bad thing. | Adjunct Lecturer | Internationally recognized scholar and chair of local research institute | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | I have since discovered that this scholar's targeting of junior female colleagues is an open secret in most of the institutions he has been affiliated with, but nothing has ever been done. | None | Since I turned him down, the harasser has spoken poorly of my abilities to other local scholars, and I am no longer invited to academic events I formerly took part in. Given that I am actively looking for work, this has adversely impacted my career. | I have been diagnosed with PTSD due to cumulative trauma I experienced in my professional and personal life at that period of my life. The encounter with the senior scholar who harassed me added to my feelings of hopelessness, depression and anxiety | I changed my first name on my professional profile to a masculine sounding nickname and I pulled my photo from my web page. People now assume I'm a man if they haven't met me. I'm hoping this will increase acceptance rate for my papers as well. | Male | ||||
1782 | 12/15/2017 23:10:00 | Upon arrival for summer fieldwork in a foreign country, my graduate advisor insisted that we share a hotel room with a single bed, and spent the night attempting (without success) to get me to declare my love for him and to sleep together (I insisted on sleeping alone on the floor). His inappropriate comments, touching, asking me to "at least" give him a piece of my unwashed laundry to sleep with, etc. continued, despite my firm refusals, for the remaining weeks of the project, and all I clung to was the hope that the relationship would become purely professional again when we returned from the field (and to our respective fiances). Things did seem better back home during the fall semester, but in the winter he and his fiance broke up, and the inappropriate emails and invitations resumed. He even began forwarding me email conversations between himself and an undergraduate who he had insisted on taking on dates after she had come to his office asking for a letter of recommendation (he had spelled out all the details in the emails). I can only imagine that he was trying to show me the kind of grand romance that "I was missing out on," or something yucky of the sort. Ultimately, my refusals to meet privately with him escalated to him threatening to give me a bad annual review and have me thrown out of the program. I next went to the (then) department chair, director of graduate studies, and a female professor, to ask for help, and was repeatedly turned away. I finally reported him to the Title IX office, and things only got worse from there. I turned over all of the emails and a list of willing witnesses, and the "investigation" dragged on for almost a year (during which I was forbidden to speak about it, but continued to be slandered within the department) before the Title IX office issued a report stating that some of his ill-advised behaviors "may have led [me] to feel that [I] was being harassed," but they concluded that I actually was not. The report was also worded in such a way that it painted me in a very negative light. | Ph.D. Student | Assistant Professor, my primary advisor | Other R1 | University of Minnesota | Anthropology | Retaliation for reporting. | A couple of years later, he was denied tenure (he appealed, claiming that it was due to my "false" accusations, and they concluded that it was for unrelated reasons). He left the department and was given a position advising undergraduates. This didn't last more than a year or two and then he quietly left the institution. | The Title IX report was circulated within the department and I was pegged as a liar and a troublemaker. I was kicked off a book project (for which I had been co-editor of a previous edition), and most of the faculty on my graduate committee emailed to state that they were no longer willing to serve on my committee. I persisted in completing my research, with assistance from mentors in other departments and at other institutions. I did manage to graduate, but it took several additional years to acquire a new advisor and committee. I am very thankful for those who ultimately did come through for me. When on the job market, several faculty declined (or outright ignored) my requests for letters of recommendation, despite having earned a 4.0, and excellent comments, in every one of their classes. I landed a tenure-track position, anyway, with recommendations from other successful colleagues. | I experienced periods of deep depression and despair, as well as feelings of inadequacy and shame. At times, I still struggle with "impostor syndrome." | I have managed to stay on track toward my goals; however, it took approximately five years longer to graduate and land a tenure-track position, than it likely would have if my original advisor had remained professional and supportive, if I'd had positive access to the full network of my professors' peers, and if all the faculty who knew my work best would have been willing to recommend me. It's possible to calculate, based on the job that I ultimately got, how much my lifetime earning potential was reduced by entering the job market five years later than necessary. It's not pretty. | Male | ||
1783 | 12/15/2017 23:56:01 | I literally just saw his obituary on facebook. This isn't even my story to tell, but seeing his face - and reading the comments of all of these people who think he was so great - I am just so angry. So here is the story that isn't mine: My closest friend, another woman sociologist who is a gender scholar, was recruited by a top gender scholar (male) in his 70s (she was in her early 30s and untenured) to meet with him to discuss whether or not she wanted to co-author a textbook with him at a conference. She was exited about the meeting - which happened at the ASA conference - but I got a panicked text from her a few hours later asking me to come meet her in the lobby of our hotel because he was trying to convince her to come to his hotel room to sleep with him. I joined, along with a woman who is a well-respected senior scholar, and the four of us had drinks and chatted for 30-40 minutes and I was shocked and sickened to notice that this guy didn't back of for even a minute. He was continuously trying to touch my friend's leg, and began stroking her arm at one point (she seemed absolutely frozen), and didn't seem the least bit concerned the this actions were inappropriate. He was married but told my friend the marriage was loveless and that he could "be in love with" my friend, and would she give him a chance. It was disgusting. It was also clear to me that he had offered her a co-editorship on this textbook and was dangling it in front of my friend while simultaneously begging her to spend the night with him. My friend grew up in a fairly working-class family and has always struggled with imposter syndrome and the fear that she won't make it as a scholar.... she was the perfect victim for this type of disgusting manipulation. So it was the 4 of us having drinks in a hotel lobby, and my goal, in coordination with the woman senior scholar who was with me, was to stay at the table until this man gave up and went to bed. It never fucking happened. Eventually it was last call, and I saw my friend's face, knew she was panicking (to be clear, in her world it would have been impossible to assertively tell him to back off), so we all rode up the elevator together to make sure he didn't get off at her floor. He, of course, didn't hit the button for his own floor, so the senior woman asked "what is your floor?" and hit the button FOR him, and said "Goodnight! It was great spending time with you!" and more or less pushed him out of the door. My friend was horrified and humiliated. She vacillated between wanting to report him to, well, anybody (in fact there is no clear place to report misconduct of this sort), and wanting to email him to apologize for not sleeping with him. She never did get that co-authorship on the textbook. TODAY I found out that he died a few days ago. I found out because some of his former students posted his obituary on facebook, saying so many nice things about him. It made me furious. I wanted to post something on facebook, telling these women - many who are absolutely amazing feminist gender scholars - that this man they thought of with kind memories was a creepy shameless predator who has to this day made my friend wonder if he was ever interested in her for her work, and if, maybe, somehow, there was a way she could have handled things to avoid the harassment but still be given the opportunity to co-author. I'm furious. I'm glad he's dead. I just wish this was MY story to tell instead of my friend's, so I could take him down and destroy his memory. But, then again, he never would have chosen me to harass in this way because he chose his victims carefully, and my friend was incredibly vulnerable. Like I said, I'm glad he's dead. | I was a graduate student, as was my friend. We were both on the job market. | He was a senior scholar in his field. At a top institution, author and editor of textbooks, etc. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | He was from UW-Madison | Sociology | None. There was nowhere to report this and my friend was humiliated by the whole situation and didn't want ANY negative attention. | None. None at all. Bastard. | I think my friend was shaken by this, and I guess we'll never know whether she could have been a co-editor if she had slept with this guy. She was SO desperate to get a job and to be respected in the field that she has wondered if she could have handled it differently and somehow managed to both avoid sleeping with him but still have the opportunity. I'm not sure the opportunity ever existed. Who knows. | My friend sobbed and had ongoing issues with anxiety AND continued self-doubt for years. | She ultimately got a great job, but she has since avoided attending talks and events where he might show up. This isn't great for her career because she's a gender scholar and needs to continue networking with other gender scholars to solidify her position in the field. That's one of the reasons I'm glad he died. | This happened at the ASA conference, so there was not one particular institution involved. But... the perpetrator was from UW Madison, a well-established gender scholar who apparently died this past week. He didn't harass me, but seeing his picture and name on facebook brought up a lot of emotions for me, mostly anger. SO MUCH ANGER. Is it wrong to talk ill of the dead? Is there any justice or logic in wanting to ruin his reputation? For my friend, and, frankly, for my own reputation, I can say the things I want to say, to tell all of these people who think he's so great that he was the most disturbing harassed I've ever witnessed (and I've experienced a few!). The lack of embarrassment or shame at harassing a graduate student 40 years younger than him, dangling a valuable co-authorship in front of her, while rubbing her leg. All of this in front of other people. | Male | |
1784 | 12/16/2017 0:48:14 | For the duration of my doctoral program, my advisor crossed professional boundaries, culminating in her telling me I was mentally ill and that she worried I would off myself like so many other talented young women she'd known. She subtly (and not-so-subtly) made negative comments about other women in our field whose work I enjoyed or admired; she always had a story about how this one was a bitch or she'd heard that one say a weird thing once. A fellow doctoral student once told me privately that she'd behaved in a way that made the student worry she was hitting on him (both prof and student were each married), but I felt alarmed and uncomfortable and brushed it off, saying I was sure she didn't mean it that way (I wasn't sure, and I am so sorry I didn't hear him out. He could have been trying to tell me something worse). I never saw her as a mentor, but I had no other choiceto chair my dissertation committee--she was the only full-time faculty in my field. We were generally cordial with one another. In the final year of my degree, she amped up the abuse cycle of intense negging (about me, my work) and intense praise, sometimes delivering both in the same day. She told a fellow grad student that she feared running into me (her graduating advisee!) because things were "so weird between us." I became anxious even to check my email, fearing what new epic screed I might find from her. And finally, weeks before I was set to defend my dissertation, I opened one where she claimed that she feared for my mental health because she believed I was in the grip of a psychotic break and, further, I was in no position to be a member of any faculty (I was on the job market.... as was she). I still feel sick thinking about how that message might have been received by someone who was severely depressed or suicidal. When I forwarded the message to the dept chair and our graduate advisors, the chair made a comment that made it clear my advisor had been bad-mouthing me and painting me as unhinged or untrustworthy. I realized her email wasn't the product of a bad day/semester/stress on the job but the culmination of her interfering with my progress towards my degree in the months before I was set to complete it. (Un?)relatedly, two female Masters advisees of hers (one a first-year, one set to graduate as well) dropped out of the program the same year the harassment from my advisor culminated. | PhD student | Associate Professor & advisor | R2 | English | Dept chair allowed me to remove her as the head of my dissertation com mittee, but not without some victim-blaming. Tried to convince me it was some kind of career suicide to have a director from outside your field, or not to have a rec from someone you'd worked with for years. Though other tenured professors in my discipline with whom I had a good relationship were aware of the incident (through their role as advisors), not one offered a word of support or even acknowledgement of what had happened. The tone of the departmental response was "Look, we all know she's a pill, do you really need to bitch about it? We've got enough on our plate." | I think she was denied sabbatical, which could have been unrelated. Other than that, nothing. Because I'm quite vocal about my experience with this person, I've unfortunately heard from current students that what I experienced is not uncommon; she continues to harass especially female students, often female POC (I'm white, as is she). | Increasingly disturbed and turned off by her behavior, I worried about how others in my field saw my advisor. Before I cut ties with her, I had stopped including her rec in my dossier for job apps. After I cut ties, she withdrew my rec, so I'll never know if she had said something negative, demeaning, or backhanded about me in it. But I did get many interviews and a good job after I stopped including her letter. I did better on the market after cutting her off, though her intent in shaming me seemed to be to make myself and others think I was unfit for faculty work. It took me a year longer (on my own dime) to finish my degree, but despite what I'd believed when I first got to the program, she holds little professional clout in my field. | Even though I knew right away she was projecting her own issues onto me and trying to gaslight me into believing I was the one having a breakdown, a teacher you've been working with for four years telling you she believes you're in no position to hold a job is still really hurtful. I feel embarrassment, along with anger and disbelief, when I think back on thisbe cause, though I understand I've nothing to feel embarrassed about, I wasted so much time during my doctoral degree tiptoeing around my (tenured, senior) advisor's emotional demands. | The fact that I've heard of so many more students, colleagues, and peers negatively impacted by this person, but had heard nothing when I was seeking advice on which programs to consider makes me grossed out about the cowardliness of academics in general and the ass-covering and glad-handing in the writing world in particular. I speak my mind now, I don't bother to "play nice" or pimp politics and it might cost me opportunities in academia but, honestly, idgaf. | People harassed by women: I hear you. You're not invisible. | Female | ||
1785 | 12/16/2017 6:40:47 | I walked in on my graduate supervisor having sex with another student in his lab, In my own apartment. (I shared an apartment with lab-mate) | graduate student | graduate supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Psychology | none | no longer allowed to supervise female graduate students | almost left graduate school | extremely stressful; limited contact with supervisor | his reputation is extended to all students and some people assume I must have slept with him to get where I am now | Male | |||
1786 | 12/16/2017 9:25:36 | 2008-2009: In my first year of grad school, I had a group of friends who were several years ahead of me in the program whom I referred to as my "shadow committee"; they gave me feedback on work, advice on coursework/the department/dealing with my real advisors, and so on. I cherished them as friends and mentors. The "chair" of my shadow committee was a man who is about 20 years my senior and was 4 or 5 years ahead of me in the program. He was a self-described feminist who was well known for his somewhat radical sexual ethics. In the summer of my first year, both my "shadow chair" and I were going to be in Europe. We made a plan to meet up and spend several days being tourists together. The night before he flew over (my flight was a few days later) he confessed that he was deeply attracted to me and wanted to pursue a sexual relationship. I was stunned and said ,"thank you for telling me." The next time I saw him was in Europe. I felt scared and uncertain; like I could either lose him as a friend and mentor or, somehow, part of me. One night when we were there he started kissing me and asked if we could do certain other sexual acts. I said no. He didn't listen. | Grad student | Grad student, mentor/friend | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | None. I didn't report it to the institution. Eventually I told some of my close friends, and as far as I know, none of them reported it, either. | None. He has tenure now. | I didn't finish the program | Anxiety, depression, and, according to my counselor at psych services, PTSD | I didn't finish the program. I still have a hard time trusting friends and partners. In addition to the obvious sexual violation, I felt like he abused his [admittedly non-institutional] power over me. I lost trust in academia and male feminist allies. And I am still kind of adrift. | Male | |||
1787 | 12/16/2017 9:38:34 | It is not a particular incident, it is rather a slow drip of listening to stories about sexual lives, coming into my office whenever and most times staying for over 30 minutes everyday, coming into my office and walking over to my desk standing over me, looking at what I was writing. There are other microaggressions. For instance, a non tenure track facility telling me how I need to improve, telling me to tone it down while speaking with another female faculty member in my office, and just the constant monitoring of my behavior by male colleagues. | Assistant Professor | the first instance an assistant professor, the other two were clinical non tenured faculty. | Other R1 | redacted | Social Work | I informed the department head about the harassment of one of the men as it relates to students not feeling safe in his office. i don't know what has happened, he is still acting like nothing happened. | none. | I figured it out that i have lost over at least 225 hours of work . which is a solid 5 weeks of work. | added to the toll of being a single mother caring for her mother, tough. afterwards there is always a period of inactivity due to being so mad and having to process this shit that keeps happening. | it has minimized my productivity. | Thank you! there are the obvious moments of sexual harassment, but it is just the lifelong shoveling of shit from men that is exhausting. It is the daily microaggressions that is mentally taxing and impacts work, family, and friends. | Male | |
1788 | 12/16/2017 10:33:03 | 1. Full professor repeatedly made lewd comments describing female graduate students' anatomy, in front of anyone who would hear. 2. Member of thesis committee attempted romantic relationship with me 3. Conversations steered toward inappropriate sexual topics at conference social hour, invitations to sit on laps, inappropriate touching, etc. 4. Inappropriate touching from tenured colleague in workplace 5. Sexual harassment, propositioning, groping by male colleague at social event outside of work | Graduate Student, then Lecturer | Senior tenured professors and a research associate | Other R1 | Did not report; similar reported incidents went unanswered and only caused more problems for the women who reported, so I chose not to | None | Anxiety; uncertainty about how to respond | Very careful about interactions with male colleagues; avoidance of the offenders | Male | |||||
1789 | 12/16/2017 10:53:09 | My advisor had a child with one of his other students. | student | advisor | Other R1 | computer science | moved advisor to other building; I think there were rules about when each party could be in the department building | none that I saw | take care | none | none | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | |||
1790 | 12/16/2017 10:55:49 | Another faculty member in my department, P1, told me a student of his was working on a project and they would appreciate my expertise. I met with them several times, but nothing really seemed to happen with the project. Then P1 sent me an email inviting me on a date. I said I was very busy (because I am a chicken). Subsequently, the project disappeared into thin air. | tenure track faculty | tenured full professor | Other R1 | computer science | I didn't report anything | none | I am still angry that P1 involved his _student_ in this little game. I avoided him like the plague and was terrified when I came up for tenure that he would vote against me (I gather he abstained). | none | get out of there! | Male | |||
1791 | 12/16/2017 10:57:32 | Chair of department, in annual review meeting, asked me if I was going to have children. When I said no, he said I really should. I should have girls because there should be more women in computer science. | tenure track faculty | chair of department | Other R1 | computer science | I didn't report anything | I didn't meet with him again til tenure (3 years). | got out of there! | Male | |||||
1792 | 12/16/2017 11:52:08 | Comments on attire at American Astronomical Society receptions: "unprofessional", "inappropriate", "too sexy", "too revealing", "provocative" and "asking for trouble" are just some of the comments. At the pre-conference reception?! not the poster session or the talks! | Graduate Student, Postdoc | Generally much older | Other Research Agency | American Astronomical Society | Astronomy | Never heard such a comment from a conference or Society official | As a grad student I would argue but as a postdoc I realized it was bad for my career to pick a fight. I learned to thank them for the advice and walk away. | It's none of their damn business!!! Have these people never heard of cocktail attire? I suspect some of them are envious of my attractiveness and the attention it gets me. Some may mean well but come off as judging. MYOB! | Sometimes skip receptions but that reduces opportunities for networking. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||
1793 | 12/16/2017 12:01:01 | There are many incidents that I could report in laboratory, remote fieldwork, and conference settings. One that sticks out was at a national conference when a peer and I were invited to a hotel party with several people I trusted. When I arrived, there were about 10 people in the hotel room, including four senior male researchers in my field. It seemed innocent enough at first, but after being offered a glass of whiskey, one of the senior males grabbed my foot and wouldn't let go. Suddenly, another one of the males was having sex with a former graduate student in the middle of the room. We were all kind of shocked and everyone left the room, but the foot guy kept trying to kiss me on the elevator and another very married senior male wouldn't stop touching my friend. My friend and I eventually escaped, but we were grossed out about these supposedly wonderful researchers. | PhD student | Full Professors/Senior Researchers | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Anthropology | None | None | Unsure | I still feel guilty about this event because although small gatherings can be good for research and job discussions at conferences in my field, perhaps I should not have agreed to go with trusted colleagues to this party. | I am still in academia, but I find most men in my field gross because they can get away with disgusting behavior at conferences and in field settings. | To echo another comment already posted: the field setting and conferences are common spaces of harassment. I have been harassed and bullied in field settings on four continents, forced to share a room with a much older colleague, asked when I would be having sex with certain people, ganged up on by male researchers about how old and barren I am, touched inappropriately, etc. etc. One thing that particularly concerns me about male researchers in my discipline is their role running field projects and overseeing female students in remote settings. | Male | ||
1794 | 12/16/2017 12:20:03 | Several undergraduate students (who were presumably male) made sexually charged comments regarding my body on their course evaluations. | Assistant Professor | lower (undergraduates) | Other R1 | University of Maryland | Art History and Archaeology | Did not report or discuss with anyone | None | My experience in the classroom has overall been a very positive one but I remain hurt that some students were motivated to reduce me to an object. | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | ||||
1795 | 12/16/2017 12:33:18 | I was invited to the UK by a professor I met at a conference to undertake an MA at UCL. He is the world expert in the author I reaarch. When I arrived in London, in our very first meeting he pulled out champagne, sat very close to me and when we said goodbye he insisted on hugging me and putting his hand on my butt. This continues throughout the year every time we met for class on a weekly basis, he would ask that I stay behind to talk to me in front of the other students and then would touch me always on the ass again when saying goodbye. He asked me a few times to meet him after hours in the being on weekends which I said I was unable to do. This lasted about 1 full year, from the first to the last time he touched me. I had no idea what to do and so pretended it didn't happen and eventually came up with a story that I was a very religious and gained about 20 pounds on purpose to make myself less attractive. This made him stop. | ma student | FBA Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University College London | Classics | Never called him out | None | He dumped me as a supervisor eventually and made me an outcast to many of his colleagues. I have no solid proof he bad mouthed my work, but those closest to him no longer reply to emails or speak to me. | I hate men. | I don't feel I can progress in my career in the UK at a normal pace, it gets harder every time I enter a new faculty. People assume my relationship with this professor went sour because I am not a good scholar. | Professor Simon Hornblower FBA Now at Oxford University. I have heard that he was promoted to get him out of a teaching position bc the university receives complaints from undergraduates as well. | Male | |
1796 | 12/16/2017 12:41:30 | During my undergrad, the department chair, a married father perhaps in his mid forties, carried on an affair with a first year undergrad. It was very public - they'd be cuddling in the agora. The context for them 'meeting' was an office visit about her poetry journal. I was also asked to go 'discuss' my journal in office hours. I didn't go. This is an example of something that didn't happen 'to me' but contributed to a climate in which female students a)were sexualized and b) lost any meaningful access to an instructor (for mentorship or otherwise being taken seriously) | Undergrad | Prof, probably assoc. prof | small canadian undergrad focused university | This was English | None that I knew of | None | Non-tangible. | none | I often avoided working closely with men as a student, which can be limiting | Male | |||
1797 | 12/16/2017 12:47:29 | Got drugged and raped during 1st week in residence. Told some residence staff, but nothing happened. They never even tried to help me figure out who it was nor told the police. | Student | Peer | Other Type of School | Commerce | None. | None. | None. | Ill never forget this. | Male | ||||
1798 | 12/16/2017 13:56:18 | I went to the restroom on the floor of my building where my department was located, went into the stall, closed the door, and sat down. I had taken a magazine with me. Within just a minute of sitting down, I heard the restroom door open and someone walk in. I paid no attention since it was a public restroom with several stalls and urinals -- I am male, and it was a men's restroom. After a few seconds I heard nothing and had a weird feeling. Looking up from my magazine, I saw that the person was peeping through the crack between the stall door and the doorframe, staring at me. I asked him to leave, but he continued to stand there staring. I again asked him to leave, and again he stood there staring. Finally, I yelled for him to get out, but he only backed up, continuing to stare at the stall I was in. I yelled again, and he took off running out the door. Before this incident, this same person would stop whatever he was doing when I walked by and stare at me with a completely blank look on his face. That had happened dozens of time. I went to my department and told our receptionist, who was a good friend, and she demanded that we report it to his supervisor. | Graduate student | Custodian | Other R1 | The Ohio State University | Spanish | The guy's supervisor and an HR representative called a meeting with me and with our department receptionist, to whom I had first reported the incident. I was asked if I wanted to file a charge, which I did not want to do. At the time, I even told them that I did not want him fired. I just felt very uncomfortable around him. He was moved to another floor of the building and told never to come onto the floor where my department was located. | He continued to work in my building and was still there when I graduated. | None | Not much. At the time he somewhat scared me since he would stare at me with such a blank look. I had no idea what was going through his head or what he would do. In the long run, it has affected me very little. It's a very vivid memory that has stuck with me to this day, but it has not caused me any sort of lasting mental damage. | None really | Male | ||
1799 | 12/16/2017 13:57:16 | Witnessed professor repeatedly get drunk and corner female graduate students at events. He was infamous for targeting women with blonde hair. He was also known for retaliating when his advances were refused. | MA graduate student | Full professor | Other R1 | University of Chicago | Social Sciences | He was "soft" retired. His role as program director was given to someone else. | N/A | I definitely felt less safe, less valued for my contributions. | I avoided him. Fortunately, I switched to another field. | Male | |||
1800 | 12/16/2017 14:08:47 | Senior prof repeatedly asked a graduate student (my friend) out. She kept saying no and was evidently creeped out but he was persistent. | graduate | Well respected permanent prof. Not in her field but in her college. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Oxford | not reported | n/a | none really, as he was in a different field | she was perplexed and uncomfortable but basically OK. | Male | ||||
1801 | 12/16/2017 14:10:27 | A male colleague referred to a female colleague as a “f***ing c**t” at a happy hour amid other staff and faculty held at our university club. | Administrator | Equal-level administrator (in front of his female subordinate) | Other R1 | Administration | N/a | N/a (yet) | N/a (yet) | Anxiety, stressed working relationship | Considering switching jobs | Male | |||
1802 | 12/16/2017 14:11:11 | Senior prof in my college was in the lodge asking about the programme for a graduation ceremony the following day. One of the porters asked him 'why do you want to go to that anyway?', to which he replied 'so that I can leer at the attractive mothers'. It's not assault or misconduct but it does create a hostile environment towards women. | student | senior prof., had been at the college for decades | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Oxford | Male | ||||||||
1803 | 12/16/2017 14:16:39 | I was eating lunch while waiting for a meeting with two professors (I had missed lunchtime). The female professor was late. The male professor arrived and kissed me on the cheek. This was normally OK as I knew him reasonably well. This time, however, I had a mouthful of salad and protested 'I'm eating!' He responded 'mm, even more delicious'. I was seriously creeped out. | graduate student | chair of faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Oxford | didn't report it | none, it was just weird | none | none, except that when I chose to leave academia (because of other, more serious, misconduct from another professor in the department) I looked back on this incident and felt glad to be out of that kind of culture | Male | ||||
1804 | 12/16/2017 15:06:58 | I was in a slightly conservative English department. I was very engaged but having trouble finding people to work with. The two women most likely to supervise my work were obviously having their own struggles: one had a four year old and complained to me that she couldn't get away for conferences. She saw me as a sympathetic ear when I went to a Kathy Acker conference, rather than someone she would want to champion. The other, though established, obviously didnt get institutional respect and was not terribly active nor current. Mid-MA, a new hire came back to his hometown where I was studying. I was stunned how much the work he was doing around class and urbanism overlapped with the digressive research I had begun during a seminar paper on Ulysses. I found out he founded the poetry collective which was the primary draw to me studying in this region. I was a bit overwhelmed by all of this consonance. It seemed mutual (I thought, lol) and we began to work together. It was all independent because for some reason he wasn't teaching graduate classes right away. During this time I began to write about art. Of course, coincidentally, he wrote about art too. I began seeing him around at art functions & got a variously flirty and disparaging vibe. I thought he was a wonderful candidate for friend-supervisor-contermporary. His relationship to academia and being a prof was obviously troubled (by his working class roots/Marxism?). There was obviously some mutual magnetism, but what began to happen is this: He began to check out my chest during meetings. He neglected to pay any attention to my work or progress. He seemed really struck when I changed my hair from curly to straight. I finally got him into a meeting about my work and he asked if I had taken my ideas from an architect we mutually knew. He eventually titled an essay loosely based on the concept/metaphor I had created (the one he thought I was fed by the architect). I thought it was my fault for slightly crushing on him. But I have to wonder: WHAT MALE GRAD STUDENT DOESNT BRING HIS BASIC DRIVE INTO HIT GRADUATE WORK? And what male supervisor who decides to champion him isn't in some ways responding to that? I decide to write about art "instead" of pursuing academia. I see this person at conferences still (I am still academic adjacent though my writing and I adjunct). The vibe is just as weird. Never respect. Never inquiry about my work. He is friend with my friends but doesn't see me as worthy? | graduate student | supervisor | Other R1 | Simon Fraser University | ENGLISH | left academia | poverty, etc | I left academia. | Male | ||||
1805 | 12/16/2017 15:18:59 | A fellow PhD student in my department has a history of routinely making weird sexually charged comments to other students (women), especially when he doesn't have a girlfriend. Many of them are weirdly intrusive implied questions about their partners or sex lives. My least favorite of his comments at least partially directed at me came during our first semester of graduate school when he sat between me and another then-first-year PhD student, a woman, in the back of a large van on the way to a site for a class field trip. He and the other PhD student were discussing the efficacy of the flu vaccine, which I found annoying, so I mostly was trying to ignore them. Then the conversation shifted to other vaccines, and more people got involved, including master's students sitting in front of us. Eventually the HPV vaccine came up, and he said something along the lines of, "Well, you only need that if you're sexually active, and I'm sure none of the ladies in this van would do anything like that." We all just sort of shut up and stared at him; the master's student directly in front of him (Indian Canadian) just shook her head once at him in disgust at his behavior. I think he knew by then that the PhD student sitting on his other side lived with her boyfriend, and a lot of his own behavior made it clear that he was no sexual neophyte, so it's not like he genuinely believed what he had said and thought he was complimenting our purity. He knew he was making us uncomfortable; I'm not sure if he actually thought anyone would take the bait and start spilling our sexual histories or if just making us uncomfortable was all he meant to achieve. Of course we were stuck in the van with him for awhile longer; I squished harder to the side and went back to staring out the window. Sometime soon after, I made some passing comment about how creepy he was to my older labmates, both women, and they pulled me into their office, shut the door, and went off with their own stories about him and what they'd heard from other people. We considered asking our advisor to talk to the student, knowing that our male advisor considered himself a feminist, and that this student respected our advisor and needed him on his committee. I decided I would try to confront him myself first. I ended up doing it really softly; in an email about something else class-related I concluded by asking that he refrain from making sexual comments, because it made me uncomfortable. He did stop around me, and for awhile, I thought I had done something. I have since heard ongoing rumors of continued such behavior and worse, particularly when he is a TA helping lead overnight field trips of mostly master's students, and everyone shares a house and drinks; I've heard of him taking a woman's phone and texting her boyfriend , ongoing gross mouthing off, and other dumb but really not OK stuff. As a first-year, I had thought that he was a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen, and that his bad behavior needed to be shut down then in part for his own good, before he got into real trouble, but now, as a somewhat more jaded fifth-year, I wonder if he'll just keep getting away with it, and get worse, but perhaps better at knowing what he needs to hide, as he continues to progress up the ranks. Science-wise, there's no reason he won't progress. I almost feel a little irresponsible for having confronted him myself about his behavior towards me and stopping it that way, instead of reporting him to an authority figure, because now I don't have solid grounds to do anything to stop him from becoming the sort of deeply embedded predator that frightens women away from our field and worse. | PhD student | PhD student (equal) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Duke University | Environment | Didn't report, myself. If anyone else has, I am not aware of any responses. | None apparent; he's doing great, and the professors all seem to support him. | By itself, none. Overall, trauma-induced mental and physical health issues, relating in part to someone else's sexual violence that this student's behavior and similar reinforced as reason not to trust men or believe that society and its institutions had my best interests at heart, did lead to long stretches of very low productivity in grad school, and I've probably produced less work, some of which is less thorough and of lower quality, and failed to approach people or go after opportunities, than I might have otherwise. It's hard to say what could have been, though, and again, I don't think this one guy's behavior had much to do with it. | I already had anxiety and depression; I do remember worrying about what this guy was up to and how to deal with him even when he wasn't around, so he probably aggravated it some. That comment he made about female sexuality did not help with my own mixed feelings about my own morality and self-worth, which came from being in what I now recognize as a sexually abusive relationship at the time. This student's persistence now, in terms of probably continuing to harass other women and definitely continuing in my school as a successful scientist, leads to a bit of bitter pessimism that probably does the same, though less so. I had a lot of other issues, so he was relatively not that bad. | By itself, none. This kind of thing, and on top of it, the cluelessness of professors (almost all straight white men) and most administrators in my school at the toll taken on people who aren't like them by the normalcy and our consistent problems with harassment and assault, has collectively gotten to me, though. In the past year or two, I've really started to doubt that I will ever be able to focus on research enough to make it as a scientist, in part because I'm so distracted by all the ways the institutions that make science are screwed up. For all the administrators and professors talk about wanting to increase diversity, they don't seem to like it much when I and other students do things that might actually help increase it, or complain or point out problems; they seem to prefer that we shut up and focus on research. I know that my job right now is to finish my dissertation, that everyone has to really focus in the homestretch, but I feel like more and more of who I am is not acceptable to bring to work, lately including the increasingly pissed-off-feminist with zero tolerance for harassment. This sense that who I am and what I care about is not really welcome has me resolutely opposed to further work in an environment anything like where I work now, and struggling to figure out if there's a kind of job still within my general field that would make use of my education and satisfy my brain, but also let me do what I think is valuable, including to care about my colleagues. | As I alluded previously, part of why this situation seems so minor is that I've also been in a relationship that basically began with sexual abuse, with a then-fairly-distant-coworker at a research station. I had become dependent on him emotionally as a friend during a difficult time, and when he pushed things physically, I was really uncomfortable, but couldn't decide what to do, so I mostly just let him have his way. I felt like it was all my fault and really blamed and hated myself, and tried to tell myself I was just being a prude, but it was bad; I'm reasonably sure that at least one each of the incidents would technically count as sexual assault and rape, and much of it was sexual coercion. I ended up with what it took years to acknowledge as clear PTSD, on top of Complex PTSD from an emotionally abusive childhood, which I read makes one vulnerable to "re-victimization;" see above. Insofar as I'm not sure if the research station counts as academia per se, and most of the worst of what happened (besides that first sexual assault) occurred after his job there ended and we were traveling together elsewhere, plus it's all rather complicated because I thought of him as a friend more than a coworker (met him at a work dinner; only actually saw him while working once), I didn't include this story as an answer to the main survey; I figured it's probably not what you're after. It does have professional consequences now; we still work in broadly the same field. After having seen him at a work conference a year and a half ago, mentally faced what happened with him a few months later, and wrung a promise out of him over email that he would never do anything like that to anyone else, even though I don't think he's actually a threat to me now, I just really never want to see him again. As a result, I decline invitations to visit the school where he now works, even though it would probably professionally benefit me to go, and am going to hesitate to go to conferences where he is also listed as a presenter in future. | Male | |
1806 | 12/16/2017 15:21:05 | At the American Astronomical Society meeting last year, a senior male approached me and asked me if I was married or had any children. He also asked me what day I was leaving. I lied and said the next day, and he goes "that's a shame, I would have liked to see you more". | Graduate student | Senior, probably faculty | Other Research Agency | American Astronomical Society | Astronomy | Who would I report this to? What would AAS do? Track him down? Force him to leave? Revoke his membership? His word against mine and as a super junior woman, I would definitely lose. | Male | ||||||
1807 | 12/16/2017 16:19:34 | The chair of the department where I was a graduate student used to rub the female grad students; we all thought it was odd, but just how it was. For example, our department designated a few grad students each semester to be “Grad Representatives” at the Faculty meetings (we were to take notes, send these along to our grad student collages and be the official voice that would represent the grad student concerns and opinions to the faculty in the faculty meetings). When I was a grad rep, this man would sit next to me and rub my thigh the whole meeting (I didn’t sit at the conference table as it could only seat some of the faculty, the rest sat in chairs around the room, and I sat in one of these chairs as well – which is to say his behavior was not under a table, or anything, but out in the open among his colleages and my professors). He did this to the other grad rep (also a female grad student) as well when she attended meetings, and to the grad reps other semesters too. I now realize that we were in a room with more than 20 faculty in a top R1 department, and no one ever ever commented on it, even in private. It is true that our department had (and still has) very few women faculty (at the time maybe 10% of faculty were women; there were more women than men grad students, however). The behavior of this chair was treated as sort of a running joke in the department. One time when a few of us were discussing him, another friend of mine said “your thigh!? -- Every time I see him he rubs my stomach/torso.” He’d rub and pet her in the hallway, whenever he saw her, not just at meetings/ sitting down. Everyone saw these things, and NO one thought to comment -- other than among ourselves. I think that part of the reason no one thought much of it and certainly no one thought to report it was because this seemed minor compared to some of his other behaviors that didn’t involve active grad students. He had a what all grad students parsed to me and my cohort on arrival as 30+ year affair with a woman who then taught (not TT) in our department – the two of them shared one office (meant for 1 faculty member, same size as every other faculty office). She had started as an undergrad and continued through her PhD in the department, he had been her adviser. Moreover, the two of them ran a seminar for first year graduate students in which he would consistently engage in strange banter with her, which would inevitably result in her saying “Students! [his name]!” He was married with children, and that family was the focus of every talk he gave in our department. And now, the room where our department events and Lectures are held is named after him (on all events, flyers, etc, the room number isn’t given, rather just his name). | grad student | Chair of the department | Other R1 | Social Sciences | none that I've ever known of | none that I've ever known of | none | These events were so thoroughly normalized (happening in front of all faculty, and yet never ever commented upon) that the behavior was made to seem acceptable, just a bit eccentric. I didn’t realize how odd it was until just this fall: when I was at a conference, a friend and I were talking to some relative big shit guy (quite a bit older than me, not an academic), he kept putting his arm around me – which I only noticed because my friend (who is a male grad student) was like what the hell is that about, why does he keep grabbing you and wrapping his arms around you? And I was told him “oh, he does?--probably because he’s an old guy, and that’s what they do" basically, I don’t even notice anymore. My friend was shocked. And my naturalized response is pretty f***ed up, I realized! But, in a context where any reaction AT ALL is framed as “over-reacting” how are we supposed to get through daily life in a world where any of the people we have to talk to and interact with to survive are men substantially older than ourselves, who present this type of touch as "friendly" or "fatherly"? The horror of my friend (the male grad student, from a different department at the same R1 I’d attended) at this situation is what made me realize the extent of how much we naturalize these things. | see above, unfortunately: Thoroughly normalized. But, my friend’s shock also made me realize that despite his radical scholar credentials and political commitments, this aspect of his male privilege was invisible to him, and suddenly visible to me. He wasn’t accustomed to this -- he didn’t get hugged and petted by any older guy in a position of relative power that so pleased, and didn’t realize that this is the case for many of his female colleagues. | Male | |||
1808 | 12/16/2017 16:57:52 | b [this entry may have been accidentally deleted? If the contributor notices--please fill it in again! sorry! I leaned on my laptop while plugging it in! KK] | Grad student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Univ Chicago | Sociology | Not really. Just avoided him. | Very scared | Male | |||||
1809 | 12/16/2017 17:02:25 | I already submitted an event, but I have a side comment I forgot to add: I was a TA for a number of semesters for a very senior professor (senior in that he’d been editor of our Discipline’s journal for years when he was younger and senior in that he was the oldest faculty member on campus (the last WWII vet still teaching)). I would carry the exams and student papers to and from class. I thought nothing of it, as I did this for all classes I was a TA for – since I took them all home and graded them afterall! But, every time he would repeatedly tell me what a shame it was for him and how wrong it was – a 20something female apparently should not carry 100 multiple choice exams – but, he was too old now and simply could not carry them. But, he consistently made sure that I knew that he thought it was wrong, and that he never let his female TAs carry anything until very recently (he could no longer walk very well). I do have a side note: I’d like to suggest that you initiate a similar type of survey at some point about racist comments and acts in the academy. I suspect that might be even more horrifying than this survey. For instance: I thought little of this man’s gendered comments (other than how old was), because he was so racist. In his lectures in class he would use racist terms!—he used the words “wetbacks” “spics,” he’d tell students “Eskimos, or as they now decided they want to be called: Inuit” etc etc etc throughout the semester. This wasn’t limited to his lectures, for instance after leaving his class one day I ran into a friend of mine who said: “Is Professor ____ deaf!?” No, I just spoke to him 5 minutes ago for like 10 minutes. Okay, that’s what I thought – I was just in the elevator with him and I said “Hello Professor ___[his last name]” FOUR times. He never even looked at me. This friend was a senior grad student who had been in the department much much longer than me – which is to say the professor knew he was a student in our department. But, as this student was originally from Puerto Rico, the professor did not feel the need to even look up or acknowledge his existence or greeting. I know that you’re busy this this very important survey, but one on racism in the academy would be useful and some point, and deeply troubling. and of course often intertwined with this one: Another elevator example: my good friend was in a different department, hers is on the 12th - 14th floor of the building next to mine. She had to resort to taking the stairs up, because she kept encountering a male professor from another department in the elevator, and things got scary for her – he’d block her when she would try to get out of the elevator, for example, and demand she answer his strange racist-sexist questions. At first, he’d keep asking her where she was from. She would tell him something, her answer was clearly not what he was looking for. He’d keep pestering her, all the way up the elevator (he was in a different department, a floor or two below hers). Eventually whenever he saw her he’d just say something like “ching chong ching” (etc) repeatedly. (the context is that she is Asian-American, but her surname does not reflect that as she was adopted). He didn’t need to know any of that. But, every time she saw him he'd harass her. She complained to her advisers and they said there was nothing she could do and she should not report it. Not only did she have to resort to walking up the 14 flights of narrow dark stairs, he’d harass her other places. We often wrote in the library, and sometimes she’d see him in there, coming or going, and he’d do the same thing! – look at her and say that shit. It made her so mad, in part because it was SO common. She repeatedly told me this is just what some old white men think they get to do to Asian American women. This man harassed her so much she didn’t even want to come to campus or go to the library. She told her Department Chair, her Dept’s Director of Graduate Studies, and other professors who were supposed to do something, and they all told her there wasn't much she could do and advised her against pursuing anything. Basically, framing it as it’d mess up her career, not his if she reported on the big-shot old professor in another Department. We only knew his name from that department’s website. These type of normalized racist-sexist comments are why people stop even bothering to report things. SO, THANK YOU FOR THIS SURVEY! | |||||||||||||
1810 | 12/16/2017 18:50:56 | When I had just arrived at NYU Abu Dhabi, where most of the visiting postdocs lived in a hotel with a swimming pool, I was swimming at night and a male postdoc I only met that night for the first time exposed himself to me and asked me to touch his penis. I refused, left, and reported it to my colleagues (male), who recommended I do nothing. A few weeks later, the harasser did the same thing to another female visiting postdoc, and she told me, and together we reported it to the professor who was the mentor of the harasser. He said he was not going to fire the harasser but would make sure he wasn't allowed to work with female students in the future. I feel the harasser should have been fired. | postdoc | postdoc/research scientist | Other R1 | NYU | Biology | Assurance the harasser would not be allowed to work with female students. No other consequences. | none | I stopped wanting to visit the campus, limited collaborations | more afraid to come forward to authorities on other harassment experienced | none | Male | ||
1811 | 12/16/2017 19:03:38 | As a postdoc, my mentor suggested that when I needed help, that I seek help from the research scientist in the lab with more computational experience. That research scientist (male) would only help me after hours, and increasingly, if I went with him to a sports bar across the street. After months, I became increasingly dependent for help, and felt lost on my own, with incredible pressure to make progress on my research project. At one point, the research scientist and I were alone and he reminded me of how helpless I felt about my project, and made me cry. In that moment, he put his arm around me to comfort me, then moved me to suggest I give him oral sex. I did not want to, but I did. Later I requested to my mentor to stop working with the harasser, and to be sent to take classes so I would have the computational skills myself. Was able to distance myself from the harasser for the remainder of my postdoc. Over time I told a few colleagues what happened, and asked if I should report it. They strongly said I shouldn't, because the whole lab depended on him (the harasser) for data analysis. | postdoc | research scientist | Other R1 | Biology | did not present the case to the institution | none | empowered me to get training elsewhere so I don't have to rely on male colleagues | permanently angry, drove me to distance myself from my boyfriend at the time, which terminated our relationship | I evaluate personalities of who my potential colleagues are a lot more. I'd say it emboldened me to be in positions of authority. | Male | |||
1812 | 12/16/2017 20:16:05 | 2014. I took the help of a PhD student to read some papers in his office. Accidentally fell asleep at the desk where I was reading my paper. Woke up to find his hand under my shirt. | undergraduate | PhD student | Other R1 | CS | None | None | None | Significant | None | Male | |||
1813 | 12/16/2017 20:59:56 | A male colleague referred to a female colleague as a “f***ing c**t” at a happy hour amid other staff and faculty held at our university club. | Administrator | Equal-level administrator (in front of his female subordinate) | Other R1 | Administration | N/a | N/a (yet) | N/a (yet) | Anxiety, stressed working relationship | Considering switching jobs | Male | |||
1814 | 12/17/2017 0:30:53 | THE MAIN RATING PLATFORM THAT OUR STUDENTS USE TO EVALUATE US SPECIFICALLY ASKS THEM TO RATE OUR "HOTNESS" AND DISPLAYS THE RESULT WITH A F&*%ING CHILI PEPPER. HOW IS RATE MY PROFESSORS DOT COM STILL ALLOWED TO EXIST? IT LITERALLY FACILITATES SEXUAL HARASSMENT BY OUR STUDENTS. When I complained about comments about my looks to RMP, they refused to remove them because "hotness is one of our rating categories." I appealed, and talked to a smarmy dudebro rep on the phone who informed me that they had a "first amendment right" to provide a sexual harassment platform. I have no words. Sorry I yelled about this for the first couple of sentences. {KK: no problem!} | Assistant Professor | Undergraduate students, Rate My Professors staff and dudebro rep | Other R1 | LOL. | consequences for students posting comments about my looks on RMP? lololol | It is anxiety-inducing to know that someone in your classroom just went on the internet and told the world you were "hot." It disrupts the classroom environment. | I have spent too many minutes of my life writing complaint emails to RMP and talking to their dudebro rep on the phone that I could have spent doing literally anything else. Perhaps this is a poor life choice. | Destroy RMP. I am all for evaluations (really! I'm not one of those profs who is against them) but every university needs to have an internal, password-protected system where inappropriate comments are removed. Not this disaster, which literally just exists as a SEO-optimized content farm for MTV (yes, MTV, that's who owns it). | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | ||||
1815 | 12/17/2017 3:58:16 | My PhD supervisor touched me inappropriately. I didn't know how to respond so just froze, and went into the next meeting as though nothing had happened. He never did it again, but I was very uncomfortable in subsequent meetings | PhD student | PhD supervisor | Other Type of School | I didn't tell anyone | Other women had warned me; I hadn't listened. And then I gaslit myself, assuring myself it had been an "accident". | Male | |||||||
1816 | 12/17/2017 3:59:45 | Some students made sexually suggestive comments about me. | Tenured faculty | Students | Other Type of School | Head laughed at me; Dean tutted and said that there was nothing we could do | none | none | I felt ashamed, and then doubly ashamed for "making a fuss" | A male student and female student | |||||
1817 | 12/17/2017 4:59:51 | Large International Conference made uncomfortable by very obvious ogling from other scholar. | Scholar | Junior scholar | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not applicable | Male | ||||
1818 | 12/17/2017 7:40:36 | My perpetrator conducted many harmful acts. I will share two of the most impactful incidences. My professor once sent me a message with my photo, indicating that he had just finished pleasuring himself to it. He also once grabbed my wrist in an empty hallway, in an attempt to pull me into a bathroom. I quickly pulled my arm away and ran into my other department's office, where I cried asked another professor what I should do (I was a double-major at the time). | I was an undergraduate, applying to PhD programs. | Visiting professor | R2 | Economics | He moved to another state. I was encouraged to drop charges. | I applied to PhD programs in a different field | I now have a fear of working with male professors. I am also afraid that he is currently abusing/harassing women because I did not immediately report him when he was harassing me. I carry this fear and guilt everyday. | I pursued a different field, which is associated with lower earnings than economics. | Male | ||||
1819 | 12/17/2017 7:43:29 | I was a grad student at a small liberal arts university in Colorado. I studied Tibetan Language and Buddhist Studies and decided to do a language immersion in Tibet in the summer of 2006. I chose a program through UVA and Columbia that a few of my friends had done years prior. It was the summer the railroad was completed. The director of the program was an adjunct faculty member at Columbia. He and I had email contact prior to the program. I had thought I might not be able to raise enough money to go and his response to that fact via email was mean and shaming and I remember the email having the tone of “you are screwing everything up for everybody.” I felt horrible. And last minute, got the money, which was a few thousand dollars, I believe. So I could go. When I got to Chengdu, I found out immediately that the Chinese government were not issuing student visas at all because of fears of protest related to the railroad opening. Everyone in the program knew this because there were emails about it. But I had not received any of those emails. I was kept out of the loop. So suddenly I was in Chengdu for who knows how long before we figured out how to get into Lhasa. I was kind of rapidly processing a very different program all at once. We also would not have access to the usual University professors the program generally worked with because of the same protest fears, etc. So we all tried to figure out what to do with our time and many of us decided to travel to Eastern Tibet by car. The director of the program offered to let us all keep our bags in his room as we traveled. A kind gesture that I think we all took him up on. I went one morning, I think the morning we were heading out. I had wanted to be on better terms with him as the only contact I really had to that point were the mean emails. So we sat in his room about 10 minutes and talked. I told him about my studies, about a non profit I worked for, about this and that. I got up to leave and he opened his arms to hug which did not bother me. I was happy we were on more congenial terms and I am a hugger. So this was normal to me. I hugged him and in a split second he pulled me tightly, put his hand on my ass, his tongue in my ear. I hardly had the time to take in what was happening but it was happening so fast. I pushed him from me and he pulled me back this time his tongue trying for my mouth. I pushed again and mustered a “no.” And something that I always remember so vividly was saying as I walked toward the door was, “thanks for letting me store my bag” as I left. This reflex to remain polite and to pacify in spite of the fact that I felt disoriented and creeped out. And I remember how my mind was working fast. He was the leader of the program, the only authority of the situation. I didn’t know what I needed from him exactly but I knew I relied on him for plenty of things. I went to the street and used a payphone to call my then boyfriend/now husband to cry. It was a tremendously groundless and strange feeling. And the director was utterly oblivious. He ended up being the only teacher for the program, so I had to theoretically learn Tibetan from him everyday for weeks from that point onward, which proved to be impossible. | I was a grad student at Naropa University in Colorado and a student in the language program through Columbia and UVA | He was the leader of the Tibet program, the only Columbia or UVA faculty representative. He was an adjunct faculty member of Columbia University throughout the academic year | Elite Institution/Ivy League | He worked for Columbia University | Buddhist Studies/Tibetan Language/Divinity | Myself and another woman who was harassed (there were three of us that summer) had email correspondence with the faculty member at UVA, the head of the Buddhist Studies department there. He was sympathetic and I still have the emails were wrote back and forth. He told, then I told my Tibetan Language professor at Naropa, who was completely indifferent. He made it clear immediately that he didn't care and we just moved on. A few women from the summer program filed an official complaint with Columbia and they ignored it. | He was pulled out of the summer language program but there were no other consequences. He has kept his job at Columbia | It didn't have much impact. My career intentions were more related to chaplaincy work, not translation. So after the program I did not depend on him in any way. | I am a resilient person and after the initial shock and groundlessness I kept marching forward. I think this was natural and also a result of responses and my wanting to be strong. It was the case that it was impossible to learn from him that summer and I felt angry that I had to try. I remember him saying to his assistant that he didn't understand why I seemed guarded in class and seemed to have a hard time. | See above. It certainly did not assist in any increased facility with Tibetan language, but as I already wrote, my ultimate goal was not to translate. | I feel it is important to note the responses I got from some other people I told at the time. There was one person in the program who said something along the lines of "he would never have tried that with me because I am a strong woman." Another friend doing her PhD research told me she knew he did this to other women in prior years and then kind of lamented about what a shame it would be to lose him in his field of expertise if this was to impact his career in any way. That was a sentiment I heard from several others, more often men, in the summer program. And I already noted, my professor at school didn't care at all, didn't even acknowledge that this person't behavior impacted myself and others emotionally, that a program we worked to get into and raise money for was cut completely short, etc. Nothing. | Male | |
1820 | 12/17/2017 10:00:43 | I received demeaning and sexually explicit comments on my teaching evaluations. These comments corroborated my sense that students in this class did not respect me and viewed me mainly as a sexual object. | Graduate student | Undergrad | None | Significant blow to my confidence and sense of self-worth -- experienced depression and anxiety | Stayed in grad school -- but seriously considered dropping out. Still influences my behavior and confidence in the classroom. | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | |||||||
1821 | 12/17/2017 10:19:34 | I was propositioned at a department Halloween party and groped in an elevator. | Grad student | He was a professor in the department who taught one of the core classes that all grad students had to take. The class was notoriously hard and quite a few students had to retake it to maintain the B average requirement. | Other R1 | Oceanography | I first reported it to the office manager of my department. She and I had a close relationship bc I worked for a summer day camp she ran for the department. We were doing Fall inventory for the camp when it came out as we talked about the party. She believed me and asked if I wanted her to tell the chair. I agreed and he asked to speak with me. He asked me if I wanted to take it any further with the university but I felt like there wasn't much to be done by them (and as I didn't work with this professor felt it would be an isolated incident). Later, I found out speaking with older grad students he had such a reputation and was problem that the department forced him to hire his wife as his lab manager in order for him to basically have a chaperone. A few months later he groped me in the elevator one evening as I was leaving. I reported it bc I had found the department supportive before. But this time was different. The chair said he believed me but it was made clear that I would probably not be believed and it would be my word against his. I was overweight and this was used as a reason it would be hard to prove. This professor was nationally known for his work in founding an internship program for underrepresented minorities in science (including women!) and is viewed as one of the top in his field. I had low self esteem at the time and felt ashamed so I chose not to go any further bc I didn't want to have to defend my looks and weight. | None. Other than me telling every female to stay away from him. | I ended up quiting grad school. It was not a direct cause, but it was definitely part of it. I became disillusioned with research and academia bc of the environment and his behavior was a lot of what I felt was wrong with academia. | It was a huge blow of my self esteem. I realize now he specifically picked me bc of how I was unlikely to be believed. And that hurts to this day. | I always felt like well I'm not pretty or skinny but I have more brains than most women and I will prove it and excel in science and my field. But I ended up quitting bc I hated the institution of academia. Despite not finishing my degree, my skills (GIS) and other degrees could have still gotten me a high paying job, but I was afraid that the attitude toward women would be the same in that field as well since it was still mainly men....so I became a teacher. While I like what I do now, I still feel cheated. | I never told anyone about these incidents since I quit school bc I felt again I wouldn't be believed and that they would treat me the same. You? But you're really fat? Why would he want to do that to you? | Male | ||
1822 | 12/17/2017 10:56:37 | Senior male colleague in department administrative position would insult me under his breath (once calling me a dolt) and hold conversations with other male colleagues in my proximity that were compromising or excluding, such as about male body hair. | Untenured assistant professor | Department administrator with influence on the Tenure and Promotion process | Other R1 | English | None | He continues to function higher up the chain and continues harassing behavior. | Internalized doubt about belonging; stress reaction whenever I see this person. | Additional stress and doubt. | The internalized negativity increases insecurity and has impacted productivity. | The institution does not seem to have any way of advising victims of this sort of low-level, years-long harassment about how to document or pursue it. A guide for how to document and institutionally pursue this sort of thing that has a cumulative and deadening effect would be very useful. | Male | ||
1823 | 12/17/2017 10:59:45 | Senior academic supervisor: touching, inviting me to his home to "fix the computer," other inappropriate crossing of boundaries | Untenured Assistant professor | Chairperson | R2 | English | None | None I can name, although he has never been promoted beyond current position | I went on the market and left the institution | Intense stress | I ultimately left the institution before I would have been tenured, but fortunately not the field. | Male | |||
1824 | 12/17/2017 11:43:23 | A week before my PhD comprehensive exams, a member of my committee wanted to meet to discuss what I assumed was my exams. We met at a 3rd party's house. Everyone was having wine, but she got drunk. She alternated between being sad and floating the idea of being suicidal to raging and being physically threatening. At one point, after going to the bathroom, she came back without her top off and being super sexually agressive. The next day she appologized, claimed to have no memory of what happened, but she stopped working with me, talked bad about me to senior scholars in the field, convinced another of my committee members to step down from my committee, and set-up the conditions by which I had little support in a department that was super toxic, so I ended up working with an advisor who was not sexually abusive but was toxic and volitile in other ways but was the only one in the department that believed me and was willing to sheild me from the first professor. I never reported it because the I didn't want to bring down the racialized violence of the University. She was a woman of color and I was white and it would be far too easy for the University to make the issue one of discrimination against a white student rather than a more complex and nuanced analysis of the power dynamic at play. | PhD Student | Committee member and senior scholar in the department and Internationally respected in her feild | Other R1 | Feminist Studies | None, never reported it | None, never reported it | I had to change my dissertation project to not cover her area. | I developed trauma symptoms. Had anxiety and panic attacks. | I have barely stayed in academia and was one of the lucky ones to get a tenure track job. | Female | |||
1825 | 12/17/2017 11:52:09 | At a conference, a professor emailed me to ask me to come to his hotel room that night. | Graduate student | Professor at a different institution | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Mathematics | I did not report the incident. | None. | Awkwardness at this conference and subsequent conferences; a distraction from focusing on math at the conference. | Male | |||||
1826 | 12/17/2017 13:43:01 | My first experience with sexual harassment in academia started when I was in graduate School , which I guess prepared me for the ongoing sexual harassment that experience as a junior professor and now is a tenured professor. I put up with it as an assistant professor, believing that once I was tenured, I would be empowered to stop it, only to discover that tenure does not offer me protection from this. I have evidence. I tested the waters by informally bringing the issue up and I immediatly felt the backlash. On a daily basis I question whether or not I want to stay in academia. The real burn, this guy's wife is a "respected" feminist, and she knows. | Tenured, editor of journal, relatively well known. | Other R1 | Sociology | Hostile, went after me. | None | I left for a year, hoping forever, but might need to go back. I wake up with nightmares about going back. | I lost my desire to be a scholar and that has been my main purpose in life. I am slowly healing from the scars, but I am afraid of what will happen if I return. | I had to switch jobs, move my family, etc. | Male | ||||
1827 | 12/17/2017 14:06:57 | Someone came into my ofgice while I had stepped out momentarily and drew a penis on my wall with red ink. | Tenure track faculty | Perpetrator unknown | Other R1 | Kent State University | Political Science | Police report filed, dept and other adminstrators took seriously. Immediately had office repainted | Mobilized me to call out harrassment; reclaim space by using office as a place for calling attention to sexism in dept | Fear, followed by anger. Need for constant vigilance. | Choose not to report | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | |||
1828 | 12/17/2017 14:19:04 | I was sexually harassed on a job interview for 2 days while at a professional conference. | I was just finishing my Ph.D. | Dean of the school where I was applying. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Kent State | Early Childhood | I never reported it in 1975 | He became a successful researcher. | I took a position elsewhere. | Minimum | I left the conference early by changing my plane ticket and never looked back as I had done pathing wrong other than fight off the jerk. | Male | ||
1829 | 12/17/2017 15:21:33 | During clinical supervision to discuss a client, my supervisor asked me "what happens to you when you get aroused?" and spent time detailing all the things that can happen to people when they get aroused while maintaining eye contact. | Ph.D. student/Intern | Other Type of School | Psychology | I reported it to another female supervisor (who, incidentally, treated women who were survivors of sexual trauma). She told me I was misinterpreting and did not take it any further. When I began crying in her office, she told me I was just tired. | None | Luckily, none. But I felt I couldn't say much more than I had because he was one of my letter of rec writers as I applied for postdocs. I ended up getting an academic job rather than a postdoc, anyways. | I felt exhausted, victimized, uncomfortable meeting with him. But it was almost worse not being believed or taken seriously by the female supervisor I had respected up until that point. | None that I can think of, other than being very conscious of supporting/believing students and others who come to me who themselves have suffered from harassment or assault. | I am so very glad you are collecting this data. | Male | |||
1830 | 12/17/2017 15:39:55 | A tenured professor, during an oral exam of one of my fellow grad students, made an inappropriate comment directed at me. The student being examined had made a photographic portrait of me, which was under discussion. At one point, this professor turned around to look directly at me, in an audience full of faculty and students who were not allowed to participate and said- "it's like we're seeing you naked." Sounds innocuous, felt violating, especially in retrospect. At the time, I froze. Never reported him, as far as I know, no one else did, either. | Grad student | Tenured faculty, but not my supervisor in any way. Separate area from mine. | Other R1 | UT Austin | Photography | None | None | Anger, mostly. | Anger, frustration, resentment, fear of speaking up for myself. | See above. | Male | ||
1831 | 12/17/2017 15:48:34 | I was raped by a post-doc from the same university a few years back. We were attending the same party, I met him that night for the first time. I was blackout drunk, he was sober. He and three friends assaulted me at least once, he assaulted me several times, at least once when I was already passed out, before raping me in a bathroom. | PhD | Post-doc at another faculty | Other R1 | social sciences | I did not report it to the university, but reported it to the police who said there was a 'lack of evidence' and dropped the case. As did the insurance company. The university has no trustworthy procedures for reporting anything, nor do I trust they would give consequences of worth (like firing/banning). | He got promoted recently. | I spent seven months on 100% leave and a following year and several months at varying percentages of part time work. When I returned to work I couldn't effectively work for more than a year, my health is consistently spiraling out of control causing inconsistencies in my day to day working ability. I haven't been able to maintain any amount of multitasking, or apply for scholarships, grants, I miss deadlines constantly. I couldn't write for almost two years after. Basically, I'm functioning at a fraction of my former self. I think I will leave academia for something else, even though research was my passion. | I suffered acute stress for three months following - not being able to leave my house, lying on the floor or in bed, not eating, raging and crying, cleaning myself repeatedly, loud noises scare me now, had a fear of people walking behind me/being in crowded spaces, nightmares nightly including waking up in cold sweats, and so on. I've been in two kinds of therapy since. I have full blown post traumatic stress. It's destroyed my sense of self and trust and I'm trying to rebuild and heal. My mental health is in constant focus now and many of the symptoms from the acute stress phase remain, even if lessened. | I'm very lost. I'm scared of so many things, I don't know if I can have the kind of career or life I wanted anymore. I'm worried I can never heal. I lost a lot of time in my program, and I wasn't able to go abroad. I've had to refocus my whole life around healing. I feel like I died that night, and I'm becoming a new person now. It's hard to rebuild from less than nothing - a completely desecrated shell of a human. | Male | |||
1832 | 12/17/2017 15:58:04 | As an undergrad, during a critique of my work, when I was 19. We were discussing a group of photographs I had made. Some were self portraits, NONE were sexual, or even provocative in nature, and there was zero nudity. If anything, they were an attempt to grapple with my own poor self image and ideas of my inner narrative expressed outwardly. Near the end of the critique the professor (who was a known lech) said of one of the self portraits "and this one, it's like, it's like I can FEEL your vagina." My classmates looked at me as I turned red and fell silent. It took a few days for the fucked-upness of what he'd said to sink in. This was in 1998 or so, the internet was not then what it is now. I couldn't tweet about it, there were no online sexual harassment forms to fill out. And I didn't feel I had the agency to share this or report it to anyone. I felt like it was one of those things you just had to put up with, just part of "being a woman" in the world. It wasn't my first lesson in dealing with creeps, but it was one of the only ones that existed within a specific power structure, like school, and where I experienced blatant abuse of privilege and power by a man. It still makes me angry and ashamed 20 years later. | Undergrad | My professor in a class | Small Liberal Arts College | Bard College | Photography | none | none | 20 years of anger, resentment, and feelings of powerlessness. | Male | ||||
1833 | 12/17/2017 16:06:09 | A fellow female PhD in my department was verbally and emotionally abused by her (male Professor) PhD supervisor to the point of suicide. I was her only confident, after it had been going on for years. When I sought help from my department (suicide cannot be kept secret), I experienced victim blaming and silence. My (male) boss tried to walk out of a 'rehabilitation meeting' (to get back to work effectively) to avoid taking responsibility for the situation. Eventually, I left the department (physically by changing offices, though my PhD is still fully connected to the department) to prevent remaining in a constant state of hyper arousal and hyper vigilance and to find peace enough to work and regain my sanity. I am now completely isolated from my department. Good news - the PhD received her degree! The status of her mental health is perhaps less than good news. | PhD | Professor (male, perpetrator to fellow PhD), head of department (male, perpetrator to bulling to me), admin and head of research I spoke to were female - perpetrators of victim blaming and silencing techniques | Other R1 | social science | victim blaming, suppression, silencing, bulling, attempting to drive me out of the program | None | I lost all opportunity to be part of the department, was not invited to teach, and have effectively been prevented from having an academic career. I'm not able to concentrate or work as effectively as before. I miss deadlines often, I'm slower, I'm struggling. | It caused me to go on leave at various rates from 25%-100% for around two years. Caused a complete mental break down and re-triggered past trauma. I dissociated full time for close to a year? I'm not at all well anymore. Still unable to work and live at my full capacity | Well, I guess I can't be a researcher anymore. Seems like the consequence of reporting abuse is that you get your career systematically destroyed. I don't know what to do now. I don't even know if anyone would recommend me. I was fully preparing for an academic career but after this incident I decided I don't want to work in academia. I don't want to be trapped in a system that perpetuates abuse and uses suppression techniques to silence victims and their advocates. Nor do I want to be part of an incestuous group that feels like a high school lunch room. I'm extremely disappointed to say the least. | Male | |||
1834 | 12/17/2017 16:38:05 | Post doc got annoyed that I was going to listen to PI's instructions /advice instead of his own re: an experiment I needed to run. Post doc proceeded to call me a "stupid woman". On numerous other occasions, post doc asked master's student and other post doc "why are you doing chemistry instead of getting a nice husband and staying at home?" Post doc had also instructed me on multiple occasions to finish male undergraduate's work after he went home despite it being a totally separate project from my own and I received no credit. Female graduate student who was my mentor liked to ask various things such as "How do you think you'll get a husband when you act so crude like that?" and "Do you wear a bikini when you go to the beach?... It seems like you would because your skirt is so short' (It was a knee length skirt, fyi.) | Undergrad | Grad student mentor and post-doc | Other R1 | Chemistry | Did not Report | None | I wound up taking a gap year between undergrad and grad school to do extra research to make sure grad school was the right choice for me. My gap year gave me opportunities to interact with faculty that weren't assholes- but for a long time, I figured I wouldn't make it in chemistry. | I constantly doubt myself and my abilities to this very day and constantly work myself until I become ill because I never know when someone will have another disparaging comment about me. | I got lucky in that these incidences taught me how to choose an adviser for my PhD that doesn't take sexual harassment lightly, and is a very respectable individual. But I'm still very hard on myself on all things I do in lab, because I worked my hardest but was constantly insulted nonetheless. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||
1835 | 12/17/2017 20:35:29 | A male colleague routinely make sexist comments during faculty meetings. For example, he would comment on women's cleavage, how he liked to walk up the stairs behind female students so he could admire them from behind, talk about which graduate applicants had been cheerleaders, and on and on. The department chair never told him to knock it off; he was infatuated with another young assistant professor who unfortunately lead him on. The department culture was that way. I documented the comments and took them to the Dean, who said he would talk with the inappropriate associate professor. I did not get the impression that he cared and do not know the outcome. I did not notice any difference in the associate professor's behavior, other than hostility toward me. When I went up for tenure, I learned that many negative comments were made about me (I can't imagine from whom) about my lack of collegiality and was initially voted down. I had to defend my case by detailing all that I had done over the years that demonstrated collegiality. I got tenure but left to another school and department that is great, though my salary is significantly less. | Assistant Professor | Associate Professor | Other R1 | unknown | none that were apparent | I left and took another position. My salary is significantly lower, unfortunately. | anxiety | negative financial impact | Male | ||||
1836 | 12/18/2017 4:44:03 | I was in a high-level administrative post with significant statewide visibility, the only woman on a small team of perfectly wonderful male colleagues in the 1980s. We often traveled together, the car being a handy "rolling conference room." Before/after a meeting on the road, we'd gather in someone's room to prepare or debrief. The camaraderie was a precious gift I've not experienced before or since. About ten months in, a colleague from another institution told me that a rumor was rampant around the state that I had only gotten the job because I had been having an affair with the (divorced) boss. I had been living three states away and never met the man. It was devastating to me - no impact on the boss, of course. Only the woman is shamed. I no longer traveled with the rest, met only in public spaces or the office, and when in meetings outside the office spent much of my time wondering who and how many of the people in the room had heard the rumor. I'll never know the full cost to my credibility, effectiveness on the job, and reputation. | Senior administrator | I suspect it was my predecessor in the position, who had been fired and was a notorious gossip. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Strategic Leadership | None | None | I'll never know the full cost to my credibility, effectiveness on the job, and reputation. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||||
1837 | 12/18/2017 5:48:06 | I was propositioned by a member of my search and promotion committee including putting his hand on the inside of my thight | Assistant Professor | Full professor, head of my search committee and on my promotion committee | Elite Institution/Ivy League | MIT | Engineering | None | None | I ended up leaving academia only to come back to another university later in my career. | Stress | ended up leaving academia only to come back to another university later in my career. | Male | ||
1838 | 12/18/2017 5:50:28 | I was propositioned by a member of my search and promotion committee including putting his hand on the inside of my thight | Assistant Professor | Full professor, head of my search committee and on my promotion committee | None | None | I ended up leaving academia only to come back to another university later in my career. | Stress | ended up leaving academia only to come back to another university later in my career. | ||||||
1839 | 12/18/2017 8:17:44 | Redacted Entirely | Program Assistant/Secretary/Graduate program coordinator | Associate Professor, Graduate program Co-Director (my coworker, and sometimes supervisor) | R2 | [redacted] | Anthropology | Department head said he will "talk to him if it ever crosses a line." | None. | I don't want to come to work. I hate my job. I want to leave. I am starting to hate my field. | Severe anxiety, returning depression, frequent panic attacks, self-harm. | I'm ready to leave this stable, well-paying job for something uncertain just so I can get away from him, from this. | Male | ||
1840 | 12/18/2017 8:56:20 | In December of 2015, the Chair of my department got angry at me for questioning a scheduling decision and told me that he would like me to "lift my skirt." He then proceeded to tell me how many times he "has thoughts about me" and had to "stop himself from coming down to my office." After I sent him an email asking him not to speak like that to me anymore, he sent me three emails (to my university as well as my private email address) and put a 2-page typed letter under my office door. He admitted in those emails and the letter what he had said and did. So, this was not a "he said/she said" -- it was a "she said/he agreed." After the email and letter under my door, which very much made my skin crawl, I filled out a harassment complaint. | I was the Chair of my department until I took a different position as a Director at my university. However, I still taught in my former department so, in effect, I had two supervisors, one of whom was the person who harassed me. | The Chair of my department. | Small Liberal Arts College | redacted | Business | The university brought in an outside company to do an investigative report. The report concluded that I had been sexually harassed. My request was that the perpetrator's office be moved from my building, and that he be removed from being my immediate supervisor (in other words, I requested to report directly to the Dean), and that the perpetrator would be sent to sensitivity training. I did not ask that he lose his position, nor at that time did I ask for any financial settlement. | As far as I know, he was not obligated to go to sensitivity training. He was given a cryptic letter in his personnel file that said something to the effect that he had violated a conduct code. The letter in his file did not mention sexual harassment; it simply gave a conduct code number. He was not put on a performance improvement plan. Indeed, he received a significant raise the following year. Our state is in a budget crisis, and there were supposedly no raises given that year campus-wide. | 2016 was, bar none, the most difficult year of my professional (nearly 30-year) career at my university. There were so many times I almost walked out the door on a successful and meaningful career. I was asked to teach more credits hours, which I felt violated the terms of my contract. My harasser would talk to his supervisors about me and send negative emails to my coworkers about me. My harasser's office was directly across the hall from the department bathroom, so for an entire year I walked up to the floor above to use the bathroom. Little things like looking down the hall prior to leaving my office became a daily habit. In October of 2016, my harasser (then still my supervisor) required me to attend a meeting that he called for himself, my Dean, the VPAA and me. I was not told the intent of the meeting beforehand even though I asked. I walked in "cold." At that meeting he asked that I "be nice" to him. I walked out of the meeting. | I did seek counseling and was told that I was suffering from the trauma. I couldn't sleep and dealt with anxiety for 1-1.5 hours every morning prior to building up my nerve to go to work. I berated myself for not calling 9-1-1 the day of the incident. Instead, I relied on my university to protect me. I realize now, that was a big mistake. | After a full calendar year, my harasser was told to move his office to another (adjacent) building and was asked to step down from the chair position. He continues to be a full professor, tenured. I am not sure what the reason was that he was physically moved or demoted a full year after he harassed me. I certainly don't think it had anything to do with me--he was moved and demoted nearly a year after my harassment complaint. I still am very cognizant of my surroundings on campus. I distrust my university's leadership team as they failed to protect me from a known and self-admitted harasser. In fact, when discussing the situation early on in the process with my VPAA, she told me that, "Worse things had happened at [her former school]" and that "Things like that happen when you are cute." | I followed all harassment procedures and met every deadline. I simply asked to be protected from a self-admitted harasser and was denied a protection that would have cost the university nothing. | Male | |
1841 | 12/18/2017 9:31:39 | 4 separate professors made repeated negative comments about women in academia (that we don't belong there), some comments were of a highly offensive and suggestive nature (one professor was described to me before I took his class as "dangerous but just be nice and you'll get a good grade"), grades were threatened, additional scholarship funds withheld, one-on-one meetings often requested (which were extremely uncomfortable), generally a pervasive negative atmosphere focused on assertions that women were "less than" and really should not be in a grad program. | student | one faculty member (required course) and two senior faculty (one director of the program & one responsible for approving additional funding, comp exams, etc.) | R2 | History | Complainants were referred to one of the individuals who was a part of the problem. No further action was taken. | None. | I am continuing my PhD but have yet to receive approval on my diss. proposal; at least one other complainant has dropped out. | Severe. I feel uncomfortable on campus and avoid going there whenever possible. I no longer want to be affiliated with the program or school. | It has made me question whether or not I should complete my degree or if there will be a place for me (other other women) in academia given the pervasive atmosphere of acceptance of gender-based harassment. | I do think it's important to give us voices but I don't think anything will change. | Male | ||
1842 | 12/18/2017 11:42:04 | Young female scholar was groped by drunken male scholar in conference after hours. | PhD student | Other PhD student from other university | Other Research Agency | robotics | None. It was ignored or unnoticed by other present | none | Male | ||||||
1843 | 12/18/2017 11:51:37 | I received a series of inappropriate sexual messages from a college professor of mine whom I had worked closely with in the past. Following the initial messages, he continued to message me and try to continue the conversations in public, even when it was obvious that I wanted him to stop. | Student | My instructor | Small Liberal Arts College | Minot State University | Music | The university took the complaint very seriously and thoroughly investigated it, finding his actions to be a pattern of abuse. | Termination | I second-guess every interaction now with professors, and I wonder if I received all that I've worked towards due to my hard work or because some professor thought I was beautiful. I feel degraded, but proud of my self nonetheless for reporting him. | Male | ||||
1844 | 12/18/2017 12:11:21 | An assistant professor (not my advisor) slept with two of his undergraduate students, to the detriment of his graduate students. One of his grad students ended up leaving, in part because he would prioritize these students over her, blowing of their meetings to go on dates with the students. This professor would also make really inappropriate comments about another professor and her child, all while professing to be an ally and advocate. In more minor incidents that have happened to me directly, my academic siblings would touch me inappropriately at parties or have conversations with my breasts. I had a collaborator spend way too much time talking to me about my outfit, rather than my science. | I was a senior grad student, the students in question were undergrads | Assistant Professor | Other R1 | Boston University | Astrophysics | Right after he was awarded tenure, the students reported him. He was quietly asked to leave and told he could save face by resigning. The acting chair and chair were placed under a gag order and told not to discuss it with anyone. The public response was that he was leaving because he wanted to go elsewhere (I have pieced the response together through the rumor mill). | Not sure. I have told as many people as I can to spread the information far and wide, so if he applies to other institutions he won't get hired. As far as I know he does not currently have an academic career. | No negative ones. | On mine, none. On others, I don't know. | Male | |||
1845 | 12/18/2017 12:19:29 | I was asked by a visiting scholar (we had previously met fortuitously while I was traveling for research) to meet at the Ivy League institution where he was lecturer. He promised to introduce me to leaders in my field and help me develop my research plan. He said I could stay in the same house as him- that he was renting a large bed and breakfast w many rooms. When I arrived in the city he picked me up and brought me to his one room bed and breakfast. He slept on the couch but still we were in the same room. He did not introduce me to any collegues. Took me to dinner, took me to the movies, held my hand when we met friends of his, and basically treated me like a date. When I inquired about meeting w collegues he simply said they were unavailable and was completely uninterested in my research project. | PhD student | A politically connected physician in his country, the equivalent of surgeon general. Visiting scholar at Harvard. Harvard was sponsoring his semester long visit. He had an office, and used a Harvard credit card for all of the outings that he took me on. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Harvard | Anthropology | Discouraged to attempt further development in my field bc I assumed that it must have been my fault that he didn’t take me seriously. | See above | Did not continue in academia. Finished PhD but felt that I would never be taken seriously if I couldn’t create a professional relationship. I now realize 10 years later that it was not my fault. | Male | ||||
1846 | 12/18/2017 13:26:06 | A faculty member (not in my program but very highly regarded in my sub-field) was assigned to be a mentor to me by a professional association while I transitioned from undergrad to grad school. They "accidentally" emailed me dozens of BDSM porn images. Their follow up email was "oops, that wasn't meant for you. Unless you're into that sort of thing". I was afraid to even tell anyone I knew because everyone else seems to love dealing with him. I avoided him for years after. I've been afraid to mention it to anyone because it's a small sub-field and everyone seems to love dealing with him despite a history of this kind of behavior. | Undergrad transitioning into graduate school | early career mentor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Political Science | I didn't even know who to report it to or how to go about it | None. They are very well regarded despite this kind of behavior being habitual | Male | ||||||
1847 | 12/18/2017 13:36:17 | Harassed for over two hours by fellow graduate student one night while I was attempting to work. They were very drunk and at the office. They tried to force me to drive them to a strip club to help them evaluate the dancers one of whom the this person was "dating". When I finally gave up and tried to go home they followed me to my car and very nearly forced their way inside while I was trying to get away. | graduate student | a graduate student a few years ahead of me | Other R1 | Political Science | Everyone had to go to a meeting on sexual harassment as a response to a large number of complaints about six or more graduate students coming to light at once. | I think they probably got a stern lecture by the DGS but that's only a guess. They subsequently defended their dissertation and got a tenure track job. | Mostly just learned not to work in the office or to keep my door locked when possible | Male | |||||
1848 | 12/18/2017 14:15:44 | My PI's husband grabbed my ass at a holiday party | Grad student, not yet PhD candidate | Research Scientist, husband of my PI | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Chemistry | Did not report | None | My PI doesn't like me and isn't being supportive or my career | Not good, had to start meds and therapy | Planning on leaving R1 environment | Male | |||
1849 | 12/18/2017 15:26:06 | In the course of three consecutive months, a member of staff that had previously been known to me, and which I considered a friend, albeit not a close one, became more and more present in my working area. I felt increasingly uncomfortable, and indicated my desire to reduce social interaction with him, blaming workload. At around that time, and contrary to what I had indicated I wanted, he stepped up communications via email and text message with me quite dramatically, and around that time I started seeing him everywhere inside and outside of the university. He always pretended it was a coincidence, but it became increasingly clear that it was not. I believe he had started to display obsessive behaviour, and had begun to calculate my movements, and to stalk me. I had noticed that prior to me attempting to step back, his verbal interactions with me increasingly resulted in me feeling manipulated and disempowered. He had started to make small comments that casually belittled the relevance of my work, even though he lacks the qualifications to genuinely understand it, as he lectures in a very different field to mine. | Postgraduate student | Lecturer, from another department | Other R1 | Law | My male advisor assisted me with initial advice and support, but soon afterwards started to avoid me, lost interest in my work, and involved me less in departamental matters. I am not sure he actually believed me. We used to work closely before, now he barely speaks to me the minimum to be civil, let alone offer any career mentorship. | None | Due to the anxiety the stalking was causing me, I left the university campus, where I had been living, and have continued my PhD away from the university and its resources in a less favourable environment. I travel there very infrequently now, only when compulsory advisory meetings are required. I have no teaching commitments, which facilitates this. I felt at the time leaving was my only way out to avoid further stalking or very unpleasant confrontation, and diversion of my energy away from my research. I felt hurt when my advisor and several male colleagues intimated they understood the situation was difficult, but that I should leave and not make trouble as this would be better for all in the long run. My female colleagues, by contrast, were devastated by my decision, and fearful for my safety. | I have developed significant situational anxiety, which has become chronic. I have had several anxiety attacks since the stalking events began. I cannot bear to be around the places where the stalking took place, some of which occurred not only in the university city, but also in certain public areas of the city where I live. I have had nightmares and loss of sleep, but this subsided after a few weeks. I have stopped wearing feminine clothes, I now wear trousers and baggy tops to hide my body, and try not to attract attention to myself when I am in public places. | Have decided to pursue career away from academia, as I believe the nature of the work attracts individuals with grandiose and narcissistic tendencies, who consciously seek out the position of power the profession grants them. I believe my stalker fits that description, and expert advice I sought after the distressing events further suggested this may be the case. Further, I feel the support from my advisors at the university no longer exists, hence I feel I would probably not be able to succeed in academia even if I wanted to pursue it as a career option. | I sometimes feel guilty for not having taken the matter further with the university, thinking he could do the same to other women. But I know if I had done so, the emotional toll, plus the effort in time and concentration that such a move would have taken away from my PhD would have stopped me from finishing. I have sacrificed that possibility to give priority to my research, firstly because I believe in it, and secondly because I want (and deserve) to reap the just rewards of all my hard work done in the past three years. Ultimately, all I want now is to get on with my life. | Male | ||
1850 | 12/18/2017 17:07:39 | Lots up upper thigh grabbing or touching, awkward paternal-wannabe holds of arms and shoulders and hands, a weird kiss on the cheek once, and a straight-up butt grab. | MFA student in creative writing (in my twenties) | My Thesis Director (in her sixties) | Other R1 | U of Iowa | Creative Writing | None (didn't report) | I met my ex-thesis director again at a conference this year, and sure enough, there was the upper thigh-grab again, so not much has changed. | Honestly, a better understanding of what women go through. | Just shame that I hadn't listened to more women sooner. | I take women's stories of sexual harassment more seriously and try to do what I can to combat it. | Thank you for doing this. | Female | |
1851 | 12/18/2017 18:05:12 | I had a male professor in undergrad email me incessantly about things I said and how I looked in class- all with a sexual undertone. About 2009. | I was an undergrad and he was a tenured professor. | He was a tenured professor. | Regional Teaching College | Sociology | N/A | N/A | I think about it often, and wish I had spoken up. | I think about it very often and now teach at this university. | I speak up now when I am harassed. | Male | |||
1852 | 12/18/2017 19:11:31 | Nothing to me personally, and nothing I witnessed myself. But this professor (tenured) had already had several instances of inappropriate behavior with female grad students, which created a culture of stress around him. My roommate told me about how he had touched her inappropriately and insisted on it despite her requesting he cease. This in front of other graduate students. Female grad students knew of his behavior and several had witnessed or been subject to it also, to the point that it was common knowledge that this was his M.O. I took one course with him and the sexual innuendo and jokes (regarding whether or not he was circumcised, for example), were a "normal" thing that he would initiate, in class discussion or on the banter before/after class begun. Months later, when it came time to take my doctoral exam, I was told I had to do it in his office. The person administrating the exam handed me the paper and closed the door. I wrote, for three hours, in a panic that this man would walk into his office and there I would be, alone and vulnerable. I thought, if he touched my roommate in public, in view of other graduate students, what would happen if he walked into his office to find a female grad student alone? This to me is evidence that a male predator does not need to directly touch you or harass you for you to feel the stress of the environment he creates and for that environment to be toxic. | Graduate Student | Professor, Tenured | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | He was already being investigated and the investigation continued after I left. I have no idea as to whether he was punished or not. | It made for an uncomfortable class environment and I do know that the anxiety I felt sitting in his office writing my PhD exam definitely distracted me from the task at hand, making what was already a stressful time even worse. | This was not the only case I run into men like him. At another university I was accepted for the graduate school, a student commented (during that weekend that you go visit when they are courting you to say yes), that female students who worked with that professor had to "do research horizontally" to advance. I can definitely say that line influenced my decision to go elsewhere for graduate school. | Male | |||||
1853 | 12/18/2017 20:21:33 | I was a student in a summer school in Free University of Berlin (Freie Universität Berlin). Towards the end of the semester, this professor invited me to his house, and at the time I thought he said, I can also introduce you to my 'cats' - I don't know why exactly, perhaps because of his accent, but at the time I thought he said 'kids'. I thought he was just being nice as some professors are and I said yes. On the day when I went to his house, it was all empty. He was acting quite weirdly. There were obviously no kids. He seemed to be living on his own. Overall on that day nothing happened physically. He did not try to touch me or anything, but he was always behind me and too close. I didn't do much and just got on with the time I was there. Months later on, when I asked for a reference letter from him for my graduate school, he sent me a very angry reply saying that he didn't have time for me. In shot, I haven't had a 'too serious' encounter with him, but I was felt extremely uncomfortable and wanted to note his name so that other women can be more cautious when they are alone with him. Please note this time for future reference: Prof. Dr. *** from Freie Universität Berlin. | Student | Lecturer / Professor | Other R1 | Free University of Berlin | Social Sciences | n/a | n/a | n/a | I can't really answer this question | I can't really answer this question | Prof. Dr. *** from Freie Universität Berlin. | Male | |
1854 | 12/19/2017 3:51:02 | While I was in the PhD program. A research scientist in our lab would come into our office and give me back rubs and would talk nearly constantly to me about sex. (Example: How long should a woman hold her urine prior to having sex if she wants to achieve orgasm?) If the neck of my shirt was open, he would sneak his hands under the back of my shirt and rub my bare skin. When I would ask him to stop rubbing my back, he would rub the arms and back of my chair. It's hard to describe how creepy even this was--this person talking to me about sex every day and rubbing my chair. I went through phases where I just let it happen because I was tired of trying to push back. When we were in group events in the lab, he followed me everywhere, tried to make himself part of every conversation I was in. I felt like he was trying to assert that I was somehow "his". I also went through a phase where I just did not speak to him, just completely stopped--but then other people asked what was wrong with me. It never progressed further (thank god) because I did everything I could to avoid him, but I felt ashamed, targeted in a way that other people weren't, and powerless anyway. | Graduate student | Research Scientist in the laboratory | Elite Institution/Ivy League | MIT | Computer science | I never reported it. | I never reported it. | I did eventually receive my PhD. But I purposely avoided the lab when I could, never wanted to leave the confines of our office, and avoided social events where the perpetrator would be. People kept wondering why I avoided the perpetrator, who was gregarious and knew everyone. When I stopped talking to the perpetrator, people asked me to stop being cruel to him for "no reason". I felt like it made it very hard to make friends, since there was no way to make friends and avoid this guy. I was one of only a few women in the lab, so it served to make an already isolating situation even more isolating. I suspect I came off as a non-confident loner to other people, when in fact, that's not really the person I am/was. | Depression, anger, so much time lost trying to figure out how to solve the problem. | I landed on my feet, in industry. But it colors my entire memory of graduate school. Truthfully, until this moment, I didn't realize that this is almost all I remember of those 5 years I spent there. Just miserable, trying to avoid this one person, every day that I stepped in the lab. I wonder sometimes how graduate school might have gone, had I not dreaded facing this person every day. | Male | ||
1855 | 12/19/2017 7:39:59 | I was at a party at a bar during a conference. We all have had a couple of drinks. I was talking to a senior professor when all of a sudden she said "this is how we do it around here" and she french kissed me. I was surprised, to say the least, and did not exactly know how to react. I turned around and went back to my colleagues. | Postdoc | Professor at my department and collaborator, but not my supervisor | Other R1 | Medicine | none, I did not report it | none | none | none | none | Female | |||
1856 | 12/19/2017 7:55:24 | Disturbing sexual content (underage women) shared via social media | doctoral student | distinguished professor and my dissertation advisor | Other R1 | Big 10 university | education | n/a (not reported) | none | I declined to write articles with my advisor, a "big name" in my subfield. Decreased publishing pushed me into an alt-ac career. | I applied for no faculty jobs after graduation. | Male | |||
1857 | 12/19/2017 9:19:12 | The Provost that supervised me at the time kept inviting me to do personal activities (i.e. go out to dinner "for a meeting" or to a college-related activity) with him. When he indicated that he wanted the relationship to become intimate at one of those "meetings", I realized that I was in a terrible situation. | I was a young, female, acting Dean of Students who reported to this Provost. | My direct supervisor. | Small Liberal Arts College | Student Affairs | I didn't report it. | NONE! However, a faculty member who had a (for lack of better words) crush on this provost gave ME holy hell! (I found out why she was angry with me, about 3 years later, by another faculty member.) | I didn't get the Dean of Students position there and really wanted/needed to leave. | I constantly questioned what I did to mislead him or lead him on. (Now I know better.) | I am cautious about male supervisors, or even colleagues with more power. | Male | |||
1858 | 12/19/2017 9:20:19 | I've had multiple events happen to me in my 15 years in science. Focusing solely on sexual harassment that goes beyond more simple gender-based harassment (one example of many: calling me a secretary when my role was Scientific Writer), I will write about two independent incidences of physical sexual harassment/assault. The first, when I was in my first year as a graduate student, there was a more senior grad student in my program (he was a 3rd year student, if I recall correctly) who made it a habit to grab the asses of women graduate students. I was groped at least 3 times by him, once during class. Another woman graduate student in my program reported him, although I do not know the outcome of this. However, I do know that he went on, within the same organization, to become a postdoc, and is now a research assistant professor there. The second incident occurred when I was a postdoc at another institution. I was attending a Gordon Research Conference, which was held at a boarding school; the conference was very insular, and prettymuch no contact with the outside world for the week. I observed multiple instances of older, established male professors - leaders in the field - speaking and behaving inappropriately with woman trainees and early-career professors, mostly during the evening dinners/recreation. On the last night a dance was held, and I was dancing with a few of the other women. One of these field leaders (one of the organizers for the conference) grabbed me by the wrist, embraced me, and kissed me, all without my consent and with physical resistance (the music was really too loud for anything to be said and heard). | First, grad student; second, postdoc. | Both were more senior than me; the first, a more senior grad student and the second, a well-established professor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Molecular/cell biology; cancer biology | None that I am aware of | None at all. One was promoted several times, the other is still a full professor and organizer of the conference. | I had to brush it off and move on. I did not let it impact my career; however, I have since had a change in career path and wonder if the second incident could have escalated or otherwise impacted my career had I chosen to stay in that field of study and career path. | It has affected my sense of safety in science and academia, and made clear to me that no matter my professional accomplishments and behavior, there will always be colleagues that can make or break my career that see me as nothing more than a walking piece of ass. I feel suspicion towards new male colleagues, because you never know who will turn out to be shady. This suspicion probably negatively affects my career. | Collectively, sexual and gender-based harassment have affected my sense of safety, confidence in others' perception of my abilities - professional and otherwise - and vigilance & awareness moving through this world, and have caused me to be more careful in professional contexts, particularly when I am advising or counseling male trainees (I do career advising & counseling for postdocs now) - I specifically requested an office with a window to the hallway to make me feel safer and deter inappropriate actions on their part because, as the more senior person, I fear that I would be blamed in a professional context if something were to happen. I have had advisees that I felt were crossing a line, and have had to encourage that they receive career counseling elsewhere. | Institutions: The first was a research center/hospital with a PhD program & a med school (not a research university, no undergrads); the second, I was employed at an R1 Big Ten University, but the incident occurred at a conference. | Male | ||
1859 | 12/19/2017 9:28:14 | My direct supervisor's wife was having a garage sale and I dropped off clothes that I didn't want any more. Apparently a bra was in this pile. My direct supervisor sent me an email that he wanted to talk with me about my donation. Not realizing his frame of mind, I went to his office where he proceeded to talk about what he had imagined with this bra. When I spoke of it with colleagues, several of them reported even more flagrant harassment situations with him (chasing them around the conference table, explicit suggestive remarks). | I was PREGNANT and directly supervised by this Director. | My direct supervisor (along with a couple of the other victims). | R2 | Student Affairs | Referred me to appropriate places. Eventually they let his "contract run out" and didn't rehire, instead of trying to fire him. For the remainder of his contract, I reported elsewhere. | After he was let go, I don't know what happened to him, but I fear that it wasn't the first time that this happened with him, and because they didn't "prove" anything, I am afraid that he went on without anyone knowing his past. | Nothing so much, I felt very supported, particularly because so many of my female colleagues had also had been harassed. | The worst was when I told my husband. He was furious and wanted to kick this guy's butt. He was angry that I didn't tell him right away. It was stressful because of the strain it put on my marriage. | I am overly suspicious of males in power and the kinds of comments that they make. I am not easily convinced that they are "innocent" (even a compliment on what i am wearing). | Male | |||
1860 | 12/19/2017 9:31:50 | During graduate school, PhD advisor told me (upon learning I'd gotten married), that there would be "no babies on my watch." Over next four years, I had to hear explicit conversations about who graduate students (male/female) should date and what sexual behavior was acceptable (hook-ups, ok; relationships, no-no). When I got pregnant, same advisor tried to push me from my degree program because I had demonstrated I did not have dedication to the field. | PhD student | PhD advisor | Other R1 | Anthropology | None, although department faculty were very aware of the behavior of the perpetrator and some engaged in creating the toxic environment. | None. | I was almost pushed from a graduate program! I finished, got the degree, but was told advisor would never recommend me for an academic position (and he didn't!). | It was horrific - to be judged on my reproductive anatomy, and feel the behavior of graduate students was somehow under the control of our advisors was disgusting. | It taught me that women were considered non-assets in academia. Our bodies were the property of our institution. I tried to talk to department chair about these and other issues, but was told that although they were very aware of his behavior, he was senior, and so they could do nothing. The chair's only idea was for me to make a public complaint, although he stated that he knew it would probably have a consequence on my career. That seemed to be a price I'd have to pay for their negligence. | Male | |||
1861 | 12/19/2017 9:34:34 | My professor only gave an "A" in our "legal and ethical studies" class to the woman who consented to sleep with him. The rest of us, who turned him down, got B's. There was no way I earned a B in that class (and for the record, was my only "B" in graduate school.) | A young female, graduate student - at a conference in the field, trying to get a job. | Professor of our Legal and Ethical Studies course (yes, I understand the irony). | R2 | Student Affairs | I didn't report it. I had graduated and left by the time the grade was available. | None that I am aware of, though he didn't last very long there (maybe someone else reported something?). | Just extreme disappointment that it could happen in an area where I was so enthusiastic and optimistic about the types of people that work in that field. | I really hoped that it was an isolated incident. I have come to realize otherwise over the years. | Because others turned him down, I put blame on the one person who slept with him. In retrospect, I wish that I had put more responsibility on him. | Male | |||
1862 | 12/19/2017 11:15:17 | I was glad I passed my thesis defense. But that was not the end. I was told to revise the thesis drastically to meet his unrealistically high expectation. After satisfying all committee members' request, I was held hostage working to improve my thesis, and delayed my graduation, my chance to get my work visa on time, and missed a job opportunity. A year later, I published an extension of my thesis work with my then collaborators, without my advisor as a co-author. He didn't like the idea of this extended work when I presented it to him while I was his student. After knowing about this published work, he sent an accusation email to the editor-in-chief of that journal and IEEE's person who oversees academic misconduct, and accused me of plagiarism. The editors dismissed the accusation after their investigation. But this was not the end. He said he will keep investigating. I'm now working in a university. It took me 4 years to overcome the fear and self-doubt. I never asked him for recommendation letters, and never told him where I went. But he still follows me, finding my new email address and sent me emails, asking me to work for him. At one point I told him to stop contacting me. He then used one of my friend (who was also his student) to send me messages. I wasn't his only victim. He got suspended twice by the university due to various reasons. However, he manipulated some of his students. One of them sent us this: "Dear All, As you remember, Dr. X was suspended last year, and I sent a request to you all for your support to Dr. X... After that suspension was due, the university started an investigation, which was completed in August this year. Unfortunately, Dr. X has been suspended again still without any pay or permission given to contact his students since August this year. They accused Dr. X of mistreating, bullying, or harassing students, which is untrue. ...... At this moment, we also still need your support. Would you please update your letter you wrote last year, sign it and then send the scanned copy to me?" I hope my case can give the community some encouragement that not all harassment cases are silent. The investigation was conducted by the university. They did something in hope for a change. I hope more schools and departments can stand up for the students who are vulnerable, and in most cases chose to be silent. | PhD student | Advisor | R2 | Engineering | The harasser was suspended. | Fear and self-doubt for years | Depression, loss of hair and weight | I thought I would never go to academia. But thanks to my mentors after graduation, I slowly regained my self-confidence and got a job at a university. | Male | ||||
1863 | 12/19/2017 11:33:51 | First year of my PhD program. A male student in my cohort stalked and harassed me for months after I tried to politely reject his advances. At one point, when I had begun to fear for my safety, I met with our DGS to discuss his behavior and he knocked on her door during the meeting and loudly made comments that clearly indicated he knew I was inside; it was one of the scariest moments of my life. Fearing that his behavior would just continue escalating, I filed a Title IX complaint, and he was found responsible for harassment. He filed an appeal, which was denied. So then, he SUED ME for defamation. Fortunately, I found a law firm to represent me pro-bono, and they got the lawsuit dismissed. However, I still had to pay the out-of-pocket fees, which cost me about $2-3K of my grad student stipend. This was a few years ago, but he's still in our program, and a few months ago I was contacted by an undergrad (apparently she heard he had sued a woman, googled the case, and found my name) who said he sexually assaulted her after meeting at a school-organized club. I encouraged her to report him. | PhD Student | PhD Student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | I filed a Title IX complaint and after about a year and a half of him doing everything he could to impede or delay the investigation (including filing counter-claims that were clearly fabricated and submitting lengthy manifesto-esque statements), the investigation was found in my favor. He received mandatory counseling, a disciplinary avoidance of context (like an academic restraining order), and a disciplinary warning - but I'm not sure if the warning has any real consequences. | Not much. Because of the avoidance of contact, he | Somehow, the administrators in our department decided that because we're not supposed to be in a room together (that's all Title IX tells them for privacy purposes, but this experience makes me wonder if there should be more transparency), we can take turns taking classes we're interested in. So this year, I had to sit out on a professionalization seminar I wanted to take. | Male | |||||
1864 | 12/19/2017 11:35:36 | An emeritus professor approached me with a research problem, and I offered a solution that appeared to be the solution. The professor wanted to work with me on more projects after that, and I wanted a research mentor and publications, so I agreed. Over the course of knowing this person, he began to offer comments and gifts of a personal and even romantic nature. Given the 40+ year age difference between us, I though I must be imagining things. However, these comments and gestures became explicitly romantic, so I put my foot down to say there would never be a romantic relationship between us. After a cooling down period without contact, we began to discuss research again. However, after a time the conversations began to turn toward romantic interests again, so I stopped communicating with the professor entirely after our 2015 annual meeting. I filter all his emails into a folder, away from my inbox, and don't ever engage with him. Since ceasing to communicate (on my end), this professor has continued to send emails. The most recent email is from Sept 3, 2017. In total, he has sent 182 emails since August 2015, all unanswered. | Graduate student. Maybe second year, approx. 23 years old. | Emeritus Professor in the same professional association, but at another school (thank god!) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Sociology | Never officially reported as harassment (although my department is well aware of the situation) | I have contributed to research for which I will never receive credit, and I avoid discussing my work on that research for fear of having to speak of my "co-author" and the accompanying social norms to praise him for his work (blech!) | Don't trust older male colleagues, I now warn other women that men might use the elusive "path to publication" as a means to get into your life for other reasons | I wasn't exactly thrilled by the idea of becoming an R1 research faculty member, but this experience has further distanced me from that career path. | Male | ||||
1865 | 12/19/2017 11:51:34 | Although this may not be a sexual harassment case, but I would like to share. I was harassed multiple times by my PhD advisor. He always told me my work wasn't good enough, although it was accepted in top-ranked IEEE conferences and he was bragging about it to other professors in the field. I moved with my family to another city with his permission to do an internship and only return to defend my thesis. However, after I moved across the country he changed his mind and said he could do that because I didn't have anything in writing from him! He demanded that I move back and do another term of research even though I had a full-time job offer waiting for me and my thesis was approved for defense by committee members. He delayed my work visa and I was about to lose my full-time job offer. After my defense, although committee members were all satisfied with the changes I made to my thesis, he demanded a lot more work and never agreed to sign the paperwork to let me graduate. Even after graduation, he contacted me many times. | PhD student | PhD advisor | R2 | Engineering/Science | They did investigations and took proper actions. | I almost lost my full-time job offer. One of the reasons I decided to move across the country with my family for an internship was to be away from him in the hopes that he would stop harassing me. My husband had to quit his job to move with me. | I felt very depressed and stressed out. That was all that was on my mind. Couldn't focus on other stuff. Doubted my capabilities in research and work, wanted to quit my PhD and just cut him out of my life. Felt he had a lot of power to do whatever he wanted and I couldn't do anything about it. A lot of sleepless nights from stress. | One of the reasons I decided to move across the country was to be away from him. Never asked for any recommendation letters from him to get a job and never will. Two years passed my graduation, he is still harassing me, sending me messages directly/indirectly and demanding I do things for him. | Male | ||||
1866 | 12/19/2017 12:00:24 | I was 18 when my first-year Philosophy professor starting following me around campus, under the pretence of 'wanting to borrow a book,' or whatever else. When I tried to begin sending more clear signals for him to leave me alone, he accused me of 'having been in a really bad mood lately.' I was 20 when my German professor started sending excessively friendly emails. Employing the standard patriarchal defence, I mentioned having a boyfriend. "Boyfriend?" he wrote back, "Damn." He subsequently apologized. But still. When I was an undergrad, one of my former TAs (a PhD student) starting sending me love letters. Because the class was over and we had become (sort of) friends, I wasn't sure whether this was wrong of him. It did, however, make me very uncomfortable. I wondered whether my success in that class and his praise for my work was all due to this attraction. When I was a graduate student, a TA (yes, this grad course had a TA) began harassing me, bursting out of buildings when he saw me walking by, insisting (over email) that we were attracted to each other, that I had sent him encouraging signals. It made continuing in that class difficult. When I was a new assistant professor, a more senior colleague (who now holds a key administrative position) asked a visiting scholar, somewhat jokingly, whether he was turning her on. Separately, and again, jokingly, he told me that he was wondering whether I had a crush on him. These things were meant to be funny. They weren't. | Undergraduate/graduate student/assistant professor | Professors/TAs/senior colleagues | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | University of Toronto, Queen's | English | None--never reported. | None--never reported. | I am a now tenured professor, but I continue to wonder whether I made it this far because men in positions of power have found me 'nice' and conventionally attractive. I find it difficult to work with male colleagues, with their casual and sometimes overt sexism. I work with several male professors who are known to have crossed the line with students (including one who has been accused of sexual assault). I sit on committees with them. I say hello to them in the hall. I am nice. I am fucking angry. | I am highly anxious about my job and about most encounters with male colleagues. I assume that I am actually not that smart. | I think every day about leaving my tenured position, not only because of sexism. But I want to find ways to empower my own young students in dealing with this shit. | Thank you for doing this. It helps to be able to tell someone. | Male | |
1867 | 12/19/2017 13:42:09 | my graduate advisor had a history of harassing female students and harassed me. Though it was 7 years ago, i do not care to recount the details. Sorry if that is not helpful to your project | 2nd year graduate student | Graduate Research Advisor | R2 | Community Psychology | the chair of the department told me to tell a story, that i liked teaching better than research so i could change advisors and my aggressing advisor could not do anything to harm me academically. I did and I graduated.Later another student filed a complaint with the university and asked me and others to come forward to build a case. He is not allowed to directly supervise students but I dont know how long that will be for, and they did not take his job away though a dozen females he supervised came forward. | He is not allowed to directly supervise students but I dont know how long that will be for, and they did not take his job away though a dozen females he supervised came forward. | I do not communicate with the community psychology field anymore. I do not go to the conference because he is active there. I did not publish my dissertation because i am afraid to continue to work with people from my institution after i came out with my statement. The chair was upset on how it made the department look. Upset at the students for bringing it up. | I was really depressed and had a hard time finishing school during and right after the incident. I have trouble trusting professionals or "higher ups" now | I am no longer very interested in my field. I am not sure how to have a strong voice in my field when I have to avoid my whole grad school experience. I am currently employed below my PhD level. | Male | |||
1868 | 12/19/2017 14:38:52 | Excessive flirting (including overtly sexual conversations) despite multiple requests for appropriate boundaries. Positive reinforcement (increased attention, approval, and occasionally research opportunities) when young female lab members dressed attractively. Sexist jokes during meetings (these were annoying but mostly harmless). Punishment (humiliation; silent treatment) when I tried to raise concerns about the flirting. Gaslighting after that (things like "I never said that;" "you're imagining things;" eventually escalating to teasing and name-calling about me being "paranoid"). | Postdoc | Postdoc advisor | [redacted] | [redacted] | [redacted] | I never reported it and I don't plan to. | The stress and preoccupation probably didn't help my productivity. | Significant. The gaslighting was especially damaging. All my previous advisors had always acted in my best interest (even when it wasn't in theirs), so I implicitly trusted that he would do the same. It was incredibly stressful to be repeatedly told that I was imagining things that I knew to be true. I ended up questioning my grip on reality and eventually I genuinely couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't. It was a terrifying experience. It took several months for my mental health to fully recover. | This might be continued naivete on my part, but I think he genuinely didn't realize how damaging a lot of this was. I'm sharing this here in the hopes that reading these kinds of experiences will increase self-awareness in otherwise well-intentioned mentors who don't fully understand how much these kinds of actions hurt their trainees. | Male | |||
1869 | 12/19/2017 15:56:11 | My doctoral advisor pursued me relentlessly from my first semester of course work through my dissertation. I lived nearly thirty miles from campus but he came to my town to take me out to dinner weekly--not a "date" I could decline without consequences. If I failed to meet him at a restaurant he would come to my house, not a risk I could take. He spoke to me lewdly during office hours. He insisted I visit his house on various pretexts. I ALWAYS kept my young son with me as a shield but once, when I had had radioactive iodine for a thyroid condition, I could not be close to so young a child and my advisor caught me undefended. He groped and "kissed" me. Even my being radioactive didn't discourage him! He bragged to like-minded colleagues that he "had had me" and threatened that people were questioning the quality of my work. He told me more than once about the fate of a woman who had "wrongly" accused him of "making a pass at her" and intimated that mine would be worse. My classmates thought I was an idiot and that I was just getting by by sleeping with this creep. He failed to support my work for publication and undermined my job applications. | Graduate student | As my program chair and my advisor, he had total control of my funding and progress. I was the single mother of a very young child and completely at his mercy professionally and financially. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | None, but I didn't dare to make a complaint after seeing how another woman's complaint was handled. This was not the one before my time with whose fate he threatened me but a third woman who asked for my help and told me that "everyone knew" I was sleeping with him. I said I couldn't risk it. She lost her fellowship and left midyear. | None. | I never even got an interview for a university job beyond adjunct and couldn't publish so much as a chapter from my dissertation. | It was very stressful and I'm sure the stress contributed to depression and anxiety as well to several physical ailments. It also made me doubt my own abilities. | I killed myself working 80-hours a week for years and never published. Now I have a part-time job without benefits managing a nonprofit that serves academics--but I don't envy them. I read the CHE and feel relief that I don't belong to that world anymore. | Male | ||||
1870 | 12/19/2017 17:21:36 | I was part of a hosting team for a graduate student recruiting event; a large group of prospective graduate students, current graduate students, and faculty were at a dinner off campus. A professor seated across from me wrapped his fingers around the beer can in front of him, peered at me with alcohol red eyes, and asked "do you think you could take it? I'm about this size.....". His demeanor, facial expression, and voice intonation clearly signaled that he relished the idea of committing physical harm to me, much as a sadist would. The entire night I felt his eyes following me, and I became very afraid. I made certain to leave with a group of other students, and I never participated in a recruiting weekend again. Occasionally I heard gossip of this man's sexual overtures and bad behaviors towards other students, but this is thirdhand at best. | Graduate Student, PhD program in chemistry | Assistant Professor, part of the chemistry department but not affiliated with me in any other manner. | Other R1 | Penn State University | Chemistry | N/A - I relayed the incident to my advisor, but not in an "official" way. | None - he secured a significant amount of NIH and NSF funding and is now considered a prestigious professor in his field. | Unknown, but most likely negligible. | I was afraid of the perpetrator, and actively avoided him. However, it is noteworthy that I have never forgotten the incident nor the fear it evokes in me even now, twelve years later. | Unknown, but most likely negligible. | Male | ||
1871 | 12/19/2017 17:47:57 | In 1993, I was a graduate student at a national conference presenting my dissertation work. A former undergraduate professor of mine (from pharmacy school), one who I had admired as an undergraduate, approached me after my talk and wanted to discuss my findings. He mentioned the open faculty position open at his new university, and I replied I had applied for the position. Over coffee, and he kept complimenting me, but when I tried to discuss my paper, asking for his advice, and he told me he would 'prefer to discuss it in my hotel room'. I replied I would rather discuss in public. He said he didn't think I would be a good fit at his department. I did not receive further consideration at that university. | A doctoral student | A former professor but one who was actively recruiting new faculty. | Other R1 | Pharmacy/Health Policy | Not reported. | None immediately. But 25 years later he was strongly encouraged to retire early from his endowed position. | It made me not want to collaborate with individuals at that institution due to fears of having to see/interact with him. | The incident made me feel small and unworthy of obtaining an academic career. It also made me rethink whether I wanted an academic position. | The harassment made me sensitive to the problem of harassment (sexual and otherwise) and vigilant about it to my female students. The incident did not change my trajectory so much as made me cognizant of the extent of harassment all around women academicians. | I applied for an endowed faculty position that was the perpetrator's prior position. Although I withdrew my candidacy for personal reasons, one reason for withdrawing was because it felt too creepy to 'inherit' his resources and bear his name on the endowment. | Male | ||
1872 | 12/19/2017 20:05:16 | My husband & I (both faculty) were in Germany, visiting with a relatively famous, now deceased person in our field. He walked us to the bus or tram or whatever it was after dinner, and when we said goodbye I thought he was going to give me a European kiss near the cheek, but no, he twisted his head and stuck his goddam tongue in my mouth. | Don't exactly remember, probably Assistant or Associate Prof. | Professor. Superior in the hierarchy and older. | Linguistics | n/a | n/a | None. Just general revulsion and impotent fury. | More pain, just weighing me down. | I stuck with it. | Male | ||||
1873 | 12/19/2017 20:08:48 | At a conference party where there was a lot of alcohol and drinking, a professor from another institution began acting very friendly towards me. Eventually in front of a many other colleagues he put his arm around me, at first in a friendly way, and eventually slipped it down to my waist and then reached from my waist around towards the area of my crotch, basically grabbing my genital area. All this in front of many colleagues during a lovely discussion; I don't know if anyone noticed but no one said anything. I panicked, had to physically pull him away from me, and have since kept quiet about it except mentioning to some other grad students that this prof was drunk and a bit overly flirtatious with me at the event. | PhD student early in my degree | Young assistant professor at another university, frequent collaborator with my group. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Stanford University | Computer Science | N/A (I didn't report this to anyone) | N/A (I didn't report this to anyone) | Thankfully not much. I have since kept my distance from this professor, especially at events with alcohol, and hope it doesn't happen again. But I probably would not consider applying for a position at his institution. | I was very anxious and upset in the days after this happened, and still feel on my guard when he is around, but overall I have experienced much worse and have managed to compartmentalize this and move on from it. | At the moment not much, though I will continue to avoid working with him and will not apply to work at that institution. | Male | ||
1874 | 12/19/2017 20:42:58 | This one's hard to describe. It's not assault or any single terrible event. It's just the drip-drip-drip of a creepy sexualized environment for years and years and years. For my entire probationary period I had to listen to the main person in my department (upon whom my tenure vote entirely depended) talk dirty. It was "Want to hear a dirty joke?" "No." "So, ..." and then the dirty joke. I'm not a prude. I just didn't want to hear them from him. Here's a typical story: once we had a visiting speaker (female) and at lunch we were talking about a female member of our field and he said, "She has a phallic vita." We said, huh? He said, "Long and strong." Meeting with him: "Do you mind if I close the door? Don't worry, I won't sexually harass you." I also heard it non-stop from our female students. Once he said to one, "This conversation would have been so much more fun in the days before sexual harassment!" Writing this sent me back to my over 25-year-old files on him. I would break this survey if I tried to really give you an idea of what it was like. I wrote *everything* down. This is just a tiny sliver of the never-ending sexual talk from him. Motherfucker. | Assistant Professor | Full Professor | Other R1 | Purdue University | Linguistics | I left after I got tenure for another job. With four graduate students, I filed a complaint. He was reprimanded. | Yeah, he was reprimanded. I heard later that he received a prestigious (and lucrative) named professorship. | How do you explain it? Fury. Rage. Impotence. You make a huge joke of it with your friends, but your workplace is toxic. Everyone knows it, everyone has experienced or witnessed it, but it's just accepted as normal. | I suffer from chronic depression anyway; this did not help. | I was so happy to get a tenure-track job - I did not think I would. This ruined it. Made it unbearable. I was SO happy to leave that toxic swamp. (Of course, the next swamp was toxic, too - that's academia, no?) | Male | ||
1875 | 12/19/2017 20:49:48 | I was up for a partner hire. I met with a male full professor in the department I wanted to be in; he asked me about the progress of the negotiations. I said that right then it looked like I would be split between several departments. He said, "I hope we get a thigh." | Just tenured at another institution; hoping to be hired at new institution. | Full professor. | Other R1 | University of Wisconsin-Madison | Linguistics | n/a | n/a | One more drop in the bucket. | Not positive. | n/a | Male | ||
1876 | 12/19/2017 22:05:39 | I helped organize a business competition at a top school in the midwest. One of my responsibilities was to meet and look after our guest speaker until it was time for her to introduce the competition. She is a well known CEO not just here - she was an early pioneer in social media and sold her company to a large media company for millions. As well as being a CEO and has a lot of money, she uses her new company as a way to talk about her good deeds in supporting women and female entrepreneurs. It sounds like she's supporting good causes, but having met her I see it's a key part of her ego. We were in the lounge that's in the business school away from the main auditorium and class rooms - we were supposed to take a tour of the building, but she said she really needed a drink, so we had a good 45 minutes to kill. She asked for a glass of wine, I was 20 at the time, so didn't really know much about wine. It was 5pm - but all we had was coffee and water. We were talking about her company and the courses I was taking and what I planned to do. She told me she was a big fan of young talent. The conversation became more personal with her asking me how she looked - she looked like my mom who has a corporate job but I didn't think she'd like it if I said that to her. She then asked me if I felt the "boys" in the audience would find her attractive - I said I didn't know. She then asked me if I thought she was sexy. I knew from her bio how old she was and that she had a husband and a lot of kids from a previous marriage and a new one, so I didn't know what to say. She sat down next to me and put her hand on my leg and said what about now. She moved her hand up and grabbed me through my jeans. She laughed and said something mean. She then grabbed my hand and put it on her breast... she said I better be nice to her or she would tell my professor that I had touched her. I could feel myself going bright red and I could feel puke in the back of my throat. Someone made a sound outside the lounge and she jumped up. She told me not to say anything and may be I would be lucky at the end of the evening. She told me if I said anything she would get me kicked out and make it impossible for me to work in the city - my whole family lives here and so I was planning to stay. I had told her this earlier. She gave her speech and everyone loved it except me. I got out of there before the end. | Undergrad | CEO very respected | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Business | I told my professor that she had been inappropriate - he laughed and said I'd be lucky if she liked me as she could help me get a great internship. | None | I didn't do as well for the rest of the year that hurt my grades. | I was very depressed - I see I felt the same way girls feel and I didn't feel I could talk to anyone about this. I didn't think anyone would believe me, even my family. | I saw this CEO at several business events at the 1871 start-up community. If she saw me, she would introduce me as a smart guy and mention my school but then say something about not being good with girls or something similar making me look bad to the other execs and the other entrepreneurs and students at the event. As a result, I left the midwest after graduation to come to California. But, the experience has made me very wary and not very good around female managers and execs, With all of the recent news, I realized that what happened to me was the same. It's given me more confidence. | Thank you for making this forum available. This is the first time I have written about what happened and admitted to myself that it did happen and I'm not to blame. I also recognize that I am one of the few male victims here - I wish I could remind everyone that harassment is about power. It's true that more men are in power than women, but as I found, power creates the opportunity to abuse others - regardless of gender. | Female | ||
1877 | 12/20/2017 8:25:32 | When I was a first-year grad student, I was harassed anonymously by email by a postdoc in my lab group. He would make references to conversations we had earlier in the day so I knew it was him, but used a throwaway account so I had no proof. I was the only female member in my lab group and the youngest student at the time. | First-year graduate student | Postdoc | Elite Institution/Ivy League | MIT | Computer science | I reported the incidents and emails to MIT and my department. I was told it was shockingly common to be harassed by email, because there were a lot of "awkward guys" who didn't know how to socialize at MIT. My advisor responded by encouraging me to avoid the lab and work in the library, and he also took me off the research project I was working on at the time so I would not have to work with my suspected harasser. | He left MIT after his contract ended, but it was not terminated early and he faced no public consequences. | I decided not to pursue my PhD and left academia | For months I was anxious and scared. I did not want to socialize with other grad students and it also affected my relationship with my boyfriend at the time. | Left academia | Male | ||
1878 | 12/20/2017 10:31:27 | Sexual harassment in 2008, when I was invited to the excursion to some Palaces during scientific visit to foreign laboratory | PhD student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Physics | I did not tell them | None | We still stay in scientific contacts, I pretend that nothing has happened | None, only unpleasant feelings | I started to be more careful with my colleagues | Male | |||
1879 | 12/20/2017 10:51:45 | Years ago some of us were happily promiscuous at astronomy's major conference, the American Astronomical Society meeting. We had a FWB arrangement, and an understanding that what happened at the conference stayed at the conference. However, apparently rumors got around, and others wanting in would come sniffing around and make subtle passes at a poster or a booth. Some were welcomed but some weren't. The latter didn't seem like harassment at the time, but now we know better. They should know - it isn't hard to anticipate whether a pass will be wanted or not. If it's not wanted, it's harassment. | graduate student | all career levels | Other Research Agency | American Astronomical Society | Astronomy/Astrophysics/Physics | None; once upon a time, it was not their business what happened between consenting adults in a hotel room. Society knows better now. | The AAS's policies are slut shaming. | Attended more AAS conferences before rumors got around and fewer after they did. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||||
1880 | 12/20/2017 11:15:13 | I briefly dated another more senior professor in the same department. When I tied to break up with her, she told me that she would deny my tenure case unless we got back together. She was chair of the harassment reporting agency. | Assistant Professor | Associate professor | Other R1 | STEM | Moved to a new position elsewhere rather then attempt to go up for tenure | Female | |||||||
1881 | 12/20/2017 11:41:08 | Our supervisor would frequently use borderline sexually offensive language; from the innocuous, like spending too much time discussing why desks have modesty shields to the entirely unprofessional, like describing a professor to another professor who didn't know her by name as the "hot blond" or discussing which actor was his wife's hall pass. The irony being that he was a very vocal proponent of women in engineering to the point where he was surprised when advised that diversity in academia should not outweigh merit. | Graduate Student | Research Supervisor (Assistant professor) | Other R1 | Tufts University | Computer Science | None (not reported) | None | Male | |||||
1882 | 12/20/2017 12:41:23 | At a conference, I went to drinks with another graduate student and a recently tenured faculty member - both cis-male. The (other) graduate student drank too much too quickly and left early, and I stayed with the TT Fac, as we were knee deep in a theory discussion (which is 90% of the reason I went to graduate school in the first place, and yet this was one of the few truly exceptional conversations I had along those lines). Mid-sentence, he leaned in and kissed me (tongue and all). I pushed him off and explained that I am not interested, I am in a relationship, etc. He persisted in trying to kiss me, so I got up to leave. He offered to walk me to my hotel. As I was staying in a less-than-safe neighborhood, I agreed. He asked repeatedly to come in, to spend the night, to have a nightcap, etc. He followed me in and up to my room, pleading. I continued to ask him to leave. When I got to my room, he pushed his way in (he literally used his body to push through the door that I was trying frantically to close). You can guess the rest. This was the third time a man with whom I was engaged in (what I thought was a productive) discussion at a conference shoved his tongue down my throat mid-sentence. This was the second assault. | Graduate Student | TT Fac at another institution in the same field | Other R1 | Geography | I spoke to another faculty from my institution at the conference and asked for help. She urged me to talk to a female faculty on my committee. When we talked about it, she told me that she had to deal with that until she was 50. Also, there are "known perpetrators" that I should avoid. | none | I no longer drink at conferences (unless it is at a party thrown by my department - and then it is only one). I will not go to lunch or coffee with men I don't know - whether from my own campus or another (including at conferences). I actually won't talk to men I don't know in any academic setting. This severely curtailed my ability to build networks as I was in a male-dominated sub-field. I have subsequently shifted to a completely different subfield that tends to attract more women. I have left behind the very areas of study that brought me into the academy in the first place. I find it difficult to muster the same enthusiasm and dedication to this new area of study, but I can't handle being in conference sessions that are attended almost entirely by men. For several conferences or workshops after, I would lock myself in my room and order room service at the end of the day (and I sometimes still do - I travel with meals I can make in the barest of hotel rooms). I run out of the last session, head down, and beeline to my room. On the rare occasion I have been talked into going to a social event, I have panic attacks or simply freeze, unable to hold a conversation. I'm fairly certain I have been flat-out rude to many senior faculty in my field out of absolute fear. Also, when I was on the job market and went out for dinner and drinks during interviews, I could barely hold it together if the group (or in one instance, the only person) was male. Considering the extreme pressure we are under during interviews, this certainly did not help. | I developed a fear of men for a while. I have become hyper aware of anything even resembling intoxication, flirtation, or even just plain old interest in my work (each of the times at conferences, the men had expressed interest in my work, as though what I was saying was actually worth listening to - something that rarely happens while in graduate school). I developed severe anxiety at conferences (particularly). I also hid it from my husband, which certainly did not help our relationship. I finally told him, five years later. And it certainly has not helped my overwhelming sense of imposter syndrome. As a woman of color, I already carried a heavy weight of "She just got that [fill in the blank] because she's a WoC" frequently. And the first few times people (besides my committee) showed a keen interest in my work, things turned ugly. The worst part has been the self-blame. The constant questioning, "What should I have done?" "Did I lead him on?" "When is being friendly crossing a line?" "Was it my fault? Clearly, there is a pattern, so I MUST be doing something wrong." And the guilt. "I was drinking, it's not his fault, don't ruin his career, you should have known better." | When I started my current position, I was "warned" about one of the men in the department by two TT Fac - nothing specific, just generally to give him a wide berth. I avoided him for the first two years, barely able to string a full sentence together in front of him. Since then, he has turned out to be quite a wonderful colleague. I still have no idea what the "warning" was about, and I still put space between us at social events. I also won't argue theory with men anymore. I only just realized this recently in the middle of a conversation in which I said, "Okay, I guess you're right," when the person (male) was clearly wrong. To his credit, he grabbed the book we were arguing about, and he conceded that I was right after a harried search. But it was in that moment that I realized I'd continually bowed to men around me, even when I had an argument worth holding. | Just thinking about adding to this list made me ill. I have had a difficult time, these past few months with the #metoo response. This is the first time I have shared this openly. Even in conversations with faculty following the incident, I didn't tell them everything. I was vague, but also clearly desperate for advice. I have heard from several young women about their sexual assaults by young men (undergraduate students) on my current campus, and I really have no idea what to say to them or how to respond because it brings me back to the first years of graduate school. I feel at a loss to help because I was so useless for myself. I am afraid to give advice because I clearly don't know how to handle aggressive men, or is it myself I don't know how to handle? I actually am afraid that I will give the worst advice possible because I clearly don't have any to give. | Male | ||
1883 | 12/20/2017 13:19:27 | I went to my professor's office during office hours to solve some questions I had before the final exam. It was June in Barcelona, so pretty hot, and I was wearing a regular short sleeve t-shirt and a pair of jeans. My professor, after answering my questions, suggested that if I wanted to be successful in the exam, I should wear lighter clothes ("a skirt and a lighter shirt" for instance). I gave him a "disapproval" look and left. I did not report it, and I did not follow his "advice" on the day of the exam. | Grad student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Universitat Politecnica de Catalynya (UPC), ETSEIB (Escola Tecnica Superior d'Enginyers Industrials de Barcelona) | Chemical Engineering | N/A - I did not report it | N/A - I did not report it | I was frustrated and outraged by the comment. | I think this is an example of "light" harassment that goes unnoticed and almost never reported. It should be reported and students should have a way of stopping this type of behavior | Male | |||
1884 | 12/20/2017 14:07:36 | I was at a very small neuroscience conference in Spain, Gordon-like in size, where everyone does everything together. After dinner, everyone went for drinks to the only bar in town, and a PI that had offered me a postdoctoral position in his lab, invited me to his hotel room well beyond midnight to continue "our very exciting scientific discussion" and tried to kiss me while making this invitation. | PhD Student, female, 27 years old | PI from a potent US University that had just offered me a job, hours prior to the incident | Other R1 | Neuroscience | None | None, even if afterwards I learnt that this harasser's behavior was vox populi | Struggle to find a postdoc because of the uncertainty of his connections. Lack of attendance to some Scientific events with other prominent scientists because I knew he would be there. | Anxiety and frustration. | This is just one of the several times that I have been harassed by my superiors in Science. | Male | |||
1885 | 12/20/2017 14:14:44 | From the time I began my program, a fellow student a couple of years ahead of me began pursuing a friendship with me that got almost immediately flirtatious. He held my hand in public spaces (even after I tried to pull away), made jokes about me trying to kiss him (I wasn't), was very touchy feely with me, and displayed other behaviors that he never would have with a male friend or colleague. I asked if I could speak to him in person because I wanted to ask him to back off and he accused me of making an advance on him. After I chewed him out for the accusation, he apologized and said he would pay more attention to his behavior, but if anything, it got worse. He combined his behavior with compliments and very kind behavior as well, and in hindsight I honestly feel that he manipulated my feelings because I let it go on for so long and even genuinely began to believe he had honest romantic feelings toward me. But when I confronted him about things again later on, he claimed that it was all in my head. I have since found out that he has done the same thing to other women in the department, even after they have told him, in very specific terms, what he can and can't do if he doesn't want his behavior to be construed as flirting or a romantic advance. This was a person I looked to for advice and mentorship because he's ahead of me in the program and very successful. I have no case against him as far as the university is concerned because the behavior was not explicitly "sexual" and because I maintained a friendship with him for so long (that even at one point did evolve into some confused romantic feelings on my part), but it was inappropriate, it was gender-based, I feel manipulated and preyed upon, and it has been significantly detrimental to my mental and emotional well-being. | Graduate student (PhD) | Fellow graduate student (PhD- farther along in the program than me) | Other R1 | I haven't reported. Because we had a friendship for so long I'm terrified that anything I say will just come back on me. | None (see above) | It is sometimes extremely difficult for me to be in spaces, like our offices, that hold memories of things that happened. He is upheld by faculty and other grad students (whom I assuming don't know about his behavior toward some of the women in our department) as a shining star within the department and I feel extremely alone here. I'm trying not to let it derail my career because I'm still very dedicated to my work but it's difficult. | Devastating. I already had depression and my symptoms have worsened- I have suicidal thoughts and urges to self harm again after years of being free from them. I frequently have panic attacks when he comes up in conversation and have had to leave multiple spaces and social events when this happens. I opened a departmental email one day in which there appeared a whole section congratulating him on a fellowship and two teaching awards he had won and I went into a full scale panic attack and could not function for a significant period of time. I feel guilty, stupid, and inferior for believing that his friendship, advice, and kindnesses toward me were sincere and for letting him manipulate me. | I don't attend social events or functions at which I know he will be present. I often avoid people I know he is close to. | As I stated, this person is considered to be a shining example of academic accomplishment by our department. He is currently on the job market, and if only one person from our department gets a job this year, I know it will be him. This makes me absolutely sick. I know I'm not the first woman he's done this to, and I know I won't be the last. I do believe that he targets women in our department for this kind of behavior. I know that departmental politics and competitiveness make this a tricky proposition, but I honestly believe that fellow grad students should have some sort of anonymous say in their colleagues' academic/professional portfolios. The men who do this kind of thing don't just wake up one day and begin doing it, it's a pattern of behavior that they've cultivated over a number of years. The tenured professors who are treating their female students like this started in grad school. If female grad students were given a platform to anonymously alert advisors and DGSs and department chairs to this kind of behavior, and if they were taken seriously, AND if male grad students knew that their treatment of their female colleagues would be considered when it comes to job placement/the future of their careers, I believe we could seriously curb this behavior. | Male | |||
1886 | 12/20/2017 15:46:13 | In my third year of BA, almost immediately after my first supervision with my dissertation supervisor (Lecturer), he text me to ask if I wanted to meet in a hotel. Thinking this was a prank or he meant a hotel coffee shop I dropped by his office to ask what was going on. He told me he had meant casual sex in a hotel-he pointed out how successful women who had said yes had gone on to become, promised me a position on a work experience placement, promised me other perks if I said yes. I said no. That’s when the harassment started. It ranged from him attempting to kiss me during meetings, constant texts, lewd comments, bullying, personal comments, his screen saver blowing x’s (kisses) at me during class, him telling stories of historic occasions when someone said no (I knew the point he was making but the class was confused!), the contacts struggle to get feedback or support for my dissertation without having to be nice to him, be gentle, don’t rock the boat, say no without making him angry. It seems I wasn’t alone. Just as it had reached the point where I was in so deep and struggling a verbal memo was passed around the dept-anyone heard making allegations against this Lecturer would be suspended. This silenced me. I’ve onlybtold two people-my best friend during and my Husband. I got through the year and then started my MA with a different supervisor. The harassment is some form continued and I was so disheartened and frustrated I tried to get through the course quickly and did not engage in post grad life within the dept. The Lecturer and I stayed in touch every now and then-mostly reference requests. When I decided to return to do a PhD he agreed to meet and discuss my options-I though I’m older, wiser, married so it’ll be different. It wasn’t-as soon as he realised I would continue to say no but that I was more confident in myself (plus I have a Husband built like The Rock!) he became really rude and personal. He told me that there was no point in me doing a PhD-I was too stupid, I should retrain (despite successfully working in the field between my MA and wanting to do a PhD), I would wouldn’t finish the PhD as I might have children or my husbands and might leave me. I held it together until I left-then I cried. I’m now about 6 months of submitting my PhD thesis-a wonderful experience with two supportive male supervisors. | Third year BA student | Senior Lecturer and Emmy dissertation supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | A Red Brick Russell Group member | Social science | Those alledging would be suspended | He remains there today | I moved into a different discipline | Male | ||||
1887 | 12/20/2017 16:26:12 | 2004: I was told by a language professor in front of an entire class that I had to make a decision between my child's music lessons (I usually accompanied them) and my 'commitment' to this program (there were some scheduling issues with me having to take my child to these lessons twice/week) | undergrad student | tenured professor | Other R1 | large institution in central europe | slavic language program for non-native speakers | n/a (I never told anyone, there was no point) | none | I felt very demoralised. I think it made me feel discouraged about trying to speak this language well. | Demoralised. | I left the program early. The good part is I ended up in a department I liked much better, mainly run by women. | Male | ||
1888 | 12/20/2017 16:27:52 | In my third year of BA, almost immediately after my first supervision with my dissertation supervisor (Lecturer), he text me to ask if I wanted to meet in a hotel. Thinking this was a prank or he meant a hotel coffee shop I dropped by his office to ask what was going on. He told me he had meant casual sex in a hotel-he pointed out how successful women who had said yes had gone on to become, promised me a position on a work experience placement, promised me other perks if I said yes. I said no. That’s when the harassment started. It ranged from him attempting to kiss me during meetings, constant texts, lewd comments, bullying, personal comments, his screen saver blowing x’s (kisses) at me during class, him telling stories of historic occasions when someone said no (I knew the point he was making but the class was confused!), the contacts struggle to get feedback or support for my dissertation without having to be nice to him, be gentle, don’t rock the boat, say no without making him angry. It seems I wasn’t alone. Just as it had reached the point where I was in so deep and struggling a verbal memo was passed around the dept-anyone heard making allegations against this Lecturer would be suspended. This silenced me. I’ve onlybtold two people-my best friend during and my Husband. I got through the year and then started my MA with a different supervisor. The harassment is some form continued and I was so disheartened and frustrated I tried to get through the course quickly and did not engage in post grad life within the dept. The Lecturer and I stayed in touch every now and then-mostly reference requests. When I decided to return to do a PhD he agreed to meet and discuss my options-I though I’m older, wiser, married so it’ll be different. It wasn’t-as soon as he realised I would continue to say no but that I was more confident in myself (plus I have a Husband built like The Rock!) he became really rude and personal. He told me that there was no point in me doing a PhD-I was too stupid, I should retrain (despite successfully working in the field between my MA and wanting to do a PhD), I would wouldn’t finish the PhD as I might have children or my husbands and might leave me. I held it together until I left-then I cried. I’m now about 6 months of submitting my PhD thesis-a wonderful experience with two supportive male supervisors. | Third year BA student | Senior Lecturer and Emmy dissertation supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | A Red Brick Russell Group member | Social science | Those alledging would be suspended | He remains there today | I moved into a different discipline | Male | ||||
1889 | 12/20/2017 18:43:53 | I was in supervision with a tenured faculty member at my university and was telling her about a child who drew a picture for me. She responded by telling me that the child likely drew that picture for me because sometimes my cleavage shows. She suggested that in the future, I bend over in front the mirror every day before I leave the house to make sure I feel okay about leaving in what I'm wearing. | Graduate student | Tenured faculty | Small Liberal Arts College | Clinical Psychology | The harasser is still in an evaluative position over me, so I have not come forward about it yet. | For the rest of my time working with her, I was sick to my stomach before each meeting and eventually stopped eating on those days altogether. I still feel angry any time I see her. | Female | ||||||
1890 | 12/20/2017 20:10:43 | Offered/promised a promotion by Dean and Research Center head that was, without notice, given to a man because he was "one of us" (an old white man) | Research Assistant Professor | Boss + Dean | Other R1 | University of Notre Dame | None | None | Found a job elsewhere | Major Stress | Male | ||||
1891 | 12/20/2017 20:19:46 | Constant disrespect by being referred to as "love," "dear," and "sweetie" by colleague in front of other colleagues and students; daily inappropriate comments about appearance and dress; constantly given unreasonable deadlines; berated for promoting my work (as defined by my job description) in front of colleagues and important guests; told I didn't fit in with department because of my shoes | Assistant Professor | Faculty administrator | Other R1 | University of Notre Dame | None | None | Considering career opportunities outside of field and academia | Anger, frustration, disappointment, and massive stress and stress-related physical health issues | Disappointed in field and academia; likely won't be tenured without a fight and won't seek position elsewhere | Female | |||
1892 | 12/20/2017 20:57:30 | I overheard two male peers discussing how women who have children could never really ever be dedicated to science. I often wonder by they went out of their way to say "women with children", as opposed to "people with children". My best guess is that men can still have children and be great scientists? How sexist. | Graduate student | Graduate students | Other R1 | Public R1 University | Astronomy | I did tell someone, and I was recommended to just let it go and prove them wrong. And really, that is true. Because nothing would have happened if I did actually report it. It is just a shame though because I bet hiring committees have the same thoughts. | I feel like I should never have children if I want people to think I am dedicated to my career. | Male | |||||
1893 | 12/20/2017 20:58:09 | 1. Fellow undergraduate took a photo of mine from social media, added suggestive comments, printed it and hung it around the building. There was nothing wrong or provacative about the photo but it made me feel so humiliated and dirty as if it was my fault. This guy also routinely asked me about my boyfriend and personal life. 2. Fellow undergraduate who was about 15-20 years older than the rest of us smacked my bottom - hard enough to really hurt - while a bunch of us were standing around talking. I told him this upset me and I had a boyfriend and had no interest in him and he said he was just joking around and to lighten up. 3. First week of grad school and a fellow grad student a year ahead of me who was supposed to be there to 'mentor' incoming grad students asked me about my pubic hair (does the carpet match the curtains?) while my fiance was actually there across the room getting us both a drink. I had to work with this guy almost daily for 5 years. 4. A different fellow grad student was openly looking at pornographic images on a lab computer. I told him to turn it off because it was inappropriate. He and another male student thought this was hilarious and proceeded to turn on porn every time I came in the room for a week or more. This same guy would try to massage my shoulders routinely. He also made suggestive comments when he found out I was pregnant - asking if I didn't understand how babies are made and other brilliant comments like that. 5. Being told repeatedly over several months that 'I'm too pretty to be in physics' by a fellow lecturer who liked to seek me out and stand in the doorway of my office trying to hold long awkward personal conversations that always came around to how good I looked. 6. Dozens of other stories from fellow students and post docs that are much worse than mine. This includes a grad student actually getting raped by a postdoc in her group and dropping out, an undergrad getting physically assaulted in the student lounge by another undergrad with witnesses standing around, and much much more. I've read hundreds of these comments on this spreadsheet now and feel like I should be surprised but I'm not. I just feel 'lucky' that I my experiences aren't as bad as some others. How pathetic is that? | Undergraduate, graduate student, then lecturer. Spanning about 10 years. | Peer or colleague. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Not comfortable saying. | Physics | I never reported any of this. | None. | Luckily none. None of these men held any authority over me. | I'm ok. I had a strong support system and never felt that these occurrences were even abnormal... as sad as that is. | Thank you for starting this much needed conversation. | Male | ||
1894 | 12/20/2017 21:03:45 | another student threatened to rape me in public at a school function. | student | another student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | CCA | Art | poorly handled title ix investigation where i was neglected by the staff. i was also fired from my work study job. | none | none, they can't touch me | the harassment over the course of two years which ended in that rape threat slowly ate away at my soul and when the program was over i started to have psychosomatic symptoms like nausea, insomnia, and hypervigilence. it was physical, not just mental. | my continued work with my institution has been severely impacted since the administration refused to take my claim seriously. i still go here and am trying to do the best i can through positive acts. | i have sadly heard that the same administrators have silenced multiple other people who have come forward against misconduct and harassment. it's frustrating. if it had just been my case that went badly, i would have felt like it was more "my fault," but since meeting other people who feel the same about the process I am starting to wonder what is going on with my school. They keep letting people get away with assault, harassment, and inappropriate relationships between teachers and students also run rampant here. many hold classes in bars, and i've heard of my relationships that would constitute as illegal. it's so frustrating, we pay a LOT to be here and try to take it seriously. | ||
1895 | 12/20/2017 21:06:29 | I was taking a class for my major and this guy who I met in the class would always sit by me. He was friendly and would chat and we would sometimes meet in the library and do homework. After the first month, he stopped sitting by me and stopped wanting to work on homework together. I didn't think anything of it until a year later, when we were both at a party together together, and he said I was beautiful and he really wanted to sleep with me, but I was a very cold person who wasn't interested in him so he thought his chances would be better with another woman in the class. I was really hurt that he only wants to "be friends and do homework together" because he thought it would improve his chances of sleeping with me. Is that all I am? Someone for fellow males in the field to sleep with? Am I only useful because I'm a woman? Do people even care about my science? | Undergraduate | Another undergraduate | Other R1 | University of Massachusetts Amherst | Astronomy | Did not report | Thinking of this incident makes me so angry. | Male | |||||
1896 | 12/20/2017 21:18:55 | An assistant professor hired by my department in 2007 very quickly made a name for himself by hitting on many young women -- graduate students and undergraduates. He made me and several of my classmates very uncomfortable by asking us out repeatedly, even after he was told to back off. He was even more lecherous around undergraduates, eventually "dating" several. | graduate student | Assistant professor | Other R1 | University of Michigan | economics | The department ignored it, even though many senior members of the faculty were very well aware of what was going on. They basically told him attaboy. They even voted to give him tenure, though the university eventually intervened. The story was covered by the Chronicle of Higher Education (April 2, 2015): "The former assistant professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor says he had no idea what he was walking into when two administrators there summoned him to a meeting. An email from the two mentioned only concerns about his "alleged interaction with university students." At the meeting, he says, their casual tone and his own belief that he had done nothing wrong prompted him to candidly discuss having dated an undergraduate after she finished taking a course from him. The 2012 meeting turned out to be "a setup," recalls the former Michigan faculty member, who spoke to The Chronicle on the condition that it not identify him because he and the woman he had dated already have been harassed online. The administrators, he says, soon used statements against him as part of a sexual-misconduct investigation. Months later, officials there declared that he had violated "the spirit of" a university rule barring romantic relationships between instructors and their students. He faced sanctions that included a salary freeze and a three-year postponement of his eligibility for tenure, which he had been on the verge of receiving. Told he could appeal his punishment but not the administration's finding of guilt, he chose to resign." | He resigned from the University of Michigan but received tenure at another R1 | I chose to study a different field rather than have to take a class from (or worse, be advised by) this individual | Male | ||||
1897 | 12/21/2017 6:58:46 | - A married male professor with full tenure in my department is known to sexually harass all his female Ph.D. students, from lewd remarks to groping and inappropriate touching; if you rebuff him he'll make your life hell and use his extensive connections to make sure no university will hire you. - The head of the department is known for inappropriate remarks regarding the bodies and clothes of his female students. His office has a couch and when receiving female students he will insist on sitting on the couch next to you. With male students he sits at his desk. - During an oral presentation a male professor plopped himself next to me and leaned his thigh into mine. When I moved my leg away he moved himself so that we would touch again. | Grad student | Professors | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | None | None | Male | ||||||
1898 | 12/21/2017 7:00:30 | Constant gender based verbal harassment and discrimination Inappropriate and unwanted touching and kissing Inappropriate comments about/to female faculty and students Inappropriate comments about female faculty appearances Negative comments about unmarried, divorced, and childless female faculty Told career would be destroyed if you have children or take medical leave Invited guests make passes at female students and lewd sexual comments to students and faculty Expected to make phone calls and perform administrative tasks as a woman while staff perform these tasks for male faculty Told not to ask for anything in writing or pursue department support, if you want tenure as a woman Female faculty constantly ignored by staff when compared to male faculty, then berated for trying to communicate needs Female - but never male - faculty and guests "lectured to" and commented on by male faculty, undermining credibility Lewd photos and comments about women by male colleagues posted on social media (accounts used for personal and professional content) | Assistant Professor | Faculty + Faculty Administrators | Other R1 | University of Notre Dame | "You'll never get anywhere as a woman with that attitude;" "you need thick skin in this field;" "it was a different time;" "you have it much easier as a woman now than when I went up for tenure;" "stop whining, it could be much worse;" "what do you expect from a Catholic institution" | None/they get promoted | Dead end - have to pursue employment elsewhere but likely can't get recommendations | Huge | TBD | Male | |||
1899 | 12/21/2017 7:06:40 | I went to see a professor because I was failing a difficult class; he looked me up and down and told me that "female students should stop going out and obsessing over appearances and social lives." I had As in every other class. I was considered "trendy" in terms of clothing and makeup, but certainly nothing inappropriate or that would interfere with my studies. | Student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Private religious university in the Midwest | STEM | None | Don't know | I chose a female-dominated sub-discipline | Male | ||||
1900 | 12/21/2017 9:33:33 | I was a first year PhD student. He was a very famous professor in my field. After the dinner at a conference, many of the atendees went to a bar. After a few of us (female young graduate students) had talked with him for a while, he grabbed me to dance, getting physically very close to me. I couldn't bear looking at him, and I felt I couldn't get away either. I endured that dance looking some other way, and ran back to my group of friends as soon as it was over | PhD student | Full professor | Other R1 | Linguistics | I suffered from depression and anxiety throughout my PhD. While it is not possible to blame this incident for this, I believe my feelings of worthlessness got accentuated by it | I suffered from depression and anxiety throughout my PhD. While it is not possible to blame this incident for this, I believe my feelings of worthlessness got accentuated by it | Male | ||||||
1901 | 12/21/2017 9:34:12 | Male faculty member given 100% credit for female faculty project | Assistant Professor | Professor | Other R1 | U of Notre Dame | STEM | None | None | No credit for work | Male | ||||
1902 | 12/21/2017 9:43:28 | My students were mostly non-traditional, adult students who were getting their education through this satellite campus. They told me that one of their professors - another instructor in the building - had asked his students to write diaries. He made one woman read her diary aloud in front of the class. It was about sexual relations with her husband. They hadn't been told in advance that they'd be made to read their diary writing out loud, and she was one of the only people who'd been made to do this. | Instructor | Another instructor | Small Liberal Arts College | English | I wrote a letter to the dean about accountability that included that, and nothing was done. I asked her about it in person, and she said that "students like to complain." She was fired for other reasons, so I forwarded the letter to the next dean. As far as I know, nothing was done. | Nothing | None | Disillusioned and angry, because I felt powerless to protect my students when stuff like this happens. Administration ignored me when I spoke up. | None yet | I just realized recently that none of the adjunct instructors were trained in Title IX. I kind of botched reporting it, but the college isn't training people on how to deal with this stuff either. | Male | ||
1903 | 12/21/2017 9:54:29 | An Associate Vice-President in Facilities & Operations bullied many people over the years both men and women. His patterns of behaviour included intimidation, humiliation, false rumours, undermining and isolation. He withheld information, belittled people, yelled at them in front of their peers and used funding as a way to control people and outcomes. In meetings there were off-colour jokes, some of which were demeaning for women. Some of the Associate Vice-President's staff were also modelling the same behaviour. This pattern of behaviour was well-known to the Vice-President but he did not do anything about it. As the behaviour escalated, people began sharing their experiences with each other. More and more people were identified as being affected. I experienced: heart palpitations, anxiety attacks, fear for my reputation and for loss of my job. I had a hard time focusing on my role and spent a lot of time questioning my confidence and abilities. I avoided being in the alone with the Associate Vice-President at all costs. The situation was heavily reported to Human Resources, the Office of Safe Disclosure and the Vice President but nothing was done. When a particularly bad incident happened to a colleague it became the catalyst for a group of people to bring it forward to the Faculty Association. They pressured the university to take action or risk a broad grievance for failure to take action. | Director/Associate Director/Manager | Executive Director/Associate Vice-President | Other R1 | University of Alberta | Facilities & Operations | The Associate Vice-President's behaviour was reported to Human Resources, the Office of Safe Disclosure, and the Vice-President of Facilities & Operations. Human Resources was unable to get the Vice-President to take action. It seems the Vice President did not have the will or the tools to help him take action. The Office of Safe Disclosure said they would do an investigation if more than one person came forward. When more people came forward they did not take action. The Office of Safe Disclosure is poorly staffed, and seems to have limited tools or support to address bullying. They are well armed to address issues related to the violation of human rights. The outgoing Vice-President was retiring and while he committed to dealing with the Associate Vice-President before he left nothing was ever done. New Vice-President inherited a mess and has been attempting to address the issue. The only way to get action is to press a formal charge against an employee through the Faculty Association. Pressing a formal charge means that the perpetrator will know the name of their accusers. The institution has no clear processes for addressing bullying in the workplace. Hopefully this will change as psychological violence is now part of the provincial legislation. | None. They kept the Associate Vice-President around because he has a lot of institutional knowledge. He was never held accountable for his bullying behaviour. In any other setting he would likely have been fired. | False rumours have created long-lasting negative perceptions that are difficult to shake. I am hypersensitive to bullying in the workplace and super vigilant when it comes to addressing signs of bullying. Have considered retiring early. | Shame, guilt, and generally destabilization. I loss confidence. I questioned what I was doing. I was hyper vigilant and extremely disappointed at the major injustice that was not addressed by my employer. My trust in people is dramatically reduced. | Remains to be seen | Thank you for doing this work. We need our institutions to take this seriously. | Male | |
1904 | 12/21/2017 10:17:40 | Tenure track professor slept with at least two male students in her class. Two students reported it and claimed it was consensual, but wanted someone to know it happened - which indicates to me that they were not ok with it. Also seen male students hug her from behind or put their hand in her back pocket. | I'm an adjunct instructor, but they are students | TT professor | Small Liberal Arts College | None, and I feel responsible. I'm trying to convince the person who talked directly to the students to report it somehow, and/but that person is understandably scared. We have not been trained in Title IX. | None | None yet | I'm afraid and angry for students, and sometimes it's consuming. I feel helpless. | I won't teach in person at the same place she does, which affects experience and job choices. | This is a white woman and African American students, which racializes this in a disturbing way, especially if you know the history of white womanhood and black manhood in the South. Those young guys come to college to be taken seriously for their creativity and intellect, and to be sexualized like that in a class by someone who is supposed to take you seriously intellectually has to be extremely damaging. As it is for young women. | Female | |||
1905 | 12/21/2017 11:03:32 | When another (tenured, senior, male) faculty member didn't like the work I was doing on a committee, he sent an email to the entire faculty at my institution in which he wondered how I had time to do that committee work AND care for my children. He also wrote a separate email to all senior faculty in which he assassinated my character, encouraging those faculty to ensure that I would not be elected to any future committee position. Elected service is a component of tenure review, so he was attempting to undermine my ability to progress at my institution. | Second year, tenure track. | 20+ years at the institution, full professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Art History | After I filed a formal complaint with faculty governance, the faculty governance structure issued a mild rebuke. I then filed a complaint with HR, who investigated and found that he was responsible for creating a hostile work environment for me. There were no consequences. | A mild rebuke. He has gone on to bully others. | While I did earn tenure and promotion, there is no question that this experience has negatively impacted my willingness to engage fully in the life of my institution. When I needed others to stand up for me, there was no one who would do so. While it hasn't impacted my scholarship, it certainly has hurt my status at my current institution. | It is utterly exhausting and demoralizing to move through my life at an institution that has effectively condoned the behavior of someone who has intentionally tried to hurt and humiliate me. | I'm geographically fixed for family reasons, and in a field for which there are few job openings, so I'm not able to leave this job that I loathe. I have, however, managed to reduce my schedule (and my salary) so that I have fewer days per week when I am required to be on campus. | Male | |||
1906 | 12/21/2017 13:48:22 | 1. During a dance composition class the professor instructed my partner to slap my but during a lift. My pelvis was on my partner's shoulder. The whole class laughed. 2. During a job interview I was instructed to not wear high heels to work. How the professor looked at me made me feel uncomfortable. He also didn't pay me on time and I had to demand payment. He said that part of the program was a criminal retraining program. I ended up feeling like a criminal. After working there for a few weeks I found out that he just got hired as a professor at the same university that I was attending. 3. A fellow student commented on my ass as I was walking out of class. Not that it really matters, but I wasn't even wearing something that was tight. 4. I was kissed on my hand while working on a group project outside of the classroom during class time by a person that I was dating. I felt embarrassed, like I had no choice in the interaction. Everything happened so fast and I didn't know what to say or how to say no because it was in public and I didn't want to draw attention to myself. | Student | Two professors and one student | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Western Washington University, The New School | Dance, Global Studies/International Affairs | I didn't know how to talk about it and I didn't say anything. | None | I don't want to be looked at or seen and I feel like hiding and running away and when I run I feel like I am going in a circle. | I feel like I am walking through a fog and everything keeps getting darker. I've lost the confidence of my friends, family, and partner. I feel like I can't talk to people or express how I am feeling. I get told that I need a backbone. | I feel stuck. | Male | ||
1907 | 12/21/2017 14:46:15 | Professor told me in front of the class that "it is ok you are getting your BS degree in geoscience, but after that you need to stay home and bake cookies for the REAL geologist". | Undergraduate student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Notre Dame | Geoscience | None | None | Just another blow in a long list of them | upsetting | I stuck with it but now I wonder if I could have had a better life if I would have just given up and done something else. | Male | ||
1908 | 12/21/2017 14:49:36 | I was the only female in class. Professor announces in class that he will not let "a woman" answer any more questions (I had answered previously) and refuses to even acknowledge that I am even in the class. | Undergraduate Student in class | Professor and Dept. Chair | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Notre Dame | Geoscience | None | Another clear indicator that I was not welcome in this field | I stuck with it and was successful but suffered this type of stuff **all the time**. I now wonder if I should have quit and gone somewhere where I would have been more welcome | Male | ||||
1909 | 12/21/2017 14:55:05 | Professor refused to give me an award that I obviously won (undergraduate research done as a TEAM with another student (male)). The award was given to him and not me, although the previous year it was awarded to both students (both male) when they also performed TEAM research. When I confronted the professor, he said that "I was just going to get married and my fellow (male) student needed the award because he was going to graduate school". I was not getting married, I was not even in a relationship (and my Professor knew that), AND I was going to graduate school - this professor was supposed to be writing me letters for graduate school!! | Undergraduate student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Notre Dame | Geoscience | none | None | I never knew whether or not the letters this person was supposed to write for me for graduate school helped or hindered my admittance into top programs. I ended up going to a middle to low ranking graduate program. | Constant reminder that I was not welcome in science. | Probably greatly affected where I went to graduate school, which has DEFINITELY affected the rest of my career because people have made comments that my graduate program was sub-par, therefore I must be too | Male | ||
1910 | 12/21/2017 14:57:45 | Working in a remote international field site with my Professor and several other students. Professor says in public to me that if anything happened with his wife he would marry me. He acted like I was supposed to fall down on my knees and THANK HIM for this comment!! I was sick to my stomach. | Undergraduate student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Notre Dame | Geoscience | None | None | Constant reminder that I am not safe, nor really welcome in this field. ever. | Sick to my stomach for rest of the field work and continued classes with this person - classes I was required to take in order to graduate, and I had to rely on him to write letters of recommendation so I could get into graduate school | I succeeded despite this, but now I wonder if I should have quit and done something else. | Male | ||
1911 | 12/21/2017 15:38:16 | I was turning in one of the written portions of my Comprehensive Exam for my PH.D. When I came to my professor's office, he got up and shut the door. I thought that was weird, but I thought, perhaps he had something he wanted to tell me?? I was standing at the front of his desk and said "here's my written exam, the oral exam will be on xx date and xx time". This professor stepped to the side of his desk, unzipped his pants, pulled his dick out and said "You can take your oral exam right here. And I guarantee that you'll pass". The coldest sweat of pure fear covered me from head to toe and I was racking my brain to figure out how to get out of this -- and still manage to pass the real exam in the next couple of days!! I quickly decided to act like he was joking, and I said "Ha ha, very funny! See you Monday!" and ran away. I told 2 other (male) professors about the incident. One was my advisor and he said that I was lying. (The professor who did this was a full professor and powerful, my advisor was not yet tenured and I think he felt he perhaps had no choice but to side against me in this-maybe?. I will never know). The second professor was not on my committee. He was shocked, but he believed me. He said that the University had nothing in place to protect me. When this happened, the door was closed, it would be a 'he-said, she-said" and I would lose. Word would get out in the community of scientists if I reported it, and not only would I perhaps not graduate with my Ph.D., but no one would hire me. They would think that I might be the type of person to 'cry rape' when doing fieldwork and no man would want to trust me to work with them. I was more than sick to my stomach, and sick at the thought of this person continuing to do this to others, some of whom might not get out of the situation as I had managed to do. But he was right, I could not report it if I wanted a career in this field - one I had been working on for 10 yrs (BS, MS, and PHD degrees). I had no choice but to not report it. I did pass my comprehensive exam, but my advisor allowed this perpetrator to ask questions first to try and upset me. I did not let him get to me (god knows how, probably because I was so angry). This professor continued to harass me multiple times before I finally graduated and got away. I had to go with him the field, alone - there were no other choices if I wanted to graduate, and while driving 4WD on a really awful road, he play acted like we might get stuck (the road was bad. we really needed to stop and hike in from there). He said 'I'm going to get this stuck and then we'll have to spend the night here and I'm going to sleep with you". I insisted that he stop and we walk in from there. I managed to get through that day and get home without being assaulted, but there were numerous comments like this one that were incredibly upsetting and I was ready to flee or fight the entire time. Another time, on a large field trip with many many other professors and students, this same professor walked by me and said quietly so no one else could hear that he would be coming over to my tent in the night to sleep with me. I laid there awake all night scared to death. I did hear him during the night come out of his tent (we all had tents pretty close together), and I heard him walk over to my tent (I was freaking out, wondering how I survive this, because yelling and waking people up would just result in ME having trouble because I know he would say that I asked him in or some other lie and that no matter what choice I made, I would be the one to suffer). Luckily, he stopped just outside of my tent, and I heard him piss right next to my tent in the night. But then he went back to his tent. It was awful. During the time of all these actions (over a year), this professor was sleeping with an undergraduate that he picked up over the previous summer from the field camp he taught. We, as graduate students, all knew about this. At a conference meeting, the opening night this professor came over to me and told me this long sob story of how his wife was leaving him (she had found out about the affair) and how he had cancer. He didn't say what kind of cancer but he alluded to it having something to do with his genitals. I was supposed to feel sorry for him. When I told my friends (other graduate students) we put two and two together and decided that he probably caught some VD from the student he was sleeping with and didn't bother to tell his doctor and thus he really didn't have cancer but had VD. But!! Several times during these months, he also told me that if I didn't sleep with him, he would make sure that I never got a job (I was just months from graduating with my Ph.D.). To avoid this, whenever I applied for jobs, I did NOT put him down as a reference. At some of my interviews, people would ask why his name wasn't there, since he had been my MS advisor and they expected a letter from him. I was able to get out of the situation because I could tell them that he had cancer, and thus I didn't want to put an additional load on him by having him write me letters. Whew. Saved by his lie. (BTW, the issue of cancer never came up again from him, so we all assume that he actually never did have cancer). I was finally able to get a job and LEAVE. I have had to avoid him for my entire career and I still feel bad that he probably has other victims out there and if things had been different, could I have done something to have prevented some of those? I'll never know. | Graduate student | Professor, previous MS advisor, and on my PHD committee | R2 | New Mexico State University | Geology | None | None | A lifetime of deftly avoiding him, avoiding his supporters, avoiding his field as much as possible, and fear. I did tell another famous professor from another university who worked with him about this happening and this famous professor shunned me - for decades. I survived that shunning by changing the topic of my research and career so that he was less able to hurt me. | Horrible anxiety and fear. | I stayed in my field of science (more or less) and was eventually successful. I wonder now if it was all worth it and I think probably not. I probably should have just ratted him out and did something else with my life and walked away from 10 yrs of college - but I had a lot of student loan debt and I felt I had no choice but try to get through it and get a job and pay back these loans, and this was the field I have always wanted to work in since I was a young child. Now, when I look back at all the suffering, fear, pain, I think it really wasn't worth it. I should have tried to find a field of work where I would have been welcome and valued. | Male | ||
1912 | 12/21/2017 15:43:26 | As an undergraduate student, and one of only a VERY few females, our 'group' of geology majors would study together often in the evenings as well as take classes together during the days. It was not uncommon to be the only woman in a room, or during most classes. Many times, one of my fellow male students would, when the professor stepped out of the room, take his penis out of his pants and push it up against me from behind or on my arm or shoulder (or wherever he could). He would also do this at night. The other men would cheer. It was imperative upon me, if I wanted to be included in the group, to laugh it off and 'just be one of the guys'. I had to laugh off a lot of harassment. | Undergraduate student | Another Undergraduate student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Notre Dame | Geology | None | None | Just another stressor. | Upsetting. | I still was successful in this field, and I didn't leave it, but now I wonder if I should have. | Male | ||
1913 | 12/21/2017 16:16:55 | A group of us graduate students were out at a local bar across from our University on a Friday night. We were there to mostly get free food during happy hour. As usual, there were more male grad students than female in the group, but I was not the only female student. A group of 4 male professors sat at a table next to us and you could see that they were talking about us - pointing, particularly at me, and talking. I had recently won an award, so I wondered if perhaps they were talking about that. (duh, in hindsight, pretty stupid of me to think they cared about my brain or scientific expertise). Finally they came to some kind of agreement and decided which one of them would come talk to us. They shook hands and one of them came over to join us. He made a lot of small talk and was really nice to us, and as graduate students we were all flattered that this professor wanted to hang out with us. Everyone in the group thought this was great when he said he wanted to go with us to the next place. He offered to give us (several of us, not just me) a ride to the next bar to help us be safer and have a designated driver. We already had one or two others doing this too, so we all just went out to the parking lot to jump in the cars of the designated drivers, and go to the next place. When we got out to the cars, it ended up that I was the only person left who needed a ride, so I ended up in his car. (in hindsight I think he planned it this way) Instead of driving me to the next bar where all my friends went, he insisted on stopping off at his house first, and he insisted that I come in with him. I was too trusting, because I didn't know this person very well but, he was a professor, so I should trust him right? He acted like it was fine. So I went inside with him, and stood in the kitchen waiting for him to get whatever it was he needed to pick up. He came in the kitchen, and grabbed my sunglasses off the top of my head, saying something to the effect that I didn't need those while inside. He set them back off to the side in the kitchen and I thought how strange that was, since putting them so far back there is very likely going to result me forgetting them when I leave. So I made a point to remember that they were there. I thought that was so weird because we were only supposed to be there for a minute while he picked something up. He insisted on getting me a glass of water, so I took it and started to drink it. He then went into his bedroom, telling me that it was his bedroom (some door off the living room - I think it was only a 1 bedroom house) also thinking why does he need to tell me that room is his bedroom? I don't care, just get what you need and let's go, my friends are waiting. Then he came back into the kitchen, and he threw me against the wall, hard, and kissed me roughly. He was trying to push me into the bedroom and telling me that I wanted it, that I must want it otherwise I would have never come into his house. I was completely shocked and not ready for any of this, but I fought back, very hard, and turns out I was pretty strong. I also screamed NO at him and I essentially threw him across the small room in my anger. His back and head smashed against the kitchen cabinets. He then tried furiously to keep my sunglasses, which I am 99% certain, was going to be his way of "proving" he 'had' me or whatever bet those 4 professors made when they were at their table staring at us and shook hands on. I had to physically fight him for the sunglasses and rip them out of his hands. I think I was still screaming at him too. I then ran out the door. I had to walk, a very, very, long way, home. crying. There is no doubt in my mind, that had I been less strong or had I not reacted so violently towards him, I would have been raped that night. | Graduate student | Professor | R2 | New Mexico State University | Geology but he was in Geography | None | None - he has won numerous awards and is considered very important in his field | I was clearly reminded that I am not seen as a scientist, but as a woman, and I need to trust no one. | Fear. Shame that I was stupid enough to fall for his crap about coming in his house, that I believed stupidly, that he would treat me with respect. Upset that I knew that I couldn't report it because no one would believe me. Upset that he probably did this to more people than me. | Male | |||
1914 | 12/21/2017 16:31:03 | A scientist at a company I wanted to work for expressed interest in my research at a conference. He told me colleagues from his company were gathering for drinks afterwards and invited me to join. When I got to the restaurant bar, he was markedly drunk and not interested in talking about anything substantive but instead asked personal questions, making me so uncomfortable I couldn't network with his colleagues. I left. | postdoctoral fellow | Potential employer | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Biology | none | I avoided cocktail hours and similar settings for years, thus missing out on networking and career opportunities | It was humiliating to think that I thought he was interested in my science and that I wasted time on him when I could have pursued other networking that would have benefited my career. | none | "What Type of Institution Was It?" - scientific conference. (I was attending an elite institution but I don't think that is relevant) | Male | |||
1915 | 12/21/2017 16:35:31 | I received an anonymous email after giving an invited talk at another university, commenting on my attractiveness and asking at which hotel I was staying. University security was unable to identify sender. | Assoc Professor (equivalent) | unknown, likely junior to me | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Computational biology | Exemplary. They took it seriously and attempted to identify the email sender. | none | I forced myself to treat it as an isolated incident and not let it affect my attitude or choices. | It was extremely frightening to be staying alone in another city and wonder if I was being stalked. | Male | |||
1916 | 12/21/2017 16:40:44 | A man I didn't recognize walked by me at the coffee/kitchen area near my office within my building and said "are you the waitress?" | Associate professor | Older, though not empowered over me | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Broad Institute | Computational biology | not reported | none | Annoying, but thankfully a rare occurrence | Male | ||||
1917 | 12/21/2017 16:46:13 | Speaker at a conference recurringly made reference to "sexy genes" (for genes differentially expressed between the sexes) and that referred to his statistical method as not choosing neighbors of data points but "neighbor's wife". It was really awkward to use sex and adultery as explanatory tools, especially since women already felt out of place - men made up more than 80% of the audience. I emailed him later to address the situation and he seemed to be listening to some degree but in the end was unsympathetic to the claim that his approach was causing harm. | Assistant Professor | equal | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Ascona conference | Computational biology | none | none | I couldn't focus on the talk, feeling already conspicuous at the conference (being female), and having myself been the victim of adultery. It was unsettling and upsetting. | Male | ||||
1918 | 12/21/2017 16:48:44 | "Your science isn't very good, but at least you're pleasant to look at", comment told to me at a conference | undergrad | professor | Other Research Agency | American Astronomical Society meeting | Astronomy | Not my place to report but maybe I should have but I was an undergrad and who would have listened to me also I do not think there was a place to tell about such thing at AAS | He would have laughed and said it was a joke | I often wonder if my science really is not that good | Male | ||||
1919 | 12/21/2017 16:56:41 | I'd been invited to the university to give a distinguished, named lecture. When I was introduced, the host said something to the effect that there were TWO female speakers invited this month in honor of Valentine's Day. I kind of blanked out and might've missed what else he said, but it was super awkward to imply that women scientists are only invited in connection with a romantic event. | Tenured professor | Senior, though holding no power over me | Other R1 | University of Utah | Cell biology | not reported | none | It was pretty aggravating to turn what should have been a great honor to speak at the series into feeling tokenized and as if women don't naturally belong except as part of a romantic theme. | Male | ||||
1920 | 12/22/2017 7:54:49 | April 2017, in a one-on-one meeting with one of my two senior faculty mentors. He leaned over and slipped his hand up my skirt and pushed his tongue in my mouth. | Assistant Professor, on the tenure track | Mentor, Chair of another dept with secondary appointment to my dept (and so voting rights on my tenure. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Neuroscience | Didn't report after negative consequences (to me) following a report (2 years ago) of power-based (non-sexual) harassment by a senior male in my dept. That male got counseling and then a corner office, has engaged in retaliatory action since with no consequences. Mentor who assaulted me knew of this prior case and had explicitly said in a prior meeting that I "can't afford to burn bridges with any more senior faculty" | None (not reported) | No longer meet with my mentor, not assigned another. Avoid situations where we are likely to meet. Have left two symposia early after he put his hands on my body in a possessive manner in public. Since I rebuffed his advance he says he no longer feels he can write strong LORs for funding opportunities. On the job market. | Anxious at work, avoiding gatherings, so I am socially isolated. Depressed. | Cannot stay where I am. Two experiences of harassment in as many years. If I cannot find a new position this cycle, will leave academia. | Male | |||
1921 | 12/22/2017 10:30:03 | Jazz band director (male) took up nearly half of a rehearsal describing a famous, female guitar player with detailed descriptions of how beautiful and attractive she is. Director then encouraged the "gentlemen" in the jazz band to look her up online after rehearsal for her looks... and partly her guitar playing. All the female members of the band were uncomfortable and discussed this after rehearsal while the male members were excited and did as instructed post-rehearsal, publicly and loudly. Director followed up in another rehearsal asking if the male students had looked at her as instructed. This all made for an uncomfortable and less productive rehearsal environment. | Undergraduate | Adjunct faculty and director of the ensemble | Small Liberal Arts College | Westminster College, PA | Music | None | None | Further discomfort in rehearsals and around him in general. Quit jazz band in part because of these types of comments. | lower self-esteem | not sure | Director later left to focus more on his other jobs and overall career. I post this story to add to the growing sexual harassment narrative as well as its scope and depth. | Male | |
1922 | 12/22/2017 11:14:54 | At conference as newly minted assistant professor, I was seated at a round table for dinner with about 8 other academics. I felt extreme thrill to be fortunate enough to be seated sit next to the most famous person at the whole conference. He just happens to also be a world reknowned expert on the study of social power. Part way through our dinner he reaches under the table, and starts running his hand slowly up and down my thigh. I excused myself and left before dessert was served. | New assistant professor. | Tenured, chaired, very famous in our field | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Was a conference in my field on organizational studies | Organizational behavior | Did not report | Nothing | Avoidance of this person and spending 20 years wondering if I should tell someone | Just creeped out at the injustice of it all. And irony, given what he studies | Definitely made me more jaded and lose respect for this man and his work | Even to this day, as I'm now well known in my field myself and my career is protected, I wonder if I should speak out and name this man. I wonder how many others have been subjected to his abuse over his long career. | Male | |
1923 | 12/22/2017 21:21:05 | A faculty advisor's collaborator from another institution publicly hit on multiple female students at conferences, insinuating that they would receive professional benefits should they engage with him. | graduate student | professor | Other R1 | The University at Buffalo | Psychology | n/a | rumors. Nothing more. | Unable to attend professional outings where individual is present in fear that his advances will lead to a confrontation that will harm my career. | I do not feel safe at social outings with professors, specifically at professional meetings out of town. | n/a | Male | ||
1924 | 12/23/2017 8:12:31 | Over the course of several years, a female archaeology faculty (then tenure track assistant professor) serially harassed young female LGBTQ identified students (grad and undergrad) in the field, during the academic year, and at professional meetings. This was done in a way in which relationships of “trust”and “mutual dependence” were formed usually in the field and then amplified afterwards. I ended the working relationship on purely ethical grounds out of concerns for student safety. | Late-stage PhD candidate, new Assistant Professor | TT Assitant Professor/Colleague | Other R1 | Indiana University | Anthropology/Archaeology | None/Not Reported | None | I have become extremely careful about the kinds of field, lab, and office situations I let students work in. Their safety and security must be my top priority. This doesn’t effect me in a particular way, but I feel it does challenge me to raise my own ethical standards and actions. I have a zero-tolerance policy for any form of harassment. | None per say, but a lot of lost sleep and many difficult conversations. | I have stayed the course of my career, but like I said, I work pretty hard to promote a safe and equitable place for career development. Frankly, at the time and much to my own deep embarrassment, I had no AA/EEO training and simply didn’t know what to do. That is not the case any more, and I take these situations all very seriously. | Female | ||
1925 | 12/23/2017 8:17:09 | Refused to invite speaker because of sexual orientation | faculty | full professor | Other R1 | private religious institution | none | none | N/A, but hurt the speaker's CV | N/A | N/A | Male | |||
1926 | 12/23/2017 13:51:17 | I was at a conference in a foreign country and a senior faculty dude I'd just met that night offered to walk me back to my hostel. After getting lost (I genuinely had no idea where the hostel was) he offered to let me crash at his apartment. I assumed that since he was married with a kid, he wouldn't be creepy about this. Wrong! He almost immediately pressured me into bed. When I refused to have sex (citing, among other things his marriage) he proceeded to physically assault me. I eventually locked myself in the bathroom until dawn and finally left. I walked around for hours, shaking. | post doc | senior faculty | Other R1 | Northeastern | Communication | Honestly it never even occurred to me to report what happened. I wouldn't have known how to approach police in a foreign country. Within the discipline, I was on the job market that year, and felt there was no way that I could risk being labeled a trouble maker. I was sure that I wouldn't be believed. And I was sure there wouldn't be punishment for him, only consequences for me and my career. | Male | ||||||
1927 | 12/24/2017 10:44:46 | Professor/Boss talked about the size of his penis | Temporary staff position | Boss | Other R1 | Univ. of Minnesota | Writing, editing | I did not report otherwise I would have been blackballed and never hired into another position (not a fact but a strong probability - didn't want to chance it) | Male | ||||||
1928 | 12/24/2017 10:51:21 | Two female grad students were harassed and/or assaulted by their male advisor. One changed advisors and one left the department to another grad program. This came to my attention and I raised my concern of the advisor being assigned a young, female, international student. I was told to keep my mouth shut that the other faculty will "take care of any issues" and that "institutional memory" will prevent it from happening again. | Graduate program coordinator | Faculty | Other R1 | University of Minnesota | Spanish/Portuguese Language, Literature | None | None. He is now Chair of the department | Left position | Male | ||||
1929 | 12/24/2017 15:06:55 | A senior professor in my research area frequently commented on my body, dress, fitness level, etc. He would corner me at department social events, making me feel humiliated and trapped. He would also "mistakenly" touch me inappropriately (graze my breast when reaching out to touch my shoulder, sneak up behind me in the kitchenette and reach for the fridge, placing his hand over mine, which was already on the door, etc.) | PhD student | Full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Stanford | Computer Science | There was an investigation after he behaved similarly towards another female PhD student. We were interviewed by a lawyer from outside the university. Ultimately we were told by the dean of the school of engineering that a letter had gone into his file, but no other action was taken. | None to my knowledge. He now directs an industry lab. | It took me much longer to graduate than I think it otherwise would have. Not only was it a huge distraction from my work, but going through the reporting process took up a lot of time. I feared that my advisor and colleagues saw me as a victim, or worse, a complainer. | I felt like I didn't belong. I was embarrassed. I was frustrated that I couldn't navigate work-related social gatherings without enlisting male peers as bodyguards. | I left research/R1-level academia to teach. | Male | ||
1930 | 12/27/2017 12:05:18 | There are too many to count; and to be honest, I feel like I have lost track of some. Yet, when it happens 'again' it feels so familiar - the shame (e.g, this is my fault), the embarrassment, the anger, the questioning (i.e., does this count as sexual harassment? am I making this a bigger deal than it needs to be?). Here is last weeks: I was on the phone with a male-contact who has decision making authority/power over access to data at my institution. He has long known of my interest and participation in sports to de-stress from academic pressures and thus, often talks about his own participation in sports. He brought up - again - co-ed sports and the challenges of finding a space for women to participate in what might be considered 'male-typical' sports (case in point here, hockey). He shared that: (a.) recently he played a game, (b.) women were in attendance to play too ('real shocker there'), (c.) that they (i.e., male and female players) HAD to share a dressing room, and (d.) he couldn't for the 'life of him' figure out where to 'put his towel.' I wanted to vomit. As usual, I laughed it off and said I felt sorry for the women that had to put up with them. He then said "you are always such a good sport, such a great sense of humor" Once again, I felt an onslaught of shame, embarrassment, and anger...even writing this, I get anxiety about it. | Trainee | Adjunct Professor | Other Type of School | McMaster University | With this interaction and a slew of others, I experience consistent and intense anxiety when working with men or when having to interact with men in a work capacity because I just have no way of knowing whether or not its going to be a safe/comfortable experience and for how long. | Male | |||||||
1931 | 12/27/2017 13:34:20 | He was married to a woman living in another country at the time. Some physical intimacy, lots of cybersex. It was consensual at first, but then when I wanted to break it off he wouldn't let it go. Used a lot of manipulation to keep me involved and close. I should have known better to see through it, but I'd never been in a relationship before. | undergraduate | lecturer in my major department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale (although he's at a Russell Group university in the UK now) | Ancient languages | Never reported it | None | Luckily, none, but he applied for a job at the university and in the department where I went for my graduate degree, so it could have turned out really differently if he had gotten it. | Not really sure how to quantify it, but it ate me up and consumed a lot of time and energy trying to hide the relationship, trying to work around his manipulation, etc. Still have a hard time with relationships. | I know he's done this to at least three other students (two grad, one undergrad, all at British universities and all after me). One of the grads left the field and the academy, although I don't know if it's because of this or not. | Male | ||
1932 | 12/27/2017 14:57:58 | Drunk faculty member at recruitment dinner for incoming grad students (hosted by another faculty at their home), lifted his shirt up and rubbed his belly while telling all those around (mostly other grad students and incoming candidates) about how he'd seen my number on the bathroom walls for a good time. | 2nd year grad student | Junior faculty | Other R1 | UC Santa Barbara | Molecular Biology | Did not report | n/a | minor | negligible | none | In this case I felt more embarrassed for the faculty member than for myself. I wish, however, I'd had the wherewithal in the moment to call him out for being an asshole. Or that any of the other people there had had my back and said something. Moving forward I have always tried to call out inappropriate behavior (directed at myself or others) in the moment when it happens. | Male | |
1933 | 12/27/2017 16:16:17 | backyard, my apartment, professor's car | graduate student | Two PhD candidates, one professor who was the Director of Graduate Studies | Other R1 | Northern Illinois University | English | I didn't try to report it until just now. I was told I was reporting way too late | None | I was terrified for a while | Added to my trust issues | Male | |||
1934 | 12/28/2017 16:59:33 | My MA supervisor insisted that we review and discuss my MRP at his apartment. At first I didn’t mind, but then he started calling me everyday to ask if I could come over so we could do some more edits. Sometimes he would order dinner and insist I stay and eat with him. After I defended and graduated my MA program, I decided to apply for a PhD program at another university which upset him. When applying for funding for this program, he refused to provide me with a reference letter unless I came over and we worked on my application together. 2 years later and from time to time he still calls or emails me. | Student (MA and now PhD) | My MA supervisor | Other Type of School | Sociology | Lowered self-esteem... I feel like an idiot for not reading the signs earlier. I’m also ashamed that I’m too scared to come forward, and as a result, he may do this to another student. | Male | |||||||
1935 | 12/28/2017 17:56:56 | I took a white male former teacher education professor out for tea to thank him for this letter of recommendation to a PhD program. Within 20 minutes of our conversation, he said, "I want to make love to you right now." | A recently admitted PhD student | former professor | R2 | Education | Nausea and depression | Male | |||||||
1936 | 12/28/2017 18:00:47 | I was accused of not being nurturing enough to students | assistant professor | peers wring my third year review. | Other R1 | sociology | It made me feel very angry and unjustly treated. | I was sure I would not get tenure following this but I did. | I have more and will fill out separately. | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | |||||
1937 | 12/28/2017 18:06:39 | During my time as a postdoctoral fellow, my senior colleague/mentor asked to have a relationship with me. I declined the offer. This made working with him uncomfortable, but because I was trying to apply for the tenure track position associated with the fellowship, I never told anyone. Meanwhile, his colleagues, particularly a white female senior scholar, would interrogate me about my relationship to him. She asked extremely uncomfortable and investigative questions including, "How well do you know him? How did you meet him?" None of the questions were about my well-being. Once I left the institution, I was told my a former student that there were rumors circulating around the department that I had been sleeping with this colleague. It should probably be known that I was up for a position at this university and after an intense battle, did not get it. | Postdoctoral Fellow | Senior Scholar | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Education | After several incidents of harassment in the academy, I have taken an indefinite hiatus. | Severe anxieties, sadness and depression | See answer for career | Male | |||||
1938 | 12/28/2017 18:29:39 | This happened during a job talk. I was brought out to the campus to give a talk for a tenure-track position. During the ride from the airport to my hotel room, the chair of the search committee, a white man, decided to tell me, a Vietnamese woman, that his neighborhood was diversifying. By diversification, he meant that that there was a new Vietnamese massage salon/spa that opened up next to his building. During the candidate's dinner, he brought the topic of massages back up to me and in front of other colleagues. Unrelated to any other conversation we were having at dinner, he said that he had received a Thai massage once and by two Thai women. These two women, he said, were "small but so strong." One apparently massaged the top half of his body. The other massaged the second half of his body. I looked around for an intervention, but none took place. Instead, he preceded to ask if this was my experience with massages. I lamely said, no. I only get massages at Burke Williams (which I've never done before in my life). | Job Candidate for a Tenure-Track Position | Chair of Search Committee | Other Type of School | CSU Dominguez Hills | Never Reported It | Seems to be doing well | I have not actively gone back on the job market since then. | Depression, doubt, and fear. I feel disgusted when I think about applying for a position. I wasn't able to say anything to anyone when this happened because I was so afraid that there would be some undoable backlash in my field writ large - I'd be blacklisted with or without a tenure track or while on the market. I was and am still afraid that if I ever go back to academia, someone will write a negative review for my tenure file (as someone who is a trouble maker or too sensitive, etc). This made me heavily, heavily rethink my career because the sheer amount of deference I have had to perform has been humiliating. The act of harassment itself is painful, but it is the deference and the lack of support in academia that puts salt on the wound. I'm actually embarrassed and saddened that I didn't call this man out or say anything because I prioritized my career. But it is even more hurtful and upsetting that racialized patriarchy is the foundation of academia thus the story is probably more commonplace than not, he seems to be doing pretty well in academia and I am still upset trying to recover years later. | I have recommitted myself to doing work on issues of gender-based violence. I have avoided academia indefinitely. I try to do work in places and with people that are more "feminist friendly" or at least have some perspective around issues of racial and gender violence - or at least know not to talk about massages by small, but strong Asian women. | Male | |||
1939 | 12/28/2017 19:58:22 | husband of support staff | assistant professor | lomg time employee's husband | Other R1 | sociology | NA | NA | just one more unwelcome grouping | made me feel dirty and made me leave early | take it as a given that will happen no matter what | all these have helped me to decolonize my mind of patriarchy. | Male | ||
1940 | 12/28/2017 20:24:41 | A white male senior prof began pushing me for sex, touching me. After I refused him he went on a smear campaign to push other senior profs to vote against my promotion. He also went on to take a senior appointment within our discipline's association even after being removed from two jobs for sexual harassment and his case had gone public. When I complained to the association executive I was told they appointed him regardless 'because we didn't have any other good candidates' and 'he denied it.' He still shows up at annual meetings. Turned out later there was twenty years of recorded harassment and the dean told him to re-review the sex harassment videotape the last time he was found harassing (students) before me. Undergrads were also being pressured it turned out later when the local newspaper published the case records. | Assistant prof | Full Prof | Other R1 | A social science | Told me couldn't discuss the case with anyone, helped him to retire, and didn't tell the next institution he went to about the problem. The next place took him out of the classroom when he did it there. Then they fired him when it came out in the news he had a long prior history. | Asked to retire, went to another position and much later asked to resign when did it again. Still professionally active, as a leader in academic societies. | Smeared my reputation...he told people I was extremely unpopular with students, hard to get on with, my work was pedestrian etc. His male grad students wrote in a commentary I was declaring him a harasser to advance my own career. Couldn't then deny any of it as the university lawyers told me I was gagged by his retirement agreement. I now realize that the university can't really do that, but didn't know that at the time. | Depressing and distressing, obviously. | I left for a new university. Was a good outcome for me as it is a better job. | Male | |||
1941 | 12/28/2017 22:17:33 | chair of department told me not to mention having a young child. | newly hired as assistant professor | my superior | Other R1 | sociology | NA | NA | Made me feel unwelcome | devalued my most significant life event- | did not deter me | Male | |||
1942 | 12/28/2017 22:25:20 | several semesters of offensive student evaluations | Assistant and Associate professor | students | Other R1 | Sociology and human services | minimal acknowledgement of reality of evaluations for faculty of color or females | none | made me stop teaching courses related to race/ leave human services as joint appointment. | tremendous stress | has often made me want to stop teaching. | Female | |||
1943 | 12/29/2017 4:11:21 | I was harassed as postdoc by a faculty member from the department where I earned my PhD. Without going into details, this included suggestive emails, requests to 'meet up' and, upon meeting up, (with me naively hoping that it was a purely professional dinner), unwanted physical contact afterward. I rejected the physical advances while still trying to seem friendly and avoid professional backlash, and then continued to get suggestive emails and requests to continue meeting up. | Postdoc | A very senior faculty member, considered a leader in my field | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Evolutionary Biology | I reported these incidents when another colleague told me of something similar that happened to another woman with the same offender. The colleague did not know my story when he told me and it was the first he had heard of this behavior from this person. (I of course had heard since I was a graduate student that he was a predator). My colleague was shocked but I suddenly realized that the offender's pattern of behavior was essentially a lifestyle and that someone (me) had to report it. However, because there was no evidence (beyond the emails) and especially because none of the incidents took place while I was still at the institution where the offender worked (same for the other victim), no action was taken beyond a minor verbal reprimand. | None that I know of. | The incident has lead me to allocate much more of my time to all issues surrounding sexual harassment including service to multiple scientific societies, advocating for sexual harassment training and policies, receiving training myself, mentoring of others on these issues, etc. This is on top of 'normal' academic service (editorial work, dept and university committees, outreach), so it certainly reduces my research output, but I have to at least try to turn the tide. | It was traumatic (particularly the reporting and associated process) and stressful. I don't think about it day-to-day, but when I talk about these issues with my mentees or others, I do get upset as all the emotions (frustration, shame, confusion, disillusionment, fear) come back immediately. | I have stayed in science, but it, more than anything else, made me realize that you can't just 'do the science'. I have to work on the culture and the climate too, especially if I am mentoring others and supporting them in advancing their careers. | This experience made me realize how hard it is for any harasser to experience any consequences if they are strategic about their harassment -- if they do it off-campus, to people who are no longer their subordinates, with no witnesses, etc. Add this to the fear that any victim will have of professional repercussions of reporting and the harasser is likely never to be reported or fired for offenses. Anyway, this is why I put more than one institution -- sure, the offender made inappropriate comments to me while I was still a PhD student in the department, but the major onslaught of harassment was not until I was at a different institution. I think those early comments where just testing the waters and laying the groundwork for the full hit after graduation. I guess I'll also add that this is one of my experiences with one senior faculty member. Other incidents have occurred (physical and verbal) but none felt as outright predatory as this one. | Male | ||
1944 | 12/29/2017 12:46:19 | Grabbed my crotch and fondled me from behind while she went into detail about her sexual history. She later sent me an email apologizing. In summary, that she assaulted me because I reminded her of an ex-husband. That was followed by another email telling me to keep this between us using her race as a leverage against me. The second email in short was telling me that since she was a black woman, it was much harder for her to come into her position. And since I was a white male, I would not face as many challenges as she had. She still works there as of December 2017. | Grad Student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Prefer not to answer | Prefer not to answer | None | Her only consequence was | Female | |||||
1945 | 12/29/2017 13:53:50 | My graduate advisor constantly wanted to discuss sexual and personal topics, telling me throughout my PhD that he couldn't wait until I graduated. I sometimes played along, trying to steer the conversation toward more neutral territory, and sometimes closed the conversation down outright. Then he booked a hotel for my graduation night and when I reiterated my lack of interest, got angry, frustrated, and then groped me. | graduate student | professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Biology | I didn't report it | It was very upsetting at the time and it took me several weeks to shake it off and be able to focus on my work again. I definitely questioned whether he truly thought I was a great scientist and this really shook my self-confidence. In future training, I was uncertain about how close to be with a mentor and avoided potential mentorship relationships, trying to "play it safe". It was very uncomfortable when I had to ask him for letters of recommendation and I always wonder whether the letters are fair or reflect his feelings about what happened. | Very stressful and anxiety-provoking at the time. | None overall. It did lead me to question my plans, but ultimately, I kept on course. | Male | ||||
1946 | 12/29/2017 14:50:47 | In 2016 I was working alone at the circulation desk when an older professor approached and asked me if I was new there since he hadn't seen me there and made comments about my "innocence" and about my appearance - he referenced some scene of the book he had just turned in. Kept asking me questions, purposefully to confuse me, and laughed more when I became visibly upset. (I was able to record his name and found that he was a professor in the English department, but I have since forgotten it.) | Undergraduate | A senior professor in the English department | Other R1 | University of Oklahoma | I felt a deep sense of embarrassment and guilt about the whole situation though it seemed relatively minor. | Male | |||||||
1947 | 12/29/2017 18:28:10 | Repeatedly groped and threatened my scholarship revoked if I said anything as an undergrad. Know I was among at least 6, so probably more. Later, different degree and institution and field later, groped by a student while a first year faculty member | First year undergrad/first year faculty member | Advisor/advisee | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Small liberal arts/regional teaching | Music/Other field MS level | Afraid to report. | Permanent nerve damage in my hand from undergrad abuse | fear of being alone with student or faculty without open door and people close by, nightmares, flashbacks, thinking I was crazy | Ultimately, leaving both fields. I love what I do now, but I wish that I hadn't felt forced to leave and fearful of consequences if I stayed whether I spoke up or not. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||
1948 | 12/30/2017 14:17:32 | Senior scholar in the field complimented my work and invited me for a drink to "thank me" for a positive review I wrote about his book. He groped and continuously tried to kiss me in the bar. He later wrote me an email giving me "professional advice" that I didn't ask enough questions about his work during our "meeting". A year later he apologized and still apologized nearly every time I see him (about once a year at major conferences) | Doctoral candidate | Senior scholar not at my institution | Other R1 | Did not report | None | None | Distracting but not overly distressing | Male | |||||
1949 | 12/30/2017 20:21:20 | at first, my (fairly old, married, with grown-up kids) PI was asking me way too many personal questions and making weird compliments. I was not flirting and was always changing the topic. At certain point he has said that there are ladies among grad students who even discuss their sexual life with him. Sometime later, he has invited me to see The Hangover in the cinema via his personal "non-university" email account. I politely asked if he is inviting other members of our research group and when his response was "No". I replied that I have other plans. I managed to defend under his supervision, he was not the worst PI, but I was never comfortable nearby him and constantly afraid of his actions and/or words. as an international student, with no family or friends nearby, that was very stressful for me. maybe it is not "the harassment", but definitely the misconduct. | phd student | PI | Other Research Agency | engineering | Male | ||||||||
1950 | 12/31/2017 10:51:57 | Over a period of five years (2009-2014), a tenured male faculty member at the university's interdisciplinary honors college sexually harassed at least three junior and contingent faculty women in his field. During this period, X was the sole senior faculty member in his discipline and he repeatedly abused this role. His harassment of others has been witnessed and tolerated by other male tenured faculty. Incidents which I experienced and/or documented to support other complaints reported to the University’s Office of Equity, Inclusion and Compliance Office include the following: X asked a junior faculty woman waiting for a colleague outside her office door if she was wearing a bra because he could not see any visible bra straps. He then asked if it was a strapless bra. When the questions were ignored, he asked if it was a corset. He stated that he wanted to buy a corset for his wife for Valentine’s Day and wanted to know where she bought her underwear. X regularly interrupted work-related discussion to insert stories about sex acts / behavior with no warning (i.e. in response to ordinary pleasantries, would say that he had loud sex with his wife to make his live-in father-in-law uncomfortable / in response to a typical “how is class prep going?” made repeated references to storing and watching pornography on his work computer, blaming the pornography for the poor performance of his computer and expressing anxiety about what the IT staff would find when they examined his computer). At a dinner with a job candidate, X asked a junior faculty member to dance on the table to entertain them while they waited for food to arrive. X asked a newly hired faculty member if he could move in with her as a tenant. When she refused, he sent two emails containing sexually explicit material and a professional attack. In the first email, a woman dressed as a schoolgirl sings about having sex with older men. The second email claims that the degree held by the recipient is a worthless degree. He spoke in a graphic sexual manner to a junior faculty woman during a meeting at which two male tenured professors were present and in which he stated that he pictured the woman in pornographic films. One of the two male tenured faculty members told him to “quit while he was behind.” He then stated that he regularly imagined the junior faculty woman in pornographic films. Immediately following the meeting, he approached her alone in her office and encouraged her to make money writing for erotic publishers. He then went on to quote graphically from this style of writing, giving the example of erotica that contains “pulling back the folds and thrusting.” At this point, the faculty member put her hand up and repeatedly shouted “Enough! Enough! Enough!” During a student conference, X loudly (so as to be overheard) stated to a student that a junior faculty woman was having an affair with a colleague. When the faculty member immediately confronted him, he told her that “sex scandals were no big deal.” X made repeated comments to junior faculty women about clothes, body, and weight changes. These comments range from sexual innuendos to comments about weight loss to specific comments about how their bodies looked in various outfits to descriptions of faculty members who did not work out as lazy. He regularly used these statements about weight as a way to invite faculty to look at photographs of his body posted online in speedos for bodybuilding competitions. X made repeated comments to women faculty about how hearing their high heels in the hall caused him to sexually fantasize about them. I can think of few interactions with him in that five year period that he did not sexualize. | Junior faculty | Tenured faculty at the same partner campus, different college | R2 | Public Florida University | Response within his college: His behavior was well-known and tolerated even when witnessed directly by other faculty. The Dean took no action to curb him. One junior faculty woman was told by another male tenured faculty mentor within the college that since X was the sole senior faculty member in her discipline, a letter from him was necessary for a tenure file and that it would “look weird” to not have his endorsement. Response by the university’s OEIC: A number of the above incidents were documented with OEIC in 2014 and 2016. My own 2016 meeting was prompted by the university’s decision to move him directly across from my office in response to a separate complaint lodged against him by another woman faculty member. Since my experiences occurred more than 180 days earlier (the internal timeline for investigations), the university lawyer suggested that I could stay in my office as a “guinea pig” to see if more recent actions within their 180 day window could be documented. I refused. I instead requested (and was granted) a transfer to the main campus instead from my department chair. This year, I re-sent the complaint along with a time-stamped letter documenting conversation with a junior faculty woman that detailed sexual harassment by him. I did so because I was scheduled to teach a spring course back on that campus and wanted to be sure that his history of sexual harassment was documented since the lawyer to whom I made my complaint had left. The OEIC copied my department chair though the chair did not appear on any of my emails to OEIC and I had never told the chair about the harassment. OEIC wrote that they should only be contacted in the future with “current and new allegations.” OEIC did not respond to my email asking if copying direct supervisors or chairs on sexual harassment response was standard for their office. University Administration response: In response to my question to the university president at a recent faculty senate as to whether copying supervisors on sexual harassment complaints was standard procedure for the university’s OEIC office, he stated that the OEIC had experienced a lot of turnover and currently lacked leadership but that they were in the process of hiring. In response to my question about the 180 day rule, the president indicated in his responses that he would be willing to review the university policies with respect to the internal 180 day rule. | OEIC never contacted me following my complaint since incidents fell outside 180 day period. His office was moved in response to another complaint. I was never contacted by their office during investigations of any other complaints against him. | Though we share a field, he has no standing or clout in that field. We are not in the same college. Opportunities for collaboration on campus declined because you couldn't trust him (i.e. he'd show up to an event and read a piece in support of pedophiles in one case or a piece that involved him yelling the n-word repeatedly in another and I'd end up having to explain to upset students why I brought them to the reading). I was never on campus outside of required office hours. Lost writing and research time spent documenting his behavior, making the initial complaint, packing up my office to move, commuting, going on the job market, weighing whether to leave what had been my dream location for an offer in a place that I knew would make me miserable. | Finishing out the semester in which he was moved directly across from me was tough, especially after the OEIC meeting. I taught from 7-10 at night so whenever I saw his door cracked I avoided the hallway and my own office. Disgust over a university policy that ignores the fact that many might wait until tenure to report. Following my transfer, my work commute changed from 14 miles round trip on local roads to 80 miles round trip on a major highway. Recently, anger over OEIC copying my chair on their email response, not because of my specific chair but for how such action could deter others from coming forward. Guilt over not reporting sooner or "sticking it out" to see if I could document something within the 180 day window. | Male | ||||
1951 | 12/31/2017 12:45:45 | The director of an organization provided the data I needed for my senior thesis would only meet with me after everyone in his building had left for the day and would insist on hugging me - I'm not huge on being touched anyhow, but the way that he did it was especially inappropriate, especially considering the power imbalance. At the time I was confused by what was happening and, after three encounters I stopped being available to meet and, essentially, ghosted the individual. | Undergraduate, Junior | Friend of advisor, Director of organization, senior in the field | R2 | Archaeology | not reported | not reported | I was able to work with the data but it made me wary about working in the city | I felt guilty for years about the way I had handled things and it wasn't until recently that I realized how inappropriate /his/ behavior had been at the time | Male | ||||
1952 | 12/31/2017 12:55:39 | I was sexually assaulted by a colleague during a celebration | PhD candidate | Recent PhD/direct colleague | R2 | Archaeology | not reported | not reported | None yet | I suffered from intense depression and anxiety following the incident and now seek therapy | I couldn't work for a few months and find myself avoiding social (and professional) situations where I might run into the person | Male | |||
1953 | 1/1/2018 9:50:36 | I went to see my professor about a paper I was working on. He had already commented a few times in class and in the hallways about my "big, blue eyes". In his office, with the door closed told asked me if I was scared (be cause my eyes were so big). I said, "No." I didn't know what else to do. Then he told me he liked my ring and w/out consent took my hand and admired my ring for a good long while, while I waited silently for him to give me back my hand. A few minutes later after I attempted to return the conversation to my paper, he again commented on my ring and said, "It's a shame you bit your nails. You could have very beautiful hands.| | Graduate student / TA | Professor | Other Type of School | York University | English Literature | Did not know to (or how to) report it. | n/a | nervous / uncomfortable / silenced | insecurity | I feel now that my younger self saw my insecurity (as evidenced by bitten nails) spoke louder than my intellectual abilities. I did not pursue a PhD. | Male | ||
1954 | 1/1/2018 9:57:25 | A professor held a class at his apartment. We were all told to put our coats in his bedroom. I was one of the last to leave. I was very drunk. The professor followed me into the bedroom and, as I was finding my coat on the bed, mentioned the bed was "king-sized, lots of room". I found my coat, squeezed past him and ran. | MA student / TA | Thesis advisor | Other Type of School | Concordia University | Creative Writing | Did not report | n/a | I think I felt somewhat guilty-- as though I must have done something or said something that made him think I was interested in having sex with him? | second guessing myself, still, twenty years later. | this professor sends me yearly requests to speak to my classes at another institution where I now work. I have never invited him. | Male | ||
1955 | 1/1/2018 10:16:38 | Between 1997-200 this happened a lot with one particular fellow student,peer, and poet (who is now a prominent literary critic in Canada). It began when he showed interest in helping me improve my writing. Although married, he invited me out for coffee to discuss my writing and tell me how I could "fix it". He did not look at my work beyond a line or two, but he flirted heavily with me and proceeded to explain to me what was wrong with women's poetry. I have heard that he did this coffee invitation thing to a lot of women poets. | grad student, TA. | fellow student, fellow poet in the writing community, influential critic | Other Type of School | Concordia University | Creative Writing | didn't tell anyone | n/a | We ended up having a very short little affair. When I cut that off, I felt the effect in a few ways: a short story I had been invited to write for a magazine he edited suddenly backed out of publishing a story I had been invited to write. My first book, though published reputably, received little press/acknowledgement. This critic has a lot of power. | Second guessing my abilities as a poet. | trying to get back on track, still, ten years later. | Male | ||
1956 | 1/1/2018 18:39:07 | Two men in my department always made me feel like they were "checking me out." however it as after we went to a conference together and they saw me dance, that they commented to other students about how sexy I was, and how male students would "cream their pants" if they saw me dance. I couldn't believe they spoke that way to STUDENTS about me. When I approached them to ask them to stop, they got indignant, and to this day, they call me bitch or crazy bitch to students. | Untenured though on the tenure track/ Assistant Prof. | Full Professors, both of them, with one on the tenure committee. | Regional Teaching College | Psychology | The department chair talked to them ... including when the follow up harassing continued. | Nothing besides talking to them. | They have mocked me in large groups of faculty; it has shut down my working memory capacity, and made me feel incapable of being successful, but just an FYI ... I am more published, have more grant money, got promoted to full professor earlier than either of those assholes! | It really messed with my head, and shut down my working memory capacity. I get a sick pit in my stomach during department functions. | I avoid departmental parties/gatherings, which has annoyed my chair. I believe it was one of a series of events that ended my marriage. My husband made light of the situation and said I was overreacting. He told me if I was a better/stronger person they wouldn't even try these things. His lack of support of me is one of the top reasons we are divorcing. However, every time they made me feel lesser than, I gave another presentation or wrote another grant to help me feel "valued." I do believe I'm more accomplished than I would have been if they didn't mock me and make me feel so little. | Male | |||
1957 | 1/1/2018 18:43:01 | Professor invited me to coffee stating that he'd be 'happy to have coffee with me'. I never took him up on his offer and, in the preceding months, began to outshine him in academic recognition. He subsequently made my candidature hell. In my final stage of candidature, I finally found the courage to change supervisors and report his psychological/mental/verbal/emotional abuse and his lack of supervision where I was basically doing the thesis all on my own. | Phd Candidate | Principal thesis supervisor, Chair of a research committee | Other R1 | Law | I successfully graduated but have cut ties with that particular college, and did not seek to work in that law school, during or after candidature, as I'd constantly be looking over my shoulder. I needed to find other colleges for work which has, ultimately, proved most successful for my career. His demoralisation of me provided the impetus for me to succeed. | There was no-one to turn to during my candidature. I was literally trapped as the Professor was also the Chair of a research committee that oversaw Phd candidates. There were no processes, policies or protocols in place to support and protect me as a candidate from the psychological/mental/verbal/emotional abuse that I endured and his abuse of authority in his lack of supervision. My mental health during that time saw me traumatised, and breaking down in tears and anguish at home constantly. I felt that I had 'no choice' but to complete my thesis with him as my principal supervisor. My fury gave me the courage to report his psychological/mental/verbal/emotional abuse and lack of supervision to the very top and change supervisors at the final stage. | When I'm in a position to effect change, I'll ensure that there are processes, policies and protocols in place to support and protect those in ways that I never was. | Male | |||||
1958 | 1/1/2018 18:46:29 | inappropriate comments about his (lack of) sex life, size of his penis, wife, what he wanted to do with/to me | faculty (full professor) | department head (different department) | Other R1 | large public flagship | communication | university lawyer said they would only take action against him if others had also reported him for similar things. I was encouraged to report him and they would have someone speak to him about his behavior but no action would be taken against him unless I could prove what I said was true. Lawyer said I would have to prove he was creating a hostile work environment then it would be an EEO case. Since I did not work directly with him and I was not afraid of him or incapable of talking to him myself, I did not see what they would do that I was not already doing, besides letting him know that I was complaining about him to leadership. | none. I said I didn't need someone to talk to him. I was capable of talking to him and/or avoiding him. I did not need the university lawyer to let him know I complained and have him make my life more difficult, especially when it was clear they would not do anything. I could just avoid him or speak to him myself if needed. | none, besides disgust for the harasser and lack of respect for the institution | disgust with the process, affirmation of a strong bias toward men at this institution (in a very red state) | even less respect for academia in general and the leadership at my former institution in particular | none | Male | |
1959 | 1/1/2018 20:10:24 | This event occurred when I was an undergraduate student. I'm sharing this story because it was consequential in terms of my pursuit of graduate school, as well as how I respond to cases of academic dishonesty as a professor. I was an undergrad in NE Ohio with anticipation of applying to my school's graduate program. Over the course of the semester in my stats class, a classmate constantly pressured me to help him study. Miscommunications, combined with my not wanting to hurt his feelings, led to a never-ending night of trying to fend off his aggressive advances that literally left over 15 dark bruises from my torso to my neck. I left his dorm in the early morning, and when I left he asked if I would leave my homework assignment and told me that he would return it before class that day. I left the assignment, but he was late to class and turned in both of our assignments to the professor at the end of class. The professor publicly reprimanded us for plagiarism and we were not given credit for the assignment. I was mortified. I never explained the incident to the professor and he never asked about it. I do believe that the incident is the reason why the prof ignored my follow-up inquiries about a project he had previously invited me to become involved with. I also wondered if the story of academic dishonesty circulated among other faculty within the department. Leaving my homework for the classmate did constitute academic dishonesty, but there were nuances to my decision that I have never been able to adequately put into words. | senior-level undergraduate student | classmate | R2 | Sociology | As a professor, I pay attention to the gendered component of academic dishonesty incidents. | mild depression for several weeks | Male | ||||||
1960 | 1/2/2018 5:05:53 | I needed to have a routine form signed by the Director of Graduate Studies in my PhD program. I went to his office and asked him to sign it, to which he responded by asking (a joke, apparently) whether the form was requesting that he do a "Chippendale's dance" for me. There were several other male faculty in his office at the time, and they all laughed at this joke. This professor is known to regularly make inappropriate comments to female graduate students (often much worse than this). | PhD student | Professor/Director of Graduate Studies | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Cornell University | None. I reported this incident in writing to the Dean of our College, along with several other female graduate students who reported their own experiences (in writing) with this Professor, and we never received any response. | none | This was just one small incident in a broader pattern of sexual harassment of female graduate students in the department by this Professor that led to discomfort, insecurity, and challenges to securing equal mentorship and professional development opportunities. | Male | |||||
1961 | 1/2/2018 8:25:11 | As a graduate student getting my education paid for with a graduate assistantship in an athletic department. So, I'm not sure this is exactly what you are looking for. I was propositioned by 2 of the men's basketball coaches, one of which was the head coach. The incident with the head coach was at a athletic department function that was held at a bar. Near the end of the evening, he came up close behind me while I waited to order a drink and whispered into my ear, "What's your favorite position?". I tried to laugh it off and give an half answer as to not offend him, but then he offered me ride home. I ignored that question and waited for him to be distracted - and when he finally was, I left the event without saying goodbye to anyone. The second occurrence in the same athletic department was after I lost my brother tragically. I was invited to lunch by another coach that had also had a family tragedy in his past. At some point over lunch, I was informed that if I ever needed to be with someone, sexually, he was available. He went on to normalize this discussion by saying everyone should have sex at least once a week and that it didn't need to be more than that. I was numb from the pain of losing my brother, so this wasn't as shocking as maybe it should have been. I didn't take him up on his offer, either. I told my boyfriend about both of these incidents, but he was a graduate student as well and we both knew that making the basketball coaches upset could put us at risk. They were both really nice people and that is hard to reconcile. I had to continue to work with both of them, in limited ways, and socialize with them at department functions, and neither ever brought up me declining their offers. I do have to say though, these instances were taking into consideration when I decided to change careers and no longer pursue my dream of being a collegiate coach. I didn't feel threatened but I didn't want to be in an environment where this type of behavior was accepted and, in a way, expected. This occurred at the highest level and I still feel guilt about what I didn't say to ensure others felt comfortable at work. This wasn't a big deal to me, I have years of experience of finding a way to turn down men without making them feel bad for approaching me. But, for those that are more vulnerable, they shouldn't have to feel this pressure. And honestly, I shouldn't have to think about the men's feelings when I say no. I should just be allowed to say no and go on about my business. Unfortunately, even someone who is comfortable saying no, in these instances, had to think about how to approach these situations as to not put my job or education in jeopardy. | Graduate Student | Head Coach | R2 | Education | Changed my career path | Changed my career path | Male | ||||||
1962 | 1/2/2018 9:53:29 | November 29, 2012: I was groped and harassed by one of the most senior researchers in my field after presenting my first conference paper. I was asking him for advice on my presentation and he said that he was "too busy imagining what was under my dress" to listen to what I was saying. He whispered that in my ear and placed his hand on my lower back. After I pulled away, he persisted, groping me (including my upper thigh, underneath my skirt) and demanding that I return with him to his hotel room. He additionally accused me of sleeping with my co-author to gain first authorship on my publication. At one point he told me that he and his wife "had an understanding"; and later that I owed him a kiss, at the very least, which I refused. I told him several times that I wasn't interested and that his actions were inappropriate. I tried to diffuse the situation politely, because my career was at stake. We were in a foreign country and I felt trapped throughout the entire ordeal. | PhD Student, 1st year | He was a tenured faculty member at UC Berkeley, I was a first year PhD student at MIT. His lab was one of the two most closely associated with my own in terms of research focus. In short: We would be at all of the same conferences. If I ever tried to get a faculty position post-doctorate, he would very likely have sway. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of California Berkeley | Computer Science | When I started with my new advisor at MIT the following semester, I was too ashamed to mention the incident and wanted a clean slate moving forward. As the next conference approached, I started to unravel. I went home on Medical Leave a month before the conference. I never attended and I never returned to MIT. | None to date | I believe that this harassment directly led to the end of my academic career. I was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, a Presidential Fellow at Columbia, and an Ida Green Fellow at MIT. My career was off to a promising start, but I felt as though no one took me seriously. I became obsessed with proving myself as a serious researcher, but I was so anxious that I couldn't focus. When I left MIT, my advisor told me he feared I would one day feel I had wasted my potential. I now work at Google and have a wonderful life, but I often wonder what could have been. | It took me years to forgive myself for letting this happen. It took years to start to feel safe again as a woman working in tech. No doubt, my boundaries have hardened and I no longer socialize with coworkers outside of the office. | Something about that experience made me want to be physically strong. When I moved back home to Washington state, I threw myself into the outdoors. I spend most of my free time rock climbing, skiing, and mountaineering. I also spend more time with woman than when I was younger. | Male | ||
1963 | 1/2/2018 13:34:32 | After taking an undergraduate course with a professor, she became an academic mentor for the remainder of my undergraduate education and the first few years of my graduate education. In time, she let it be known that she would like a physical relationship with me. By her own admission, she tried to seduce me on more than one occasion. Most of the time our relationship was friendly and professional, but there was always this underlying dynamic that made me uncomfortable. I eventually terminated our relationship, and we have not spoken to each other since. | Undergraduate and Graduate Student. | Tenured professor, mentor, and prospective graduate advisor. | Small Liberal Arts College | Geology | I never reported it, as she had no formal authority over me at the time. Her mentorship was more informal, though it was understood that she would eventually serve as my dissertation advisor. | None, except that she lost one of her most promising students. She remains a respected authority in her field. | I withdrew from academic settings, moved back home, worked full-time in other professions, and completed my dissertation from afar with a different—and less invested--advisor. With rare exceptions, I no longer publish in our field or attend academic conferences, in part because I wish to have nothing to do with her or her academic circle. | At the time it was a source of considerable anguish and stress. Having ended that critical relationship, in rapid succession I withdrew from virtually all my academic friends and mentors. | I lost the most prestigious mentor I ever had—the mentor who took the greatest interest in my work. Instead of rising up in the profession, I drifted off and tried to do academia on my own terms, with as little dependence on others as possible. Partly as a result, I do minimal academic networking, and I have settled for a financially-difficult life as an adjunct instructor. | Female | |||
1964 | 1/2/2018 13:44:25 | Late 1990's. I was doing very well in all my STEM courses, but I would never get higher than an BC on my lab reports for chemistry. My two other lab partners were men, and while once or twice they received the same grade as me, often times, they received A's or AB's. When I asked, they shrugged it off and said I must have omitted some steps in my own lab reports. Halfway through the semester, studying for midterms, my study group (50% M, 50% F) started talking about labs, and we realized that every single woman in the group had the same experience. When we confronted the TA who ran and graded the labs, he admitted, several times, that he "didn't want to generalize" but he just thought womens' work was subpar in the lab. | Freshman Undergrad | Teaching Assistant | Other R1 | UW Madison | Chemistry | We (my study group, men and women) met with the supervising professor. He called in all the lab reports graded by the TA, and at the end of the semester, opted to average grades across the labs, so we all ended up getting B's. The TA lost his teaching appointment for the following year, but he had talked at the beginning of the semester about getting back to a research position anyway. | Not sure. | I ended up leaving the program about a year later, and I have to be honest and admit this played a role in that decision. It opened my eyes to the truly disproportionate battle I would have to fight for grades, respect, and opportunities compared to my male colleagues in the field. This incident really took the joy out of my first year in college. I also was glad that the professor stepped in as he did, but I remember feeling just a bit let down when the best he could say was he would "average" the grades. I knew I had stellar work, as did many of my female colleagues, and it felt like an easy way out to not truly evaluate our work and give us the grades we deserved. | It was certainly a blow to my self-esteem. It also made me quite angry for a long time. | I can't really say. I was a very good chemistry student. This wasn't the only incident, just the first. On the negative side: I gave up some dreams. On the positive side: I acted, and things were done. I learned from the professor how to listen when a student (or students) come forward, a lesson that I have had to call on more than once as an instructor now in a different STEM field. I also learned how NOT to treat such a situation. | Male | ||
1965 | 1/2/2018 17:26:51 | Series of inappropriate text messages - for example, a late night text reading "in the bath, thinking of you". | Lecturer, non-tenure track, newly appointed | Lecturer, non-tenure track | Regional Teaching College | Political science | I mentioned these texts to a colleague, he reported to my chair, I then followed up and an investigation followed | Allowed to resign. He had done this before at another institution, where he was also allowed to resign | None | Severe stress. Harasser identified himself as someone who carried a gun on campus | None | Male | |||
1966 | 1/3/2018 4:05:13 | The Department Chair posts provocative posters of women on his office door. Picture a large pinup of a nude woman with pouting lips laying in bed, covered only by a thin sheet, pulled down to expose much of one breast. | Department Chair | Other R1 | Louisiana State University | Geography and Anthropology | None | None | Complaining about it has resulted in retaliation | Male | |||||
1967 | 1/3/2018 4:32:15 | Numerous boundary issues with both grad and undergrad students--he was once teacher of the year, serial harasser and power figure in the dept | Grad student | Grad faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | midwest large public IVY | psychology | Initial swept under rug--then others came forward w like complaints--suspended one semester LOA from teaching | minimal | devastating---I was contacted by investigative HR review to give evidence---harasser eventually acted out towards me | anxiety/depression | never completed dissertation | I don't trust the privacy or I would give name---there was a climate of acceptance of this in this dept | Male | |
1968 | 1/3/2018 4:51:18 | This began 26 years ago. After a public talk, I went up to the (famous - and, I later learned, married) speaker (whom I had never met before) to ask a question. After a short conversation he took my hand and said something along the lines of "you will be at the reception won't you." I said I would be and went home for the hour before the reception, deeply disturbed by the look in his eyes and the way he held my hand. I debated about what to do all hour long, and I felt sick. But he was/is very famous, and working on a topic I cared deeply about, and I wanted to know more about his research, and so I attended the reception, at the department head's house, where he took my hand again and barely let go all evening. It was horrifying but I felt paralyzed. I didn't feel like I could make a fuss about it in front of the rest of the department, and a part of me thought that perhaps if he liked me so much he would be more willing to talk about his research by email after he left town, and that that would help me (and I think part of me also thought that perhaps my star would rise in the department because of my colleagues seeing this). He asked if he could see videos of my research the next day and I agreed - once again with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, but also the sense that this could help me get ahead. At this point I have to say that I had had childhood experience of being fondled in return for favors, and I believe (and literature confirms) that that experience led somehow to predators recognizing that I might be amenable to this behavior (I wonder how many of us who have been the victims of academic predators in adulthood have had similar childhood experiences - NOT an excuse in any way for the predators, of course, but rather an observation that all kinds of predative behavior exists, and has deeply destructive consequences). I have spent decades working this out of my system. The next day we watched the videos in my (windowless) lab, and he kept his hand on my knee throughout. At this point I finally told him that I was not interested in that kind of interaction, and he said that was fine, but that he enjoyed my company as well as my research, and that we should try to collaborate. We did write a (successful) grant proposal together and so I lived through several years of a hand on my knee and, as time went on, a question about whether I was interested in more. I continued to say I wasn't and, after a year or so, said so MUCH more strongly, and the questions and touching stopped. As did the collaboration. | I was a first year faculty member | Much more senior. Very famous. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | I was at a large state R1. He was at a private R1 | None. Nobody ever mentioned his behavior to me, although most of the department saw it. | None that I know of - and I'm sure I was not the only one. | Positive in the sense that his name was on my CV as a collaborator. | Very negative. I came to feel that this was the only way to get ahead, which led to a terrible kind of lack of intellectual confidence rooted in the belief that I needed to be attractive to male colleagues in order to be heard. I was disgusted with them, and disgusted with myself, and felt that it was only an ability to flirt that was going to result in being able to do the research I wanted to do. It took decades to stop feeling like I had to dress in short skirts to be heard in my field. | I pursued a different research trajectory; one that was less close to my harasser's. | The fact that nobody ever brought up his deeply inappropriate behavior at the reception led me to feel that there was nobody whomsoever I could speak to about this. Why did nobody mention it? Why did nobody ask me if I was OK with it? The harassing behavior was bad enough - the turning a blind eye to it on the part of all of my colleagues led me to mistrust them, and I chose to leave the institution as soon as I could. | Male | ||
1969 | 1/3/2018 6:26:38 | 1995. Consulting with lit crit professor in his office. Describing my master's thesis, when--apropos of nothing--he mentioned "Bride" magazine which, he claimed, featured an article about how to successfully perform oral sex on one's husband. (My thesis had NOTHING to do with brides, marriage, oral sex, etc.) Stunned, I did not reply, and left his office soon afterward. Told some of my female classmates, and a few said they'd had similar experiences with the same/other profs in the department. I was 47, the prof was mid-50s, my husband was also a grad student in the same department, and this professor knew both of us well. The additional insult was that I already had a doctorate from another institution and had taught in a different field, so--at least in my mind--I was on more of a peer level with this guy, despite being his student. | I was working on a second Master's degree. He was my lit crit professor and--until the incident--my thesis advisor. | He was a tenured professor, well known in his field. Required us to buy his own textbook, which I've always viewed as unethical behavior. | Other R1 | University of Oklahoma | English | None. I didn't report it. | None to my knowledge | I changed the topic of my master's thesis, which added an extra year to my work, but it was a change for the better in many ways. | Because I was 47 when it happened, I wasn't particularly distressed, since I'd been experiencing this type of shit my whole life. I certainly lost respect for the guy and felt disappointed that he was such a jerk. I try to respect my professors and colleagues, but some of them don't give me much to work with. | One incident like this doesn't have a whole lot of impact on me, but there is a cumulative effect that--over time--has made me cynical about men. I've come to believe that most of them are just not-very-smart drones, only useful for reproduction. However, I've also been lucky to know a handful of men who were actually people. | Male | ||
1970 | 1/3/2018 6:50:27 | My department chair used to follow me around, make inappropriate comments (about how I felt about him, etc), sit in my office staring at me for no reason (chit chat and leer), etc. He did the same type of thing to my female colleague and, it turned out, to undergrads as well. | Adjunct instructor | He was my direct supervisor. | Small Liberal Arts College | Foreign languages | I reported the harassment (including some harassment I had observed of a student) to the provost, who told me it was nothing to worry about. I then transferred to another department so I wouldn't have to work under the harasser. They we got a new dean. He had heard the stories (as had everyone), and he kept his ears open until he got students who would admit that the guy had touched them (in addition to the other creepy behavior). This was enough to force the perpetrator to "retire" with immediate effect. | He "retired" but still kept his status (among those who didn't know about him). He went on to get another senior position at another small liberal arts college. | I did what I could to avoid the guy, but he didn't especially intimidate me. I just hated that students had to put up with him. | This guy was not the first creep of this type I had come across. He brought back some unpleasant memories of a person who had actually harmed me (which this guy did not). This guy (dept chair) behaved badly to lots of people, and it was widely known, so I didn't take it personally. | I ended up teaching a lot of classes outside of my specialty because I couldn't work for this man. After he left, I went back to teach in foreign languages, and I realized that I actually liked teaching in the other areas (world civilizations, interdisciplinary humanities) more. | Male | |||
1971 | 1/3/2018 8:38:44 | In my first semester as a grad student in 1990, my mentor (who had previously bragged about his pornography collection and jokingly asked me to bring in nude photos - which I dismissed as "sick humor") began massing my shoulders while I was entering data on a computer. Suddenly, his hands went under my shirt and onto my breasts. I left immediately and walked around campus in a daze. | Grad student, first year | Assistant Professor | Other R1 | Psychology | I told other professors about it but all except one (who agreed to become my mentor) found it disturbing. My new mentor was no angel (e.g., he had an anger mgmt problem, nursed grudges, and didn't write for me while I was on the job market), but I had no other option so I stuck it out with him. | He wasn't tenured for scholarship reasons, but my backdoor complaining to the outside member of his reading committee (who was in cognitive psych) may have played a role. I'll never know for sure. My harasser seems to think it did. He wept about that when I confronted him, saying "it's over for me." If only he knew how little most people cared. Notably, he never apologized to me, just felt sorry for himself. | Eventually positive, but at the time I thought seriously of quitting. It was also a struggle to get a job, thanks to my second mentor not writing for me. It wasn't personal - he had done this routinely - but fortunately, my post-doc advisor is a terrific man who restored my faith in humanity. | Devastating! I was married and almost got divorced. Counseling helped. So did researching gender (e.g., I studied why women in the academy generally don't report SH, and fear of retaliation was the primary reason). | I had a "click" experience that led me to specialize in the psychology of gender - a career that has been endlessly rewarding, even though I couldn't have imagined it when I started graduate school. | I was really shocked that nobody seemed to care about what happened to me. One male professor I complained told me, "If we got rid of every man in the building who behaves as X did, there'd be nobody left." Later, I learned that other men in my area (social psychology) had also been accused of sexually harassing students, so it seems to have been normalized. There was only one senior woman, who refused to talk to me about it. The lone junior woman was shocked, but she said (knew) that she had zero power to help me. | Male | ||
1972 | 1/3/2018 8:40:46 | This was an unsolicited incident where a male individual made very intentional inappropriate physical contact in an intimidating and domineering manner. The individual was not an employee of the university, but a prominent figure associated with the academic department I worked in. [He was an appointed external member of a search committee for a new hire, and that is where I first met him. Additionally, he was a friend of the Head of the Department. They shared common interests. Apparently, after I accepted the job offer at the institution, but before I arrived on campus, a member of the Department alleged I was gay. I learned this after arriving at the university and was devastated as there was nor is there any basis for making such an allegation. I feel I was set up and that the exercise was a sick attempt to try to trap me and to justify their sick sense of character assessment. Some additional background information, my place of employment is in the south-east, and I am a foreigner.] I just wanted to share with you that men are also victims of sexual and other forms of harassment on campuses across the country. | Relatively new Assistant Professor | The individual was a friend of Head of Department, not university employee. | Other R1 | Natural Sciences | Did not file a complaint, but shared the incident with a colleague. | None, since no complaint was filed and the individual was not an employee. However, I did share the incident in a recent campus wide anonymous survey on sexual and other forms of work environment harassment. | None | Felt depressed and unsure I would survive in the Department or at the university as I did not know how widespread this false opinion of my sexual orientation was shared. | None, battled on and put the negative experience behind me. | I realize that the focus of your survey is to document sexual and other forms of work environment harassment of female colleagues, particularly by males, at tertiary academic institutions. But there are also incidents where males are victims that are not only devastating to their career trajectory, but also to their mental and physical well-being. Such assaults are so damaging to individuals family and personal lives, and there were times where I wanted to quit and leave the institution. I stuck with it, have been successful at the institution where I still remain employed. The perpetrators and their collaborators are no longer employed or part of the campus community. | Male | ||
1973 | 1/3/2018 8:48:35 | A renowned scholar, visiting my department on sabbatical, approached me in the Reading Room one lunchtime and introduced himself in what seemed an overly friendly way. I was taken aback, as I was already feeling bullied by a former advisor (but that's for a different survey). When I told him my name, his eyes lit up and he said "So YOU'RE <my name>." He then tried to strike up a conversation about work, from which I withdrew very quickly, feeling confused. I had no idea why this Great Man would want to talk to me about science, although there were sleazy overtones to it. Later I found out the story from a fellow graduate student who was dating an administrative assistant. The Great Man's stipulation for coming to our campus on sabbatical was that he had an open marriage with his wife, and he needed the names of at least five women who would be intelligent enough to understand him (although of course not wanting to share in his work). Another Great Man in our department, for whom I was a teaching assistant, was charged with finding the required five women (and of course they had to be attractive). Apparently I passed the test. In a way, my Imposter Syndrome saved me from allowing the predator in, but I have felt bitter ever since about having been used as bait by someone for whom I worked very hard--and who did nothing to protect me from the bullying advisor. | graduate student | Visiting Great Man--no status; In-House Great Man-- in charge of choosing graduate students the year I came in; prof of course I was TA'ing. I considered him an ally. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Cornell University | Astronomy | none--I did not report it at the time because I didn't realize what was happening. | None | I jumped quickly to marry a fellow graduate student, and it was always clear that he came first in the two-body problem. I have persevered in the field and been fairly successful, but this situation and bullying from other professors have caused me, in the past, to question whether I am good enough. I now know that I am. | I'm ok, but recent revelations--over the past two years-- do trigger some PTSD responses. | Employed, probably underemployed. | Male | ||
1974 | 1/3/2018 10:18:31 | I was told I should change my dissertation topic because "you're a woman who's good at math. that'll be a commodity on the job market if you show it off, since it's so rare." | Ph.D. Candidate | Multiple faculty, some on my advisory committee, some not | Other R1 | Political Science | The only person I told agreed. | I left the institution. Ultimately, it probably had a positive impact because I ended up at a more highly-ranked place. | Rather severe self-doubt as to my choices of what to study. | As I mentioned above, this was in large part why I left the institution. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||||
1975 | 1/3/2018 10:56:21 | At a summer school (conference for junior scientists to learn from experts), one of the lecturers, an important man in the field and in a position of responsibility at his own university, drunkenly made his way through a whole social event, propositioning each woman in turn. And was turned down by each one, as far as I could tell. The victims were almost entirely students & postdocs, many of them visiting from other countries and there to learn about his scientific expertise. One victim (me) was also there in the capacity of being an expert lecturer. | tenured professor | senior, well-known professor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | agency-funded summer school | physical sciences/engineering | agency has been notified | I have not invited him to speak at similar situations where this might arise again (and if his names was proposed, argued against it); I have declined to be a reviewer if he was a proposer/author on the item to be reviewed | None so far, but that will only continue as long as (a) he doesn't know I'm talking about him and (b) he therefore can't retaliate in reviewing my grants/papers. I have no idea how sustainable this situation is, but hopefully he's 5-10 years from retirement. | Time & mental energy wasted, plus embarrassment that the only way to keep him from doing it again is to repeatedly describe my role (and my own ineffectiveness at avoiding the situation) even though I prefer not to spend more time on it. I've been gratified that people believed me, and that a peer was willing to talk to him about the reports circulating (other similar situations at various times.) | None so far, but see above for caveats about sustainability. | Male | ||
1976 | 1/3/2018 11:00:24 | Started to work in new environment. Was warned by other women in department that Provost's spouse was a frequent guest and known hugger/groper. Was warned to never be alone with individual, and that there was a signal used to let others know when spouse was approaching office spaces | untenured | spouse of Provost / no formal relationship to University | Small Liberal Arts College | reported to HR, was told to not allow myself or others to be alone if individual was in building | none | mental stress, distrust of institutional HR, disbelief that this was reported and not dealt with, known issue across campus at all levels. | left institution | Male | |||||
1977 | 1/3/2018 11:50:00 | 1. Professor had a romantic relationship with an undergrad student while married (with child/children). This put immense pressure on friends and classmates of the female student and created a dysfunctional power dynamic among students. A handful of women reported it to the administration and were questioned about the relationship. 2. Professor remarked on tops and clothing of young, female undergrads during class constantly | Undergrad | Full Professor | Regional Teaching College | Art / Art History | Was investigated but not terminated | He moved to greener pastures, joined Ball State University | Made me feel unsafe for many years | Extreme stress - made me distrust the university and administrators and their ability to act | Made me distrustful of the college experience | Male | |||
1978 | 1/3/2018 12:32:07 | I had a dean who was very supportive, until a young female professor was hired who he favored. She took aim and he fired. Together, they shut down my research and my community service. | I had just been tenured | He was my supervisor | R2 | Librarianship | None. My dean was best friends with the HR Director | None | After 2 years of craziness, I left to work at another university in my state's system | At one point, I thought of suicide. I've had to back away from seeing my chosen career as a calling; it is now just a job to get through every day. | I left the university. | Male | |||
1979 | 1/3/2018 12:32:44 | During academic fieldwork, my co-collaborator (a senior male, and also my former dissertation advisor) had invited a senior French archaeologist who was his close friend to join us in the field. Based on prior experience I knew the two of them would act somewhat badly, so I warned my younger female students that there might be off color jokes etc. The senior French archaeologist acted badly beyond anything I could have anticipated. Not only were there stupid and childish homophobic jokes and generally stupid male banter between the two senior males, but the French archaeologist also proceeded to talk in a disgusting and sexist manner about the local indigenous women in Church who we had seen on the weekend, discussing their body parts and how he would like to have sex with them (in a much more vulgar manner). All of this was in front of three younger female field assistants who came to me later in a panic- they had never experienced this sort of behavior before (being sexually harassed), one put it this way- that she had never felt so uncomfortable but at the same time that she had no power to say anything to ask the behavior to stop. I decided I had to confront my co-PI and tell him that this French researcher would no longer be invited into the field to work with me as he was sexually harassing the female students. My co-Pi (remember this is my former dissertation chair) blamed the whole incident on me- I was told that yes, this French archaeologist was a sexist but that I just had to deal with it, and moreover, I had been "pushing his buttons" so whatever had happened was my fault. Never have I felt so unsupported by a male colleague in my entire life. | Assistant Professor | Full Professor and head of the local University in the country where I work abroad | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Archaeology | He said later to my colleague that he would never work again with me in the field and that he would try to ban me from getting research permits in the country where I work. This has not happened but I do know he has called me difficult and bitchy to other male colleagues. | The whole incident was incredibly stressful and disappointing, but I am glad I stood up and said something to my co-PI. It made me change my relationship with him- we are not as close now and I lost respect for him in many ways. | Male | ||||||
1980 | 1/3/2018 12:42:06 | In the field in a foreign country, an undergraduate student researcher who was working with my co-PI (also my former dissertation advisor) was sexually assaulted by one of the local men my co-PI had hired to work on his crew. While I had been part of the fieldcrew, the assault happened after I had left. My co-Pi had let female US students smoke pot and drink alcohol with other males on the crew and other local (foreign) male workers. As a female researcher, I knew this was not acceptable cultural behavior in this part of the world and told the female students as such, but because I was not head PI of the project they did not have to follow my advice or my rules. My co-PI let this female student go fishing, alone in a boat, with a male field worker (foreign) who then sexually assaulted her and threatened her life numerous times. Once the assault was reported by the student it was reported to the local police. My co-PI did everything he could to keep the story under wraps and out of foreign newspapers and US papers so as to save his own reputation. He also called me and asked me to lie to the local police stating that he did not want them to know that he and the student had been smoking pot (which is illegal in this part of the country). | In a tenured Museum research position | local crew member hired to work as part of field crew | Other R1 | Archaeology | The student who experienced the sexual assault left archaeology. She thought about suing the PI managing the project for inappropriate advising while in the field, as he had her sign a form stating she would not smoke pot or do illegal activities in the field, but then she did so (in participation with him). | I experienced a great deal of trauma due to this event and they way that my co-PI (my former dissertation advisor) handled the sexual assault of one of his female students. It has caused me to loss respect for my dissertation advisor and to alter my relationship with him. | Male | ||||||
1981 | 1/3/2018 13:08:23 | After I had graduated and was working elsewhere, I saw my former dissertation adviser at a conference. He followed me around the whole conference, and pressured me intensely to go to his hotel room alone. When I did, he tried to get me to drink alcohol he had brought and revealed he had feelings for me and continued pressuring me to stay in the room, sit on the bed and so on. I left the room, but he continued hovering and interrupting conversations. I had to leave the conference early because I could not get away from him. He also tried to prevent me from leaving the conference, including physically. This was followed by persistent emails and phone calls, including calls from other famous professors he had apparently mobilized, until I wrote him a very sharp email. His response included a threat of career harm. | Assistant Professor | Former dissertation adviser, leader of a major well-funded research group in my field | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | None. I did not lodge a complaint with his university. I did file a sealed report at my university to protect my tenure case should any serious consequences arise. | none | I avoided participating in the research group he runs though I was invited. Prior to this I had imagined it would be my main intellectual base and source of inspiration. I also generally withdrew from contact with my most important male mentors for a few years because although they seem "fine" so did this guy, right up until this incident. Also I didn't want to be asked about it. | Major distraction for a month or so because I decided to file a sealed report. I still feel intensely frightened and furious in moments when I think about it and I am less gregarious than I was. Even though this adviser was less central to my intellectual identity than other mentors have been, it did cause me some self-doubt because the general insanity of this incident undermined my faith in this person's assessment of my work. It also activated some self-doubt from a prior incident: my undergraduate thesis adviser had declared his love to me right when I graduated. (No pressure exerted in that case, but it still undermined my confidence in his assessment of my work.) At this point I have a lot of great support and female colleagues in positions of power at my new university so I am moving forward with my research without getting bogged down in these thoughts. | Solidified my commitment to my now life-partner, who took care of me after this incident. | Male | ||||
1982 | 1/3/2018 13:48:09 | I have two main experiences: 1 - Before agreeing to be my thesis advisor Prof X at Georgetown University needed to meet me at bars, multiple times, for drinks to discuss my thesis. He put his hand on my knee and arm. I declined him, and he still agreed to be my thesis advisor. However, I am 90% sure he never actually read any of the thesis and seldom agreed to meet me to discuss my progress. 2 - While applying to PhD programs after completing my MA, Professor Y wanted to meet me for lunch so that we could discuss phd programs and so that I could ask him to write a letter of recommendation for me. He forgot his papers, pen, computer etc. when we went to lunch. He said he needed to go to his house to get these materials. He insisted that I ride in his car with him to his home (which was in the 'burbs so there was no way for me to easily get out if I wanted to leave). When we arrived at his house he first poured us both wine and placed it in front of me. Then he laid on the sofa and told me about his open relationship with his wife and how attractive I was. | MA student | Professors, and in both cases I was specifically asking for something (thesis advisor and letters or recommendations) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Georgetown University | Communication | I never felt comfortable asking for mentoring, advice. I didn't get any real mentoring or support as I worked on my thesis and applied to graduate school. | I never reported either of these events to administrators. At the time, I didn't realize how deeply unprofessional and coercive these actions where. I assumed that because they didn't physically violate me, then it didn't matter that they were trying to use their power to coerce a young, vulnerable student into sex. | Male | |||||
1983 | 1/3/2018 15:49:58 | Repeated invites via text and in person to be polyamourous by a male colleague, despite my being married and repeatedly saying no. This culminated in an event whereby he came up behind me one afternoon at work, placed his lanyard cord around my neck, secured it at the base, effectively choking me, and asked if I liked it. I immediately said NO, removed it the cord, asked him what the fuck was wrong with him, and told him to never do that to anyone again. | Phd student | Visiting PhD student to our lab | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Interdisciplinary - art and technology (computer science and engineering) | Both of our supervisors supported me and spoke to the harasser, outlining why it was inapproproate behaviour. He was no longer allowed to visit our lab unsupervised and hasn't come back since graduating. | None, except I'm now kind of 'that person' who calls out sexual harassment. I make others uncomfortable. | It shook my confidence, but it didn't effect my career as I didn't make a formal complaint. Something which the harasser wrote an email to me thanking me. Disgusting. | A bit startled and scared. For a while my partner met me at work in the afternoon or for lunch. | I'm careful. So careful with my friendship now. | Thank you for the survey. It's good and worthy work. It's nice to have a platform to speak where you don't have to explain why this behaviour is gross and inhibits our trajectories. We can just talk about it with others who understand. | Male | ||
1984 | 1/3/2018 15:58:30 | A colleague and collaborator harassed a visiting collaborator on my final PhD project. We were out for a celebratory dinner after the exhibition launch and he gripped the visiting collaborator under the table. She was pinned at a wall seat in a booth and didn't want to upset dinner so didn't say anything until we were in the cab later on. She also didn't return to our lab after that as she didn't want to see him. | PhD Candidate | PhD Candidate, co-author on a long paper, collaborator on data analysis, work friend | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Art and technology (computer science and engineering) | Initially just concensus that his way of 'indicating interest' was inappropriate. I yelled at him. I complained about it for a month to anyone who would listen, including both my supervisors, and eventually another male colleague spoke with him about his behaviour being predatory and that he should speak to someone. The harasser said he knew and agreed. But then nothing has happened. | We aren't friends and I won't work with him anymore. | None, except I am 'that person' who reports sexual harassment and it makes everyone uncomfortable. | I was upset and stressed for a month and lost a colleague and friend. | I won't bring attractive and smart women to my lab anymore if I know the harasser will be there. Which effectively means I don't have an office. | Male | |||
1985 | 1/3/2018 16:12:35 | In a professional, on-campus space, 3 male PhD students decided to have a loud conversation about how female PhD students and female professors dressed and their judgment of whether they thought these women were attractive or not. A few months later, a male faculty member brought up the same subject (this incident was not connected to the first) at a dinner with other male faculty / grad students. Apparently male academics think it is their professional place to judge female colleagues for not meeting their standards of attractiveness or stylishness. | PhD Student | Other PhD Students (male) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | I wear clothing that hides my body, and I am self-conscious about being judged for how I look when I give talks. | Male | ||||||||
1986 | 1/3/2018 16:41:55 | 1) A Dean asked me, "Do you like to get fucked?" I said no. He voiced his regret and we became friends until his death. 2) A Distinguished Professor tried to rape me. I finally escaped and ran out of his apartment. 3) An Assistant Professor at a Research 1 university gave me a hickey during his department's party during his national association's annual meeting. I was given an invitation, flew out, gave a job talk, and received an offer. I turned it down. He has stalked me for almost 50 years. | 1) untenured first semester assistant professor 2) tenured associate professor 3) ABD graduate student. | 1) Associate Dean of the Graduate School 2) Senior faculty in another department 3) Faculty on search committee | Other R1 | Hunter College/ 3) University of Hawaii | Political Science | None | None | 1) He became a friend, mentor, and advocate 2)none 3) As a result of the Hawaii offer, I got a better offer from Hunter. | I was really shaken by the attempted rape. Forty years later, it still haunts me. 3) The creep from Hawaii still stalks me at professional meetings. His publisher recently asked me to write a blurb for his latest book. I refused. | In a crazy way, I benefited from them. In one case, a dean became a friend and advocate. In one case, I got a better job offer. In the case of the attempted rape, I was motivated to do something about sexual harassment. | I am a 75-year old gay man. | Male | |
1987 | 1/3/2018 17:10:43 | The first time I met with my new colleagues, the tenured professor who would be a part of the committee to interview me for tenure, said when meeting me "wow, you are really pretty", then in same conversation said to me, "don't worry you will get tenure, you are very pretty, you have nothing to worry about." | Lecturer on five year probationary status, as is how our tenure works at our community college. | He is tenured, friends with the dean, sits on committees to hire people, head of a department and responsible for getting a very prestigious grant for our college. | Other Type of School | Dont want to say but its a Community College | Liberal Arts | Too afraid to bring him to anyones attention, for fear of retribution, has kept as much distance as possible and have seen and overheard inappropriate behaviors with colleagues and students. | none | Very wary of keeping my distance within the small campus, not being on same committees, or clubs etc. He has asked for numerous favors outside of my work duties but I have had excuses for all. | Don't feel like I can relax until I get tenure, I am a single parent can't afford to loose my job. | Male | |||
1988 | 1/3/2018 17:27:30 | I witnessed numerous incidents while a graduate student. Relationships between faculty and grad students were normal, and so harrassing behavior could be presented as normal too. A known harraser (having an affair with one of my cohort) would regualrly get drunk at parties and do very inappropriate things: licking the hand of a new grad student he was just introduced to; following us out of parties and looking up our skirts as we went upstairs; making sexuallly inappropriate remarks. After one particularly egregious party, I reported it to the grad chair but was told it was not actionable. | graduate student | full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UCLA | English | none | none | none, except I made sure to avoid classes with that professor (and others known to harrass) and choose an all-female committee | not helpful | probably affected my education and choice of field. | Male | ||
1989 | 1/3/2018 17:36:18 | We were screamed at for not doing our job when we could not keep up the cover for the perpetrator | Staff | Supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Faculty staff assistance referred me to campus police. I filed a complaint with campus police because I feared for my safety at work; no response from police; went to female ombuds who said "many women have to deal with angry men". Director's response "I don't see what the problem is" Mocked by other managers. | None. Promoted | Stagnant | Significant | Stagnant. Complete loss of identity | Male | ||||
1990 | 1/3/2018 17:45:41 | [redacted] | Staff | Associate Vice President | The University of Texas at Austin | He was promoted. | Depression. Anxiety. Insomnia. | Lost references should I have looked for work outside UT. Stifled job prospects. Lost friends and the respect of colleagues. | Male | ||||||
1991 | 1/3/2018 17:48:33 | A senior prof in another program petitioned the college president against me for no apparent reason. (My research, service, and teaching were all better than his.) Ultimately this cost me tenure. I know about this because after I was denied tenure -- after being voted up by the Division, faculty evaluation committee, and dean -- the prof in question started harassing a technician who had worked with me and was a good acquaintance. Prof repeatedly told the tech that the tech was having gay sex with me (we were not; we are both straight white men, the tech is married to a woman), continually bullied the tech, made lewd sexual gestures and sounds of the tech engaging in oral sex, would not let the tech avoid this harassment, referred to the tech as the prof in question's "nigger", his "bitch", and said there was nothing the tech could do about the prof treating him like this. Eventually this affected the technician's health. I knew about none of these events at the time, but the tech sued the college (Title IX) and this information all came out. By then it was well past any window where I could appeal tenure (there is only a 2-week window to announce an appeal at that college). The college settled with the technician out of court in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement from the tech, which the tech has honoured, and the prof in question was stripped of his status as Program Chair. The prof counter-sued and won on procedural grounds. Or maybe the college settled. You can look up the result, it's online. While this was going on the prof in question started following the tech's wife, who works on campus, and blocked her ability to drive off campus at one point. Those actions led to the local police enacting a restraining order on the prof in question. The tech got a high school teaching job and left the college. I was denied tenure and moved twice for other jobs. The irony is that I barely spoke to the prof in question; why he petitioned the president against me is anyone's guess. He had a reputation for being unstable (which was clearly true), and I gave him a lot of room. The prof in question has been the subject of first-amendment websites, which claim he was wronged, despite his actions arguably ruining the careers of two dedicated employees at the college. | Assistant prof going up for tenure. I was in the biology program. | Senior prof, head of the chemistry program. | Small Liberal Arts College | Anyone familiar with SLACs will know | Biology | College had to respond to two lawsuits, and the college settled one (technician's) out of court, and either settled or lost the other (chemistry professor's) on procedural grounds. At least one restraining order. Both the tech (plaintiff) and I left the college. | Stripped of status as Program Chair, but not stripped of an endowed Chair. Still at the college. | I was denied tenure. Big moves to other institutions. | Understandable stress about not getting tenure and then the lengthy process of finding a job, where people look suspiciously at my record, i.e., Why didn't he get tenure? But when the events came to light they confirmed both the injustice of my being denied tenure, and my impression of an amoral culture at the college. At other institutions the chem prof would have been fired. The impact of harassment on the health of the tech was large. He evidently got to the point where he'd vomit before coming to work because of the stress of working with the chemistry prof, above. Again, I only found out about this after the fact. | I work at a great college now. I like it very much. In many, many ways my situation is much better now. But, I still don't have tenure, and the standards here are much higher. I also do not have the financial stability (or any other kind) that comes with tenure. I am 5 years older and well past the age of being easily hired anywhere else. The technician is a high school teacher. My impression is that he is happy in his current position. His wife still works at the college. I doubt either the technician or I would have left the college in question had the bullying/harassment not happened. | In a way this survey is limited. While it addresses the sex/gender of the harasser, it does not address the sex/gender of the harassed. Is the assumption only women are harassed? I cannot tell. I suspect people of any sex or gender can be either the perpetrator or victim of harassment. I know of cases where female senior faculty have made repeated unwanted passes at male underlings, e.g. In the situation above, a straight (white) male prof harassed a straight (white) male technician about his friendship with a straight (white) male prof, as a means of bullying. | Male | |
1992 | 1/3/2018 19:32:39 | FYI: My example is an outlier as it has to do with a colleague harassing me after I transitioned from male to female. I don't want to distract from the other stories but be a supplement to them by providing an example that likely has some parallel others with regard to the negative effect dealing with the harassment has had on me and my career. After earning tenure, I transitioned from male to female. What I experienced was sexual harassment in the form of purposeful mis-gendering of me by a colleague in my department. I kept trying to get him to stop by personal interventions as I had no desire to "out" myself to any more people at the university which would happen if I made a formal complaint. However after 5 years of it I finally filed a formal complaint. When I finally did make the complaint, an ally in the department remarked at how patient I had been with the perpetrator. This is when things got much worse. The dean, chair, and the Human Rights people did their best to address the complaint but the perpetrator stymied them as much as he could which was very stressful to me as his office was next to mine and we had to work in the same department during the investigation. The uncertainty of when the investigation would finish along with not knowing if it would be in my favor was extremely distracting. It was also very worrying as if he was found non-guilty then he would basically have carte blanche to keep doing what he had been doing. Things got much worse when the perpetrator appealed the decision of the human rights office investigation that he be removed from the department. The perpetrator hired a lawyer and I had to read extremely transphobic statements about me in their prepared rebuttal statement. The appeal was also drawn out with me now having to make a statement to the appeals board to defend myself. The worrying about the appeal being granted and my perpetrator being let back into my department caused even more distraction and depression. During the appeal process I learned the one of my colleagues (a woman full prof) was testifying on my perpetrator's behalf and that one of the appeals board members was obviously hostile to me. Eventually the original finding was upheld but I still lost due to all of the worry and distraction that caused major depression which also severely affected my professional efforts. | tenured associate professor (science) | colleague, another associate professor in my department | R2 | science | Human Rights Office investigation, followed by an appeal by perpetrator to a review board | removed from department but kept job | After receiving tenure I had set out on a new direction for my research. This on going harassment that became worse when I finally complained was distracting enough to derail those new research efforts. I now don't expect to be able to get promoted to full professor. This was in addition to fighting to have my health insurance cover my medical expenses associated with being transgender but that is another story. | Depression. | I've stayed at the institution but now I have much less in the way of research productivity (with some colleagues thinking I'm now a free-loader) and which has negatively affected my pay (through merit raises) and ability to ever get promoted to full professor. If I can I'll retire early. | The punch line is that even though my perpetrator was punished, I still was the biggest loser in all this. First the harassment, then the burden of dealing with the investigation, and then appeal to the findings of the investigation that found my accusations accurate cost me much time and energy, negatively affected my mental health, severely curtailed my research productivity, and ultimately negatively affected my career trajectory. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
1993 | 1/3/2018 20:11:08 | Where do I start? My first year at my program I was disrespected by most men in class. A man tried to debate whether or not a rape in a story counted as rape since the character didn't "say no or fight" enough. I was marked for going against him, he was a favorite. Another student from the same cohort tried to argue with me about women being too sensitive, and then later would walk into my office at various times during the day to ask if we were enemies. One professor would talk shit about his wife in class and how she didn't have a real degree because it was in Women's Studies. She made more money than him and was at a different University. A male professor sent porn to students, harassed several people I know, stalked them, sent them sexist youtube videos, slept with undergrads, among other things. Another professor was unbelievably racist and sexist, grabbed asses, touched women, talked about how his students were fat or sexually appealing, offered to have sex with people's wives in class, etc. I was not willing to work with one professor because I had been involved with his title IX case, our chair, a woman, told me to just "pretend nothing ever happened." He was promoted to director of my program after the case. | Graduate | Graduate Student, Professors | Other R1 | MFA | I participated in a title IX case against two professors. Both were cleared, one was promoted and gained tenure. I went through all appropriate channels and nothing happened. | Later on a profesor was fired after a new investigation was held. It came 20 years too late. | I left academia. I'm distrustful of academia. I was branded a trouble maker by my program and am probably blackballed. | I had a relapse of PTSD. I had to receive counseling and medication. My last semester I paid out of pocket and gave up my stipend and teaching just so I could avoid the environment. | Left academia, am more in debt then I would have been if I had been able to be comfortable in my environment. Did not apply for phd like I had wanted to. | Male | |||
1994 | 1/3/2018 21:09:03 | I am glad to report as a graduate student in the 90s that I had great female mentors and did not experience harassment directly. My friend, though, said that one of the senior professors in our department stared at her in his office and made her very uncomfortable. Sometime later, I asked this senior member to be on my Masters exam committee as he had knowledge of my field, and he was very harsh during the exam and made the other two (less senior female professors) feel that their input was less important. During their discussion after I left the room, he disclosed that he did not want me to continue in the program, even though I had done well and excelled at it (but I had written a paper that was subpar for one of his classes and never re-wrote it). I wound up feeling like a "dud" and not very smart for years, even though I was allowed to continue to the PhD level. I wound up getting stubborn and wanted a caring, smart person like me to succeed in academia. I am now a tenured professor, but I was very fragile during those graduate school days. | Masters level student | Senior faculty member | R2 | Literature | Never was reported. | none | I could have quit academia after this incident, but I continued on. | It lowered my self esteem, and I already was not very confident (common to women). | none--I continued the program but had doubts for years | I especially appreciate the strong female mentors I had and hope I bring hope and support to the students that I work with every day. | Male | ||
1995 | 1/3/2018 22:17:58 | From the perspective of my 20 year old brain, we spent a lot of time together, got along exceptionally well, and had a lot in common. I suppose there was flirting. I adored the attention. We spent one summer creating a unique database together for a new project, so spent 8 hour days in his office together sometimes. One day, he tried to kiss me. I leaned away uncomfortably, surprised, and he rushed out of the office. Later, he told me I made him feel so awful by pulling away that he vomited. I did not pull away the second time. We wound up in a relationship. Seventeen years and an incredible amount of institutional power separating us. Obviously I was mature enough to make these sorts of choices for myself, right? Any time there was conflict or, even worse, I contemplated ending it, I feared my graduate school and thus career prospects would be ruined. So I stayed for awhile. And at times, even believed I was happy about that. As a late 30-something assistant professor, the story is very different for me now. He clearly groomed me. He made himself the most important figure in my academic life as an undergraduate hoping to pursue a graduate degree. And he took advantage of that. The relationship was emotionally manipulative and abusive. And continued to be as such periodically for many years even after the relationship theoretically ended. Once we were done, he moved through a series of other undergraduate women over the course of several years. Eventually he married and had children with one. | I was an undergraduate. | Associate professor. He was my primary academic advisor, the instructor for most of the classes I took, my connection to the departments I considered for graduate school, my main letter writer for graduate school applications, and eventually a co-author. | Other R1 | University at Albany, SUNY | Political science | None - I think people suspected, or even knew, but no one ever challenged him or said anything to me. I did not report anything at the time. It was only a decade later that I actually started to talk about it. In hindsight, he used to complain often about people being nosy or in his business and wanting to move out of town for more privacy. I often wonder if it was associated with his "dating" habits. | None. His career has only improved since then. | On paper, none. I finished my PhD. Got a job at an R1 institution. | For many years I believed I did not earn my degree or other academic accomplishments as a result of my abilities. The relationship and the amount of influence he had during the earliest stages of my career robbed me of a sense of self confidence and independence. I feared I only advanced to where I was because I succumbed to his bed and not because I was bright, hard working, passionate. And I feared everyone else thought similarly. While it was going on, I felt isolated and defensive. He convinced me my friends and family simply did not understand when they criticized us. I believed him and distanced myself from those people. I was in somewhat constant fear of ruining my future if I disrupted the relationship in any way. | It is hard to say. I have struggled to own a new research project for many years. Much of what I did throughout graduate school was somehow, even if loosely, connected to that original project we began while I was an undergraduate. I feel disappointed in my chosen profession and in many of the people around me. | Male | ||
1996 | 1/3/2018 22:48:34 | I was a doc student in 2008 when my husband and I decided to have a baby. After I told my female adviser, she started introducing me at conferences as "my student who got knocked up". She also said this to her colleagues and during lab meetings with a dozen other research assistants present. During my pregnancy, she repeatedly sent me articles describing how being pregnant impaired memory with notes about her having to keep and eye on my work now that I wasn't going to be able to think anymore. After I had my child, she called me flaky (even though my performance had not changed) and told others that I'd been a great student until "I got knocked up" or until I had kids. A couple of years later, when we decided to have another baby, I didn't tell her in private because I was scared of her reaction. I announced it to her and the rest of the lab at a meeting and she growled and said, "oh my God, I'm going to shoot you." She laughed, but no one else did. Undergraduates in the lab approached me later and said they were proud of me and hoped they could be brave someday. I was shocked by their responses, actually. 2 years later, I defended and graduated and now am close to being tenured. I finished my PhD in 5 years despite her repeated harassment. I pushed through by completing my dissertation work in a different lab. My experience in the other lab was better, but my male mentor there did tell me when I was pregnant that he didn't know how I could decide to become a "breeder" when there were already too many people in the world. I'm not a fucking horse. | Doctoral student pre and post ABD | Female Assistant professor and dissertation committee chair; Male associate professor and dissertation committee member | Other R1 | Speech-language pathology | I was afraid that reporting would affect my graduation, so I didn't. I needed a job and wanted off EIC. | None known | Drastically reduced opportunities with potential collaborators that she introduced me to and kept my publications reduced. She sat on manuscripts for months saying she needed to edit for my "mommy brain". I'm scared and anxious with new colleagues for fear they'll behave in this way or think that I'm an inferior researcher if they find out how much my mentor sucked. | Moderate to strong. I'd been assaulted and harassed as a teenager and younger adult, so I wasn't as shocked as I might have been. I'm definitely afraid to work with new collaborators, though. | I'm a strong, angry advocate for students that are humans, including parents and folks that have life complications. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||
1997 | 1/3/2018 23:11:39 | I had only been at my new TT job for about a month. The Dean invited me to dinner (an all-male dinner). We had a few drinks. We had to walk through a hotel bar to retrieve our coats from the cloakroom. The Dean informed me that he "wouldn't fuck any of the women in this bar." | Assistant Professor | Dean/ Professor & the head of my unit | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Toronto | Because I had only been at my new job for a month, I didn't know where to report it and worried that reporting it could have negative consequences. After I learned that other colleagues were documenting similar incidents, I went to the faculty association to document it. | None. Years later, he was asked not to renew his contract as Dean for a number of reasons. He remains a full professor in my department. | None (so far) | Anxiety. I blame myself for not calling him out in the moment. But I didn't think fast enough and feared his reaction. | I avoid him. Because of other incidents from mostly male colleagues, I have become much more cautious about getting close to people at work. I pretty much just stick to being friends with other queer colleagues. | Male | |||
1998 | 1/3/2018 23:28:08 | February 2002 during the campus interview for my current job, where I was hired, and where I also subsequently earned tenure and promotion. The search committee chair picked me up from the airport and took me to dinner in town, where we had a friendly discussion about our common roots in California while he guzzled two beers, after which he brought me to my hotel. Rather than dropping me off (which would have seemed pretty normal), he escorted me to the check in desk, collected my room key for me, then took my suitcase from me and walked it to the elevator. This struck me as odd, but I assumed he would bid me good evening at the elevator door. Wrong. On the second floor, I practically had to run after him (he, still dragging my luggage), and thought surely he'd have to hand over my room key at the door... Wrong again. He entered my room, walked my bag over to the bedside table, and began scribbling something on the pad next to the bed: his phone number, in case I needed to reach him, he said. For what felt like an eternity, he stood there in the room looking at me in silence, until I stuck my arm straight out to shake his hand uncomfortably. I thanked him for his help, told him I'd see him in the morning. I remember thinking to myself: how do you remain courteous and professional and at the same time make it resolutely clear that this guy needs to clear out PRONTO? Nothing happened to me that night, and ultimately, I was offered the job. Still, I have no doubt this man behaved in a manner that was inappropriate. His demeanor for the rest of the interview was icy, and his behavior toward me as my colleague for the last 15 years has been distant at best, but more often downright uncollegial. | Fresh out of grad school and interviewing for my first tenure-track job | Tenured faculty chairing my hiring committee | R2 | [redacted]\ | French | N.A. | N.A. | It's hard to articulate exactly how this has impacted my career. I earned tenure and am mostly satisfied with my job, but this and subsequent events have doubtless affected my morale, though only on occasion. For example, this colleague, while serving as undergraduate advisor, actively helped a student file a complaint against me (it was unsubstantiated tripe and went nowhere, but what a slap in the face!). I inadvertently learned, on another occasion, that he passed off a verbatim copy of one of my course syllabi as his own, without ever mentioning it or asking my permission. And naturally, I will always wonder if his was the one dissenting voice on my tenure case (thankfully a non-issue). | See above. I didn't think my mental health had taken much of a blow until the Weinstein scandal broke, follwed by the more close to home allegations of sexual predation against minors by Roy Moore, who ran for Senate in Alabama. These stories resuscitated outrage (and fear) I had almost forgotten, and the scale of this type of abuse has made me even more terrified about preparing my two daughters for a world in which they are not always safe. | The way I now conceive of my job as both a teacher and a parent has doubtless been shaped by this experience. | Thank you for your important work! | Male | |
1999 | 1/3/2018 23:41:00 | (Married) male department chair placed arm around my back and hand on my waist. Commented on how svelt I was. This was in a departmental setting without witnesses. On another occasion off campus referred to me as "eye candy" (also nobody else around). | Tenured Associate Professor | My senior colleague and my department chair, in charge of annual evaluations and raise recommendations | R2 | NA | NA | NA | NA | Awareness of the ubiquity of this sort of behavior. I respected and liked this colleague very much (as a colleague), and so was never moved to make noise about it. However, I did resolve to speak with him directly about it if it ever happened again. Generally I just avoid being anywhere where we might be alone together. | Male | ||||
2000 | 1/4/2018 1:46:10 | Undergraduate and graduate students stalked by one male assistant professor. Graduate students coerced into relationships with a senior tenured professor. The latter was represented as a one time occurrence but was a pattern over years. | Professor | One more senior; one junior | Other R1 | NC State University | English | Discussions at Department level aimed at shutting down complaints in second case. Silence around the first case during tenure proceedings. Harasser was tenured. | Junior faculty member was eventually fired. Senior member remains in very powerful position. | Part of my decision to leave institution. | Corruption in education is depressing. | See above— left institution | Male | ||
2001 | 1/4/2018 6:18:28 | I complained to HR about my department chair but the HR person blamed me | Naive | HR employee | Other R1 | LSU | Social Sciences | HR blamed the victim and circled the wagons | None | Highly negative | Had to see a psychologist fat the time but not any longer | Withdrew from social interactions in my department as the only way to protect myself, set up a nice home office, and spend as little time on campus as possible | At that time I naively believed HR was there to protect LSU employees. But I learned that they're actually there to protect LSU and the harassers it puts into positions of power. A story in the local paper a few weeks ago brought it all back to me. Someone actually recorded their interview with HR and caught them on tape swearing at them. I wish I had recorded my interaction with HR. Not sure what I would have done with it other than share with my psychologist. The person whose recording made the paper was forced to retire and the HR person continues at LSU. | Female | |
2002 | 1/4/2018 7:02:13 | I was a research assistant working for a prof who I had had as a student and then he asked me to work for him. He was married. After work at the university, he started taking me out to pubs and places where his colleagues wouldn't frequent , like pool halls. I was so inexperienced that it was a mixture of awe for a mentor but also confusion and I felt I had no choice. Then it escalated into taking me to a motel where he wanted sex. As soon as the project was finished he told me I had to leave but would write a good reference for my graduate work. I thought it was a love affair. I heard from other grad students of his that he repeated this kind of behaviour. I was 20 years old. I left the country to do graduate work but when I came home and settled in my home town and applied for a job at that institution, he was high up in the department. I was never able to get a tenure track position there. I always wondered if his influence was a factor. | Just finished my undergraduate degree/research assistant. | Professor, mentor and employer | Small Liberal Arts College | Geography | none | none | It destroyed my faith in an institution that I once held in high regard. | Difficult to assess but I have become a community researcher, independent of an institution, and have increasingly come to see universities as embodying the same kind of patriarchal entitlement exerting their power over the more vulnerable as the professor. This has gone hand in hand with the funding for universities increasingly shifting to corporate partners. The public interest is no longer represented and these institutions lord it over women and resources. | Male | ||||
2003 | 1/4/2018 7:58:49 | In an interview for an Assistant Dean position, I wearing a suit jacket and skirt, the hiring Dean smirked, told me he was a "leg man" and patted me on my bare knee. | non-tenure track faculty | Dean who would be hiring for the open position | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Political Science | I did not report it - there were other Dean's there who witnessed it | none | none | minimal | none | Male | |||
2004 | 1/4/2018 10:28:39 | I was at an timber harvesting site in a remote rural location as part of a field lab for a course. I was the only woman in the class, the only woman at the harvest site, and likely the only women for miles around. At one point, a group of 5-6 students lined up and began to openly urinate along the edge of the clearing, about 20 feet in front of me. When I brought up the event with the professor, he basically said “boys will be boys.” It wasn’t until I kept pressing the issue, pointing out that the behavior was also incredibly unprofessional (we were invited to the site by a logging company and should have been on our best behavior) and that public urination is illegal, that he softened some. However, if anything was to be done about it, I was expected to come up with the solution myself. I left that interaction feeling belittled and invalidated. During my time in this particular program, the overwhelming majority of the male students (the number of females I could count on one hand), refused to talk to me, refused to make eye contact with me, walked away from me if I addressed them. Fortunately, I was never verbally or physically assaulted, but being treated as if you do not exist is emotional abuse. The other female students experienced the same treatment, and most have stories of harassment, abuse, and/or discrimination. | masters student | undergrad and graduate classmates | Other R1 | forestry | My self esteem took a huge blow from being in that program. As a masters student, I had other higher ed and professional experiences, but I am incredible concerned for the undergrad students (both male and female) for whom the program is their main frame of reference for how to navigate and exist as professionals in the world. | I ended up withdrawing from that particular course. I absolutely love the operations aspects of forestry, but have backed off that area of research. | Male | ||||||
2005 | 1/4/2018 11:07:47 | I was called into a room by the head of the FYC program/PhD program professor where I attended classes and taught and told that my social media profile photo was too sexy and that I was too much of a "babe" to teach. This person then touched my knee - and this was all behind a closed door. He was not necessarily my mentor, but he was most certainly my supervisor as a grad assistant and my professor. I was scared and didn't know how to react. I was afraid I would lose my job and lose my health insurance, and I was living 1000 miles from home and from my dad (who was dying at the time this harassment occurred) so needless to say I didn't know how to react. I told a female PhD program professor about it a couple of months after it happened and she seemed to understand, but did not provide me any support nor did she tell me that as an administrator of a different program within the same department, she was tasked per university policy to report him. She didn't report him, and she did not speak up when he ended up on my comps grading committee at the last minute. I failed my comps - something I blame on his participation in my grading, my dealing with the death of my father, my dealing with a department that did not support me after his death and did not care I was so bothered by what my harasser did and the fact that I just couldn't prepare as I should have with all that baggage. After telling a fellow student about this and avoiding my harasser as much as possible (e.g. not being in a room alone with him, not raising my hand in his class, seeking out the associate head of the program when I needed something), I reported him to the university's EOC. They told me I let too much time pass to file a formal complaint and that I should be lucky it wasn't as bad as other instances they knew about on campus. I then went to the Office of Faculty Affairs about it and was told I should learn to avoid him when I needed to be in the building. I became so anxious about coming to work and felt so depressed over the death of my father and how I felt alone in a city and at a university that had no interest in my success. I started to drink more and go out more - anything to take my mind off the environment I was in. I finally reported him to who I thought was my mentor and asked him not to tell anyone but to just help me overcome this issue. He took it upon himself to report it to the dept chair who then told my harasser I was causing a problem for him. When I asked why my name had to be brought up, the dept chair said while he didn't have to tell my harasser who was causing a problem for him, he felt it was the right thing to do so he could face his accuser. Of course this caused further hardship for me because it seemed as if they were protecting him, not supporting me. My mentor began referring to me by Ms. (my last name) instead of just my first name like he usually did. He sat with me and the female PhD professor I first told about the harassment for one hour one time under the guise because I asked them to please help me pass my comps, but when I let on how frustrated I was and got tears in my eyes, the female professor made a face, implied I had mental problems, and asked if I needed to leave the room to get myself together. I took my comps twice more and failed out of the program. I wrote a lengthy letter to the university president and received a response that said her office reached out to the dept and that a "counter-narrative emerged from those conversations, supported in some cases with rather compelling documentation. I have no doubt that you were sorely disappointed in your experience in the department and really do wish it had been otherwise. However, your failing out of the program was also very disappointing to those in the department who sincerely believe they attempted to work with and support you to the extent that they could. It was, in essence, a mutually disappointing experience for all concerned. I asked the department to think seriously about what they might have done differently to facilitate a more positive outcome. I ask you to do the same." Because I failed out of the program, I lost my job and my health insurance. I had to rely on the other adjunct teaching jobs I had to work to pay my bills and on unemployment for a while. I left teaching as soon as I found the first full-time job that hired me. I left my research interests behind, I left students behind, etc. That part was probably for the best. If what I experienced is what academia is, I don't belong there. And maybe I just didn't have what it takes to cut it in a PhD program - that I can accept. But it would've been nice to find that out based solely on my lack of success, not on being harassed, having to hide in hallways to avoid my harasser, being a part of a university that did not care about my success or my well-being and being in a culture that dismissed me and so fiercely protected my harasser. | PhD student and grad assistant | My supervisor and my professor | Other R1 | University of South Florida | English | I detailed it in my response, but to sum it up I was dismissed to say the least. | NONE | Left academia - never to return | I drank too much, I was anxious, I was depressed, I felt defeated, I felt alone, etc - one of the worst experiences I have ever had | It made me realize how blind I was going into the situation and believing I could trust professors to help me and the very least to not harass me. It has made me a stronger person in my current workplace, as I am now able to loudly call out things that are inappropriate, etc, but it took quite a journey to get here. I will never trust a supervisor again though - especially a man - and I will never get over the loss of my PhD and the pain of being so far from home and so far from my dying dad while facing this disgusting situation. | Male | ||
2006 | 1/4/2018 11:22:41 | When I was a graduate student, an older male assistant professor (who had recently been a fellow graduate student in our department) asked me to co-edit a volume of essays with him. As we started working on this, he wanted to skype and text and talk all the time- not just about the project. Before this we were sort of friends, but not close (did not hang out outside of school). I saw red flags, but I also wanted the publication. I let it go on way too long. When conversations got awkward, I just went along with it. He would call me belittling names, and I let him. I am so ashamed and embarrassed. As things escalated, I started to be honest and confront the situation. It devolved from there. Our meetings got worse-- he would cry, freak out, call me names. He started making decisions about the book behind my back, belittling me and my contributions. I tried to confide in one of the contributors (male, also a former graduate student from our program). He believed me, but did nothing. I ended up just walking away from the project and all the work I'd done, only to have him stalk me for a whole year after this. I now carry mace with me at our annual conference, and I'm always looking over my shoulder. I can't go to our department's reception, and I avoid walking around and going to other panels out of fear. | Graduate Student | Assistant Professor | Other R1 | Religious Studies | none | none | Fear/avoidance of conferences, didn't apply to jobs remotely near his city | I'm better now, but I was sick to my stomach for months. Lost weight. | I will NEVER collaborate with another male professor again. | Male | |||
2007 | 1/4/2018 14:23:17 | First year as a tenure-line Assistant Prof, a senior male colleague texted me almost every weekend to have beer with him and his male friends. I never accepted the invitation, and no other faculty member in the department received this invite. Second year as an Assistant Prof, the same male colleague began texting me various types of dick pics as well as Bristol Stool charts describing his bowel movements. Also during my second year, a female master's student came to see me during my office hours. Upon meeting with this male colleague to express her interest in pursuing a PhD, he asked her why she wanted a PhD and why she didn't just return to her home state to be someone's "bitch." The student was visibly shaken and looking for advice. She decided not to enter the PhD program at this university. During my third year, the senior male colleague videoed - unbeknownst to her - an inebriated female Assistant Professor kissing someone. The male colleague offered to send me the video, and I declined his offer. I believe he shared the video with other male colleagues. Since my third year, I have had resources removed from me, program administration assigned to me (really, dumped on me), and have had my merit pay negatively impacted. The new department chair, who is also male, is good friends with this particular colleague. Finally, I have had other colleagues approach me with concern about inappropriate language this male colleague has supposedly used in emails to female students. | Assistant Professor | Associate then Full Professor | Other R1 | located on East Coast | Never reported - way too scared about the impact on my career and/or ability to find another position | Promoted to Full | Without going into detail with university admin (I didn't want a Title IX investigation), I was able to get my tenure line moved to another department. This move was a 1.5 year-long process. However before the move happened, and perhaps unsurprisingly, my productivity dropped. I lived and worked in fear about what would be done to me and/or what would be taken from me. I considered resigning effective immediately. I also still avoid conferences this male colleague attends and buildings where he teaches. | Pretty much undermined my mental health. My self-confidence plummeted. I couldn't eat. Sleep became a luxury. I still see the therapist who diagnosed me with anxiety, situational depression, and PTSD. Although I still have triggers, I am doing much better now that I am in a different department. I can once again eat, sleep, and concentrate. | It's difficult for me to assess the impact on my trajectory as I am still pre-tenure. If this male colleague is voted onto the college-level tenure and promotion committee, then I fully expect him to try and subvert my tenure. | Male | |||
2008 | 1/4/2018 16:38:30 | I had a job interview for a tenure track position. My first after getting my PhD. The Chair took me out to lunch, had three scotches, put his hand up my skirt and laid it on my upper thigh under the table, gave it a squeeze, and asked me if I wanted the job. I was frozen and could only squeak out, yes. I experienced incest as a child and I think that early experience, along with cultural norms, made me unprepared for what happened at the job interview. I taught in a very male field (film history as well as film production, directing, camera) and men hated having a woman teach them. My male students constantly made films where women characters were raped, mutilated, and killed. Or films where they masterbated for the camera. They would project their films and then watch for my reaction. That, too, was sexual harassment. I got no support from the male faculty to help me deal with this classroom atmosphere. | I was an applicant for a tenure track job; then Assistant Professor. | He was the Chair of the department and a prominent scholar in the field. He has since died. | Other R1 | Temple University | Film | None. I never told anyone at the time. It was 1974; I was 25 years old and although a feminist there was no one to report this to and as one of two women hired for the first time in the department's history that year we were quite isolated. | Nothing happened to him. | I did get the job but left after one year. I was continually harassed, though not by the chair and not sexually. I was told as the newest and youngest faculty member I had to take the minutes at our weekly faculty meetings. Each week I wrote them up, mimeographed them out, and distributed them. And each week I received a copy back red-penciled with grammatical corrections. Anonymously. It was an atmosphere that made me feel inadequate and insecure and it drove me out. I left for an experimental college, where I taught for 3 years. That college had 50% women on the faculty and was politically progressive. In many ways I think being among the community of feminist women there "healed me." | I grew up in the working class and was the first in my family to go to college. I already felt insecure at the university and my experiences that first year only deepened those feelings. I left Temple believing I was inadequate and everyone could see that. | After three years teaching at the experimental college I was hired at one of the premiere universities in the US where I ultimately became a Professor, Department Chair, Dean and am now retired. My early experiences had a huge impact on my creative and scholarly work, which evolved to focus on women's lives, autobiography, and sexual trauma. Ironically, it was that creative and scholarly work that got me the position at the elite university. Once again, I was the first woman hired in the department's history. They needed one and I was it. But this time I had support from enough colleagues to thrive. | Male | ||
2009 | 1/4/2018 18:04:17 | In 2012, just as I was beginning to explore my options for graduate school, the Honors Program director took me under her wing, She presented herself as an academic mentor, and she also hired me as a teaching assistant and student office worker. Over three months, she began to schedule meetings over lunch and dinner, began to write handwritten letters sent to my home, and pursuing long text message exchanges. At first these were work-focused, but gradually she began expressing dissatisfaction in her marriage and making suggestive comments about me. Eventually, this escalated to direct, forward comments imagining a sexual relationship with me. When I tried to deflect these comments by explaining that I was gay, she began to push harder, trying to “convert” me, and pressuring me to divulge details of my love and sex life, explaining that she had an appreciation for homosexual erotica. On one occasion she demanded I bring some files to her home, and when I did, she forced me into her bedroom and would not let me leave until I sat down on the bed. When I demanded an end to contact, she threatened to out me and blamed me, claiming that she believed I had been leading her on. | Undergraduate student | Faculty of record for a class I was enrolled in, administrator for a program I participated in, and direct supervisor | R2 | English | My complaint was shuttled back and forth between multiple administrators in multiple divisions, forcing me to recount the harassment in a level of detail that re-traumatized me to administrators who had no business being involved in a Title IX complaint. When my complaint was finally referred to Human Resources, the Title IX deputy directly told me he did not believe me because I was a male student complaining about conduct by a female faculty member. I was denied access to campus mental health resources related to the trauma due to the ongoing complaint, and my request to be assigned to a different academic advisor was denied. I had to retain counsel and initiate civil legal proceedings before they offered an informal reconciliation procedure. | She was asked to resign her administrative role, and eventually she resigned her faculty appointment as well. She remains a prominent figure of the arts community in my hometown as the curator for an art museum in the area. | Once in graduate school, I experienced PTSD-related suspicion and fear of female mentors, which led to me requesting reassignment to a male thesis advisor. | As a direct result of the harassment, I experienced months of intense depression, which caused acute insomnia and 30 lbs of weight loss over three months. Her prying into my love life triggered a period of risky sexual behavior. The sense of hopelessness and loss of control resulting from the procedure for addressing my Title IX complaint made me contemplate self-harm. The fact that my sexual orientation was a pertinent fact in the case outed me to my family. | I nearly failed a full semester of classes, had to repeat two courses requiring an additional undergraduate year, and lost at least three potential references due to the adversarial nature of the Title IX complaint process. As a direct result of those grades, I was ineligible for departmental and Latin honors, and I was removed from two student leadership positions at the time. | Female | |||
2010 | 1/4/2018 18:17:47 | A group of grads went on a week field trip driving to Mexico with a professor, who was graduate director at that time, about a decade ago. Another prof co-led the field trip. When they came back from Mexico one who went revealed it had been a week of hell for her. He had arranged the hotel rooms so she had to sleep with him. He turned on the pay for porn. He slept naked. Incredible that he thought that that would work, but I guess that's how sexual predators think. He married one of the other grads, less than half his age, and they had a kid together. It's difficult to talk about and I was not even on the trip. | professor and grad director | Other R1 | LSU | HR is a joke here. | If anyone ever complained, I don't know about it. There were no consequences for him at all, if that's any indication. He was made Department Chair after that. He constantly flirted with female grads, faculty, and secretaries. He eventually left for another university only so his grad/wife could get a tenure track position. | It made me a lot more careful with people in positions of authority because it made me realize that sexual harassers like him get into positions of power, like graduate director and department chair, to force others to gratify them. He seemed to think everyone really wanted him, and all he needed to do was make them realize it. He always flirted with the line of what was acceptable behavior so he could deny any complaints. I hope the good work you and others are doing will quickly shift that line so far over that he and others are stopped cold. | Male | ||||||
2011 | 1/4/2018 18:33:58 | One of my female faculty members was physically assaulted. The perpetrator fled the country and was arrested after he returned. | Department Chair | Full Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Psychology | The dean, provost, and president tried firing the perpetrator. The faculty disciplinary committee delayed a meeting for 9 months, then held a meet with a 4 year old child screaming in the room. They felt the university was over reaching and they protected the individual. | Full salary while he was suspended during the investigation. He is still suspended pending a court date later this year. | Ask to resign as chair | Utterly destroyed | Considering leaving the academy | Male | |||
2012 | 1/4/2018 18:37:58 | An incoming professor sent me explicit messages via Facebook and offered a quid pro quo— he’d fly me out to a conference if I stayed with him in his hotel room. He was married. I found out he’d done this to other people, all with a very similar pattern of behaviors. His old institution was happy to see the creep go without needing to pursue some kind of action. He kept trying to get me to go out with him, and he kept sending me messages about sex. It made me so uncomfortable, but given his status (big time professor) and mine (an advanced PhD student at the time) I didn’t feel like I could just tell him off. | A PhD student about to defend | Tenured faculty member | Other R1 | Rutgers | Doesn’t feel safe to say. | I filed a complaint at the title ix office and gave them all the evidence. I mean, this was all happening via Facebook messenger! Another former student came forward, too. They decided that there had been no wrongdoing(!!!!!!!!!) | None. He has tenure, access to many women students, and a research account bigger than my salary. | Extremely stressful, humiliating, and the Rutgers response was enfuriating. I was on the job market at the time, which added to the stress of it all. | Thinking of changing my field. | Rutgers is notorious for this kind of garbage. | Male | ||
2013 | 1/4/2018 20:12:18 | Undergrad 2001) Lecturer in History of Science flirted and made inappropriate, sexual comments/propositions to me for perhaps the first month of class. Put his arm around my shoulders or my waist. When he was rejected, he then made me stand in front of the class to answer questions, berated my stupidity, assured me that my essays could not have been written by a woman, etc. This lasted for the remainder of the semester. The final was oral. Because I scheduled late, I knew that everyone else had a casual chat and that it was a pleasant experience. My final was entirely different. I went to his office and sat across from his desk; he then got up, shut the door, turned the lights off and trained a spotlight on my face. I told him that I expected to keep my A, but was not going to submit to any further humiliation. Then I ran. Undergrad 2002) Pinned against a wall and french-kissed by my graduate student supervisor. PhD Program ) My clinical supervisor (a well-known name in my eventual field) told me that I should no longer wear heels because I was too tall and he could not see my cleavage. Further, I should definitely switch to wearing shorter skirts instead of pants because my height would no longer pose a problem for him. There were many other comments like this that I tried to ignore. Postdoc) An attending physician repeatedly flirted; when I didn't respond, he switched to emails repeatedly propositioning me in graphic terms. I said that we were both married and that I was emphatically not interested--he told me not to be a child but eventually stopped when I threatened to report him to HR. | Undergrad x2 PhD level clinical practicum student Postdoctoral Fellow | PhD level staff lecturer PhD lab supervisor Clinical supervisor/program chair Coworker (but senior to me by several levels) | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | R1 x2, Med/Research x2 | Psychology | Undergrad 2001) I wrote down every incident and stapled them all to my end of semester evaluation--it was only later that I found out that many of my classmates corroborated many of the details in their evaluations as well. He was staff, applying for a tenure-track faculty position; he was summarily fired from the university, while I was (gently) chastised for not disclosing sooner. I told no one of any institutional importance about any of the others. When I was a doctoral student, I was concerned that reporting would destroy my career--and it nearly did anyway. | See above. | Undergrad 2001) I felt empowered by refusing to do the exam, and did receive the A that I'd had prior to the final. PhD Program) Because of his status, other programs/hospital systems discussed me with him when I was applying for internships. He ensured that I did not match with an internship site the following year (he was quite open about this with me), and I had to spend an extra year in graduate school. | PhD Program) I was understandably devastated and took Prozac for a brief period due to depressive symptoms. I was even more humiliated when multiple people expressed that they were not surprised that this had happened--apparently, he was well-known for this sort of thing. | PhD Program) I had to leave my home state and spouse to complete internship elsewhere. | Male | ||
2014 | 1/5/2018 6:02:58 | Male Chair made inappropriate sexual comments to undergrads and colleagues, ranging from talking about others' sex lives, commenting on faculty and student physiques, dirty jokes, inappropriate hugging, brushing up against student arms/elbows; was taken off of tenure line due to the above (after 3 Title IX reports); put back on tenure line pending good behavior two years later; granted tenure and promoted to full professor (without dept support for either); continued with bad behavior until several students reported to dept chair and then Title IX. He later "resigned" following investigation. | started as visiting professor and now tenured associate professor and chair of dept | started as associate professor and chair (without tenure), demoted from tenure line, put back on tenure line, given tenure and full promotion | Small Liberal Arts College | English | Events were reported by students and faculty multiple times to three female deans; taken off of tenure track line but then granted tenure later. perpetrator was spoken to, but behavior did not change. two provosts supported the perpetrator. Finally, he "resigned" though he stated to others he was forced out. Administration told those involved to keep quiet. | He is now has an administrative position at a larger university | Some administrators and faculty have treated me with disdain because I reported incidences reported to me by students. The faculty member knew that I had had students report to me and spread vicious rumors about me to other colleagues and administrators at the college. He also made it impossible for me to fully inhabit the role of Chair since my promotion followed his demotion. He took over many projects and refused to collaborate, taking much of the credit for work done by himself and others. Multiple individuals have defended him to me or stated that what happened to him as "unfair." | The faculty member created a toxic work environment. He bullied me through gossip and rumors once he knew that I knew. I think the institutional response (or refusal to take action for so long and refusal to discuss openly now), has been the most damaging. Those of us involved did not receive support and I still have had other faculty (including the chair of faculty) express their concern that we have lost such a "valuable" faculty member. | Male | ||||
2015 | 1/5/2018 7:31:42 | I consider this gender harassment rather than sexual harassment, but I thought I would still share: When I was in my doctoral program in clinical psychology I took a course on the Teaching of Psychology. In this course the professor told us - formally in class - that it was especially important for the women in the class to pay attention and become strong teachers because as we start our families we may want to take part-time community college or adjunct positions rather than top research or clinical positions. | Doctoral candidate | Full Professor | Other R1 | Psychology | None | None | None | I was (and still am) pretty mad about it, but I wouldn't say my mental health was impacted. | None | Male | |||
2016 | 1/5/2018 7:41:28 | I was an Associate Professor at the time of this event, but it was between two of our graduate students. The male grad student was taking photographs of the female graduate student under the table, up her skirt, repeatedly -- DURING CLASS. | The victim was a female grad student | The perpetrator was a male grad student | R2 | Psychology | The male student was reported, investigated, and terminated from the program. | He was terminated from our grad program. | Male | ||||||
2017 | 1/5/2018 7:46:09 | In the first day following my arrival at the college where I would teach. I had driven from my prior position to the new location and was to stay at the home of the department chair for one evening. He invited me to have a drink with him in his living room. While his wife was preparing dinner in the next room, he sat facing me with his legs bent in a crouching position, open wide, giving maximum exposure to his genital area. Yes, he was wearing pants, but this was very creepy and I never trusted him after that. | Newly arrived assistant professor | Professor and department chair | Small Liberal Arts College | Arts/Humanities | None -- but I didn't feel I could report this -- not in my first week on campus. | None. | None. | Somewhat negative, leading to a cynical attitude toward the department as a whole. | Made me very cautious about local men, given this person's mentality. I figured that the culture of the institution excused this kind of behavior. | No further comment. | Male | ||
2018 | 1/5/2018 7:53:36 | In the late 1990's, in my office on campus. The chair of a department that shares the building with my department came to my door and stood there, leering at me, giving a clear signal that he meant to block my access from my office. I told him that if he didn't leave, he'd call the campus police. Eventually, I picked up the phone and he turned and left. | I believe that this was within a year or so of my having gotten tenure. | A full professor with many years seniority over me. | Small Liberal Arts College | Arts/Humanities. | None. He was the best friend of the former chair of my department, and I feared retribution within the department if I reported the incident. I did have two female colleagues in the department, but they and the other male colleagues had shifting allegiances and could be hard to predict. I didn't really trust any of these colleagues. | Women within his own department came forward with a range of complaints. He was eventually dismissed. | None, except for the impact of cynicism on my own career aspirations (which could be measurable). | It elevated a cynicism which was already there, toward my institution. | Again, an enhanced level of cynicism which made me detach from the campus environment as much as possible. This is a sacrifice in a campus that is located in and dominates the social environment of a small town. | Male | |||
2019 | 1/5/2018 8:11:15 | I was the object of "wolf-whistling" in the middle of an undergraduate class I was teaching. | Assistant professor | Undergraduate(s) student(s). I only heard the whistle, did not see who did it. | Other R1 | Marketing | None | None | It made me more uncomfortable in the classroom. | Made me wonder if I did something wrong (I was just taking off my blazer as it was warm in the room). I felt embarrassed. And I felt let down by my institution when I reported the incident and nothing happened. | No sure. | There were other incidents that I don't wish to share in a public forum. | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | ||
2020 | 1/5/2018 13:11:56 | When I was a starting postdoc, a senior faculty member (male) agreed to lend me an expensive instrument. Then, he actually joined the trip (the experiment was to be done at another lab), which was super helpful. All good so far, except that on the drive, he kept playing Howard Stern's radio show, including the language, and kept telling very negative stories about his ex-wife (again, including language). Maybe he would have done it to a male postdoc too. Maybe a male postdoc would have commented more easily. In any case, not a pleasant experience at all. | postdoc | Tenured faculty member (much more senior than me) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Probably nothing, but 10 years later I still avoid him. | Male | ||||||||
2021 | 1/5/2018 13:24:28 | My academic mentor pressured me to date aand become sexually intimate with a professor friend of his and to double date with him and his student-wife. | Graduate student | My academic mentor | This would out him - I can’t | Asian Religion and Philosophy | None | None | I did not receive academic mentor ship or support | Added to my self doubts about being smart enough for academia | Did not pursue further degrees | The institution knew he dated and then married a student who was his student at the time. | Male | ||
2022 | 1/5/2018 13:39:37 | As a new employee at a research institute, I became friends with an older male IT staff member. I was eager to get to know people and thought this man was being genuine in his friendship. We went out to lunch a few times together and he would often come to my desk to chat. At some point during this time period, I noticed he was getting a creepy and he would continuously ask me out to lunch despite me turning him down everytime. One day, he came over to my desk and verbally commented on one of my facebook pictures of me in a bikini on the beach. He said "Nice pictureee...I want to see you like that." I was so uncomfortable, ignored him, and just continued working. I did not officially report him but I have told this story to most females in the office. I still have to see this person in the office on most days and I try to completely avoid him. He also stated at another time, "I told my wife about you." | New employee | Senior employee | Other Research Agency | Environmental sciences | none | Disgust every time I see this person. | Male | ||||||
2023 | 1/5/2018 18:16:24 | Chair of session where I was presenting emailed several times to tell me how wonderful my paper was. When I arrived at the conference, he inquired as to what hotel i was staying via email. I told him. He called in the evening and asked me to meet him at his hotel for drinks. He would pay for the cab. He hadn't even seen me. I refused, but I realized that I could never apply for a position at his institution and be seriously considered for a job. | Grad Student. In the job market. | Chair of session where I was presenting at national meeting. | Sociology | Nothing. | I didn't pursue anything to minimize any impact. | Male | |||||||
2024 | 1/5/2018 18:29:42 | Chair of my department would stalk me in the halls in the evening, approach me and laugh maniacally in my face. Words cannot express how horrifying it was. I would lock myself in my office and call a colleague to escort me to my car. This was only one thing he did to me. Others I have blocked out. | Untenured Asst. Professor | Chair of Department | Small Liberal Arts College | My pre-tenure evaluation was given to another senior faculty. In the college community I was blamed for not trying harder to get along with my chair. I was widely viewed as "uncollegial." | Nothing. He continues in his position as Department Chair 25 years later. One of his other victims discussed similar behavior with me many years later. | I left the school for another position. But, if I could not get another job, I was prepared to quit. | Depressed because I thought I had no choice but to leave my career. It was hard to find another job. It took four years. | I have never been able to fully trust anyone in a supervisory role over me again. His disdain for me came out of the blue, as I became a successful teacher and published a paper in a refereed journal. I am ever vigilant, always looking behind my back. | Male | ||||
2025 | 1/5/2018 18:55:32 | I was repeatedly abused by the department member (two females, I am male). | PhD student | Assistant professor & full professor | Other R1 | UNC-Chapel Hill | English | None (so far) | None (so far) | considering leaving program | it makes me furious that people (e.g., ***) act like men are always the perpetrators and never the victims | considering leaving the program | Female | ||
2026 | 1/6/2018 11:39:54 | In my third year of law school at the University of Michigan in the ‘84-‘85 school year, I went to a professor’s office for help. When I got there, he told me he had been waiting for me all semester. It was absolutely a sexual come on and I think I was so terrified, I can no longer remember the details. He never touched me but thereafter also made me feel uncomfortable in class. I honestly can no longer remember if it affected my grade but I remember feeling like I had absolutely no recourse and I never told anyone except my husband. | Third year law student | My professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Michigan | Law School | I never reported | As far as I can tell, my harasser has had a long and successful career on the UM law faculty. | The incident and my lack of ability to respond effectively haunts me today. I hope he never did anything worse young woman students after me. | Male | ||||
2027 | 1/6/2018 13:22:18 | I was a first year doctoral student, older (thirties), white, out lesbian, leftist, in a College of Education, Curriculum Studies. The advisor I was assigned was a well-respected leftist professor in his fifties, and the only male African American faculty member in my program. I had taken a class and crossed paths with him during a just-completed Master's program. He requested an advising meeting; we met in his office, and after a few minutes of chatting he asked me to close his door. I did, and when I re-seated myself he said, "I've always wanted to know, what do lesbians do? Sexually?" I was embarrassed and creeped out. I said something like, "I'm sure you know," and left the office quickly. I told another professor, also male, white, fifties-ish, who I was employed by as a graduate assistant. He brushed it off as just talk, nothing serious. I felt like I was being told to keep quiet. In addition, I did not want to be responsible for causing difficulty for one of the very few POC faculty in the department. I sent the advisor an email that I was choosing another advisor, giving no reason for the switch, and endeavored to never be alone with him again. | Doctoral student | Tenured full professor | Other R1 | Curriculum Studies | I was surprised at my feelings of shame after this incident; I told no other faculty or students at the time. It felt like a way-back machine to feelings I had after an incident with a high school teacher who asked me to show him my breasts when I was 15; I didn't tell anyone about that, either, and felt like I was a tainted, dirty person. The offending professor was well-liked at my university, and admired by those I admired in the field. He had produced work generally valued as important. I continued on in the program and loved most of it, but avoided this professor. | Male | |||||||
2028 | 1/6/2018 19:14:55 | One of my co-advisors began making sexual advances. He would call me to his office and spread his legs so I was caught in between them and would have to touch him if I wanted to leave. When I made it clear that I would not put up with it, he started punishing me academically. He gave me an F for a class without an explanation. When I confronted him about the F he sat next to me and touched my leg. I pushed him away and shouted at him. He then told me he was going to kick me out of the program and he did eventually. | Graduate Student | Professor of Middle Eastern History | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UCSD | History | The History Department was notified of the said professors behavior in 2016 and refused to do anything about it. My co-advisor who was aware of the situation on some level, blamed me for the situation. | He was once called to the Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination. I recently found a second victim of the said professor, but UCSD OPHD refused to look into the matter. | He managed to push me out of my PhD program. | Male | ||||
2029 | 1/6/2018 20:23:51 | I ran into a male student I'd had a class with the semester before in the elevator up to our department. Had a basic and brief chat with him on the ride up with nothing out of the ordinary happening. Passed him in the hallway again a few minutes later, and you know that awkward dance you do with people when you're trying to get out of each other's way, but end up failing (usually to both parties' chagrined amusement)? This happened, except that he was deliberately trying to block my path. I got by him by brushing up against the wall, but not before he took the opportunity to grab me as he went by, laughing. In the immediate aftermath, I felt awkward and embarrassed, which quickly gave way to rage. I would've liked to have slapped him or told him off, but in the moment, I was just too stunned and wanted to get by to wherever I was going. Just as well, he probably would have just laughed at me more. | Undergrad, 4th year | Undergrad, 4th year | York University | Political Science | none: I didn't report it | none | nothing noticeable | I thought about it for weeks afterward. Feeling powerless and humiliated, it lowered my self-esteem for a while, which I've had issues with for my entire life. I had stellar grades, but the incident made me feel degraded and like a piece of meat whose thoughts and opinions didn't actually matter. | It was one incident of several that have led to me being more guarded around men. | Male | |||
2030 | 1/6/2018 20:41:49 | I was a visiting instructor at a small liberal arts university in North Carolina when one of the guys in the IT department called me at home and invited me to a party. I was new to the area and didn't know anyone. He was married, so I assumed that the party included his wife and actual guests. It didn't. He told me that I had given off the "fuck" vibe at work and that I shouldn't laugh at his jokes at the office as it sent the "wrong message." I refused his advances and he then begged me not to tell anyone, especially not his wife. | I was between my MA and Ph.D. programs. I was a sabbatical replacement for the academic year. | Long-term, permanent member of the IT department | Other Type of School | Art History | None | None | None that I was aware of but perhaps I was lucky. | I was scared. I didn't know if he would continue to harass me at home and at work, or if he would leave me alone. | Male | ||||
2031 | 1/7/2018 4:57:18 | A colleague of mine sexually harassed me for years (e.g. "why dont you sit in the bitch seat of my Harley and be my bitch?", "how do you get Mardi Gras beads?", "I love riling you up just to get a reaction out of you", "Come with my to Belize on my grant and help me with research or whatever.") My department chair always dismissed these with a "He's a Texan" I finally complained to the office of equity and diversity and they found my perpetrator and my chair guilty. My chair immediately removed me from my director position. This was not seen as retaliation because it was pitched as part of departmental reshuffle. My perpetrator has been promoted to program steward. The university will not let me know what they will do to make me feel safe. Due to nightmares and feelings of insecurity on campus I am on FML for this academic year. All my new dean implies in his emails is, "Fix yourself and come back soon cos there are courses that need to be taught." | Assistant and Associate Professor | Perp Assistant and Associate (1 yr senior), chair - full professor | Other R1 | University of North Texas | Educational Psychology | Office of Equity and Diversity found them guilty, yet no visible actions have been taken | None (to my knowledge) | Possible impact on pay raise, I am on FML because I am unable to work on campus without feeling violated and unsafe | Sleeplessness, loss of security, nightmares, fear, anxiety, | I am looking for jobs elsewhere | Female | ||
2032 | 1/7/2018 5:31:12 | An unmarried prof in a graduate program at a large state university invited female grad students to come individually to his apartment for “a glass of wine” after the last class but before grades were turned in, for the alleged purpose of “informal discussion about how the student liked the class and suggestions to improve it.” No grade was turned in for unreasonably long time, holding up completion of requirement for advanced degree. Exasperated grad student felt she should not have to go to a professor’s apartment after class to get a grade, since all class work had been completed and graded already. Student eventually told her boy friend, who immediately contacted the department head and demanded the grade be posted to the transcript. The grade was then posted and there was no other response from the university. | candidate for advanced degree | Prof | Other R1 | University of Maryland | No response | Unknown | Unknown | None | Annoyed and angry, at the time | None | It is unknown if the prof’s process of luring vulnerable female students to his apartment and plying them with alcohol was for an improper purpose, or, simply for the benign purpose of learning how the prof could improve the class, etc. as stated. The suspicious factor was withholding the grade for a dubious requirement not on the syllabus. | Male | |
2033 | 1/7/2018 5:31:47 | An unmarried prof in a graduate program at a large state university invited female grad students to come individually to his apartment for “a glass of wine” after the last class but before grades were turned in, for the alleged purpose of “informal discussion about how the student liked the class and suggestions to improve it.” No grade was turned in for unreasonably long time, holding up completion of requirement for advanced degree. Exasperated grad student felt she should not have to go to a professor’s apartment after class to get a grade, since all class work had been completed and graded already. Student eventually told her boy friend, who immediately contacted the department head and demanded the grade be posted to the transcript. The grade was then posted and there was no other response from the university. | candidate for advanced degree | Prof | Other R1 | University of Maryland | No response | Unknown | Unknown | None | Annoyed and angry, at the time | None | It is unknown if the prof’s process of luring vulnerable female students to his apartment and plying them with alcohol was for an improper purpose, or, simply for the benign purpose of learning how the prof could improve the class, etc. as stated. The suspicious factor was withholding the grade for a dubious requirement not on the syllabus. | Male | |
2034 | 1/7/2018 5:32:19 | An unmarried prof in a graduate program at a large state university invited female grad students to come individually to his apartment for “a glass of wine” after the last class but before grades were turned in, for the alleged purpose of “informal discussion about how the student liked the class and suggestions to improve it.” No grade was turned in for unreasonably long time, holding up completion of requirement for advanced degree. Exasperated grad student felt she should not have to go to a professor’s apartment after class to get a grade, since all class work had been completed and graded already. Student eventually told her boy friend, who immediately contacted the department head and demanded the grade be posted to the transcript. The grade was then posted and there was no other response from the university. | candidate for advanced degree | Prof | Unknown | Unknown | None | Annoyed and angry, at the time | None | It is unknown if the prof’s process of luring vulnerable female students to his apartment and plying them with alcohol was for an improper purpose, or, simply for the benign purpose of learning how the prof could improve the class, etc. as stated. The suspicious factor was withholding the grade for a dubious requirement not on the syllabus. | |||||
2035 | 1/7/2018 7:14:43 | I had two male colleagues and editors of a literary journal published by the University graphically describe the “fisting” scene in Caligula over a “working lunch” in which they were interviewing me for an editorial position on the journal’s staff, presumably to make me uncomfortable as some sort of test of my potential “fit” on the editorial board. At another time, after they gave me the job, (presumably because I didn’t get up and walk out of that lunch or file a complaint about it) they joked about taking bets on how long I would last in Afghanistan as a reporter before I got raped. One of the two had fabricated press credentials (the other one assisted in this endeavor) so that he could travel there and bolster his CV by writing and publishing as a “war correspondent.” They bantered back and forth about the “over/under” of my potential rape until I managed to deflect the attention and redirect the conversation back to the literary journal we were supposed to be editing. | Adjunct instructor | Full time, non-Tenured instructors | R2 | English | None; I never reported it. | One is still employed by the institution, the other went back to get his PhD (he had an MFA in fiction at the time of the incident). | I switched universities | I live in fear of “bumping into” either person at local literary events, conferences, etc. | I would like to think I would stand up for myself and say something if this were to happen again, but I’m only a full time instructor on a yearly contract at my current position, and that likely means any sort of “drama” associated with me would result in a contract non-renewal. That’s how things go for untenured (and thereby expendable) labor. | Male | |||
2036 | 1/7/2018 10:31:33 | Inappropriate touching, by a prestigious senior professor. I was a doctoral student considering applying for a scholarship for which he was one of the decision-makers. I was making copies at the department at night, and he entered in the room and looked at the article I was copying. I mentioned my project, advisor support, and interest in applying for the said scholarship. He then abruptly reached into my blouse, where a long family necklace was lodged, and took it out, from in between my breasts. I was flabbergasted. I just remember saying it belonged to my grandparents, then disappeared and lost faith in the scholarship fairness process. Needless to say I gave up ever meeting with him again, even if there was a perfect match for my research. A second incident with another senior prestigious professor in the same department. I was working on a research paper in the field of this senior new hire, and was enthusiastic about his work. I was done with my classes, but would audit his classes, and come often to his office hours with questions, for more than a year. He was injured for months, and I was very sympathetic with his circumstances. As I made progress in my work, and by chance met his wife, he mostly wanted to discuss his personal life with me. I thought he was not ok then, but did not take it personally. Then, out of the blue, he asked me out, despite his marriage and my own committed relationship. I was profoundly disappointed - particularly given my interest in his field of research, and my expectations of his character. All the investment in intellectual interaction went to waste - no way I would be able to have him in my committee or to provide comments about my project. I then realized, through these 2 career demaging episodes, the additional pattern of disrespect going on with the few female faculty at the department, and that disrespect was a generalized practice then towards women professors in my profession. | Doctoral student | Senior professors at the department | Other R1 | An institution in Northeastern US | Philosophy | Did not report - did not feel safe to report | None | Despite having a strong cv and having received every other merit scholarships I applied for then, I was not able to compete for the obvious internal scholarship in my exact field as I was not able to be perceived as ‘cooperative’. This scholarship would have bought me crucial time for research; I lost a crucial interlocutor and committee member for my doctoral thesis and there was no more time for establishing other long term collaborations. I ended changing my work to fit the lack of support in this area. Also, no letter of recommendations for jobs could be asked for said senior professors in my field, and there was no time to establish other intellectual conversations with other professors - adversely affecting my career prospects. | I had to seek psychological support, which was very helpful, to not internalize the implicit social norms going on at the department, and for moving on. It affected me deeply, for it had shown how unfair the field is and what to expect for me and others in the years to come. It has affected me ever since. | Changed my thesis project, which changed my intellectual trajectory, an important aspect of my life choices. That creative work for which I had so much investment is lost. That identity in time is lost. Also, given how important the senior professor who touched me was, I had to give up attempts to participate at the time in a crucial academic community that was built around him, despite its perfect fit, which reduced then significantly my professional network. | Male | ||
2037 | 1/7/2018 10:51:10 | Medical school professors often showed, at the end of a slide show lecture, a playboy centerfold or two and made lewd comments. At that time there were only 12 women in a class of 100 med students. | Medical student | Professor of Medicine | Other Type of School | Physician | It was the late 70's. The attitude was "Women don't belong here!" | None | I graduated, completed residency, and opened a medical practice despite much intimidation | Much frustration and distrust of male professors, residents, etc | Avoided male fields like surgery | This was the tip of the iceberg. It carried on down. Male residents and interns routinely made lewd commments about attractive female students and jeered at those less attractive, often to their faces. When presenting a case to the chief resident one night on call, he jammed himself up against me, saying it helped him "to hear better." When I resisted, he later retaliated by blaming me unjustly for an incident in another case. He bragged that he'd made me cry. | Male | ||
2038 | 1/7/2018 14:05:47 | I was on a leadership committee for a scholars program. The managing faculty member had a graduate student assistant. The graduate student got my phone number from the committee list and proceeded to call and text me repeatedly, asking for a romantic relationship. I declined. He told me he would wait for me. I told him not to. He continued to text me and harass me in person. | Sophomore undergraduate | Graduate Student | Other R1 | The Ohio State University | School of Environment and Natural Resources | N/A | N/A | N/A | It was very distressing. I dreaded going to group meetings with him, and I had a lot of anxiety about the issue. | N/A | Male | ||
2039 | 1/7/2018 14:55:30 | At various department social events, other professors made lewd remarks about my wife and other women and daughters. At one party, when my wife was pregnant, she was told that pregnancy must agree with her because her breasts were filling out and looked sexy, and that I must be loving that. I was standing right there! Neither of us knew what to say. At another party, one of them looked my wife up and down from the back in a lewd manner while standing in line to get pot luck dishes and commented on what a sexy figure she has. Again, this is in front of me, so I don't know if that classifies as sexual harassment of her or of me, or of both. At another party, one of them came up behind someone else's tween daughter and pushed her into the pool and then remarked that she was beginning to look great in a wet T-shirt. When I got tenure and my daughters became a bit older we stopped going to social events like the Christmas party, crawfish boil, and so on out of disgust at this toxic department culture. And we didn't want to expose our daughters. I can't remember the last time I went to any department social event (or "total creep show," as my wife refers to them). | Tenure-Track Assistant Professor | Full Professors | Other R1 | Louisiana State University | Geography and Anthropology | I complained but nothing happened | None | A negative impact on promotion and merit raises | It's depressing having your family suffer sexual harassment, having the university do absolutely nothing about it, and seeing the perpetrators get away with it year after year as well as make decisions about your promotions and raises. | I and my family have withdrawn as much as possible from interacting with my department. I now keep my professional and social lives fairly separate. We still get together for dinner with other faulty, grads, and their families occasionally, but it's always in small groups where we can control who is there and make sure none of the creeps show up. | Male | ||
2040 | 1/8/2018 6:06:46 | In January 2017, I was participating in a meeting for a committee that I've been a member of since its inception. We had a new (interim) president who came to the meeting to discuss his ideas. When he entered the room, he went around the table introducing himself to everyone. He skipped over me. I'm not faculty - professional staff - so I'm unfortunately used to that. He came back around and stopped behind me. Before I had the chance to turn around, he placed his hands on my shoulders and started massaging them while talking to the other members of the committee. I froze. I had never met this man. There were faculty (all tenured) in the room, as well as law enforcement (who are part of the committee). Nobody said or did anything. I did not report it because he was the new president. He was essentially a political appointment brought in to drastically cut spending at the institution. He was very connected politically and despite the witnesses, I knew the only outcome would be my termination. I reported it to my boss (male), but he didn't do anything (or offer to do anything). | Professional staff | University president | R2 | Research ethics | None because I didn't report it. | None because I didn't report it. | Technically, nothing since I didn't report. I have to wonder if telling my boss has colored his opinion of me. | Self-worth and self-esteem have been very impacted. I feel very unheard and unsupported, particularly because of the faculty around the table who witnessed it and said nothing, as well as the lack of response from my supervisor. | I'm actively looking for something else. I also thought I would obtain my doctorate (it's a personal and professional goal), but given what I'm seeing happening to women in higher education, I don't think it's the right place for me. | I think one aspect of the problem that needs to be considered is the women who enable men to harass. By this, I mean the women who are willing to do anything to advance their careers, including protecting and supporting harassers, and persecuting the women who come forward (often behind the scenes so the victim isn't aware of forces working against her). This seems to be a serious issue on our campus, and I'm wondering how prevalent it is at other institutions. | Male | ||
2041 | 1/8/2018 6:34:34 | There is a senior white male scholar notorious for engaging in sexual harassment. He uses social media and conferences as well as offers of help (tenure letters, facilitating opportunities at journals and conferences) to try to start relationships with junior female scholars. I have witnessed him making a female graduate student sit on his lap at a conference off-site reception. I've heard from others about issues with graduate students. | Grad student and then assistant professor | Full professor | Other R1 | Sociology | Male | ||||||||
2042 | 1/8/2018 7:12:57 | Was told when I arrived at new job that a particular faculty member liked to "bully women"; saw him flame a junior female colleague, in her first semester, on an all-fac listserv; he wanted to get drinks before a department event, I said yes to try to be "collegial", but over drinks we got into a disagreement about something work related, and he ended up first standing over my chair, raising his voice at me in public to shut me down, then when I drove him back to campus on the way to the event he continued to yelled at and belittle me (while I was driving), culminating with him saying that if people shared my opinions I would be "raped in [my] own bed." I had to avoid him at future events because he would get drunk and suddenly his hand would be on my shoulder or arm or back. | junior (untenured, tenure-stream) | senior, tenured member of department | Small Liberal Arts College | Quinnipiac University | Chair of department removed me, at my request, from a program the harasser was directing | None | minimal | At the time, not insignificant | I doubled-down on my attempts to find a new job (which thankfully I did) | Male | |||
2043 | 1/8/2018 10:57:40 | 1981-1988 The technician in a lab where I was doing a research rotation became obsessed with me. He left notes in my mailbox, left gifts at my apartment, changed his running training schedule and location to match mine, left messages on my telephone answering machine. He stalked me for 7 years even though he lost his job, agreed in mediation to leave me alone, and was told by the police that what he was doing was illegal and a felony in North Carolina. I was on the verge of going to court for a restraining order when I got a job offer in a different state and moved away. He got my new phone number and address, sent a few letters and then telephoned. My (male) partner answered the phone and he hung up, then sent a letter telling me what had happened. I didn't hear from him again. | Graduate student and then postdoctoral fellow | Lab technician | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Duke University | Cell Biology | The PI (his boss) and department chair refused to do anything. I then went to the EEO office on campus (because the harasser was a university employee, not an academic). They wanted the harasser fired, but the PI allowed him to resign. | He was fired from his job at Duke. He did a PhD and is now on the faculty at the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy. | I left research and academia as soon as I found a job outside of academia. | This started when I was particularly vulnerable. Just before my first semester of grad school one of my best friends from high school was murdered by a former boyfriend because she tried to end the relationship. I was grieving and terrified (and still I persisted). When he started doing this because I had been friendly to him, I then isolated myself from the other graduate students in the department (most of whom were male). | I thought I was going to end up teaching biology to undergraduates. After this (and other less serious incidents), I couldn't get out of academia fast enough. | Male | ||
2044 | 1/8/2018 11:39:03 | I was applying for a job at a well known academic institution, my alma mater in fact. When I did not get the job, I was informed through a lunch meeting with a old classmate who is a fellow alum . When the meeting was over, he came to give me a hug and instead put his hand on my head, pulled me in for a kiss and stuck his tongue down my mouth. I protested and tried to stay away from his after that but ran into him at several alumni events where he did the same thing. I have stopped going to many alumni events, stopped applying for positions at my alma mater. | Job applicant | On the job search committee. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Design, Psychology an Engineering- Human Factors | Shock- and then told some of my friends. | None | withdrew to a lesser university where my skill set is more then needed and i am not able to work on my potential | Lowered self-esteem. Dont feel confidant at my alma mater. | Took less threatening job- not living up to my potential and I feel very bad about that. | This has happened to me in some form or another at least 2 other occasions. | Male | ||
2045 | 1/8/2018 11:39:16 | I signed up for an independent study after lack of enrollment cancelled an advanced class. The professor's office was in a locked facility (due to the presence of specialized equipment). He scheduled our meetings to be after the normal work day. No one else was around. No one could get in. He had a mini-fridge he kept stocked with beer and had always started drinking before I arrived. He pressured me to drink with him, pressured me to drink faster. I'd prepare questions about the material, he would tell me stories about past exploits with famous people in the field and make sexual innuendos about the one prominent female scientist, implying past relations with her. When I tried to redirect, or end the meeting, he would imply that only unintelligent or lazy people would want to talk about that or end the meeting so early. The first several meetings ran nearly three hours; he would finally let me go once it became obvious that I was never going to "relax". He would go pee in the sink of the adjoining wet lab space that was 30 feet away from his desk rather than end these meeting. There was a line of sight and could hear him relieve himself. I would finally be dismissed around 9:30 or 10 pm. The guy was a "genius" professor and I was some idiot graduate student. I minimized the number of meetings, read every book I could find on the topic, wrote a 15 page paper about the aspect of the technique that interested me the most, turned it in by the end of the semester and hoped the whole thing would go away. I made sure not another female student crossed the doorway of that facility for the entire time I was at that institute. | graduate student (pre-qualifying exam) | Tenured professor, widely considered to be a "genius" by other professors. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Physical chemistry (spectroscopy) | none (did not report) | None. FWIW, he's dead now. Liver failure. | He told me, other students and all the faculty that I was the least intelligent student he had ever taught in his whole career and gave me the lowest possible passing grade on the independent study. Excellent performance in other courses and high research productivity eventually neutralized his assessment, but the early reputation as an idiot hurt. I never said a thing. To anyone. | While I still had to interact with him (during that semester) I was full of self-loathing. Afterwards, I was ashamed. It wasn't until near the end of my PhD that I regained any confidence in my intellectual abilities. Sure, I could do the work (like a good technician), but I doubted that I understood any of the underlying physical framework that lies at the heart of the techniques that I used. | Hard to assess. | Male | |||
2046 | 1/8/2018 12:37:25 | Three years ago, my department head e-mailed a sexual joke to all the faculty in our department. The joke consisted of a picture of a construction sign that had a misspelling that made the sign have an unintended sexual meaning (in our department's foreign language). Translated, the sign read "Put yourself on two girls" instead of "Put yourself into two lines". He added his own commentary to the image in the subject line. Translated, it read: "Men have dreamed of it, this equipment department has done it [created this sign]". Then at our department meeting that week, this same department head asked the two women present (not the other male faculty) if they had gotten the joke. My female colleague insisted that she hadn't read the e-mail. I said that I had gotten it. My chair then asked me to explain the joke to the others in the room (including a student). I refused, stating that I felt it was not appropriate. | Adjunct, full-time | Tenured professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Foreign Languages | The dean had a "serious" conversation with the professor this past summer (after I brought up other incidents to the dean, and then finally included this one, which I had been so afraid to report, thinking it would lead to termination of the professor. I was very naive). | None that I know of. | This particular incident did not have any direct result on my career, but there were many other incidents of gender bias that were of great concern, and I know for a fact that the department chair stated that I was unqualified to teach advanced classes, despite my doctorate, my many presentations, and my active research agenda. It became obvious that my gender was a problem for this professor. I lost so much self-esteem due to the toxic atmosphere created by my department chair that I stopped presenting at conferences and submitting publications, judging myself to no longer be worthy of such activities. Now that my department chair is aware that I spoke to the dean, he ignores my existence and seems to be completely checked out from our department. I avoid him at all costs, but do not understand why I am made to feel like I did something wrong, especially since nothing happened to him. | I cried in my car after the meeting, as I had done many times after inappropriate remarks or situations. The toxic atmosphere created by my chair had a deep impact on my academic self esteem, which I didn't realize for a long time. I had felt quite happy to be a full-time adjunct, even after I started being "adjunctified" , my little term for being made to feel "less than" by others in academic departments or institutions (not being allowed to attend faculty meetings at one institution, being addressed in the third person and summarily dismissed from conversations at a large public university, being treated as less important adjunct compared to other positions that included a search...). Being an adjunct was hard enough, but sexual harassment and gender bias on top of this were overwhelming. I also became physically afraid of my department chair after seeing him lash out at another tenured professor over a very simple matter to the point that I thought he was going to hit the other professor (the entire ghastly fight witnessed by another student and taking place during a search interview, no less). I was supposed to present a paper at a conference, and I found myself unable to finish the paper, but I didn't understand why for a long time, because I've never had any problem finishing my work, even when I was dealing with difficult personalities in my work life. But this was different. This treatment hit me at my core, particularly since I am a survivor of rape. Thankfully I already had a good therapist, and I was able to work through this experience with her and figure out next steps. I have never experienced such a profound loss of faith in someone as the moment when I realized that my chair's inappropriate behavior was connected to his opinion of my career potential. I had always thought that people could say silly things but still act correctly. I now realize that often what people say is tied directly to how they act. | While I still love teaching, I plan on leaving academia and changing careers if I do not get a permanent position in the next few years. I have lost all respect for academia and the ability of administrations to do anything but maintain the status quo. | Sexist jokes are not benign. Do not dismiss them. If someone is willing to make a sexist joke, they are not going to be someone who advances the career of women. People who really respect women in academia and want them to achieve their potential will support them in a myriad of ways. My department chair did not show any support for female academics and went out of his way to make their work life uncomfortable for them, losing his temper and yelling at people in meetings or one-on-one, making inappropriate remarks about women, on top of seeming fairly disconnected and burn-out from his job. Time's up. | Male | ||
2047 | 1/8/2018 12:46:27 | Among the more minor things such as having my appearance commented on regularly and having male colleagues come into my office without knocking when the door is closed and so on, I have been asked out repeatedly by professors whose courses I was taking as a grad student, asked out repeatedly senior colleagues, groped by a senior male colleague/administrator, received sexually explicit and unsolicited emails from senior male colleagues, been called to an administrator's office because one of these colleagues wanted to understand why I was "besmirching his name" even though I hadn't said a word about his behavior, and I have been intimidated in person and via email by perpetrators so that I would not go public about these incidents. | Grad Student; Assistant Professor | Professor when I was a student or senior colleague while I am a | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | English | None | I am a high-performing academic but I dread going to work every day, attempt to minimize all contact with most male faculty in my department. | Anxiety; In therapy currently to develop healthier responses to harassment. | Grad Student at Ivy League, Assistant Prof at R1. Thank you for doing this: it's harrowing but so important. | Male | ||||
2048 | 1/8/2018 14:03:52 | This happened when I was still a graduate student. I was asked by my advisor to help host a visiting scholar from a university outside the U.S. After some conversation, that visiting scholar mentioned that there was a postdoc available at his university. I was still in the my second year of graduate school, but I asked about the postdoc, such as what is its title and how would I apply? That person verbatim told me, "you get to know me". I did not say anything. Afterwards, he kept leaving me notes on my apartment door and asking me to hang out with him. I declined and avoided answering the door. Years later, I saw him again at a small conference. I had just made it public that I was engaged. That scholar's vibe became weird (because I was engaged?) and he left the conference early but right before leaving, he grabbed and kissed me. (I never did apply for that postdoc). | Ph.D candidate | Senior Tenured Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Anthropology | Nothing directly happened to this person related to his words and actions towards me, but later I learned he either lost or left his position related to other reports of sexual misconduct. | I lost a lot of confidence in myself at first. For years, I felt an imposter syndrome that has been difficult to shake. I also felt that I could not trust people to talk about it, and wondered if people would think I was making a big deal out nothing or that I had courted such advances since I agreed to hang out with this person socially. | I did not even think of applying for the postdoc that person suggested, and would have thought twice about applying to anything in that person's institution or even city. | Male | |||||
2049 | 1/8/2018 15:30:04 | This was just the worst of, and by, many. The year was mid-2000s. I had known this person for several years during and after graduate school. I drove him home one night after dinner, he invited me to get a book, and once in his apartment, began trying to kiss me. This was a complete shock; he'd never pulled anything like this with me. I pushed him away several times on my way to the door. However, before I reached the door, he was able to grab me and hold me down long enough to shove his hand down the back of my skirt and under my tights to shove a finger up my ass. | Fixed-term (contingent) faculty | Chair of a different department | R2 | Portland State University | Interdisciplinary | Have never told anyone. | I can't exactly say because, until now and reading your blog post, I did my best to forget it happened. I fell into something like the 'missing stair' mindset: I was able to get out before he became more violent. | Related to career impact, I processed it on my own. More than a decade later, it is still humiliating. | In hindsight, I see how it still negatively impacts my confidence. | Thank you for the chance to put this information someplace. | Male | ||
2050 | 1/8/2018 15:46:13 | In the first year I went on the job market, still ABD, my dissertation director sexually propositioned me, out of the blue and while his wife was out-of-town. I turned him down. Decided not to report after talking to another faculty member (a woman), who said, "this happens all the time," and, "can't you just work with him"? | PHD candidate | full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Italian | I did not report (if I had a do-over, I would, though ) | na | I left academia | Quite severe; his proposition shook my confidence in my work, everything I thought I had accomplished. It was at such a late stage, I couldn't see my way to changing directors, and how do you explain that on the job market? I felt very trapped. Struggled on the market for a while, with a lack of support from the same director. Was pretty seriously depressed for three or four years. Eventually built a new career, for which I am grateful. Now, looking back, that was a very black time. I would do anything to help and save others from a similar situation. | Left the career I'd spent more than a decade of my life preparing for. | Male | ||
2051 | 1/8/2018 20:06:08 | I was repeated asked by a male faculty colleague to share a hotel room with him at a professional conference. | Associate Professor un-tenured | Program Co-ordinator, Associate Professor, Tenured | Regional Teaching College | Business | Change jobs | Stressful | none | Male | |||||
2052 | 1/8/2018 21:04:40 | Rape | New grad student | Advanced grad student | Other R1 | English | None | None (he got a solid tenure-track job) | Switched fields to avoid the rapist. | Long-term trauma | Trajectory currently uncertain | Male victim | Male | ||
2053 | 1/8/2018 22:42:07 | Pervasive and persistent harassment that led to me leave a tenure track job during the recession. There were so many incidents that it would be impossible to list them all. This person smacked a female faculty member on the behind and told her "congratulations bitch" for completing her online sexual harassment training, he would call female students bitches in class and at dept. functions, he mocked a female student for her weight in front of a large group of students, he pressured at least one female student into sexual acts (I believe she wasn't the only one), constant belittling, bullying and intimidation including screaming and physically threatening me when I tried to discuss his treatment of female students, a sudden vengeful turn in my tenure reviews when this person was added to my committee, requiring me to change offices every year, plopping himself down in my office and telling me about how he cheated on his wife, gas-lighting me, etc. etc., etc. | Assistant Professor | Dept. Chair | Regional Teaching College | There was no official or unofficial response to the harassment, not even a follow up with me after I complained about his behavior. | I was too afraid to report everything, but what I did report resulted in him being pressured to step down as Chair, but then the personal harassment got worse. There were no further consequences for him. | I have not been able to land anything full-time since I left; I can't exactly put why I left in my cover letters, and I'm sure committees wonder. | Extreme stress that led to physical health issues. At the time I left I was very traumatized and unable to think clearly; I just wanted to get out no matter the cost financially or to my career. I also lost a lot of money selling my house which led to substantial debt that I'm still trying to pay off which has in turn led to more stress (it was a small town so staying wasn't an option). | What had been a very promising career track took a very serious hit. I've only been able to piece together part-time work since I left, and I've been seriously underemployed working low wage part-time jobs. | I ask that anyone on a Search Committee to please give an applicant the benefit of the doubt when you see a sudden departure, and understand that a sudden departure from a TT job isn't always a result of something the candidate did or poor performance/progress toward tenure. The golden rule for applicants is to never bad mouth your former institution; and there is just no polite way to say I endured unbelievable sexual harassment, and if you only knew the details you'd understand why I had no choice but to leave. I didn't report everything at the time out of a fear of ending my career, but apparently I did just that by not fighting harder. | Male | |||
2054 | 1/9/2018 0:18:24 | Grad school; a star professor clearly and persistently hitting on/ flirting with another (female) classmate. This caused a great deal of difficulty in the class, because the rest of us felt that she was getting special treatment because she was pretty. We were inclined to blame her for being flirtatious. At the same time she was very disturbed by it and made a point of not being alone with him. This (married) prof had a reputation for hitting on female students but always "waited to be asked"; was rumoured to have had several affairs with students (his wife had been a former student, but also others, both before and after my time). This introduced sexual competition into an environment in which we should have been judged for intellectual activity only. He also had a favourite undergraduate student, admittedly brilliant, who spent hours alone in his office with him and flaunted this to everyone else; again causing other students to feel as if we had to compete for his attention through sexual attractions rather than through intellectual prowess. And this element of sexual competition introduced rivalry where it should not have been. So, for example, I didn't like either of these students simply because they got his (sexualized) attention. This should not have been an issue. They were not the problem. He was the problem. And here I want to mention an issue that I'm not sure if others have mentioned. Partly because I knew he was "available", I had a huge crush on him. I did nothing about it, and avoided him as much as I could because I was ashamed of how I felt. It felt like my fault; that I was the one was sexualizing the environment by having a crush on him. And I think that female students, in particular, tend to often have crushes on male profs; and it is the prof's job - because he's the one with the power - to downplay that, ignore it, and desexualize the environment as much as they can (which, obviously, he didn't.) But I felt as if I was to blame. And I was jealous as hell of the students he was paying that kind of attention to. Was I not pretty enough? Was I not smart enough? This complicated grad school. And I should say: this paragraph was hard to write. I am still ashamed of myself and still blame myself. Perhaps rightly. I finished my degree 25 years ago. | grad student | full professor, and my advisor. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | would be too identifying | Classics | At one point (before my time - he was a serial offender) efforts had been made to discipline him, but nothing happened. He never became chair, however. | Never became chair. Acquired every other possible honour, however, and probably didn't want to be chair. | None. He was a good advisor to me personally. The grad student he was hitting on left the program and went elsewhere to finish, and cited his behaviour as the primary reason. | Self-doubt. Hard to say if I would have felt the same anyway. I mean, I had huge self-doubt problems in grad school. As does every female grad student I have ever met. | I didn't finish the PhD until I left the city, and produced the whole thing while living elsewhere and sending it in, chapter by chapter, by email. However, got a job (this was back in the day when there still were jobs) and got on with my life. So, probably none. | Male | ||
2055 | 1/9/2018 7:18:41 | A senior co-worker pressured me to date him | I was a research assistant | He was a tenured faculty member | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Harvard University | Ecology | Human resources told him to leave me alone | Unknown | I have completely avoided the sub-discipline he worked in because of this. | It undermined my personal and professional self-confidence. | The only positive part is that this has made me a fierce protector of and advocate for other young women in ecology. | Male | ||
2056 | 1/9/2018 7:41:44 | Mine is a 1990 hostile environment case: a pattern of animus and obstruction of degree completion that I--but not a similarly-situated male colleague--experienced. The male colleague and I had nearly identical committees (including the same dissertation chair) and were at the same stage, i.e., ready for defense and graduation. One of our reading committee members, TL, withheld his signature so that I could not set a final defense date and insisted on reviewing my statistical analyses in detail; however, TL allowed the male colleague to set a defense date (August 3) with no prior review of his statistical analyses. During June-July 1990, I endured four 2-3 hour meetings with TL reviewing statistical printouts (at one point, taking a phone call and asking the [unknown] caller whether they thought my analysis strategy was "stupid"). TL demanded that I conduct analysis and put them in the dissertation; then at the next meeting, he'd insist I take them out. Another committee member (CL) who held a joint appointment in the statistics department had no concerns with either my analysis strategy or findings. I reached a breaking point in late July, when another faculty member intervened with my dissertation chair, who evidently talked TL into allowing me to set a defense date. The defense date (August 16) required me to change my travel plans (I'd accepted a job 2300 miles away and was flying out to begin teaching in late August). My defense ran nearly three hours (most other students' defenses were less than two hours), and when the committee called me back into the room, TL said (twice) "Congratulations, Dr. [name of male colleague]." TL demanded additional changes that required me to register and pay for fall quarter tuition, and when I sent them he delayed reviewing the final document so long that I feared I'd have to fly back for a second defense (the university required another defense if the final document was submitted after more than 60 days). In the end, it cost me $1500+, a gigantic hit to my self-esteem, and an incredibly stressful start to my new job. About 6-7 years later, he pulled the same routine with another female student who asked him to chair her committee. She documented every nasty comment and discriminatory action, and he was eventually removed as her chair. | Graduate student | Associate professor; dissertation reading committee member with absolute power over my progress | Other R1 | University of Washington | Management | None. I never reported it or pursued any form of redress, as I feared I would not be believed and/or would be labeled as overly sensitive. | None--he went on to edit one of our major journals and became president of one of our major professional associations | It delayed my ability to prepare to teach 2 (new) courses and made it difficult to work on papers based on the dissertation (due to anger). I ended up buying out of two courses pre-tenure to make up for lost time. Fortunately, I did get tenure and was later considered for a tenure-track position at my alma mater. Not surprisingly, TL blackballed my application--he told others that he had serious concerns about my "ethical standards." | At the time, I fell into a state of learned helplessness from which it was difficult to recover. The most damaging impact was a gigantic and long-lasting hit to my professional self-confidence. | I would not submit my work to the journal he edited while he held that position, as I did not trust him to give my work any sort of fair consideration. | I have a 5-page chronology, prepared at the time, that includes all dates and details. I found it this weekend, and have been wondering what to do with the strong feelings it stirred up. It feels incredibly unfair that I suffered so much and for so long, and that he was able to get away with treating me so poorly. | Male | |
2057 | 1/9/2018 8:33:48 | A tenured philosophy professor (Ethics) at my school flirted with me online, then raped me in his office | Student | Professor - though neither mine nor in my department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | The College of William and Mary | Interdisciplinary Studies | I did not report the incident to the school because I felt, at the time, that the incident had not been violent | As far as I know, he's still a professor | I dropped out of college | I tried to kill myself | That's...complicated, but I'm doing better now | Male | ||
2058 | 1/9/2018 8:45:15 | I went out to celebrate a friends birthday and ran into my organic chemistry lab instructor, who was a graduate student at the time. He bought me and my friends drinks and hung out with us the entire night. One of my friends drank too much, and he offered to help get her home. When we got back to her apartment, I almost immediately fell asleep on a blow-up mattress in the living room. The next morning, I woke up to someone brushing his hand up and down the side of my body. It was my instructor. He called me several times a day for a week or so, asking me out. Each time I let the call go to voicemail. Other than with my friends in the apartment, I have never spoken about this incident because I've been incredibly ashamed and embarrassed, thinking that may be it was something I did that let him think it was okay to lay down next to me. Now I'm aware enough that this was not my fault. | Undergraduate | Graduate Instructor | R2 | STEM | Deep feelings of shame. | Male | |||||||
2059 | 1/9/2018 9:09:46 | Me and fellow students often got remarks on our physical characteristics, often got stared by male professors. | It happened when I was in undergrad and during my master | professor | Other Type of School | University of Venice, Ca' Foscari | Asian Languages and Culture | I decided not to pursue a PhD there | I had to change country and continente and radically change my life. Clearly it was not only because of the harassment, but I just didn't want to stay in Italy anymore and this terribly patriarchal culture was one of the big reasons behind my choice. | I wanted to tell my experience even if I don't have a specific episode of harassment. It was mostly that during my undergrad and master it was common for male professors to do inappropriate comments to female students. I was in Italy where the patriarchal culture is so spread that I did not even realize that I was being harassed. I was told putting short skits meant being stared at by professors and I did not question or report any accident. Unsurprisingly, I did not work well with any male professor and they did not value me as potential PhD student very much. Most of tenured professors were male. I moved to the US and my eyes opened to new perspectives. I understood that looking back my undergrad experience was totally unacceptable. Now talking with Italian colleagues I'm told that it is common for male and female professors to be extremely misogynistic and homophobic. I know your survey is focused on the US but I feel it is important to talk about what happens in countries that have less gender equality, | Male | ||||
2060 | 1/9/2018 11:25:58 | December 1990. I had graduated from my B.A. in French, and was in France for a year. My advisor invited me to meet him and his wife for coffee one evening. Because I had babysat their two children through my undergraduate studies, I thought it was a lovely gesture, and agreed to meet them. The venue changed from a coffee house to a bar--again, not a problem, because I knew them well. I arrived, and my advisor was in his car smoking a joint, and beckoned to me to get in the car with him. He said that his wife couldn't make it, and asked if I wanted to go see a particularly gawdy Christmas light display with him nearby. He started the car, and drove toward it, then parked. He grabbed my hand and shoved it between his legs, and pulled me close. I was so stunned, I didn't know what to do, but pulled away while he told me of his stress getting tenure, then having terrible reviews from his graduate students the semester before. He kept talking, then drove back to the bar. We went inside, and I tried to act as though nothing was strange, then left quickly after finishing a beer. I was upset, but thought he was high and would forget about a lapse in judgement. I did go to graduate school, and was forced to take a sparsely attended rhetoric class that he was teaching, because ***'s class was full. It was a topic I loved, but throughout the class, my professor continued to harass me, suggesting first that my paper was brilliant (but only gave me a B+), and offered to help me in his library carrel. I didn't go. He gave me information about a conference, and told me that I should submit a paper there. I hesitated, and he called me one night, asking me if I was going, so he would be sure to go, too. I didn't submit a proposal--even though it would have been a great opportunity for a first semester master's student. I avoided him for the rest of my studies, and did well. I was given a paid position assisting the editor of a major journal, and the graduate advisor asked me to stay for my PhD. Unfortunately, my professor presented a question on my master's exam that I could never have anticipated--it had nothing to do with my studies, and did not allow me to demonstrate what I did know, and so far from what other students were given that I was blown away. I knew a little--it was related to a French psychologist--and tried to answer, but was absolutely devastated, and sat in the exam sobbing for two hours before trying to write--about two pages, actually--then leaving. All the events in the car, and for that semester, came back to me, and I realized that he wanted me gone. In my orals, the department head sat beside me, and reassured me as I talked about the other questions. The question from my harasser did not come up once, and I tried to mention it (had become nearly an expert by the time of those exams!), but the committee kept switching the topic, and then said that the question was "unusual". The harassing professor did not say much at all that day, which was very unlike him. The following week, the graduate advisor told me that he was ashamed of my written exam, and told me that I was not allowed to return. I did, however, pass my master's exam. I really felt that they wanted to get rid of me quickly and quietly. I am incredibly grateful, in particular, to one professor, who believed me. He was excluded from my exam process because they scheduled the exam while he was on an extended trip to Brazil. He told me that he felt this had been intentional. He was extremely well regarded (***'s biographer, among other things), so it meant a lot to me that he tried to help me. | just finished undergrad, was offered opportunity to attend grad school | my undergraduate advisor, later on my M.A. exam committee and a teacher; I babysat for his family, as well. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Washington University | French | none: told me that I was too vulnerable, and gave me my M.A., but did not allow me to pursue a Ph.D. after grooming me for it up to my exam. I did not tell them specifically about the harassment, but three professors told me that they knew | none, now professor emeritus after a long and fruitful career | I left my program, and went to a lesser college, changed fields slightly (to comparative literature), and never finished. I went from being a highly regarded rising star to a trouble-maker, at best. | My mother, in particular, begged me not to report the abuse, and it destroyed my relationship with her, and with my brother and boyfriend, as well. I got in a car and moved away abruptly--never returned, either. I married a former fellow grad student. It was a mistake, and my husband was abusive. Immediately after the harassment, I was devastated, could find no meaning in anything, had lost my dream. In many ways, this has persisted throughout my entire career, and I never achieved the success I had hoped to find. I lost other mentors, many recommendations, and I trusted very few people. I also lost my love for literature for some time, though it did return in time. I have often been anxious and depressed as a result of what happened. | I mentioned this above, as I ended up marrying someone whom I never would have considered, simply because he seemed at first to believe me and back me up. I never achieved what I had hoped, and felt often crushed by a big secret, and by my disappointment in not having more support. | Male | ||
2061 | 1/9/2018 12:57:22 | I was a postdoc in a genetics lab. Two male graduate students would frequently berate the female undergraduate students for things like their weight and relationships. One of the undergraduates remained in the lab after her graduation. The professor who ran the lab and she were involved in an inappropriate relationship, and the woman was fired, apparently when the professor's wife found out about the relationship. The incident was not common knowledge, but was known to another female graduate student in the lab whose was close friends with the woman. I found out when the professor himself confessed to me a few years later. He justified his behavior because he said I knew he was not treated well at home by his wife. | I was a postdoc in the lab. | Tenured professor, my postdoc advisor. | Other R1 | Rutgers-New Brunswick | Genetics | I filed a complaint with the Office of Employment Equity, and, although they concluded that the professor was guilty of nepotism (for which they did not provide any consequences), they concluded that the harassment did not occur because the professor denied it. | None whatsoever. | My advisor fired me (chose "not to renew my contract"). I have left science, partly due to the fact that it is difficult to get a job without a letter of reference from your postdoc advisor. | This was very traumatic, and it is still difficult for me to fully trust the motives of people in positions of power. The way that Rutgers dealt with the situation made me feel completely powerless. | Male | |||
2062 | 1/9/2018 14:38:24 | After becoming his research assistant during my first semester of grad school I found out that he had a lengthy reputation for propositioning female grad students. I had already noticed some odd behaviors: he often closed the door (or asked me to close it) if I was working in the office with him but left the door open if he was working alone; he frequently had the lights off when I worked with him as well. I would turn the lights on whenever I entered (he never said anything and I hoped it established a boundary). He frequently invited me to "see his house" after work. I'd always respond by saying that I'd check to see if my then-boyfriend, now husband, was free to join us. He would quickly change the subject. He had also published an autobiography of sorts, which he suggested I read. In it he recounted some of his past sexual escapades, which was quite uncomfortable. It's been 10 years since I worked for him. I no longer remember the details. I know there were many times that I was made to feel uncomfortable. I had to be on my guard constantly. I loved the research but disliked going to work each day because of him. I remember my then boyfriend, now husband, kept his phone close when he knew I was working in case something happened. My husband is fairly laid back and not the paranoid type; I've never seen him as consistently concerned for my safety as when I was working for him. | Graduate student (Research Assistant) | Professor and mentor | Other R1 | Architecture/Design | Didn't report it (no singular incident, just a year of subtle and not quite as subtle boundary pushing and testing) | NA | He was also on my thesis committee and wrote a really nasty email to me, threatening me and saying he would make sure I never worked in the academy. He had misinterpreted a section of my lit review and thought I was insinuated something negative about his work, which I hadn't. Another faculty member talked to him, and he apologized. Afterwards I avoided him as much as possible. My research is similar to his, and he remains a leading expert in the field. But I have no interest in collaborating. I still have some anxiety that we'll have to at some point. | Male | |||||
2063 | 1/9/2018 21:57:01 | I was in a PhD program and in a Family seminar. The Professor had a regular habit of getting "too comfortable" and saying inappropriate things. I don't remember what the topic was for that week, but all of a sudden this instructor (also Chair) blurted out how "he remembered when small p*nises used to be in". At that point, any of the 15 students in the class could have reported him for sexual harassment. I gave him a weird look as I was confused where the comment came from and where he was going with this line of non-academic inquiry. In reaction to my puzzled look, he said out loud in front of all my peers, "Well, I know YOU find that hard to believe." I laughed off the moment as I realized that this tenured faculty member just called me a "size queen" in front of the whole class, which was a public slight on a sexuality level as a gay man and as biracial/black man. | Graduate Student | Instructor, Chair, and academic adviser | Other R1 | Social Sciences | Settlement | None | Trying to move "PhowarD" after second failed doctoral program | Because I was so intent on making this program work (after getting half way through first program) I tolerated and tried to deal with more disrespect and attacks than I have before. In one semester I developed anxiety, adjustment disorder, lost 20 lbs and had elevated blood pressure. Unfortunately it triggered child abuse and bullying that I have never really dealt with. | I would never thank or credit my harassers, that program or school but thanks to my commitment to therapy I am starting to understand why I react (or seemingly over-react) to things. When you have been beaten upon socially, physically, and emotionally for most of your life, you refuse to be silent at any abuse once you find your voice. I'm working on choosing my battles or at times to let silence be my weapon | Thanks for doing this! Another horrific aspect about what I went through was that I could see the reactions of my classmates and those faces are ones I know well, they belong to people who have been victimized. No one goes to an advanced degree program with expectations of experiencing trauma on the way to degree. Particularly for us underrepresented students who had to overcome hell and high-water to get there in the first place. | Male | ||
2064 | 1/10/2018 6:37:42 | A professor had porn on when I walked into his office. He turned it off, but it took him a while. He didn't acknowledge it. I wish had just said something like "sorry." | PhD student | Advisor | Other R1 | I never told anyone because of the power dynamics in play. It took me a while to really trust him. It's still a bit awkward, even 6 years later. | Male | ||||||||
2065 | 1/10/2018 7:29:00 | A famous poet and infamous creep, died in 2002 with a perfect literary reputation. Overtly sexist and inappropriate in class, trading on grades and the annual literary awards (of which he was sole judge), obsessive and stalking behavior. Had male acolytes for whom he was "like a father" who served to protect and clean up his messes for him. | Undergraduate | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | English | The open rumor was the university and department knew of this behavior, had received complaints for years, and had chosen to allow it. Was taken aside and warned by one of his acolytes never to "go to the administration." | None | Male | |||||
2066 | 1/10/2018 9:03:19 | Most of what I've experienced is constant, low-level micro-aggressions. No colleague or student has ever openly tried to coerce me into sex. But, as we all know, microaggressions can cumulatively use up a lot of your energy. Here are just a couple of examples of the kinds of minor episodes I experienced on a near-daily basis in my pre-tenure years, and which still continue to a certain extent. (1) After my chair announced that I would be on parental leave the next semester because I was expecting my first child, my male colleague announced that he knew he'd noticed my "muffin top" during our last committee meeting. (2) Same colleague begins a conversation, "I was walking behind a woman the other day, and at first I thought it was you, only I noticed she lacked a special something in her walk, a little wiggle, . . ." (Well, you can imagine how it went from there.) (3) Same colleague asks me to help me pick out underwear from a catalog "for his wife." (4) Constant touching by particular senior male colleagues at conferences! The constant hugging, arm across the shoulder, arm linked through mine without permission. I love to give hugs, but I would never do it the way they do--unsolicited, a little too long, etc. Again, none of the above is severe in the sense that it's not open solicitation. It's not rape. But it's part of a constant, ongoing pattern that has lessened since tenure but never totally let up. | Assistant professor (and to a certain extent Associate as well) | full Professor | R2 | English | None. Although events like the above happened constantly in my pre-tenure days, always in front of others, no one ever suggested I complain, and I never did. | Would it shock you to learn none? | This is hard for me to answer because I'm not sure that everything I've experienced would legally qualify as "sexual" harassment. No one has ever attempted to coerce me into sex. But gender bias is a longtime constant. For example, in my pre-tenure days, I had one male colleague consistently accuse me of playing the "mommy card" any time I tried to schedule a meeting during business hours (he preferred late afternoons to early evenings, thank you very much). His behavior was bullying, incredibly gendered, and interfered with my ability to conduct service in a timely and efficient manner (which in turn affected my research), but, legally speaking, I'm guessing it wouldn't count as "sexual harassment." Similarly, when the provost floated my name as a possible Interim Dean, the male Assistant Dean marched to my office and said, "Well, you know he's only talking about your name because of how you look, right? You'd look good in recruitment brochures." Does his remark constitute sexual harassment? Or just gender bias? I honestly don't know, but episodes like those above have made my work life a lot harder than it should have been. | Mental and emotional load: it takes a lot of energy processing these episodes! I used to get so angry, and then I'd have to decide if I wanted to pursue it, and then I would ultimately decide *not* to pursue it, and then I'd spend a lot of energy making myself let it go. I'm better at letting it go these days--and I would say it doesn't happen as often--but a fairly good-sized portion of my brainpower is--at any given time--consumed with how to move around men who have just leveraged gender in one way or another to question or undermine my authority. | There's a chilling effect. I'm less openly ambitious than I'd like. I modulate constantly to manage sensitive male colleagues. But I never encountered anything that made me want to leave the profession. And I've made a point of trying to act as a good mentor to my younger women colleagues! | Again, much of what I've experienced is gendered bias, but probably a lot of it wouldn't legally count as sexual harassment. It's all part of the same discourse, though, and sometimes it's not easy to separate out gendered harassment from sexual harassment. | Male | ||
2067 | 1/10/2018 9:19:54 | I was a recent hire at my institution (my first job out of graduate school). He was/is a powerful public intellectual. As soon as he met me he started making sexual advances and, when I was up for tenure, he made these advances in a more aggressive manner. The advances would range from suggestions that I should go out to dinner with him because he was writing documents for my tenure file to attempts at kissing and touching me (in elevators, whenever we were alone). He said he was in love with me but I know this to be an awful lie. He harassed many others. | Untenured faculty | Senior and famous | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English and African American Studies | None | None | None | It made me depressed and caused havoc in both my private life and career. I split from my then partner partly due to the harassment. He (my partner), who is not an academic and with whom I had a long distance relationship, was ashamed that he could not protect me but manifested that shame by being passive aggressive with me. We had a great deal of trouble (some not related to the harassment but the harassment made everything worse). I went into a deep depression and had to start taking anti-depressants. After tenure, the harasser maintained that I owed it to him, which I know is not the case. But I have suffered from doubt and have had trouble writing my second book. | I had to fight hard to fend off the impulse to flee the institution where the harasser works and ruin my own career. He has not ultimately changed the trajectory of my life, for which I am grateful. But I continue to be in therapy, to take anti-depressants, and to struggle with the writing of my second book. | Male | |||
2068 | 1/10/2018 9:32:41 | Various issues across the department. Tenured faculty member has sent emails describing other colleagues in the department inappropriately - putting down the work of female colleagues, commenting on female colleague's weight and appearance, even commenting that a new TT faculty was hired only for "diversity". This person also pounded his fists on a table in a meeting and yelled "This is your job" at me - I was the only woman in the room and no one else said anything. A different tenured faculty said that I didn't contribute to a collegial environment and that I should bake cookies and bring them in. I was stalked last year and upon this news being shared internally, I was mocked by a tenured faculty, told that I would be "targeted first" if they made it on campus, and then suggested I was targeted because of what I was wearing. This faculty member then told me that I should pay for my own security protection out of my own paycheck. When a colleague brought issues of gender discrimination forward to her department chair, he said that it wasn't sexism and refused to assist in investigating the formal complaint. | All were tenured faculty | Other Type of School | Art school in Chicago | Complaint was taken to HR. Was told it was not gender based harassment. Was told it would be dealt with but they didn't know how or when - there was no timeline or steps to be taken. I was told to not reach out to them but they would reach out to me. Issue still happening with no follow up. | None | I have spent hours putting together documents and meeting with colleagues, trying to get support on this when I could actually be doing my job. I feel less effective because it is difficult to interact with problematic and upsetting colleagues. | Frustration, depression, exhaustion, feeling unsafe at work. | Male | |||||
2069 | 1/10/2018 12:49:48 | 5 year grad student | Grad student | UK Lecturer (ie Assistant Professor) [partially redacted] | Elite Institution/Ivy League | [redacted] | 19th Century American Literature | NA | None | Moderately bad - anxiety, skipped conferences, distrust of male mentors. But managed to publish and secure TT research job in the US. | Extremely bad - suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety for over a year. | Serious. | Male | ||
2070 | 1/10/2018 14:48:18 | When I was an assistant professor, a very senior, very powerful member of my department told me to get on my knees and beg for tenure. Thinking fast, I treated it as a joke, laughed it off, and walked away. He let it go. But the message was clear: he wanted to remind me that he had power over me. He wanted to intimidate me, to put me in my place. It worked. | assistant professor | very senior full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | I didn't report it. | None. | Despite my refusal to get on my knees, I did get tenure. But I don't feel at home in my department. | It made me feel sick to my stomach (and it still does). I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I hadn't treated it lightly, or if he hadn't let it go. | Male | |||||
2071 | 1/10/2018 15:23:48 | Summer 2009 - I was constantly harassed with comments on my body (sexy) and suggestions about what 'we' could do, invitations to engage in sex, physically accosted - rubbing up my thigh, grabbing my bottom, inappropriately rubbing arms. One-off horrors occurred occasionally e.g. hanging out dancing when one of my colleagues started rubbing his erection up against my leg and bottom (I verbally said stop, and left). | Postdoc transitioning to Faculty position. | Multiple Full Professors, Associate and Assistant Professors, and a postdoc - there were 7 that were the most notably bad. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | [redacted] - please keep this name private. | Neuroscience | The EOO office was in transition at the time and not available for reporting - there was no process available for me to submit anything. I reported to some senior people who were sympathetic but ineffective. | none | It remains difficult to establish myself as the scholarly expert I am..... | At the time I went into extreme workaholic mode - with the assumption that if I worked hard enough eventually 'they' might see me as a colleague and not a sexual object. Eventually I wore out, battled with depression, and developed an autoimmune disorder. I am well now - after years of healing and managing exposure to potentially harmful professional situations. | I elected to opt out of R1 and Ivy League academic environments. | Male | ||
2072 | 1/10/2018 15:30:36 | January - July 2006: I was hired into a lab as a postdoc with the agreement that I would learn electrophysiology, only to be directed into molecular portion of the lab over and over again. I learned that according to my PI women do not have the 'temperament' to do electrophysiology. | Postdoc | Full Prof | Other R1 | Neuroscience | I didn't report it | none | I left the R1 academic trajectory and very nearly left academia, but sought and found another lab in which I could learn electrophysiology and continue to work with ephys in my lab as a faculty member. | depression | I left the R1 academic trajectory and very nearly left academia | Male | |||
2073 | 1/10/2018 16:33:08 | My senior colleague started stroking and rubbing my back at a dinner after a talk (I had given the talk). I was seated next to him, it was crowded and dark, there was no way to move away. | Professor, but younger and more junior than the senior colleague. | Professor. Senior colleague. | Other R1 | English | None | None. He is well known for sexual adventuring, but he has never had any corrections or consequences. | Did not want to have anything to do with senior colleague but I was far enough along that avoiding him had no impact on my career. | Anger, but also a new sense of my vulnerability because I became aware that he was physically so much larger and stronger than me that I literally could not stop him. | None, because I was already well established in my department and career. If I'd been younger or a grad student and he'd had power over me, I might have tried to leave. | This man is in his 80s and is part of a generation that enjoyed the free-love experiments of the '60s. He has spent his whole adult life cheerfully trying to get grad students and colleagues into bed, with zero consequences. He attends an academic summer program where the entire senior cohort is infamous for this behavior. My point is that it's a generational issue. | Male | ||
2074 | 1/10/2018 18:34:11 | I was manipulated and harassed by a tenured professor while working as his research assistant. 1989-90. University of California at Berkeley | Graduate Student, Research Assistant | Tenured professor; my boss (married, heterosexual male) | Small Liberal Arts College | University of California at Berkeley | History of Art | None. It was a "gray area" and I did not report it. I got out of the position as quickly as possible and avoided him thereafter. | None. | It made me wary and caused considerable distress at the time. | Stress, fear, a feeling of helplessness when I was in a vulnerable position. | I eventually left academia, by choice, choosing to leave after a junior sabbatical, before tenure (with the firm belief I would have earned it). | Non-Binary | ||
2075 | 1/10/2018 19:27:42 | I attended a dinner hosted by one of my colleagues during a big conference in my field which that year happened to be in the town where I live. At the dinner, I sat next to one of my former dissertation committee members, whom I hadn't seen in several months. We were happy to see each other and talked animatedly about mutual friends and interests. One of the other attendees at the dinner, a male colleague at another university on the other side of the country, addressed me from across the table and asked if my former supervisor and I were "an item". This came utterly out of nowhere. I had not been formally introduced yet to this person. I was startled and humiliated. I immediately wondered if I had somehow been behaving inappropriately in conversing with pleasure and animation with my former supervisor, whose friendship I enjoy and value. The dinner conversation moved on, but the remark made everyone uncomfortable, and afterwards it cast a shadow for a little while over my friendship, making me hesitant to be friends with my former advisor. I have since joked about it with him, and the moment has passed, but when I remember it, I still feel embarrassed, self-conscious, and anxious about being misperceived. | Assistant Professor | Full Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | English | Male | ||||||||
2076 | 1/10/2018 20:34:37 | A senior faculty member in my field would make jokes about women graduate students: "She's a gem -- she ought to be mounted," and his two TA's were "like two halves of the same little bum." When I was a grad student, he tried to joke with my boyfriend about how the bf needed to get me to bed. The same faculty member gleefully work a "Male Chauvinist Pig" tie to seminars and job interviews with women. Another faculty member at the same University asked a female grad student, in a seminar, if she "liked it rough." | Grad student, junior faculty | both Full Professors | Other R1 | Western University | English | None. | None. | One of the students noted above changed supervisors and then left academia. | Male | ||||
2077 | 1/10/2018 20:58:20 | A math professor failed me despite knowing that while in his course, I was recovering from sexual abuse and was, at the time, being stalked. Every other professor I have ever had accommodated me and worked to establish a plan to complete my work. He failed me. | Undergraduate | Professor | Other R1 | American University (DC) | History | None, but one of the Deans liaised with every professor following, to ensure I was accommodated | None | It caused various graduate school nonacceptances, I’m sure of it. But in cases where I’ve been asked for clarification of why I have an F on my undergrad transcript, I’ve explained. I am now in graduate school. | Male | ||||
2078 | 1/11/2018 5:42:21 | A professor repeatedly hit on me during independent study. | Undergraduate | Mentor | Other R1 | University of Oklahoma | English | Not applicable | He’s successfully branded himself by writing about penitence for sexual sins committed in academe. | Immeasurable. | Immeasurable. | Immeasurable. | Male | ||
2079 | 1/11/2018 6:20:24 | This happened in early 1990s when I was a grad student at UWASH a fellow grad student in my cohort made some dirty phone calls to me, freely identifying himself. I reported this to my academic dept and was told they could only do something if he had authority over me. Since he was my peer, they could not intervene. | First year graduate student | first year grad student | Other R1 | University of Washington | Social Sciences | No intervention because he was a peer | None | Made my first year more unpleasant and I already had a tough time was a single parent of a young child who was diagnosed with a serious disability that same year, I persevered and eventually, the creeper dropped out | Minimal | Its made me a more empathetic professor who listens when students report things | Male | ||
2080 | 1/11/2018 6:23:46 | Staring and comments on my appearance | Graduate student | Proffesors | Other R1 | Earth Sciences | no impact but unpleasant | It is very mild but very common and commenting on a student appearance is an act of power | Male | ||||||
2081 | 1/11/2018 6:32:26 | Relationship with a professor (under consent) | Graduate student | Professor | Other R1 | Earth Sciences | The professor has a direct effect on my career as a member in search committes | It is not in the definition of sexual harassment exactly since it was a relationship under consent but I decided to included it here since it has a component of power imbalance and after many years a direct effect on m career as a young scientist. | Male | ||||||
2082 | 1/11/2018 6:47:44 | During my phd the professor who I was assigned to made multiple lewd comments towards me and eventually asked me out. When I refused, he refused to work with me, thus limiting my publishing abilities. I told the University about him and they did respond. They limited the professor’s summer teaching abilities and grant receiving abilities and put me with another “female” professor. This female professor had actually been told in the past by the offending professor and other male professors that she would never receive tenure because she was a women. Eventually the offending professor left the University and went to another and actually was arrested at one point for bringing a gun to class and threatening students. It is also important to note that he married another phd students about 6 months after the incident with me. The female professor received full professorship about 15 years after the original statement when the University had finally had almost a full turnover. I cannot even put into words the about of frustration and hatred I have towards my present place of employment. I have been here for 15 years. I have been told by two different deans to go home and take care of my kids and not work. I have had multiple lewd, disrespectful and flat out abusive comments made towards me by 2 different department chairs and other faculty. There was even two incidences of rape that were reported in a student organization (male advisor raping female students) over the past 10 years. Both incidences were completely ignored by the University and the National chapter of the organization. The advisor is still part of the organization. | Two stories above: Phd students and professor | mentor/professor | Other R1 | Anon | marketing | see story - first great - second no response | first story - fired/second story nothing | horrible. I hate academia. I hate my job. I'd be stupid to get out though. I make high six figures, have tenure and am 7 years from retirement. Also see last statement. I have been the one blamed. | I constantly doubt my self. Did I over react? | It has made me put all my feelings and effort into my family and real life. My job is just a prison sentence. Every semester, I count off the semesters left until I am released. | The more public this is the better. I would love to name names, but I have already "been put in my place" for speaking up at my school. They even gave me extra course load that no one else has. And other financial implications for speaking up (removed grants and no invited me for consulting projects). | Male | |
2083 | 1/11/2018 6:51:20 | During my time as a PhD student, one of the professors (who also had power over my advancement in the program) made extremely inappropriate comments about exposing breasts and cupping his hand under an imaginary breast. He also had inappropriate pictures hanging in his lab, outed another student who was gay in front of a class, and even had a stamp that said "Penis" that he and one of his grad students printed all over papers during class. On the first day of his class, I overheard him ask another woman student if she had kids. When she said no, he said, "Good, because women with kids can't do this program." Meanwhile, I had 4 children at the time, so I kept my mouth shut. | PhD student/Doctoral candidate | Instructor for required PhD courses, self-imposed head of the research proposition panel that could pass or fail you and bar you from proceeding through the program. | Other Type of School | Information Systems | I reported the incident about the breast and expanded on other things. The university took notes and yet didn't even interview the professor until 2 years later. In the end, nothing happened to the faculty member, although the grad student who was also involved was barred from teaching as a TA. Props to our Dean of Students for being proactive, at least. | None | I survived but spent about a year terrified that the professor would say my research proposition wasn't "up to par" and get me kicked out of the program. Little did I know he hadn't even been interviewed until 2 years later. | Very stressful during the event, now it makes me angry at the lack of response from the university. | I could have applied for a teaching position in the department upon graduation but knew that I would have to interact with that faculty member and that would have been an untenable position. | Male | |||
2084 | 1/11/2018 7:00:43 | 2007, my academic advisor, in a closed door meeting, sat on the edge of his desk, invaded my personal space, and grabbed my ankle. He then said I was very pretty and asked if I wanted to take off my clothes. I refused and told him he was making me uncomfortable. He shrugged and tried to kiss me and when I pulled away, he laughed and sat back in his chair. He then started to justify he proposition saying he’s done things with students in the past and when I expressed disappointment for disrespecting his marriage and my relationship status he said that he and his wife have an understanding. I repeated that I wasn’t interested and left his office. He later sent me apologetic emails which I deleted, feeling ashamed and confused. I obsessed about whether I had lead him on or talked about inappropriate things that made him think I was receptive. I told a friend, who told me I was over reacting. I constantly wondered if the A I had received in his class was due to the fact that he wanted to sleep with me and not my developing skill in the subject. Aware of his tenured status in the department, I decided the following semester to change my major and never took another class in his department. Of note, two years later, that same friend who dismissed my concerns, was propositioned by the same professor and finally validated my experience. She and another student who had had similar experiences (being cornered and asked for sexual activity by this professor) went to a female professor in the department and with her guidance, the three of us reported our experiences to the Dean of the college. We were made to recount the experiences and told that they would take it from there. If any institutional action was taken, it was unknown to us and the professor is still teaching and probably still harassing his vulnerable female students. | First year in college | Tenured full professor, my academic advisor and lecturer for my intro course | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Wellesley College | Medicine | slap on the wrist, none | Absolutely none | I never took another political science course despite initial interest and aptitude | 10 years of self slut shaming and avoidance of finding close mentors | I went into medicine as intended but my anxiety about office hours, closed door meetings with professors, and discussion of anything beyond the academic subject at hand left me at an obvious disadvantage in identifying and bonding with mentors, which was especially detrimental in medical school where networking is a key mechanism for opening specialty doors. I struggled more with school-life balance for this and overall, am in a specialty I would not have chosen because I was not comfortable enough to ever be linked in with mentors in my first choice specialty. | Male | ||
2085 | 1/11/2018 7:31:48 | As an undergraduate, I worked closely in a one-to-one mentoring relationship with a older male professor. I thought of his as my "campus dad." The day I graduated, I had a meeting with him. He gave me a gift, then confessed that he had been in love with me for almost the entire time he knew me. He told me exactly when he "fell in love" with me. He then came to my hometown a week later. He told me that he "needed to get away" and it wasn't about me. When he was in my (small) hometown I hid in my house. He texted me photos of where he was throughout the day. He still texts me on my birthday and on holidays, six years later, even though I have never replied to him. In retrospect, there were two things that I found odd during our meetings, but I ignored them. He once touched my hair, and he once asked me to pick him up from the airport. That's over three years, so it didn't seem significant. | Recent graduate (the day of graduation) | Professor, personal mentor | Other R1 | University of Notre Dame | Music | Did not report | None | I never went back to that university. I had been considering a career in that field and instead chose a different field. I no longer trusted anything he said about my ability and so I felt a lot of doubt and confusion. | I feel ashamed and embarrassed that I didn't see it coming. I don't trust mentor relationships anymore. I lost confidence in my ability because he had told me compliments that I no lon we trusted. | I was deciding between two fields and avoided one because of this incident. | Male | ||
2086 | 1/11/2018 7:38:05 | My boss's chief of staff (who claims to be gay) would stare at my breasts in one-on-one updates with him about my work. This happened on several occasions. I was perplexed by his behavior. He was also always trying to limit my role in the office. Everyone worked under him in the office and I was a lone wolf who was hired by his boss directly. May be it was his way to make me feel small and uncomfortable. I was very uncomfortable with his stares. This behavior continued for 2.5 years (from Oct 2014 to Dec 2016) | Administrative Postdoc | My boss's chief of staff | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of California Davis | Administration | The HR told me that if I go against this guy I would never get a decent job again. At every step of the way, it felt like the HR rather than helping me was helping this sick guy. The irony is that HR also reported to this chief of staff (my perpetrator) so how can anyone seek justice. Not only that, the chief compliance officer also reported to this guy. What is worse is that the chief of staff's boss (who was my boss and who was the boss of my perpetrator) told my perpetrator that I had some grievance against him. I tried to tell my boss that this guy was making me feel very uncomfortable and I wanted to have a conversation with him about it. But the my boss forwarded that private email about my grievances to my perpetrator. My boss insisted that I work with this guy and figure it out. There was no hope of justice there when your own boss is an enabler of such behavior. My boss decided to let a junior postdoc (me) go because I had reported his chief of staff and perhaps he was so comfortable with his chief of staff. I was told eventually that my position is going to get dissolved because of lack of funding. This is after 3 months of telling my boss that I was uncomfortable with his chief of staff. I still reported my perpetrator and my boss too for the breach of whistleblower protection after getting to know that I was gonna get fired. My perpetrator was in a powerful position and I knew that reporting him would do him no harm. I still went ahead and reported him even though my days in my job were merely numbered. When I met the investigator sent by University of California Office of the President office from Oakland and told him about the harassment and stares of my boss's chief of staff in meetings on my breasts, he asked me a few times are you sure that he was looking at you that way? It was bizarre being questioned whether I was imagining being stared at my breasts and all the unwelcome comments about the dresses I wore and my hair and make up. I got another job within a week of getting the news that I am getting fired. I weighed my options and decided that since the whole chain of higher ups were aligned with this perpetrator (especially my boss who was in the highest echelon of UC Davis administration who sent my email of grievances to that sick perp), to not pursue my complaint. | None | I was given a termination notice within weeks of reporting this guy to the compliance officer. The lack of funding excuse to dissolve my position was just a cover up. It just made me feel disgusted of going further on an administrative career track after getting my PhD. I think all this cry of sexual assault training for guys in positions of power is useless. They create such trainings to keep the activists satisfied but most of these perpetrators go unpunished. | It was really bad. It elevated my anxiety levels. | I decided to not ever associate with University of California Davis administration. I found further employment in my academic department (back to working as an academic postdoc). But my stint in administration at the highest level left me with a feeling of deep disgust of how white men are scared of women of color who are ambitious. Even though my perpetrator claims to be gay I have wondered often times how he made me feel small in the meetings by staring at my boobs. How he ridiculed my ideas. How he made so many attempts to make sure I never succeed. | The way academic administrations handles sexual assault complaints is just tilted in the favor of perpetrators who are old white men in powerful academic positions. It is a shame when women and men enable such abuse by siding with perpetrators in powerful positions rather than helping the survivors. Thank you for giving us a voice by creating this form where victims and survivors of sexual harassment and assault can talk about what they have endured. This effort is great on your part. There are so many stories untold. So many women who have endured abuse of power in academia. We are just scratching the surface. So thanks again. It is a struggle for women of color trying to rise up in the career ladder in academia. So we have to come together and help each other. | Male | |
2087 | 1/11/2018 7:39:06 | I was raped in a fraternity house. My roommate left while it was happening. | student, freshman. | sophomore. | Small Liberal Arts College | Butler University | undecided | transferred | deteriorating. attempts of suicide. | Male | |||||
2088 | 1/11/2018 7:45:06 | Older male student forced himself on me while I was too intoxicated to consent and could barely move- Male University Police Officer wrongfully arrested myself and other females to fill the universities “quota” and we just happened to be dressed “provocatively” - both of these instances happen on a semi nightly basis at the Florida State University | Student | Student; Police Officer | Other Type of School | Florida State University (FSU) | The way title 9 carried out the investigation was atrocious. Never kept me informed nor gave me a chance to respond to the false statements the male Student and his friends were making. These cases are often a “he said she said” and this Student had around 5-6 of his friends report as witnesses that I was completely fine and not drinking at all. False witnesses with false claims. Six month process of complete DRAMA and stress- completely regretted reporting it through title 9 because of the way it was handled. I was told that due to his witnesses statements (people who weren’t even there), and him being a clean cut Student with good grades, that “it looks like maybe you did have consentual sex that night”..... they don’t take this stuff seriously at FSU. | No consequences for the Student and Police are unfortunately above the law therefore justice on a police Officers harassment and wrongdoing is rare. | Depression; PTSD diagnosis | Seldom left my house out of fear I could be arrested again for walking down the street as a female. Completely avoid all nightlife due to the male student | Male | ||||
2089 | 1/11/2018 7:47:00 | My PhD has been a tough time. I have an extremely controlling advisor, and I never know if his behavior is on the line of harassment. The hardest part about my circumstance is... I don't know if this is "wrong." It feels wrong to me, but is it categorically wrong and something that universities would recognize is wrong? Or am I mistaken about how this whole PhD experience should go? I feel like this is part of the broader problem... women (especially) aren't aware of where they can stand on these gray issues. Anyhow, him and I were very close during my Masters and at the beginning of my PhD, which makes this even harder. During my PhD I became socially isolated and as a result depressed. After I completed coursework and was ABD, I decided to move an hour away from the University to a city that was a healthier living environment that offered more social opportunities for me. He told me I had to live in the town where the university was or he'd take away my funding. I was floored. I argued with him on it, and he eventually said I could move, but he's made my life difficult in many ways since - forcing me to take a class at the University even though my coursework is complete and I've met all departmental requirements, making passive aggressive comments about my whereabouts, embarrassing me by having the head of the department email me to remind me of my duties as a student even if I've moved, etc. I am always terrified to cross him, because he controls my funding. Another student who he is funding feels exactly the same. He is not her advisor, but she feels afraid to live her life the way she wants if he doesn't agree with it, because "he pays for everything." Additionally I was told me being single is ideal because marriage would make my job placement harder. And that kids during tenure-track years aren't a good idea. I just feel trapped. And I am frustrated because I never felt this way when I was living my life in the way he deemed fit. Now, I feel constantly controlled and as if I am walking on eggshells. This is not all of it, but I feel uncomfortable sharing other behaviors because they would be too identifying. I've considered dropping out, but I've made it so far I want to finish. I just can't decide if finishing is worth handing someone so much power over my life. | PhD Student | Tenured Professor - endowed chair | Other R1 | Public Policy | I've never said anything | None | Considering dropping out of my program | I feel that my life is in someone else's control - I fear upsetting him | I make all of my current decisions in fear of the consequences if he finds out. I have seriously considered dropping out, and will most likely avoid academia as a career path if I decide to finish. | Male | |||
2090 | 1/11/2018 8:17:55 | In the spring of 1977 I was a senior at SUNY College at Buffalo.i was working as a paid research assistant for a professor. He accompanied me to the library to do the research and began his harassment gradually by pointing out words in articles we were reading that had double meanings, such as “errection.” As he did this, he would snicker and look at me to see my reaction. This made me very uncomfortable but I needed the money from the job so I said nothing. Towards the end of the semester, as I was sitting at a table in his office writing notes, he approached me from behind and started stroking my hair. I boltedfrom the room. I ended up going to the counseling center and was asked what I had done to lead him on. I was afraid to go to his class, but needed the credit to graduate. I attended one more of his class and turned in the final paper. I passed. | I was 21 and a college senior. | My professor and employer. | Other R1 | SUNY College at Buffalo | Mass Communication | None - other than a counselor asking me what I maight have done to lead him on. | Not any that I am aware of. | Fear of professors. But, I did go on and complete law school. | I was already a survivor, having been sexually assaulted when I was seven. It set me back and I felt there must be something I was doing to draw this kind of attention. I gained weight and felt safer. | I made sure I found a good partner in a man I felt very safe with and respected by. I still get a panicky feeling if a man indicates he finds me attractive. I also have had multiple years of therapy. | Male | ||
2091 | 1/11/2018 8:54:14 | I was a 2nd year PhD student in Northeastern University's Experimental Psychology program when my (married) male advisor attempted to initiate a romantic relationship with me by telling me that he was in love with me. | I was his student. My success or failure in the program depended on his evaluation of my academic performance. | My advisor - the professor I was assigned to do research with and who evaluated my performance. | Other R1 | Northeastern University | Experimental Psychology | I told another professor after I graduated. I do not know that anything came of it, but am not sure what would have. | None | The experience was extremely distressing for me and essentially ruined the rest of my graduate experience. It was very uncomfortable to work with him after that, even after I told him that I had no interest in a romantic relationship. | The joke among my peers when I entered the program was that I was the "poster child" for mental health. That changed after the experience. I experienced periods of depression and anxiety afterward. | After my advisor propositioned me my self-esteem plummeted. I thought he had paid so much attention to me because he saw my promise as a research scientist. After he propositioned me I realized that the attention was for something else. It made me question my abilities and I seriously thought about dropping out of school.However, I ultimately decided that I wasn't going to allow him to have that kind of impact on my life so I stuck it out and continue to work with him even though I hated it. | Male | ||
2092 | 1/11/2018 9:00:39 | When I was a student in his class, his touching (during class) progressed from a light touch on the shoulder to rubbing both shoulders and touching my neck. My boyfriend was also in the class and was incensed at his behavior. When I read with him for my dissertation, an older female student warned me that he needed to "break" his female students by making them cry and that, once I did, everything would be fine. He used harsh words and criticism during our study sessions together (but never touched me). I did not cry. During my general exam he berated me to such an extent that I expected to fail (I passed). | PhD student | Tenured professor, Harvard Divinity | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Harvard Divinity School | American Studies | Reported it only this year (nearly 20 years after it occurred) | None | I withdrew from graduate school the following month. | I was distraught and depressed. I felt let down not only by the harasser, but by my other dissertation readers who would not meet my eye during the exam and offered no suppoert. | I chose a career outside academia | Male | ||
2093 | 1/11/2018 9:07:04 | In 1992 I was a senior at a Canadian university political studies department. I had applied to a specific grad school and was awaiting response. Our department sponsored a conference and there were speakers from many places, including one luminary from York University whose work I followed and quoted. I was excited to talk to him. He asked me about my plans and when I told him I was waiting to hear from this particular school, he told me that he was in advanced discussion to take a job there as department head and that we should have a further discussion about this. I was over the moon of course because I thought I might get to study with him and maybe he could even help get my application noticed. I was confused and thought “uh-oh” when he suggested we should meet in his room. But I agreed (feeling uneasy and later I blamed myself for this) because I was naive and he said he had his things there or made some potentially plausible excuse about why it made sense. Once we were there he started making not-so-subtle advances after 5 minutes and I pretended to not realize he was doing it. I kept trying to talk about the grad school. At that point I realized what I had gotten into and I was afraid both for my safety and also for spoiling any chance of getting into the one school I applied to! This mattered greatly because I had a Rotary scholarship to pay for the school but it was dependent upon me getting in. I didn’t know what he would do if I rejected him or if he felt insulted. We basically pranced around the pretext for a while and he finally pressured me for a kiss. I apologized and told him I had to leave (which I did, unharmed). I worried for a couple months that he would get the job and that I would not be comfortable studying there, if I got in. I did get in and it wasn’t until I arrived at the new school that I was certain he did not get that job. (This was pre-internet!) Then I was ashamed of myself for years. Every time I saw his book on my shelf, I felt disgusted, but it was an important book to the field so I had to keep it. Finally I threw it out and I no longer feel ashamed. He took advantage of a young lady and it could have affected my career because I would have dropped out of school rather than study with him and I would have lost my full scholarship for that. Next time I visit Toronto I am going to go drop by his office and tell him that I grew up and #TimesUp | Senior in university, applicant to grad school | Conference speaker, Professor and leader in the field, potentially/likely my thesis advisor if he were to move to the school where Inintended to study (as he told me he was planning to do) | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | York University in Toronto - he came from there but it was at a conference at another university | International relations and political science. | I recently notified the Ombudsman at York, not as a complaint since it was so long ago and I am not at York but as a red flag in case there were recent complaints about him, to help them see if there was a pattern. The Ombudsman acknowledged my email and the fact that they take the matter seriously. He did not make any comment on he matter of whether there have been other complaints because of confidentiality requirements. I accept that as reasonable and I was not making a formal charge. I do wonder what requirements Ombudsman offices have to reveal patterns of complaints to their administrations and whether the committees reviewing that pattern are gender-balanced. Should be mandated! | ? | Hard to say. Indirect maybe. My dream was to be a professor of political science. I got my masters from a leading European grad school but dropped out of the PhD with the conclusion that there were too few positions open for women in the US or Canada in this field. I preferred to have lots of options in a city of my choice than “take one of two positions for women that might be available in the middle of nowhere”. That’s how I explained my change of path to my friends. It wasn’t worth the battle when I had other things I could do. | Certainly! I stressed for months. But it was only the first (not even) of many battles to advance professionally while being a woman. | Would say sexism and male dominated workplaces in general had more of an impact than harassment. Harassment is the final expression of sexism by a few men. But the sexism in general is what allows and leads to those extremes. | Male | ||
2094 | 1/11/2018 9:18:41 | A faculty member, when I asked for a letter of recommendation to PhD programs, told me that I should consider that, because I had children, I would have to "turn [my] husband into a house husband, which would be really unfair to him] in order to be a successful academic. | Graduate student | Faculty teaching a class I was taking at the time | Other Type of School | Spanish | My advisor supported me and reported the harassment | None | None | I experienced anxiety during the first year of my PhD program | Male | ||||
2095 | 1/11/2018 9:44:22 | I met the perpetrator at an international conference, and we had lunch/drinks in a group of six people after one of the sessions. The next semester, he gave a lecture where I was studying my M.A. and we once again went to a bar in a group after the event. He groped me repeatedly and tried to get me alone, resorting to calling me multiple times late into the night after I went home, which I assume was to try to convince me to come to his hotel to sleep with him. | M.A. student | Full professor and program director at a different institution | Other R1 | University of Redlands, UNC Chapel Hill | Spanish | N/A | discouragement | N/A | N/A | This experience makes me hold back from key networking opportunities, such as socials and happy hours that are part of academic conferences, where I might find myself in a similar situation. I have seen how often, how suddenly, and how unexpectedly this kind of thing happens all the time and inherently distrust senior male colleagues who might, nevertheless, be able to provide mentoring or other opportunities to advance my career. | Male | ||
2096 | 1/11/2018 9:47:39 | I was an undergraduate student employee in the university's media unit and when I told some of my adult (non-student) colleagues in that unit that I was planning on taking a class with professor X next semester, they told me that I should not go alone to his office hours. I heeded that advice. One day in lab, the professor came up behind and pressed himself up against my back and started to straighten the equipment in from of me. After that incident, I noticed he did it to other women in the class too. | Undergraduate | Full professor | Other Type of School | Catholic University in Philadelphia | Communication | None as far as I know. | None as far as I know. He is is still listed as being on faculty | This incident made me not want to go into the sub-field that the professor taught. This limited my career options. | Male | ||||
2097 | 1/11/2018 10:00:13 | A former professor sent me sexually suggestive text messages. When rejected, he acted like the incident had been some big misunderstanding and blamed me for flirting with him. | Recent graduate | Tenured professor, mentor, former advisor | Small Liberal Arts College | None -- I never brought it to anyone's attention. | None -- -- I never brought it to anyone's attention. | Since this incident, I've experienced severe self-doubt, which has impacted my performance in grad school. This incident happened as I was beginning my graduate studies, by a person who had written letters of recommendation on my behalf. It made me feel like the whole reason he had ever supported me was out of a sexual interest in me. | Depression and anxiety in the form of crippling self-doubt | I question my future in academia everyday. | Male | ||||
2098 | 1/11/2018 10:07:46 | After completing the oral defense of my master's thesis, one of my three committee members failed to send me his correction notes, which I needed in order to submit a final copy for printing--a requirement for completion of my master's degree. This was in 1990, so no email or cell phones--everything was done via landline and snail mail. I left town, got married and started a new job, and would periodically call and leave messages for the professor--or sometimes reach him, upon which he'd promise to get the notes to me (but then wouldn't). The university actually allowed me to "walk" at graduation but my degree wasn't officially awarded. This went on for about a year. Finally, during one phone call, my professor said that he'd be attending a conference in a city about an hour from where I lived, and that I should meet him there at the hotel, where he'd "go over the notes with me." From the tone of his voice, it was clear that he intended much more than a platonic discussion, and it was of course completely unnecessary for me to be in his presence to get his notes. Instead, I called my thesis chair and told him what the professor had suggested. I also pointed out how long I'd been waiting. After a moment of silence, he said (sounding disgusted), "Just turn it in as is. I'll approve it." I was so relieved, and so grateful that he was backing me. | M.S., ABT | Professor; Thesis Committee Member | Small Liberal Arts College | Abilene Christian University | Psychology | None that I knew of, aside from allowing me to complete my degree without having the professor's final notes. | None that I know of. | It delayed my getting my degree by about a year, although by then I had a job. | Although I was stressed about it, I used my busyness with other things to distract myself at the time. It was very frightening to feel like this professor could prevent my finalizing my degree. I had seen him be cruel to other grad students (of both genders), so I knew he was capable of hurting me if he got angry enough. | It made me much more wary of the vulnerability that college students have in relationships with their professors, and inspired me to be more supportive of women who claim to have been sexually harassed. | Male | ||
2099 | 1/11/2018 10:30:34 | When I informed the PhD adviser that I was pregnant, he got mad and asked me "why I had gone and done that". He told me that now I would not make it through the program (I did, but actually inspired to prove him wrong. Successful career in spite of him.) | PhD student | PhD advisor | Other R1 | Business | Did not report to the school (there was no mechanism), but told the faculty member I worked with. | None | He did not make it easier for me. Soon after this happened (and I was done with coursework), he "discovered" that I needed another course (but my peers did not), so I had to take a course immediately after giving birth. Inspired me to prove him terribly wrong. | Shocked, disappointed, did not feel supported. | I thought a lot less of him, but I made sure that from that point on that no one would criticize my life choices and the effect on my career. However, I ran into the same kind of thing at my first teaching job (also at R1). The department head there did not put up roadblocks, but I had higher hurdles to clear than my colleagues. A further note: The PhD adviser who made the disappointing comments about me getting pregnant? Years later at a professional conference's reception, he made loud crude and lewd comments about my physical appearance, comparing my chest with that of Dolly Parton. Again, shocked, embarrassed. | Male | |||
2100 | 1/11/2018 10:37:31 | In Spring 1994, at Cornell University computer science department, the Teaching assistant (redacted) to the course COMS 432: Introduction to Databases and Information Retrieval deliberately lowered my grade to B+ because I was a female. | Graduate student | Teaching Assitant | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Cornell University | Computer Science | None | None | It really told me loud and clear that in technology women will not be treated fairly. Doesn't matter if you have ideas or if you are smart or work hard. | It impacted my contributions to the technology industry | Over the years I have internalized that this is what it is and women just have a wrong set of cards. | Male | ||
2101 | 1/11/2018 10:43:10 | My advisor repeatedly would tell me how hot (or not) his other female students were, or evaluate students' "hotness" on other campuses. | PhD student | PhD advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Didn't realize how wrong it was until very recently, so none | N/A | In combination with numerous other factors, hard to say, but I have high-anxiety reactions to my advisor now, even years after graduating (though it's hard to saw how much is from this type of interaction and how much is from other toxic/emotionally manipulative aspects of the environment) | Otherwise he is very supportive of me (at least superficially), so thankfully none notable | A very mild form, and one that I didn't think much about until this past year… but I think I will be prepared to call him out if he ever does it again. It's something that I think he's not aware is inappropriate because of cultural differences, but of course that's not an excuse. It's kind of amazing how at the time I thought this was a gesture of solidarity, that he was bringing me in to his inner circle, rather than literally objectifying me and people like me. No wonder it made me so uncomfortable! | Male | ||||
2102 | 1/11/2018 10:51:19 | I was repeatedly harassed by a colleague I had dated before he joined the university. The harassment included blocking the exit from my office, using his body to prevent my passage through corridors, etc. When I gave a conference paper at a local event, the harasser spent twenty minutes packing and repacking his bag in a bid to distract me whilst presenting. | I was tenured and at Associate Professor equivalent level. | The perpetrator was junior to me, and exploited this fact when I sought to complain about his actions | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Literary studies | I was passed to five different people in HR, each of whom referred me to someone else, before I gave up. A senior colleague, fully aware of the situation, told me that I was creating a 'toxic work environment' when I refused to engage in research projects with my harasser. | None. | Difficult to quantify: it changed my interactions with my immediate colleagues and my work environment. I was unwilling to draw attention to myself and thought seriously several times about quitting. | I became more introverted, distrustful of colleagues and the institution, and unwilling to draw attention to myself. My research productivity slowed, and I was less willing to put my hand up for public-facing events. It also made me angry, particularly with the colleagues who did not support me as well as they might have. | Male | ||||
2103 | 1/11/2018 11:29:25 | I was raped by a friend of a friend at a party, we were both under the influence of alcohol. | Undergraduate student | Undergraduate student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Nevada, Reno | did not report | none | not very trusting of people anymore | left the university because of this, do not drink in social settings anymore | My 'friends' shamed me into not reporting anything by making me feel like it was my fault. | Male | |||
2104 | 1/11/2018 11:39:01 | An incoming PhD student started harassing me, attempting to blackmail me, and lying about me to the department as well as the administration all because I rejected his escalating, predatory behavior. | PhD Student | A fellow PhD Student/ peer | Other R1 | I don't feel comfortable saying. | Criminal Justice | When I reported it to the Department Chair at the time, he asked what I had done to elicit this predatory behavior and made light of its impact. He also told me I was being "too dramatic" when I voiced my concerns about my personal and professional safety. I was also told that I shouldn't be "so harsh" on this student/ predator because of his life experiences (!?). The only "justice" (and I use that term in the loosest way possible) I got was this guy wasn't allowed to have an office in the same building as mine. He was never reprimanded in any other way. | Ha! None. AT ALL. | After that happened, I switched from my TAship to a GAship in a different area of campus because I didn't want to see him anymore (especially after the powers that be in the department did little to nothing to insulate me from him and essentially blamed me for it happening in the first place). The incident and the move to another area of campus caused a delay in my programmatic progress. | I was anxious for a LONG time after that. Also, I felt guilty, victim-blamed, and scared. I don't wish that on anyone. I mean, he tried to harm me both personally AND professionally...to say it was hard to get over is an understatement. | All my research and professional experiences now revolve around gender-based violence. I want to raise awareness about this pervasive issue and to help others I know have been impacted in the academy and beyond. | Male | ||
2105 | 1/11/2018 11:44:44 | When I was a Junior in undergrad (2006), I was in a physics writing class with about 10+ male classmates and one other female classmate. The professor wanted to make a point about electrons not being able to occupy the same state and invited me to come sit on his knees in front of the whole class (which is obviously very unnecessary for making said point). I looked like a deer caught in the headlights and he insisted again, saying he "wouldn't bite" or some such nonsense. I proceeded over to him and sat at the very edge of his knees, mortified, as all of my classmates watched him bounce me on his knees. I told my father about the incident and he suggested I not report it because it would "create more trouble than it's worth". | Junior in undergrad | Professor (tenured) | Other R1 | Applied mathematics (was in physics at the time) | N/A, did not report | None, did not report. | I stayed in academia, but remember the incident 10+ years later and is a motivation to never be treated like that again. | I felt a lot of shame and confusion and felt powerless to do anything. To this day the incident still makes me mad, because I was too young to stick up for myself. | I stayed in academia so the incident did not deter me enough to leave. | Male | |||
2106 | 1/11/2018 11:46:02 | I was not sexually harassed but I was constantly treated as inferior to men. Men had better ideas, made more money, etc. I knew of others that were sexually harrassed and it was always swept under the rug. | management | Senior management | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Boston University | None | None | Found a job at a different higher education institution | Severe Anxiety | Changed jobs | Male | |||
2107 | 1/11/2018 11:46:18 | I was a director for an externally-funded program and the program officer came onto me. That first meeting was followed by pressure to attend a conference where we could spend time together. | I was a grant funded scientist. All of my salary came from a grant funded through this program officer. | He had complete authority over me. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | No names. I'm at an R1. The program officer is at a federal research funding agency. | science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) | complete support from my co-PIs and guidance from therapist who works for employee assistance | none. I had no inclination to file a grievance. The fallout would be devastating to my career and potentially harm my ability to get funding. | Huge chilling effect on my productivity. I am very cautious about initiating any communication with the program officer and I plan very strategically when I know I must attend a meeting where he may be present. I questioned my competence, avoided contact with colleagues, been very slow to publish. | Significant depression, PTSD triggering, had to seek therapy and actively work to get past the trauma for years. | I'm less invested in or committed to my career in higher education. | Some agencies, like NIH, have strict protocols to govern how program officers communicate with grant recipients in order to prevent the sort of abuse that I have experienced. There is no recourse when the external funding agency has no such policy or guidelines. Granted, I have managed to navigate my situation by limiting contact with the program officer. That is not a tenable strategy over the long term. I love my work and research. I hate having anything to do with this person. | Male | |
2108 | 1/11/2018 11:49:07 | Chemistry professor made sexually explicit/overtly sexual comments during and undergraduate class | undergraduate | professor | Other R1 | The George Washington University | Chemistry | No one said anything | None that I know of | N/A | N/A | I pursued graduate work in another field | The professor in question would bring up male genitalia whenever the opportunity presented itself (even if the topic we were discussing had nothing to do with penises). The most questionable thing he ever did was during an art exhibition in the building where our lecture was held. Outside of our classroom, a painting of two people having sex was hung. It was art, but the professor felt the need to start the class out by drawing everyones attention to it and then proclaiming that he had a great view for lecturing that day and how every time he looked out the door and saw the artwork he was going to smile. | Male | |
2109 | 1/11/2018 11:54:03 | I was being given an oral exam by a very senior professor in my field and he was hitting on me and propositioning me the entire time. | Undergrad | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Middle Eastern Studies | None | None | None, I still pursued a graduate degree | Incident made me mistrustful of and wary of being alone with men | This incident, and others like it, make me want to leave academia entirely. I'm also very anxious at conferences because I worry I might run into him. | Male | |||
2110 | 1/11/2018 11:54:59 | Predatory behaviors towards vulnerable female students and female faculty (too many cases/too specific to recount here). | Undergraduate student | Full professor of graduate and undergraduate studies | Small Liberal Arts College | Small Christian university in Oklahoma | "Necessary actions were taken," but no response from Title IX offices or general counsel/HR. No observed differences in authority after reporting of incidents. | None observed. He held a lot of power and privilege, and did not get any of it taken away after reporting. | None | Seething anger | Male | ||||
2111 | 1/11/2018 12:12:32 | As a female physics graduate student, I was repeatedly harassed by my PhD advisor, and by my male colleagues. I was eventually pushed out of the department after seeking help from the graduate student advisor, the chair of the department, and the dean of arts and sciences. It was made clear to me that the only important thing was the money my advisor brought into the department. My own investment in my education and my own career path (not to mention my humanity) were not valued. | Graduate student | Tenured processor | Other R1 | Physics | They acknowledged what happened to me. It turns out that this man was a serial harasser, and they didn't doubt my story. But they flat out told me that I should quit. My harasser brought in a lot of grant funding, and they had no interest in getting rid of him. They were pretty up front about their knowledge of his behavior, and their lack of willingness to do anything about it. As to my fellow graduate students, I was met with a "boys will be boys" attitude, regardless of the fact that they were humiliating me, making me feel unsafe, and undermining my work on a daily basis. | None. In later years he was arrested for an unrelated crime. At the time, the department came back and asked me to go public with my story, as that would help the department to be rid of him. They didn't offer me any apology for not being there when I needed them. Instead, they just wanted to use me again when it suited their own purpose. They weren't concerned with what happened to me, or what the impact of going public would be to me. They just saw an opportunity and tried to exploit me in a different way. | I took out loans for my physics education. All that was lost when I was forced out of the field due to harassment (that the university admitted). I then had to take out more loans to change careers. I ended up deep in debt and in a career that isn't what I would have chosen. | I wish I could just say, oh, well, these things happen. But the reality is different. I passed my PhD qualifying exams, but I left grad school feeling like a failure because I was pushed out. (Again, I was pushed out despite the fact that the university knew this man to be a serial harasser, and despite the fact that they knew he was ruining my own career. They just openly said that they valued his grant money more than me/my career/my education etc). That feeling of failure has followed me. I'm now struggling in a career I entered in order to pay off my educational debt, but it's not the life I would have chosen. In recent months, I have felt like the walls are closing in. I have to take pills to sleep and I wake up struggling for breath every morning. I think that when I was younger, I felt like I still had many options in life, but now I've felt like all my options have collapsed down to this dark, scary place. I feel like I'll never get out of debt, and I don't know how to jump to a more compatible career when I'm in the midst of drowning. | See my prior answer. I hate feeling like a victim and I still want to believe that I have a chance at a fulfilling life, but I'm in a pretty dark place right now. | Male | |||
2112 | 1/11/2018 12:13:50 | A tenured Faculty member told multiple female students in the department that they were too pretty and or effeminate to be in our field and that they would be better served moving to a more "soft science" akin to women | Undergraduate | Academic Adviser | Elite Institution/Ivy League | George Washington University | Title IX training that was non mandatory for the department | No longer advising. Still teaching courses, still has tenure. | Left the field. | Brought to my awareness to the department of how horrific their behavior is. Multiple students changed majors because of it. | Male | ||||
2113 | 1/11/2018 12:16:25 | The course supervisor for the course I was TAing met with me at the beginning of the semester to go over expectations. He then told me it was frowned upon to sleep with students, but once the semester was over I could sleep with anyone I wanted to. When I told him I did not plan on sleeping with students or anyone in the program he told me "never say never". | Graduate student | He was my direct supervisor for my TA job. | Other Type of School | Simon Fraser University | Education | None / unreported | None / unreported | Chose to not meet with him individually | This was not a particularly terrible experience, but simply acted as a reinforcement that I should not let my guard down around male colleagues and I generally attempted to work female supervision after that. | Male | |||
2114 | 1/11/2018 12:18:16 | I was on an annual geology 'field camp' related to my major. My class (10 men, 3 women) traveled through Colorado working in different areas of geologic interest - like a 6 week hands on lab. I consistently received bad scores on my weekly labs, insulting comments from one particular professor. One included "did you even do this work?" on a very extensive lab (yes, i had). Turns out that the professor expected at least one of the women in field camp each year to sleep with him for the duration (6 weeks) of the course. It just didn't happen to be me, so i guess i warranted a bad final grade from him. Lucky for me the other professors gave me great scores, in hindsight I'm sure this was a regular occurrence for this course so they passed me in their sections. I DID graduate. | Getting my undergrad degree. Passing this course was critical for on-time graduation. | Senior professor of the department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Geological Engineering | None | None | None | None, just general annoyance about the situation. | Just a general knowledge that anyone you work with has serious issues and not to trust anyone. | Male | |||
2115 | 1/11/2018 12:24:26 | A tenured head of department professor at my elite engineering school was fired after 20 years of abusing power that came with his position. He would routinely proposition women students in his department and offer to get them internships, funding and jobs if they had sex with him. He was married with two kids. Apparently this activity was common knowledge to the entire institution for many, many years. Finally enough women came forward and complained. The school created a 'inquiry panel' and had all the women give their accounts of what happened (instead of outright firing this guy). I believe the true reason the institution finally gave in is because he was also embezzling and mis-appropriating funding, not for the harassment. | Employee at the school (and alumni) | Member of the staff | Elite Institution/Ivy League | IT | Firing after 20 years of consistent abusive behavior to his students | He finally was 'asked to leave', with no formal acknowledgment of the issue | None | Seriously annoyed | None. Most guys are pervs. | Male | |||
2116 | 1/11/2018 12:26:43 | A professor took a staff member out to dinner to proposition her in the guise of offering her a new job. He continued to harass her and other colleagues of mine. The moment I took my job I was warned about him and other male professors like him were pointed out to me. | Staff and colleague to the sexually harassed staff member. | Senior to me and the woman he sexually harassed. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Business | University's HR handled it incredibly poorly. They hid the charges, forced the staff member to leave the university, did an internal "investigation" where they accused the staff member of lying, attacked her character, and then stated they were not at fault, despite staff having proof HR has been hiding allegations against this professor for decades. | None - allowed a retirement package which he has yet to take. | I lost my job by speaking out against the professor. | High stress levels | I was originally intending on doing an MBA within the institution, now I have had to take up another career. | There are so many more examples of how rotten this institution is to the core, how the men within it treat it like an old boys' club and constantly harass female subordinates, that it would fill a book. | Male | ||
2117 | 1/11/2018 12:35:37 | A male colleague in my department began inappropriate comments and touching the week I was hired as a full-time, tenure track professor. When I asked him to stop, he became aggressive and hostile and verbally abused me in an extremely threatening and belligerent manner. This continued for years until I finally filed an internal formal sexual harassment complaint against him. Following that, although I technically "won" against him, I was subjected to retribution in numerous forms for the remainder of my employment at the college. That went on for about 17 years. My daily life was filled with incidents. My students were also subjected to problems as a result of his constant harassment of me. | Newly hired tenure track professor. | Tenured professor | Regional Teaching College | Truckee Meadows Community College, Reno, Nevada | Biological and Environment Science | Criticism and retribution against me in the form of blatant criticism, hostility and fewer resources that I needed for my classes and program to succeed. | Initially, minor things like moving his office a little bit away from me, although he was still given excellent evaluations. Later, he was fired after another female professor filed a lawsuit against the college because he embraced her and kissed her on the lips in class in front of students. | It cast me as unstable in the eyes of the college administration, and thus I was subjected to hostility from the administration, and denied resources and funding that I needed for my courses and programs. For example, I was denied adequate lab space, office space, support and funding while these were allocated to newer less promising programs than Environment Science. Further, faculty members took sides, often against me, and openly criticized me and played tricks on me to sabotage my classes and the ability of some of my students to access classes and information they needed. | It created extreme stress, numerous serious health issues and constant exhaustion. Sleeplessness was my normal. I began drinking simply to get some sleep. | I managed to stay the course of my teaching position, because I refused to let him drive me away. However, I quit the biology department to form a separate department (Physical Sciences). After he was fired and served with a permanent restraining order to stay off campus, that became very successful. After that, I was still subjected to minor incidents of revenge by his allies, but nothing like what he did to me on a daily basis. | The current movement is an enormous comfort to me. I'm not even sure if my harasser is still alive. If he is, I hope he is bombarded every day with the MeToo movement and programs such as yours. I hope he cannot sleep at night. And I am so proud of myself for speaking up in the early 90's and staying the course. | Male | |
2118 | 1/11/2018 12:38:40 | I was a male grad student who witnessed this behavior by a male professor toward female undergrads. The students and professors in my program had a lot of informal social interaction, with clear lines and behavioral standards of course. One professor would attend parties with the undergrads and get inappropriately drunk and dance with or become handsy/close/etc with the students. To my knowledge he never assaulted anyone but I would watch him act extremely inappropriately, and the female undergrads could see exactly what was happening and were VERY weirded out by it. Several female students told me stories of being made to feel extremely uncomfortable/threatened personally by his behavior at past events as well, in this same manner. This happened about twice per semester, if not more. That this professor, then and now, taught a required course that all undergrads in the major have to take, and some of them have to be dragged kicking and screaming to take it seriously. (I on the other hand LOVE this material.) This guy's behavior and reputation definitely pushed many students away from taking this particular field of study seriously, which deeply upsets me. I will also add that several of the other grad students he worked with - before, during, and after my time - are distinctly similar in their approach to undergrads, and one of them started dating an undergrad while in his PhD program, which I felt weird about. I hate to think this professor is producing more people like him to sprinkle around the landscape in our field. | Grad student | Professor | Other R1 | Rutgers | Arts/Humanities | I heard stories about "talkings to" that he received, but I don't know | None, although he does have a reputation | None | None | None | Male | ||
2119 | 1/11/2018 12:48:12 | In 2013, working in University athletics dept., I was raped by 8 men on a sports team I worked with. They filmed me being raped and beaten and shared the video around. Before and after the assault, I experienced sexual harassment as well as verbal abuse in my athletic dept. workplace by both co-workers and superiors. | Undergraduate | Student athletes, coworkers (some undergrad, some professional level). | Other R1 | University of Arizona | Reported rape to Title IX and hostile work environment to OIE. Title IX investigator determined in my favor (after horrifying investigative process) and perpetrators were “expelled after graduation”. This means they were allowed to graduate and play sports without punishment, but simply could not return for grad school. OIE considered my claims unfounded and dismissed them, but did discipline my former supervisor for not reporting the abuses I reported to him. | A few transferred schools before Title IX decision came down. Those who stayed were “expelled after graduation”. Meaning they continued to play sports and go to school without punishment, but could not return for grad school. | I had to quit my job. | 5 years later and I am still not okay. | I went on to a career in Victim Advocacy after graduation. Helping others to hopefully have better outcomes than me is how I have coped. Being raped changed my life forever. | A woman recently went public with a hostile workplace claim against University of Arizona athletics. Her claims are horrifically similar to mine. I warned the school about this years ago and they did nothing. I feel like they should be held responsible for allowing this for so many years. | Male | ||
2120 | 1/11/2018 12:56:07 | Interprofessional committee work was met with unwelcome and inappropriate request from committee chair to go away together. Refusal was met with further unwanted attention. | tenure track | tenured & committee chair | Other R1 | social sciences | received recommendation not to go through HR because "they are inept" thus no actual results ensued | none known | I left the prestigious committee- impact on T/P process and loss of potential collaborations with others in the group are not fully known but increased professional isolation is assured. | It accelerated a decline in mental health resulting in need for medication and ongoing treatment. | Personal unrest at home continues and I continue to doubt myself. "Impostor syndrome" is real and professional and personal paralysis is the new norm. | Male | |||
2121 | 1/11/2018 12:56:41 | A tenured male professor groomed his advisee and student, and subsequently entered into a sexual relationship with her. He treated her with preferential treatment, in some cases at the direct cost of other students and advisees. Other students were extremely uncomfortable and distressed by the whole situation. He was subsequently divorced and moved in with this student, which can be substantiated from property records and word of mouth. | Student | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Mills College | Economics | Unclear, seemed like an inquiry that failed to target the professor | None | Male | |||||
2122 | 1/11/2018 12:57:40 | I was an undergrad student (18 years old) and my then-professor (in his sixties) out of the blue offered me a job in his lab. I took it without hesitation, since on-campus jobs are hard to come by. He'd come down while I was working to flirt heavily with me which creeped me out, knowing that I couldn't leave the lab mid-procedure. He offered to "show me a good time" if I went on vacation with him, and kept insisting once I turned him down. A colleague/friend who worked in the lab with me told me she'd made the mistake of giving him her cell phone number when she was hired, and she showed me messages sent late at night from him saying she was beautiful, asking her why she hadn't come by his office to say hi, and then angry and demanding ones calling her names for not answering him. Another friend/colleague who worked in the same lab and who was a bit heavier showed me messages from him expressing appreciation for "curvaceous women". We were all incredibly uncomfortable with the situation. None of us were older than 20. | Undergrad student/Lab technician | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | McGill University | Food Chemistry | Once my colleagues and I realized that we were all in the same boat, we reported it to the office of student affairs together. They asked us if we were sure of our claims and that we hadn't misinterpreted. They told us that if we wanted to file an official claim, it would be long and difficult and hard to prove, and it could damage his (the professor's) career. Then sent us away to think about whether we really wanted to do move forward with escalating it or not. We were so discouraged by the response we just let it go. | None | I decided to steer clear of working in a lab ever again. This isn't the only reason behind that decision, but it was definitely a significant one on the list. | I'd often leave the lab crying or just feeling disgusted. I was too young then to know how messed up the situation was and just assumed I had done something to deserve it. | I've denounced sexual harassment (which has happened to be sadly in almost every job before or since) every time I've encountered it again. For the most part, it hasn't actually done anything except make me feel like I did something and force HR to make a note of it, but it helps me. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
2123 | 1/11/2018 13:00:52 | While doing my PhD studies a collegue used to enter my office and left messages with the word 'whore', he also used to call me that way around the working place and send me pictures of his genitals once. Also, he told many office colleges that we have sex, which was not true. When I explicitly told other people in the department I work about the situation he come to the office and told me to stop playing the victim. He stops for some months, but he eventually start doing it again before graduation. From this incident I was called "feminazi" by a professor. | I was a PhD student. | PhD student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Universidad Carlos III de Madrid | Statistics | They told me to not report the incident since I have not taken pictures of the notes and also the pictures of the genitals were not enough proof of the harassment | I was isolated within the university community having health problems related with the stress of the situation | Male | |||||
2124 | 1/11/2018 13:07:04 | PhD Candidate in ABD Status attempted to rape a female member of his cohort while in her home. She was able to fight him off. Candidate attempted to again assault same student a few months later. At the end of the semester, Candidate raped an underclassman whom he was student teaching at an off campus, end of semester party while underclassman was impared by alcohol. Candidate also has a history of violent rage when in a blackout state on intoxicated. | PhD Student Approaching Candidacy | ABD PhD Candidate - 2 Cohorts Ahead of Me | Other R1 | Lower Plains R1 Institution | Social Sciences | All incidents were reported to department/department chair. The secondary incident appears to have made its way up the chain to the Dean's office. No student conduct/honor code hearings took place. No Title IX response from institution. | The first incidents were dismissed as unfortunate interpersonal happenstance and characterized as both he said/she said and 'dating relationship gone bad' (the first victim and the candidate were never romantically involved for whatever that's worth). By characterizing it that way, it removed any onus on the department to do anything about it and placed the responsibility on the first victim to just cut off contact with the candidate. Once the underclassman had been victimized, the candidate was given a one year leave from the program and placed in a field research position in another state. The candidate allegedly agreed to seek help for a drinking problem and to 'clean up his act'. This was arranged all by the department chair with some input from the candidate's committee chair and possibly also the Dean's office. After one year, the candidate returned, resumed his candidacy, and started teaching in the department again. | Male | |||||
2125 | 1/11/2018 13:10:49 | I was an MBA student at a meeting with two faculty members to discuss a recently awarded grant application I had helped submit. Present at this meeting was a senior male accounting professor and a female who worked in administration and was responsible for government grants. In that lunch I remember the male placing his hand on the thigh of the woman in charge of government grants. He had hoped to do it undetected by me but it was obvious in part, due to her expression. I had never witnessed anything like this and did not know what to do. I did nothing and pretended not to have noticed. She was visibly embarrassed and stiffly took his hand and moved it away from her thigh. I have often felt remorse at not having said anything and I have no idea whether the accounting professor had a relationship with this administrator or not. What I do remember is how awkward the situation was how embarrassed the administrator looked when it happened. She was much younger than him and unmarried. He was married. It was certainly inappropriate and my first real encounter with such a thing. | Student | Faculty | Other Type of School | Thunderbird School of Global Management | Business | Not reported | None | None too me. Unknown for the victim | Guilt at not reporting what I observed | None | Male | ||
2126 | 1/11/2018 13:13:02 | I used to go to office hours for organic chemistry, because it's a critical class for premed and pre-phd. I was often the only one there for part, if not all, of the allotted time. He started making "flirty" comments, which is a weird way to put it because I was 18 and he was late 40s/early 50s. Also it was't normal flirtation as I've ever experienced it. For instance, I was taking art classes, including painting - he used to say he wanted to come watch me "paint." He asked if I did nudes - he made it clear that he meant that I would be naked. He tried to hug me, grab me, touch my thighs, body etc. I pulled away and tried to laugh it off until it was too much and I left. This happened many times, but I needed help - the exams were far more advanced than the lectures. Anyway, this continued with him trying to push it further and further. I finally told a fellow student study buddy, who was stunned... because the same guy had done the same thing to his girlfriend the previous year! The next year, I was at a restaurant downtown and I was obliquely talking to a friend about what had happened... the bartender was stunned and interrupted our conversation. A chemistry professor had come in one day and had told him all about how he seduced the students in his classes, and they were such easy pickings, and in fact he was there to meet one that night! The bartender saw him skeeving on the young woman who came in (they left together), and he was super disturbed by the guy, the whole conversation and the scene. He described the guy and also volunteered without prompting that the guy had a very prominent limp! Just like the guy who had been harassing me. So apparently I was one of many. | Undergraduate student | Professor of organic chemistry | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Biochemistry | I did not officially report. I made some furtive attempts to bring it up with people with some power. I was told by a number of undergrad and grad students (and two undergrad advisors) that the behavior had been continuous and common place for years, and that it was well known in the department and the institution, and that there was no point in mentioning it other than marking myself for reprisal. "You got your A! What more do you want?!" | None that I am aware of. | I had been trying to cultivate a faculty mentor in the department. I was required as part of my degree to have a PI to lead a full year of research in their lab. I was also considering academia as a career. I was the top student by far in his class, so it should have been a fit (e.g. 98% on an exam on which the class average was below 50%). Once I turned him down, he became very hostile, rude and abrupt. I didn't have time to find anyone else good. I settled on someone whose work was not related to my field or interests; it went poorly and I almost failed the 2 semesters. I didn't pursue any further degrees or a career in science. It was one of a number of things that made me feel disillusioned, and convinced there was no place for me in that world. | It was confusing and very unsettling. I was afraid to be in a room with him. I was afraid what he could do to my grade. I felt embarrassed and ashamed that I must have done something wrong. It made me question my worth. I used to go and check my exams (graded by TAs anyway, not him) over and over again to remind myself I had earned my grades. It definitely fed into my general inability to trust people, especially men, due to a challenging childhood and adolescence. | Ugh. It's awful to think about. I was good. I can't know how good, or not, now. Another closed door. | Everyone already knows all of this and no one cares. Including women. The two advisors who told me to forget about it were a woman and a gay man. Both white. I appreciate this effort, but no one has ever cared and I don't think they're about to start. Whatever BS PR initiatives you may be able to squeeze out of these institutions, they will close ranks as soon as it's someone they know and like. No one liked Weinstein or Spacey! That's the only reason they are gone, because they were stupid enough to antagonize men too. The only way to get them is their pocketbooks. Find a way to make them literally pay (a lot), then maybe they'll think about some real policy changes. | Male | ||
2127 | 1/11/2018 13:24:24 | I was leaving the school library around 1 a.m. and was followed by a male graduate student from my department into the parking garage. He had a weapon in his hand and the look on his face is something I'll never forget. He intended to hurt me and possibly kill me. You could see it in his face - the intent was clear. I ran as fast as I could and he chased me, though I was able to make it back to the library where I screamed for help. The on duty librarians called campus police. This happened because I had teased this graduate student in the research lab a week prior and the graduate student was angry at being publicly embarrassed by a female underclassmen. He had a history, not known to me then, of making inappropriate or very scary remarks to women in his cohort and his female committee chair. He had a history, not known to me then, of domestic and sexual violence against his ex-wife. He had been administratively released from military service against his ex-wife, not known to me then, but the military granted an administrative discharge because they categorized the violence as a result of PTSD from combat field violence. This administrative release allowed this graduate student to attend my institution on the GI bill which he wouldn't have received if he had been dishonorably discharged. This graduate student had followed me into the library that night and watched me for a total of 6 hours, lying in wait for me to leave. He had likely been stalking me for several days prior in know that I was in the library in the first place as neither of us lived on campus. I spent the rest of the semester terrified of him. I went on study abroad the following fall semester to get away from him. | Underclassman - Junior | Graduated Student | Other Type of School | CSU System (California) | Social Sciences | Campus police took a report and referred the incident to the Title IX office. No further escalation resulted. Campus police advised that I could seek an Emergency Restraining Order but it would be very difficult to enforce and generally felt it wasn't worth my effort. No criminal charges resulted. I also reported it to the department chair and 2 faculty members who were all concerned but nothing further was said or done about it. | The harasser eventually withdrew as an alternative to dismissal from the program but this was after I graduated. His mental health continued to unravel and after he made a number of scary comments to his female committee chair member, she no longer met with him in her office with the door closed and only at times when other faculty members were present during the work day. I am told he entered a law school program instead in another state. I do not know what became of him but there were no consequences to this incident for him. | Male | |||||
2128 | 1/11/2018 13:27:14 | I'm not sure if this counts as harassment, but it certainly felt very inappropriate and creepy. I had a brief romantic relationship with another grad student in my lab, but we did not publicize our relationship to our program nor to our mentor. The relationship ended amicably and we remained good friends and professional colleagues. Several years later, my friend reported that her mentor (one of my committee members) asked about the nature of this relationship as he had witnessed "evidence" that we were romantically involved and wanted to know more details about the nature of our relationship as well as a prior relationship. | Grad student | Committee member | Other R1 | University of Pittsburgh | STEM | I did not report the incident. | I was humiliated that a senior faculty member thought that personal details about a female student's dating life was somehow an appropriate topic of conversation. Further, I became paranoid about whether he would use that information against me in some way and the reason why he would want that information. Since personnel from my lab and his lab interact often and our labs are in close physical proximity, I have been forced to interact with him nearly daily. I have attempted to remove him from my committee, but without a suitable replacement (and the fact that I do not want to share the details of the relationship with my mentor), I was shot down. It's been a big source of stress and anxiety. | This incident (and other similar events) has solidified my decision to leave R1 level science. | Most of the sexism I have experienced has been in the form of microaggressions that diminish women but are small enough that they are difficult to report without some backlash/unwanted attention. Examples I've experienced in grad school include comments about cutting my hair short ("but boys don't like it"), comments about presentation of my work ("it's cute that you think there's a connection there"), comments about the way women talk, "joking" about accepting female recruits because they're attractive, and on and on. Worse, when I've tried to speak up about some of the more egregious examples, I'm gaslighted- "you're interpreting his comments wrong," "that's just the way their generation is," "you should take it as a compliment," "I'm just joking," etc. | Male | |||
2129 | 1/11/2018 13:30:02 | When I was a PhD candidate, a professor grabbed me around the waist and tickled me at a faculty reception, another professor tried to kiss me on several different occasions in the mail room, and yet another professor tried to kiss me while we were out walking and discussing math. It’s important to be able to have casual friendly academic discussions with professors and colleagues, but it seems that male colleagues either want a sexual relationship or they won't talk mathematics with women at all. | PhD candidate | All were full professors in the dept. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Colorado at Boulder | Applied Mathematics | I didn't report the incidents. | None. | Minimal, but even small incidents like these made me angry. | I finished my PhD, but left academia because there are so few women mathematicians and it was very difficult to make the casual friendships with male colleagues necessary to do collaborative work. | Male | |||
2130 | 1/11/2018 13:36:47 | When I was entering my senior year, my advisor started to blur the lines of our relationship, sending me personal texts at all hours of the night. We had a friendship since I first took a class with him as a freshman, and I admittedly had a crush on him, but he was more than 20 years my senior and in too powerful a position over me for this to be okay. He would unload all kinds of personal problems onto me, expecting me to be his emotional support. Eventually the conversations turned sexual, and he asked me to send pictures, which I did. Dumbly, I thought maybe the relationship was "real" and went on to have sex with him and continued some semblance of a relationship post-graduation. I ended things eventually and moved out of the state. | Undergraduate student | Professor and Academic advisor | Small Liberal Arts College | University of Redlands | History | N/A - I did not report it. | It was never reported. He told me that he had had a relationship with a student once before, when he was adjuncting straight out of grad school. I wasn't the first, and probably wasn't the last. | I have major imposter syndrome, thinking that all of my accomplishments were only because of our relationship. I fear forming close relationships with men in my field due to the power they may have over me or that my accomplishments may be diminished under them. | It was very difficult for me to trust others and to be intimate with people after his transgressions. I continue to feel guilty for it because I feel responsible since I consented at the time...even though I realize now that I couldn't have consented given the power disparity. | I wanted to go to graduate school. I'm 3 years out of college and still haven't applied. I don't want to have to revisit that time in my life, ask for references, etc. | Male | ||
2131 | 1/11/2018 13:37:08 | I took a temporary research technician position in a cell biology lab in 2012, fresh out of college. Shortly after being hired, the PI began sexualizing me; looking down my shirt when talking to me, not taking me seriously as a scientist, very obviously 'checking me out.' The senior-most research assistant told me that the boss had deliberately scheduled my interview for a day when the research asst wasn't there, as research asst had been warning off people (especially young women) from taking this job. I was then informed that he had a history of harassing undergrads and similar aged employees and was regaled with stories of his highly inappropriate behavior, including why they no longer had evening lab outings due to his inappropriateness. The boss continued to act inappropriately towards me as well as being abusive towards myself and other lab members so I avoided him as much as possible. His approach to science and grant-based research was also suspect at best. During a lunch time holiday outing, he played with my hair and told me I looked like a Disney princess. I was extremely concerned with looking like a 'job hopper' but finally left after 9 months and on my last day, he was nowhere to be found. I left with the research asst and then boss called research asst and proceeded to rant about "how much he had done for that bitch, how dare she just leave without saying goodbye, etc." while I was in the car. I know there were at least 3-4 other undergrads/techs that he had been inappropriate with and most of the senior most members of the lab were aware of how he was, as well as whoever was on his tenure committee. It was an open secret to a large degree and there was a 'whisper network' for new graduate students to not join his lab, but this didn't help technicians like myself who were underpaid and generally couldn't just transfer labs. | Research Technician | Associate Professor/PI | Other R1 | UNC Chapel Hill | Cell Biology | I didn't report it during my exit interview and I regret it; I was so early in my career and he had made it clear that he was willing to be vindictive when speaking about others so I didn't want a drawn out battle where my name would be dragged through the mud even if they did believe me. He is still quite powerful and continues to get appointments at prestigious institutes and retain funding. | None, this was apparently enough of a pattern that during discussions of his tenure various people were called in to try to get an on record account of his harassment but no one was willing so it remained an "open secret" and he has tenure. | I accomplished nothing of scientific merit during my job there; Moved back into a lab with worse funding and lost many contacts in that department, really discouraged me from staying in academia long term | Made me more on edge about harassment and anxious about men as bosses, really doubted my scientific skills for a while | I don't think I'll stay in academia long term and I'm extremely wary of the whole power dynamic set up in PhD programs so I don't plan to get a PhD (for multiple reasons) | I would be willing to go on record if there were other accusers; he is scum. | Male | |
2132 | 1/11/2018 13:44:01 | I have heard so many stories, so will just report my own. I will only report three main ones. 1) In 2002 I was a brand new graduate student doing fieldwork in a remote location. I was warned in advance that the PI had a "reputation" so I was wary. After about a week we were all sitting around a campfire. I had avoided him, but he seemed to find me. He sat down and started talking. I admit to being abrupt with him, but didn't want to be rude so started talking more. He seemed just conversational but then asked about my body, which took me off guard. He laughed and said he just wanted to know what sports I had done in high school to shape my body for life. After telling him I had been a cheerleader he would frequently come up to me after and during work and say, "You know, I had always wanted to date a cheerleader...". It just just awkward, but these comments went on and on every day. No specific one seemed overtly disgusting, but I just wished it wasn't happening. There was a lot of drinking and smoking pot and playing games and as the fieldwork progressed it started to feel "normal" somehow. It seemed like he really liked me. I started to feel flattered. One night he kissed me. I broke it off, and he started to feel my chest. I told him no, and he persisted a bit but ultimately backed away...but he barely spoke to me for the rest of the fieldwork (many weeks). He found someone else who would sleep with him, which was a very clear message that had been his only plan the entire time. I felt dirty and used, like it was my fault, that I had instigated or encouraged it, and that there was no way I could ever tell anyone because I would be the fool who didn't see it coming. After all, hadn't I been adequately warned? A year or so later I saw him at a conference. I tried to sit away from him at dinner after the talks. He got drunker and drunker, and would not leave me alone. There was dancing. He would dance over to me and comment on how I moved, persistently, trying to touch me. I would just laugh and move away, trying to make light of it. I walked back to my hotel in a group, and said goodbye to them all in the lobby. The next thing I knew, he was calling my room at 3am asking if I could come see him. I had many roommates, one of whom answered the phone. I told him no way, but I'm sure it damaged my reputation. I just never had the guts to try to explain it to anyone. Fortunately, he was a PI at another institution and I never had to deal with him after that. He was married and had two kids the whole time. 2) In 2004 I was a mid-level graduate student and I was doing fieldwork in a different place. There was a senior graduate student who was in a supervisory position (married, with two kids). Several of us took a night off on a weekend to go into a town, and stayed in a hostel. There was drinking. This man got very drunk and was all over me, whispering in my ear "I'm going to make you come over and over" and groping me. I told him no, no, no, so many times. I tried to squirm away. I didn't want to make a fuss about it because I had to work with him, and everyone knew him as the "dirty old man" anyway so I figured they would just see it as me making a big deal out of nothing. I could not seem to get away from him without raising a fuss. We were in a shared room with several other people and I took the top bunk. He got up there with me, trying to touch me, and I just kept shoving him away with my feet. I really didn't want to make the situation awkward for other people, or for myself when everyone woke up the next morning and had to go back to work together. I must have stayed like that for an hour or more, just shoving his hands back with my feet through my sleeping bag until eventually I guess he just passed out. The next morning he pretended like nothing had happened, and every once in a while I see him and he hugs too long, squeezes too tight...but he does that to all the women, so I feel like if I brought it up I would look conceited. There were rumors that all the men (PIs and male graduate students) would get together and rate the female graduate students and undergraduates on the fieldwork. I can't know if any of that was actually true, but I would not be surprised. 3) In 2016 I was a TT Asst. Prof. I thought all of this was behind me. I am married with two children. I did not think I would be a target any longer, because I was now "old" and cynical. I was invited to attend a workshop. Afterwards, several of us colleagues went out...and out...and out. We just kept going from place to place, chatting, having a great time, generating ideas. We were in a group. It felt like my grad school years, but the good parts of them. I chatted for a while with someone who was probably about my age. We knew a lot of the same people, but had never met in person. I showed abundant pictures of my husband and family. He seemed to like seeing them. At the last place, the music was loud. I went to the bathroom and when I came back everyone was gone except for this guy. I asked where they went and he said they had all left. I thought that was weird, and since I had been following the group I didn't really know where I was. I started trying to figure out how to get back to my lodging. A rad song from the 80s started playing and I said I liked it. This guy said I should dance to it then. So we danced, not touching, in a crowd. It was fun - I hadn't done something like that in maybe 10 years. We kept dancing, and he kept getting closer. I kept trying to keep it light, keep my distance, but he kept getting closer and I could not find a way to move away without making it awkward, feeling like he was trying something that I was telling myself he couldn't possibly be trying. After all, he'd seen my family photos and I was no longer a young, naive graduate student right? It just kept happening and I couldn't find a way to stop the situation without bringing attention to it. I felt like that would be awkward, sort of like accusing him of something, which to me felt both conceited and like it could become an issue if we ever worked together in the future. Eventually he pulled me in all of a sudden and planted a huge kiss on my mouth. That was a pretty clear signal that it wasn't all in my head, so I pushed him away and scolded him and reminded him I was happily married. He just smiled and acted like nothing had happened and tried again...and again...after a couple of minutes of trying to "be normal" I just gave up and said I needed to go. He walked with me, pretending like nothing had happened. I felt a terrible, awful guilt - just like back in grad school, like I must have been responsible for it simply because I hadn't made a big protest about it at the start. He kept trying to take me on all these detours back to my lodging to "show me things around the city". I eventually just got out my phone and found it myself, feeling stupid that I had let that happen on top of everything else. I still feel terrible, like I've done something wrong. I saw him later at a conference and pretended he didn't exist; he did the same. It all felt so childish, stupid, and like being back in high school, which was very distracting when I was supposed to be at a professional conference. Those are just three incidents. They do not include all the many times I have to greet senior men and they hug too long, kiss on the cheek too long, and make comments about my appearance. One committee member told me at my dissertation defense (in front of the crowd) that I sure didn't look like I'd just had a baby (my son was about a month old at the time). It's just tiring. I was glad to get old enough and secure enough to be what I thought was beyond all of that... | 1) young graduate student in early 20s; 2) mid-level graduate student in mid-20's; 3) TT-Asst. Professor in late 30s | 1) PI of the project on which I was working but not a direct supervisor outside of that setting; 2) senior graduate student with authority over me; 3) same-aged colleague | Other R1 | 1) and 2) were affiliated with an R1; 3) was with an elite institution | Anthropology | I never said anything to anyone except friends/significant others. In hindsight, I should have reported every one of those incidents, but I just felt so terribly guilty about all of them and I just wanted them to go away. I figured as long as they didn't happen again, they were in the past. I took the blame for hanging out with people, for drinking with people, for just being present in a situation where there was potential for this to happen. I kept saying to myself, "it's not like you were actually raped or anything". Now I look at that and I think what a poor benchmark that is. But I don't know if I would have the guts to report them now officially or not if I ever found myself in that same situation again. | N/A (see above) | I feel cynical, wary, and fed up. I don't think it had any direct impacts on my career because I did not allow it to get me down to the point where I wanted to leave and ultimately I was never harassed by someone with direct control over my career. However, I have felt very embarrassed and as though when I attend conferences everyone thinks they "know" something about me. It's just been a lot of extra mental and emotional work to have to deal with when I need to focus on other things. | Just emotionally draining - one more thing to deal with. | I did not want to go back to do fieldwork with the PI in situation 1). I may have missed out on an opportunity there, but I had other opportunities that led me in an equally rewarding direction. I was lucky to have a supportive (and harassment-free) primary supervisory team who would write me letters, recommend me for projects, etc., including a strong female model. | Male | ||
2133 | 1/11/2018 13:50:02 | - the most serious incident involved a fellow PhD student in my department, Political Science, at York University in Toronto. We had been friends, strictly platonic, not even flirting, since I started the program (three years by then). One night we ran into each other at a free outdoor concert. I had drank one large beer prior. We went back to his apartment with some friends of mine and his brother and his brother's friends. At his apartment he made me a drink. I don't remember anything after that. I woke up the next day, terrified and unable to even move my body. I felt extremely ill. I didn't know own where I was. I was in a strange bedroom. There was no one else there. I was also naked and covered with scrapes and bruises. It took hours of laying there terrified before I felt well enough to try and get up and find my clothes. Eventually he came into the bedroom and my heart sank as I realized where I was. I was shocked. I would have never ever consented to sex with him. I identified as a lesbian at the time. Openly. He knew I was a lesbian. We had never flirted. He had a girlfriend who was a friend of mine. I asked him what happened. He said that I came on to him. I told him I was "in love" with him. Then he said that he had sex with me. He said the scrapes were from me falling down because I couldn't walk straight and then a few minutes later said, "but I didn't think you were that drunk"... He also said that I tried to run out of the apartment naked and he chased me. He laughed as if it was a funny thing for me to do. He said I told him that "men always tell women what to do!" I have absolutely no memory of it myself. I have to trust him version. But I don't. An expert told me that it sounded like I had been drugged. Even if I wasn't, if I was so drunk that I was falling down and badly scraping my body (if that is where the scrapes came from) how could he not realize that I was too drunk to consent. If I passed out, which I must have, why did he just leave me alone in his room all morning and not check on me or call an ambulance? I was so humiliated and scared that I wasn't thinking right. I made him promise not to tell anyone. I went home as fast as I could. I told myself never to think of it ever again. I tried to burry it. But I couldn't. I started to hate academia. He became more and more successful and I became depressed and withdrawn. I have seen other male PhD students in my department go after young undergrad women, often when they are drunk at campus bars, in predatory ways. I've heard rumours of tenured professors doing the same thing to female grad students. Every grad student party I went to I felt uncomfortable at. Men would touch your arm or lower back without asking, they barely knew me. They would flirt. I can't count how many times that happened but I can count (5 in total) how many of my male colleagues ever asked me about my research in the total 7 years I was there. | PhD student | PhD student one year ahead ABD | Other R1 | York University (Toronto) | Political Science | I didn't report until I had left. To two of my committee members. They apologized for what had happened. | I haven't told anyone who he is. | I left academia. I couldn't stomach it. I hated it. I hated him. | I feel angry all the time. I quit drinking permanently. Depression, low self worth, etc... | I loved academia. It was what I lived for. It was the only thing I could see myself doing for a career. Now I work for a Sexual Assault Services Association. I am happy here but it wasn't what I initially thought I would do. | Male | ||
2134 | 1/11/2018 13:50:46 | At 2010 conference in shared hotel room with cohort, white, male phd candidate put unwanted penis in WoC phd candidate's hand and then on body, other colleagues just laughed and shrugged. White, male phd candidates have inappropriate sexual relations with undergraduate female students. White, male phd candidates and faculty have inappropriate sexual relations with in field study subjects and community liaisons, some known to be underage. | 4th yr PhD candidate, ABD | PhD candidates, tenured profs | Other R1 | Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison | Sociology, Asian Studies | None | None | Defended PhD, left academia | Changed career completely | Several of University of Wisconsin, Madison's area studies departments and those attached (soc, anthro, hist...) are a mess. It is abundantly clear to WoC PhD candidates the abuses that occur on campus and in country during dissertation research by white, male colleagues are condoned by their advisers. Years ago, a white, female prof warned about a well known and respected older white, male prof at a different institution who sexually abused a 14 yr old girl in a remote village while he conducted field work for his dissertation. | Male | ||
2135 | 1/11/2018 13:52:38 | the person i worked for repeatedly commented on my appearance; repeatedly complained about her own appearance; gave me "tips" on how to manipulate the director into thinking my ideas were his own in order to "get him to support me" (because he was a man); and commented on other students' appearances and behaviors in a belittling, sexist, and racist manner. | ma student | administrator | Elite Institution/Ivy League | approached the director about it, who kicked it over to hr, and then heard nothing about it | none that i know of | Female | |||||||
2136 | 1/11/2018 13:56:04 | Three weeks after my PhD defense, my PhD advisor started making hand-touches that were uncomfortable, and after an occasion where I pulled away, he started acting differently - making disclosures about his sex life, talking about his sex dreams. It changed the nature of the mentoring relationship, and I made a hasty decision to leave the lab because of this. I went to a lab that I hated, and was later unemployed. | PhD student | Faculty (PhD advisor) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Ivy University | Life Sciences | Other faculty telling me to work on the relationship with my PhD advisor, HR threatening me, the Dean turning me back to HR, Title IX office ignoring and then later dismissing my concerns | None | Four years of unemployment, lack of recommendation letter, unable to feel at peace in the city where I live | Absolutely destroyed. I doubt myself constantly and am insecure about my abilities. I have permanent dental damage from clenching my teeth at night, I developed pre-diabetes despite having a normal BMI. | Massive financial problems. I've given up on working in academia because of the disgusting super-hero culture that rewards men like those who harassed and retaliated against me (I am including another story from this Ivy as followup, where after voicing my concerns to one faculty that I worked with, I experienced an even worse situation). | Male | ||
2137 | 1/11/2018 14:04:00 | A professor would make at least one lewd comment in each class that made many feel uncomfortable. He spoke to me so closely that I could smell his breath and see his pores; I physically had to bend backwards to avoid any unwanted contact. He would also make comments directly towards other students like "If it weren't inappropriate, I would hug you right now" or "I should have brought you flowers if it weren't inappropriate." | Undergraduate student | Professor | Other Type of School | Fashion Marketing | I blew the whistle, and it took 2 semesters for them to take action (fired him), but he was harassing students for much longer. | Fired from the college | Thankfully, none | I am now worried about male professors and am overly cautious of any males in power. | N/A | Male | |||
2138 | 1/11/2018 14:04:08 | Example 1: I was repeatedly sexually harassed while in the coursework portion of my PhD program by a student in a previous year. He had repeatedly told me he thought I was awful but then began making comments like he would have sex with me to shut me up or I'm much more attractive when my mouth is shut or I'd be more attractive with something in my mouth. He made sexual gestures once standing in the back of the room while I was presenting a paper in a class. Example 2: I was in my second year in the same program. A student contacted me after we exchanged numbers while working on a class project. He wanted to get a workout buddy. I was game at first but wanted to make sure he was aware I had a boyfriend and would not date other people in the program under any circumstances. He assured me he was gay and we were just friends. We hung out a couple of times and then he turned really touchy-feely. I made it known I did not like that. He apologized but then called me again and again begging me to hang out. I did not want to so I texted him back and said I was not interested because I found him too involved in my personal life and needed to just keep things professional. He responded by threatening to kill himself if I would not see him and pleaded with me to leave my boyfriend. After I blocked his number and reported it, he insisted on sitting next to me in class, trying to have sidebar conversations with me, and stole my notes while I was writing. The professor of the class who had been alerted to the issue not only did nothing, he reduced my participation grade for being "distracting". | PhD Student | PhD Student | Other R1 | University of Missouri | 1: A professor once stepped in and called him out on a non-sexual but offensive comment but only after I went to bat for myself. When I discussed this with my then-advisor, she recommended I ignore most of it because some of it was said during department functions off campus and I would be fobbed off or blamed. 2: I reported it to the DGS and called campus PD to do a wellness check (he was in his office). My DGS took it seriously but the chair poo-pooed it and blamed me. The professor of our class said me bringing my personal business into his classroom was inappropriate and unprofessional and then reduced my participation grade for the distraction. I wanted to appeal it but my advisor was concerned it could hurt my chances of passing comps among other faculty since the chair had already decided I was a "problem". | 1: He still works as an adjunct faculty member at a private research university. 2: He failed out of our program for unrelated reasons. He went to another program for a master's degree which took him 4 years to get. He harassed other female students there, too. I heard from faculty in that program that he was frequently unstable in classes and female faculty were made uncomfortable by him. | 1: Anytime I had to be in class with him again, it was a distraction. Other students knew about it and just thought of it as "drama" so it was distracting all around. I did graduate and am still doing academic research so it, thankfully, did not follow me on the job market or ruin any plans with that. 2: Nothing. The faculty member who taught the class and the dept. chair both retired before I took comps (the semester before). I don't know what would have happened if they were still around. Again, this was triggering. | I was previously the victim of sexual assault and this was really upsetting. I had previously been raped by a boyfriend and earlier a friend while I was in school so this was hard. I had to rely heavily on anxiety meds whenever I was around him. And since we were in the same program, I was around him frequently. I took a job outside of academia while I was ABD just to lessen the likelihood of working with him. | Social Sciences (Rather not say, it's a very small program) | Male | |||
2139 | 1/11/2018 14:16:47 | My business professor took pictures of me without asking during a class | Student at community college | My business professor | Other Type of School | RCC | Business | Did not report it | None | I felt targeted and shame. Did i really see what I did? | Shame and disgust. Told my boyfriend, but he got mad | Just want to transfer and move on | Male | ||
2140 | 1/11/2018 14:27:52 | I was a student at FIT in 2012 when I walked into an elevator with my professor and one of his colleagues. They both looked me up and down then made jokes with each other about how the fresh meat this year was fuckable. | Student | Professor | Other Type of School | Fashion Institute of Technology | Visual Presentation & Exhibition Design | Never reported. | Never reported so no consequences. | Never reported. | A huge level of discomfort having to sit in his class & having him grade my work. He actually ended up almost failing me for not giving him enough attention. | Never reported. | Male | ||
2141 | 1/11/2018 14:47:00 | Found an explicit cartoon drawing of a teen age girl on the printer, which the person claimed. Person claimed the drawing was from a friend. | grad student | senior researcher | Elite Institution/Ivy League | chemistry | did not report | Full professor at Ivy League Institution | Deep regret and guilt that I didn't report the incident. Was scared of repercussions. | Avoided contact with the person, even though he could have positively impacted faculty position applications | Male | ||||
2142 | 1/11/2018 14:50:19 | My colleague and roommate frequently made conversations sexual and found excuses to touch me. He admitted to having been sympathetic to red pill attitudes, having abused his girlfriend, and having wanted to physically attack a previous female roommate after a fight over laundry. I lived with him and one other roommate. Two nights after my third roommate moved out, we went to a dinner at some friends. When we returned he expressed interest in me. I turned him down but he proceeded to argue with me for two hours about my reasons for turning him down. I did think it was strange that the time he'd choose to make his interest known was when there was no one else in the department and I was drunk, but I chalked it up to bad decision-making. Two weeks later we were at a bar and he kept buying my shots because I was celebrating an academic success with our colleagues. When we got home he again propositioned me again and argued with me for more than an hour instead of accepting my answer. He also physically blocked me from leaving my seat during this until I begged to go to the bathroom. Once I got away I barricaded myself in my room, since my door didn't have a lock. Several nights later I awoke to seeing him standing outside of my door looking in at me. I confessed what happened to a female colleague and she told me he had hit on her when she first got to campus. I heard a similar story from a third female colleague. I felt these incidents were likely to continue and escalate and sought recourse from the faculty to prevent that from happening. I also thought I had an obligation as an employee of the institution to report sexual harassment, but apparently there is a loophole where you can decline to report sexual harassment directed towards yourself. I was unaware of this. A female colleague was supposed to replace me in the house and she was good friends with him, so I didn't think she would listen if I tried to warn her. I thought the best way to protect her, other female colleagues, and the undergraduates that he supervised as a teaching assistant was to report the situation to the Dean of my department. I was unaware I could have gone directly to Title IX without going to the faculty as an intermediary. | Graduate student | Graduate student | Other Research Agency | Northern Illinois University | Philosophy | I told a female professor, who guided me to the Dean. They both guided me through a title IX process. As mandated reporters, they reported my complaints, which were enough that the Title IX office decided to launch an investigation. However, even though I limited who I spoke to (a female colleague and a friend unaffiliated with the department), my harasser spoke to many (perhaps all) of the faculty and grad students in order to disseminate his side of the story. After I complained about this, we were both told to stop talking to anyone about the case. As a result, these people only heard his side of the story, whose details were vague, downplayed, or entirely different from mine. I dropped classes because while I could handle my cohort hating me, I couldn't handle being in a class with a professor who thought of me as an hysteric. I lost all contact with all of my professors except for my thesis advisor. I heard a rumor that all faculty was encouraged not to communicate with me at all unless absolutely necessary, in order to be neutral and protect the department. That rumor would explain my experience. I had applied to PhD programs and some of them were calling faculty connections to inquire about me. I did very well in my acceptance rate, but I do know at least one faculty member thought I was overreacting and putting the faculty in a bad position. Apparently he was angry that I did not take advantage of the loophole that I wasn't obliged to report harassment if it happened to me-- a loophole I was unaware of. I will never know is his opinion impacted my acceptances. | None. I chose to request that the investigation not be pursued because the faculty had become completely distant to me and I heard rumors that my actions were not well-received by faculty members. | I still worry about the opinion of faculty members at NIU impacting my career. I don't know if it affected my acceptance to PhD programs. | My fervent wish is that I had never gone to the faculty with my problem. I had to move out and pay two rents anyways. I was encouraged to do so by my Dean. Interestingly, he made no such recommendations to my roommate. He described our living in the same apartment as analogous to a divorced couple living together. What I experienced after reporting the incidents was much, much worse than the incident itself. I was surprised at how badly it effected me. I have had over ten men try to rape me, so what this student did was nothing. I went forward to 1) prevent him from doing something that would really screw me up, 2) protect the women in the department, particularly the student who was supposed to replace me (and I was successful in that), and 3) satisfy my obligations as an employee of the school. I was prepared for my colleagues to turn against me. I wasn't prepared for the faculty to be completely unsupportive. I wasn't prepared for them to think the incident wasn't a big deal. Because of my history, I always think I am too accepting of egregious behavior, and I did have to be convinced by my female colleague that what he had done was problematic. I think I felt betrayed. The faculty talked so well about the women in philosophy problem. The male faculty members seemed really invested in it. However, their distance, and the rumors I heard about their views of me, made me realize it's all talk. I understand the incentives at play. If my harasser experienced consequences that became public, that would hurt the reputation of the department, and there have been several cases that have ruined departmental reputations even when the departments took the right steps. I suspect that my department talks about this issue very strongly in order to prevent it from happening, but when it actually does happen, they are going to protect the department and not try to protect the victim or remedy the behavior of the harasser. The thing is, I can deal with a sexist environment. I've worked in incredibly sexist environments, and I've done well. A faculty that presents itself as protective of its female students, but which will not back up that messaging should a student need it, is much more dangerous than an overtly sexist department. If I had been in an overtly sexist department, I simply wouldn't have reported, moved out, and my life would have gone much better. I experienced a three-month long, intense depressive episode. I couldn't get out of bed. I literally peed in a cup several times because I couldn't be bothered to go to the bathroom. I was barely able to get together the money and paperwork together to move on to my PhD program. I am worried this student will get into my PhD program so I have been unable to really commit to this program, because I know if he's accepted here, I will probably leave. He's very manipulative and he already ruined my reputation once. He will do it here too and I don't feel I can explain the situation to my current department because they might think of me as hysterical and prone to overreaction, just as my previous faculty did. I am still depressed. I alternate between too much sleep and insomnia. I self-medicate with alcohol frequently. I am unable to do the work I need to be doing in my PhD program. | I will never report sexual harassment again. Never. My biggest fear in becoming an academic is having a female student come to me with a sexual harassment problem, because I know that female faculty members have lost their jobs trying to stand up for their students. I know the female professor I turned to was pressured into behaving differently than she wanted to. For this reason, I am desperately hoping to be able to teach at a women's university, or to take my skills outside of academia. | Male | ||
2143 | 1/11/2018 15:16:32 | Male grad student, late 20s, preyed on female undergrads at student events, protests and off-campus parties. We organized together. He had a girlfriend but used to wait outside my dorm without my invitation. I cut him off for a month but he came back around, asked me on a date. I wasn't old enough to drink. One night I stayed at his place and he went to meet friends at a bar (where I could not be). I woke up to find him raping me in my sleep that night. He apologized, but later threatened to "fight back" if anyone tried to "come for him." He coerced me into unprotected sex, lied that he had been tested, and then later disclosed that his ex had HPV (which became cervical cancer). He was also an emotional bully, dismissed my coursework as irrelevant (to him), racially fetishized me and cheated on me with other students. He later dated one of those students. After she dumped him, he waited outside her class and shoved her against a wall. He later taught at Clark University, where a student filed a sexual harassment complaint against him. He is back at the New School. | Undergraduate student | Graduate student | R2 | The New School, Clark University | Liberal Arts | He was reported to his advisor. Nothing happened. | I quit academia and political organizing completely. | Years of PTSD, panic attacks, anxiety. High-risk HPV. | Doing better than him tbh. | Male | |||
2144 | 1/11/2018 15:16:52 | I asked to do an independent study with one of my professors. He approved at first then told me I had to sleep with him. | I was in the second year of my MBA program | He was a professor I had had for a core course. | Other R1 | MBA | I reported it to the coordinator of the program and while she was very sympathetic she said it would be my word against his. She also said it would bias the other professors against me as they were all male and I was one of about three women in the program. | None | None though the subject of my independent study was relevant to my job at the time and delving into it would have been useful. | It made me more wary of working with and trusting men in the workplace. | None | Male | |||
2145 | 1/11/2018 15:19:32 | In 2007, my senior thesis adviser took me to dinner as a debrief/review of the project. At the time, I was very close to this man and believed him to be my mentor. At dinner, I ordered a martini. He heavily encouraged me to have more than one--at one point even ordering one for me. After dinner, he drove to a park, where he held me and tried to kiss me. I told him I wanted to go home. Instead of taking me to my apartment, he drove straight to his house. He wanted to slow dance and grope me and smoke weed. When I said I wanted to leave, he said he couldn't drive and then told me I could lie down. I went into the bedroom without him and shut the door to try to think of how to get out of this house. He entered and grabbed me, saying "I love you like a daughter, like a lover...I don't know what." I reiterated I wanted to leave. I felt extreme pressure, since at the time my thesis grade was still out and this man was solely responsible for that grade. Finally, he took me home--after I said I was leaving. (My plan was just to run, until I was far enough and could call someone.) I was supposed to meet some friends two hours before I arrived home--they were worried about me. The next day he gave me a present--a "graduation gift" and told me in writing he was "Sorry...just sorry." When I didn't respond, he resent the card, changing the message to say "Sorry...just sorry parting is such sweet sorrow (Romeo and Juliet)). | Senior in college | Senior Thesis Adviser | Small Liberal Arts College | Colorado College | I still feel it's too small of school to say this. | A sexual assault counselor spoke with me, after one of my roommates reported me for an eating disorder. (I didn't have one, I just was so upset and nervous after that night that I kept puking whenever I ate or someone mentioned the professor. I totally thought this event was my fault.) The counselor was very helpful and I met with her several times, but the way CC worked was you could not submit a formal complaint or expect any punitive action anonymously. If you wanted to complain you had to go in front of a board of nine professors and tell your story. In a school of less than 2,000 students, I felt this would ruin my chances of ever getting a recommendation again and would ruin my standing at the school. (As confidentiality, didn't seem to be a part of this process.) CC helped me when I couldn't go to my last class, which was a requirement for graduating, because I was too stressed/sick from the event. I asked repeatedly for this professor to not be at graduation events. The school finally agreed to my request after I said I didn't feel safe. Eventually, the chair of my department helped me enroll in an independent study so I could graduate on time. They had me speak to several lawyers--who asked me more questions about what I was wearing and how much I drank--than about him. | None. As of a year or two ago, he still taught there and was celebrated. If he doesn't work there anymore it's because he retired. | I stopped entirely. My senior thesis is the last time I ever performed in that art field. I could never be okay being on stage after this, as I felt I had been groomed and used, through the lie that I had talent as a performer. | For about three months I had horrible vomiting sessions of any thought or mention of this man. To this day, I have almost no friends from college, because I freaked out so bad at the end of my time at CC. I loved that college so much, and yet, I have never gone to homecoming or any event because I am afraid to go on the campus. I am afraid I will see him. I went last year (2016--nine years later) after being convinced to go, and I just wanted to leave. I was terrified. On another note, I spent a lot of time feeling guilt because I wasn't raped. And I felt I had "asked for it." It seemed very obvious to other people that he was using me. | I never want to be alone with male bosses, coworkers, etc. I am overly cautious about seeming flirtatious or overly friendly. I had a really hard time when I was assigned a male thesis adviser in grad school--even though it was a completely different field. I never met with that thesis adviser outside of his office, with the door open. I declined all other meetings. Probably, the most devastating aspect was I don't perform or do that type of art anymore. I loved it. I lived to perform my entire life and then because of one night and one person, I couldn't get over it. | I heard (although I have no proof) that he had done this before to a girl who looked strikingly like me. Although, I have never spoken to her, so I don't know. | Male | |
2146 | 1/11/2018 15:22:41 | Sexually harassed by a technician in a medical science research lab. He constantly commented on my looks (to me) and very explicitly talked about my body, especially my breasts, when I was not in the lab (which other people told me later). I felt very uncomfortable when we were alone. | I was a lab assistant, part time during college (Duke University) during my freshman and sophomore years | He was one of the two lab technicians I worked with on a daily basis. He advised me on how to conduct experiments. We both worked for the same professor. He was 15-20 years older than me and had a master’s degree. Strangely, his wife was also a scientist who worked down the hall. I always wondered if she knew. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Duke University | xenotransplantation lab in the Department of Surgery and Experimental Medicine | Like so many other victims, I thought I should ignore it rather than report it. | It’s hard to say. All these years later I know that I lack confidence in my scientific talent. I also never pushed to get a publication in undergrad, which I regretted later. I don’t know how much those things are related to the harassment during my earliest years in the laboratory setting. | Moderate | I did take some time away from science after college (for a variety of reasons) but eventually got my PhD | My supervisors, a professor and an assistant professor at the time, were wonderful and supportive, and I assume they were unaware of what happened. I think they would have supported me if I had told them, and I regret that I didn’t. | Male | ||
2147 | 1/11/2018 15:51:54 | Tenured professor in my department touched me without my consent, at least 4 times that I can remember, from 2009-2011. "Touching" includes coming up behind me and putting his hands on my hips or lower back (2x); putting hand on upper back and rubbing; putting my hair behind my ear and dragging hand down my cheek. He also made comments about liking how I dressed and how I wore my hair. There was also just the way he looked at me; it made me uncomfortable, especially in conjunction with the touching. | Graduate student, pursuing an MA as part of my PhD in the department | Professor (I took several classes with him); Potential MA Thesis Advisor (but I ended up asking another professor to be my thesis advisor because of this sexual harassment) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Wisconsin-Madison | German | I didn't tell anyone except a few other graduate students (who said I was not the first person to complain of these types of experiences with this professor). I also told the professor who ended up being my MA thesis and PhD advisor; I told this professor as a justification for why I was asking to switch MA Thesis Advisors so close to when my MA thesis was due. This professor did not comment on my allegations against his colleague; he just agreed to be my advisor so that I didn't have to work with the other professor. | None | I changed my course of study because I wanted to avoid taking classes and having meetings with this professor. I had planned on this professor being my MA thesis and PhD advisor, and I had planned to go into a different field of research than I ended up going into. After the cheek touching incident, I asked another professor to be my MA and PhD advisor. I changed my entire research focus, ending up in a field that was not a good fit for me culturally (i.e., lots of men, "bro" culture where drinking and procrastinating and pushing yourself to the limit were encouraged; not very family friendly and not good work-life balance). I completed all of my PhD coursework and worked on my dissertation for 2 years before leaving academia. | At the time, the harassment just made me feel more stressed because I had to find a new MA Thesis advisor in a short period of time, and I had to change the focus of my courses and research. I still had to see the harasser and I even took classes with him towards the end of graduate school. No further harassment occurred but I think this was because I was very paranoid about it occurring, and I avoided being physically near the professor and alone with him. It was very stressful to worry about it happening again and plan how I needed to prevent it. | After the #metoo movement started and people started talking about this, I started thinking about it all again. I believe now that this harassment played a big role in my decision to leave academia and ultimately get a job in a different field (corporate education). For the past 3 years, I've been telling myself and other people that I didn't want to work in academia because of the lack of tenure track positions, the grueling nature of the tenure process, etc. But I'm only just now starting to admit to myself and others that the shock of the harassment, the way that other grad students were aware of it but no one was saying anything, the power that tenured professors had over graduate students and assistant professors, the masculine culture within my chosen research fields -- all of these things contributed to my decision to not complete my PhD and pursue a career outside of academia. | Male | ||
2148 | 1/11/2018 15:59:26 | I knew a fellow graduate student in my field and was visiting his city for research. My original accommodation plans fell through and he took me in, sleeping on the floor in the living room. On the last night he and his roommate are drinking and trying to get me to drink with them, but I'm exhausted and I just want to sleep; I lie down to go to bed and this guy comes up and lies down right next to me, almost spooning me, and starts caressing me on the hair, back, etc., clearly trying to initiate sex. I didn't have a car or anyway to get out of there (this is before rideshare) or anywhere to go. I pretended to be asleep, lying on my stomach to protect myself from his hands, and didn't move. I ran through my potential options for escape and realized that the only one was to pack my things up and spend the rest of the night on the street hoping something else bad wouldn't happen to me and that I would suffer complications from the cold. I was really freaked out. I just stayed immobile for a while and eventually he went away. I called him out on it later, after I'd gotten home, and he did apologize for putting me in that situation. But I was still very creeped out and angry that I felt I had to put up with it because I didn't have any other solutions. I've seen him at conferences since then and we're friendly. But I haven't NOT noticed him staring at my ass on those occasions. | PhD student | PhD student | Other R1 | UT Austin | Music | Just makes me uncomfortable that a person who would do that has access to undergrads. He seemed remorseful and like maybe he'd learned his lesson with regards to that particular night, but given that I've seen him giving me a one-over since then I really doubt it. | Just your run of the mill, completely skeeved out and completely banal female rage. | Just still angry I have to pretend, for "collegiality" in our small field, that it's totally cool and that I don't notice him staring at my ass at conferences. | Male | ||||
2149 | 1/11/2018 16:14:07 | I was a rotation student in my lab, and was being mentored by a senior graduate student. He was going through a tough breakup at the time, so I tried to be nice to him. He ended up projecting his feelings onto me instead, and once was overly friendly and put his hand on my lower back. He then pressured me to date him several times over text and in person, saying that he knows we would "work well together" and would "be good for each other" -- like I need to be told when a relationship is good for me... I was firm and told him no over and over. I ended up joining the lab anyway, and we still work together because we work on similar topics. He tries often to overpower my thoughts, and I have learned to become more assertive such that he would not walk over me on our joint projects. | rotation student at the beginning of a phd program | senior graduate student in the lab | Elite Institution/Ivy League | biomedical engineering | none, did not report, did not want to jeopardize my lab joining | none | it has made me especially sensitive to interactions with males that are highly opinionated and pushy, and has given me short temper with these situations | I think I am more intolerant now. And far louder with my opinion, even if it is not agreeable | Male | ||||
2150 | 1/11/2018 16:14:28 | I was newly divorced and a single mother in an administrative position at a Research I institution. I had a new supervisor who took an interest in me sexually and continued to ask me to sleep with him, comment on my body, how he found me attractive (in both words and in "sound effects" - grunts and "mmmm mmmm's" and such) whenever I was near him or passed by him. I often had to travel with him alone to conferences and other job-related events and he also would try to find ways to get me alone (following me when I left rooms) and would corner me and again tell me how attractive I was, how much he wanted to sleep with me, and how lucky he was to work with me. I desperately needed my job as I was in a very bad financial position given my divorce and status as single mother so I was terrified to stand up to him. The administrative assistant (female) in our office witnessed some of these events and told me that I should expect "this kind of thing" because I was a "very attractive woman." Thankfully, that supervisor's tenure was brief and he took a position in a different department, but he is still employed by the same university. | Full-time employee of the university | Direct supervisor who shared an office suite with me | Other R1 | Penn State | Diversity and Inclusion (ironically) | Never reported for fear of reprisals | n/a | Because I never spoke out, it had no impact on my career | I am still very fearful of being alone with men and times that I have to work after hours, I lock myself in my office so that I feel safer. It also added to the trauma that I had experience earlier in my life and collectively these experiences have left me with an anxiety disorder/PTSD. I also have a lot of guilt for never having actively resisted or reported him, but I felt trapped in a no-win situation, as I feel very confident that while the university itself may not have penalized me, colleagues in my department (he was very well loved) would have isolated and enacted retribution and I would have been labeled a "troublemaker" behind closed doors and opportunities denied me. I was very early in my career and I just could not afford the risk of that happening so this is why I felt I could not report. | I choose positions where I work independently and do not have to have such close interaction with a male supervisor. This, of course, limits my choices. | Male | ||
2151 | 1/11/2018 16:33:49 | A professor married one of his postgraduate students and she later publicly stated that she considered it to be abuse. When I expressed my feelings about this to the professor he took actions to derail my career. | Postgraduate student | Male | |||||||||||
2152 | 1/11/2018 16:42:20 | My PhD advisor would often sit very close to me when were were discussing my work in front of my computer. He would sit right next to me and put his hand on my upper thigh. It bothered me a lot but since he was my superior and the head of department at the time, I was too scared to say anything. It happened two more times before I learnt to move as far away from his as possible when looking at at the same computer together. Later, another female PhD student told me of how traumatized she was when our advisor did it to her. She said she felt dirty and and shamed. I regret to say I brushed it off since I learnt to not be anywhere near him in meetings but it's bothered me ever since. I did ask a male PhD student about it and he also said our advisor did it to him too and his response was just to move our advisor's hand off of his thigh every time he did it (which was more than once). I wish I was brave enough to have done something about it at the time. | Phd Student | PhD Advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | The University of Melbourne, Australia | Computing and information Systems | Male | |||||||
2153 | 1/11/2018 16:54:03 | Freshman year was asked out of nowhere in front of a group of my peers AND another professor if I "liked to be on top." Later, came persistent gender-based harassment and exclusion regarding my playing ability. My final year, he refused to use my name and referred to me as "c*nt" when I came up in conversation with other professors and with graduate students. He would unfairly and arbitrarily impose grade-based punishments when it suited him, and when I asked for clarification, he sent an email to the entire studio targeting me. He had a habit of making up nicknames for the girls in studio (One girl was referred to as "butterface", etc) and complained constantly about his ex-wife during private lessons. I was told his humor was more explicitly sexual and degrading to women when he was surrounded by only male students. | Undergraduate | Professor | Other R1 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Music | Reported it to the Dean of the School of Music. Was told that the professor already had a VERY LARGE stack of complaints against him and since I was graduating soon it would "take too long" to go through the process and it "probably wasn't worth it to pursue." It was also suggested to me that I switch my degree to an "easier" one to avoid further contact with him. As far as I know, he was never spoken to. | None. He is still teaching. | I left music entirely. | Spent most of my last year of college and the two years after graduation grappling with depression and suicidal thoughts. | Music is a very small world, so I switched career paths entirely. I fell out of love with it, as the gatekeepers were going out of their way to protect abusers and harassers. | Male | ||
2154 | 1/11/2018 17:00:23 | I used to volunteer in a virology lab in 2012. Postdoc was not helpful...belittled my work, told me to do something, then it would go wrong, then he would blame me for it when I followed his instructions to the letter. Postdoc would flirt heavily with two other girls in the lab. There was one in particular that would work at the same times as me, and sometimes I witnessed inappropriate behavior (he would touch her breast or hug her, she would protest and move away uncomfortably, he would laugh, she would giggle in awkwardness). I felt bad for the girl because she was an international student and clearly did not like the attention. One time it got to me and I asked her if she was ok after an "encounter" with the postdoc. She was nervous but did not want to cause a scene. I left after about 1.5 years. It was an utter waste of time, I learned nothing. When I initially joined I had of course been promised publications but never got on any, and when I mentioned how I was disappointed, of course the postdoc said that it was due to my poor quality of work. A few months later, I get a call from the Title 9 officer at my university saying that the Postdoc had been accused of sexual harassment by 3 other girls (besides the two that worked with me). She asked if I had been a victim. I said no, I had not, but I witnessed it happening to the international student and that I felt like my time at the lab had been poorly spent. Nothing happened to the guy, obviously. I got an insincere apology from the Title 9 officer and the university covered their behinds. That was it. | Undergraduate researcher | Postdoc at the lab | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UCLA | Microbiology, Immunology, & Mol Genetics | Nothing as far as I'm aware. | None. He's still publishing. | I personally vowed to never do wet-lab work again. I switched to bioinformatics. You at least know it's your mistake and not some other person's fault when you're coding...it's between you and your computer...not some 3rd party member who tells you you're not fit for research. | I have no idea how to measure that. | See prior. | Thanks for the solidarity. | Male | |
2155 | 1/11/2018 17:29:52 | My advisor was, on a near-daily basis, extremely inappropriate. He told me, in front of several other department members, that if he were my boyfriend, we would never leave the bedroom. He commented on my body and on Mondays wondered aloud how many times I had had sex during the previous weekend. Later, he suggested that I become a stripper to earn extra money to supplement my stipend or that I enter into a sugar daddy-type relationship with a friend of his. When I went to the department chair and deans to complain, he reported to them that I was out for revenge because I was unable to academically function in the program and that I had convinced "someone else" (he never identified who that person was) to do all my research for me since I wasn't able to do good work on my own. Other female students in my lab experienced similar behaviors (except one, who reported that he only told her that she was too ugly to ever have a boyfriend). | graduate student | advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | geoscience | Most ranged from disbelief ("we don't have problems like that here" -- dean of the faculty) to general questioning about whether I'd gone to any media outlets. Both my department chair and the dean of the graduate school believed me utterly and expressed dismay that there was nothing they could do. | None. I later learned that the university had financially settled with women who had pressed charges against him in the past. | Left academia. | I left academia entirely. I'm okay with that now, and I'm still glad I left, but I wish it had been on my own terms. | Male | ||||
2156 | 1/11/2018 17:44:41 | 2005-14 A faculty member senior to me, who also had a singular vote on my tenure decision, repeatedly leered at me, drew me into inappropriate conversations about sex and sexual matters, questioned me about my personal relationships, and made comments on my body. He was savvy enough to know that he could not physically touch the women he worked with, so he fixated on hair. He patted me on the head like a dog, but I know of other instances when he would come up behind seated women and, without permission, run his fingers through their hair like he was massaging their scalps. He was widely known throughout the University as someone who said and did inappropriate things. Faculty who predated me at the school even had a nickname about his inability to censor himself. One of them defended him to me by saying he was "just a boy," even though he was a middle-aged man with a six-figure salary and power over hundreds of faculty and staff. | Faculty | Senior faculty/administrator | Other R1 | George Mason University | Not comfortable saying | None. I never formally reported him, because his behavior was widely known and joked about. I did obliquely bring it up with some other faculty, but they dismissed it as "boys will be boys." I felt completely vulnerable and powerless, because this man had the power to end my career. | None that I know of. | I earned tenure in spite of him. But I also wondered what opportunities were withheld from me, because I wasn't more reciprocating of his advances. | It was corrosive to my self-esteem. I felt dirty after meetings with him. I was fearful for my career, and I felt powerless to object to his behavior. I sometimes went along with the conversations, because I wanted to keep my job. But it was humiliating. He literally patted me on the head like a dog. That's not how you treat a professor with a strong record of publication and the respect of her students and peers. I suppose that was the point. I am still very angry and don't trust my colleagues. Their inability (or refusal) to see the damage he inflicted disgusts me. Since he retired, I have become more vocal about his behavior, in that I will no longer tolerate people who defend him. But I am so angry that I had to endure ten years of that shit. | Thankfully he didn't end my career by denying my tenure. I earned tenure, through my publications and teaching record but also my ability to endure his behavior. I EARNED IT. | Thank you. I feel better writing this down. | Male | |
2157 | 1/11/2018 17:54:17 | bullying and gender based non-sexual harassment | asst. prof | assoc. prof | Regional Teaching College | so slow that the harassment escalated and has continued for years | devastating | extremely challenging | stuck in a job I hate | constant fear of attack; constant fear of retaliation; constant disappointment in an administration who doesn't do enough to address an unsafe and hostile work environment or to stop the harassment of women in my department. | Male | ||||
2158 | 1/11/2018 17:59:21 | I was working as a summer research assistant on a project with a colleague of my advisor. The colleague was a professor at another university in a different state, which is where the research project took place. On the first day of the project (and the first day I met the professor) he and I camped at the field site. When it came time to set up camp we only had one small tent so I decided to sleep in the car. He told me I was being a prude and that I should sleep in the tent. I slept in the car. At the time I didn't think too much about it, it's only after reading about harassment in academia that I realize how inappropriate it was for a 50 year old man to try to pressure a 22 year old woman into sharing a small tent with him. | Undergraduate student | Professor, advisor for summer research project | Other R1 | Biology | I was fortunate enough not to need the approval of this professor to further my career, as I had other faculty members I could use for references and was not hoping to have him as a graduate advisor. We certainly did not have a good working relationship on the project. | Based on my experience on this project with this professor (but not solely this incident I reconsidered going to grad school. | Male | ||||||
2159 | 1/11/2018 18:00:24 | In the fall of 2001, I was working in my first few months of my first professional job in a private housing company at a university in south Texas. The assistant director of housing began sexually harassing other females and myself. He was not our direct supervisor, though he was above us in rank. The harassment would vary from comments - comments made to me included that we should be married, as we acted like an old married couple - to unwanted touching. At one point, he would randomly hug us. My coworker was making copies, and he came up from behind her and wrapped his arms around her. My coworkers and I approached the associate director, our direct supervisor, who then approached the director of housing and our regional manager, each of whom were male. While the associate director advocated for strict action in the situation, the director and regional manager just told him to stay away from us. Unfortunately, the associate director took a position at another university in town, and after he left, we were forced to report directly to the assistant director. My peer, the one who had been hugged at the copy machine, also left, which left myself and our student employees. He began micromanaging my work, checking upon my whereabouts constantly and questioning my tasks. The situation took a toll on me, and when my previous supervisor offered me a position in his department, I immediately took the position and left. | I was a first year residence life coordinator, who was single and had moved out of state to take the position. | He was the assistant director of housing, overseeing facilities. | Other R1 | University of Texas San Antonio and Century Campus Housing | Residence Life | He was told to keep away from us but later required us to report to him. | None | I no longer felt comfortable or supported at the institution, so I left as soon as an opening came around. | It caused me a great deal of stress and anxiety. | It led to me taking a job without fully understanding what I was getting into. While the job was positive in some aspects, I worked 120 hours per week, which ultimately led to my leaving residence life and higher education for more than 5 years. | Male | ||
2160 | 1/11/2018 18:04:12 | A tenured faculty member from another department would openly check out my ass when I was a graduate student. He would purposely come out of his office to my department's side of the building when he heard my voice in the hall. I tried to ignore him at first, and then gave him dirty looks when I caught him. He followed me to my office once and blocked the door way, asking me "what my problem was." I was terrified, because he was much larger than me, I was alone, and he was blocking the doorway, so I told him "nothing." He continued the behavior until he asked me "what my problem was" and I told him he was checking me out. I then filed a complaint, because I was terrified of retaliation but he continued the behavior until I left the institution. | Graduate Student | Tenured Faculty | Other R1 | University of Washington | First, met with the Ombudsman who told me I was harassed because I was "making myself available." She also seemed to believe me more, because I told her that fellow male graduate students had noticed this behavior, saying things like, "Oh, a man said that." Second, I met with the Title IX coordinator. Third, I met with a higher level administrator who told me that the chair of the department met with him. No one sat in on that meeting and there is no definitive record that he was reprimanded. Nothing changed, and he continued the behavior, coming over to my department's side of the building to stare at me when I was there for departmental functions. (I had changed my office to an unannounced location on another part of campus.) When I complained to the administrator I had spoken with, she said there was nothing the administration could do. The reasoning was that he did not have a direct supervisory role over me, so there was nothing the administration could do to stop the behavior. | None. He received a fellowship the month after he supposedly met with his chair, and I believe has since been promoted. | I left to finish my dissertation at a badly paying job abroad, because I no longer wanted to be in that environment. | It was a deeply humiliating experience. I still feel very angry about it, particularly in the institution's failure to protect me. I had loved my department and it was a deeply depressing and distressing situation to finish my career there. | It took me much longer to finish my dissertation. I ultimately stayed at a badly paid job I hated for another year, because I did not want to return to the environment. | Essentially, the only way I survived the situation was because of two female administrators in my department who protected me and guided me every step of the way through the process. I owe my well-being and my career to them. | Male | ||
2161 | 1/11/2018 18:09:34 | I was nicknamed and referred to as "sex object" by multiple men in my department. My professor made suggestive comments about me giving blow jobs in front of a group from the department. During the last lecture I attended, I wore a skirt whose hem was significantly below my knees (laundry day), and had a professor stare at my legs for half an hour with his hand down his trousers. By the end of my degree, I was getting death threats from male students. One attacked me, and I quit. | PhD candidate | Peers and Professors. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Philosophy | None | None | My career ended. | Significant. | I changed fields. | Male | |||
2162 | 1/11/2018 18:20:29 | 2002-05 I worked at a center on campus that relied heavily on donor money. My boss was a controlling, passive aggressive jerk. Much as I didn't like him, he thankfully never hit on me or sexually harassed me. But I felt like he put me in a bad situation with donors. I was a young woman at the time, and we planned a multi-day out of state excursion for the donors that involved a lot of dinners with booze, cocktail hours & nightcaps, and hotels. There was one donor with a reputation for being handsy. My boss told me as much--that the donor had physically cornered and groped the center's other female staff assistant. My boss told me that if the same thing happened to me, I should just brush off the donor and let my boss know--but not to antagonize the donor, and definitely not to alert the police, because we needed the guy's money. WTF! Basically I felt like I was being used as bait--the pretty, vivacious young woman who was there to cater to their every whim and make them feel important. Fortunately, the donor never got near me. I just kept my head on a swivel at all times and ran in the other direction when I saw him stumbling drunkenly towards me. But on that trip, I was also put in another difficult situation in which I feel that my youth and gender were exploited. I was asked to drive a dean home from a party back to his hotel. Thankfully he didn't hit on me, but he was stumbling drunk and insisted on continuing to drink (ie, have an open container) in my car. I was terrified that I would be stopped by police and held legally accountable for his behavior. But as grad student, I couldn't very well object, could I? | Grad student/staff | Supervisor, donor, and dean | Other R1 | Penn State University | HA. My boss told me straight up that if the donor groped me, I shouldn't complain. For those who aren't familiar, that IS the "Penn State Way." | None. | None. I gritted my teeth and smiled my way through that job. | Nothing immediate, but I do think after 40+ years of this shit, I feel weary and angry in a way that I wouldn't if I hadn't had to navigate such choppy waters my whole life. | None. | Penn State's recent history of scandal is not surprising to anyone who has spent any length of time there. There is a sickness about Happy Valley that is difficult to identify and understand until you leave and can look back on it. The entire University is obsessed with the athletic program (especially football), donor/alumni relations, and giving a pass to Greek Life and all its shady, drunken practices. The actual educational mission of the University is subordinate to pursuit of these other missions, with donor/alumni relations really taking precedence over everything. All of Central PA is complicit, because the University is the economic engine of the region. And the engine's health is contingent on donors who fondly remember their time there. Binge drinking is a central feature, as is "looking the other way" at child molestation, conferring degrees to athletes who are functionally illiterate, domestic violence, regular violence, and of course sexual harassment. | Male | ||
2163 | 1/11/2018 18:28:17 | My supervisor repeatedly told sexual jokes with the intention of being transgressive (i.e., he knew it was inappropriate and seemed to enjoy crossing boundaries). Used the c-word in conversations with trainees. Said that a senior female faculty member could "fuck up a wet dream." Would ask us if we thought our patients were sexually active, if they masturbated, and what types of activities they did. Called a patient "cute" and said he would date her if he was her age. Told a male trainee about his masturbation preferences. | Graduate student | Supervisor | Other R1 | Initially nothing happened when students reported the behavior. A few months later, the complaint finally went forward. Students gave statements to HR - never heard anything back from them or anyone else in the department about the complaint. | The harasser was suspended pending an investigation, but quit before the investigation concluded (I assume, we never got follow-up information). | I was afraid of being retaliated against or people might treat me poorly if they knew that I had made a complaint. Rumors went around the department about who had complained and the other students were angry because they had been inconvenienced by the departure of the supervisor. A female faculty member asked her students if she knew who had made the complaint because she had never been treated like that by him. Consequently, I trust very few people in my department to act in my best interests; instead, I worry that they will do whatever will create the least amount of work/avoid rocking the boat. I question my desire to go into academia and become part of a system that values the status quo over trainees' well-being and pits people against each other in this way. | My anxiety and depression increased while I was working with him and peaked during the complaint process. I still am angry about how no one ever followed up with the people who were affected by working with the harasser. | This is one of the reasons that I do not know if I want to be an academic. | Male | ||||
2164 | 1/11/2018 18:30:44 | Visiting prospective grad student rubbed my leg up under the table and down while we were having a group welcome lunch. I was so shocked and confused, thought I was imagining it, but it just got worse through the lunch. He then made a sexually suggestive remark to me later in the day. It was completely inappropriate, and I had given zero indication of being interested. | graduate student | prospective graduate student | Other R1 | I never filed a complaint, but I wish I had told the department, though they most likely would have done nothing. He ultimately went to another institution (Berkeley) for grad school. None of my fellow graduate students believed me when I told them. In fact, most of them emphasized later to me how they had befriended him and "what a nice guy" he was. | It was very disempowering. | Really depressing to see he has a great job the first year out of grad school. | Male | ||||||
2165 | 1/11/2018 18:45:03 | I was sexually assaulted by one of my professors after running into him at a reunion party. | Undergraduate | Tenured Professor | Found him "not responsible" for sexual misconduct following a Title IX investigation | Extended his sabbatical (I was told later by the institution that he agreed to this because he "cared about me") | Impacted my confidence in academia; I severely underestimate my ability still and am uneasy working with men because I fear their motives | Worsened problems with addiction, depression, and eating disorders | Switched disciplines for my graduate degree | ||||||
2166 | 1/11/2018 19:17:07 | 2014-2017; Multiple instances of touching: hand placed high on inner thigh in closed-door program-planning meeting, unsolicited shoulder massaging publicly, inappropriate comments to colleagues (inside and outside the institution) about my body, innuendo via email, pulling in for unsolicited hugs and holding my body against his for uncomfortable amounts of time, I only reported after another (younger) student shared a similar thigh-groping experience | The first incident happened in my first weeks as an MA student, and then intermittently throughout my time in the program | Graduate Coordinator | Regional Teaching College | Writing | HR investigation established guilt of sexual violence and sexual harassment beyond doubt after corroboration from current and former students who'd had similar experiences and students and other faculty who'd witnessed the pattern of behavior. When passed on to administration for disciplinary action, the complaint stalled. | None to my knowledge or the knowledge of faculty at the institution | Time lost in documenting/meetings/phone interviews; Missed would-be opportunities for important career-advancing networking due to his introductions based on my physical appearance rather than intellectual pursuits; A divide among my cohort between those who supported my decision to speak and those who did not (I did not participate in my graduation festivities because he was invited to the event at another student's house) | Heightened Anxiety, Sleeplessness (I am not sure if this was worse while wrestling with whether or not to report or after reporting, worrying about whether he'd find out it was me and if that would carry a negative impact), Depression, General Stress, Doubt in my value as scholar/intellectual | Engaging in educating college students about speaking truth to perpetrators in power | Male | |||
2167 | 1/11/2018 19:28:22 | I received obscene phone calls from students I was involved in a class/extracurricular activity with | Student | Classmates but I think the professor knew something was going on and did not care. From talking with other students that asked " Why does your professor threat you that way?" | Other Type of School | Iowa State University | Anumal Science | Contacted campus authorities but someone else's death threats were more important and they never got back to me. | None | I stopped the activity because I knew I was not going to get it participate fully | Stressful | I never worked in the field | Male | ||
2168 | 1/11/2018 19:30:47 | During the visit weekend for accepted students, I met a tenured faculty member who, upon learning of my research interests, mentioned a dataset he had that I could use for a project. This was my first interaction with him, and it seemed ultimately quite positive. Later that evening was a dinner at this professor's home for current and admitted graduate students and faculty. At one point he came up to me in the kitchen and began asking me if I had read a recently published magazine article about how women were entering into casual sexual relationships so they could focus on their careers. This had absolutely nothing to do with my research interests or our previous conversations, and my gut instincts told me he was trying to hit on me or test some kind of boundary. I felt panicked and didn't know how to respond, especially since he had offered that research opportunity to me earlier. As a defense mechanism, I tried to exit the conversation as quickly as possible and tried to hide how upset I felt. A female junior faculty member was close by and, I believe, heard the entire thing, but did not step in at all. I clearly remember her giving me a look as though I was the one who encouraged it, and she didn't follow-up with me or anything. I left the room as soon as I could and immediately told a few other admitted students, who shared my alarm. I never told anyone in the department because I didn't know any faculty well enough to bring it up, and I also was worried it would make me look bad or ruin potential professional connections. I ultimately decided not to go to that program because of this encounter, even though this was the highest ranked program I got into. I later found out from other women that they had similar encounters with this particular faculty member. | admitted graduate student | tenured faculty | Other R1 | University of Wisconsin - Madison | sociology | I chose not to go to that program because of the harassment I experienced, even though it was the 'highest ranked' program I got into. | Male | ||||||
2169 | 1/11/2018 19:33:48 | This was during the 2012-2013 school year. A fellow graduate student tried to change his clothes in our shared office. When I protested, he told me that if there weren't women in the program, this wouldn't be a problem. I was also asked to apologize to the male graduate student for worrying him. Other similar instances happened to the other female grad students. For instance, one female grad student was told that her mug was used as a receptacle for the other grad students' cum. When I complained to faculty members about the way we were treated in the department, they said they would do something to make the situation better. Somehow, one of the grad students I complained about found out. He complained about me working in the department office, and I (as well as the other female office employee) was fired in retaliation as a result. When I tried to find out why I was not allowed to work in the office, I was told by the chair of my department that it was a mistake, and that he would come up with a solution within the week and let me know. He also asked me to think like I was not myself in order to help him come up with a solution to the situation. I never heard back from him until I indicated that I had been upset with the way the situation was handled. Throughout the month between our talks, I was repeatedly questioned by faculty, staff, and graduate students about why I was not working in the office, and I didn’t know what to tell them. | Graduate student | Graduate student (same cohort) | Other R1 | Philosophy | A conversation with the harasser and with me about how to deal with each other | None | That and other incidents were a big part of my decision to leave philosophy after I finished my PhD. I started skipping extracurricular activities that involved being around the students who participated in the harassment, which meant I missed out on conferences. | I developed an anxiety disorder once I realized my department wasn't going to do anything | I took a job in a very different field so that I could work around primarily women. I'm really glad I enjoy my current job, but it is not at all what I had planned for myself. | Thankfully my department has improved greatly since that time. But it was due to the time and effort of eight female grad students, and it took us about 3 years to get anything changed. | Male | ||
2170 | 1/11/2018 19:48:45 | Senior faculty member at a lunch table conversation for a work luncheon spoke repeatedly about pornography, female porn stars, and prostitution despite the topics having nothing to do with the luncheon or his own field/research. Despite attempts to ignore the comments or change the subject, he persisted, easily able to see that it was making people, particularly female staff seated at the table, uncomfortable. | Academic Staff | Tenured faculty, graduate advisor and department chair | Other R1 | George Washington University | n/a | none | none | have tried to limit interaction with the faculty member whenever possible | n/a | none | Male | ||
2171 | 1/11/2018 19:52:37 | Fall 2017, my professor and assistantship supervisor enjoyed overcomplimenting female grad students. He made allusions to pornography during meetings with his all-female staff (there are few men in our program), and was hostile toward my ADA accommodation. | 1st year grad student | Professor, assistantship supervisor, formerly the director of another program in my department | Other R1 | English | After consult with head of my program, Title IX was brought up by dept brass. I was removed from the class and my assistantship was changed to avoid interaction with perpetrator. | None that I know of | None that I know of | Spike in pre-existing (medically controlled) anxiety and depression | Said anxiety and depression spike led to weight gain, but, on a positive note, I don't think I will ever stay silent in a situation like this | Male | |||
2172 | 1/11/2018 19:53:30 | An adjunct professor (25 yrs my senior; married, but separated from his wife at the time) expressed interest in me romantically, asked numerous personal questions about my love life, asked me out. Across the department, he was overly familiar with students -- at least one other student in the program spoke to the department head about how his extreme and unwanted interest in her work/research/goals -- and before/after classes, in the library, and over Facebook and email, he divulged extensive personal information about his ongoing divorce, mental health issues, and perceived mistreatment by full -time faculty and the department. Even after making it clear that I was not interested (and thought his propositions were inappropriate), he continued seeking me out, inviting me to informal social gatherings with other faculty members, asking me to dinner and the movies, offering private tutoring for comprehensive exams and help with doctoral applications. I didn't want the attention or help, but felt guilty and accepted it anyway and blamed myself for his interest and for putting myself in this situation (and enabling it to continue). I am an extremely private person and didn't tell anyone. Years later, I ran into him at a reception at a professional conference and was embarrassed by side comments clearly referencing his personal and romantic interest in me -- made not only by him, but also by another of his former students (my peer, but from a different institution). | Graduate student (MA) | Professor (department adjunct) | R2 | Art history | I didn't say anything. | Even years later, I chronically avoid him at professional conferences, and always feel desperately uncomfortable when he's succeeded in tracking me down and interested conversations. | Contributed to my depression, insecurity, professional and personal self doubt. Blamed myself for almost a decade until I finally disclosed the experiences to my therapist (and still kinda do). | Male | |||||
2173 | 1/11/2018 19:58:13 | Spring 2017 while at the home of my dissertation chair- the family and family friends were there but as the night came to a close, my chair shut the door of a room everyone left and turned off the lights. I freaked out but didn't know if it was ok to try to leave or what. Nothing like this had ever happened the previous 2 years I've known her. Her husband had just left the room and I couldn't process what was happening. She rubbed all over me and wrapped herself around me and pulled my arms around her and got so close to my face I thought she was going to kiss me but I kept pulling back and moving my head. I don't know how long this lasted. It seemed like an eternity and I was in a total panic. I remember backing up and backing up until I hit a little table behind me. She tried and tried to get me to participate but I was so stiff and freaked out. She got mad and threw my hand down and complained. The whole time I just couldn't process what was happening. It was surreal and part of me wanted to engage because I was worried that she was upset. I had soooo much respect for her. I admired her so much and felt like I was disrespecting her by upsetting her but I was also scared. She ended up lying on the couch reaching out for me. She brought her knees up and was reaching for me asking what came next before bed as she thumped her knee into my side over and over spreading her legs. I still have trouble fully processing it all and have nightmares about it. I pulled her up and she got angry. She pushed me aside and walked out of the room. I followed her and then she acted like nothing happened. I was so confused. Then she reached out and hugged me and I just let her. She held me for a very long time and I felt so bad but I have a lot of childhood trauma that she knows about and things like that just make things worse for me. She let go and then I just stared at her trying to understand why all this was happening, trying to read her, if she was drunk or drugged or just self-absorbed. She pulled me in again and hugged me for a long time again. It was more confusing so I pulled away and tried to joke about it all and ran off. I wondered where the hell her husband was and why he never came back from his room! Was this a planned situation? I can't help but think the way things unfolded that it's not unusual and she said it later that she did this with others. I called a friend that night on my way home and told her. She was blown away but I just joked and tried to play if off. The next day I was really triggered and couldn't stop talking about my childhood trauma and also how bad I felt for feeling aroused by my chair's behavior with me. I was still very confused. I told another friend and she was very angry. I attempted to process it with my chair but she instead threatened that I shouldn't tell anyone especially not my campus therapist or she would get in big trouble. I still didn't understand the magnitude of this and I couldn't process it all. We finally met after several weeks of back and forth and she blamed me for everything. She said it was my fault that I came over and that she knew I had feelings for her and so I should've told her at the start and that would've never happened. She said I should've had better boundaries and that I couldn't blame her for my past issues. I didn't know what to say. I just kept saying that what I felt about her wasn't what she was claiming. We went round and round then she said I hoped I felt better now that we cleared it up and we should only meet to work on my dissertation and she scheduled a date. I was numb. I felt a pit in my stomach like something was very wrong and it was only going to get worse. She asked me what I was feeling now that we had talked things out and I told her I felt anxiety. We walked to the parking lot to her car and she asked me if she could have a hug. I just started to cry. She gave me a hug and I walked off knowing I had to do something else to never have to see her again. The problem is we share a ton of circles in and outside of the university. I left feeling afraid and more confused and not sure who to confide in. I ended up telling my therapist and he urged me to report it to the university. I also changed chairs but not without some trouble with the department. I didn't say why which was part of the trouble but I was finally able to do it. By then I was feeling angry instead of afraid and confused and I wrote her a long email explaining how she made me feel and how upset I was with her. She responded with how it wasn't her intent and that I had mis-characterized her. It was still about her and not what she did to me. I blocked her and asked her to delete any shared online spaces with me which she has. In that email I also told her I wasn't going to lie to people if we showed up to shared spaces and they asked why we weren't speaking. Since then, she hasn't shown up to 3 shared events which makes me feel like maybe she does finally realize she was wrong with what she did to me. Still I am angry that I constantly have flashbacks and find myself thinking about what happened and still trying to make peace with it. She gets to continue her privileged life while I continue struggling with the emotional distress of either keeping this to myself or speaking out- either way it's still an undue burden for me to carry with no real resolution in sight. I hate her for that but I can't reconcile how I felt about her prior to that evening. I hate her for that too! I have since shared what happened with my family and at least half of my cohort who have been very supportive and also encouraging me to report to the university. | Graduate student | Tenured faculty and dissertation chair | R2 | Education | I haven't reported | I haven't reported | It slowed my progress | Flashbacks, anxiety, afraid to go to campus even though o know she's not there | It has slowed my progress and caused delays in my life and academic goals | I'm still on the fence for reporting. My brave goal is to report when I finish defending my dissertation | Female | ||
2174 | 1/11/2018 20:02:20 | Spring 2017 while at the home of my dissertation chair- the family and family friends were there but as the night came to a close, my chair shut the door of a room everyone left and turned off the lights. I freaked out but didn't know if it was ok to try to leave or what. Nothing like this had ever happened the previous 2 years I've known her. Her husband had just left the room and I couldn't process what was happening. She rubbed all over me and wrapped herself around me and pulled my arms around her and got so close to my face I thought she was going to kiss me but I kept pulling back and moving my head. I don't know how long this lasted. It seemed like an eternity and I was in a total panic. I remember backing up and backing up until I hit a little table behind me. She tried and tried to get me to participate but I was so stiff and freaked out. She got mad and threw my hand down and complained. The whole time I just couldn't process what was happening. It was surreal and part of me wanted to engage because I was worried that she was upset. I had soooo much respect for her. I admired her so much and felt like I was disrespecting her by upsetting her but I was also scared. She ended up lying on the couch reaching out for me. She brought her knees up and was reaching for me asking what came next before bed as she thumped her knee into my side over and over spreading her legs. I still have trouble fully processing it all and have nightmares about it. I pulled her up and she got angry. She pushed me aside and walked out of the room. I followed her and then she acted like nothing happened. I was so confused. Then she reached out and hugged me and I just let her. She held me for a very long time and I felt so bad but I have a lot of childhood trauma that she knows about and things like that just make things worse for me. She let go and then I just stared at her trying to understand why all this was happening, trying to read her, if she was drunk or drugged or just self-absorbed. She pulled me in again and hugged me for a long time again. It was more confusing so I pulled away and tried to joke about it all and ran off. I wondered where the hell her husband was and why he never came back from his room! Was this a planned situation? I can't help but think the way things unfolded that it's not unusual and she said it later that she did this with others. I called a friend that night on my way home and told her. She was blown away but I just joked and tried to play if off. The next day I was really triggered and couldn't stop talking about my childhood trauma and also how bad I felt for feeling aroused by my chair's behavior with me. I was still very confused. I told another friend and she was very angry. I attempted to process it with my chair but she instead threatened that I shouldn't tell anyone especially not my campus therapist or she would get in big trouble. I still didn't understand the magnitude of this and I couldn't process it all. We finally met after several weeks of back and forth and she blamed me for everything. She said it was my fault that I came over and that she knew I had feelings for her and so I should've told her at the start and that would've never happened. She said I should've had better boundaries and that I couldn't blame her for my past issues. I didn't know what to say. I just kept saying that what I felt about her wasn't what she was claiming. We went round and round then she said I hoped I felt better now that we cleared it up and we should only meet to work on my dissertation and she scheduled a date. I was numb. I felt a pit in my stomach like something was very wrong and it was only going to get worse. She asked me what I was feeling now that we had talked things out and I told her I felt anxiety. We walked to the parking lot to her car and she asked me if she could have a hug. I just started to cry. She gave me a hug and I walked off knowing I had to do something else to never have to see her again. The problem is we share a ton of circles in and outside of the university. I left feeling afraid and more confused and not sure who to confide in. I ended up telling my therapist and he urged me to report it to the university. I also changed chairs but not without some trouble with the department. I didn't say why which was part of the trouble but I was finally able to do it. By then I was feeling angry instead of afraid and confused and I wrote her a long email explaining how she made me feel and how upset I was with her. She responded with how it wasn't her intent and that I had mis-characterized her. It was still about her and not what she did to me. I blocked her and asked her to delete any shared online spaces with me which she has. In that email I also told her I wasn't going to lie to people if we showed up to shared spaces and they asked why we weren't speaking. Since then, she hasn't shown up to 3 shared events which makes me feel like maybe she does finally realize she was wrong with what she did to me. Still I am angry that I constantly have flashbacks and find myself thinking about what happened and still trying to make peace with it. She gets to continue her privileged life while I continue struggling with the emotional distress of either keeping this to myself or speaking out- either way it's still an undue burden for me to carry with no real resolution in sight. I hate her for that but I can't reconcile how I felt about her prior to that evening. I hate her for that too! I have since shared what happened with my family and at least half of my cohort who have been very supportive and also encouraging me to report to the university. | Graduate student | Tenured faculty and dissertation chair | R2 | Education | I haven't reported | I haven't reported | It slowed my progress | Flashbacks, anxiety, afraid to go to campus even though o know she's not there | It has slowed my progress and caused delays in my life and academic goals | I'm still on the fence for reporting. My brave goal is to report when I finish defending my dissertation | Female | ||
2175 | 1/11/2018 20:10:27 | I was on a graduate school interview and went to a social event with current graduate students in the program. We went out to dinner and then to a bar where one of the more senior graduate students told another female applicant and me that his evaluations of us, which he implied would be shared with the selection committee, would be higher if we kissed each other. I laughed it off uncomfortably, but he was not joking. This person was a clinical psychology graduate student. Blatant coercion and sexual harassment are completely antithetical to the code of ethics for clinical psychologists. | Graduate school interviewee | Graduate student/interviewer | Other R1 | University of Texas at Austin (he's now at Indiana University) | Clinical Psychology | None because I didn't report it. | n/a | I don't think I did as well at that interview because that caught me so off guard. | He is now a clinical psychology post-doc who mostly likely interacts with people who are seeking therapy, and that is deeply unsettling to me. | I received several other grad school offers that I was happy with, so I fortunately was not reliant on an offer from the school where this occurred. If I had needed that offer, it would have derailed my career trajectory and forced me to do another round of grad school applications. | Thank you for doing this. | Male | |
2176 | 1/11/2018 20:15:05 | I worked with this professor and also took his graduate-level class. There were always rumors that he had been/was dating undergraduate students. For the grad class, he required one-on-one meetings to discuss our papers, and would often shut the door during the meetings. He asked nearly every woman-identified student to meet with him at a bar to "discuss the paper" and suggest he was asking ONLY that person because they were "special." For the students that met with him, he didn't discuss the course or paper at all, and would ask really personal questions, including about their "love life." He rarely returned graded papers and graded based on how he felt about a student. In one instance he lowered a student's grade after she confronted him. When I worked for him I could tell he was trying to groom me. He would rarely discuss work and try to tell me how "special" I was. He frequently made sexist comments about students and faculty, including saying that women were too "maternal" to be good professors, "especially in our department." He insisted on hugging me twice, and both times were awkward and too long. | MPH Student/TA | Adjunct professor/boss | R2 | Portland State University | Public Health | A few students spoke with the program coordinator. I spoke with the Associate Dean, who referred me to the program coordinator. The student government was also referred back to the program coordinator. The program coordinator told me that she "spoke" with him about the incidents, and that faculty would have to take some sort of sexual harassment training at the department retreat in six months. | None--his annual contract was renewed, and he taught the same courses for undergrads and grads the following year. | It made me very wary of faculty early on. I was hesitant to try to build relationships or reach out to other faculty because I knew they supported him. I avoided him as much as possible. | I was anxious while I worked for him and took his class. Looking back, I can see I was also very angry but felt trapped due to his power--I needed a job, and I needed an 'ally' in the department to connect me to future funding opportunities. | . | Male | ||
2177 | 1/11/2018 22:06:49 | A professor continually praised my work in class, occasionally stopping the lecture to go into deviations that allowed me to speak more. I was quite encouraged by this and believed my work was genuinely good. This also included deviations into personal interests during class - pop culture and things, so off-topic but nothing that seemed too inappropriate. The professor started to suggest that one of my paper ideas could be a major article and started to invite me to his office occasionally. He also started to talk about me maybe working for his research center and that I should think about continuing past the master's. I ignored what now seem like deliberate attempts for him to get closer to me personally because I knew he had a girlfriend, who was a former student he mentored who still worked for the department. His relationship, and that he started this just a day or two after his class with her ended (and that he had also singled her out in class, like me), was public knowledge for other professors and some students. However, after he broke up with her he began to find awkward ways to point out that he was now single, and he became more aggressive in trying to find out about and discuss my non-academic interests. Discussions about me writing an article with his help, working for him, and and maybe even pursuing the PhD became more serious. I eventually spoke to the professor in the most non-confrontational manner I could. I told him that I was excited about working on projects with him, but made it clear that I try to draw lines between work / school and my personal life. His reaction was very calm, including a few lines about just trying to be friendly. However, in the coming days he gave tepid responses to e-mails about my research or possibly working for his research center, citing his schedule and other issues. He also lacked his previous excitement when he saw me and would try to leave the area quickly. Since this long incident occurred I have learned that this is a regular pattern of behavior with female students that has not been addressed by the department. | Master's Student in Library Science | Professor for a required course for my program | Other R1 | University of Maryland | Library Science | None in my case, due to lack of reporting, but no consequences for other publicly known actions (dating, flirting with students) | No consequences for my case or any of those better known (i.e., actually starting relationships with active students). Promoted to head of a master's program and placed in charge of Title IX reporting for the department. | I had briefly considered shifting to a research position under the professor or pursuing a PhD. I suddenly did not have those options, but my career has recovered since I left universities. | Relatively minor, thankfully. Temporary impact on my self esteem and ability to trust men in authority positions, obviously. Self-doubt about whether I was too harsh on the professor when I tried to establish boundaries, but this feeling went away after I heard about other similar cases of singling out and flirting that resembled mine. | I no longer consider any possible positions in university libraries. All other libraries are fine, including my current job. | Male | ||
2178 | 1/11/2018 23:00:18 | Gender discrimination / Extreme harassment / Physically assaulted while disabled in front of students / Disability harassment | Assistant Professor | Chair | Other Type of School | CUNY | History | Harassment all the way up the chain -- corrupt to the top | None | Too much to write | PTSD | Lost all hope in academia & don't know if I can ever live in USA again | Male | ||
2179 | 1/11/2018 23:16:05 | Sexually harassed in person & text; colleague sent text messages saying he is studying rape porn to rape me better; in person he boasted about being with prostitutes (he's married with children & says he doesn't care about them); got visibly angry & aggressive when I turned down his lunch invitations; I faced extreme retribution for reporting him; removed from teaching as retribution for reporting his behavior; he threatened me for reporting him; all attempts at professional development rejected/sabotaged (conference leave/etc.); add disability discrimination to the mix (my doctors were bullied & my chair tried to get my doctors fired for giving me medical leave); mocked for being disabled; visited repeatedly late at night by another professor seeking a blowjob (wtf?) | Assistant Professor | Assistant Professor & Chair (good friends) | R2 | English Literature/Intercultural Communication | Extreme retribution--terrifying retribution (more than I can mention at this time) | So far, none (but I have a big upcoming media piece about it--look out!) | We shall see--after I publish my exposé on this university | PTSD and serious new related physical symptoms (heart/blood pressure/etc.) | Resigned and now re-thinking whether to stay in academia | Male | |||
2180 | 1/11/2018 23:32:15 | Continually demeaned for being a woman; was told "We only give full funding for men for all their years of study -- for women, we make them all pay the first year to prove they can cut it"; had all accomplishments unacknowledged or "disbelieved" ("but you don't *really* know that language, right?" -- even though I had studied it for years); Chair touched his ding dong in front of a beloved female faculty member--who then resigned; Chair tried to sabotage PhD dissertation even though prestigious Ivy League postdoc had already been granted (female dean had to step in and make it clear to him his behavior was not appropriate & took the reins thank God) | PhD Student | Chair(s) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Brown | Ancient World | Female dean blocked his attempts to sabotage my dissertation so I could graduate and start my prestigious postdoc | None | I did not want to use any of the harassers for recommendation letters due to their disgusting and atrocious behavior & switched my field of research as a result (a shame, really) | It made a time when I should have been celebrating a prestigious postdoc one of unnecessary stress since my jealous Chair tried to sabotage my dissertation passing -- but thankfully was thwarted by the female dean who came to my rescue (and understood what he was trying to do) | I switched fields of study to avoid having to interact with these sexist "giants" of their discipline | Male | ||
2181 | 1/12/2018 0:37:18 | I was a 17yo freshman at the time, and our entire program had the same advisor. At first I thought he was nice, if a bit strange, but later on in the semester it became clear he was hitting on me. He took me out for coffee and piled on the flattery, which made me feel “special” at the time. Mental health issues came to a peak, and I needed help — advisor took advantage, and on the day I went to his office to talk, kissed me. At the time, I had other problems to deal with and didn’t have much of a support system. I later found out that he’s known for being involved with former (and some not former) students. | Undergraduate student | Academic advisor | Other Type of School | NYC art school | Creative Writing | N/A | Still employed by the school, in same position. | I left the school on medical withdrawal, originally intending to return, but I didn’t. I was turned off from writing entirely, and only with the support of excellent female professors at my next school did I return to the field. | My eating disorder intensely worsened and I ended up entering treatment for bulimia after leaving. Thankfully, several years later, I’ve mostly recovered. I have lingering issues with depression and anxiety, but they’re not solely caused by my experiences at this institution. | I originally intended to return to this institution, but I left following my first semester there. It took two years for me to start writing again, and while I’m still pursuing an English degree, I’m constantly questioning whether I want to continue in academia. | Male | ||
2182 | 1/12/2018 0:53:46 | At conference drinks in a group of people, when discussing what I was planning on doing after a PhD a tenured professor said I should be fine to get a postdoc as I had a pretty face and nice breasts. Got stuck in a lift with an elderly professor who suggested I had jammed the lift on purpose to seduce him. | PhD Student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | STEM | My advisor said 'oh dear' | None | None | Contributed to deciding academia isn't for me. | Male | ||||
2183 | 1/12/2018 0:57:35 | During a first year course (psychology elective) I had emailed the professor regarding questions related to material and exams. Over the course of the semester, his replies started going off topic and becoming more suggestive. He started talking about his summer house, and how he would like to invite me there. He talked about parties he would throw, how he was a friend of Sting, etc. I was starting to get uncomfortable with the tone of the messages, and when he suggested that we move the discussion to "private" email addresses, I got uncomfortable and broke off communication. In discussions with other students who had taken his class, I learned it was an open secret that he regularly had different undergraduate "girlfriends" from the first year class he taught - he was at least 50 at the time. | 1st year undergraduate | Tenure Prof & Internationally known author | Elite Institution/Ivy League | McGill University | Engineering | I never reported - I heard rumors that other students had though, and nothing came of it | Nothing - he is now a Professor Emeritus & even more world-famous author | I had been planning on transferring to psychology - I decided against that, and did not take another psychology course at that school (I went back for a psychology degree at a different institution several years later) | Part of cumulative experiences that severely damaged my relationship with my sexuality | Male | |||
2184 | 1/12/2018 1:05:20 | Persistent and escalating sexual harassment & sexism by my supervisor, who frequently said he was blameless because he identified as gay (he had been previously married to a woman for 20+ years). Starting with comments about how I shouldn't be "feisty" or slightly off-color jokes, progressing into invasive questions about my relationship status and sex life, to touching my inner thigh and butt at a Christmas party, and towards the end of the year making frequent comments on my body, breasts, and speculation about my sex life. | Undergraduate Honors student | Supervisor | Other R1 | University of Calgary | Psychology | I left academia & my honors degree without a referral letter, and spent several years in low-paying jobs before working my way up into a career | It made an already stressful thesis year much worse | Though I originally wanted to do a Masters degree, I couldn't stomach maintaining the positive relationship with him necessary to get a referral - I ended up leaving academia | Male | ||||
2185 | 1/12/2018 4:28:49 | A graduate student supervising me for the summer. Started by showing me pornography on lab computers, would get me to work late and then not stop touching me, at one point pushed me up against a wall, pushed himself up against me, said he was going to drive to my hometown and kill my boyfriend. Famous PI was gone most of the summer, did see me a few times and told grad student "You can stop touching <my name>" because of what he observed right in front of him. The grad student never responded to my emails about the work after I left at the end of the summer. | Undergraduate research student (REU) | Senior PhD student in charge of supervising me | Other R1 | A UC campus | Physics | I didn't report it. I was a visiting student, PI was very eminent, this student painted himself as a favorite of his. (In retrospect, I don't think that was really true.) | None. | Not sure. I wasn't admitted into the PhD program there - my only full rejection. I wasn't enthusiastic about going there but had applied for reasons I don't fully understand myself. I was worried noone else would take me, I think. I was wrong. I did get admitted into much stronger programs. | Several years of ruminating and distress about it; affected my behavior in relationships with future supervisors causing conflict. | I'm a tenured faculty member now in the same field where I did the REU. That guy is out of the field. | Male | ||
2186 | 1/12/2018 4:31:25 | A senior member of my department targeted me with malicious sexual gossip, frequently accusing me of sleeping my way "to the top," told me that I would be "more palatable" if I just had a few kids to keep me busy, and generally harassed me by making innuendos and spreading rumors (all sexual in nature) as I worked towards tenure. I'm torn between the public time he told me that I should have kids when I was raising an issue around placement testing & curriculum OR the time he told me privately, after evaluating my teaching, that he thought I should be working in an s & m club. These are two (small) examples of his persistent bullying. | Assistant Professor | Tenured, Senior member of the department | Other Type of School | Prominent Community College; I wish this form had community colleges on it. I think there is rampant abuse within cc systems. | English | I was told that this was part of the process for becoming a member of the department and how I chose to deal with it would say a lot about my character. I was told to ignore it. I was also told to take him out for "drinks" and "buddy up" to him. I was also told that this was part of "earning" my stripes. | None. Despite repeated complaints and official reporting (not only by me, but also by other junior faculty), nothing was done to this person. He got a total free pass. | I chose to stay and did get tenure. I sit on several committees with this person. It's unpleasant and I try to minimize any time and energy spent around this person. | Significant. I have been in therapy for several years learning how to negotiate a very difficult work space. | I mean, a tenured position in academia today? Who is going to give that up, given what the job market looks like? So, I stay even though I'm sure I would be happier and healthier elsewhere. I've looked elsewhere, but in terms of salary and benefits, financially, the best decision is to stay, even though it's a very toxic environment. Student loans and debt limit career choices. | Male | ||
2187 | 1/12/2018 5:43:25 | When I was coming up for tenure, the member of the law school tenure committee who was putting together the report on my tenure case repeatedly and over the course of several weeks cornered me in areas of his office or the faculty lounge from which it was difficult for me to exit and then put his hands on my body in inappropriate and sexual ways. | untenured law professor | tenured law professor (and the member of the law school tenure committee who was writing the report on my tenure case) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Michigan | Law | I reported the problem to the dean of the law school. The dean said that he could not do anything in response unless I were willing to make a public accusation. At a recent faculty meeting, faculty members had been harshly critical of law students who complained of sexual harassment by their summer employers, with one faculty member insisting that any woman who made a sexual harassment complaint wasn't fit to be a lawyer. Enough of our colleagues seemed to agree with that view that it seemed to me that making a public accusation would make it impossible for me to be voted tenure by 2/3 of the tenured faculty. I believed then, and still believe, that the dean insisted on a public accusation before taking any action as a way to cause me to back down. It worked. Thereafter, I made significant efforts to avoid being alone in a room with that man ever, even though it meant declining to meet him to discuss my tenure file. | None | That's hard to assess. I ended up not getting tenure, but I really don't know whether and to what extent the harassment experience made a direct contribution to that result. I can say that the harassment (and the willingness of colleagues and the dean to tolerate it) was symptomatic of an atmosphere in which women were accorded significantly less respect as teachers, scholars, and students than men were, and in which the idea that women were sexual objects appeared to be, if not widely shared, at least held by a significant proportion of the faculty. That atmosphere made it more difficult to pursue my research and teaching, and to participate in faculty activities. The experience itself caused me to withdraw from social interaction with many of my colleagues. | Male | ||||
2188 | 1/12/2018 6:21:40 | I was a 23 year old in a prestigious lab working as a post bac intern at the NIH. The majority of Senior lab members were male (i.e post docs and PI) and while my PI did not participate directly, he did not curtail the stream of offensive and explicit commentry spewed forth by a couple of the younger male post docs. Those guys would casually rate female scientists on their appearence and discuss their "fuckability at lunch." I was often bullied or excluded from lab events,for telling these guys that I wasn't comfortable with their discussions - the only TWO female post docs would laugh along with the guys, the rest of the women were older technicians who stuck to themselves. Being at the bottem of the totem pole scientifically and socially meant (to me at the time) that I had to endure discomfort. I needed their help designing experiments and performing well, and so, because I wanted to be in the good books, I accepted being fondled while intoxicated and then being slut shamed thereafter. There are other incidents beyond this that occurred during that hellish year, but I don't feel like revisiting them in detail. I live with two regrets 1) I wish that I had reported all of them 2) sucummbing to the insecurity that I wasn't intelligent enough to pursue a successful Project without their help. | Post Bac Intern at NIH | Post Doc | Elite Institution/Ivy League | NIH | Biology | Never reported | N/A | I took a leave of abscence from science for about a year, but eventually started a PhD in Germany | Depression, Suicidal tendencies | I learned to look beyond the publication records | Male | ||
2189 | 1/12/2018 6:34:08 | I was in a lab room--no windows, small room, isolated. He came in and we had a friendly conversation like we'd often had. He came to give me a hug--that was new--and picked me up off the floor by holding me against him. He rubbed my body back and forth against his, groaned, and started sniffing my hair, saying "you smell so good." He put me down, I started to back up, and he picked me up again and continued, saying he "just had to" do it again. I can't remember a lot more details after that because I was trying to figure out how to get away--I was literally in a room designed so that no one would know what was happening inside of it. He did not rape me. He freaked me the hell out. I had to go to a brownbag lunch from there, and when I walked in, my fellow student looked over and said "what happened to you?" Apparently I looked like I felt. | Grad student, ABD | Professor and faculty advisor | Other R1 | Psychology | I did not report it (he had the power to ruin me) | None | hard to say. I certainly couldn't work with him after that. I used to recruit fellow students to come with me if I had to meet with him for some reason. Since I couldn't work with him and was at the point in my career that I needed to publish to get certain career opportunities, those doors closed--I had the option of starting over in a new lab and spending extra years in grad school or getting out with a thin vita. | Shock, fear, anxiety, questioning whether anything I had done in his lab was really worthy on a scholarly level | He emailed me months afterward and said he "sensed" that I might have "misinterpreted" his "friendly nature." I don't know anyone else who sniffs their friends' hair. | Male | |||
2190 | 1/12/2018 6:43:32 | A senior faculty member from another department would single out my appearance whenever we had interdisciplinary meetings. "I used to think all psychologists were ugly, but you...." He would pull out a chair next to him and make a big production of inviting me to sit next to him. Once I started dodging him, including avoiding committees he was on, he would call out his comments in the hall or wherever he saw me. Once I tried to say something like "and here I hoped you respected my work" but it never slowed him down. In the last few years before his retirement, he started touching me--my hair, my clothes, whatever. I would enlist allies to stand between me and him. The last set of interactions I had with him were during an inservice I had to attend. I told the organizer: watch how long it takes him to approach me and touch me. It was within 3 minutes of being in the room. | starting with assistant professor, through full professor | full professor in another department, kind of an "elder statesman" beloved by the college. | Small Liberal Arts College | Psychology | My dean said "I'm sorry." His dean said "we take this very seriously." As far as I know, that was the complete institutional response. | None that I could observe. He was named Professor Emeritus on retirement. | I avoided committees and work where I could have contributed. I spent time figuring out how to dress defensively to give him less to comment on or touch. I took to wearing my hair pulled tightly back every day so he couldn't get his hands into it. I basically felt like I was walking through a minefield; I'd be doing my job and this person would pop out of nowhere and suggest my main value was as a decoration, and or touch me. | Chronic stress | I've been sexually harassed at every place I ever worked, inside and outside academia. This was the place that convinced me there was no point in ever reporting it. This school talked a lot about empowering women...sure. As long as it wasn't inconvenient or embarrassing to them. | Male | |||
2191 | 1/12/2018 7:22:13 | A senior faculty member pinched my butt at a social event | conference participant | senior faculty member | University of the South | Creative Writing | none | Many and varied | This senior faculty member has inappropriately touched dozens of women | Male | |||||
2192 | 1/12/2018 8:14:17 | In May 2007, I went out with friends to join the usual department happy hour at a local bar. I was wearing a wrist brace for recently-diagnosed carpal tunnel syndrome. Someone at the table asked what the brace was for, I explained. High ranking professor at the table, drunk, overhearing the conversation commented to me, "Well, if you can't use your hand, I guess you'll have to learn how to suck testicles!" I was too shocked to respond. Someone at the table who heard his comment must have said something to him because a few seconds later he said, "Oh you'll read about this in the Reveille [student newspaper] tomorrow! Professor charged with harassing students! hahaha" | graduate student | tenured professor | Other R1 | LSU / Louisiana State University | Anthropology (Dept of Geog and Anthro) | I reported the incident to HRM maybe a month or so later after consulting with two female professors and gathering my courage. Before going to HRM, following LSU policy, I reported the incident to the current department head, who was about to leave the university for another job. Apparently it was his duty to accompany me to HRM to make my complaint, but when I told him he just sighed heavily and said, "Well, what do you want to do?" So I went to HRM alone. I wasn't able to provide witnesses to the professor's comment - my friends who were with me didn't hear it and the people who did hear it were the professor's fiancee/wife at the time (she was one of his current or former grad students), and a few other grad students who were buddy-buddy with him. | According to the letter I received from HRM, he denied everything but the comment about the Reveille which he claimed was "regularly said in the department." He was, "advised that if he made those comments they were inappropriate and unprofessional," the university's policy on sexual harassment was "reemphasized to him", and he was told to limit his interactions with me. He later became department chair, and was up to become dean of the graduate school at one point. Myself and many other female students from my cohort made sure that that didn't happen the only way we knew how, by writing letters of complaint to the selection committee about his behavior. He's currently a professor emeritus in the department at LSU and teaches at another university overseas, he's received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships over the years. | I was close to finishing my degree in anthropology and he was in geography so there wasn't any direct impact on my coursework, degree, or career. | I still have carpal tunnel so I'm still, unfortunately, frequently reminded of his disgusting and uncalled for comment, even 10 years later. But overall I'm fine. He's gross and he has to live with that. Mainly I still deal with anger at the department and LSU for doing nothing to punish someone who clearly had a track record for this type of behavior, and anger that he continued to be promoted after my complaint and what I later learned was a mountain of others. (see "other comments" section) | This was the first time I had experienced harassing behavior from a superior in a professional context. I had dealt with incidents before from peers. It was disappointing to learn from this incident, and from speaking with other female students, how rampant this behavior was among several senior male professors in the department. It fortunately didn't effect my career trajectory and that of several of my fellow students, but I worry about the effect it may have had on others who weren't as lucky as me. | Years after this incident, I was contacted to take part in a lawsuit against this professor about something completely unrelated. (I never did) Apparently the lawyer was able to get this professor's work records from LSU HRM and it was close to 400 pages of content, including my complaint. I can only imagine how many others were in there! | Male | |
2193 | 1/12/2018 8:32:11 | Professor calls me over in a public space, beckoning with his finger and whispers in my ear "I like your hair when it's wet you should leave it like that more often." Repeated attempts to get me alone. Later berates me in front of other staff asking if I have a learning disability because I misplaced a file. I learned after reporting the incident that other women had also had experiences of harassment and it was 'commonly known.' | Graduate Student | Professor | Other Type of School | CUNY | Sociology | I reported to the person in charge of sexual harassment complaints at the time. | none | made me more paranoid about motives of male colleagues but otherwise, none. | I was depressed at the time so this did not help my overall situation. | Male | |||
2194 | 1/12/2018 8:39:49 | I was belittled, demeaned, and bullied by my male mentor. He referred to me as a cachectic supermodel that Academia would not take seriously. He said things like this to me in private for months, yelling at me that I would not succeed in science. When he said similar things in front of other full professors, I was able to escape his mentorship. I reported the incident to the University Ombudsperson. No apparent action was taken by the University and he remains the Chair of an important Department. | Pre-tenure | Mentor, full professor | Other R1 | None | None | I had to take a medical leave of absence to recover, I lost time & productivity. I lost self-confidence and am working on rebuilding my research program. I continue to have therapy for PTSD. | PTSD, ongoing anxiety | I am determined to overcome & reach my goals. I won't let this change who I am. | Male | ||||
2195 | 1/12/2018 8:48:00 | Was working as an RA for a male professor over the summer. He snuck photos of my feet in sandals (I caught him and he said he likes to have photos of his assistants to remember them by .....um, sure?) and forced me into long hugs with furtive stroking of my sides and back at the end of our meetings. Before I could say anything about the weird hugs he'd talk about how much he appreciated his assistants and liked to give everyone hugs. I was too intimidated and confused to report him as nothing was overtly "wrong" although I knew he wouldn't do the same things to male students. I was old enough to know what was happening was wrong, but also knew I didn't want to jeopardise my stipend (rent and bill money!) and my standing in the department. I dreaded going to his office to discuss my research for him and felt like the other people in the department knew what was happening and thought I was a bit of a joke. Aaaand that's how you silence women! | Late 20s, MA student and Research Assistant | RA Supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Alberta | English and Film Studies | No | No | Lack of confidence, self doubt, mistrust of male professors and colleagues that lasts to this day (ended up working on campus and had a Dean treat me very similarly - he was a well known "womanizer" who heartily disrespected women and mistreated junior female staff). I now work from home to avoid these issues. | As noted - self doubt, etc. As well as mistrust of male colleagues, also have mistrust of the female enablers (senior staff) who laughed this behavior off and belittled me and the other fresh graduates who were victimized by this predatory and disrespectful behavior. Toxic environment for sure! | Work from home to avoid such situations | Male | ||
2196 | 1/12/2018 9:22:55 | A fieldwork informant told his employees (who were also informants of mine) that he and I were dating, and allowed them to believe this for the full year I was in the field. I was single in my late-20s at the time. I was unaware that everyone believed this until I was almost finished with fieldwork, at which point someone asked me about it and I told them the truth. They were shocked and told me everyone had assumed I was their boss's girlfriend the entire time. | Ph.D. candidate | fieldwork informant | Other R1 | Anthropology | I told my supervisor and he laughed it off, joking that I should wear a fake wedding ring into the field next time. | none, it wasn't seen as serious | I have wondered ever since how my fieldwork experience would have been different if this hadn't happened. It impacted the way I was perceived in the community where I was conducting research and who was willing to talk to me. I have an ongoing research relationship with the community and everyone just pretends this never happened. | Extreme embarrassment when I found out, which led to both retroactive self-doubt (could I have done better research if this hadn't happened? could I have prevented this?) and self-blame, and makes ongoing research always slightly awkward. | I continue to work with this person because I have to, but it has made me maintain a distance--which impacts communication and research functionality--that I otherwise would not. | Male | |||
2197 | 1/12/2018 9:22:57 | l. Was told that females in my department could not receive Teaching assistantships because they had husbands who were employed. But males who has wives were allowed to receive teaching assistantships, because their marital status and spousal employment was never a consideration. | I was a Ph.D. candidate/ | The department chairman, who was then engaged in a very obvious sexual relationship with a female student in the department, who, I recently learned, he ultimately married, divorcing a wife with whom he had several children. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UCLA | Geography | This was gender discrimination/hostile environment | Was never able to get a job in tenure-track position | Life's unfair if You're a woman. A permanent condition. | I went to law school and specialized in gender discrimination. | I reported to this same chairman my complaint that I had received a bad grade from a prof who apparently disliked the subject of a term paper I had done. This was a Plant Geography class. I submitted that term paper to an academic refereed journal in that prof's field "Economic Botany" , and it was quickly accepted for publication. I took the acceptance letter from the journal to the chairman of the department, expecting he would look into the problem, and he dismissed my issue with the following: "It's not unusual for Harvard to publish B papers from UCLA." I had also complained to him about a tenured prof in the department who told everyone who would listen that "because women enrollments in our field are increasing, we no longer offer field research courses because women "menstrate'" (sic) . "Blood all over the place, messy, very mess" hd would say. Recently I sent a "me too" email to the current department chairman and he acknowledged that my field was notorious for its misogyny, but that the department at UCLA may have been among the worst. | Male | ||
2198 | 1/12/2018 9:33:50 | First term of my undergrad degree, I signed up for an extra-curricular project run by a senior lecturer in my department. In the first session, I noticed he was looking down my top during the whole time he was presenting but brushed it off. However, within a couple of months of being on the project, he would try and greet me physically after a few months of working together by hugging me and kissing me on the cheeks, which I tried to avoid but often couldn't. Another time, I ran into him at the train station, where he complimented me on my physical appearance (I was dressed up) and proceeded to sit down next to me on the bench and get as close as he possibly could, while talking as in my face as possibleWhen he emailed me about the project we were working on, he detailed his physical exercise routine and that he had been swimming daily over the summer, as if I was interested? And whether I had had an exciting summer?' . I lessened my involvement in the project so I would avoid being around him - even on campus, he would make a beeline for me, often ignoring my female friend who also worked on the project, so it made it even more obvious he had a thing for me. | Undergraduate BA Hons | Senior lecturer and project supervisor | Other Type of School | Sociocultural Anthropology | I did not report it, it felt too micro at the time! I am still wondering about doing it retroactively as he is still employed and working there. | None that I know of | It leaves a bitter taste and a concern about experiencing similar and worse at graduate levels. It also prevented me from contributing more and being more involved in the project as | It's awful to say but having experienced worse, it was just uncomfortable and unpleasant, probably at most contributed to a feeling of anxiety whenever he was around or whenever I saw him! | It has made me really research the benefits and costs of academia as a woman, I did well and have been very strongly encouraged to continue, but thanks to this experience and other experiences of sexism and entrenched misogyny in the system, it makes me question whether that is the path for me. It's also made me realise I need to be braver and more outspoken about such incidents rather than just complain about them and hope they will go away. | thanks for all you are doing, huge amount of admiration for this. | Male | ||
2199 | 1/12/2018 9:39:53 | As a high level, yet young, female administrator in a college, I was surrounded by high powered men who thought nothing of openly objectifying women in meetings. Asking questions about who certain women were on campus, were they married?, telling stories about their own affairs, etc. One even told me that if his dick still worked, he’d be all over the freshmen girls. After my second child, I realized I had stepped into the “mothers” network (female, less power) and been pushed out of the male power group. There were many subtle changes, but one particular incident when in a meeting filled with high ups, the president of the college said to me, “I get it. You’re a mother now. You live in the suburbs. You have lost your edge.” The public harassment continued when there would be hours of meetings when I was yelled at and maligned by the highest men in the college. And was the only woman in the room. And honestly, for no performance-based reason. I realized I was being pushed out, so I left. And I signed a nondisclosure agreement in exchange for 4 months salary. And I left behind a career and 15 years of unquestioneable success under the same president. I was essentially replaced with a younger, childless version of myself. The bullying and eventual firing- or pushing out- of 40 year old women in favor of 25 year olds was something I had seen over and over. I always thought it was performance based. Now I see it differently. | I was an AVP | Men in higher positions | Small Liberal Arts College | I brought the harassment up to HR when I was leaving. The female head of HR glazed over it as my reason for leaving and told me it was a great and important decision to stay home and care for my young children. That was the way it was spun- I was leaving to take care of my children. | None, none, none. | I left with no job, health issues from stress and the absolute need to detox from the environment. I love my work and I’m damn good at what I do, but I am reluctant to get into a situation where I’m vulnerable to abuse again. I am currently unemployed. It sucks. | Oh, you name it: thyroid issues, migraines, back pain. All classic stress symptoms. | It actually has made me realize that I never want to be beholden to a male dominated organization again. And also to stand up for myself - and other women- earlier and more often. | Male | ||||
2200 | 1/12/2018 9:46:08 | A student at UC-Santa Barbara exposed his erect penis to me while I was lecturing in class. No students sat in the front row, and this one did in the middle of the semester. After class I called the Dean, who wanted nothing to do with the episode. Told me to report to 'Campus Police. I reported to Campus Police who were outside my classroom for the next lecture, and when that very same student came up to speak to me, I asked him to accompany me out the door, where he was nabbed by the police. The result: the police reported to me that this was "a biological accident." Nothing done. The student later came to my office complaining that I should have discussed this "problem" with him instead of calling the police. He frightened me, which seemed to be his intention. Very difficult finishing up the semester with that looming. | I had completed the Ph.D. UCLA, and was in a part-time lecturer position | A Student. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC-Santa Barbara | Geography | That an erect penis being displayed to me through an unzipped ly, during an academic lecture, was a "biological accident" | Nothing; he continued to pursue me, coming up to me to ask questions after class, coming to my office. | I went to law school and pursued a very lucrative practice in gender discrimination/gender harassment. | I remain angry. View men as brutes, in keeping with my father's mantra: "Might makes right." | Avoid situations where males hold power over me; and there are a lot of male judges that I encounter as a litigator, who enjoy power-plays. So I've done quite a bit of appellate practice, too. I refuse to give up. | I mourn the young woman who started out with 'the world is your oyster" notion, that by dint of intelligence and hard work, I could achieve what I yearned for--an academic career. I had a wonderful (male) academic advisor in graduate school, who told me, of my work that "You will really become someone." And I was publishing in my field, while still a student, before finishing the Ph.D.. And never was hired for a tenure-track job, and was interviewed only a couple of times. I believe my anger and disappointment have serve me well as an attorney, because in vindicating the women I represent, I am also healing myself . | Male | |
2201 | 1/12/2018 9:48:05 | While I was a graduate student, I met a tenure-track professor at the AAAs whose work I liked and who had been recommended to me as someone to connect with. We spoke initially at a panel (he offered to read my dissertation draft and suggested we collaborate on some work) and then later continued the conversation at a drinks party for our AAA section. He and another male tenure-track professor in our field bought me multiple drinks, and he told me he was separated from his wife and they were getting a divorce. We left together and everything that happened was consensual, but six months later I received an e-mail from his wife (still married, not separated, not divorced) telling me that she knew all about our "highly inappropriate relationship" and that I should never contact him again. She contacted me as well through Facebook, and continued to message me. I don't know how she found out or got my contact information, but I never responded because I was so mortified and had no idea what to say, and didn't want to add fuel to the fire. | Ph.D. student | Assistant Professor | Other R1 | Anthropology | none, I didn't report anything as I didn't feel harassed by the man since it was consensual. However, I did feel misled when I found out he was still married, and in retrospect feel that he was able to use his position relative to mine to draw me in (promises to read my work, etc). | none | I found myself avoiding situations where I might see him or work with him, because I am legitimately afraid of his wife coming after me again. I have also had to tell friends who are considering working with him or who do work with him to be cautious about bringing my name up unless it's strictly about my work, and to never mention me around his wife if they interact with her at department functions or other social settings. I feel that this has derailed potential research collaborations and steered me away from academia. | I have ongoing embarrassment and self-doubt about ending up in such a cliche situation. The emails and messages from his wife were very stressful and I was consumed with guilt that continues to linger. I still fear her wrath, although I feel "safer" now that I am married and have a kid. I never would have crossed the line from professional to personal with this man if I had known the truth about his marriage. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||||
2202 | 1/12/2018 9:50:10 | Film/Media Studies professor stalked my personal website (on university servers) photo page, and looked at photos more frequently (by a range of over 300%) than anyone else, meaning he was seeking it out (I had a tracker on the site, and this was largely a pre-Facebook way for me to share pictures with others). This would generally not be a cause for alarm, if it weren't for him leering and acting incredibly creepy to me in person. | Undergraduate | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Bucknell University | Was not reported | None | None | Generally weirded out and avoidant of that person | Dropped the class, even though I was really interested in Film Studies and wanted to minor in it, because the professor was so prolific in the department | Male | |||
2203 | 1/12/2018 9:53:35 | A colleague announced to his class that he would like to see me, a fellow faculty member, in a "wet t-shirt contest." Several of my students were very upset and came to my office to inform me. | Assistant Professor | Full Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Baldwin-Wallace University | Accounting | None. Was not the first sexual intimidation. I reported another earlier that resulted in no action. | None | I believe the culture of the institution contributed to not being hired for a tenure-track position at the end of my five year contract. | Coming from industry, it was just more of the same behavior from male coworkers. I just felt it was unfair, and moved on. | I am now happily, a small business owner. | Male | ||
2204 | 1/12/2018 9:55:49 | I went to my TA's office hours and he put his hand on my knee and leaned in to try to kiss me. I rebuffed his advances and left the room. He then repeatedly emailed me and sent me letters about his previous sexual experiences, including with prostitutes, and suggestive poetry he'd written. Several years have elapsed but he still tries to contact me via email or social media, even though I've blocked several of his email addresses and accounts. | Undergrad (senior year) | TA-visiting PhD student from another university | Other R1 | Asian Studies | None | None | None | Made me angry, bewildered, and anxious--I worried the rest of the semester that he would give me a bad grade for rejecting his unwanted advances. I also get angry with each new attempt he makes to contact me after nearly 10 years. | None really. As disturbing as these events were, I went on to grad school. | Male | |||
2205 | 1/12/2018 9:57:55 | I attended a conference of the American Sociological Association. THE SAME PROMINENT PERSON FROM UNC WHO SOMEONE ELSE SUBMITTED INFO ABOUT ON HERE CONTACTED ME, TOO, PRIOR TO THE CONFERENCE. I hope that woman sees this submission so she knows she's not alone!! I was mid-level in the field and was flattered that he had researched my work. I knew his name because he's published and prominent. He suggested we meet to discuss my work further. Everything seemed above-board and friendly but business-like but my spidey sense kicked in when he said that he preferred to work and network out of his hotel suite. I didn't commit to anything and then got busy at the conference and didn't communicate further. When I thought of it later, I shrugged it off though I was pretty sure he'd contacted me only because he'd found my photo and thought he'd like to start something with me. Knowing this was likely the same person at the same conference that another poster submitted, I wanted to add this because it sounds like her experience upset her quite a lot. I just wanted to add my #metoo for her benefit. [KK: feel free to email me at gettenure@gmail.com so that I can potentially connect others] | Assistant Professor | Professor and Program Director of a prominent center | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | American Sociology Association conference but he works elsewhere | Sociology | I didn't report anything | None | I shrugged it off because I was unsure about whether to trust my spidey sense that this was "off." Then I read another person's submission here of her interaction with him at the same damn conference and I was PISSED that I didn't confront him. | None really, just temporarily pissed off | None | Male | ||
2206 | 1/12/2018 10:02:48 | Seated behind a very prominent mid-career scholar during a conference the summer before last in Washington, my colleague and I saw a white-haired male historian introduce a very attractive and 15-20 years junior female student to the academic star in question. He explained that she was a great fan of his work. The Ivy League professor came to life, and in no time began pressuring her to go out to dinner with him after the panel, to "discuss her work." She looked stunned and very uncomfortable, caught between trying to squirm out of his aggressive invitation after having just explained her admiration for his work. Her theoretical mentor just stood by. | PhD Student | full Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Cornell | History | Female | |||||||
2207 | 1/12/2018 10:07:54 | Professor constantly stared at women's breasts in conversation and not, very obviously. When I commented on this once after class, students in the history PhD program responded instantly, "yes, we know." | MA student | Professor | Other R1 | CUNY Grad Center | Am Studies | Male | |||||||
2208 | 1/12/2018 10:27:35 | At least three older white men have done everything from make lewd to demeaning comments. One is reputed to have made advances on several women. | student | two assoc. professors, one full | Elite Institution/Ivy League | cuny | history | never heard of any reporting | i left | Male | |||||
2209 | 1/12/2018 10:28:35 | In the Fall 2005, I took an Honors College course on the European Union. It was co-taught with a former German ambassador to the United States. I am pretty sure he did this outside of class, but I know that during class, in front of the entire class and the professor co-teaching it, he would make sexually suggestive remarks or comments on the appearance of the female students. He would also say things during class like, "Would any of the lovely ladies of the class care to have dinner with me?" One of the female students in the class asked him point-blank why he would like to have dinner with us. He was grinning. At a farewell dinner, he put his arm around my waist. I can't remember correctly, but I'm also pretty sure he "squeezed me in." He was approaching 70, I was 19. Things like this went on the entire semester. The professor co-hosting the class never said anything to challenge him. | Undergraduate | Visiting Scholar | R2 | University of Nevada, Las Vegas | None. I don't know if the professor ever reported to the department, but he certainly never intervened to protect us. | None. This was his second time co-teaching the course. I'm sure he had done this before. | Thankfully, none. | It was really confusing and degrading as an undergraduate. Years later, I guess I'm just now beginning to realize how inappropriate and wrong it was. | Definitely made me not want to go into diplomacy! | Male | |||
2210 | 1/12/2018 10:54:00 | Major professor and other academic staff continuously harrassed me for being gay when I was not gay they knew my wife. I felt belittled and it hurt personally and professionally. That professor was a racist sexist pig that I saw him hit no undergrad students while drunk. This went on for 4 years (1991-1995) and i never lived up to his version af masculine enough. I bailed with only a masters degree even though i wanted a phd. no other professor would take me becasue they thought I was a pig like him if I was in his lab and he would not give me a recomendation. | grad student | my major professor and he is full professor. | Other R1 | U of Minnesota | Science | never reported any of it | nothing he is still there and advancing | I wanted a phd and got only a masters and have not ever been the higher ed teacher i wanted to be. | difficult. | I ended my desire to be a professor and struggled for years to find a job. I never found a job in my field and now am happy as a high school teacher. | Male | ||
2211 | 1/12/2018 11:14:00 | My professor in my MFA program who was known for getting drunk with graduate students grabbed my butt at a party in an attempt to get me to dance with him or to sit next to him. He complimented my writing. I quickly shunned his advanced and left the party feeling ashamed, disgusted, and fearful of my fate in the program. He got wind of the incident and claimed to "not remember it." He called me into his office where I awkwardly accepted his apology, and continued to have to take classes with him for the rest of my program. | First year Graduate student | Full professor | Other R1 | University of North Carolina- Greensboro | Creative Writing | I reported the incident to the head of the English department about a year after the incident. I was about to graduate from the program and the situation was still haunting me, especially because I saw him behaving similarly with other graduate students. The women in the department were wonderful to me, especially because the whole process was incredibly demoralizing and scary. In the end, however, the university system was on my perpetrator's side. In order to actually get this event into the file, I would have to file a formal complaint with the university and enter into a trial. I felt too overwhelmed and discouraged to do it, especially since I'd have to involve my friends who had been at the party in the process, and many of them wanted to forget the whole thing had ever happened or had him as a thesis advisor so they felt uncomfortable. In the end, I got some solace because some of the women faculty members (all tenured) confronted him individually and basically told him they were watching him. My hope is that this curbed his behavior significantly, but I can't know for sure. | That many of his colleagues knew about this. | I am fortunate that I don't have any specific career consequences. | I was depressed and highly anxious for many months during my MFA. I felt alienated from many of my peers and friends. Because the perpetrator was such a highly revered faculty member, I felt betrayed over and over again when people spoke his praises. It created divisions in my friendships. | I learned again the importance, for me, of friendships with women and of believing women's stories. The women that supported me from the beginning changed my life, and I will forever be grateful to them. | Tremendously grateful for this project! | Male | |
2212 | 1/12/2018 11:15:34 | We'd previously met at a conference for our field (where we'd both presented) and he began writing me expressing an interest in my work. In retrospect, this was his process of grooming. During the incident, we were in a building on campus after an event at which he'd spoken. He asked to see a photo of me and my then-girlfriend (as I am queer) and then grabbed my hand to smell it. When I demanded to know what he was doing, he said, "I am memorizing your scent." I was alarmed and tried to get some distance. He then hugged me while he was sitting down and he put his ear to my chest. He made some comment about my strong heart. I pulled away. He then tried to pressure me into sex by claiming that we're the same generation (we're not), and that his wife approves of his sleeping with other women. (I found out later that his wife is a former grad student of his.) I left the building. He has since sent me multiple YouTube videos of himself shirtless and drumming. | PhD student | Visiting Guest Lecturer of a prominent lecture series on campus | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Ethnic Studies | He is a highly regarded mentor to one of our department's top professors so he used his clout as inroads. I've become far more skeptical when senior professors take an interest in my work since that's the guise he used to approach me. It's possible that this has negatively impacted the degree of trust I have in senior faculty which may, in part, impact my career advancement. | I come across his name and work fairly often and always feel discomforted by these memories and disappointed that he's been "allowed" to have a prominent career. I have seen major abuses of power (and cover-ups) on campus, at UC Berkeley, and know that even if I'd reported this man nothing would have happened to him. The general climate of impunity for abusers has impacted my mental health just as much as this specific incident. | Perhaps you can format the spreadsheet to have all the entries 'text wrap' so that we can read the longer entries at the bottom | Male | ||||
2213 | 1/12/2018 11:38:51 | In order to cover up her own shoddy work, my TA, anticipating that I would complain about her, falsely accused me of pursuing her romantically and "making her uncomfortable." Rather than filing a formal complaint, she spread this rumor to several profs and the dept chair (a woman). Everyone from the chair down presumed I did something wrong. The chair subsequently bullied and harassed me, shouted me down, and slammed my office door. | PhD student and sessional lecturer | TA & PhD student / departmental chair | Elite Institution/Ivy League | McGill | Communication Studies | When I tried to tell my supervisor the truth, he said "I don't want to hear about it." | None. The TA was rewarded with another TA job. | Despite the fact that I did nothing remotely wrong, plus I was unanimously popular among my students, and I was next in line for the position, I was denied a sessional teaching job by the chair the following semester, who hired her own supervisee instead. | I am only now realizing that this incident caused PTSD-like effects: anxiety, depression, anger, feelings of loneliness and helplessness. | I am less trusting of people in general, and in positions of power, specifically. | Women in power are not immune to being abusers of it. | Female | |
2214 | 1/12/2018 11:40:24 | This happened in the late 1970s. My nationally prominent professor in his 50s was in his first year on campus. I was an older undergraduate, but still under 30 and a single parent, desperate for an education, somewhat naive, very idealistic. Plainly put, he seduced me, first singling me out for attention in class and then after class with highly complimentary remarks regarding my work. Made me feel on top of the world and headed for a lofty career. I was soon in his bed, but uncomfortable and feeling creepy. As soon as I had my final grade I stopped and even changed majors. | Junior year undergraduate. | My professor. | Other R1 | University of Wisconsin-Madison | Economics | None. I told no one. | None. | I changed my career focus and major, and lost a huge amount of confidence. My academic performance became uneven and I never worked in what I had thought was my perfect career. | Self-loathing, self-doubt, increased vulnerability. Complicated previously undiagnosed conditions including depression and PTSD. Contributed to delayed graduation. Even after this many years, and years of therapy, I still feel sick when I think of what happened and how gullible I was, how expertly I was played. | I changed majors and my career choice, and tended to have a series of jobs rather than an actual career. I retreated from intimate relationships and have avoided professional relationships with men as well. | It’s been interesting to watch the unfolding of so many accusations of harassment and assault from the same era as mine, in academia as well as politics, show business and other walks of life. It is such a relief to know I am not alone in feeling deep hurt at the effects of these acts suffered earlier in life. The impact is long and deep. | Male | |
2215 | 1/12/2018 11:41:16 | As a third-year graduate student, I approached the chair of my department (at the time), a very respected (white) man at the top of his field, to request a leave of absence for the next year. He knew little about me, as we work in different fields. I requested a leave to work on a personal project, and have saved up funds to live independently. His response, with a lewd look: "mommy and daddy letting you do that? mommy and daddy helping you out, hmm?" I grew up working class. There was no way this was ever the case, especially now. This same professor was rumored to have constantly asked female grad students to dinner and drinks, alone. | third year doctoral student | Chair of my Department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Harvard University | Comparative Literature | None | None | Made me never want to return to my department, and indeed, that was the last year I ever lived in Cambridge | Minimal (this was only one of many similar harrassments) | Honestly, probably positive: I learned to appreciate SLACs much more than R1 schools, and far prefer lower-ranking teaching SLACs than the Ivy League | Male | ||
2216 | 1/12/2018 11:46:13 | Male PhD student never acted professionally, but worse, he frequently made our work environment feel unsafe. He sent lewd photos to the other female PhD student, once he even stopped at her & her husband's apartment to ask for a threesome. Our advisor always defended/protected him. Then the PhD student even harassed him-- he took a picture of our advisor in his underwear during field work and put it in a presentation he to our department's grad student seminar. Our advisor had this student organize our field work, so I had to share a hotel room with him despite feeling unsafe doing so. There was also a time period when the student became obsessed with guns. Then one day he announced he'd gotten a gun permit and would soon have a gun. I stopped going in to the lab because that terrified me. The lab group's research scientists were also scared, so one of them decided to talk to campus mental health services about our fears for this student having a gun. When our advisor found out, he singled me out to ask why I would be afraid of this student getting a gun, why I would want to get him in trouble with the university, why I wouldn't just talk to him about how he scares me. | PhD student | Gun talk / sexual harassment / field work planning - PhD student; Perpetuating an unsafe work environment and allowing a known sexual harasser to plan field work: tenured professor / lab PI / our advisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Planetary Science | I spoke to the Equity Officer about having to share a room with that student during field work. MIT's Equity Officer also happens to be an astrophysics prof (who once wrote a blog about never having had a woman student) and during the meeting he asked if some other specific profs in my department knew about what was happening. When I told him they not only knew, but sometimes had similar situations (i.e. male students/profs room with female students to save money) when they do field work, he was shocked because those profs were his friends. He sent me an email later saying they were trying to change policy to prevent this sort of thing from happening during field work-- not sure if it's been effective or not. I was too scared to bring up other issues to him because when things had been brought up to our advisor, he made us feel like we were in the wrong for bringing it up. Anyway, the institutional response was what disturbed me the most. MIT has a lot of money so why is the Equity Officer an astrophysics prof (which seems like an obvious conflict of interest) and not an independent person with a background relevant to that job? MIT doesn't seem to actually care about having a proper institutional response to harassment or unsafe work environments... and MIT profs seem to value "male geniuses" over people having a sense of safety in their work environment. | None. His career is going very well. He has a tenure-track professorship at an Ivy League institution. | I left MIT to finish my PhD elsewhere. I don't like being in a place where I feel neither respected nor safe. Thus, it'll be a bit longer than I originally expected until I have my doctorate. | The fieldwork experience plunged me into depression, which just got worse the longer I stayed there and continued to feel unsafe. I also started having anxiety/panic attacks, and sleep issues. | Honestly, I'm still figuring this out. One thing that is for sure: I've learned nothing is worth feeling unsafe and I value my own brilliance/intellect too much to stay in a place where I feel it is not properly valued. | Thank you for doing this. | Male | |
2217 | 1/12/2018 11:52:43 | A male graduate student in a PhD program with direct supervision to me within our laboratory hurt my career and threatened to hurt other female undergraduates careers when he was denied sexual and romantic advancements by me and these other female students. To quote "If you tell anybody anything negative about me and her I will hurt her career, I can do that, you know that right?, I can hurt yours too." That was regarding another female research assistant in the lab who had reported to me she was scared to say no to his requests for dates because he had also told her something similar. When I approached our male professor and the head of the lab with my concerns he said he would "take it into consideration". I was left out of authorship of publications in which I had a considerable amount of contribution on in direct response to my rejection to this graduate student. I cannot say what has happened to this other female as I decided to leave the lab due to this male graduate student threatening me and not allowing me the same recognition and opportunities as my male peers and the lack of response from our male professor. | Research specialist | Graduate student | Other R1 | University of Wisconsin-Madison | Psychology | None | None | Unable to enter into a Phd program in the timeframe I should have been able to. | I felt devalued, I was depressed, I felt helpless, I engaged in unhealthy coping mechanisms. | I was discouraged to continue a career dominated by men, no longer feel valued as a scientist due to my gender. | Male | ||
2218 | 1/12/2018 11:59:26 | In 2004 at the AAG (large disciplinary conference) a professor (not sure of rank, but more than twice my age) cornered me at my poster to tell me his sexual fetishes. | Undergraduate | Same discipline, far more senior, but not in a position of authority. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | University of Iowa | Geography | I told a professor from my institution, and she shared my anger, but couldn't do much. | none | none | distrust of older white men | Male | |||
2219 | 1/12/2018 12:03:15 | a supervisor teaching me a medical procedure gratuitously pressed his whole body against mine, as if he was spooning me. | resident physician | attending physician | Other Type of School | medicine | deemed by complaint "unsubstantiated" | none | decreased opportunities to learn about a field of interest | severe anxiety at work and some depression | will likely rebound in a new environment, but playing "catch-up" now. | Male | |||
2220 | 1/12/2018 12:03:46 | I am a non-tenured faculty member at Rowan University. I am the only female in subject area that is dominated by males. My male colleague, who has less time at the institution, has made statements such as "strange vibe". He would say that he wished we would communicate more. I felt completely uncomfortable around this colleague who would seek me out at conferences, interupt meetings to run after me and other awkward experiences. I reported to the administration and they did nothing. I told my colleagues and they just would say don't pay it any mind or that he was a jerk. This was not enough. More should have been done. The administrator (his boss) also would glare at me more during meetings and would treat me differently because of my gender. | Non-tenured faculty member | Non-tenured faculty member; administration | Other Type of School | Rowan University | Library | Substantiated but the EEO has done nothing | possibility of not getting tenure | none | I have fallen into depression as my female colleagues have retaliated against me. | Leaving the institution | Male | ||
2221 | 1/12/2018 12:12:47 | While, as an older man, I taught at Austin/Riverland Community College in Austin, Minn, 1991-96. Some women students, ranging from indicating a willingness to strongly suggesting to outwardly offering to, engage in sex as a means to a good grade or passing a course. I, and other men, felt extremely uncomfortable with the fear of false charges and awkwardness in dealing wit such students, especially in private. | Adjunct instructor | Undergraduate women students | Other Type of School | Austin Community College, named changed to Riverland Community College, Austin, Minn | English writing and literature | Acknowledged situation | None | None I could recognize | Not serious, but unpleasant and worrisome | None | I and other male instructors agreed to hold each other accountable by self-reporting to each other any incidents or fears and to document such against any allegations being made. We feared not submitting to the appeals but retaliation when we did not as an alternative to the propositions in gaining favor sought. | Female | |
2222 | 1/12/2018 12:22:11 | Supervisor asked if he could take nude photographs of me. | Undergraduate student working in academic job on campus | Supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Brown | English Lit / Digital Humanities | N/A, never reported | N/A, never reported | Male | |||||
2223 | 1/12/2018 12:35:06 | I was ABD doing research at a small archive which had given me a fellowship. Part of the fellowship included free residence on site adjacent to the archive. The archive and residence were in rural Pennsylvania, and at the time I was in residence only I and the live-in academic director of the archive, a more senior male ABD from another institution, were living on site. One other full time staff person was on site during the day but I was told not to bother her. The male director started off nice enough, but over the course of my month long fellowship, started to make comments about my weight, my appearance, and the appearance of the female high school student who worked a few days a week. Comments escalated to things about how lucky or whipped my male partner must be to put up with me, and when another male fellow arrived who was polite and friendly, comments about how we must be having an affair. The man making the comments was the person administering my fellowship, and the residence was isolated in a rural area without doors that locked, so I decided to leave early. I explained the situation to my dissertation director, who was supportive once he found out the details, but advised against reporting to the archive's board of trustees because it would either do nothing or prevent me from getting future funding. While the man who harassed me was still at the archive, I told all the women intending to work there about what happened to me, and most experienced similar. He has since left the position. | Grad student | Director of archive/also a grad student | Other Research Agency | Small archive | History | None | None | I left the fellowship position early and felt it damaged my relationship with the archive and the likelihood of getting funding from them in the future. | Male | ||||
2224 | 1/12/2018 12:35:51 | I was a graduate student and in an elevator with a male tenured professor in my department, who advised one of my comprehensive exams. When the elevator doors closed, the male professor slowly looked my body up and down. Then he did it a second time. He wasn't even trying to hide what he was doing. He told me I looked nice and asked me why I was so dressed up today. I managed to squeak out an answer (something about how I was teaching that day), and then fled the elevator as soon as the doors opened. This faculty member very publicly leers at other women graduate students in my program (even when he's teaching us in the classroom), and he has a history of other inappropriate behaviors toward women students. | Graduate student | Tenured faculty member (one of my comprehensive exam advisers) | Other R1 | History | I didn't report the incident, in part because I know my department and institution have not taken action on other women's reports of workplace harassment (including against this individual). | I didn't report the incident, in part because I know my department and institution have not taken action on other women's reports of workplace harassment (including against this individual). | I wouldn't say this had a direct impact, beyond making me feel more marginalized in my department and uncomfortable being around this individual at department events. | I still feel dehumanized whenever I see this individual and think of this incident. Unfortunately, this individual is not the only powerful man in my department with a history of harassing or degrading treatment toward women, and I would say that my department's culture is quite toxic for women in general (especially to women graduate students). I do believe the culture of my department contributed to the depression and anxiety I battled during much of graduate school. | I made consistent efforts to avoid this man, as well as a few other male professors who have mistreated my female colleagues, in my place of work. This means I sometimes miss out on networking opportunities. | Male | |||
2225 | 1/12/2018 12:40:02 | The gist: a senior "rockstar" colleague in my field (married, with children) invited me to join a conference panel with him and some other senior colleagues. This ended up being a pretense for trying to have sex with me, though, and after I rejected him, this colleague later went on to spread vicious rumors about me and attempted to thwart and ruin my career. The details: this senior "rockstar" contacted me about serving on a panel with him at an upcoming national conference, then proceeded to send me lewd text messages (including photos of his genitalia) in the months leading up to the conference. I explained several times that I was married, that I wasn't interested, but I was relying on this conference panel to boost my sphere of contacts and so tried to take a lighthearted and laughing approach to his advances. This involved continuously steering the text message and email conversations back towards more professional topics. He told me to arrive a day early to the conference because a big dinner was planned and he would be able to introduce me to some influential people. I did as he instructed, but there was no big dinner: it was reservation for two, and included only me and him. During the dinner, he told me that he had an erection and he pressed himself against me under the table. He was convinced that we would wind up having sex with each other, which he told me point blank. I made excuses, laughed it off, and exited the dinner as quickly as possible, trying to save face. Once I got back to my hotel room, though, he started texting me: the messages started out as imploring ("I'm just so attracted to you, I couldn't control myself") and then, when I didn't respond, they turned threatening ("I can put you in touch with the right people at this conference. I can also make sure that you never get to spend time in the same room as them.") The next day at the conference, I experienced multiple rounds of cold-shouldering from him and his cohort: I would enter a room and a group of men (usually including him) would laugh and get up and leave. I later learned from a close friend / colleague (one of this man's former graduate advisees) that he had told everyone that we had had sex the night before, but that afterwords I had gotten "crazy" and "weird," which was why he felt the need to avoid me. His group of male associates still avoids me at conferences to this day. And I still see this man -- everywhere, at multiple events throughout the year -- to this day. | Assistant Professor | Professor | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | English | N/A (not reported) | N/A | Being cast out by a group of influential academics; having my reputation tarnished by his lies; not wanting to attend certain conferences where I knew that he / they would be present and in control; having this all-male group of academics not take me or my scholarship seriously; being passed over for opportunities (association board membership, committee work) because of their opinions of me. | Following the initial event at the conference, I started having terrible nightmares and began to experience sleep paralysis. They continue to this day; I dream that I see him in the room with me, or else that I am giving a presentation and he in his friends are in the audience laughing at me, etc. | I feel that I've had to work five times as hard to establish myself in my field, as a means of compensating for these rumors / for this situation. | This situation involved two different state universities, plus a professional association. | Male | ||
2226 | 1/12/2018 12:46:41 | 1992 at the University of Houston business school | Other R1 | University of Houston Business School | Marketing | After about 48 hours of “he’s crazy, we’ll go to the wall for you,” the tone changed. The dean said things like “well if it happened to more than 1 person it’d be a problem.” Problem was, we had 2 documented cases already. We had email proof of some of his carrying ons. Of course we suspected others were targeted and made inquiries for which we were soundly criticized - probably because our suspicions were confirmed. They were grad students and quickly recanted. THe people who should have spoken up, and should have/did know the truth didn’t - classic protecting the perp. He was full & tenured and pulled in money. From then on, I was persona non grata in a poison environment. My contract at the next review was not renewed but I fought that and won. I was very well respected, on the top jnl editorial board, etc. Next they created a sham tenure process sending it to people that didn’t work in my area, etc.My colleague was denied tenure despite a brilliant research record. We used the university’s faculty appeals and both won but the provost and president wouldn’t Change their minds. We filed a federal lawsuit which was ultimately settled and I left as part of it. During all the active depositions, he was known to have accepted a chaired position at the University of Georgia business school. It’s a small world and I don’t believe his reputation was unknown. | Zero. He went on to take a chaired position at UGa. There’s nowhere to put this info but about 12 years later he murdered (shot point-blank) his wife and two others in front of a crowd. Luckily for the world he dug a pit in the ground, covered himself with leaves and shot himself. Google George Zinkhan and University of Georgia for details. | The end of my academic career. I had a child at the end of this mess and wasn’t in a position to ask my husband to leave his job for a position elsewhere. I made a decent working life for myself but have always felt ashamed to tell many people of the circumstances. It’s too painful to see what my ex-colleagues are doing. | I was paralzyedd with stress. My reaction was to be unable to do much research. | Left the profession. Got on with working life but it wasn’t how I’d expected to spend the next 25ish years. | Male | ||||
2227 | 1/12/2018 12:49:27 | I had just finished my undergraduate thesis and was still at the College, preparing to apply to graduate school. My male adviser wanted to have an affair with me. I did not want to have an affair with him, but felt pressure to do so. I then tried to break it off, very clumsily I am sure since I was about 21 and felt that the whole situation was unbearably awkward. He was close friends with my other adviser, a feminist professor whom I had been working under for a long time and looked up to. He must have complained to her. When I asked her to write letters of recommendation for me for graduate school, she refused. She told me that she did not like how I had treated her friend, and therefore could not recommend me as a colleague. It was a consensual affair, so I do not blame him overly much, though clearly I was too young to be involved with him and there was a power imbalance in the relationship because of his role as my mentor. I blame more my feminist adviser for her vindictiveness, which I feel breached an acceptable standard of professional ethics. | Undergraduate | My honor's thesis advisers | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Medieval | I did not report anything | I was unable to apply to the graduate programs I wanted to | I eventually recovered, but it took me a long time | I looked up to my feminist mentor so much, so I internalized her judgment of me and felt as though I were a terrible person | I feel as though I cannot have any kind of relationship with this person, who is a leader in the field | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||
2228 | 1/12/2018 12:52:43 | 1992 at the University of Houston business school | Untenured professor of Marketing | Full chaired professor, editor of a B journal, VERY powerful | Other R1 | University of Houston | Marketing | After about 48 hours of “he’s crazy, we’ll go to the wall for you,” the tone changed. The dean said things like “well if it happened to more than 1 person it’d be a problem.” Problem was, we had 2 documented cases already. We had email proof of some of his carrying ons. Of course we suspected others were targeted and made inquiries for which we were soundly criticized - probably because our suspicions were confirmed. They were grad students and quickly recanted. THe people who should have spoken up, and should have/did know the truth didn’t - classic protecting the perp. He was full & tenured and pulled in money. From then on, I was persona non grata in a poison environment. My contract at the next review was not renewed but I fought that and won. I was very well respected, on the top jnl editorial board, etc. Next they created a sham tenure process sending it to people that didn’t work in my area, etc.My colleague was denied tenure despite a brilliant research record. We used the university’s faculty appeals and both won but the provost and president wouldn’t Change their minds. We filed a federal lawsuit which was ultimately settled and I left as part of it. During all the active depositions, he was known to have accepted a chaired position at the University of Georgia business school. It’s a small world and I don’t believe his reputation was unknown. | Zero. He went on to take a chaired position at UGa. There’s nowhere to put this info but about 12 years later he murdered (shot point-blank) his wife and two others in front of a crowd. Luckily for the world he dug a pit in the ground, covered himself with leaves and shot himself. Google [redacted] and University of Georgia for details. | The end of my academic career. I had a child at the end of this mess and wasn’t in a position to ask my husband to leave his job for a position elsewhere. I made a decent working life for myself but have always felt ashamed to tell many people of the circumstances. It’s too painful to see what my ex-colleagues are doing. | I was paralzyedd with stress. My reaction was to be unable to do much research. | Left the profession. Got on with working life but it wasn’t how I’d expected to spend the next 25ish years. | Google on [redacted] and University of Georgia. It’s a matter of public record and I’m happy to have this made public. [KK: I have redacted the name because that is the policy of this spreadsheet/survey, but I am holding it in my files] | Male | |
2229 | 1/12/2018 13:17:08 | Between 2009 and 2012, as an assistant professor, I was repeatedly told by tenured male colleagues in my department that the only way I could receive tenure was to demonstrate my "loyalty" to the department by getting married and purchasing property. I was the only unmarried person in the department - there was only one other female faculty member in the department. At one point (2011), a male colleague (tenured) made comments during a faculty meeting about the fact that I was unmarried and wondered aloud about my sexual partners. No one said anything. | Assistant professor | Tenured male faculty members in my department | Small Liberal Arts College | History (African) | I scheduled a meeting with the university ombudsman. During this meeting, I was told that it was quite possible that I was "too sensitive" and that I should attempt to move past the comments. | None | I left academia as a result of the harassment | Severe anxiety | I was fortunate in that the nature of my research allowed me to transition into a research based non-academic career. However, I spent years recasting my career following leaving that university position. | Man | |||
2230 | 1/12/2018 13:20:39 | I was a visiting assistant professor and the department chair had a party at her house at the beginning of the semester. It was strange as there was a lot of drinking and she even invited undergraduate students. Throughout the party she kept implying that I was single in front of a t-t Assistant professor, we both felt awkward about it and it was fine. Any ways I met several people and one was the partner (they had a child together) of another instructor in our department. We chatted and it was fine. He also worked as an instructor on campus in another department. Later he would come by her office routinely when she was not there and talk to me, and complain about her. I tried to be polite but eventually he called me in the middle of the night, asking me where I lived, and could he come over. I felt very strange as he was a colleague's partner (besides I was not interested). The next year I became friends with his partner and I did not tell her what happened, one night she showed up at my apartment with her daughter, he had taken her phone, computer, and assaulted her, she stayed at my place and would not call the police. I later texted him that if it happened again I would call the police, and he threatened to go to Human Resources and to report me for harassing him, and to stay away from his partner. I told him to go ahead. Nothing happened. | Assistant Professor | Same level or below me | R2 | ||||||||||
2231 | 1/12/2018 13:25:53 | I was an undergraduate at a NYC campus of a Bronx private university. It was the end of the period of registration for classes. I sat in on a class that seemed perfect for me. I approached the teacher after class to sign my "add class" card. He offered to sign it for me in his office. As soon as we entered the elevator and the door closed, he pounced on me and in a few seconds had me on the floor. I was taken aback but quickly concluded that his intentions were based on love (this was the mid 60s and he was affiliated with the Church). He repeated his actions in his office and then pursued a sexual relationship with me which ended several months later because he said he was conflicted about his religious commitment. I was devastated. Many years later, after he left the Church and married he discovered where I was working and began visiting me there on occasions. Each time, he would embrace me with an inappropriate French kiss which I did not welcome. Finally I told him that I did not forget what had happened to me when I was an impressionable student, that it was not proper, was an abuse of his authority as a teacher and his religious affiliation. He responded that he also remembered the incident with regret, that he suffered about it, and wanted to apologize. I did not accept the offer and never heard from him again. I graduated some years later after the incident but never expected to have the chance to denounce it in some way and now believe if it happened to me, it's likely to have happened to others and may still be happening as he now holds a position with greater authority (not in academia). Therefore I am adding this incident to your document. | Student | My teacher | Other Type of School | social science | didn't report | none | none | negligible | none | A lot of "intramural" sex took place as I perceived it between the professors and female students. It was a loosey-goosey environment with off campus partying. If the school had any idea what was going on, they didn't share it or publicize a no-touching policy. The particular program I was enrolled in has since been terminated. | |||
2232 | 1/12/2018 13:47:00 | A professor responsible for a group of us on a study abroad in the Czech Republic engaged in an "open secret" affair with a undergrad. There was a pretty out of control incident in a hotel room where nude photos were taken involving female students and the professor. There was a lot of heavy drinking involved in the situation. Some students were severely uncomfortable with what happened, and it was public knowledge about the nudity, the photos, the sex. The people upset/uncomfortable were considered party poopers spoiling the fun. There was pressure to just go along with things. It was well known the professor was doing something very inappropriate, and met with eyerolls from other professors. | undergrad student | professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Texas at Austin | Slavic Studies | None | None | It was confusing/upsetting. While this behavior was never directed at me, it left me with a mess of feelings I didn't understand or know how to handle. I felt very isolated and unable to talk about this. | It normalized some shitty behavior for me, and I did a lot of dumb stuff in my personal relationships, accepted some terrible behavior because I thought it was all like this. It took a long time to realize this was not okay, not just some fun crazy lark. I still feel shame around memories of what should have been an amazing experience in my life. | Man | |||
2233 | 1/12/2018 14:15:13 | A professor and I were alone in the office. He came up behind me, put his hands on my waist, and remarked on my figure. | academic staff | full professor. | Other R1 | did not pursue | none | none | contributed to my sense of insignificance in the department and in academia in general. | contributed to my desire to leave that institution, which I did. | Man | ||||
2234 | 1/12/2018 15:15:51 | Groped while visiting area college by faculty member hosting me. Also flirted with by male colleagues at home institution. In one case retaliated against due to failure to play along. | Contingent faculty | All tenured or tenure track, all older men | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Religion | None | None | Retaliated against | Stressful and discouraging | Left academia for an extended period of time | Man | |||
2235 | 1/12/2018 15:39:32 | Winter, 2000. Was pledging a fraternity as a freshman (undergrad). Pledgemates (NOT actual fraternity brothers) called in the wee hours of the night to inform me of a false "emergency meeting" supposedly called by the fraternity. Turned out to be a drinking session in my pledgemates' dorm, followed by a prank of building a giant "snow penis" on the quad, for some stupid reason all done with our pants removed in the cold weather and extremely drunk. After building the snow penis, the largest member of the group threw me to the ground and removed my boxers, leaving my bare genitals and buttocks exposed to snow, and me covering my freezing genitals to prevent frostbite. | Freshman student, male, fraternity pledge | Fraternity pledge mates | Other R1 | Reported the incident to the fraternity brother in charge of pledge activity. Response: "I'm pissed off as far as them impersonating brothers and calling a fake meeting, but as for the other thing, it sounds like you're being bullied, and we're NOT going to help you with that." | None. | One man who was a brother (not a pledge mate) at the time still lives in my area and works in my field. I am unemployed and recently called off a job interview because he was going to be the interviewer and I don't know what hard feelings may or may not exist from me quitting my pledge all those years ago. He as well as a few other brothers harassed me over the phone and IMs after I quit pledging following this incident. | Truthfully, it is one of only many, many incidents in my life that have led to my having PTSD, but is worth mentioning in that light, especially as a reminder that sexual assault does happen to men as well, though not nearly as often as women. | I quit pledging the fraternity after the incident, leading to some harassment, also see my response to the career question. | Man | ||||
2236 | 1/12/2018 15:50:52 | I was an undergraduate and was in charge of showing some important visitors around the campus before an event. I asked my male advisor (full professor) what type of dress would be most appropriate. He responded: "If I had it my way, you'd wear nothing at all." I was 19, and hoped to continue on in the field and pursue a PhD (which I did, I am now a tenured professor in the field). I feared the repercussions of reporting him. Who would write me a letter of recommendation for graduate school? Would I be destroying any prospects I had in this field? He was well-connected and the field (even internationally) is small. This was also 2002, in a private institution in the Midwest, and there was not widespread support for victims of sexual harassment. | I was an undergraduate student. | Faculty advisor | Small Liberal Arts College | Concordia College | Man | ||||||||
2237 | 1/12/2018 16:05:03 | My department head left for another job and Professor X. took his place. Prof. X. had been hired a few years before; his letters and CV were impressive, and he had decades of prior experience. The school was constantly pushing diversity rhetoric and was thrilled to have a faculty member who was from a diverse ethnic background. He was asked to serve on or chair many committees. Students loved him. He was personable and warm and became popular at this small liberal arts college. A married female professor from another department began to sneak into his office in the late afternoons and spent considerable time there with the door closed. We were told they were having "Bible study." Later, other mature women whom I did not recognize began to appear for late afternoon closed door visits. Prof. X also showed an inappropriate level of interest in a student intern in the office. She said nothing untoward was happening but after a few months she became obviously burdened and unhappy and eventually dropped out of school. Our married department secretary was also blatantly wooed by him but she shut him down after a few weeks. (Prof. X was also married, but his wife lived in another city.) The first Bible study woman became Provost. It was time for my tenure review. I had passed a fourth-year review under the previous department head with no indication of problems, but Prof. X. became very hostile towards me as soon as he was made department head. He sabotaged me in various ways and gave me lukewarm performance reviews. It was so bad that I asked the Provost if I could leave the tenure track and go on contract instead. She said no. While the tenure process was initially going well, one day he invited my committee to a meeting. A big supporter who was on my committee said she left that meeting feeling somehow convinced that I was undeserving. Although she shook that off and continued to be of great support, I suspect that I lost the support of the others; eventually I was denied tenure. There were other factors and I don't claim to be perfect, but I believe that under the previous department head I would have been tenured. This was in December. As the academic year progressed Prof. X's behavior became more and more bizarre. He began to miss classes and disappear for days at a time. The following summer I was told confidentially (there was of course a non-disclosure agreement) that he had been forced to resign. It turned out that he had been defrocked by his church for inappropriate "counseling" sessions and the administration became aware that the same sort of behavior had occurred on campus. It was later discovered that he had left his previous job, along with his leadership position in a different religious denomination, under similar circumstances. | Assistant Professor | Department Head, Tenured | Small Liberal Arts College | Religion | He was eventually forced to resign from this school but went on to another school in another state, another religious denomination, and another and another after that. He is currently an associate dean at a community college, still receiving rave reviews from students and colleagues. | I ended up leaving academics after that. | I was angry, felt that I had been treated unfairly, but also questioned myself and lost a sense of self-worth for a long time. Throughout grad school and in previous jobs I had a reputation for being gritty and overcoming obstacles, for being daring and willing to challenge the status quo, but after this I felt defeated and unable to push forward anymore. There were various other things that happened at the school that contributed to this. It was a sick and dysfunctional environment and others were harmed by things that occurred there, before, during, and after my time there. I've long thought that the reason for his actions was that I was a threat to him in that I had observed and suspected a bit of what he was up to and might expose it. Thinking back after writing this, it occurs to me that this man, for all his trysting, must have disrespected and despised women. (The one woman from whom I later heard said that the "affair" consisted of a regularly scheduled, weekly glass of wine and a blow job.) He must have hated that I was a strong woman who could not be manipulated by him, and was immune to the charisma and charm that had worked so well on most everyone else, so he became determined to destroy me. Sadly, he more or less did. I will have to reflect on this and see if I can use this insight positively. | The timing coincided with the beginning of the recession and jobs were scare. After some near-misses for other positions in a couple of different lines of work, I basically gave up. I am retired now, do freelance work, volunteer, and am very frugal. | Male | ||||
2238 | 1/12/2018 16:10:06 | A c-level officer of the college would regularly follow me into the restroom and berate me while I was at the urinal with my back to him. He stated that he could say whatever he wanted and that anything he said was true because he was the boss. He stated that my job was to be loyal to him and not to creating honest reports. I started only going to the bathroom when he was not around and going to different floors to avoid him. This same individual regularly made demeaning comments about his female superiors and board members, stating that no woman could tell him what to do. This same individual made inappropriate comments about an investigation into the alleged rape of a student by a public safety officer of the college. When I reported my bathroom experiences through the school grievance process to HR and to the offender's boss, I was charged with insubordination. The school claimed that because I only verbally told them the information, I was not protected by the grievance policy. I asked the school President for help in a confidential email and he had his secretary reply to me (breach of confidence) that he was not in the proper channel and would not see me. Subsequently, my employment was terminated by the school using circuitous means, and the offending individual called others in the industry to dissuade them from hiring me. The school attempted to have me sign a NDA giving up my right to sue the school or the individual. In exchange, they offered one quarter of my salary. | employee of the college | boss | Small Liberal Arts College | College of the Holy Cross | Administration | Charged me with insubordination | none | my reputation in the industry was damaged, lost employment | made me question my faith, particularly the actions of the President who was a religious leader. I have continuing difficulty trusting people. | Man | |||
2239 | 1/12/2018 16:27:00 | I was asked out on a date by a student. | PhD student, Teaching Assistant | Undergraduate student in my TA section | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Anthropology | Never Reported | Never Reported | Nothing severe but the experience made me question my authority in the classroom and rethink how I self-present and engage with students as a woman in her mid-twenties. | None as of yet | Man | ||||
2240 | 1/12/2018 16:42:38 | At the International Conference on Thinking, Brown University, Providence Rhode Island 4-6 August 2016, I invited two male Academics to post-conference dinner drinks 5th August 2016. They were peers of my supervisor who had discussed my poster presentation with me, so I felt inclined to host them for the night. We all had a great time talking, laughing and even discussing our partners and wedding rings. I got up at one stage and started dancing to a song. One of them got up and started dancing too. He said, "in Brazil we like to dance close"... I did not want to dance 'closely' with him, but I didn't want to sour the mood, be seen as up tight, or threaten potential future research opportunities, so I agreed under duress. The moment he got close to me, he started aggressively groping my whole body with both hands and his own body, holding me in a vice-like grip. Meanwhile, his co-researcher leapt up from behind and said, 'hey, where's mine?' and stuck his tongue into my ear and licked vigorously down my neck. Trapped between the two men I was terrified and backed away, back to the table we had been sitting at (a booth). Everyone sat back down at the table. I was at a loss at what to do next. The way the men were looking at me, as the leader of the social event; waiting for me... I felt that they were hoping I'd say something like "hey guys, what a great start, why don't we all go back to my dorm room and really get going"... While trying to find some words, I felt the hand of the first Academic sliding over my thighs, towards my vulva. Meanwhile I felt the foot of the second Academic sliding up my own foot and calf towards my vulva. I felt attacked by two snakes. I leapt up, said that I was leaving and rushed out the door. I had no phone as I was in a foreign country. The senior Academic followed me down the street and tried to dismiss the situation as 'miscommunication'. I can assure you that I had not invited this attention and have never experienced anything like it either professionally or as a single woman socially. As a final insult the Academic wanted to 'hug it out', which I did, because I was scared of angering him, alone at midnight on a dark college street. Finally I got to my dorm room. I couldn't face the conference the next day. I didn't want to talk about what had happened to the conference organiser or to risk seeing either of these men again. As a direct consequence of this event I became fearful of men generally and revulsed by Academia more generally. I managed to attend some of my next conference in Cognitive Science in Philadelphia, but found myself anxious, stressed and depressed. The incident has had impacts on my mental and physical health, my intimate relationship with my partner and my career pathway--I changed my Academic research priority away from the subject area these men worked in, as I never wanted to see them again. | Associate Lecturer (aka Assistant Professor) on a 1yr Contract | Associate Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Brown University (conference) | Information Science | My institution supported me writing a statement and following it up with the attackers, but I was too traumatised at the time to write it up. | N/A | I changed disciplines and research direction. I changed supervisors. I left the School. Note, these actions were also caused by poor leadership in my School and by my supervisor to manage employment uncertainty (thus unrelated to sexual harassment). | After the harassment (and during employment uncertainty) I suffered anxiety, depression, stress, dissociation (living 'in my head', rather than my body), I developed stress-related skin conditions that required multiple courses of antibiotics, oral and topical steroids, large does of antihistamines, and finally oral anti-fungals and took nine months to heal leaving my immune system vulnerable and susceptible to minor bacterial and viral infections. I gained a lot of weight and did not practice self-care (e.g. meditation, exercise, eating healthily). I felt fearful at work and out in public and interacting with men. My intimate relationship with my partner suffered for at least 1yr. | Desire to work with female leadership as a priority and away from male dominated fields. Desperation to fund my own research and not be dependent on senior men. Tempted to leave Academia. | I will email you the name of the perpetrators and hope that any other submissions relating to these men can be bundled together. | Man | |
2241 | 1/12/2018 16:46:45 | Some examples: 1. A lecturer who I had never spoken to drunkenly groped me at a department happy hour. It was well known that he sexually harassed students in the masters program he coordinated. After a number of years his contract was not renewed. It turned out he was also harassing faculty members in the department. 2. My advisor talked negatively about a female postdoc in my department and how she dressed too fashionably. It made me always second guess what I wore and if I would be taken seriously. 3. A male collaborator at a national lab made it a point to mentor my male colleagues and talk science with them, whereas with me he never discussed anything scientific and would strike up awkward conversations about things like what to do if a woman starts crying in your office, or wondering if women wore socks or not. 4. At a conference dinner, a respected senior professor told sexist jokes to myself and female grad students. 5. A member of my research group who was more senior to me said that if we ever made a research group nude calendar, I’d need extra big items to cover up my boobs. He framed it in the context of ‘I know you’re cool so I can say this to you’ but in reality it made me feel really uncomfortable. 6. Being ignored in group meetings- I would say something and no one would acknowledge it, then a man would say it and they would. I have lots of friends with far worse stories than this- for me it was lots of small things that made me feel like I wasn’t respected or didn’t belong. | PhD and postdoc | More senior- lecturer, PhD advisor, senior research fellow, etc. | Other R1 | Geology | Didn’t report it; for the first incident listed I wish I had. Eventually that person was let go but my understanding is that it took a very long time and that new female faculty members were instrumental in making it happen. | First one lost his job, none for others. | I started to feel like I didn’t belong and worried that people didn’t take me seriously. As my research group began to feel more like a boys club I eventually left and also lost quite a bit of respect for colleagues I had previously admired. At a new institution I had a much more positive experience but eventually left academia. This decision was not because of sexual harassment, but knowing how much people got away with certainly didn’t give me extra reasons to want to stay. | Imposter syndrome for sure. | My main reason for leaving academia was not sexual harassment (although it did contribute to imposter syndrome which made me feel like I didn’t belong there). I think it’s main effect on my current choices is my resolve to be more vocal on calling it out and standing up for myself if it happens again. | Man | |||
2242 | 1/12/2018 17:08:51 | On multiple occasions when meeting with one of my supervisors he would at some stage be staring at my chest for an extended period. I thought maybe I was imagining it or over-interpreting it, until another female student said he regularly did the same to her. She called him out on it at least once. | PhD Student | Secondary supervisor (younger than me) | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UK Russell Group university | Medical Sciences | Did not report | n/a | None | Annoyance. Wore ever-higher necklines if I knew I was meeting him but it made zero difference. | None | This is a tiny incident compared to what some people go through but it irritates me that I never challenged him on it. | Man | |
2243 | 1/12/2018 17:19:41 | My advisor admitted, drunkenly, that I reminded him of his ex-wife in "multiple ways." This meant he would often be harder on me than any of his other students, and took his anger out on me in ways that were in no way appropriate. I eventually left the field because of his systematic harassment and discrimination. | Graduate student | Full professor | Other R1 | History | The department chair and the university reps told me I could report it, but that he would not be punished and that he would ruin my career. | None | I left the field entirely. | Substantial. It made me question all of my self-worth and abilities. | Immeasurable. | Man | |||
2244 | 1/12/2018 17:23:49 | Pervasive, long-term predatory behavior, assault, harassment, and retaliation amongst a number of the senior male faculty in a department named multiple times on this spreadsheet. Male faculty assaulting, intoxicating, and impregnating (I am not exaggerating, this has happened twice in five years) female graduate students, and, sadly, undergraduates. Ending contracts of female contingent faculty (who are too senior to be contingent in the first place) for refusing the advances of senior leadership. Multiple faculty targeting vulnerable women. As far as I know, not a single woman graduate student has made it through her first two years in the program without being victimized. Because so many department leaders, including the chair, have been serially harassing so many female graduate students, contingent faculty, and junior faculty for so long, to expose them would be to expose the university at large. As such, university leadership is colluding with a weak Title IX office and complicit HR officials to retaliate against anyone who speaks up, and to allow punished faculty back on the job after "rehabilitation" when they are a clear threat. Senior faculty members who are in a position to do something about the problem fear this retaliation and are rewarded with inflated salaries and random small grants and sweetened work assignments for minimizing the problem by not reporting or discouraging victims from reporting. Some are in denial; others cynically play along. At least two male graduate students sleeping with their undergraduate students on the day they turn grades in: because senior faculty has told them in no uncertain terms (and these male grad students have seen faculty do this with their own students): "You can sleep with them as soon as grades are turned in." I was a partner hire who was essentially fired for breaking up with my partner, who was abusing his departmental power over me to control the relationship (which was unacceptable), and I did due ethical diligence for a graduate student who told me she had been raped by my colleague with devastating results. I was told by the chair that my job was being terminated because I was only at the university to retain my former partner, and was otherwise useless. My academic career--a book and a near-forthcoming contract for a second, a dozen peer-reviewed articles, a series of major funding awards, major teaching awards, keynotes, and advocacy for minoritized students--is over. Hearing this word around town (he was friends with one of the faculty harassers), one of the harassing male graduate students grabbed me by my waist in a public place at night, pulled me to his body and put his mouth to my ear. It turns out he had physically assaulted nearly all of the women in his cohort but was allowed to remain in graduate School there. I ran screaming from academia and have been diagnosed with PTSD. I am fighting form the outside. But of course this was only one setting for the harassment I've experienced: suggestive touches, grooming, even propositions. That being said, I never dreamed it could be as bad as this department was. | Contingent Faculty | Senior Full/Associate faculty in my field | Other R1 | Social Sciences | The Title IX investigator's hands were tied. The institution is so afraid off this problem getting out, they've browbeaten any agents if justice into minimizing and extinguishing the problem. | I think if the incidents had been light or less pervasive, the institution would have been more likely to take small steps to batten it back a bit. But because it amounts to serial harassment and assault, and frankly enough scandal to nearly end the program altogether, they have entrenched in denial. Zero consequences for anyone as far as I know. | Call me when the news finally breaks and I'll be ready to talk. For now, I fear the legal consequences. Dozens of women's careers have been destroyed by this. No one knows the true reason I left academia, but it was very public, so people know something severe happened. But I can; tell them for fear of being sued or not being believed. The litigation (not mine, I am overwhelmed with just getting out, for now) regarding some of these cases is pending. | PTSD. | I left academia in the midst of an illustrious career with a host of forthcoming work and teaching accolades. I didn't have a backup job when I lost this one, for all my efforts. I probably would have if I would have stuck around and "behaved" until I scored one, but I did not feel that I could do that ethically--or stand it. | Man | |||
2245 | 1/12/2018 18:31:34 | My major professor made a "pass" by asking to kiss me within a couple of weeks of arriving at the program. I was told by other grad students that sexual predation was very common by the male faculty and that often students were willing. I was not willing, and the professor did not push the matter, nor punish me for refusing his advance. However, he made the same advance on his next grad student and they entered a relationship that led to inequitable treatment of his other advisees (who were obliviousness as to the relationship). He then proceeded to sleep with a series of subsequent students. This experience and the overall hostility toward women that I experienced at this university in the early 1990s were not unique. One female faculty member told me that the chemistry department had barred one of their pregnant colleagues from faculty meetings when her pregnancy began to show. There were other stories that circulated about how female faculty members were treated inequitably in the promotion and tenure process, particularly if their research addressed gender. I don't know the truth of these narratives, but they contributed to a culture of gender marginalization. The universities I've been at since have frowned on faculty sleeping with students - which is a significant improvement. At my current university, faculty have been fired for inappropriate sexual conduct. However, I've seen female faculty sexually harassed by male faculty; never with consequences. I've seen strong female leaders marginalized. I've experienced having my work attributed to others and having my work erased while men doing the same task are recognized and rewarded. I've seen powerful men at conferences behave as drunken boors toward female colleagues and graduate students. I've really had enough. I don't want to "punish," but hope that by acknowledging the harm we can all make academe a more civil and respectful space. | PhD student | Major professor | Other R1 | None | None | Contributed to academic alienation | The one case I described above is part of a general marginalization I've experienced as a woman in academe, despite significant research success | I'm in my early 50s and have been successful in academe, but I've lost considerable respect for our profession because so much of what we do - especially in our scholarship and in our scholarly communities - is tainted by ego and hierarchy, and that hierarchy is most certainly infused with power relations that have nothing to do with merit. | Man | ||||
2246 | 1/12/2018 19:23:14 | In a literature class, an older male professor asked women during class whether they’d ever been sexually harassed in academia. Most of us were uncomfortable and unsure how to answer. He kept asking the question, insisting that he did not think sexual harassment occured at our university. Some of us finally answered that we had witnessed, heard about, or experienced sexual harassment on campus (professors making comments about women’s bodies and appearances, unwanted touching, etc.), but kept it general because of the classroom setting we were in. One of my colleagues in class had experienced harassment, making this conversation very awkward and personal. All of the men were staring at the women with disbelief, waiting for us to share personal details of trauma. After we shared vague and anonymous accounta, the professor looked incredulous and proceeded to question whether our experiences had really occurred. I think he was genuinely in disbelief, but somehow didn’t realize that he was contributing to the problem. This professor also routinely made comments in class about undergraduate students’ bodies and clothing. Another “celebrity” literature professor told students in class that women tend to be smart or pretty, and rarely both. He treated women who dressed in more feminine clothing much differently in class than other women. He would rush to assist them with simple tasks and comment on how nice they looked. | Graduate Student | Professor | Other R1 | Literature | I was unsure whether to put these professors on my committee, though they both specialized in my areas on interest. | Man | |||||||
2247 | 1/12/2018 19:41:04 | 1. Undergrad: I took many grad seminars, and one male grad student briefly stalked me during and after class, and made me feel very uncomfortable. Another male grad student picked up on what was happening and did the best he could to block the stalker when possible. I discussed this with my then boyfriend (now spouse), and remained vigilant. The incident was brief, and ended once the semester was over. 2. Grad: Upon entering grad school, I was surprised by how sexism is rampant. There was an odd expectation that because we were peers at a prestigious institution, I would welcome the attention of these men. They asked no questions about whether or not I was in a relationship (I was, and am now happily married). They just projected their desires onto me, making sure that nothing was sexually overt enough for me to report or complain about. The sad and pathetic thing is that if these men treated me like a human being, these incidents would have just been a matter of one individual expressing interest in another individual. Of course, they would have been rejected. a) I met a prospective cohort member at a visiting weekend for potential candidates. He seemed oddly interested in the fact that I was younger than him. Later, when he found out that we were both going to the same program (different school from the visit), he sent me an unsolicited email about how he can show me around town, because he had lived there before as a visiting student. He tried to find every reason to talk to me, and even went as far as to pretend that I "dropped" my books in the library, by taking them out of my tote bag when I wasn't looking. I kept on ignoring him when he would try to catch my attention. b) I had one classmate pretend to be a gentleman by letting me go ahead through a doorway to the stairs. The staircase is wide enough for two people to climb at once, and was empty, but he stayed behind me the whole time, staring at my calves. I was wearing a long-sleeve sweater, knee-length skirt and low-heeled pumps. We went three flights of stairs like this. Later, he sent me an unsolicited and very poorly written email about a random event at the local library screening a documentary. I didn't respond. Later, he tried to make me talk to him by charging his books to my carrel - it was by pure coincidence that I intercepted the delivery before it was made. c) An advanced grad student whom I had never met before, called me by my name in our department lobby and introduced himself to me. It was only after that I realized that I had never once said my name - so how did he know who I was and how I looked? Afterwards he tried to keep saying hello to me, and I would ignore him. d) When I did my fieldwork abroad, I had lunch with my faculty sponsor and was introduced to an advisee. I found it odd that student would only talk to me when the professor left to pay for the lunch or use the restroom, but thought that perhaps he was being very polite (not uncommon given the local culture). After lunch he asked me where I lived. An email he sent to me indicated that he had no idea what my research topic was, and he offered me his years-long research on what he assumed was data that I wanted and needed. I politely informed him of my research in my reply, and he did not email me back. We've to interact at conferences, but since he found out about my engagement and eventual marriage, he has stopped talking to me unless it is out of pure necessity. There have been many other instances of male grad students staring at me, trying to touch me or touching me without consent, and generally treating me like fresh meat, rather than a colleague. These male grad students are worse than undergraduate men. 3. I'm glad that I've only had two instances where a professor or someone senior in my field has harassed me. a. A visiting professor kept suggesting that I modify my research trajectory, making references to his past relationship to someone who was in my field. When I was getting food at a reception he said: "Well you don't have to worry about what you eat.... (looking at me up and down)....because you're fit." b. The worst thing that has happened to me, which pales in comparison to the horrors that others have experienced, was perpetrated by a retired curator from a foreign country. As I was carrying a tray full of tea through a short corridor, he put his arm around my waist and his hand on my hip. It was brief - 20 seconds at most. I was an intern in the presence of many important people, and could not do anything bar dropping the tray and making a scene. The incident disturbed and upset me. | Undergrad, Student in PhD program | 1. Grad students (so definitely in a position of power vis a vis undergrads as older men) 2. Fellow PhD students at my institution, a student at a foreign institution 3. A tenured professor from another institution, a retired curator from another country | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Two ivies, one elite foreign institution | History of Art | Most of the incidents that happened were not sexually suggestive enough for me to report. The one instance of sexual harassment was difficult to report. | None. I discussed some of the incidents involving male grad students with some women in my field, and we have a blacklist of sorts. | None. Thankfully the grad students who bothered me are not in my immediate field. One student is in another country with a completely different system, and though we will technically remain "colleagues," there is no need for me to collaborate with him in the foreseeable future, as I have other options. The visiting professor and retired curator are not relevant to my research. | Most of what happened to me was difficult to report, but I knew all too well what was going on. These experiences made me change my lifestyle. I stopped wearing skirts and dresses, except for when my spouse would visit me on weekends from his institution. I stopped studying on campus and stayed holed up in my tiny studio apartment, even though the department gave each of us amazing carrels in a beautiful library. I avoided staying too long at department functions, and declined invitations to parties organized by my cohort members. I cut off my long hair before embarking on year long fieldwork, because I knew that this would minimize unwanted attention from men while I was alone in a country that is "civilized" and "polite" but quite sexist. I think very carefully about how to dress for certain events, in anticipation of unwanted attention. I know that being an East Asian woman has a lot to do with how these perpetrators treated me, and how people continue to perceive me. | I am still happily pursing my degree, only because I believe in my project, and have a wonderful advisor, mentors, and colleagues who support me. I am so thankful to have met great scholars outside my field - men and women - in whom I have faith. My academic community and my spouse, who is a partner and colleague since my undergrad days, are the main reason why I care about academia. | Thank you for this survey. I read through some of the examples, and learned about incidents that have taken place at my alma mater, as well as at other peer institutions in my field. | Man | |
2248 | 1/12/2018 20:02:12 | My MSc advisor verbally abused and sexually harassed me, sometimes in front of undergraduates in the lab. My lack of smiling displeased him so he would take me outside and walk me around the campus, berating me (probably so no one in the dept could hear him), telling me I was a nothing and a nobody and by letting me in his lab he was doing me a huge service and I should treat him better since it was a privilege for me to be there. After the move to the new place where I didn't know anyone and was being berated, I went to a psychiatrist and was prescribed some medication. It made me sleep all the time and my progress slowed. I finally decided I should talk to my advisor because of this to let him know what was going on. I didn't tell him he was part of the problem. However, he was not sympathetic, made fun of me, and I left his office in tears. I was blamed for anything that ever went wrong in the lab, even if it wasn't my fault. Sometimes this would lead to me having to dig through the hazmat to find samples that I'd thrown away because they didn't work so he could double check they didn't work (they didn't). He once told me that when he saw my face he heard a "giant sucking sound, a void." I didn't know much as a first year grad student, but when I would ask questions I as berated with things like, "How could you possibly not know that?" He threw rocks at me in the field, made me keep working/hiking when I was pretty badly injured one day, would yell at me if I made his food wrong (once he made me watch him make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich so he could show me how it was done). He made fun of/commented on how I dressed/looked, often. He hit the back of my seat in the car because I changed the radio station. Then the worst, the things that would make me cringe and freeze. Telling me which grad students in the dept he thought were cute. Once when he opened the freezer some things of mine fell out and rolled under it. He shut the door and walked away. I asked him if he was going to pick them up and he said, "No, I want to watch you bend over." Once, in the car with a male undergraduate, he told him to "Look at [my name's] tits. Look how dirty they are!" because we had been working outside and on the ground. | Master's student | advisor, associate professor | Other Type of School | Biology | I told one faculty member and he was obviously very uncomfortable talking about it. Another said I could report it and it would go in his file, and they may or may not consider it when deciding to give tenure. I was afraid there would be consequences while I was there so I said nothing. | none | I wanted to quit academia (and did for a while). People love him and seem to think it's unbelievable, so I don't usually tell anyone. I feel pretty isolated in that regard. I have low self-esteem and think I'm dumb because of the ridicule I endured. | At the time it was the worst thing in the world and I still look at it as the worst two years of my adult life. I felt so alone. | I think it was a major stumbling block for me and I would have been more successful for numerous reasons if I'd had a better advisor. The issues it created are legion. Even though I have a job now, I think if I had to go back and do it again, I wouldn't. I'd just walk away. Not worth it. | Man | |||
2249 | 1/12/2018 22:50:57 | A male faculty fired me from a school production on the third day of a five month process, despite the fact the videos taken showed that everyone was making mistakes, and I was keeping up with them. During the class he ignored me and was dismissive even when I stood directly in front of him. He called me over to his car in the parking lot and fired me in the parking lot despite the fact that he was not the professor in charge of our class. During the class he begged for volunteers to help him teach the high school students their part of the production. And after he fired me for not being good enough, he then told me he wanted me to help him teach the high school students which meant being alone with him after hours. He originally wanted 60 dancers, but very few people showed up to the audition so he committed himself to accepting student dancers at all levels, and then he backed out of the obligation as quickly as possible. Despite taking dancers from 6 schools, he began with less than half the dancers he wanted. I was told by the dancer he favored that people were dropping from the production like flies in the first week. In the end, he less than 1/3 of the dancers he wanted due to mutual disrespect and open harassment. There was no reason for this man to seek me out alone in a parking lot and ask me to teach the other students what he decided I could not do for myself. If his motives were pure then he shouldn't have been in a rush to fire me. I do believe he wanted me to feel jealous and to sleep with him for the part. | Student | He was a visting Alumni in charge of a production he choreographed | Regional Teaching College | CCCBC ESSEX | DANCE | They never apologised because he was an alumni, and because the female professor also believed I was too old to study dance in the first place, so she didn't care. Had she cared then she could have told me herself, or made sure that this discussion took place in the classroom. He claimed he had already told her he was firing me, but she ran home and left me despite the fact that I was her student. After several semesters there, I was ready to quit anyway because it was a hostile learning environment. One of the professors especially is violent, yells and makes fun of students for using their brains, and openly tells students that they shouldn't bother taking classes because she feels they have no future in dance. | NONE | I dropped from the production and dance team, because it was the only way to protect myself from him. I study dance somewhere else now. | The school was a hostile environment and I felt betrayed by the dance director and artistic director for not protecting the students from sexual harassment. All of the rehearsals were recorded and placed on the internet. One of the teenagers was filmed caressing her breasts because he wanted us to pretend to be bathing ourselves. Every member of the dance company has a copy of that and there is no way for this teen to prevent that from being circulated around the internet. | I know have proof that sexual harassment is common in the dance world. It's not just a tv stereotype. | Man | ||
2250 | 1/13/2018 4:37:15 | The experience I disclose occurred over a 5 year period. It began my junior year in college when I took a course in the fall and another in the spring semester with a professor. I was a philosophy major but deeply drawn to his line of thinking and decided to take a third course in the spring of my senior year. When I mentioned that to him he suggested instead an independent study in rhetoric and I was to meet with him weekly. We did so, not in his well lit office shared with a colleague but in different locations in a dimly lit theater. Over that year I was essentially seduced. The year between my graduation (magna cum laude in history and philosophy), he suggested we could meet to talk which we did frequently. I think I was looking for mentoring, however one thing led to another and the relationship became not only professor-student, but also sexual. The next year I was a philosophy graduate student at a local university and the relationship continued with him pressing me to follow him to another university as a graduate student and his side paramour. He was 14 years my senior and I had a boy friend and was distraught over the pressure and conflict about life goals. Eventually I chose to marry my boy friend and entered graduate school in a different city. I did, in light of this relationship, change my graduate training discipline from philosophy to rhetoric and earned a Ph.d. in that field and published and became full professor in that field. Coming apart from that relationship and salvaging my marriage was the worst time in my life. Thankfully I succeeded on both accounts. As I look back, it seems to me that I was looking for mentoring in a profession, but the professor expected a quid pro relationship in exchange. This occurred from 1967-1972 : ) | Undergraduate and then graduate student | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Philosophy undergraduate and graduate student | Not reported | None, though I would note that a former graduate student and colleague forwarded to me an on-line link to a legal case in which another young college woman after years of troubled relation with this professor charged him with sexual harassment. Due to time limits in the law he and the institution avoided all consequences. | I did become a professor in the discipline he introduced me to. | During the relationship I was deeply conflicted, my marriage almost ended, at one point I contemplated suicide. | As I note above, I became a professor in the discipline he introduced me to. We talked many hours about ideas and books and that is the mentoring I believe I was seeking. | Thank you for the opportunity to anonymously record a problematic experience. | Man | ||
2251 | 1/13/2018 4:38:13 | The experience I disclose occurred over a 5 year period. It began my junior year in college when I took a course in the fall and another in the spring semester with a professor. I was a philosophy major but deeply drawn to his line of thinking and decided to take a third course in the spring of my senior year. When I mentioned that to him he suggested instead an independent study in rhetoric and I was to meet with him weekly. We did so, not in his well lit office shared with a colleague but in different locations in a dimly lit theater. Over that year I was essentially seduced. The year between my graduation (magna cum laude in history and philosophy), he suggested we could meet to talk which we did frequently. I think I was looking for mentoring, however one thing led to another and the relationship became not only professor-student, but also sexual. The next year I was a philosophy graduate student at a local university and the relationship continued with him pressing me to follow him to another university as a graduate student and his side paramour. He was 14 years my senior and I had a boy friend and was distraught over the pressure and conflict about life goals. Eventually I chose to marry my boy friend and entered graduate school in a different city. I did, in light of this relationship, change my graduate training discipline from philosophy to rhetoric and earned a Ph.d. in that field and published and became full professor in that field. Coming apart from that relationship and salvaging my marriage was the worst time in my life. Thankfully I succeeded on both accounts. As I look back, it seems to me that I was looking for mentoring in a profession, but the professor expected a quid pro relationship in exchange. This occurred from 1967-1972 : ) | Undergraduate and then graduate student | Professor | Not reported | None, though I would note that a former graduate student and colleague forwarded to me an on-line link to a legal case in which another young college woman after years of troubled relation with this professor charged him with sexual harassment. Due to time limits in the law he and the institution avoided all consequences. | I did become a professor in the discipline he introduced me to. | During the relationship I was deeply conflicted, my marriage almost ended, at one point I contemplated suicide. | As I note above, I became a professor in the discipline he introduced me to. We talked many hours about ideas and books and that is the mentoring I believe I was seeking. | Thank you for the opportunity to anonymously record a problematic experience. | |||||
2252 | 1/13/2018 5:55:07 | Two days after returning to college after my mother's funeral I had a delayed meeting with a professor to discuss my essay and he used my vulnerability at that time to 'comfort' me with unwanted sex. | undergraduate student | My professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Cambridge University, UK | English Literature | I did not report it | Very damaging to intellectual confidence. He said my esay was excellent, but after the sex, I realised I could not trust that evaluation. | Damaging but I carried on. | Damaging. | Damaging but I found denial helped and I was determined to continue with my academic career. I did. | Man | ||
2253 | 1/13/2018 6:15:03 | I shared an office with folks in this other geophysics group. The prof in charge of that group put the only women in his group in my office so that my office would be a women's only office and all the men of his group would be in their own office. The prof would routinely comment on the perfume worn by the sole female student. In one group meeting, he singled her out in front of the rest of the group and told all the other men to go up and sniff her perfume. She wound up walking out of that group meeting and returning to our office really upset. Meanwhile, one of the male students (in the men's only office) wanted to paint their office walls purple. None of the other students really cared, so he had it painted purple. The prof then proceeded to make a lot comments to him, and to the rest of the people both in that office and in my office, about how purple is not a masculine color, how it is very feminine, etc, that a man shouldn't like purple. It was an open secret in the department that women shouldn't work with this professor or have him as their advisor. An undergraduate student told me he was a nice man, and the example she used to prove this was that when they were doing field work, he brought his prostitute and her son to the group dinner. | PhD student | Tenured professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Geophysics | None that I know of | None that I know of | Man | |||||
2254 | 1/13/2018 6:27:21 | We were in a remote location doing field work. I was the only female student. There was a woman prof and a woman postdoc, but english was their second languages so we didn't really speak much. Anyway, most of the group were male French scientists. When I arrived, the lead said to me, "You are ---? I thought you would be a boy." That same PI proceeded to make a lot of comments to be about how hard field work is for a woman, how hard it is for women to use the bathroom outside, etc. At our field site, before dinner but after our day of work, I went for a run. When I got back the others were eating so I joined them. The PI then said to me, "You shouldn't be in running shorts around professors." (One of the professors was also wearing shorts-- that prof actually came up and apologized to me because he was embarrassed about the PI's behavior). He made me change into pants. A few days later, I was with the woman postdoc and one of the other French scientists. We found an amazing sample and the French man said, "Wow! This sample should be help by a woman in a calendar of naked women!" I was shocked/offended that that was what he chose to say to describe the excitement of the find. These are just some examples of what that trip was like. | PhD student | Professors | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Planetary science | I became withdrawn and stuck to my tent as much as possible during that trip. | I have avoided field work since then | Man | ||||||
2255 | 1/13/2018 6:27:50 | The chair of my PHD committee began to send me inappropriate texts about meeting him and asking me at places other than his office and asking me when I "was ready" to move forward in our relationship | PHD candidate. Writing my dissertation. | Chair of my committee. Associate professor. | Other R1 | North Carolina State University | Adult Education | I went to the chair of the department. He asked me to speak to a lawyer at the institution and file a harassment complaint. I did go, but I was told that I needed "more evidence against him and that a file could be opened on him. I was also told by this women to really think about whether I wanted to fill a complaint because the professor had power over me as the student and that is why many never followed through with complaints. | The professor was put on a leave of absence for one semester due to "medical reasons". He is back a still teaching there. | I never finished my PHD. | I felt very sad that I never completed this degree. I put so much work into it, but I just couldn't continue. | I was already close to retirement age. I thought I might spend a few years after getting my degree working part time at a university or online teaching. I went ahead and retired instead. | I was assigned another chair halfway through my dissertation. She made it clear to me after our first meeting that she was overworked and gave me absolutely no feedback on my dissertation until I gave her a final draft. I was overwhelmed with all the changes she thought I needed to make. She told me that there was no way I would graduate the next spring which was my plan. Her feedback and the way she delivered it to me was just too much for me to handle at the time. As I said I was already close to retirement age so I retired. It took about a year for me to work through all my feelings about this experience, but I am now very happily retired. | Man | |
2256 | 1/13/2018 6:32:15 | In 2003 when I was a graduate student at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, in the Department of English, I attended a seminar session held at a professor's home. The professor was well regarded in his field, and this final class session was meant to conclude the semester's classes. He cooked and baked for the class--a small group of 3-5 students. At a point midway through the dinner, I went from the table to kitchen to get more water and he came up behind me, pressed himself against me, held me against him so that I could feel his erection. He kissed my neck and placed his hands on me. I froze in the moment but then pulled away. He didn't speak during this episode. I tried to leave as soon as possible, feigning some excuse. I felt embarrassed and sickened. | graduate student in final semester of the program | Named professorship, fully tenured | Other R1 | University of Nebraska Lincoln | English | Met with graduate chair and department chair, on the advice of a counselor. They said they were sorry. No official response came. He was allowed in the building and room with me, although I didn't have to take any classes with him. They said he would be told to stay away from me. | none | This incident derailed my thesis. I couldn't think right nor could I formulate cohesive thoughts relative to my program. I was applying to another, higher level of graduate study at the institution. I was accepted but without funding, so I decided not to attend. | This incident left me feeling like it was my fault and destroyed my confidence in myself. I questioned the professor's comments on my work, and continue to do so in experiences with male professors and colleagues. | I think I could have done much better work and been more successful. I'm am not as ambitious or confident as I once was. | Man | ||
2257 | 1/13/2018 7:40:00 | In 1999, I got an RAship at a research center which covered my tuition. My boss was the PI on a number of research grants and my job was to help him with by doing some statistical analysis on his projects. He would ask me to hang out with him outside of work and I would always say no. For example, he asked me to go to happy hour with him once. Another time he asked me to attend a book signing with him. When I said no, he would punish me by not talking to me. We were the only ones in the office suite together. He once asked me into his office and told me that the moment he met me he felt that we had a very special connection with one another. It made me extremely uncomfortable and I told him that I was very busy and had a lot of friends - and therefore I did not have time to spend it outside of work with him. After awhile I grew so uncomfortable with him that I quit. He insisted that we have an exit interview and wanted me to meet him at the student union by the lake. When I did, he asked me "what would you say if I asked you out?" My response was, "Are you asking me out" and he would counter with, "No. I asking you what would you say if I did?" He was very sneaky that way. I was so upset and talked to him about our unequal power dynamics and that I needed his reference to get another RAship someday. He shrugged it off and said that he would give me a good reference even if I turned him down. I left the "exit interview" shaking. After I quit, he did the very same thing to another woman who he hired to be his RA | Masters student - RA | PI and senior researcher at a large research center housed at an RA 1 university | Other R1 | University of Wisconsin - Madison | Education Research | My friend and I (the one who was harassed after me) filed a formal complaint with the university. After a year of investigation, they concluded that it was not sexual harassment, but that his behavior was mildly inappropriate. His punishment was to attend one sexual harassment training class. | To attend one sexual harassment training session | I lost my tuition funding and had to take out loans, which I'm still paying off | I went through a period of depression and had anxiety over losing my funding | I had panic attacks about getting another job because I would need to use him as a reference. Luckily my next employer never called him and I was able to get another position. | Man | ||
2258 | 1/13/2018 8:23:05 | Sexually harassed by my professor for 2+ years. Assigned to his research project in vascular surgery and he started with inappropriate comments (my favorite feature is your tits, can't concentrate on work because of your body, etc.) then progressed to repeatedly demanding I join him for drinks alone and assaulted me (would force his hand down my shirt, tried to kiss me, grabbed my thighs and tried to move his hand up my leg). Made me cry after one particularly aggressive incident and then stated I should be fired when I told another professor what happened. Repeatedly threatened my career and grad school application every time I tried to stop behavior. Threatened a medical trainee who stuck up for me once and told my professor to leave me alone at a work dinner where he openly harassed me. Professor stated to trainee that he was the program director and had the power to stop him from graduating so he needs to be quiet. | Researcher and grad school applicant | Professor of Surgery and Primary Investigator - my supervisor | Other R1 | University of Maryland, Baltimore | vascular surgery | Filed Title IX complaint - several women came forward. They ignored us, refused to interview witnesses or include statements from women professors during investigation. Found him innocent of any wrongdoing and helped to quietly move him to another institution. | None - he was found innocent and received another job at Emory University at his same level of associate professor. | Was forced to resign from my position due to retaliation and when I refused to "resolve" complaint with UMB (sign an NDA), was not provided with grad school letters that Title IX assured me I'd be given after 5+ years in the research department. (I was told to ask a professor I had accused of knowing about harassment and retaliating when I complained to him and received no response when I asked about a replacement letter instead of the one due from my harasser.) | Pretty personal but basically was an emotional wreck and incapable of functioning throughout the 8 month investigation (supposed to be 60 days per policy) and was suicidal and beyond depressed when they found him innocent, despite texts where he said "I'd kiss you but you won't let me" "going back to stalking you" and repeated texts at midnight alternating between yelling at me for not spending enough time with him and saying he loved me. Felt like I was losing my mind. | Left surgery department all together. Only professor of vascular surgery who was a woman also resigned when department refused to address the behavior and sexually hostile environment. Physician assistant who was also assaulted by same professor and filed Title IX received severe retaliation (drug tested, not fit for duty complaints, etc.), was forced out of vascular, and then resigned and found another position. Now we are all pursuing legal action and I pretty much had to give up my career to spend the last year and half pursuing justice after UMB failed all the women who spoke up. | Institutional response was just as bad if not worse than the sexual assault and abuse itself. We were blamed for his actions and shamed repeatedly by Title IX. Investigators didn't answer our e-mails for 2 months but stated they were in communication with harasser so he could provide evidence during same time period. He hired Private Investigators on me and openly discussed destroying our careers and UMB refused to address these complaints. | Man | |
2259 | 1/13/2018 9:05:40 | A professor who was supervising my research made several sexually suggestive comments to me, and several unwanted touches. | Undergraduate | Full Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Criminology | I lost first authorship on that project when I left the research group. I also switched research focus and studied something else when I went to grad school. | I was no longer sure if I got this research position because I deserved it or because he was attracted to me. I was very nervous for a long time to go to conferences that he might attend. | I was very wary of male professors going forth, and almost didn't work with my current grad school adviser because he was male. | Man | |||||
2260 | 1/13/2018 10:31:23 | In 2011, I was tasked with observing an adjunct's class in order to evaluate her teaching. I got there a couple minutes late and slipped in the back, taking a seat amongst the students. Because of my late and discrete arrival, most of the students were unaware a professor was sitting amongst them. During the lecture, I found myself distracted by the laptop screen of a student in the next row and one seat up. He was perusing a website of nothing but photos of scantily clad female models in bathing suits, lingerie, and less. At the break, I asked for his name, told him I was a professor, told him that what he was doing was inappropriate, and demanded that he knock it off. He did. After the class, I informed the professor, then my department chair, who encouraged me to follow up with other administrative offices. The three of us agreed that this was inappropriate classroom behavior. However, convincing other University officials of that proved impossible. I spoke with an administrator in the Dean of Students office who accused me of "getting emotional" and refused to take the issue seriously. He agreed to speak with the student, but I actually asked him not to. I realized that having someone who didn't think this was an issue and who couldn't refrain from undermining me would only make the situation worse. I also spoke with the head of our Title IX/EEOC office, who incidentally moved on to George Washington University and, according to the Washington Post, is now getting sued for not addressing a harassment complaint. That guy said there was no policy that prevented the student from doing what he was doing. He also was solely concerned about the University's liability, not amending the student's behavior, not on fixing University policy, and not the effect on the other students in the class. As in, he literally didn't care about the actual hostile environment created by the student's porn browsing habit, just that I had reported it as required! (The class was overwhelmingly male. How are female students supposed to feel comfortable participating in class if they have to watch their male peers look at porn?) I ended up dropping the whole thing in disgust. I later learned that other, more enlightened universities actually use this example in seminars about how to identify sexual harassment. What the student did was no different than putting a poster of a naked woman up in an office. He created a hostile work environment for every female student who could see his screen. But, getting the administrators at my University to see that proved impossible. | faculty | undergraduate student + 2 administrators, including the head of the office that deals with Title IX & EEOC issues | Other R1 | George Mason University | Humanities | See previous. I reported it, and they literally didn't care. According to them, students are literally free to watch porn on their laptops while in class at George Mason University, regardless of who in the room has to watch along with them. | None. | In this case, none. | It's just so exhausting and demoralizing. I feel like we failed all the women in that classroom who as a result are socialized to think that it's normal for men to expose them to sexually explicit material while they are trying to learn. | Man | |||
2261 | 1/13/2018 10:40:06 | During AY 1994-95 (after announcing my divorce), I was harassed, stalked and assaulted by my boss over a period of several months of employment. I complained extensively to the school's and university's administration and nothing was done. I finally filed a complaint w/MCAD (Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination) and refused to continue working in my office. I hired an employment attorney and spent two years fighting w/the University (who supported the faculty member). I finally settled the case out of court under the condition that I did not pursue it further. (I was living alone w/my two small children.) I was placed in a new and unrelated job and I was prevented from advancing in that job (despite the efforts of my supervisors) until I left in 2004. | University employee, middle management | Faculty Member, department chair, my supervisor | Other R1 | University of Massachusetts Amherst | Engineering | The University openly supported the faculty member (my boss), even though he had been accused of similar behavior twice before this (with no consequences). | After the case was settled and I was placed in an alternate position (1997), the leadership at UMass continued to actively block me from advancing until I left in 2004. In fact, they threatened to lay off my new husband after we married. | I had limited job mobility and was kept in the same position level for a decade, despite having strong performance and having my supervisors try to move me up. | This was frightening and very stressful! I was living alone w/my two small children and would see this man outside my house at night. He would call at all hours and hang up. He chased my vehicle and ran me off the road. He assaulted me in my office. He screamed at me and terrorized me for months. Plus, given the University's response, I felt like a pariah in my own workplace. It all made me less confident and more insular as a person. | It radically slowed my career trajectory. It was until I moved away that I was able to quickly advance and I will never catch up to where I might have been. The fact that I had to move away had a huge impact on my life! | At the time this occurred I was aware of a number of specific cases of other employees and students being harassed by faculty and that the University was working to cover up as much of it as they could. | Man | |
2262 | 1/13/2018 10:41:14 | Disparaging sexual comments by senior academic made in public social events | Graduate student | Reader in my department (not my supervisor) | Other R1 | Prestigious UK university | English | I never reported it for fear of reprisals. Everyone who heard the comments treated it as a hilarious joke. I had experienced enough shame. | I avoid socializing with male professors. I am now an academic in another institution. I have personally experienced and witnessed many other similar incidents, always by male professors targeting students and young female academics. | Man | |||||
2263 | 1/13/2018 10:46:14 | Male academic colleague repeatedly pushed me forcibly forward from behind while I spoke with other colleagues in public spaces (not just on campus), causing me to stumble forwards. He treated it as a joke, but it was obviously an attempt to humiliate me in front of others. | Professor | Professor | R2 | Told me to email him asking him to stop. | None | Man | |||||||
2264 | 1/13/2018 11:00:58 | Both instances occurred at a large regional conference for our field within the last five years. This professor had been my undergraduate advisor and mentor (and chair of my undergrad thesis). The first instance occurred during my first semester as a graduate student at a different university. Two female friends of mine (who were still students at the University where the professor taught) and I were hanging out with the professor and a few other (male) professors and former students of his from different institutions at the hotel bar. He was buying my friends and I drinks and had clearly had a few himself before we showed up. Pretty soon the other people we were with left for the night and it was just my two friends and I with the professor drinking and catching up. Pretty soon the conversation turned sexual, with the advances very pointedly directed at me. There was no touching (this time), but the comments were very sexual, and he even insinuated that I should go up to his room with him instead of with my two friends who I was rooming with. It was completely unexpected since this professor never made any remotely sexual passes at me while I was his student. None of us knew how to react except to laugh it off. The next day he approached me and apologized "if" he had been inappropriate the night before and blamed it on the alcohol. The last night of the conference we ended up outside the hotel smoking with a group of maybe 10-15 professors and grad students from various universities. He was very drunk again and came up to drunkenly apologize again, but insisted that he hold my hand while doing so. After this conference I began to doubt myself and question if the A's I earned in his classes, the letters of recommendation he wrote, and the research opportunities I had with him were only given to me because he had sexual/romantic feelings for me and not because of my merit as a scholar. Two years later at the same conference I confronted him about the incident (I had seen him a few times since, but it had been kind of awkward and I tried to keep my distance). We had both been drinking, but him especially. He told me that he "loved me in many ways" but that he would never give me recommendations or opportunities I didn't deserve based on my abilities. I believed him and I felt that we had reached some sort of resolution with the whole thing. Then, a bit later that night he went to two female friends I had been with during the first incident and propositioned them to come up to his room with him to keep him company. That sense of resolution immediately went out the window. After the conference he contacted me to apologize. I insisted that he also reach out to my two friends and apologize to them, which he did. I haven't seen him much since, and I think things will always be a little awkward between us. | Graduate student, then professional working in private sector | Full professor and my advisor at the University where I got my B.A. My research area was very small and specific, and he had high standing in that group of researchers. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | A public university in Tennessee | Anthropology | None- I never reported it to anyone. Even if I wanted to I don't know who I would have reported it to since I was no longer a student at the University where he taught and the instances happened at conferences. | None | Nothing overt, but it has made me work harder to prove to myself that I really deserve every achievement and opportunity I have and that I didn't just get here because a powerful old man thought I was attractive. I also don't tell people about these incidents (only the people I was with and my husband know the specifics and who the perpetrator was) because I'm afraid they will think that I was favored and didn't really earn my way. | This has definitely amplified the feelings of imposter syndrome that, as a female in this field, I would probably have regardless. It's also ruined what had been a great mentor/mentee relationship up until that point. I really looked up to this person and almost saw him as a father figure. Now I don't know what to think about him. I still respect him as a scholar and I think he feels genuine guilt about his actions. But I also wonder if he has found new young and naive victims. | I left academia after finishing my M.A. and I now work as an archaeologist in the private sector. I've pretty much abandoned the research I did as a student and now focus more on public archaeology and another area of the sub discipline. There are a number of reasons for this, but the biggest reason is that I realized that as a woman working in that specific research area, I would always be a second-class citizen. It was a good old boys club and I lacked the main thing required for full membership. There were a couple of senior female scholars working in this research area, but they were often marginalized. The harassment I experienced convinced me that my fate would be no different, and that I would never truly be taken seriously because of my gender. | Man | ||
2265 | 1/13/2018 12:07:32 | 1) Professor touched my hair and told me I was cute several times even after I would walk away and made it clear feelings were not reciprocated 2) Advisor insists on hugging goodbye when he gets drunk. 3) Comments on my body/ appearance/ dancing from multiple professors, and some professors get touchy when there is dancing at conferences/ social gatherings | Graduate student | Professors; Advisor | Other R1 | Big 10 Institution | Psychology | Personally, I did not report any specific incidences, but the department and the graduate student committee are working on assessing the extent and scope of these incidences and develop some actionary plan. | Scared to go to conferences; worried about working with certain professors who otherwise would have been good collaborators/ advisors | First major incident (hair touching/ professor calling me cute) made me feel really helpless and sent me into a depressive episode. Later, when I experienced a different sexual assault (outside of academia), these continued incidences have made it incredibly hard to recover, feel safe, and have hope. | The level of gender discrimination and sexual harassment in academia has made me not want to go into academia as a career. | Man | |||
2266 | 1/13/2018 12:45:35 | 1. Undergraduate Student Experience: Theology Doctoral Student tried to rape me at a private religious university. He continued to stalk me and call me and leave creepy notes for me saying he would find me and was watching me. I reported the incident to the university. For punishment, he got sent to S. Korea to teach English to young girls for 2 years before he was allowed to come back to the university and finish his Theology Doctoral Degree. It was otherwise, dismissed. 2. As faculty, the Associate Dean came directly in my office after my divorce to tell me a story about him and another woman he had a threesome with and how wonderful it was to all the parties involved. I kicked him out of my office- as Assistant Professor and made an official complaint. Since then, it took ten women to file similar complaints and he finally got demoted, but is still tenured prof at that university. 3. Too many instances to list.... it would take all day. | Undergrad, Grad, and also as Faculty/Assistant Prof to Associate Prof | I have had Assoc Deans, Grad Students, and Undergrad students sexually harass me throughout my career- up through my own professorship. | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Professor in Health Sciences | To send the perpetrator for service learning to teach in S. Korea for 2 years to young girls!!!! | 1. Harasser was able to finish his Theology Degree 2. Assoc Dean became Faculty- but kept his tenure. | Each instance set me into fear, depression, and anxiety for several years after... the toll is unmeasurable, as I continue to have the fear working in an academic setting. | Unable to function fully in the academic work setting for several months.... became very distrustful of the academy. | I was not able to follow a straight path of academic employment because of this incident. It took me many years to regain my strength and confidence, again. | Man | |||
2267 | 1/13/2018 13:06:12 | My grad chair made me feel uncomfortable when he look at me and said Iʻm married out of the blue when I looked at him. I was like obviously he have a ring. I am a male get mistaken as gay but not. He is not the first male to do that to me in academia. | Graduate student. In the middle of my PhD program. | Grad Chair | Other R1 | Afraid to share | engineering | n/a I did not report it | n/a | None. | Gives me anxiety that professors question my sexuality. | N/a | *** | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | |
2268 | 1/13/2018 15:03:14 | During my time in undergrad I worked under an incredible scientist for two years. He was very kind and intelligent. I didn't interact with him much, however, because he had been battling a serious illness since before I began working for him. Towards the end of my time in lab I received an email under his name (but a different address than usual) with the subject line "I'm dying, need your love." In the email he professed his love for me, saying he wanted to leave his wife for me and that I couldn't tell anyone. As my advisor, he held my future in his hands... My heart sank; I was so uncomfortable and I didn't know what to do. Neither did my boyfriend, who also worked in the lab and had another year left of school. I spoke with another female undergrad in my lab and she received a similar email the week before. She sent it to some department at the university that was supposed to handle those kinds of issues and recommended I did the same. I did, but never heard back about the incident. They never investigated or responded to my email. My labmate had a feeling it was sent by the postdoc who had recently been fired. He preyed on us as female students in an attempt to get my advisor fired. My advisor kept his position (I'm glad, he was a good man and that email was out of character) but died from his illness a few years later. It's sickening that the postdoc used us as pawns to try to end my advisor's career. (That postdoc sucked at his job, by the way.) | Senior Undergrad | Postdoc/supervisor | R2 | Physics | NONE | Man | |||||||
2269 | 1/13/2018 16:57:20 | I was offered an A from a professor from France in return for sexual encounters while in the Language Institute at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Co in the summer of 1962 | I was a 19 year old summer Language Institute undergraduate student. | He was a professor in the Language Institute. | Other Type of School | University of Colorado, Boulder | I was a French major at the University of Massachusetts. | I refused and left his office. I did not report the event to the college as I did not realize that this was abuse. | I simply stayed away from the professor and graduated from Univ of Massachusetts the following year. | I was raised as a child to know that men had the power and the privileges. | I was not taught and only learned much later in life that abuse was not the norm. I had an verbally abusive principal the last 5 years of my career. I stayed at the job and told him to leave me alone - he did but used more subtle ways of making my life difficult. I needed the job and survived. These years were hard - many of us teachers suffered under his principalship. He was real respected by many. | Man | |||
2270 | 1/13/2018 18:41:47 | I had heard stories about the man at the top of our field, but had never had any personal interaction with him until I was nearing the end of my PhD (and more so when I was early career). I had been warned that this individual was a sexual harasser, so I purposely stayed away from him at conferences, but was always disgusted to observe so many men and women circle around him like he was a god. My first interaction with him involved shock and disgust when I observed him having an open affair with a former student of his who he gotten a job for at Cornell straight out of grad school. He was/is married and has two children. The female ended up publishing all of her early work with the sexual harasser. He was well known to abuse his students (sexually and mentally). The woman and he continued their affair for years (at conferences) and flaunted it at dinners and dances at various conferences. When they took to the dance floor older individuals in our field would literally applaud them. I was told by a prof that if I was willing to give myself over to this guy, I would have a career. Another younger prof (cis male) confronted the sexual harasser about his abuse of power and about abusing another student so she could advance. This confrontation was in public. I was not there, but the younger prof told me his experience after it happened. The sexual harasser got in the young prof's face and called the young prof a C*** and wanted to fight him. Back to the conference where I first saw the affair, I also observed the woman giving him a handjob under the table before they disappeared into the bathroom for a while. The two of them still publish together, and the woman admitted that most of her work was written by the sexual harasser. I have pictures of them at a conference. :-) | PhD student | At the time a 'star' in the field who worked in Canada, now he's at Oxford | Elite Institution/Ivy League | The name of the institution that I observed the flaunting/affair was Western Michigan University | Medieval Studies | I told my own supervisor who was friends with the perpetrator. My supervisor was shocked and saddened, but did nothing. | Nothing. He now has the most prestigious title in the field. | I've interviewed with him on the hiring committee and interacted with him, since receiving my PhD. It's demoralizing when I even imagine having to work with him or have my work screened by him. It's also demoralizing knowing that there are many young and older men who he has supervised who have the same bullish and bigoted attitudes. On top of that, I know that many of his students (both male and female) are quiet about this because he has helped them advance in their careers. Many of these individuals are decent people, but will throw all decency out the window or say nothing to protect their own careers or friendships. With his power, there's nothing left for those of us who speak out or don't put out. I've given up on the field. | With this and other experiences of harassment it makes me angry, helpless and often hopeless. Knowing that he has hurt so many people and has been protected by Cambridge, Toronto and Oxford makes me realize how worthless we are. Mentally, I like to think I'm stable, but I don't know if that's true when I think about these things. | I'm completely jaded by academia and life. | Man | ||
2271 | 1/13/2018 18:45:22 | Saturday May 10, 2008: I had heard stories about the man at the top of our field, but had never had any personal interaction with him until I was nearing the end of my PhD (and more so when I was early career). I had been warned that this individual was a sexual harasser, so I purposely stayed away from him at conferences, but was always disgusted to observe so many men and women circle around him like he was a god. My first interaction with him involved shock and disgust when I observed him having an open affair with a former student of his who he gotten a job for at Cornell straight out of grad school. He was/is married and has two children. The female ended up publishing all of her early work with the sexual harasser. He was well known to abuse his students (sexually and mentally). The woman and he continued their affair for years (at conferences) and flaunted it at dinners and dances at various conferences. When they took to the dance floor older individuals in our field would literally applaud them. I was told by a prof that if I was willing to give myself over to this guy, I would have a career. Another younger prof (cis male) confronted the sexual harasser about his abuse of power and about abusing another student so she could advance. This confrontation was in public. I was not there, but the younger prof told me his experience after it happened. The sexual harasser got in the young prof's face and called the young prof a C*** and wanted to fight him. Back to the conference where I first saw the affair, I also observed the woman giving him a handjob under the table before they disappeared into the bathroom for a while. The two of them still publish together, and the woman admitted that most of her work was written by the sexual harasser. I have pictures of them at a conference. :-) | PhD student | At the time a 'star' in the field who worked in Canada, now he's at Oxford | Elite Institution/Ivy League | The name of the institution that I observed the flaunting/affair was Western Michigan University | Medieval Studies | I told my own supervisor who was friends with the perpetrator. My supervisor was shocked and saddened, but did nothing. | Nothing. He now has the most prestigious title in the field. | I've interviewed with him on the hiring committee and interacted with him, since receiving my PhD. It's demoralizing when I even imagine having to work with him or have my work screened by him. It's also demoralizing knowing that there are many young and older men who he has supervised who have the same bullish and bigoted attitudes. On top of that, I know that many of his students (both male and female) are quiet about this because he has helped them advance in their careers. Many of these individuals are decent people, but will throw all decency out the window or say nothing to protect their own careers or friendships. With his power, there's nothing left for those of us who speak out or don't put out. I've given up on the field. | With this and other experiences of harassment it makes me angry, helpless and often hopeless. Knowing that he has hurt so many people and has been protected by Cambridge, Toronto and Oxford makes me realize how worthless we are. Mentally, I like to think I'm stable, but I don't know if that's true when I think about these things. | I'm completely jaded by academia and life. | Man | ||
2272 | 1/13/2018 18:57:07 | I went for coffee with a professor at a conference. We had never met before but were alums of the same university (and had been to another conference together, but hadn't interacted). He told me that I was very beautiful and would have to decide what I was going to do in my career to get ahead. He was an assistant prof at the time, and I *thought* I understood that he was trying to warn me and suggest I should be principled in my conduct. He didn't need to tell me that, but I sort of brushed it off. So, after he warned me about sexual abusers in our field, he just went on to say that I should be careful around them. He gave me names of 'safe' people as well, and repeated that I would have to decide if I was going to lower myself and sleep with guys to get ahead. So, after coffee he asked if I wanted a ride back to the conference, and I accepted. As soon as I got into the car, he grabbed my left leg and ripped off my shoe (I had sneakers on). I had no idea what was happening, but I remember shoving him and grabbing my shoe. He laughed it off and told me to calm down because he was just trying to teach me that I shouldn't wear socks with sneakers. | Grad student | Assistant Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | The conference was at Western Michagan University. | Medieval Studies/Latin | Didn't tell anyone | He's tenure now | It made me realize I probably wouldn't be able to trust anyone. I have always been suspect of people's intentions, especially men in the field because they treat me like an object and/or token. | I've learned to be so distrusting of people that it's hard to connect. I had become really distant (because of further harassment) and aloof to protect myself. | It's made it difficult to get close to male academics because I don't know who to trust (unless they are gay). | Man | ||
2273 | 1/13/2018 19:19:40 | October 2006 I had to attend a course on teaching before I could teach (as a grad student), so there were other PhD students from all departments. We were put into small groups to make it easier to interact and work on whatever assignments we had. A man sat beside me and we had to introduce ourselves and write down a question to find out more about them. This individual wrote down that he just wanted to be with me. I laughed it off because I thought I would never see this guy again. Sadly, he became a physical and virtual stalker to the point that he was following me places. I used to like to work late at the university (the grad building) and he had overheard me telling someone I was going to be there late. I drove by the place at 11pm and he was standing outside the door (you needed a pass to get in). I kept driving. He stalked me to the point where I was scared for my safety. He would send me numerous message (several an hour late at night --- and I stopped responding to them). He also met with my supervisor to find out more about me. My supervisor didn't know at the time that this guy had begun to be obsessive, so naively he gave him information about me (he was under the impression that I knew this stalker and that we were friends). The stalker would send me messages saying that my supervisor wanted me to meet with him (among other things) and when I stopped responding, his emails got more and more threatening and hostile. I told my supervisor who agreed that there was something wrong, so he met with the guy. The guy continued to put things (notes, presents, etc.) in my department mailbox, email me and stalk me. I finally went to the police and they gave me tips on how to stay safe (never walk alone, let others know where you are, don't reply to the guy, etc.) and told me to wipe my online profile, so I did. This started in 2006, and to this day, this guy still emails me (I do not respond) and follows me on academia. | PhD student | PhD student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Glasgow | Medieval Studies/History | Nothing. They could not care less. | He's a professor now. | Not having a strong online presence had some consequences, especially when I was on the job market. Also, just missing out on interacting with others in my field because I feared for my safety was difficult because I couldn't connect with others the way I might have liked. I also feel jaded knowing that there were no consequences to this person's actions and that he's working now (and continues to harass me, albeit virtually). As for me, I never advanced the way I would have liked and have been left behind or forgotten, partly because I just couldn't be 'out there'. The virtual world has become such an important way for scholars to interact and connect and I just couldn't be part of that, so I'm paying the price now. As for doing things anonymously, that only helps you know what's going on, but doesn't help if no one else knows who you are. | Psychologically it was and is difficult. I became paranoid and anxious and it was hard to deal with when there was no substantial support from my department. I have severe insomnia now. | I have become so jaded with academia, but it has motivated me to become an activist. There is nothing like feeling abandoned when you are a victim, and it seems universities are the best at watching victims fall to the wayside while allowing perpetrators to advance in various fields. Change may not happen within my lifetime, but I will fight for it until I can't breathe any more. | Man | ||
2274 | 1/13/2018 21:04:51 | Professor in Communications Department would often have his female undergrads (including myself) appear in their underwear or sexy outfits in his films. A couple of instances, he either set up or tried setting up his female undergrad students (18-19) with his older, reaching middle-aged friends. Once, he told he me (as his undergrad student) that he would "have done [name of 19 year old student] if he hadn't been in a relationship." I remember feeling uncomfortable and thinking it was wrong, but he always said he was a feminist (hah!). | Undergraduate | Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | None. Other professors knew, but I don't think the admin knew. | None, he's tenured. | I'm just realizing at this point (over a decade later) how inappropriate this was. Yes, all the girls were over 18 and consented to appear in the films, but now I know what a misuse of power and exploitative it was. My parents were always very concerned about the relationship, but I thought it was so cool an adult took interest in me like that. (You were right, Mom and Dad.) He would always tell you how much of a feminist he was (while suggesting you take your shirt off or wear a push-up bra for this shot--hey, it's art). I used to consider him a mentor, but I now see how destructive his white liberal bro "feminism" is. | It made me really aware of how vulnerable my own students are as a prof, now, and I am hyper-aware of power dynamics. [Of course, I'm a female prof, so that's a whole different game for me. I would never have gotten away with things like this (nor would I want to).] | Man | |||||
2275 | 1/13/2018 23:14:10 | I thought the professor was taking interest in my musical career/skills through his encouragement, but during a private music lesson class the professor told me he fantasizes about me and can't stop thinking about me and that I drove him crazy sexually. He propositioned me in a very small room during our class. He was a large man at least three times my age. I was terrified said no and left quickly. I also quit that class. | Undergraduate | Music professor | Big ten university | Jazz studies | I told the dept director who was horrified and he ensured me that there would be consequences for that person. Dept chair was very supportive of me afterwards and I believe/trust he kept his promise. I didn't want to broadcast it further on he assurance that he would be dealt with. | Unsure I think he retired or left but I didn't investigate that | Unsure; did not pursue music career | I felt scarred by the incident emotionally and mentally for several years. I would cry when it came to mind and felt isolated because I could not talk about it with anyone really supportive. Intense feelings of confusion/guilt about why it happened and whether I did something to elicit it. One time later I was alone in a dept elevator with the same person and the same intensefeelings of intense fear came back. Distrustful of motivations of men/mentors, fearful in the department building. It definitely affected me. | Man | ||||
2276 | 1/14/2018 1:29:27 | I was a student who had a professor that I developed a close relationship with. He became a mentor that I respected and trusted. One day while we were chatting in his office, as I was leaving, he grabbed and forced his tongue down my throat. In the moment I was so completely shocked that I just pulled away and said goodbye as normal. | Student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Southern California | Business | Mild | Man | ||||||
2277 | 1/14/2018 7:28:12 | Throughout the year, he made graphic sexual jokes when my research group and I (all females) went to see him during office hours, but it didn't register as harassment at the time. Our class then went on a trip to Costa Rica over the summer, where things got more intense. He drank with the students frequently, and at one of our stops we had two cabins rented: one for men and one for women, and he insisted on staying in the women's cabin, "for protection". He spent that time walking around in his underwear and drinking. A few times when we were taking group pictures, he would put his hand on my butt and squeeze, but there was no way to tell him to stop without making a scene in front of everyone, including other professors. I felt that he was more or less acting in creepy ways, and had discussed this with other students, but two of us had gotten food poisoning and while we were sick he made a point to take care of us. Then, both of us felt really guilty about labeling him a creep, and both decided to give him another chance. At another location, he asked me to come with him to get some food and wine from his cabin to bring back for the rest of the class, and while we were getting it, he started rubbing my shoulders, and I made an excuse to go. Then, on our last night there, myself and several other students were talking with him, the other professors, and the owner of the farm where we were staying. It was getting late, and people were starting to go to bed. We had all been drinking. I said goodnight and started walking through the woods to my cabin. A few minutes into my walk (in the dark, in the woods) I heard someone calling my name and he caught up to me. He told me that he had a lot of connections and that he helped a lot of his students get really far in good biology careers. He mentioned jobs that some of his former grad students had. He told me that he saw a lot of potential in me, and then he kissed me. When I turned away from his kiss, he held me tight so I couldn't walk away and said "let's try that again" and kissed me on the mouth, with tongue. I said that I was tired and needed to go to bed, so he asked me if he could at least hug me, I said yes. Then he holds me tight and rubs his erection against my body for a few moments, as a struggle to get away. Then he let go of me and insisted on holding my hand and walking me back to my cabin. When we returned home, I mentioned this to some of the other girls on the trip with me and several female students had similar stories of being touched in ways that could have possibly been an accident, or him trying to rub their shoulders or kiss them. | Undergraduate | Full Professor, with tenure | Small Liberal Arts College | University of North Carolina at Asheville | Biology | This occurred during my senior year, and I filed a complaint and had to attend several meetings about the incidents, in front of other of my professors who I respected, and had to discuss the details of the underwear he had been wearing, and what he said, and what I said, and how much I had had to drink. In the end, they were unable to prove that anything inappropriate happened, as they said it was a "he said, she said" situation. | Aside from having to go through the investigation, none that I am aware of. | It did prevent me from asking some of my favorite professors to write recommendations for grad school, because they sat on the investigatory committee. | It was very stressful as it came at a time where I was deciding what I wanted to do in academia. It was also difficult because it triggered a lot of PTSD symptoms due to an unrelated rape that I went through in my freshman year at the school. | This was one of the main reasons that I decided not to pursue biological research and academia as my profession, and I frequently regret that decision, although I do enjoy my current career. | Man | ||
2278 | 1/14/2018 12:03:41 | November 2017 - Male, highly celebrated and beloved dissertation advisor made a gross remark to me at a conference... [the rest is redacted] | [redacted] | hugely successfully and celebrated professor within the field and beyond | Elite Institution/Ivy League | [Redacted] | History | N/A - I didn't report the incident | N/A - I didn't report the incident | Nothing yet (it happened so recently) but I feel grossed out and uneasy about our relationship | N/A - just grossed out by him and rethinking the respect I've always had for him. | N/A - just grossed out by him and rethinking the respect I've always had for him. | Man | ||
2279 | 1/14/2018 12:38:22 | Gang stalked and harassed by faculty members after I was no longer a student. A male faculty who works with the Veteran students at CCBC made me aware that his wife no longer has sex with him. Each time I had to register for classes, he would take me aside and ask deep personal questions about my life. He told me that he had sexual dreams about me. He made sure that my file was always hidden on his desk. No one else could touch my file. They couldn't even find it. It was normal procedure for me to be forced to wait there for up to 2 hours while they fiddled around looking for my file, called my professors to make sure I could take the class, emailed them and insisted I wait for an email response, and whatever else they were doing. I always had permission to be in the class from the professors and the VA doesn't care what classes I take, so long as this is an accreditted college. So because the admin person was sexually harassing me, I was also forced to endure mistreatment based on my protective status as a veteran. After everything was filled out, this sexual harasser would then insist on sitting down and reviewing my entire career at the school, claiming he could not read his writing. When I complained to the head of the VA, he insisted angrily that the sexual harasser worked in the finance office. That he does but he also represented the Veterans at the school. The head of the VA department for CCBC did not care that I was being sexually harassed or that I was forced to wait 2 hours at the Veterans desk at the finance office. He wasn't listening and was instead angry that I refused to go to his frat party where alcohol was served. He then insisted that I was mentally ill for using the adult words, "CYA" and "BS." What I meant was that these people refused to allow me to leave their office until they had covered their butts that the class was paid for and that I would not sue CCBC if I took an elective for fun that I wanted, seeing as I already have a degree and the classes I took with them were just for fun. And it is totally BS that they would force me to stand there and wait in their office for hours while they track down professors who have a life. I said nothing wrong but this abusive faculty member told me I was insane and that he was calling the behavioral health department to punish me for speaking up to him about the sexual abuse, harassment I had received at CCBC. I had already told him that I had quit the campus a week before. Needless to say the abusive woman at the behavioral health department called me on my cell despite the fact that she had in writing that I was no longer a studdent, and she left a voicemail telling me she would recommend me mental health treatments. I called her back and asked her to quit stalking me since she knew I was not a student and she had no legal right to call me and because I had done nothing wrong. In this was she was psychologically abusing me and defending piss poor treatment, sexual harrassment, age discrimination, Veteran's discrimination I had recieved, and MANY MANY other students have placed on ratemyprofessor.com, or had told me in person they had suffered. I watched the staff demean and speak down to other students, I watched 2 of my proffessors scream and yell at students and stomp out of the clasroom.Students talked about fights they had with students and named names in front of other students, and students whisper to each other about the staff behind their backs, and sometimes in front of other students. One professsor admitted she hated her careerfield as a child, and hated teaching in public schools. Many of the professors bragged about only getting their degree so they could make money teaching at the college level. I put up with the chronic sexual abuse, psychological abuse, verbal abuse, gang stalking, age discrination and disccrimination against veterans and the over all violent, explosive and hostile environment until I could take no more. | Former student | Veteran's admin and the head of the behavioral health department | Other Type of School | CCBC Catonsville | Creative Arts | They gang stalked me after I had alerted them I was no longer a student due to the various was staff had harassed me. | NONE. The director of our department said we should talk to him, not the deans if we had a complaint. He said when it comes between him and a student, the deans always support the staff. I think that is why the abuse permeates every single term, despite so called "trouble students" leaving the college. The staff rally around each other, rather than disciplining the worst among them. | Hostile learning environment. I already have a degree so I no longer give my money to abusive staff members. | I hated going to the office because I knew that I would be sexually harassed, and discriminated against based on my status as a Veteran | I chose not to finish this third degree at the school. | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
2280 | 1/14/2018 12:58:52 | In 1963 when I was a first year student in the law school at Columbia University, I was repeatedly harassed by a female student who made it clear that her only interest in me was my penis. I reported these incidents to the dean of students but no action was taken. | Student | Student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | None | I was upset. | Woman | |||||||
2281 | 1/14/2018 13:43:21 | An alumnus of the university followed me on campus in a way in a way that conveyed romantic interest (invited me back to his place to look at his etchings, *actually*); I told him I wasn't interested in him. He wrote me really creepy poems. He followed me around the stacks in the library. He waited outside my classes for me. I told him I was queer and he wrote me a sexually explicit letter asking me to reconsider / detailing how much I would enjoy having sex with him. (And telling me that I might only *think* I was queer but ... just wait!) | An undergraduate | Alumnus, a bit older | Other R1 | I asked the dean of students for help to no avail. (The message I got was that until something more serious happened, I was on my own, and that maybe I was just misunderstanding his flirtation.) I did have other institutional support from faculty members I trusted that was invaluable, though. | None. | None. | Not great. I was already working with an undiagnosed/untreated anxiety disorder and depression, and my family / the institution I was in dealt with the situation so poorly (treated it like it was my fault, or a super embarrassing misunderstanding on my behalf) encouraged me to not report sexual harassment and assault when they occurred later. | Man | |||||
2282 | 1/14/2018 14:14:42 | I took a course 2-3 years ago co-taught by some "distinguished" older history and classics professors at Yale. Many of the assignments were presentation-based, and these professors would make a point of commenting on female students' posture and attire as part of "presentation feedback." Of course male students did not receive similar feedback. At one point, rape was discussed by one of the professors (it had come up in a literary work) in a very casual and dismissive way. On the whole, these events made me feel like I was not taken seriously as a female student. | College student | Professors | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale | History | I didn't feel like these events fit neatly into Yale's definition of sexual harassment, so I never thought seriously about reporting them. Also, the professors in question were considered very "distinguished," and I highly doubt Yale would have done anything with a complaint against them. | None. | I wouldn't say this had a huge impact on my career. While I felt like I wasn't taken seriously because of my gender in this particular course, and that was certainly frustrating, it was only one of ~40 classes that I took in college. I felt like my contributions were considered seriously and I was treated respectfully in every other one. I did briefly flirt with the idea of pursuing graduate training in history towards the end of college. Not wanting to deal with these sorts of personalities was one (of many, many) reasons why I didn't pursue history grad school. | Not that much. I was frustrated and uncomfortable for sure -- and I certainly feel like no female students should be made to feel that way -- but I didn't feel unsafe, and ultimately this did not really have an impact on my career. | See above (not much). | While, in my opinion, my experience wasn't that bad, it still really sucked to have to deal with sexist attitudes from people who were supposed to be my teachers and mentors. Once I got out of college and into the workplace, I experienced much more serious sexual harassment than I had come across in college -- I know firsthand the toll that this takes on women. Thanks very much for shedding light on this important issue. | Man | |
2283 | 1/14/2018 14:18:24 | I overheard a male faculty member discussing the physical appearance ("fuckability" in his terms) of female field school students; witnessed this faculty member leering at particular students and encouraging them to drink with him...rumors that he pursued multiple students (and slept with at least one). | Graduate student | Professor in my department | Other R1 | University of Wyoming | Anthropology | Not reported...a different male faculty member (same department) was reported for sexually pursuing a student and while well documented and widely known nothing happened- did not feel comfortable reporting. | None (promoted I think) | Not comfortable taking his classes or including him on my committee (as encouraged by my adviser) but finished my degree. | I still gag every time I see this guys name in print. | Has made me question the emphasis placed on fieldwork and made me hesitant to join field crews w/o asking trusted colleagues about PI behavior. | Man | ||
2284 | 1/14/2018 16:39:46 | 1)A lab mate thought that it was ok to hug me awkwardly because I am gay, so I don't mind men hugging me like that. He would ask to meet me in isolated places so that he could hug me for very long moments. I expressed my discomfort and confusion with that because he always says that I am his best friend but that's not how friends hug! He stopped hugging me like that for a while upon my request then last time I saw him he did it again. I don't think we are friends anymore. 2) In a professional conference, a guy got himself drunk, started hugging me, saying that he loves me and wanted to kiss me. I said no and he kept getting his face close to mine so I pushed him and ran back to my room. | Graduate Student | Senior Graduate Student | Other R1 | Georgia Institute of Technology | Aerospace Engineering | I didn't report it | None | Doesn't really affect me. | It made me feel very disgusted of myself! I am already suffering from anxiety and depression and this guy put more stress on me whenever I see him. I would try to avoid him because I don't even want him to touch me. My body language was very obvious and he noticed that, yet he would still do it! | Gave me one more reason to not trust men! | Man | ||
2285 | 1/14/2018 17:06:28 | Senior professor has a long history of harassing female graduate students and post-docs in his lab and beyond (inappropriate comments about appearance, inappropriate physical contact, invitations to step into his conference hotel room after a long night of drinking at conference, professional promises are made for 'special' attention, inappropriate text messaging...} [the rest redacted] | Post-doc | Senior faculty member | Elite Institution/Ivy League | [redacted] | Neuroscience | None | I had to leave my position at the university and precipitously take another job at another university. | I still do some work with the professor do to the fact that I need his help professionally. I feel like I am being used not for my smarts but for my body | Life trajectory hasn't changed yet but I think about quitting routinely. | Man | |||
2286 | 1/14/2018 18:18:31 | I was harassed, stalked, experienced unwelcome advancements, was threatened by a tenured faculty member at an R1 Institution. | Graduate student | Tenured faculty member | Other R1 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | The faculty is located in Gies College of Business | Retaliation by HR | None made public. But, he’s been spotted chasing after Asian students in the college’s hallways after I reported my incident. | Setbacks, debt, loss of benefits, including tuition waiver, black balled on campus. | PTSD | At a holding point at the moment, as I lost my source of income and am unable to afford the tuition and unable to apply for more student loans. It’s like I had my wings cut off, as I love knowledge creation, research, and the world of resources that this institution has to offer. So much for ‘Inclusive Illinois.’ | Man | ||
2287 | 1/14/2018 21:01:18 | I frequently commented online about university issues and frequently agreed with several staff members who also posted on the same university fan site, including a male professor in my honors program who I respected, and frequently consulted for advice and other guidance on things. Those who disagreed with me somehow then alleged that our relationship was sexual in nature, which led to extensive trolling online and likely elsewhere. I was also taunted over a friendship with the son of two professors along a similar nature. This was a conservative Christian university, so allegations that I was a "slut," a "whore" or worse were even worse than they would be elsewhere. Of course, men who cause a stir with strong ideas rarely if ever get called things like "sluts." | Undergraduate | One poster involved in the harassment was a university staff member who was open about his offline ID, and the university got involved as a result. Because it was online, however, others involved were harder to pin down. Some thought it might be a controversial professor, and others thought it might be a member of the board of regents, both of whose actions and ideas I criticized frequently online. I never found out. | Other Type of School | Baylor | Political Science | The known harasser had some consequences over reports of his behavior online. I don't know the details beyond the fact that he drastically changed his online behavior afterwards. The others I'm unsure of because they were unknown. | Unknown. | I became even more depressed than I already was—I was struggling to cope with health issues at the time, but this additional harassment pushed it over the edge. It took me much longer to graduate than expected from college, and my grades dipped severely. I opted out of the idea of going to law school entirely as a result. | I was dealing with severe depression at the time which worsened greatly when I had to deal with constant online harassment. I attempted to kill myself, but I'm glad it didn't work as my harassers frequently said I should do just that. | Several self-harm/suicide attempts, one of which got me kicked out of my dorm when I needed the safety net of people near me the most. I withdrew from activities, lost interest in everything and could barely function. My sorority pressured me into resigning as a result of all of these things snowballing at once. My grades plummeted, and the GPA I graduated with was barely enough to get a degree. I have extensive student debt from having to do a year without financial aid to finish. I feel like I'll never pay off a college that became a living nightmare while I was attending. | Unsure (if harassment was anonymous, for example) | ||
2288 | 1/14/2018 21:15:14 | It was 2005. I was 19 and just a few weeks into my studies at a respected art college after having transferred there from a liberal art school. A professor from a different department noticed me in the copy room a few times, where we would make small talk while waiting for copies. One day I mentioned to him that I wanted to get into the field of children's book publishing and illustration, and he suggested that we go out for dinner sometime to talk about that since he had experience with publishing. He made it sound like it would be a professional meeting related to my goals. Later, at dinner with him, it became clear to me that he thought this was a date, which I would have never agreed to had I known what his intentions were. He never brought up writing, publishing, books, art, or my goal of being a picture book author/illustrator, which had been the entire point of the meeting. Instead he only asked me questions about my personal life. I felt uncomfortable about this, and when he drove me back to the dorms at the end of the evening he parked the car and then leaned in to kiss me. I recoiled just before he could, and when he noticed how uncomfortable I was he tried to pass off his physical advance as just going in for a hug ("What? I just wanted to embrace you", he said). I awkwardly got out of the car, went up to my dorm room, and called my boyfriend. I was extremely shaken and upset. The professor tried calling me while I was on the phone with my boyfriend, but I did not pick up. He did not approach me again, and I avoided him for the remainder of my time at that school. I never told anyone at my school about this. | Undergraduate student (technically a sophomore) | Professor, not from my department. | Other Type of School | California College of the Arts | Illustration | I never reported it. | N/A | None. | I felt vulnerable, and like I had been taken advantage of. However, this was just one in a seemingly endless string of sexual harassment experiences that I have gone through, and they all take a toll on mental health. Over time I have become untrusting of others, and have changed the way that I dress in order to be less noticeable. Up until the incident that I described here, sexual harassment had only ever occurred outside of school. The institutions I attended had always seemed like a safe space, with professors who would protect and nurture me. When this happened I learned that they could be duplicitous. | This particular incident made me wary of my male professors, and now colleagues. Now that I am a college professor I make a point of maintaining a professional physical distance from my students, and I always make my intentions crystal clear when I communicate with my students; if I invite a student to lunch to discuss their work, we talk about their work. I would NEVER make a physical advance on a student, or try to date one. This is inappropriate, and I would NEVER want to make a student feel the way that I did. I keep a diligent eye out for other professors who might not feel the same way. | Thank you for helping victims to bring their stories out into the open. | Man | |
2289 | 1/14/2018 22:21:16 | A very well known full professor in accounting visited my University. As a young lecturer, I was encouraged by my Head of dept to see him to discuss research. I met up with him in his office. After some formalities, he immediately diverted his conversation to me. He first commented about my looks and then asked whether I had a boyfriend. Next he started commenting about Singaporean girls. He said that he was told that many girls in Singapore were virgins and asked if I was one. I told him I was not in a position to comment on the issue. Then he asked, "Can I give you a kiss?" At which point, I left the room, leaving my documents and my thumbdrive with him. I never saw him again except at conferences. He had not approached me during the conferences. I never told my head of dept (who is male) about what happened. | Lecturer | Full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Accounting | There was no opportunity to report because it was behind closed doors and it will be a case where it is his word against my word. And you can expect who they will trust, the person who is more powerful (him!) and not me. | Nothing. When I mentioned his name to other colleagues at another University, several of the women told me that they knew about his habits of molesting women and making dirty talk. | No impact but I know how to size these people up after the first meeting. Usually touchy feely and will make lewd remarks. He is an editor of a journal and I have never sent any papers to that journal. | Not much, but learn that these people are everywhere | Man | ||||
2290 | 1/14/2018 22:25:40 | One the first day I joined the dept, I met my co-lecturer. After being introduced, we talked and at every opportunity, he would attempt to tap my shoulder, and touch my hand. I mentioned it to a colleague and she told me that she was subjected to the same thing. There was once, he put his arm on her back and started fingering her bra strap. He is always smiling and acting friendly. | Lecturer | Assoc Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Accounting | Not reported | None. | Man | ||||||
2291 | 1/14/2018 23:35:06 | I am lucky enough to never have been sexually harassed or assaulted in my profession (I have been sexually assaulted, but that's a story for another survey). I am teaching faculty at a private R1 university. To keep my story short, one of my male coworkers (same position) - super gregarious, beloved by all students - was caught planting a camera in one of our department's bathrooms. This bathroom is a single stall, with a shower, and was used by faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students alike. This camera - a "spy" pen - had purportedly been in the bathroom for weeks, at least. No one in the department was made aware of the situation when he was caught. To this day, many of my colleagues believe he left to pursue a better position. The perpetrator was quietly forced to resign, with no criminal charges brought against him. He has since secured a position at a community college, where his salary has effectively doubled . Since no one was told the truth, he likely managed to procure a letter of rec from colleagues who were left in the dark (I cannot disclose how I know the truth). I have had to deal with all of our students asking about what happened, whining about how much they miss him, talking about what an amazing man he is. I am not allowed to discuss the situation with anyone, lest I lose my job. I have lost a lot of sleep, worrying about when he will repeat his actions, and wondering if next time, his actions will be escalated - given the fact that he has in essence been rewarded for his (criminal) behavior. | Faculty - Lecturer | Same position | Other R1 | USC | Forced resignation | Ultimately, none. Makes 2x the money, still in academia. | N/A | Anxiety, insomnia | Often consider leaving academia. | Man | |||
2292 | 1/15/2018 2:02:58 | I was a 'good' undergraduate student, the kind being groomed for further study and a number of teaching academics took an interest in me, most of which was very supportive and great. However I was also going through a difficult time. I was trying to leave an abusive relationship and having a lot of difficulties. A lecturer who knew my circumstances took an interest in me, supposedly for my work, and then repeatedly made sexual advances even after I'd tried to stop them. He would tell me that physical affection was part of his culture and complain about how lonely he was and how anglo-Australian women were so uptight. At first, I didn't really believe it was happening but eventually dropped out of his class and ceased contact. | Undergraduate student | Lecturer, potential dissertation supervisor. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UNSW (Australia) | Criminology (his political science) | None - but I didn't report. | No direct - although as part of a series of events it led to me temporarily dropping out of university and suffering a huge problem with grades. I was very lucky to be able to scrape back into a PhD scholarship. For a long time it really affected my intellectual and academic confidence. I couldn't trust that people actually valued my work or ideas. | Again, alongside other things it contributed to me developing long-term anxiety and panic attacks, particularly in the context of academic work. A lot of therapy and personal work has fixed this. | Almost prevented me from going into academic, but thankfully it didn't. | Man | |||
2293 | 1/15/2018 8:19:50 | My department was very close and social, we often went out with our superiors after a long work week for drinks. To keep it brief, one time I had too much to drink and after passing out (very unprofessional of me, I know), my advisor performed several sexual acts on me while I was unconscious. I don't remember most of it and actively work to keep it blocked out of my memory. The next day, he messaged me to let me know to "not worry about it, he was helping me relieve some stress." Prior to this incident, I was very close to him and saw him as a mentor and sort of father figure, but in hindsight I now realize he was inappropriate in some of the things he shared with me, as well as inappropriate touching in several occasions which I always brushed off as accidents or slips of the hand. | MS student, year 2. | Graduate advisor, Chair of Department | Other R1 | Paleontology | Not reported. | Not reported. | Dropped out. | Bad? | Change in careers. Have completely removed myself from field and academia. | Man | |||
2294 | 1/15/2018 8:27:39 | I was raped by a fellow college student who was on a full-ride scholarship as an Ambassador. It happened in my home, after a party, less than half a mile away from my my college, Utah State University. | Undergraduate | Undergraduate | R2 | Utah State University | Health Education and Promotion | Reported to Title IX, the case hasn't finished yet/I haven't heard back from them. It has been 5 months since I reported. | He was suspended from a volunteer program on campus that helps students undergoing mental crises. My therapist was one associated with the volunteer program, and he was able to suspend him from the program. | Had to withdraw from all classes for a whole semester due to prolonged anxiety and depression, resulting in failing grades. Quit many jobs, unable to go on campus due to PTSD. | PTSD, OCD, ADHD, Severe Anxiety, and Depression. Attempted suicide once. | Has propelled me toward my career by giving me insane amount of passion and drive to get this problem OUT OF HERE!!!!!!!! But also, has made me very timid in social interactions and has made schoolwork very mentally exhausting due to OCD and Anxiety. | Anybody who is from Utah, or especially at Utah State University (USU) please email me at ***(contact Karen Kelsky to get in contact with this respondant). I would like to set up a group and possibly some projects regarding this issue. Thank you very much. | Man | |
2295 | 1/15/2018 8:31:28 | A famous academic was offering an invite-only seminar. I arrived when the room was almost full and found a seat around the table. The famous academic (male) pulled a chair next to me, rubbing his leg against mine. I tried adjusting my chair to avoid contact, but he only spread his legs wider as he spoke to re-establish contact. All the seats were filled, and the chairs were clearly arranged around the table. I would have had to get up and leave the seminar to halt the contact. There were senior people in the room who would have questioned me for snubbing him, so I stayed, angry the whole time that I felt trapped. | Assistant Professor | Very Famous and Eminent International Scholar | Other R1 | Anthropology | None | Shattered confidence. Disgust for frequently cited scholar that I couldn't publicly state. | Distress | None | Man | ||||
2296 | 1/15/2018 8:35:17 | When I was a new assistant professor, senior faculty in my department would often invite us to lunch or coffee. A senior professor in my field extended an invitation, which I gladly accepted. When we sat down to coffee, he said, "So, tell me about yourself. What turns you on?" I don't know exactly what expression came across my face, but I know I was flabbergasted. When he saw my response, he tried to recover: "I mean, intellectually. What are you about?" I answered the second question, but I never felt comfortable being alone with him after that. | Assistant Professor | Full Professor who would vote on my tenure case | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Education | I never reported it | None | Avoided certain committees, meetings, social situations | Distress | I always tell my junior female colleagues to avoid being alone with him and others with his "vibe." | Man | |||
2297 | 1/15/2018 8:40:44 | Pressured into sexual relationship with graduate student supervisor | Undergraduate | Graduate student supervising me in research lab | Other R1 | Indiana University | Neuroscience | Don't care because I was not given a grade by this person | None | Don't know how it will impact my PhD letters of recommendation | Do not wish to say | Unsure if I want to continue in academia | Man | ||
2298 | 1/15/2018 10:52:35 | Repeated sexual / unprofessional comments made to me privately and in front of others, as well as speaking about me in a sexually-charged nature to colleagues and industry partners | Research scientist | Director | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Formal interview process, leading to a few other women stepping forward. He supposedly will be fired if he makes any other "mistakes" I was told to be sympathetic to him because he has to change his whole style and that will be very hard for him. | A letter on his file - he remains in his position and as my manager. | I want to quit my job because of this person. I feel like a pariah in my office and my "complaint" greatly inconvenienced people. I am embarrassed to speak to the external people again. | Daily stress and anxiety | I am looking for other options outside academia. | Man | ||||
2299 | 1/15/2018 13:35:24 | Myself and at least six other women suffered repeated instances of sexual harassment, psychological manipulation, and stalking. | Undergraduate | Assistant Professor | Other R1 | [redacted] | [redacted] | The incident was reported to one faculty member in the department, who did nothing to stop the misconduct. The situation has since escalated as a consequence of their inaction. | None | I believe that this individual limited my graduate school options to those which he felt would be most professionally advantageous for him. | Unquantifiable | I and most of the other women involved share a desire to leave the academy. | Man | ||
2300 | 1/15/2018 16:31:18 | In college, I was a research intern for the summer at a different university. The professor I worked for was a big-wig (got tapped to work for Obama a few years later), but I didn't have much contact with him, as his employee managed interns. The following winter (after I was no longer an intern) I attended a Christmas party where he was seated next to me. He spent the entire night looking down my dress, asking me if I had a boyfriend, exclaiming how he couldn't believe that I didn't, and if he could call me when he went out to the state where I was in college. He was, of course, thirty five years my senior and married. A woman sitting next to me saw what was happening and later told me how wildly inappropriate it was. While he was no longer my boss, I had to rely on him for recommendations. | College student, former intern of perpetrator | former supervisor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Yale University | N/A | N/A | Unable/unwilling to ask for recommendations | Man | |||||
2301 | 1/15/2018 19:32:18 | I attended my first international conference in December 2015. After the workday was over, myself and a PI and some of her colleagues went to a bar for a few drinks. Other women in the program had been mentioning all week that this one particular male student was creepy or gave them bad vibes. I barely knew him, but he was friends with a good friend of mine and older/more senior than me so I figured it couldn't be that bad. Eventually that friend, him, and I went to another bar to catch up while everyone else went back to the hotel. The creep started to become sexually aggressive to a waitress (making inappropriate comments, blatantly staring at her chest when she spoke, trying to do things to get her to touch him or bend over in front of him), before he eventually turned it on me. He kept buying me drinks when I had switched to water, getting angry when i wouldn't drink them. I decided to leave, and while trying to convince me to stay he grabbed my ass and tried to pull me towards him. I pushed him away and took off. I texted my friend to explain where I had gone and what had happened, but he just insisted that the creep was "a good guy" and "wouldn't do that". I couldn't do any more without fear of retribution since he was important to our department and research group. | I was a new MSc student. | He was an older PhD student who was associated with my research group | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Western University, Canada | Science (any more detail would be identifying) | None, but I didn't report to the institution for fear of backlash as the newbie going up against an important part of the team | None | Made me avoid networking events with alcohol, which likely reduced my number of contacts in my field. | It made me anxious and made me wonder if I had somehow overreacted because someone I trusted just straight up would not acknowledge what I told him, and it made me feel unsafe about reporting it to anyone. | None. I've become more knowledgeable about sexual harassment since then and I refuse to let this change my goals. | Man | ||
2302 | 1/15/2018 21:20:58 | Aggravated Assault/Aggrivated Stalking | Grad Student/Staff | Student | Small Liberal Arts College | Grand Valley State University | Research and education | Asked me to leave job and home; said I should have been smarter than that was more educated than person who committed act, came from better background | None; received full support from institution and was allowed full access to all student code of conduct hearings. I was not. Am unaware of future trajectory consequences. | Had to relocate and start over due to stalking. | PTSD | Financial, physical, mental | Man | ||
2303 | 1/16/2018 5:50:28 | In the late 2000's a female student at the College of the Holy Cross was raped by a male student around graduation. When this was reported to the administration, the female student was pressured not to get the police involved as it would "ruin his life". The offender was allowed to walk at graduation. This was confirmed by a close friend of the girl and by a c-level officer who discovered the notes from the incident and I believed destroyed them. Her predecessor had been involved in the cover up and was later given a higher position at Boston College. | Student | Student | Small Liberal Arts College | College of the Holy Cross (Worcester MA) | down played | none | Man | ||||||
2304 | 1/16/2018 7:13:02 | The professor I was working with as a TA for a summer class (Prof A) sent me to the home of another professor from a separate university (Prof B) ostensibly to pick up some research materials. Prof B answered his door wearing only a bathrobe and insisted on taking me to dinner. His home was miles away from any large town, in the woods, and I did not feel safe. I told him I'd just collect the research materials and leave, thanks. Prof B said he didn't have them at home, they were in his office. I asked why he'd contacted Prof A to have me come and fetch them, and he said he'd tell me about it over dinner. He was very handsy with me as I tried to get away from him, and I became worried that if I just ran for my car, he might physically stop me. I agreed to accompany him to dinner (driving separately), and made my escape as soon as possible. When I told Prof A about it the next day, he said, "I suspected that he might not be all business." Prof A is the highest-paid professor in his department, and Prof B later became a University Vice President. I decided not to go into academia. | Graduate Teaching Assistant | Prof A: advisor, member of my dissertation committee, department chair. Prof B: friend of Prof A | Other R1 | University of Maryland College Park | Anthropology | None | None | Changed dissertation topic to get away from one Professor, decided not to stay in academia | Nothing too serious, but it pissed me off | Although Prof A threatened to destroy me when I took my dissertation topic elsewhere (his exact words: "If you do this, I will destroy you"), I have had a very satisfying and successful career outside the academy. I run a small, community non-profit in my field and also have a paying job I love. | Man | ||
2305 | 1/16/2018 7:20:09 | As a TA for a large intro course, I (female) was assaulted by a male student who was unsatisfied with his grade on an assignment. He attacked me in front of several other graduate students, called me a variety of names, and had to be pulled off of me by two bystanders. I reported this to the professor of the class (recipient of a MacArthur genius grant), and told him I thought the grade was more than fair. It was a solid D paper, but I'd given him a C. The professor read the paper and said even a D was generous. However, he then raised the student's grade to a B, thereby rewarding him for attacking me. | Graduate teaching assistant | Student, Professor/Employer | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Texas at Austin | Anthropology | None, although campus police investigated the incident. They told me, "He's a veteran, so..." | None | Did not accept any further TA program assistance, did not enter academia after completing my PhD | Nothing too terrible, although it made me very angry, and I am still angry. | Decided the academy was full of violent male hypocrites who hate women and went somewhere else to work. Never looked back. | Man | ||
2306 | 1/16/2018 10:27:23 | Inappropriate touch and sexist comments during a lab meeting | Postdoc | PI, Section Chief | Other R1 | UC Davis Medical School | Psychology | HR meeting because several other incidents were reported with same perpetrator | None | More cautious in general, no collaboration seeked out further | Triggered depressive episode | Reconsidered career in academics | Man | ||
2307 | 1/16/2018 10:32:10 | I was harassed, stalked, experienced unwelcome advancements, was threatened by a tenured faculty member at an R1 Institution. | Graduate student | Tenured faculty member | Other R1 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | The faculty is located in Geis College of Business | Retaliation by HR | None made public. But, he’s been spotted chasing after Asian women in the college’s hallways after I reported my incident. | Setbacks, debt, loss of benefits, including tuition waiver, black balled on campus. | PTSD | At a holding point at the moment, as I lost my source of income and am unable to afford the tuition and unable to apply for more student loans. It’s like I had my wings cut off, as I love knowledge creation, research, and the world of resources that this institution has to offer. So much for “Inclusive Illinois.” | Man | ||
2308 | 1/16/2018 10:50:35 | Stalked, harassed, subjected to confront a tenured faculty member who demanded to be hugged while he was erected during school hours on state property. | Graduate student as well as administrator | Tenured Faculty member at the place where I worked at. | Other R1 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | His field is Business Administration | I was harassed by HR and eventually T contracted. One day after I was T contracted, I ran into the Dean and he incredulously smiled at me from ear to ear and said hello. I asked him why he had Tcontract me and he told me that he was just trying to protect the College (from little old me, I suppose). He wasn’t trying to protect the women in the College, including its female students- appauling! | None. He was nominated for best mentorship award for graduate students and the current Dean granted him the award. | Debt, setback, loss of benefits, including tuition waiver. | PTSD | Stilled being assessed, as I hired an attorney. | Man | ||
2309 | 1/16/2018 13:58:48 | As a graduate student and post-doc, my primary male mentors have stared at my breasts and checked me out as I enter for a meeting. On post-doc, after being checked out, he would determine whether or not we would have a full meeting. Although these behaviors were non-verbal, both were academic bully's referring to me as difficult and of lesser intelligence despite my being highly productive and having positive collaborations with other faculty. I did share my experiences with other faculty regarding both men with responses such as "we know he has interpersonal difficulties" and related comments that showed, in both situations, that others were very much aware of this behavior. | graduate student/postdoctoral researcher | Full professor/Associate Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Social Sciences | None | None | Self-doubt | Increased anxiety/depression | Continued in academia at an R1 institution - being out of training has provided me with more power and more of a voice. | Man | |||
2310 | 1/16/2018 18:03:49 | a tenured faculty member in the art history department at Rutgers has a reputation for looking down the shirts of female students, making inappropriate comments about female students' appearance, and being vulgar in lectures when teaching material that includes nude or suggestive forms. when I worked at the front desk in the department, he did various things that were uncomfortable but not overtly WRONG -- rubbing my back, touching my knee, etc. I finally said something when he leaned in closely to smell my neck, ostensibly because he liked my perfume, and "accidentally" brushed my breast with his hand. I was a phd student and he was the director of graduate studies. | Phd student | Tenured prof and director of grad students | Other R1 | Rutgers | Art history | None | None | None | None | None | Man | ||
2311 | 1/16/2018 19:44:08 | I've been harassed and propositioned by both female and male colleagues. I've continually witnessed how senior male academics treat their junior and female colleagues, both in their objectification and in 'mansplaining' to them. I've seen women in academia change institutions to get away from the male dominance of power; which in some instances involved changing into disciplines that are more female-driven. I had to put in two separate and formal sexual harassment claims within my first two years at the same institution. I've seen male academics respect the mind of a female academic, but who have disrespectfully in turn attempted to desire her body as well. I've heard/seen countless tales of supervisor-student affairs, predominately when the supervisor is male and the student female. | PhD | Fellow PhD | Other R1 | Business | Man | ||||||||
2312 | 1/17/2018 8:06:35 | I was a student in a biology field course. The late-career, distinguished professor instructing the course used binoculars to watch female students bathing in a lake (we were in a remote area without facilities) while masturbating, according to a male student who reported this to me. The professor apparently (according to the male student) said that he was frustrated with me for wearing a swimsuit in the lake to bathe, unlike the other female students. He decided to "get back at me for my modesty" by calling me into a communal male shower room at another location later in the course, where he and approximately five other adult men who were either students or associated with the course's teaching staff were naked. He and the other men formed a gauntlet that I had to walk through to leave the shower room. All of them laughed at me for my "modesty" at being shocked and horrified to see them all naked. | Undergraduate student | Late-career distinguished professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Queen's University at Kingston | Biology | None - I did not realize until years later that this was inappropriate behaviour. At the time, I felt like there was something wrong with me for being overly modest. | None. I have since met a number of women who have shared similar incidents with me concerning this professor. He has enjoyed a long and distinguished career, and he seems to have been engaged in behaviour like this throughout. | None - fortunately, this person was not necessary for my career advancement | None - fortunately, I have not been adversely affected in the long-term | None - I am lucky that this has not had a negative lasting impact on my life choices | Man | ||
2313 | 1/17/2018 10:32:20 | I'm not sure where to begin. First, a lab coordinator at my anthropology program (prominent forensic anthropology program) had vicious rumors circulated about her saying that she got the job by sleeping with professors during her Master's degree. This was a tactic to discredit her. I had multiple professors (women) warn me about a prominent forensic anthropologist that was known for sleeping with students, harassment, and having a long term affair with a married former student. I had multiple traumatizing experiences at conferences where I was propositioned or had dirty jokes told about me, due to my appearance, including a very explicit come on by a friend of a colleague. Other colleagues either laughed it off or did not believe me (I don't attend major conferences anymore). I've been told that my career in forensic anthropology was unlikely due to who I was (gender, appearance and LGBTQ+ status). I felt pushed out of opportunities by professors, and colleagues distanced themselves from me after speaking up about the comments and experiences I had. I've had untrue rumors circulated about me claiming that I slept with other male students, and that my partner was a student of mine (not true). I also commiserated with another PhD candidate about the situation at conferences, and he privately shared that he had experienced similar behavior by women professors. I have not been taken seriously during fieldwork, given access to data, or invited to certain events, despite an excellent record. A mentor of mine was harassed and bullied by other professors (as they were competing for tenure at the time), horrifying stuff to where they (including my advisor at the time) would even write up complaints about her leaving her office to use the restroom. | MA student | Professors | R2 | Anthropology | None, just verbal warnings to students, blame placed on students | None | Significant, I left the subfield due to the pervasiveness of harassment | Significant at the time | I left the subfield. I am much happier now in a different area of anthropology, but it did limit my opportunities and delayed my career by years. | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||
2314 | 1/17/2018 14:50:26 | Belittling comments in class such as "that's a good answer for a girl", being cornered at a department retreat and drunkenly yelled at and name-called for asking him a "hard" question at a presentation (it wasn't that difficult of a question). | 2nd-year PhD student | Associate professor (tenured) (took his classes, almost on my committee) | Other R1 | University of Pittsburgh | Biological Sciences | other faculty said "I wouldn't have done that if I were you" - but University executed Title IX investigation | he got a stern warning (literally nothing) | I left my program, I had to start a new PhD program from the beginning, changed study system entirely. | Because I removed myself from the situation and received a thorough Title IX investigation, I feel like I'm much better off than what I would be if things didn't work out that way. But now I'm able to pick out an attitude like his a mile away in other professors and I stay away from them. | I had to start a new PhD and make new networks from scratch, I think twice when I go to conferences where this man might be (when I really shouldn't have to), I worry about when I meet people who might collaborate this man if they also subscribe to the manner in which he treats women, or tolerate that behavior. | This man had been harassing women in the department for years and years. Apparently the department had a big file on him and they knew about his behavior, but he never got any punishment and no one officially complained beyond the department until me. | Man | |
2315 | 1/17/2018 16:21:24 | My graduate adviser made it clear to me that he would only work with me if I was wearing revealing clothing. If I wore my normal school attire to meetings, he would call me derogatory names and wouldn't assist me on my grad project. However, if I dressed in a way that revealed my body, he would make inappropriate remarks about my appearance but he would actually help me with my research. There were rumors that he was sleeping with undergraduates, and I witnessed inappropriate closeness between him and undergraduates. He forced a colleague of mine (also one of his grad students) to watch porn with him. | I was a graduate student | He was an adviser and professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Marine Biology | None, I never reported anything, although I know the university was aware of inappropriate behavior. | None, he's actually much more successful now than he was then, and partly thanks to the success of my grad project which helped make him relevant again in the field. | Some impact, since I can't work in my chosen field since it is very small and I'd have to work with people who know him and likely encounter him at some point | Huge. Grad school was the first time I was trying out my talents, so to speak, and my adviser made it very clear that unless I looked like a slut, I was "stupid" and "worthless" and he wished he had gotten other grad students. However, if I dressed according to his wishes, I was suddenly attractive and on a track to be successful. He completely eroded my self confidence and has changed the way I present myself to the world. It has taken me years to realize that I actually am a good scientist, and that my abilities are not tied to my sexuality. | After my experience in grad school I swore to myself I would never be a part of academia again, since it supports the kind of narcissistic and power and achievement driven personalities that engage in abusive behavior. I've spent six years working as a biologist in the private sector and for the most part everyone is governed by company policy and HR and things seem more regulated and humane than they did in the university setting. | Thank you for doing something like this. I'm sure abuse of graduate students goes wildly under-reported because professors and advisers can hold their students' futures hostage by providing bad references or ruining their grad projects. | Man | ||
2316 | 1/17/2018 20:00:10 | I am a heterosexual man and so was my graduate advisor but that didn't stop him from joking about anally penetrating me on several occasions. No physical abuse ever occurred although he would regularly say things that made me and the other grad students uncomfortable. Screaming at us and throwing things in the lab, sometimes at us but mostly just "in our direction", was frequent. I'm a former college athlete, am probably thirty pounds heavier and six inches taller than my advisor, not to mention a third his age. So he was no physical threat to me. He also mentioned once to another grad student that sometimes I looked at him like I was going to punch him in the nose. I would never do that, despite how much he deserved it, because I'm non-violent and professional. This is all to say that no one is immune from this kind of harassment, even straight, male, muscle bound action stars like Terry Crews. He clearly was not actually sexually attracted to me, he just enjoyed the power of being able to say and do horrible things with impunity. Even now that I've left his lab I'm still dependent on him for letters of recommendation, which he uses as another form of leverage and power over me. | Graduate student, M.S. candidate | My PI and thesis advisor. | Small Liberal Arts College | Neuroscience | The department head recorded my statements, which were ongoing whenever he did anything else. I requested not to file any formal complaint to that it wouldn't affect my schedule for graduation. | It may have been part of why he failed his promotion to full professor the next summer, but I can't be sure of that. Regardless he received full professorship the following year. | He delayed my graduation for a full year and has made job searches and PhD admission more difficult because I can't rely on him for a good letter of recommendation. | Anger and stress, with a fair amount of self doubt. | I have a hard time trusting supervisors and PIs now, sometimes that lack of trust makes difficult tasks out of easy ones. I regularly need to remind myself that they are not him so that my interactions are appropriate. | Man | |||
2317 | 1/18/2018 5:46:09 | Student raped by male faculty at Holy Cross, president of college attacked her for filing a claim, has had her arrested for protesting his actions. See her blog: https://vigilatholycross.wordpress.com/ | early 2000's | faculty, school president | Small Liberal Arts College | College of the Holy Cross in Worcester MA | personally attacked victim, claimed she was "mentally ill" in front of board members | none | see https://vigilatholycross.wordpress.com/ | Man | |||||
2318 | 1/18/2018 6:51:09 | Was working late on a grant and a faculty member offered to buy me dinner, we had a friendly rapport so I saw it as a nice gesture. Afterwards he kissed me and asked me to undress. I immediately left, didn't finish my work, and avoided being alone with him under any circumstances, | Admin Asst | Tenure Faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UPenn | Research - Med School | None | None | None | Feelings of anxiety and disappointment in the workplace. | Took a lateral move to another department, even though I should have been up for a promotion I needed to be in a better workplace environment. | Penn has a really decentralized approach to HR and the management of the departments. I honestly felt like if I had brought my situation up to our single HR rep nothing productive would have happened, and if I had brought it to central HR they would have handled it with a lack of understanding of how the department works. Also, this faculty member had already been reported for having lab members that failed to follow safety protocol and had no repercussions- so if the school didn't take the physical safety of the lab seriously why would they take a sexual harassment allegation seriously? | Man | |
2319 | 1/18/2018 17:32:22 | I was harassed and cyberstalked by a Professor who became fixated on me. My career was in its fledgling stages and he would google me to find my work on the internet and come to my office to ask deeply personal questions about it. He began emailing me and frequently messaging me using an internal messaging app, which he set to "private" so the messages were not recorded. Often he say things such as "I need to talk to you. Can you come to my office?" which I would ignore, prompting him to turn up at my office which I shared with my supervisor (female) who was bullying me. At a Christmas party he had some drinks and approached me, saying that he knew I was uncomfortable with his fascination with me, but that he was married and it "wasn't sexual". He took a photo of me at the party that night and told me sent it to a friend of his to "show" him the kind of young women he worked with. After the party, the harassment escalated, with emails, messages, phone calls and (when these were ignored) aggressive visits to my office. | I was an administrative assistant. | Full Professor, member of Faculty for 25 years | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Monash University | Medicine. | I didn't report it, I knew I would not be supported. My supervisor (female) witnessed the harassment and blamed me, asking "what did you do to make him act like that?" | None. I confronted him via email with a list of his behaviour and he wrote back and admitted to it all. After that he left me alone because I finally had written proof, however he has experienced no negative consequences. | I was finally able to quit my job some two years later and transition to to different Faculty within the university. | This situation sent my anxiety through the roof. I was on edge, cried frequently, didn't want to come to work, felt utterly alone and unsupported by the university. | Luckily for me, this was an admin position and not a "career" role. I was able to transition into my own discipline after I had completed my Masters - however I still work at the same university as my harasser so I see him on campus occasionally. | Man | ||
2320 | 1/18/2018 18:12:10 | At a department backyard social event one evening I heard the department chair say to one of the associate professors that sometimes he just wanted to give him a great big french kiss. The associate professor said something like, "Oh come on, please stop with all that." That made me think I had overheard some sort of ongoing situation between them. I was shocked. I did not know either of them was anything other than heterosexual. Both were married. I doubt they realized I had overheard because it was a dark part of the backyard and they were standing a little ways off by themselves, but the sound carried so I heard it clearly. They never said anything to me about it. I never said anything to either of them or anyone else other than my partner, who had long held the opinion both were secretly gay and this incident only confirmed it. | Associate professor and full Prof/dept Chair. | Other R1 | LSU | Anthropology, joint department with geography | None | None | None | None | None | Sometimes when you witness what you think might be sexual harassment of one person by another it's not entirely clear what to do and you end up doing nothing. What if all is fine between them and it's consensual, but you end up outing them? One could say go to the one being seemingly propositioned to talk about it, but they both had so much power over the future of my career that I could have ended up making them both hate me and ended my career. But what if you witnessed something that really was abusive and failed to act and thereby enabled the abuser? I would greatly appreciate if you could address that issue on your blog. | Unsure to this day of either of their sexualities | ||
2321 | 1/18/2018 18:30:54 | The director of my department started targeting a specific second-year undergraduate student 8 months ago. She began making multiple false accusations against him and reported him to campus police at least three times. I overheard her making disparaging sexual comments against him like how he was just a "skirt-chaser" and a "pretty boy" who needed to be physically/sexually assaulted to understand consequences. After her false accusations landed him in trouble with the university's administration, the student came to my office and told me he wanted to kill himself because of the harassment. | Junior Lecturer | Faculty Director | Other Type of School | Canadian University | Business | The student ended up contacting the Dean about the harassment who encouraged him to report it so the university's legal counsel. The legal counsel dealt with it by giving my director an informal warning. | None | I was told not to develop any more relationships with students to make sure my department didn't get into any legal trouble. | The fact that the student seemed to live the perfect life (he was the top of his class, incredibly popular and one of the most likeable, easy to get along with people I know) made me realize how easy it is to hide my own mental health struggles. | I used to love teaching but the harassment of the student made me realize how disillusioned I've become with the university and their values. I will leave as soon as my contract expires this April. | Woman | ||
2322 | 1/19/2018 8:14:57 | Racism and Sexism conjoined: a junior faculty member, a woman of color, was introduced to a senior male professor whom many in the Department were eager to hire. When he met her (in the course of his campus visit), he made some comment about her being the affirmative action hire. She complained about this extremely demeaning remark. Members of the Department dismissed it and said that he was just trying to flirt with her (as if that were acceptable!). They went on to hire this man and she left the department. | junior faculty | male senior professor and other senior members of the department | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | English | rewarded the harasser! | no problem at all | This is about someone else, who suffered as a consequence, feeling completely unsupported by her colleagues, including senior feminist professors | Man | ||||
2323 | 1/19/2018 10:19:48 | Constant comments about appearance by multiple members of faculty.. A member of what would have been my dissertation committee attended a department happy hour and asked for a ride home because he was intoxicated. When we reached his drive way, he tried to kiss me. I sent clear signals that I was not interested. He laughed and said "Yeah, we better not." Sat silently for a moment then invited me into his house noting that my grade in his course would reflect my decision. I refused. Same faculty member taught the first year research methods course. He made advances toward the only female in the cohort after mine and told her male classmates that he was interested in her. She eventually quit the program because her male colleagues constantly told her that she only did well in class because the professor "wanted to f*ck her". Because of the general environment in the department, I opted to transfer. While applying to other programs, one faculty member said he'd be happy to write me a letter but that it would be better if he knew me better. He then invited me to have drinks with him and his wife and "several other graduate students". He often had gatherings at his house, so it didn't seem strange. On my way over, I spoke to another grad student and learned that his wife was out of town and I was the only grad student invited. Turned my car around immediately. After transferring to another program, I was working on a project for which I was told I could be coauthor. My coauthor --- a full professor --- asked me to babysit his kids (he only ever asked female grad students to babysit). I said thanks, but no thanks. Within a week, the female grad student who had agreed to babysit became the second author on the paper and I was removed. | graduate student | Professors of multiple ranks, including one presumptive member of my dissertation committee had I remained at my first institution | Other R1 | Political Science | Was too afraid to report given the general environment in the department | none | Transferred | Increased anxiety, | I avoid certain groups within the discipline. I don't know who (male or female) in the discipline is trustworthy. As a prof. I now try to speak up and protect other women, but my male colleagues think I'm "being dramatic". I'm concerned that doing so will hinder my tenure prospects. | Man | |||
2324 | 1/19/2018 22:21:34 | I was invigilating an exam where there were several other colleagues invigilating as well. I was standing at a desk going through the attendance sheet. A colleague come and brushed his body against my back. It was a fast action, done in an environment where silence has to be maintained. I could not do anything. He got away with it. At the end of the exam, I watched him get picked up by his wife. | Lecturer | Lecturer | Other R1 | Business | Man | ||||||||
2325 | 1/19/2018 22:34:00 | Senior male faculty often patted me on the head, patted me on the knee, hugged me at odd times, unexpectedly and for no apparent reason. This, while in a position to give me a job, which he did, and for which I was grateful. Rumor had it that he often gave A's to his pretty female students, though I had no direct knowledge of this. Female faculty would advise their students not take him. | Classified staff, before I was an adjunct | Department chair and union chief negotiator (negotiated raises for all faculty) | Other Type of School | English | Informally, people warned female students not to take him, presumably because he sometimes made them feel uncomfortable. | Ha. | He got me a job and a raise. | There wasn't much, although it didn't help me feel like a confident professional, more like a pretty child. | I'm not sure it hurt me in that sense, but it certainly didn't lift me up. | Man | |||
2326 | 1/20/2018 7:28:45 | 2016, my first meeting with my MS advisor. We discussed my career goals, and I asked if he had any tips on finding a part-time job in our field (he has a lot of connections in academia and the private sector). At the time, I was working in a college residence life office, and somehow this got my advisor on a tangent about women's dorms at another local university. "Though why women would want to go to [this prestigious engineering school] I don't know," he said. I was taken aback, so I mentioned that my boyfriend's sister went to this school. Then he asked if I had moved to this city to be with him and his family. No, I came here for [this highly ranked program]. My boyfriend (now ex, heh) was in the military. As soon as my advisor heard this nugget of information, the meeting went from kind of sexist to really sexist and condescending. He told me, flat out, that if my boyfriend was in the military, I should switch my focus from one sub-discipline to another, so that I could follow him around and get a job more easily. For fifteen minutes, I tried to steer the conversation back towards my actual career goals. Finally, I had to interrupt him and say "My boyfriend's career has no effect on my career goals right now. I want to do one of these two things, not what you are suggesting." My advisor acted like I offended him, but went back to half-heartedly advising me about the career path I wanted. I'm not sure if this is sexual harassment or not, but I haven't been back to my advisor's office since. | First semester MS student | Program advisor, former dean, professor emeritus, has our program's student lounge named after him | Small Liberal Arts College | Library Science | I didn't report it. The student lounge is named after him, and he's so well connected in my field, I figured reporting it would be more trouble than it was worth. | I haven't been back to his office, or sought his advice, since. Maybe I'm missing out on career opportunities, but I don't want to seek his advice or his help. I also never officially changed advisors, because I was afraid that if I did, administration would ask me why. | I haven't been back to his office, so I figure I'm missing out on the career opportunities and connections that could offer. | I don't know if this is sexual harassment or not, but I feel like I need to report it to someone. He's an institution at my institution, and if I reported this to administration I'm afraid it would get back to him. Because he's so well connected, I'm afraid he'll blacklist me with potential employers. | Man | ||||
2327 | 1/20/2018 14:08:39 | Prof I was assisting patted me on the butt when I brought him the eraser he asked for. In front of about 70 students. | Grad student | Professor for whom I was a teaching assistant | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Cornell | Geology | I did not report it, spoke with him about it personally | He was really nervous around me (I told him if he ever did such a thing again, I would make him un-employable) | None, except perpetuating the struggle | Depressed | Didn’t stick with academia, too hard a struggle | Man | ||
2328 | 1/21/2018 2:40:11 | Chair of department was obsessive and harassing a female grad student in interdisciplinary department who he co-authored with. Harassment occurred over months. | Grad Student | Grad Student | R2 | Tulane University | Industrial Organizational Psychology/ Organizational Behavior | University researched into removing the Harasser. Hurricane Katrina happened so the investigation was halted. Other professors distanced themselves from him when they used to eat lunch together every day. | Harasser's investigation had weird impact as Hurricane Katrina happened to explain why he would leave from a regional R2 school to a unknown business school out West. Continued to retain Editorial role in one of the top 5 A level Journals for business. Later discovered the reason why he was not at an R1 was because this type of harassment had occurred at the R1 in the Northeast with secretaries and he had been asked to leave there. | The person harassed was removed from the authorship of the A publication ironically or not "Does it pay to be a sexist? The relationship between modern sexism and career outcomes". | General disgust that other females and minorities who knew about what had happened but were still grad students even after securing tenure track positions still glowed at the retirement party a decade later. None would turn down co-authorship with anyone with such a strong academic background and publication reputation. | Man | |||
2329 | 1/21/2018 7:00:00 | My graduate professor made sexual advances towards me on more than one occasion during field work, including constant “friendly” pats on my thighs or back which always lasted just a smidge too long. When I finally really made it clear through avoidance and polite but firm refusal he completely ignored my research, including any phone calls or emails I sent him asking for guidance, and hinted at withholding my Masters degree unless I “changed my additude”. I later found out he was sleeping with one other of his grad students and expected me to similarly fall in line. | Graduate student | Advising Professor | R2 | Biology | I left without finishing my degree. Transferred to another university and started over. | Incredibly detrimental | It took me a while to regain my love and enthusiasm for my field, and I have a jaded outlook on men with doctorates now. | Man | |||||
2330 | 1/21/2018 14:01:28 | I went for academic advising as an undergraduate and my adviser invited me to his basement to watch ‘films’, complained about his failing marriage, and kept me in his office for 3 hours. He asked me about boyfriends and if I slept around. I wanted to ask about funding for study abroad for 1st gen students not be leered at by a man twice my age. I froze when the flirting started and it took ages to find a way out of the office. When I complained the university reassigned me to someone who wasn’t a regular adviser. This happened in 2011. As of today he is currently employed and has received a promotion since the incident. | Undergraduate | My academic adviser | Other R1 | University of Kentucky | Gave me a new adviser who worked in advising but was not a regular undergrad adviser and didn’t seem to know what to do with me. They only did something because I threatened to go to the ombudsman. At the time I didn’t get why that got their attention but I now figure they were afraid I might have gotten some advice and support and perhaps would have gone to title ix or community standards. It was so slimy. | He got promoted | I lost out on advising opportunities that may have helped me with the grad school application process. | Felt belittled, shamed, and disgusted. | It’s hard to say. My former adviser was the one handing out tassels at graduation and he ruined that experience for me. He knew who I was as what I’d done so he glared at me. It was just a gross way to end my college experience. | Man | |||
2331 | 1/21/2018 18:06:38 | In the midst of a social faculty gathering, a colleague—who had been drinking—hit on me and asked me out. I was annoyed and tried to ignore him, so he came up behind me and put his hands on my hips. I froze, unsure of how to respond b/c this was a person I had worked with for years. Up until that point, we had had a good, friendly, and respectful relationship. | Full-time, non-tenured track faculty | Adjunct faculty | Other R1 | Did not report. | None. | None that I know of. | At the time, I felt disgusting. And still to this day, the thought of it makes me physically ill. My skin crawls. The harasser wasn't even in a position above me and yet he clearly felt entitled to try and take advantage. | I was fortunate in that I moved/got a position at another institution shortly thereafter. So, I was able to avoid him and avoid a confrontation; I was afraid of causing any conflict on my way out the door and worried that the incident would not be taken seriously by the administration. I wanted to focus on moving forward and tried to put it behind me, chalking it up to something that ultimately "wasn't a big deal." | Man | ||||
2332 | 1/22/2018 0:32:30 | a 30"x40" collage of explicit close-up vagina photos, clipped from pornography and pasted to poster board, was taped to my first floor dorm window in the dead of night. I was awakened to phone call with a creepy whispering voice to "look out my window". I was frightened and called campus security instead. When they arrived, they searched the window from the outside and found the sexually explicit "artwork". They did not find the perpetrator. I then called a male friend for support and heard laughter. He was with 3 or 4 buddies. I had no idea that someone I considered a friend would do something so aggressive. And he did it in tandem with other men. | I was an undergraduate student | 4-5 undergraduate Sophomores and Juniors | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Syracuse University | Advertising Design | They took initial report. Never followed up. No council. No suggestions. Years later I called to ask if they still had a record of the report and the head of security was VERY defensive as he told me they destroy all of those "types" of records after a couple of years. | none. | All of the young men involved went on to high level careers in and around my field. I felt shut out from that part of my friend group leaving a gap that in my connections and potential networking. | At the time I confronted the two men I knew best. I was angry and hurt. They were upset that I might report them and there would be repercussions for them. They persuaded me to stay quiet. I did so because I did not want to be a "victim", I didn't want to lose my friends (I did anyway), and I was overwhelmed by how it effected me. I was depressed and scared. This was 30 years ago. I am still mad and stressed when I think about it. | I don't think I can fully estimate the impact. These guys had been the main chunk of my social group. Everyone knew them. I later discovered they talked about me to the larger social circle to downplay their assault. Instead they characterized the event as "a joke" and that I couldn't take a joke. I was ostracized. This had far reaching long term effects. Many friends from my class shared career information early on. Having a strong network from an elite university is a strategic advantage when breaking into creative businesses. I can not estimate the damage done to me by breaking the natural pattern and thus benefits of my undergraduate class cohort. I feel it was a substantial loss to me though. | This event effected me mentally the most before it broke my trust in friends. However, I was also assaulted once by a stranger who followed me to my door. Luckily I was able to punch him and he ran. And another time a man came into the dormitory showers when I was alone with a gorilla mask on. Terrifying. I screamed so loud he ran. And I also had a phone stalker and a separate note/card stalker which lasted all 4 undergraduate years. I never knew their identities but was terrified. I just add these notes to say that it wasn't just one thing. I was a serious student. I put myself through school and was very focused. I felt simultaneously grateful to be there, and constantly worried about predators. | Multiple men | |
2333 | 1/22/2018 11:42:03 | I had just submitted my PhD. supervisor was off sick, and so i got statistical help from another staff member. After i submitted myself and a few friends decided to celebrate. This staff member's (SG) office was next to mine, so when i saw him i invited him along. He came. When we were there he wanted to sit inbetween me and my friend. We were both hesitant about this because it meant we were all sitting very close together but felt we could not say No to this. At the end of the evening our male friend suddenly dashes off and everyone else leaves, leaving us girls alone with SG. She asks me to walk her back to her campus room because SG had been stroking her back and feeling her bra strap. I walked my friend back. When i went to go home SG propositioned me for a physical relationship for 45 minutes, and he wanted to walk me back home. My friend made an anoymous complaint about him, but i think he thinks i did it. My friend later co-authored a paper with him, whilst i cut all ties with him. Everyone knows he is the creepy guy, but he never gets sacked. He is Black, and he uses his race as a protector (by calling people racist if they challenge him). | PhD student | Senior Lecturer | Other R1 | Brunel University | Psychology | SG had to go to a meeting with the Head, and had to leave his door a bit open when female students were in the room with him | Not sure, but i guess none. He does not get promoted to Professor (UK) but he says this is due to racism. | I do not go back to my old Department for support, and have tried to navigate my career on my own. | Yes, he twists stories so i am sure the staff has spoken about me. This has made me withdraw. | I refuse to co-author with him, so it has strengthened my career choices. He also gave me very bad stats advice anyway. | Man | ||
2334 | 1/22/2018 12:09:09 | I had just started my PhD, and i got talking to a Senior Professor in a UK University and we found out we both come from the same area. I like walks in the countryside and he said he could give me some maps. He emailed me arranging a time for me to go to his office to collect the walking maps. Just before the meeting he contacted me telling him to meet me in town and he'll buy me dinner. I thought this was weird but thought ok.... and i went. We went to dinner....it was like a date. He insisted on walking me home. I said it was not necessary but he kept insisting. When we got outside my house i could see where this was leading, so i played dumb like i didn't know and went inside my house. He also asked me at the dinner not to tell my PhD supervisor about this because she gossips. We didn't speak after that despite being in the same Department. He eventually left and got another job. Good! | New PhD student | Senior Professor (UK) | Other R1 | Brunel University | Psychology | I didn't tell any staff about it, only friends. As i was new i didn't want people to talk about me in a sexual manner | None | I realised he manipulated me to go to dinner. I wont let that happen again. | None, i just know to be careful around nasty old men | I think it is important to be aware of what kind of Department you are in and how to navigate these things | Man | ||
2335 | 1/23/2018 7:18:28 | Sexual comments and harassment in the classroom laughed off by chair. Sexual comments and harassment by fellow department members. Unwanted, inappropriate physical contact from chair. | Full-time instructor, assistant professor | Colleagues, department head, chair | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Retribution, including revocation of ADA accommodations | One received early tenure. Another promoted from instructor position to professorial position. One was "traded" with another school when he physically attacked a colleague who wanted to press charges (he attacked several colleagues and students, but incidents were hushed up) | Left academia. | Developed severe anxiety and panic disorder | I left the world I knew behind, lost friends, because it was the only way I would survive. | Man | ||||
2336 | 1/23/2018 10:58:55 | In the mid 2000s, when I was a first-year graduate student, another first-year graduate student made unwanted advances. He told me "a bunch of people" were getting together to do homework together at a cafe, but when I got there, it was just him. He told me he had already done the homework and implied I should copy from him (I didn't). He asked me if I was still with "that guy" (my boyfriend of 4 years who I was living with, and he knew that). I left and tried to avoid him from then on. However, we were TAing together so I couldn't always avoid him. When I did see him, he would find ways to touch me (laugh at a joke and punch my shoulder, put his arm around me like we were best buddies, etc.) I felt uncomfortable speaking up about it because it was only a few weeks into the first semester of classes, and I was still trying to make friends with other students (who were almost all male). This was in a physics department with very few female students, and it seemed the department had organized it so the female students were evenly distributed among the TA groups. They probably meant well by this but it meant I was the only woman around most of the time. I tried to avoid events with this person at them, including skipping class for a few weeks and avoiding social events. When I tried to get back into social events, I found myself at a table with myself and 9 male students discussing whether men and women had statistically different aptitudes for physics. They weren't amused by my suggestion that measurements of these aptitude differences perturb the system and affect the result (stereotype threat). They also weren't amused by my suggestion that the error bars are much much larger than the effect that they were interested in measuring. I gave up on making friends with other graduate students from my cohort after that. | First-year graduate student | First-year graduate student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC-Berkeley | Physics | I did not report | No formal consequences, but I think other people realized he was a jerk too (for other reasons), so he didn't make many friends either. | I tried to avoid him by skipping class and skipping department social events in my first year. I think my academic background is slightly weaker because I missed class and missed opportunities to work with other students on homework. | I had a hard time making any friends because I was busy avoiding this person. | In the long run, minimal. | Man | ||
2337 | 1/23/2018 13:14:20 | Domestic violence committed by a male graduate student in my department. Over a period of several months, this person stalked me, physically assaulted me, and threatened to kill me on and off the university's campus. When I tried to leave him, he made a suicide attempt in the department that was explicitly aimed at me, which culminated in his being forcibly removed and briefly detained in a psychiatric ward. The next day, he was back in the department, with a public sympathy campaign intended to silence me and others who knew about his history of violent and threatening behavior. The university took no action; as far as I'm aware, none of the faculty who were aware of his abuse reported it. After learning extensive details of the case, his (female) faculty patron continues to support and protect him. | Graduate student | Graduate student | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | History | In process | To be determined | The impact of violence, death threats, and emotional abuse on mental and physical health is hard to overstate. I am lucky to be alive. | Man | ||||
2338 | 1/23/2018 17:32:52 | Conversations when dropping by office or in hallway that moved into sexualized talk (reports of visits to strip clubs when traveling on university business, spending $$$ for private shows, ‘how will I explain the CC bill to my wife?’); one instance (with me) of wearing pajamas to annual Halloween staff lunch (wearing costume was optional, most 20 or so staff wore holiday sweaters if in costume at all), physically much closer to me for my comfort, at one point ‘adjusting’ my holiday sweater from behind. I move again and again, eventually just gave up and left. Several other instances of lack of respect for boundaries (physical) and sexualized comments. All these occurred to me (and more), and all began within 6 months of his arrival. Later I discovered that at least 5 other women staff have had similar experiences, and some have made formal complaints to HR. | Staff | Dean | R2 | Oakland University | Education, Human Services | Went to HR to talk about it. Questions/responses along the lines “Are you sure you’re not reading too much into this? He might just be trying to be friendly.” HR encouraged me to wait before filing a complaint to see if things got better. Only months later did I discover that others went to HR and were given the same treatment, but they insisted that HR accept a formal complaint. The only result of their formal complaint was that he was required to stop hosting a monthly happy hour in a bar near campus. | None, other that not hosting a monthly happy hour in a local bar | My job has always been enjoyable, my responsibilities suit me, and I do my job well. I like the university environment, there are a lot of opportunities to meet people. I enjoyed using campus theater/gym facilities, going to lectures/concerts, but I don't want to be on campus anymore. In the 18 months since this began (2016), the joy has gone out of my job. I try to avoid him as much as possible, but it’s almost impossible and I don’t want to live like this. I tense up every morning coming into the building where I work. | I actually thought that HR would help me. I've read a lot since and now realize that I was so innocent. I now know that this is simply not true - they're there to protect the university from scandal. Joy has gone out of my life, my family is affected. I have panic attacks, and they're are days when I just close my office door and cry. My physician is willing to give me medication for panic attacks, but I don’t want to have to take medication to survive. . | I need this job, I can’t just afford to quit and hope I’ll get another job. I’m trapped, and I know it. | Man | ||
2339 | 1/23/2018 20:01:06 | It was well known that he had had affairs with students before, the age gap between him and his wife made that apparent. We assumed that this was why the girls, they were always girls, who he invited into his inner circle were overwhelmingly queer. He was brilliant and respected and his letters of recommendation were rumored to remain unfinished until they made his wife cry. I babysat his children, did yard work, and bartended his parties. He used to take me to concerts, operas, and plays - just the two of us. He waited until just after I had graduated before he tried to kiss me, while his kids were in the other room. I ducked and made a hasty exit. He was invited to my graduation party, schmoozed with my friends and family, shook my father's hand, and then called me 6 times after he had left to ask if I had really meant it when I said 'love you' to him and his family as they left. He refused me feedback on my final paper unless we could 'go over it one on one' and sent me late night texts about how he missed me and wish we could slip away or travel to italy together. It shook me because he was my mentor throughout college, and I realized that he wasn't grooming me because he thought I was talented or capable, but because he wanted to sleep with me. | undergraduate and recent graduate | senior faculty | Small Liberal Arts College | Ithaca College | English | I confided in a female mentor of mine who tried to help me report it after he continued to text and email me after I had moved away. The school said that unless I was willing to go public with my claims and file a restraining order, even though i had spoken to three or four other current students who were willing to go on record, there was nothing they could do. I was then told that I couldn't make a claim because it was a year after I had graduated. | None. | Made me scared to work with established men in the academy and restrict my mentors to women only, of which there are still too few to choose from. | Nearly broke my intellectual esteem, made me feel like people would never value me for anything other than wanting to have sex with me. Made me distrust praise and encouragement, even when sincere and platonic. | moved across the country. delayed my application to graduate school ( he withheld a recommendation because I wouldn't "sit down one on one" with him after he had made several previous advances that I had dodged), made me scared to return to my college town, which I love. | Man | ||
2340 | 1/24/2018 23:12:47 | A professor who taught a class I was taking told me I reminded him of his wife "back when he was actually attracted to her" and later said he wished his son (who was my age) could meet me, though I "would be way out of his league." A couple other professors and my advisor would say that he mentioned/talked about me a lot; he also unexpectedly started showing up to the coffeeshop I worked at off-campus very often. | Second Year Undergrad | Associate Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | History | Didn't report it. | Man | |||||||
2341 | 1/25/2018 7:45:34 | My friend is a very modest woman. She is a bigger girl and often has a hard time finding clothes that fit appropriately particularly for her upper half. She usually wears extra large/baggy t-shirts, but when at department events/conferences she tries to dress more professionally. We were attending a multi-department function with 50+ people. My friend was wearing a women's suit with a shirt underneath. A tiny bit of her cleavage was showing (less than an inch-which is amazing given her size). She was really self conscious about it and I assured her that she looked great and that things would be fine. We walked into the event and the chair of my department immediately approached her. He said in public "That's a really low-cut shirt you have there. We don't usually see you in something that is so suggestive to men." He smiled as he said it. She turned red, smiled and froze. The chair chuckled, turned and walked away. My friend was so upset by the comment that she quickly turned and left. I left with her. She had to meet with the chair a few weeks later and he made another comment after seeing her enter his office in a baggy t-shirt. "I thought you would wear that professional low-cut number you wore the other night." She proceeded to make suggestive comments for the next few weeks every time he saw her. I watched as she changed her hours for being on campus to avoid him, missed department functions etc. Given the climate at Michigan State University and how professors, administrators, athletics is protected she didn't want to say anything, but as I watched her get further and further depressed, self conscious etc. I knew I had to do something. At the time, I was the top graduate student in the department. I had the most publications, awards, etc. I reported the incident to a professor, who reported it through the proper channel. Nothing happened to the chair. Nothing. He remained the chair until his contract was up. He is still a professor in the department. The professor I reported it to experienced retaliation. I felt horrible about this. The next semester I lost all of my funding from the department. Completely confused by this, I contacted the chair and was told "sometimes other people out perform you." When I showed him my record having more publications than any other student, more awards etc. and asked how I could drop from #1 to below #30 in less than a semester, he refused to answer and only said "our decision process is confidential." I reported this retaliation and nothing happened. I continued to experience retaliation until I graduated in various forms. | Graduate Student | Professor/Chair | Other R1 | Michigan State University | I'm too scared to even say although I have graduated | None | Loss of funding, Retaliation | Extreme anxiety due to loss of funding | Michigan State University has long had a problem with handling sexual assault/harassment. This is not new in any way. Nearly every graduate student I know has experienced some form of harassment and nothing ever happens. We all live in fear of having our funding cut, our comps failed etc. if we report anything. I am still afraid today because of the sheer reach of MSU in influence. | Man | |||
2342 | 1/25/2018 20:52:17 | This all occurred in one department over approximately two decades: 1. A fellow faculty member had an affair with a married graduate student in the department, the student's marriage subsequently ended and eventually the relationship between the student and faculty member ended. The faculty member and student openly attended school functions and faculty gatherings together. This faculty member later began a relationship with a younger faculty colleague in the department. 2. Senior faculty member had affairs with two of their students which ended two of the faculty member's marriages. 3. Senior faculty member #2 had a relationship with their student and later married them on campus with some of the faculty member's current students performing at the wedding ceremony. 4. Junior faculty member had an affair with a graduate student in the department which ended the faculty member's marriage; faculty member later married this graduate student. 5. Junior faculty member #2 (roommates with faculty member in #4 above) had a relationship with one of their students. 6. Junior faculty member #3 had relationships with two different students enrolled in their courses. 7. Two other senior faculty were rumored to have had affairs with students; I did not personally witness these but found the accounts credible. 8. The author was sexually assaulted by a female colleague following a faculty gathering. | Faculty | Faculty Colleagues | R2 | Southern Illinois University Carbondale | Performing Arts | NONE | Tenure, Promotion | Disillusionment with the field of higher education | Disillusionment with the field of higher education | a contributing factor to leave the university | Various incidents with people of different genders | ||
2343 | 1/26/2018 9:38:06 | I was taking an intensive summer course to prepare for my language exams - 9am every weekday. Apart from mansplaining English to us (he was not a native speaker - either of the language we were learning or speaking - but somehow knew more about colloquial English than we did) he was also overly familiar with the women in the class. He mentioned frequently how his now-wife had once been a favorite student. He soon started focusing more on me, being effusive about my translations (I know they were terrible, and looking back his attempt at grooming was pathetic), which simultaneously garnered the ill will of the rest of the class. In an effort to stop it I stayed home from class one day without notifying him - the next time I attended class I was dressed down in front of everyone, since he "had no idea if I was alive or dead and would it have taken that much effort to let him know I was going to be absent). I was more or less dead to him after that, which suited me fine, although I still get LinkedIn requests. | Grad student | Professor | Other R1 | Emory | We're a tiny group - I'd rather not say. | None (not reported) | None (not reported) | I'm not as proficient in that particular language as I perhaps should be. It's had a bad taste in my mouth since. | No long term effects, but it made the class miserable. | I never really thought that much about it until now...my friend in the class agreed that he was weird and it has always bothered me, but I thought I was being overly sensitive. I wish now that I had reported him. He still tries to add me on LinkedIn. | Man | ||
2344 | 1/26/2018 21:24:28 | I was disappointed that this person had let me down as someone I trusted. Explicit messages from this person for a month have resulted in me feeling isolated and uncomfortable. I feel even shameful, as I worry that I led this person on. I have been victimized previously by a professor, which I worry made me a target. This person is charming and well-established in the university. The person's significant other is on the Title IX committee, so reporting seems complicated. | Graduate student | Faculty/Mentor | R2 | Social sciences | I worry about recommendations, as this person is listed on my CV | Guilt, shame, confusion, isolation | I engaged in some back and forth flirting, but abandoned quickly because I knew how badly this could blow up and impact me as well as him. It's weird that I feel some attraction to him still, which is likely what makes me an easy target. The nature of the power differential is such that it is abusive. When I think about it, I know he was in the wrong. But superficially, I did enjoy the attention. Then I feel wrong, and you understand the cycle. I have no idea if he's ever done this before. | Man | |||||
2345 | 1/27/2018 15:40:38 | For women students of my generation (this happened in the mid 80s) and probably others that followed, he was known as *** "***." Although ***could be an informative and stimulating teacher, he was a nightmare for female students. Case in point: I lived on Capital Hill in those days, and one evening after class *** saw me waiting at the bus stop and offered me a ride in his old Volvo. I still remember our avuncular conversation, *** gabbing away about collecting license plates. When we reached Broadway, I was suddenly mashed against the door as *** accosted me in an unwelcome embrace, complete with tobacco-stained kiss. I tumbled onto the street, my dignity in tatters. At the next class, *** appeared unfazed, likely knowing I would brush the incident under the rug, which I did. (This was 1986 - there was no forum for reporting horny old profs. You simply hid behind a tree if you saw a Volvo cruising past the bus stop.) If it were only a case of horny old prof syndrome, I wouldn't be writing this. However, *** put his money where his mouth was. He announced in class it was his policy to never give female students a 4.0. And he didn't. I had a 4.0 GPA going into 19th Century British Lit, the penultimate course in my college career; I was shocked to emerge with a 3.8. (I still have a wonderful paper on Mansfield Park that Roger made me revise three times. Because apparently that's what women need to do.) Since mine was a terminal degree (MFA), I wasn't professionally affected by ***'s policy (as far as I know), but several women going for a doctorate needed a certain grade point average, and were rightly outraged by ***'s "policy." We all signed a petition and took it to the dean. Of course, nothing happened--not to *** ***, and not for many of us going forward, either. For men of ***'s generation, lovely young grad students were the coin of the realm. For women of my generation, whose lives and careers were dented if not blighted by these old goats, it was a very different story. | Graduate student working on MFA in English | Professor of required class I took | Other R1 | University of Washington, Seattle | English/Creative Writing | Ignoring petition by female students | Are you kidding? This letter was written in response to recent laudatory obit in English Matters, the dept's online newsletter | Didn't go on to have a career. What was the point? | Pissed me off at the time - delayed rage ever since | Funnily enough, I pursued a writing degree after Hollywood (*** ***, in fact) chewed me up and spit me out. Turns out, more sexist crap awaited me. | Happy to supply any info you need - will email separately | Man | |
2346 | 1/28/2018 6:29:39 | Prof X and I had a working relationship which I thought was just like the working relationship he had with other MA and PhD students. I knew that he tended to have favourites - mostly men - and I just thought that I was one of them. He would invite groups of us to his house for dinner, and we would all go to the pub together after classes. It was an intellectually stimulating and friendly environment. The fact that there were a number of others that he showed similar levels of attention to made me assume that he was just treating me in the same way. I was friendly and informal with him, and I trusted him, I even talked to him about the impact that family troubles had had on me personally. After one of the dinners, he sent me a text message saying 'you are so beautiful, what is a boy to do?' At this point I had started a relationship with one of the PhD students in the group, which he and everybody in the group knew about. We had had a lot to drink that evening, and so I just ignored the message. I thought of it as a strange but ultimately innocent comment that one of my father's friends might say after too many whiskies (Prof X is older than my father). After that the comments became more frequent. It was confusing because at this point I had known him for several years, I had worked for him, I had had coffee with him to discuss work, and I had been to many many gathering where there were lots of MA and PhD students who were all very relaxed and chatty with the faculty members. This meant that I didn't see how inappropriate some of the things he was saying were. It quickly escalated to the point where in the pub at the end of term, just before several deadlines, and I was about to start my dissertation, he grabbed my arm and confessed feelings for me in front of my partner (the PhD student), and a couple of others at the table. I pulled my arm out of his grip and said something along the lines of 'that's very nice but I don't see you in that way', and left with my partner. I thought that that would be the end of it. The next day he posted a package through my letter box containing earrings, a card, and a cd 'mixtape' he'd made for me. I was gobsmacked. I was already shocked by what had happened the night before, but thought I had made it clear that I wasn't interested in him in that way. I had arranged to go away for the holiday break that day, and left without saying anything to anybody about it. After a few days Prof X sent me a message asking if I'd received the present and if I liked it. I said 'they're nice but I'm very shocked', he replied 'What! Shocked! I thought I'd made my feelings clear! You give the most seductive looks', I replied that 'I'd never seen him as anything other than a teacher, mentor and friend'. The next day he sent an apologic message, and asked if he could come to see me to talk things though, I said 'no' and that I didn't want any contact from him. Eventually we met, and I told him I wasn't going to report it, he seemed happy about that. Following this he continued to make inappropriate comments at times, and to put cards in my inbox, but it happens much less frequently now that I am married, and I avoid him as much as possible. He refused to help me with my PhD application, and prior to the main incident, when I still went to him for advice about academic things he was actively discouraging me from following up opportunities with other faculty members (I discuss this more below). It was a very strange situation, and initially I felt sorry for him, and that it was my fault, I had, after all, been friendly with him for years, and I ignored the initial messages, but now I see that his actions were calculated and wildly inappropriate given the age difference, and the academic power imbalance, and I am, frankly, furious. | MA student. I was about to start writing my dissertation, and was considering doing a PhD. | Professor. He had been one of my lecturers for several years, while I was an undergraduate and an MA student. I had been doing bits of paid work for him (proof-reading and copy-editing), so we had a working relationship as well as him being my lecturer. I viewed him as a mentor, teacher, and friend. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Political theory | None | None | I'm not sure about this yet. I made some choices (below) as a direct result of the harassment. I ran away from academia, and missed out on funding opportunities that I might otherwise have made the PhD experience quicker and easier. It is possible / likely that if I had started a PhD right away, rather than running away from academia, I would have finished by now, and have a job. I still find it very difficult to trust male colleagues, and to think that they respect me intellectually. But I am going to complete, and I hope that I can use the experience to motivate me to do well, and to create a safer academic environment for women. | I have had multiple mental health break downs since the peak of the harrassment. I was depressed for a year immediately after, while in Italy, and then after I returned. I had a mental health crisis during my first pregnancy (2 years ago). The harrassment by Prof X was not the only thing fuelling that crisis, but it was among the events that had impacted on my sense of self-worth as an adult, and triggered old feelings of helplessness and worthlessness. | Immeasurable. It profoundly undermined my, already fragile, intellectual self-esteem. All of the MA students I knew who successfully gained PhD funding did so with the support of a lecturer/mentor who helped with the application, and guided them with regards to where and how to apply etc. Prof X was my main academic contact. I had had a couple of other academics tell me that they would be interested in supervising me if I wanted to do a PhD. I asked Prof X for his views on doing a PhD with those people, and he discouraged me. He told me I should apply for another institution in Italy, where, coincidentally, he had a arranged to spend a semester as a visiting scholar. After the event, I was so upset and my intellectual self-confidence was so low that I ran away from academia. I felt betrayed, and did not trust any of the other academics in my field in that department (all men at the time). I didn't want to work with another man, because I felt that I couldn't trust any of them, and that any positive comments or encouragement I had received from them was due to them wanting something sexual, rather than because they thought I was good. I decided to spend a year in Italy teaching English while I figured out what to do next, which did nothing to help my academic CV. Towards the end of the year in Italy I decided that I still wanted to do a PhD, and that I shouldn't let what happened set me back any further. I contacted the only person I felt I could for advice - Prof X, he became hostile when I asked him if he had any advice about how to go about applying for PhD funding, saying that I was taking advantage of his 'soft spot' for me. I ended up starting a PhD with a woman in a different department. What I didn't realise, and what would have helped to know, was that because my 2 degrees were from another department, my CV wasn't looked upon particularly favourably in that department, so I didn't get any funding. People from my original department (that of Prof X) told me that some money had come up, and my name had been mentioned as a strong candidate - but I was immediately dismissed because at that stage I was enrolled in a different department. So this meant that I started a PhD with somebody who I got on well with and trusted on a personal level, but wasn't a good academic match for me, without any funding. After it became clear to me that we were not a good match, I transferred over to my original department under the supervision of one of the people who had told me I should do a PhD while I was an MA student. I am now a self-funded part-time PhD student. I have a project, and will complete, but I cannot quantify how much what happened has set me back work, and mental health, wise. I ran away, I enrolled in the wrong department, missing funding opportunities because I just didn't undertand how funding works, and the person I asked (Prof X) implied that it was inapproriate to ask for help, I still have crippling self-doubt and feel like I shouldn't be there. This is magnified by the fact that I am self-funded, and the students with funding seem to get looked on more favourably by faculty members. I am hoping to complete soon, but being self-funded it has taken a lot longer to get the work done. | Man | |||
2347 | 1/28/2018 7:43:06 | From year 2 till year 6 of working at the University. The Dean walked into my classes unannounced, treated me with disrespect in front of my students then called me in to laugh at me. He kept repeating: "Ha! Ha! Ha! I intimidated you!" . He also said: "I want to play games with you, I want to play games with you!" He praised my teaching and says he will write positive reports for my Personal File but he never kept his promises. Instead he wrote bad reports and put them into my Personal File. Based on his reports, the university let go of me twice (after year 4 and 5) and twice, I was replaced back when the University Union examined and Independent Campus-Tenure Faculty examined my case and my file...writing to say that : "She is on tract to getting tenure!" The Dean then kept asking me: "Do you want tenure? Do you want tenure?" Another newly-tenured female professor in out Department faculty told me in confidence: "We all like you.... But, You need to kiss the ass of every single person in the department! You also need to kiss the ass of every one of your students". But I have no idea whatsover how to do that? | Untenured assistant professor | My Department Dean | Other R1 | Ph.D in Secondary Science Education | None that I know of. The Dean retire after my 6th year but I am not sure if its due to my case... | Its strange though for the Dean to retire when he did because just a few months before that he was boasting in public speeches about being promoted to be "czar" to head the combination of two departments. | Did not make tenure twice (despite Independent Campus-Tenure Faculty support of my Tenure applications) and have been out of academia for 6 years | I thought often of suicide and went though depression and several medical processes. | I am now a much stronger and confident person! I like being free of the fear, pain and horror of being in academia! I work on my communication and leadership skills as well as a substitute teacher. I travel, garden, care for my mental/physical/spiritual well being and am working at writing a book. | I will try to email you. Thank you for taking up this project. I do not see any untenured professor willing to share? I think there is too much of risks involved. Since academia is now out for me...I dare to write (but only anonymously) . I think, even now, if this happened when I try to make tenure, I will not participate. | Man | ||
2348 | 1/28/2018 15:25:10 | Sexual assault, 2001 | Undergraduate student | Tenured Faculty | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UVA | English | Not reported at the time | None at the time | [redacted] | [redacted] | [redacted] | Man | ||
2349 | 1/29/2018 7:37:24 | I was a first year PhD student. I was pregnant with my third child and due to give birth in the first few weeks of the 2nd semester. I was confident that I could stay enrolled and complete all the coursework for the 2 required courses for my program so as not to fall behind. I had the support to do this through university policy as well as the chair of my department and my dissertation advisor. I made it a point to meet in advance with the professors teaching the required courses to talk to them about how this would be managed. As a first year student, I did not know these professors. When I met with one of the professors and told him that I was pregnant but that I was confident I could keep up with the work in his class his response was: "Do you know who knocked you up or is this a bastard child?" I was completely shocked by this response, gave a nervous laugh, and repeated that I wanted to stay enrolled in his class. And his response the second time was "Okay, whatever floats your boat." This is the same professor that since then greets me with "Hello Beautiful" when I see him in the department. | 1st year PhD student | Tenured Professor | Other R1 | CUNY Graduate Center | Sociology | I didn't report it, other than relating the story to other students. So there were no institutional responses. That said, this professor is known to be inappropriate by the faculty but is considered just who he is. | n/a | n/a | Not much. Just shocked that this level of inappropriateness is acceptable in a seemingly liberal department of a liberal institution. | I am more hesitant to discuss my personal decisions with faculty. | Thanks so much for doing this! | Man | |
2350 | 1/29/2018 8:42:28 | I've been for a few years now at an institution where this behavior is endemic and everyone turns a blind eye. I was told from my very first month there by colleagues and students of multiple professors who routinely made sexual advances to students in class and out, a professor who'd raped a student, a professor who exposed himself to students, a professor who had sex with a student in his open office, on and on. I witnessed some of this behavior myself. I confided in my chair, an older woman, who told me "Men have their needs" and refused to believe me or use her social capital to intervene. I asked everyone up the ladder for help. No one would do anything. The old boys' club protected its own and junior and female faculty never seemed to survive past a couple of years. | Junior: tenure-track assistant professor | Almost all were tenured senior professors; one was an instructor on a full-time contract who was close friends with powerful professors | Regional Teaching College | humanities | Denial, silencing tactics, intimidation, threats of lawsuits | none | I'll be changing careers although I love teaching | I've been truly devastated by this and have lost faith in the law, academia, and human beings. I have panic attacks multiple times a week. It's hard to walk into the building where I work. If I have to encounter my horrific dean, it leaves me upset for a couple of days. I've tried a wide variety of medication and therapies. I think I frankly just have to get out of this environment. | I feel like my entire life has fallen apart and I can't function knowing how deeply entrenched this behavior is in academia | honestly want to kill myself | Man | ||
2351 | 1/29/2018 17:35:18 | I was ignored in meetings when I was the most knowledgeable about the content (in favor of a male new hire with less experience/education) ; inappropriate comments made about my body while pregnant; a female colleague was called a slut by our chair when she reported a job candidate had stalked her while they were in school. When issues were reported to HR/Title IX/ Dean's Office, grossly inept responses were provided (Female Dean invited me to meeting to talk about these issues and then said "do you want to hear my stories? It could get worse" and proceeded to suggest that I do not fit in at my institution. Ultimately, I was denied a promotion on the grounds of my pregnancy. | NTT | Department Chair | Other R1 | Public Health | Title IX office said they would only open a formal investigation if I authorized it (that's not compliant with HR law). Once I hired a lawyer, and quit, I was awarded a settlement. | None | I quit my job and have not found new employment. | My anxiety went through the roof. I had to be medicated. | I don't really have any interest in returning to academia b/c it's clear that institutions protect themselves. My department chair found a new job at a nearby institution. I have since found out he had problems with young female faculty at his previous institution (before he became the chair at our department). | Man | |||
2352 | 1/30/2018 17:29:39 | My postdoc adviser married his PhD student. By the time he was supervising me, he had been divorced. I was constantly accused by colleagues and other in the department of having a relationship with him any time I went to his office or had to travel with him, since he was "known to date the women he supervised." My adviser never harassed me. Not once. Nor did he ever make any advances toward me. But, my professional reputation suffered the consequences of his sexual reputation. Dating PhD students when you are professor has long lasting consequences for a large sphere of women. | Postdoc | Department Head, Immediate supervisor, Research mentor | Other Research Agency | Geosciences | None | None | I still have colleagues to this day that believe I only got ahead by sleeping with my adviser (which I never did). | Imposter syndrome, anger | I quickly moved to a new institution, despite efforts to retain me | Man | |||
2353 | 1/30/2018 17:35:05 | Full professor cornered me in the elevator of our building (with undergraduates present and watching) and told me I looked like a "sexy co-ed", not a faculty member. | Assistant Professor (un-tenured) | Department voting faculty (voted on my tenure) | Other R1 | Geosciences | None- Didn't report. This guy gets to vote on my tenure. I can't risk it. My department apparently has a history of not taking actions against such reports. I was pre-emptively advised in my first month on the job against ever filing a complain at this institution. | None. Apparently he has a "reputation" | None yet, as long as I keep silent | Anger. Discomfort. Humiliated in front of students to whom I am supposed to be an authority figure and role model. | I have modified my appearance at work. I dress "down" now. Wear less makeup, don't wear my hair in a pony tail anymore. I have felt like I had to physically alter my appearance and fashion sense to avoid future remarks. | Man | |||
2354 | 1/30/2018 17:55:37 | I was at a bar and a postdoc who was recently hired to work in my lab came to the party and while dancing in a group approached me and tried to (did*) kiss me. I politely declined and moved out of the area. I wasn't interested in being involved with anyone in lab but I felt sympathetic to that this may have been a semi-innocent mistake. I messaged this person the next day explaining I was not interested especially given we are coworkers and he apologized. We continued to work and occasionally socialize so I came to trust this person. Several months later at another party when I was leaving (sober and early) I was saying goodbye when he grabbed me, kissed me, and asked me to stay over with him. I was leaving the party early because it was three days before my masters qualifying exam, which he knew. I was immensely stressed and left crying. I felt deeply disrespected and violated by this colleague. I felt distracted from focusing on my exam (which could determine if I would stay in the program). I felt a huge burden that reporting would have consequences for him that I wasn't sure I wanted to set off so I decided to message him and set my foot down again, he apologized and said it wouldn't happen again. No issues since because I avoid him. I talked to my friends and lab mates and another woman in the lab had similar issues, we never told our advisor. | Graduate Student | Postdoc in my lab | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Princeton University | Neuroscience | Not reported so no consequences. | Did not report so no consequences. | Added stress to important moment in my career (qualifying exams) | Decreased comfort in the workplace | Increased my motivation to advocate around these issues. | Thank you everyone for sharing, it is powerful. | Man | |
2355 | 1/31/2018 12:37:53 | When I was applying for grad schools, I asked my academic advisor for advice on the process. He told me "not to worry [my] pretty little ass" and that since I was "cute", I would have no trouble getting into a grad school. I was so shocked that I just smiled and then left. I felt so ashamed that I never talked about this experience with anyone until my 3rd year in grad school when his papers were referenced during a talk. That was a shock to hear his name again. | Senior in undergrad | Faculty academic advisor and the primary investigator in a lab | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Biology | Because of the bad "advice" and lack of direction, I almost missed the deadline to take the GRE and have time to apply for grad school, so I didn't study. I was still able to get into a PhD program, however, I probably could have done better. I personally believe that a lot of the blame falls on me for this for not asking the right people/finding the right resources for information. | More wary during one-on-one meetings with male superiors | Less naive and more careful about people and situations. For the best, really. | Compared to others, this was a very mild case of sexual harassment. We as women tend to down-play these experiences, but these types of interactions are unacceptable, especially in a professional environment. | Man | ||||
2356 | 1/31/2018 22:24:05 | First incident: As an undergrad in communication studies and SFSU in the '80's my instructor encouraged me to apply for the grad program. When I did, after I took the entry exam he invited me to his home in order to let me know his decision about my acceptance in to the program. I asked him if I got in and he said he hadn't decided yet. He told me that I had taken the wrong exam and my scores were borderline. He gave me a tour of his house and in his marital bedroom showed me a picture of his son. He said, "Isn't he handsome" , "Sure" I said. "Don't I look like him?" he asked. ..I didn't know what to say, then he joked about me dating his son and then said he wasn't available, so why not date him instead? I was shocked and extremely uncomfortable I was young and nervous and didn't know what sexual harassment was but I just started getting sick to my stomach. I said, "I am sorry, I have a boyfriend and I better get going now" and I left his house flustered. Walking across the street away from his house I was terrified and shaken. I didn't know what was going on but I knew it wasn't good. I was depressed and sick to my stomach for days. Later I realized he was holding the key to my future and was indirectly asking me to go to bed with him in order to get it. I felt glad that I didn't entirely understand what was happening at the time. I hadn't heard of sexual harassment or quid per quo. But later I always wondered if I got into the program on my own merit, because he needed new students in the program, or if he was afraid I would complain? | Undergraduate Senior in college. | Admired instructor and new dean of the gradschool program. | Other Type of School | San Francisco State University | Speech and Communication Studies | I did not report it. | None | I felt like an imposter. | Depression and anger. | Oddly, It probably moved me faster into a more professional life than I would have gone otherwise. If he hadn't encouraged me to enter the program I probably would have worked in retail or something. I never really thought I was qualified to go to grad school and when I got my degree I didn't feel like I deserved it. | I am following this entry with two other instances of sexual harassment, that perpetuated this feeling of being an imposter. Througout my 20 career teaching communication studies. | Man | |
2357 | 1/31/2018 22:40:08 | Incident #2. As a part time instructor I had the wonderful opportunity to do an interdisciplinary team taught class. I had done one previously with a female co teacher but this time I was asked by an agricultural studies instructor to help create an interdisciplinary course combining small group communication with agriculture, horticulture and natural resources. They were trying to pull these three disciplines together to create an "environmental studies" program and the "learning community" course was supposed to be the centerpiece. I was mainly working with the ag guy to weave our course outlines. When we met with the two other male instructors to share with them our draft, the ag guy was telling the others how well we worked together. He said, "She is good, real good". He meant that sincerely but the natural resources instructor sitting across the table said, " I bet it is written all over the bathroom walls." There was a moment of akward laughter, then silence. I had to get up to leave the room. I was infuriated! | Part time community college instructor | Full-time community college instructor | Other Type of School | Shasta Community College | Speech and Communication Studies | I did not report. I was afraid to cause conflict when I was just beginning to gain ground. | None | Just took the wind out of my sails a little. | Humilliation, anger, frustration, discomfort working with the guy. avoidance. | Generated distrust and feeling of insecurity | I did tell my female co worker about it and asked if I should report it. She discouraged me saying it probably wouldn't make a difference. | Man | |
2358 | 1/31/2018 23:16:42 | Incident #3. When I finally got a full time teaching job at Portland Community College it turned out that my dean, who was the only person to decide if I would pass my 3 year probationary period, was sort of an "old school ladies man"? or so he thought. Every time I walked into his office he would slowly look me over from head to toe. He frequently made sexual jokes and remarks, always stood too close to me, and once came into my office and imitated some kids making out in the hallway. I told my female department chair he made me feel really uncomfortable but she said he was her friend and he was "harmless". My frustration was compounded by another female instructor who would flirt with him and even breast fed her child bare breasted in a meeting between the three of us well knowing she would turn him on and make me uncomfortable. For a while I tolerated his antics, then I began to tell him his commentary made me feel uncomfortable, eventually I got so pissed that I said to him, "I am beginning to feel sexually harassed" . I hadn't gotten to the point of reporting him but I was primed. He retired within a few months of my saying that to him. Oh! And the other thing he did was when I was first hired he let me know that there was a person on the comitte that didn't want me to be hired but that he had the final say...so he made his power over my position clear. | New full time hire. | Dean and the person who would decide if I passed my 3 year probationary period. This was in Oregon where they dont have tenure...just "continuous hire". | Other Type of School | Portland Community College | Communication Studies | I never reported it. I was afraid to cause conflict during my probationary period and he retired shortly after. | None | I became very insecure and anxious. I felt under-supported and this perpetuated the feeling of being a sort of "imposter". I became seriously depressed and contemplated quitting. When my department chair said, "Well, maybe this isn't something you should be doing." I kind of rebelled and stuck in my spurs and kept going. | As stated above. | What doesn't kill you makes you stronger? I did start to protect myself and begin to document and difficulties that came up at work ...but now I am so relieved to be retired from that institution!!! | I think people don't really understand why sexual harassment matters other than it is bad behavior. What I came to realize is that throughout my career I have been sexualized by men in power over my position. This wielding of power always made me feel a sort of lack of agency for my own destiny. There was always this sense that "You don't really belong here, you belong in my bed" which contributed to this haunting feeling that I was an imposter in my profession. There were other factors that lead to me feeling that way ...but these incidents that punctuated my twenty year career as a teacher were like startling alarms going off at regular intervals questioning me or reminding me that my self doubts might just be true. | Man | |
2359 | 2/1/2018 11:31:25 | One by one, students were capriciously kicked out of this prof's class & clinic for no reason at all, not allowed to return. We had to sit in other labs & work on other work bc we were barred from the class. We also had to purchase commercial Implant classes to learn. He would publicly berate, demean, yell at us. Pres & Dean never disciplined him & allowed him to run all over us while they took our $$$$. He also taught & passed down horrendous behavior. | DDS, PostDoc Prosthodontics Program | Prof Prosthodontics Board-Certified | Other R1 | University of Pittsburgh | Dentistry - Prosthodontics | Nothing! Until class-action Title IX lawsuit was filed. It had to come to a class-action lawsuit for them to do anything. Upper administrators, including Title IX should have been sanctioned - publicly. Prof should be fired. No question. | Believe he is still employed by Pitt. He does not get to kick students out of class anymore. | I dont believe many were Board-Certified at end of program bc they could not get the cases. Not many pple even got their Masters. | Depressed for a long time. | Doing well now. No thanks to Prof Asshole. Makes pple less likely to report miscoduct bc we saw the dental school administrators allow it to go on. | Man | ||
2360 | 2/1/2018 12:17:17 | I was forced to lay on a bed while my attacker pleasured herself on top of me until she had finished. | Graduate Student. | Visiting Assistant Professor. | Other R1 | Michigan State University. | English. | I was not believed and was shunned. My attacker was believed over me. | None. | My academic career ended. | Thoughts of suicide. | I have been unable to pursue a career. | Woman | ||
2361 | 2/1/2018 13:01:37 | a senior administrator made inappropriate comments about my appearance, gender, and decision to take parental leave that made me very uncomfortable | junior non-TT faculty member | associate dean | Other Type of School | education | none, I didn't report it | none | none per se | felt weird for a long time | made me decide that i was going to have to keep my mouth shut about this kind of stuff, sadly | I'm male | Woman | ||
2362 | 2/2/2018 8:40:58 | A colleague, on the first day of my job, showed me texts with another male colleague discussing me. In the conversation, they discussed my attractiveness, and discussed that X (colleague who was showing me his phone) should date me. In it, they acknowledge I am married and therefore "off limits," but never that this is inappropriate. These interactions continued, and I felt unsure what to do because it was never a quid pro quo situation, but one that was clearly meant to make me feel uncomfortable. On the last day of that academic year, upon entering this colleague's group office, he asked, "Why do you always wear shirts that make me look at your tits?" I left in shock. The colleague apologized at the opening of the following school year. | first year tenure track professor | second year tenure track professor | Other Type of School | English | n/a | None. I did not report it; everyone still thinks he's a great guy. | I began to avoid meetings, formal and informal, where he'd be. I eventually left for another job, where I took a significant pay cut, in part because he was in my same discipline and it was impossible for me to avoid having to work closely with him. | I spent that entire summer stressed and terrified of going back to school in the fall. I lost sleep, doubted myself, and got to the point where I was constantly second guessing my clothes, as if I'd deserved this comment. | I began over on the TT, losing three years progress in my career. I moved to a new city for a new job. | This was at a community college; I don't see a category for this, but recommend one be added. | Man | ||
2363 | 2/2/2018 19:16:27 | Professor put his hands in my pants while at a social gathering | Doctoral student | Professor and former supervisor | Other R1 | Michigan State | Business | Did not report | Significant stress and other mental health issues | The incident happened just a few weeks before I took comprehensive exams so I did not report out of fear for how it would be perceived given the timing... would anyone believe me? would anyone think I was trying to get the department to take it easy on me during comps? who would I report it to?? There was no clear, trustworthy source in this department. | Man | ||||
2364 | 2/2/2018 21:07:53 | When I met with the chair from my department in December 2013 he was very nice to begin with. After his admin left for the day from outside his office we made progress on our work. I said it was very long day and neck hurt so then he started to massage neck. At first I thought is was nice then he kept going too long and it was starting to make me squick. When I heard him sniffing my hair I felt nausea with panic. His hands came down on on my chest and tried to touch my breasts. I had to pretend phone rang and then ran out. He told me I had to come back later, but I said I was sick and never returned. | Undergraduate in major | Department chair of CS | Elite Institution/Ivy League | U.C. Berkeley | Computer Science | Did not report because of fear. | He got away with it. | I had to drop from project but I was still possible to graduate. | Always scared to be alone with men. | Not sure. | Please do not identify me. I am now at good job. | Man | |
2365 | 2/3/2018 2:49:35 | On of my good school professors always commented on my appearance if I dressed up. He regularly hit on female students and made them feel uncomfortable. He clearly favored students he considered more attractive allowing them more opportunities to advance their scholarship. The worst part wa s how he treated my best friend. He could often ask her to do his work for him given that he was her advisor and had a lot of power over her career and research trajectory. He/would her into his office in private and use that as an opportunity to ask her to be physically intimate with him or touch her or invade her personal space inappropriately. Of all the female grad students, he only took it that far with her and while at this point it is pure speculation on my part, it seemed he was taking advantage of the fact that she was quiet and reserved and infrequently socialized with others in her cohort. The worst part about this is that others, who in similar situations would speak us agains such transgressions dismissed his behavior as simply a product of his upbringing in a different country combined with a bit of senility as he was close to retiring. These same students who turned a blind eye to this situation are now "advocates" for calling out sexual harrassers in academia and successful in their careers while the victim chose to leave and start all over again in a very different career path. | Graduate student | Tenured Full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Anthropology | None, but then no one would risk making formal charges | Retirement and a life time achievement award | Recognizing that I cannot trust anyone to support me if I ever needed to report a harasser in academia. | Mostly I'm frustrated that this man is venerated and his victims' experiences and feelings are further invalidated. | I veered away from the specific area of focus so as not to interact with that professor or those who continued to support him. | Man | |||
2366 | 2/3/2018 20:33:13 | I was a 21-year-old almost-grad-student. My 60-ish professor sent me to present to the most prestigious international gathering in my field on behalf of our research institute, then stopped by my hotel room late at night. Fortunately, I was out. Much later, when I was completing my dissertation under his direction, he asked me to have dinner with him, then later kissed me and threw me against his office door while groping my chest. In a separate incident, he grabbed my hand and started sucking on my fingers before I retracted them, horrified. | His employee and undergraduate/graduate student | My boss and dissertation advisor (and also my husband’s) | Other R1 | University of California Riverside | Sociology | None (I didn’t report) | I heard he was required to attend a sexual harassment course for harassing another woman. | I have always suspected that not sleeping with him meant that I never published with him, as did other female graduate students he had sexual relationships with. | I felt diminished and less qualified for years | I did not publish for a decade after the abuse—he belittled my work at every step of the way. | Man | ||
2367 | 2/4/2018 7:37:56 | (1) About a decade and a half ago a number of female students started to come to my office asking how to make sense of the fact that two of our male faculty students (one full, another assistant TT), were dating graduate students. I was one of a handful of women tenured in my department. I brought up the incident with my chair and he appointed me, together with two other colleagues (both of them my seniors, one male and one female), to deal with this. we had meetings with grad students, discussions, meetings. another female grad. student came to me confidentially to complain about another male senior faculty member dating graduate students. i made a big stink about it in the department and as a result i was identified as a bully, a McCarthy-like figure, and someone to avoid. One single person, another woman full professor (she was not on the committee appointed to deal with this) defended me publicly. other women kept coming into my office and virtually holding my hand as to how awful it was that i had to deal with this. (2) a prospective female faculty member was repeatedly disrespected by senior faculty members, who refused to refer to this candidate as "Dr." and instead calling her "Ms." in the documentation forwarded to the department and discussions in the department. The other candidates, all of whom were male, were just "Dr." One senior male faculty member insinuated in this and other ways that were not about the substance of her work that this person was not qualified for a position in our department. I called him on it in a department meeting, he stopped, but there was no other senior colleague in the department who stood up for this person publicly. I again got some private "thank you's", but that was the end of the discussion. (3) a senior female colleague has told female students directly that if they get pregnant, they need to have an abortion. she also let another male senior colleague know that she considered no longer writing letters for a female grad student when that person had a child. | associate/full professor | department colleagues, male and female, same rank and senior to me | Other R1 | humanities | none; for incidents 1 and 2, they happened before we had clear TIX policies about sexual harassment and "responsible employee" obligations to report. (3) has happened since that policy has been put in place, but the person has not been reported, i suspect because students feel vulnerable to say anything when they depend on this person for letters of recommendations in a dwindling job market. and i can't speculate about the reasons for not reporting on the part of the male senior colleague who has heard the story from the harasser. | (1) got to have fewer service responsibilities in the department; (2) nothing; (3) nothing. | it is difficult to keep a positive attitude about a toxic environment. | thank you for providing this space for people to offload and also for prospective students to become more aware of the toxicity of work in academia. It is widespread, but i want to also say that there are people and places that can be very collegial, provide intellectual and professional support, and have a healthy feminist attitude about sexual harassment. The more transparency a place shows about such issues (discussing their own problems in public fashion, keeping a well-staffed office for women's affairs for both faculty and students, making a point to learn from past mistakes, having a campus mentoring program for female students and faculty), the better your chances as a graduate student and junior faculty that you will not be harassed. I am sorry I do not name my own institution and discipline. I fear for female grad students here and I have had enough marginalization in my own unit. | male (1 and 2) and female (3) | ||||
2368 | 2/4/2018 10:52:59 | I was in my second year of my PhD program and I was raped by the postdoc in my lab. We were off-campus at the time of the incident. I became pregnant as a result, and terminated the pregnancy. When the postdoc learned this he attempted to physically assault me at a lab get-together, but was prevented from doing so when two lab technicians physically restrained him so that I could leave. The postdoc began stalking me - waiting outside my apartment, hacking into my email, and sabotaging my lab work. | 2nd year PhD student | Postdoc in the same lab | Other R1 | MSU Bozeman | Immunology & Infectious Diseases | I took the incident to my advisor as well as the department PhD advisor, and was able to switch labs - but still had to work in the same building. I was told that I should not take the incident outside of the department. | None | I dropped out of my PhD program | I had a nervous breakdown, but have since recovered and changed careers. The incident happened long enough ago that I've been able to largely repress the incident. | I completely changed trajectories. While I am happy and confident in my current career, I do wish I had more aggressively advocated for myself at the University level, and not kept things within my department. | Man | ||
2369 | 2/4/2018 16:36:52 | A drunk professor when asked how does he selects applications answered, "based on their pictures. They have to be attractive enough to be smart." | Intern | Associate professor | Other Type of School | Neuroscience | Man | ||||||||
2370 | 2/4/2018 17:23:07 | A senior male professor invited a new colleague (also a woman) and me out to dinner shortly after we started our new jobs as assistant professors at the university. Opening line of discussion? An extended discourse on the senior woman in the department's breasts. Shortly after, a male grad student gently "let me know" that I was a topic of similar commentary at said professor's "poker nights" (which consisted of the professor and the department's male grad students.) The grad student wanted me to "watch out," though I was at a loss as to what to do as the most junior member of the department. The chair at the time was utterly spineless and I knew that talking to him would be pointless. | Assistant Professor | He was a full professor. I was a new assistant professor. | Other R1 | History | None. Our chair at the time was spineless and we knew that it wouldn't be worth the effort. It would simply spur more discussion, probably with the participation of the chair. | He's a serial pig and sociopath and has been "written up" any number of times, though I don't know what that means. He has been banned from most meaningful committee work, which simply means he has more time to work on his research. Apparently he has not been awarded the raises that his non-harassing peers have, which he complains about constantly. | I'm constantly wondering whether my personal life is a subject of discussion or mockery among my students. I have tenure now and don't know whether this sort of commentary has continued but, if I had proof, I would no longer be afraid to confront him. | His continued presence in the department and the persistent rumors about his misogyny and poor behavior enrage me. | None. | Man | |||
2371 | 2/4/2018 18:52:44 | A senior colleague (not in the same exact field but in an interdisciplinary group that meant we saw quite a bit of each other) tried to kiss and caress me after a team social event. I explained that I was not interested and he apologized - I was happy to put this down to genuine misreading of signals and agreed that I hoped to continue a cordial professional relationship and forget this had happened. But then he started to behave oddly, sending me letters and gifts, telling me off privately if I appeared nervous in his presence because people might think something strange was going on (as though I should be complicit in covering it up). He then made another pass at me and said that because I had continued being 'friendly' at subject-events he assumed I was interested. He made me feel that I had been leading him on, that I'd done something wrong, I began to feel very stressed and uncomfortable in my workplace, always worried I might bump into him. The following year I found out that the same person had harassed a friend of mine who had got a fixed-term job at the same institution. A few years after that (after I had left) I heard from another female acquaintance who worked there after me that he had also harassed her. She was reluctant to report it as she was leaving academia anyway - I told her the back-story, but I don't know what she decided to do in the end. | Post-doctoral fellow | Senior academic with a permanent job. I was afraid he might be on a future job panel, as I hoped to apply for a permanent job in that institution the following year, and was very worried about the risk confronting him would have on my career prospects. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | I would rather not say, but in the Humanities | I spoke to a senior administrator, who was supportive. At the time I was very unsure and nervous about reporting it, and wasn't asking for any formal action anyway. After my friend reported the second incident, the administrator asked my position to pass my report further up to a more senior person who would speak to the harasser directly. This may have happened, but it didn't have any consequences and (judging by the third woman's story) had no effect on his subsequent behaviour. | I believe he had a talking-to by his line-manager. However, he is still in the same post, and nothing was made public. I gather from mutual friends that his behaviour is widely known in the institution, but because of lack of formal action, it's often dismissed as gossip and rumours. | It was a source of stress in deciding whether to apply for a job in the institution he taught in, knowing that we would still be working in close proximity. It also took up a lot of time and mental energy that I could have spent on more productive things. | At the time it was extremely stressful. I felt uncomfortable in my workplace and anxious about going in, nervous about leaving my office to go into common spaces, always worried about how I would react if I encountered him. I felt inexplicably guilty and tainted, as though what had happened was my fault and I had somehow caused it. It made it harder to enjoy what had previously been a supportive and welcoming environment, which was sad because I had really enjoyed working there and had been doing my best to be collegial. | I don't think it's had a long term effect on my trajectory, though it no doubt did affect my feelings towards (and therefore chances of getting a job in) that institution. Given my partner works in the same field as me, and has a job in the city the institution is based in (and where I also still live), this has limited my career options. However, I am lucky that the harasser works in a different sub-discipline, which means that my contact with him now is non-existent, and I don't need to worry about meeting him at conferences etc. It would have been much worse if it had been in the same discipline. | I'm lucky that what happened to me was relatively mild, and I have put it behind me, and it hasn't significantly affected my life or career. But I wonder what other women have also been harassed by the same person (given that all 3 of the young women I was personal friends with were). I understand why people don't want to report harassment (and not much happened when I did), because if you're in a fixed-term job you don't want to be a trouble-maker, and in a small field you may have to work with the person and his friends later. It makes me angry that then what happens is that when our experiences are known about, they get dismissed as 'gossip-mongering', because people either don't feel safe enough to make a formal complaint, or because the institution does nothing which makes it look as though the complaint had no merit. | Man | ||
2372 | 2/4/2018 20:20:41 | In 1969 as a 17 year old beginning Music student at University of Queensland I was targeted for grooming and sexual abuse in the organ loft of St John’s Cathedral. I began complaining in 1997, to the university, the police, and the church where the organ loft was situated. Four complaints to the police have been rejected. In 2014, my lawyer was successful in organizing a mediation with the church and I received a modest settlement. But the late Professor Freda Briggs warned me I would have more trouble with the University of Queensland, and this has proven to be the case. It is now a year since, in the glare of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (I was a child of 17 at the time of the abuse), the University finally agreed to investigate. But they are dragging their heels. In 2002 an article appeared in the media following comments former Archbishop Hollingworth made in relation to my case. The article was seen by the son of a 12 year old victim of the same man, who died after disclosing her abuse to her son. His vocation as a priest, marriage, and health, have been destroyed by the Church because he made a respectful approach to tell his mother’s story. In addition, he is the nephew of the former Chancellor of the University, with whom he is furious for the cover up of his mother’s case. His mother’s abuse occurred in the 1950s. My abuser was appointed a Lecturer in Organ in the 60s. Despite my constant complaints, and the severity of the abuse, I am not hopeful of a resolution. My story is on the website SNAPAustralia. My abuser has been decorated by the Queen with an OBE, the Archbishop of Canterbury with the title Cantuar, and has an honorary doctorate in Music conferred by the University of Queensland. I have nothing and do not fear a defamation suit. My abuser is named on the SNAPAustralia website in ‘Sylvia’s Story’. I will not rest until he is brought to justice, although the abuse occurred so long ago. It has ruined my life, made it impossible for me to have the career in music that I practised so many hours to achieve, and led to an unwise and turbulent marriage. I can’t understand why he is still being protected. I have several documents supporting my story and would be happy to share them. [Karen: please email me at gettenure@gmail.com if you would like to share anything at all, completely confidentially to me, about this story. I'm so very sorry this happened to you]. | undergraduate | Lecturer | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | University of Queensland, Anglican Church | Music | Non-existent for 21 years, barely answering now. | None as far as I know | I lost my career | It has caused severe, life-long depression and PTSD | It caused me to make an unwise marriage and to believe I was mentally ill. | One of the instances of abuse was gaslighting. He told me he could "detect my frigidity in my playing". My music was very important to me. | Man | |
2373 | 2/4/2018 22:37:35 | One of the senior staff in our group, a Senior Lecturer, had sex with his PhD student and then employed her in the group. This was against the staff Code of Conduct (clearly!) and this was discussed and joked about my other males in the group, ie you know how to get ahead ladies etc. It was also revealed by other men in the group that this was not the first time the staff member had done this, and that one of his female PhD students had transferred to another faculty after she refused his advances and he stopped helping her. | Junior academic | One of the leaders of the research group. | Other R1 | Queensland University of Technology (Australia) | Information Science | Despite numerous women in the group complaining about this behaviour, that the senior researcher had acted unethically we were told by the Discipline Leader and Head of School that there was nothing they could do. That it 'probably wasn't great' that he had sex with his PhD student and that they 'knew he had done it before' but he's 'actually a good bloke' and just to stay away from him, delivered while smirking. They did not care that his behaviour and continued presence was unsettling for women in the group. | None! He got promoted as he brought in funding. | I left the area as the management of the area did not care about this behaviour, and treated it as part of the boys club way of doing things. 3 women left the group and the managers were shocked, they are now actively recruiting women to the area and wondering why nobody wants to work there. | I was really just very angry and frustrated that this could continue and I did not want to work in such a misogynistic environment. | I am no longer an academic. | Man | ||
2374 | 2/6/2018 11:06:54 | Male faculty member consistently harassed female students. When I was a first year grad student, pressured me into a number of sexualized situations and eventually sex (the sex was consensual, but with many elements of coercion and imbalance of power). | Graduate Student | Faculty Member | Other R1 | Georgia Tech | Computer Science | I was too embarrassed to report it or pursue. | None. | None, once I recovered from my drug abuse. | Fucked me up for 2 years, sent me into a cycle of drug abuse until I got into rehab in my 4th year in grad school. | None, once I recovered from my drug abuse. | Man | ||
2375 | 2/6/2018 11:47:19 | Male Chair of the Writing Program gave cocaine to and forcibly made out with 3 female students at a local bar where students were celebrating their Senior Reading. | Lowest rank adjunct, 3 students in question were undergrad juniors. | Chair or Program | Small Liberal Arts College | Pratt Institute | Perpetrator was able to resign rather than get fired and is still working in academia in a position of leadership. Must have been recommended/vouched for by colleagues to get new job. | None? Was given option to resign and save his reputation | Not my assault | Name of perpetrator is *** ***, who after leaving Pratt Institute was hired by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York as the Associate Director of the Leon Levy Center of Biography. Continues to work at CUNY. | Man | ||||
2376 | 2/6/2018 15:01:32 | I am a Ph.D. student and met a professor from another university in my country at the social evening of an international conference. I read my name on my badge and told me that he knows me. I thought that he remembers that the was the session chair of a talk I gave a year earlier. But he told me, that he knows me because he felt in love with me more than twenty years ago (I would have been 8 years old). That was an akward situation for me. Luckily, one of my colleagues saved me. | Ph.D. student | Full professorship | HCI | Man | |||||||||
2377 | 2/7/2018 8:22:48 | Circa 2000-2002: A graduate TA put me on the bar at the meeting place of the German Stammtisch club, and inserted his fingers into my vagina. The bar was closing, I was somewhat inebriated, and yet I don't understand how he got away with this. There were other students there; they seemed to think it was funny. | Undergraduate | Graduate TA | Other R1 | University of Cincinnati | German minor | I didn't report | None | I stopped going to Stammtisch, which had been, up to that point, a great way to socialize and practice German. | I felt ashamed, used. I became less outgoing. I know what it feels like to be prey. | I later got a scholarship and spent a year in a German-speaking nation, so I did okay. | Man | ||
2378 | 2/7/2018 8:53:10 | I was hired to work as a post-doc with the head of the department. Several people had warned me against working with her, but I have worked with difficult people before so I brushed their warnings off. She asked me pointed questions about my husband and child during the interview, and when I clearly reacted like that was inappropriate, she laughed and said, "Oh, I know I'm not supposed to ask, but we have *such* a family-friendly atmosphere here that I just want to let you know that you'd be welcome." When I showed up for work, visibly pregnant, she looked me up and down slowly and scowled, and began to "talk around me", not to me. When I met with her that week to discuss work goals, she told me I was "stupid and crazy" for being pregnant as a post-doc, and that she "wouldn't have hired me if she had known that I was pregnant". She suggested that I should have aborted once I got the job with her, so I could focus on my career. Hilariously, she recounted tales of how she SCUBA-dived when she was a pregnant post-doc, basically saying that she could accomplish research when she was pregnant, but that I wouldn't be capable at doing so. She also gave me unwanted advice, such as getting a C-section was preferable so that I wouldn't wreck myself "down there". She gave me this particular advice several times, including on the day I gave birth. She purposefully put up roadblocks to my research (switching goals capriciously), and made it difficult for me to work on my project, and then tried to pin my difficulties on me. I had filed a complaint with HR after that first meeting, because I could sense that she was trying to find ways to fire me. Shortly before I filed, there was another complaint by a staffer in the department filed against my boss for creating a hostile work environment, unrelated to my situation. | Post-Doctoral Researcher | Tenured, Director of Research Center | R2 | The Lake Erie Center at the The University of Toledo | Natural Resources/Genetics | They appeared to (slowly) be making moves to fire her. She found a job on the west coast and left before the university enacted termination. | She had to set up a new lab elsewhere, and she lost a few students in the process, but apparently she's doing fine. | My name won't be on the papers of the research that I performed, because she won't communicate with me. She's done this to previous students and post-docs when she decided she didn't like enough to include them on their own author lines. | I am reluctant to trust other researchers, especially if they are "too nice" when I first meet them. | Less publications = lower salary, less options for the time being. | Woman | ||
2379 | 2/7/2018 16:03:17 | In the early 2010s, my unit unwittingly hired someone into a mentoring and teaching position who had been charged with illegal, sexually-based activities at their previous institution (a very large, well-known state university). I worked alongside this person for several years without ever being informed they were potentially dangerous or not to be trusted. I was later promoted to a midlevel leadership role that ultimately required that I terminate his contract, but I was not permitted to tell him that his dishonesty in disclosing his legal issues/sexual exploitation was why he was not renewed. The fact that a proper background check was not done when this person was hired still fills me with rage, as does the fact that I was not permitted to be clear about why the contract was terminated. This person worked closely with students on a daily basis, sometimes behind closed doors, and while nothing untoward happened to me personally, it was a gross breach of trust for the university to ever make this hire to begin with. | Full-time non-tenured faculty; early career | Lateral coworker, then later employee | R2 | Termination of employee | This person--last I was aware--worked at an out-of-state community college | Nothing negative happened to me as a result, but I was not directly harassed. | Complete disillusionment, shock, frustration, anger. I sought help with anxiety. | I left the institution four years later, and this incident was partially responsible for my relocation to another university. | Man | ||||
2380 | 2/7/2018 19:24:39 | Verbally harassed and verbally assaulted during remote field work. Followed by bullying in the field and finishing thesis - degrading ability, etc and speaking out against my future advancement to PhD in the program | MS student (23 years old) | Full Professor and co-advisor | Other R1 | Earth Science | Spoke with graduate advisor who told me that what happened was wrong, that he would support me filing a complaint against the faculty member but that it would probably ruin my chance of ever advancing in the field. He recommended and then supported my transition to a different advisor for my PhD | None | Lost a year of funding, had to change sub-fields in the middle of graduate school, avoided disciplinary meetings, part of MS thesis that was publishable was never published by me and picked up by advisor and post-doc to be later published by them. | Panic attacks required counseling. Deeply embedded doubt into my scientific ability. For years have wondered if it was correct, that I wasn't good enough. | I cannot dissect this from career and mental health at this point. But it has been nearly two decades and I still think about it. He is now a fellow of a major scientific academic society and a distinguished professor at his current institution. I resent the smirking smile of success on his bio pictures. | Man | |||
2381 | 2/7/2018 19:56:40 | After having a few glasses of wine, I slept over at the apartment of a fellow graduate student/classmate with whom I was friends and had previously had consensual sex on a few occasions. We slept in the same bed, but when he asked if I wanted to fool around I said no, that it wasn't a good idea. I woke up later that night to him groping me and trying to initiate sex by touching my butt, thighs, and breasts through my clothes, but I pretended to be asleep. I don't know why I kept spending time with him, but I did, and on several other occasions the same thing happened, with one time him successfully coercing me into having sex with him at 3AM. these instances were always after drinks and after we had been asleep for a while. he had, in the past, successfully pressured me in "joking" ways to have sex with him, always framing it as being really turned-on by me, and, since we did sleep together sometimes, I was always unsure of the validity of my discomfort. now that we are no longer sleeping together or spending time together, he doesn't speak to me and I have anxiety about seeing him around campus and in classroom settings. it has caused me emotional distress that has impacted my work and my mood generally, and I am always feeling guilty as I'm afraid this (or worse) will happen to someone else. | graduate student, 1st year | graduate student, ABD | Elite Institution/Ivy League | [Redacted] | extreme psychological distress, anxiety attacks once I realized that what had happened wasn't completely consensual | Man | |||||||
2382 | 2/8/2018 10:34:18 | A powerful male coworker continuously objectified women, made lewd comments, and made some of my colleagues uncomfortable. In a meeting, he kissed a woman who did not seem troubled by the incident; however I was troubled by it. This was a 'death by a thousand paper cuts' situation, in which male colleagues constantly asked women to 'take notes' or 'scribe', made inappropriate suggestions regarding hiring practices for pregnant women, and made jokes about birth control. the faculty member in question made comments that made a coworker so uncomfortable that she told her supervisors, who should've reported the incident but did not. Instead they told her she would not have to be in the same room with him and could skip any meetings at which he was present. One of the comments he made to her was that her boots made her look like a dominatrix. | Postdoctoral fellow | My supervisor | Other R1 | None. | None. | I was offered a position at this institution, but I took a job at another institution. There were a number of factors in my decision to take a job that would pay less for more work, but the gender dynamics made a strong impact. | I don't know. | I don't know. | Man | ||||
2383 | 2/8/2018 11:15:32 | A Full Professor announced on many occasions that he does or wears things because he heard through the grapevine that when a person does or wear those things, "She is on her back with her knees behind her ears." | Assistant Professor | Full Professor | Other R1 | Sociology | None | None | Continued harassment | Questioning myself constantly | My academic trajectory slowed on account of numerous examples like this | Man | |||
2384 | 2/8/2018 11:20:56 | A Full professor in my department sent me several e-mails during my tenure year asking me to go out with him and expressing that there was chemistry between us. He would show up at every coffee house I tried to sit down in and do work, so I finally started working at home. I went to other full professors to tell them what was happening, and their responses were more disheartening than the harassment. "It's not harassment unless you say, 'No.'" -Male Full Professor. "Save those e-mails. They'll get you promoted to Full some day." -Female Full Professor "Why doesn't this stuff happen to me?" -Female Full Professor "Well, don't feel special. He is chasing after my neighbor, too." -Female Full Professor | Assistant Professor (promotion year) | Other R1 | Sociology | None | None | Slowed me down and made Full Professors treat me like I wasn't a 'team player' -- I could feel the distrust moving forward from Professors I tried to get advice from and confide in | Continually questioning myself and not being able to trust colleagues | Trajectory slowed | Man | ||||
2385 | 2/8/2018 11:24:30 | A colleague who always said inappropriate things while in the Department but is now retired and has a service dog was at our professional meetings. At the meeting, his service dog started sniffing my upper thigh. The retired professor laughed and said, "You can tell I trained him." | Associate Professor | Emeritus Professor | Other R1 | Sociology | None | None - retired | It slows one down to replay the constant barrage of inappropriateness | Just made me feel gross | Man | ||||
2386 | 2/9/2018 15:03:49 | At a professional conference I was presenting research on a panel with 2 other women from my program. The senior tenured male professor who served as adviser to most of us (and taught/graded all of us) referred to us as "his harem" in front of the room. It was treated as a joke with the professor and several senior people in our field laughing. | doctoral student | Senior faculty, tenured, adviser. | Other R1 | Sociology | None | None | Embarrassment, feeling degraded, feeling it was necessary to legitimate the "joke" by laughing and not making a fuss. | Man | |||||
2387 | 2/9/2018 16:01:08 | I presented an idea for an article to two colleagues; one (who also often made demeaning comments about my appearance, my clothes) tried to argue that my idea was unoriginal. When I defended my argument, he said my idea "made his balls shrink up." | Adjunct Professor | Associate Professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Philosophy | None | None | It discouraged me from pursuing the idea, writing, publishing about it. | Diminished my self-confidence greatly. I never felt comfortable or confident in the department. | I was too discouraged to pursue the work; I didn't ever become a full-time professor. I let myself become intimidated. I also asked my husband (another professor) several times to speak up for me, and he chose not to. | thank you so much for doing this!! | Man | ||
2388 | 2/11/2018 9:51:57 | Long-standing history of predatory behaviour by male TAs (mostly Master's students) toward fellow MA students and undergraduate students in their classes. This behaviour likely based on their "superiority", playing on insecurities of junior colleagues and students. TAs dated undergraduate students in their seminars. Professors were informed and there were no consequences. Brock University is a toxic work environment with unhappy scholars who behave poorly and get no reprimand. | Undergraduate student | Teacher | Other R1 | Brock University | FILM STUDIES | none | none, perpetrator continues to work at this institution, likely continuing this pattern of behaviour | Negatively impacted my scholastic performance, especially when this individual was my TA | Directly impacted my already increasing anxiety and depression issues. | Continued my education elsewhere. | Man | ||
2389 | 2/11/2018 9:54:31 | The Alumni Director (2013) also known as the "Fake News Clown" of Loyola College, a Jesuit Institution was trying hard to embezzle USD 160,000 from the Alumni fund. The only person between him and the money was the Alumni Coordinator (she) and he tried his best before she alerted the management and his signatory powers were removed. Her complaint on this matter is on the college record. The individual in question is also a repeat offender with several sexual harassment complaints and other complaints of misconduct against his name. Not able to withstand the humiliation he subjected the Alumni Coordinator to sexual harassment at work, criminal intimidation and did not spare her family members too. Needing to mobilize support to retaliate against her, he hatched a plan with the help of the following individuals (names with-held) Rector of Loyola College (Current) Profile: Chain Smoker, Self confessed Alcoholic and a pathological liar. http://goodjesuitbadjesuit.blogspot.in/2007/09/jesuits-and-juice.html --------------------- Then Principal of Loyola College (Former Principal Now) He was sacked and demoted to an ultra-ordinary staff in another institution. --------------------- Treasurer of the Institution (Currently - Alumni Director of Loyola College) --------------------- Admission Officer - Loyola College The above individuals hired two disgraced alumnis, one a bankrupt individual who would do anything for money and another a white collar criminal who was a college correspondent which went defunct and is currently facing corruption charges to harass the honest woman worker. As fate would have it, there were other surprises in store for these criminals who were duly left to face their karma. The Alumni Coordinator has since not resigned nor has been legally terminated from her job, but has filed a writ petition in court and is awaiting legal hearing. | Alumni | Alumni Director | Small Liberal Arts College | Loyola College | Zero | He was removed from the following posts - Alumni Director, Loyola College. - Secretary & Correspondent, Loyola College of Education - Director of ICRDCE But was given a promotion as Co-ordinator: Higher Education. | The victim has not legally resigned nor legally terminated from her job, but has filed a writ petition in court and is awaiting legal hearing. | Suffered severe stress related illness and was hospitalized for a while. | Jesuits who are supposed to be pioneers in higher education have fallen prey to money, power, position, women, forgetting the principles of their vows i.e poverty, chastity and obedience. They have totally forgotten God and Jesus the patron of the Jesuit Society, now they are loyal disciples of Satan. While discipline is the bedrock of any educational institution, intimidation and threats to alumni's and sincere staff's is a despicable practice. | It is every staff and alumni’s duty to speak out when power hungry individuals at the helm of the institution tamper with the rule of law to keep themselves in power. Protest is necessary to open up more democratic spaces. Freedom of expression in Loyola College is under duress. The authorities are clearly not in favor of the rights of free speech and expression. | Man | ||
2390 | 2/11/2018 10:18:26 | Profile Details of College Correspondent of Kalsar Engineering College Sexually Harasses his own college student in Kalsar Engineering College which was flashed in news channels. AICTE serves notice on 21 engineering colleges to stop admitting students, till further communication http://prayatna.typepad.com/education/2004/06/aicte_serves_no.html AICTE clears transfer of GGR, Kalsar college students http://www.thehindu.com/2003/07/30/stories/2003073004430500.htm Fakes the death of his Sister and gets a loan from State Bank of India and eventually gets caught http://indiankanoon.org/doc/1527066/ | Student | He faces several criminal charges including bank frauds and cheating cases. While he continues to roam freely, I hope the law catches up to him and justice be served. | Regional Teaching College | Kalsar College | Student | None | The institution remains closed till date. | I left without finishing my degree. Transferred to another college and started over. | Detrimental | While It took me sometime to regain my interest for my field, and I have a skewed opinion on men with especially the ones with doctorates. | Man | ||
2391 | 2/11/2018 10:19:57 | **ADDENDUM TO PREVIOUS POST FOR CLARITY** Person in question hung out with undergraduate students outside of class (usually in bars). This behaviour was endorsed/joined in on by a tenured faculty member (male). Really bad boys club mentality, shrugged off by other members of faculty. As an impressionable, under-experienced undergrad I thought this was really cool. However, it did negatively impact my experience at the school, especially when this person was my TA. In hindsight I see how the individual was directly targeting young women (I am ten years his junior) because he felt superior to them. Should not be working in this department or any academic institution (he is now a PhD student). | Undergraduate Student | Teacher | Other R1 | Brock University | FILM STUDIES | None | None | -- | -- | -- | -- | Man | |
2392 | 2/11/2018 16:20:29 | I had just started a PhD program and was assigned an older, male advisor. I met with him to discuss courses to take and research interests, and he told me, "Wow, you're blonde, 23 and live in _________? Are you married? No? Do you want to get married?" He would routinely invite graduate students over to his home for drinks, and several rumours abounded that he had sexual relationships with at least 2 previous students. | Graduate Student | Tenured Professor | Other R1 | Criminal Justice | I became wary of all older, tenured males and carefully planned any interaction had with them. | I changed advisors and research focus | Man | ||||||
2393 | 2/11/2018 20:42:46 | A female student was stalked during the three years that she attended Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. From the time that her began attending the school until her graduated, about a dozen male students regularly loitered by her locker, and constantly leered and stared at her. Two students in particular stalked her daily in the school and outside of the building. They learned her class schedule and entered the classroom before and after her classes or stood outside the room during her class. They would loiter near the entrance of the building at the times that her usually arrived or left for the day. When she was not in class, R.W. They never addressed her directly, not even when they were assaulting her, but amongst themselves they referred to her as “that fat bitch” and “that bitch” and “dyke.” One of the male students (with encouragement from the other), physically and sexually assaulted her nearly during her 3L school year. He pushed her, lunged at her, choked her, put her in a headlock, shoved his crotch against her, walked up behind her and shoved his crotch against her bottom, punched he in her back, punched her in the back of the head so hard that she had to go home and then hit her in the head again the next day, pulled her arm, pulled her hair, grabbed her clothing, put his hand in her pants or shirt, grabbed her by the belt, approached her in an aggressive manner as if to start a physical altercation with her, cornered her in secluded areas of the building. One night, a group of about of male students watched while two male students attempted to rape the female student. one of them attempted to do so again on other occasions, again, while the other male students watched and did nothing. These male students would stand around her locker everyday in addition to following her around the small. One night, a male student shoved the female student face forward against a locker and repeatedly shoved his crotch against her bottom. This was witnessed by a security guard as well as other students. In fact, the physical and sexual assault occurred in public areas of the law school - classrooms, cafeteria, library, lobby, lounge - and not once did anyone attempt to assist the female student. Perhaps the response would have been different if the female student was not a person of color. The sight of a dozen black men groping and physically attacking a white woman would have garnered an immediate response and swift repercussions. | Law Student | Law Students | Other Type of School | Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law/Yeshiva University | Law | Numerous incidents of sexual harassment, physical assaults, and sexual assaults were witnessed by security guards, professors, employees of the law school, and other students. The female student reported the incidents to the Counseling Center but was not offered advice or assisted in any way. The psychiatrist asked the woman if she had done anything to offend the men. Yeshiva University’s General Counsel, Title IX Coordinator, and Cardozo's Dean of Students did not escalate the matter when it was reported to them. The Title IX was given a detailed report which included the names of the men and their places of employment. The Title IX Coordinator told that woman that she waited too long to report the harassment and abuse. The Committee on Character and Fitness and American Bar Association are aware of the of the physical assaults, sexual harassment, and sexual abuse that occurred and they have the names of the men who committed these crimes. | None. Most of the men who stalked, harassed and attempted to rape the woman are practicing attorneys in New York City. | The woman cannot work at any of the organizations or firms that these men work for. This limits where she can apply for jobs. | redacted | redacted | Men | ||
2394 | 2/13/2018 4:36:24 | Sexually assaulted by Distinguished Faculty, Vice Chancellor for Research and Collaborations at RU-N. Sexually abused over two years. Knowingly inflicted mental distress leading to suicide attempts. The so called respected professor never felt to report to University authorities even being aware of my declining mental health | phd student | Dissertation Advisor | Other R1 | Rutgers University-Newark | Information Technology | Investigation delaying more than 60 days. Trying to undermine evidences | Placed on administrative leave but allowed to communicate with students. | Kept away from work for six months. Attempted suicide thrice under extreme depression and currently under therapy | Extreme depression | Completely disrupted my normal functioning | Man | ||
2395 | 2/13/2018 13:53:34 | A staff member at the graduate school I attended, tried to provide answers to a make-up test while touching me. He told me, "You just do something to me." He also ran his hand under the hair on my neck while I was seated in an office speaking to another staff member. | Graduate student | Staff member | Other Type of School | Forest Institute of Professional Psychology | Clinical Psychology | Meetings with myself and harasser | Live and Light love and light love and light | Difficult to complete school. | Loss of trust. Difficult to complete education. Anxiety. | Unknown | Man | ||
2396 | 2/13/2018 17:00:05 | Professor said he would tell faculty that I plaigarized my dissertation if I didn't have sex with him. I did not plaigarize anything, but I didn't expect to be believed because he was a professor and I was a student. | Student | Professor | Other Type of School | Social science | None because I was scared and gave in, even though I didn't do anything wrong. Who is the institution going to believe? A student or professor? | None. See previous answer | Made me very adverse to working with men in any capacity. | Depression, PTSD | Never going to pursue a career in academia | Man | |||
2397 | 2/14/2018 22:53:20 | Unsolicited and unwanted embrace and kiss from married senior faculty member following unsolicited comments about the relative attractiveness of other non tenured women faculty. | pre-tenure faculty | full professor. | Other R1 | University of Michigan. now at Ivy League | Sociology. | No complaint filed. | Appears to be limited to loss of professional ties but lingering concern about proactive negative statements about me as a proactive defense against potential revelations. | I am posting this because of concern this may be a pattern with this faculty member, and sense of obligation to provide the information to others, such as the faculty whose attractiveness was commented on, who may have experienced a similar incident. | Man | ||||
2398 | 2/15/2018 7:14:58 | A senior male colleague continually made sexual comments to me (talking about he had turned lesbians straight, how he had an affair with a woman who was "loud" in bed, and saying that he had slept with women of my ethnicity). He also asked me weird and inappropriate questions of a sexual nature. He referred to our meetings as "dates." When I confronted him, he did not deny it, but later he lied during a Title IX investigation and implied that, because I had continued to socialize with him, there had not been sexual harassment. This completely ignores the power relations involved. Incredibly, the Title IX officer included this ludicrous defense in her report (which found him not guilty). He also threatened to sue me for "slander" for seeking advice from my colleagues about how to handle this situation. | tenure track faculty | full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Private university in the Chicagoland area | Title IX found him not guilty and wrote a horrible letter (see above) that was sent to the Provost's office, thus making it look like I am a manipulative liar to higher-ups. | None whatsoever. | Lost time during important tenure track years | Very difficult | I persisted in my career but it was incredibly difficult. | Man | |||
2399 | 2/16/2018 14:20:14 | Walked in to ask advisor a question to find open porn on his work computer in full view. Brushed it off as normal, but have heard similar reports from other students. | 1st year rotation student | Thesis advisor in his lab | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Columbia University | Biological Sciences | None | None | Ultimately moved to second-tier status in lab, decided to leave science | Man | ||||
2400 | 2/18/2018 11:49:39 | My professor had me meet him at a bar to go over my final paper draft for his course (something I thought he did with all students). He left abruptly halfway through our meeting and a glass of wine and said he be right back (he had forgot something). He returned with marijuana and asked if we could go smoke. I willingly invited him to my place where of course, he made a move on me. Long story short, I ended up pregnant. I decided to keep the baby because of personal morals. The day I finally told him I was pregnant--10 weeks along--all he said was, "fuck, I am going to get a divorce." This was news to me: that I was sexually harassed and impregnated by a married professor with children. He never asked me to get an abortion either, maybe I would have if I had the financial support? Throughout the pregnancy, he went totally absent and would only reach out here and there for comfort with how to deal with his wife (added to my distress). I was so depressed that I did not have the power to say or do anything during and after the pregnancy. After the baby came, he would come over to my house uninvited and/or with about 10 minutes warning as he had to "sneak around to see the baby." He was trying really hard at this point to be a "good husband." When the baby was about 8-months old I was given information that the professor, without the truth-teller knowing about my situation, had a history of "coercing students" (undergraduates, graduates, all of the above) into their homes with marijuana and fucking them. This was the moment I took my power back. His response to me addressing him with this knowledge: telling his wife. They both then decided to collectively harass me for the next 5-months, whereby they would not support me financially and were so crude to me--reminding me always how I ruined their lives, yet wanting to see my daughter. I was so desperate for help--am nowhere near family--because of needing to pass my qualifying exams that I let them watch the baby on the weekends. I eventually tried to put my foot down and ask for financial support ($20/week) and then the professor said that my daughter meant nothing to him and that we should never talk to them again because we did nothing but cause distress for their family--my child was not their family. I of course gladly agreed that that was a great idea--to not communicate anymore and to leave them alone. I didn't speak to them, vice versa, for about 5-months when the new academic school year began and the professor stalked me and my child on campus (I had to attend an after-hours event and as a single-mom had no choice but to bring baby) where the professor picked the baby up in front of shared colleagues, calling her child, etc. I immediately and finally went to TIX the next day. I felt so terrified and couldn't handle the harassment anymore. | Graduate Student | Associate Professor | Other R1 | Virginia Tech | TIX opened an investigation and took 6-months to find him to have violated TIX policy (times 8 counts). TIX did not investigate his history, even though there was plenty of evidence to suggest that he had similar accounts with at least two other women (likely more had they investigated). Once the report was sent out, retaliation eventually followed suit by way of my department chair (who also has a history of predating on female students--has a child with and eventually married one after divorcing his wife) and eventually the case went to the federal level (it is still under investigation). | Professor was put on an 18-month paid leave of absence and will return soon. | During all of this I was able to complete my PhD and actually land a TT position. However, the first day of my new job I was served papers--the professor is taking me to court for custody of my child! Clearly they did not protect me because I guarantee he is doing this to retaliate--to get back for the TIX as well as the child support I eventually filed for. Needless to say, I have been kept in a state of fear, anomie, and have learned one thing: that Higher Education only protects itself, not victims. I am also an additional $15k in debt--I took out student loans to help me survive during the completion of my degree post-baby. And, now, I am an additional $4k in debt because of legal fees. | Horrific and deep depression until I was empowered to see through the lies and deceit when I found out about Professors past. Constant state of fear and anomie. Have a hard time remembering the first year of my child's life, so feel robbed and deeply saddened about that. | I have zero savings, am more in-debt than I should be, and suffering from PTSD and thus cannot find happiness in my new job. Want to seek new career, but feel lost about what to do considering that the professor is still chasing after me, robbing me of moneys and I have little to no training to do anything else because of my disciplinary and research fields. | Man | |||
2401 | 2/18/2018 17:17:22 | Prior to the MPSA conference in 2010, a male prof said to me in casual conversation, "You're going to Midwest? We should get together for a drink." I said, "Sounds great. But, [my husband] and I have family in Chicago, so my schedule will be packed between conference and family obligations. Let's catch up at the reception for the black (poc) political scientists [name has changed since]." I didn't hear from him until the conference reception. He wasn't at the reception, so as a courtesy, I sent an email from my phone: "Sorry I missed you at the reception, maybe another time." I was looking for a way to get out of getting together because my husband wanted to spend time with his family and did not want to join. I didn't want to have a drink with this person alone but was concerned about offending a colleague likely to get tenure before me. NOTE: This was my second semester at this institution. The male prof had been hired temporarily by then-chair and his friend at the time, [full prof and chair], who was working to get this male prof a TT position. It seemed clear to me (and the rest of the dept) that he would be tenured before me. He responded to my email indicating he was at [I can't remember the name of the hotel restaurant] and requested I join him for a drink. He included his cell to call or text. I sent a text message with the same basic response as my email. He seemed to insist. I texted or called [can't remember] my husband because I really did not want to be alone with this person. I asked my husband what I should do. My husband said, "I'm having a good time with my uncle. It seems like you have to or should go for a drink, but I don't want to." I met the male prof at the restaurant. In the lobby, I ran into a former student who was in grad school or at a post-doc at the time [can't remember which]. I tried to get the grad student (or anyone else) to join us, but he had other plans. Over the course of the conversation, the male prof put his hand on my knee and said, "I'm sensing a mutual attraction." I said, "That's a nice compliment, but I'm happily married." NOTE: I did not want to offend someone who would likely be voting on my tenure. Also, you never know how men will respond to rejection. I have experienced some very hostile responses by men to even the kindest rejection. I was also thinking that this is a simple misunderstanding and (hopefully) not a big deal. If I seem like it's no big deal, maybe he'll not hold it against me... He responded, "You can't just come up to my room, fuck and forget it?" At that point, I quickly signed the check and walked quickly out the door and down the street. Ambar chased after me and said, "I'm sorry. Now I feel like I did something wrong." I wanted to smooth it over and not make any enemies. I said, "No, it's fine, just a misunderstanding. I've got to get back to my husband. It's no big deal." Then, I got immediately into a cab and left. Afterwards, I spoke about the incident with my husband (that evening) and my dad later (by phone). I was concerned that I had miscommunicated and that I shouldn't have put myself in that situation. They were both clear that a woman should be able to meet with a colleague and not have that experience. I also spoke about this with a senior female colleague inside my department, a female colleague at my same rank, a senior female colleague in other department, and a staff member. The advice was overwhelmingly that there is nothing I can do that will not put my tenure at risk. I am also aware of some undergraduate students who might have been harassed later by the same male professor. My husband, and I usually try to have students over for dinner once a semester. Generally, this is for graduate students, but some of my classes are graduate/undergraduate, and we decided it's not fair to only invite some students. In 2013 (pretty sure it was the spring semester), we had students over for dinner at the end of the semester. We overheard a few of them talking in a side conversation about explicit comments from a professor to a couple of female undergraduates. A male undergraduate was telling the young women, "that's wrong" and "he can't do that." The male undergraduate was encouraging them to report it. We did not hear the details, but we interjected. I said, "I'm sorry to interrupt your conversation, but from the little bit that I heard, that is NOT ok. It shouldn't happen to you, and it is NOT your fault." I also told them that there is not much that I can do as an untenured professor but encouraged them to talk with a female full professor that they trust. They did not want to report it, and I do not believe that they reported it at the time. The only details that I know from those students is that there were "sexually explicit" and "inappropriate" comments made to at least two female students in class and some inappropriate fb messages to at least one by the same male professor who had harassed me. I feel incredibly guilty about the fact that I did not report the incident that happened to me or what I learned from students in this case. We (faculty and staff) were not trained as mandatory reporters until 2015 or 2016 at my institution. I also feel terrible because I do not think that this has stopped. I should also mention that this male professor voted against me for tenure. My tenure case received unanimous support from the college tenure committee, the Dean, and the Provost's Office because I had a strong case. Initially, I was afraid to talk about this even after tenure because I believed that people might think that I'm just bitter and trying to get revenge. After speaking with several other colleagues, I've realized that actually it's evidence of retribution. I'm submitting this information to you because as a tenured faculty member I have a duty to protect young people from this kind of abuse. I wish that I had done something sooner. I may be out of a job if I had done so, but that does not alleviate the guilt I feel about the fact that I did not report and others were affected by that decision. | Assistant prof in second semester on TT at elite, private R1 institution | peers - both knew he would be tenured before me | Other R1 | Political Science | I did not report at the time. | none | voted against me for tenure and negative merit eval when he later became chair | so much anxiety and guilt | I refuse to be pushed out or even pushed around, but I had to choose to stay quite about this in order to keep my job. This meant that other people were negatively impacted and that this guy kept charming his way to power. It took me too long to talk about this, but I hate the fact that so many young women, in particular, are being bullied out of the profession like this. I'm not trying to defend my choice to tolerate it (or stay quite to keep my job). Quite the opposite -- I respect deeply those who have told their stories before I had the courage to do so. People in more vulnerable positions than I am in have come forward, and in many cases (all that I know of) there has not been any consequence for the perpetrator. This is unacceptable. | Man | |||
2402 | 2/18/2018 23:28:26 | sexually assaulted in the guise of work meetings, propositioned, sexually harassed from 2010 to 2015 | PhD student | He is my co-supervisor. He's a full professor and teaches development studies in a reputable institution in The Netherlands | Other Type of School | none yet, I just reported it to my main supervisor who declared support to remove the co-supervisor from my supervision team; i hope he gets fired | none yet | I couldn't finish my PhD thesis; I gave up applying for a university post in my country | depression, anxiety, low self-worth | i've become unmotivated, unwilling to take on posts outside of admin work | I've sent a private email to you to identify the perpetrator. I hope you could connect me with his other victims, if any. Thank you. | Man | |||
2403 | 2/19/2018 6:33:22 | Sexual assault | Graduate student | Professor | Other R1 | U of Michigan | In the Social Sciences | Initial responses were actually swift & substantial. Then, the institutional decision-making process became slow and sometimes hair-raisingly, yet ludicrously, bad. The counselling service was great throughout. | PTSD, depression. Though many years have passed, I dread that he might be reading this and reveling in any statement about how grim things got. | Man | |||||
2404 | 2/19/2018 11:32:53 | When I first started working, in faculty meetings whenever anyone said the word "big" or "large" a male colleague would cover his lap with a folder and say "We don't want to talk about anything big now, do we?" with this slimy smile on his face. The department was male-dominated and all the men would laugh when he did this. Later there were many more incidents - I had to deal with students who told me they had been sexually assaulted, sexual jokes in faculty meetings, etc etc. This all happened along with male faculty members constantly dismissing my ideas, ignoring me, laughing at me, and generally being patronizing. | tenure-track and later tenured faculty | tenured faculty | Regional Teaching College | Fine Arts | I am ashamed to say I did not report the first incidents but I did accompany students to the sexual harassment officer. Of course none of them ever laid a complaint because they were afraid that it would have repercussions on their grades. Later after I got tenure, I sent informal letters of complaint to anyone who made inappropriate sexual comments or jokes in faculty meetings and they stopped. But one faculty member in particular made my life difficult after that. | none | These incidents made me uncomfortable and made me realize that all the men I worked with were a 'club' and so I felt vastly outnumbered. This took a lot of emotional and mental energy and I realized how unfair this is - the men don't have this kind of chronic fear, pressure, and isolation. I also paid to see a counsellor once a month and this really helped me to stay sane and keep my job. Sometimes I berate myself for staying there and not finding another job. But it's the same story everywhere, isn't it? | I would sometimes have what I call "mini-mental-breakdowns" where I would just scream and cry. I was scared all the time - these guys had power over me and over my budget, my students, everything. And they were clearly connected to all the other old white guys working at that institution, which was also a very scary thought. I think eventually I just tuned it all out, avoided faculty meetings, concentrated on my research and my students. | I moved my office to another building, and changed the room where I taught in order to limit my exposure to my male colleagues. Now that I am retired I can look back and see how deeply all the harassment and degrading treatment has changed me, slowly but surely over the years, and I mourn for the person I used to be. | Man | |||
2405 | 2/19/2018 17:49:31 | In July 2017, I had just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's JD and MBA programs, and I went on a date with a self-professed social justice advocate, Harvard Law graduate, and Democratic Party candidate in the 2016 election who was about to start teaching at Penn Law. We met at a bar, and when it started to empty, he suggested we go to the rooftop of his apartment complex, where many of my friends lived. But the rooftop turned out to be closed, so he suggested we go back to his apartment unit instead (I flagged this, but agreed). An hour later, I told him I was going home, and he kissed me in response. I repeated that I was leaving, and without saying anything, he picked me up, carried me into his bedroom, and pinned me to the bed. I told him I was leaving (3rd time) and tried to push him off of me, but he just continued kissing and lying on top of me without moving. I extricated myself by peeling myself out from underneath him and told him I was leaving (4th time). When I walked to the door to the living room, he grabbed my arm and dragged me back to the bed. He was laughing, because he somehow thought I was flirting with him. I wrenched my arm out of his grasp and went back into the living room to put on my shoes and told him, "I'm not playing hard-to-get with you. Maybe you think I am. I'm not." I left. The next morning, he texted me to ask why I had unmatched him on the dating app. He wanted to "talk." He called me and said, "I get the feeling that you were upset at me last night. What happened?" I yelled at him for 45 minutes about what he did wrong. He had so many excuses. "But it was late .... and you came to my place ... I thought you were just playing hard-to-get ... But most girls ..." At the end of our call, he apologized and then had the gall to ask me for a second date because he was "really disappointed" about how things turned out. I told all my friends and wrote about it in a public Facebook post that went semi-viral. He currently teaches Law & Candidacy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. | I had just graduated from law school, and he hadn't started teaching yet, so we never overlapped in the student-teacher context. However, I wanted to share this incident in case a Penn student reports him too, so that I can file a Title IX complaint against him. | I had just graduated from law school, and he hadn't started teaching yet, so we never overlapped in the student-teacher context. However, I wanted to share this incident in case a Penn student reports him too, so that I can file a Title IX complaint against him. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Pennsylvania | Law | N/A (I did not report it) | None | None | I was upset about the attack itself for only a day. I later wrote about the incident in September 2017 in a public Facebook post that went semi-viral -- people were overwhelmingly supportive of me. I only experienced significant stress and anxiety when the Aziz Ansari story broke in January 2018, and several close friends who had supported me later blamed/criticized Grace for being "weak" and defended/excused Aziz as being "awkward." | None - I am a Title IX attorney focusing on sexual harassment and violence | Man | ||
2406 | 2/21/2018 15:53:41 | In a weak moment I (male graduate student, 22) slept with my (several years older) teaching assistant while I was in a relationship. Things went (what I thought was) amicably stale and we discontinued our affair, but when we happened to join the same lab for postdocs, she bullied, ridiculed and harassed me, disclosed our relationship to every lab member and generally created a very unpleasant situation for me. Until very recently I would have not thought of this as sexual harassment (the original incident was consensual, and I am the guy, right?), but following the #metoo stories here and elsewhere closely, it resonated with me that the power dynamic between us was such that I was victimised for not conforming to the expectations of the other party, and that this was abusive. I could not retaliate or get out of the situation, because I was (at the time) still with the same partner that I had been unfaithful to, and knew this was going to be a deal breaker (It was), and disclosure to my partner was explicitly threatened. | graduate student / postdoc | Teaching Assistant, my senior by two years | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Neuroscience | I did not think of this as sexual harassment, never reported | none | non - left the lab without publications, recovered and am now Professor at small university. | stress and embarrassment, feeling alienated in my peer group, low levels of trust with my colleagues, constant feeling of being the target of gossip and backstabbing, mild depression, weight gain. | I am keenly aware of the power dynamics between me and my students (and I avoid any kind of sexual - or sexist - vibe, religiously) and even though this is clearly a negative memory, I think I have become a better person and mentor from it, probably because I am in the priveledged position of being a man. I realize that many of my peers who have experienced similar circumstance may not have had the luxury of recovering from it in relative serenity of a new lab, and without new aggressions. | it was an eye-opening moment for me to realise I have been in the role of the victim, and quite strangely so. It was not my fault. Despite having been the guy. Liberating. Thank you, #meetoo | Woman | ||
2407 | 2/21/2018 22:51:15 | I was groomed and sexually harassed by a professor I admired and trusted. For the first four months of my freshman year, I was the bearer of all his burdens, marital problems, and received 50+ cryptic emails from him alluding to his feelings for me. I was 18 and he was 65, and he made think it was all very normal, that this was how our close-knit community functioned, that professionalism took a back-seat. I attend a small college. He had been teaching there almost since its conception. He was loved by everyone on campus, and I was very flattered that he had taken (what I had originally thought was) an academic interest in me. It was a gradual process, one that I was manipulated to believe was genuine and innocent. Throughout it I has been naive, and he conditioned me to think that interacting in this manner was appropriate. I was happy to receive the attention because he made me believe it was because he saw potential in my interests in Humanities. Fast forwarding through more sickening nonsense, he made a sexual comment toward me in front of everyone at a trustee dinner, including his wife. The next week, I confronted him and told him I didn't want any contact with him anymore. It was a truly terrible and mortifying experience through and through. I was really young and had no idea how to navigate college life, let alone this. For the rest of my freshman year, I worked very hard to avoid him. | Undergrad/Freshman | Professor/Adviser | Small Liberal Arts College | Later on I was notified that there had been an on-going investigation of a formal complaint made by an alumni who he had sexually harassed to an extent beyond my experience. I testified for it as witness and shared what happened with the Title IX team. | He was fired in my second year of undergrad. I am very lucky. I know that a lot of institutions this would be overlooked, especially considering his status and tenure at the college. Though, half the school was in uproar about his sudden leaving. No one really knew why he was fired. | Since it happened at the very start of my college career, it has distorted my experience in the worst ways. I have a very difficult time interacting with male faculty. I take classes with majority female faculty even if their subject matter isn't in my field of study. I closed myself off to networking and would never reach out or go to office hours. It has been especially hard when thinking about grad school, letters of recommendation, and working closely with older men. | It's been a lot. A lot more than I had originally thought. I definitely hadn't had the time or space or desire to process what had happened or what it meant until very recently. I held a lot of guilt and blame, and still do. It has caused me endless amounts of stress and anxiety and anger, that I tend to displace on those around me (faculty and friends) who don't deserve it. | Man | |||||
2408 | 2/22/2018 16:05:52 | I was sexually assaulted at a research station during a class. | Graduate student/assistant | We were both graduate students with the same major professor. I was pursuing a Master's degree. He was pursuing his PhD. He was white. I am a person of color. | R2 | University of Montana | Ecology | I reported but did not request an investigation | none | created some distrust of male colleagues | mildly harmful | mildly negative | Man | ||
2409 | 2/28/2018 21:09:23 | A researcher from Ohio State and Automona University of Madrid routinely made sexist and hostile comments about women professors and students. He also preyed on numerous women on campus and at conferences. The research group never has any women so the problem was structural. His supervisor knew but benefited from his work and protected the perpetrator. | doctoral student | He had support from his mentor and chair of the OSU department so nobody could do anything. | Other R1 | Ohio State University | social psychology | none, although everybody knew (and knows) | none | devastating, it convinced me that a network of men controls the field and victimizes women | Man | ||||
2410 | 3/2/2018 0:30:22 | The current chair of my department used his power as a senior member of the faculty to pressure me into a relationship. It was consensual but there was a huge power imbalance. There was also sexual assault within the context of the relationship. | Graduate student | He was a senior professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Ivy League University | Anthropology | None | None — he became chair of the department. | It was traumatizing. He dumped me as soon as he moved on to another relationship. I did not feel I could press charges against him. And I have been struggling to finish. | I am struggling, in therapy, stuck. Immobilized at the way this man is chair of my department, runs a major journal xxxx [redacted] he is a predatory, destructive man with nothing but contempt for women- emotionally manipulative and physically violent. I know of several junior scholars and female students he has treated as he has me and from talking to some of them, realized he has been at this for years. | I am thinking of leaving academia. I do not think I can finish. | Man | ||
2411 | 3/2/2018 3:19:50 | 1- Non Portuguese female coordinator of the academic program that I was in told me that my face reminded her of the private parts of Portuguese men. I was shocked, said nothing in reply. I was offended but I was naïve and had no idea this was a sexual harassment back then. 2- I changed academic programs to have a different supervisor. Then I found out what sexual harassment was, so I non-maliciously and naively told about the previous offensive comments to the male prof who is the supervisor of the same program that the female coordinator was in. So two weeks after I told her that if she ever made such a comment about my face, I would complain, I got a phone call from campus police telling me to come talk with them 3- Campus police asked me if I was covering the pics of the same program’s supervisor and if I was sending him gifts, I had no idea that this was even happening. The police officer of campus police kept laughing all the time while he interrogated, which was bizarre, to me it was very serious and not funny at all. 4- Proceeded my studies by going to classes and after classes ended I avoided campus altogether due to fear of obliviously, innocently and unknowingly being at the wrong place and at the wrong time and be unjustly falsely accused again of doing things I didn’t do and knew nothing about. 5- One year before I graduated, I got an e-mail from campus police telling that they had contacted the wrong student and that I hadn’t done anything wrong. I replied and kindly asked that the male prof who had falsely accused me of covering his pics and of sending him gifts no longer contact me at all because I didn’t feel comfortable being around him. 6-A few months after I had graduated, I received an e-mail invitation through the e-mail listserve (how convenient) inviting me to attend the 3oth year anniversary party of the same academic program that I didn’t even graduated from, but that the same previous male prof who had unjustly accused me is now the director of, I refused, and since then and for the rest of my life I'll happily avoid this male prof and all three different campuses of U of T for good! No doubt about it! Yikes! Scary and creepy! 7--Since I’ve graduated and to my dismay and shock, I’ve discovered that the same male supervisor in the same corporation committee of a super prestigious college at U of T that the son of a former high school English female teacher is also in. Plus, it creeps me out how this female teacher from high school has a windmill in my birth city, in mainland Portugal. There have been far too many disturbing , stressful, bothersome, and unwanted coincidences happening in my life revolving around this particular male prof. | Undergrad student. | When I was in that academic program the female was the program’s coordinator and the male prof who falsely accused me was the same program’s supervisor. | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Toronto ( U of T) | Political Science | 1-One year after I told campus police about the inappropriate comment that the female coordinator made about my face, I stopped seeing here there. After I non- maliciously Goggled her name, I found out she works in a far away city. 2-The male prof who unjustly and falsely accused me is no longer the supervisor of the program. Now he’s the Director of that same program. | 1-One year after I told campus police about the inappropriate comment that the female coordinator made about my face, I stopped seeing here there. After I non- maliciously Goggled her name, I found out she works in a far away city. 2-The male prof who unjustly and falsely accused me is no longer the supervisor of the program. Now he’s the Director of that same program. | I’ll continue to avoid all U of T campuses and the prof who wrongly accused me at all costs and I’ll continent o avoid the female high school teacher that I’ve had. | I was scared because I didn’t do anything wrong. But my conscience was clear and so I didn’t lose sleep over this. But it made me be super vigilant and aware of my surroundings, and about whom I allow to get close to me and into my life. But other than that, I’m ok. I was scared of being falsely accused again in the future so I avoided all campus events after classes ended. | Now that I’ve graduated, I prefer not to study anymore at U of T. | Woman and Man | ||
2412 | 3/2/2018 9:45:58 | I was sexually assaulted at a conference in the hotel. The colleague had sex with me while I had passed out. When I tried to say the next day that it was not ok, he dismissed me. | grad student | full professor | Other R1 | History | I told my doctoral advisor and they told me I needed to be more careful. | I have to be careful at conferences in my field not to stay alone in a hotel room (I usually share or stay elsewhere); I need to watch out not to have him review my work. | not great. I have nightmares. | Man | |||||
2413 | 3/3/2018 5:06:16 | A grad was in the final year of completing his dissertation. The professor who was the committee chair went abroad on sabbatical. The large timezone difference made it difficult to keep in touch other than via email. As a way to stay motivated without regular meetings with the chair, the grad turned to a writing support group. The group was mainly other grads, but there was one female assistant professor who hung around the grads. She seduced the grad into letting her "help" him publish one of his dissertation chapters, which she told him would be easy to do in a journal edited by a female friend of hers (who some years before had been an associate professor in the department). All she wanted in return was to be the co-author on the article. To be clear, she was not a member of his dissertation committee, had not been involved in the research at any stage, was not a Co-PI on any of the project funding, and was not even in the same discipline (it's a joint department). All she had done was some copy editing and write a new paragraph for the introduction to reorient the research to her field that, unsurprisingly, was entirely unsuited to the research design. The grad naively did as she told him and submitted the manuscript to the journal (with him as first author and her as second) and kept the submission from the committee chair. When he returned from sabbatical, someone else in the writing group told him what was going on. He told the grad that what he was doing with the assistant professor was completely unacceptable, inappropriate, and unethical, and that he must write the editor to withdraw the submission. The grad told the assistant professor and she put up major resistance and even refused to discuss the matter with the committee chair. She was supported by the female editor and another female associate professor in the department with a rumor campaign that the patriarchy was trying to abuse graduate students by poaching their research and that the committee chair was behaving unethically by refusing to allow her to “mentor” the grad. The grad student was distraught, and like many grads quite naive about the ethics of publishing, but after the committee chair pointed out that the assistant professor had not asked the grad to collaborate with her on coauthoring publications deriving from her dissertation, which she was then in the process of trying to publish, he began to see how he had been lured into an extremely unequal and exploitative relationship with a manipulative assistant professor. He remembered that it was the committee chair who had supported and guided his research for many years, intellectually and financially, apologized for his naivete, and began to get back on track with the plan to complete his dissertation. At the same time, he still had a relationship with the female assistant professor that he wanted to maintain. And the assistant professor was intransigent that it was her right to have relationships with grads she was not on the committee of, “mentor" them, and coauthor articles derived from their dissertations. Just as the committee chair was going to report the situation to HR and others, including the journal publisher's legal department, three highly negative reviews came back. Even the conspiring editor could not cover up that degree of rejection. Apparently, wonder of wonders, the reviewers thought the data were excellent but required a completely different analytical approach to become acceptable for publication in their field. With the adulterated manuscript rejected by the reviewers, the female editor used that turn of events as an excuse to withdraw her participation in the plan to poach the grad's research and escape possible repercussions from the journal publisher’s legal department. With an easy publication no longer in sight, the female assistant professor dropped the grad like a hot potato. The committee chair did not file official complaints with HR or the journal publisher. He wanted to in order to protect other grads from being similarly exploited in future, but ultimately he realized that his primary responsibility was to his current student, who had apologized profusely for his naive behavior. Filing complaints could create future difficulties for the student just as he was starting out on his career. Out of the same fears, the grad also did not file a complaint with HR. So, in the end, the grad did what he should have done in the first place -- he worked with his committee chair to finalize analysis of the data, finished writing the dissertation, graduated, published dissertation chapters in journals, and got a tenure-track position. | male grad and male full professor | female assistant professor, female associate professor, and female editor | Other R1 | Louisiana State U | None of the women involved have had any impact on their careers so far, have never apologized, and have never wanted to talk about it. The lack of apology or even willingness to discuss it and give their side of the story indicates that either they have learned nothing and remain intransigent deplorables or that they now realize that they acted in a highly inappropriate manner and are embarrassed by it. Regarding her tenure case, the assistant professor will be better off with one fewer article than with an unethical one when she comes up. The editor has suffered some damage to her reputation. The associate professor who advised the assistant professor to act in such a deplorable manner continues to focus more on expressing her indignity at the patriarchy than on publishing enough to apply for promotion. | Nothing for either the grad or the committee chair except for a nasty rumor mill, which can be a useful weapon of the weak but, in this case, is a weapon of the deplorables. | It caused a great deal of stress for the grad but does not seem to have had any persistent impacts, since his career and romantic life ultimately worked out wonderfully, with a position as an assistant professor and marriage. Nothing for the committee chair, who was very happy to graduate another wonderful PhD student despite the best efforts of the assistant professor to sacrifice his career just so she could get another publication onto her CV by any means necessary. | Nothing | Some women are using #TimesUp and #MeToo as cover for their abuses of power. Their hypocrisy should disgust all of us who are genuinely concerned about doing something about sexual harassment and patriarchy. Those are real, serious, and hurtful to many. We must all understand what many women are subjected to and that some of our male colleagues are sexual predators. But the way forward is in all of us working together to improve and punish those predators, not in some women engaging in equally despicable predatory behavior and rationalizing it as somehow fighting back when it's really just about their own personal gain. | Woman | |||
2414 | 3/5/2018 13:57:39 | I was paired with a teaching mentor to help me develop materials to teach my first two section of freshman English. We had a group meeting and broke off to discuss our materials. After the meeting, my mentor asked me to come back with him to his office in the back of the department. No one else was in the hallway when we walked into his office and he asked me to shut the door behind me. I hesitated but ultimately did what he asked. He asked me to sit down and he began telling me how he intends to be fully available to me as I transition into teaching, which to me, was the entire premise of him being assigned to me as my mentor and did not need to be said to me in private. I never set up a meeting with him again. | Second-year Master's student | Instructor, pushing 40, getting his PhD from another institution | Other R1 | I had another mandatory meeting during which a supervisor sat with me so we wouldn't be alone | None | I don't have intentions of working one-on-one with a male professor | Will make sure to not be alone with male authority figures | Man | |||||
2415 | 3/5/2018 14:41:39 | 1) Genius-but-troubled senior professor in my department (I was in my mid-20s, he was a white dude in his late 50s) invited me to lunch to "talk about a project" in my first year of grad school. Instead, he bragged about his "crazy" life and asked me if I had a boyfriend. I lied and said yes (years later I found out he always invited young, non-white female grad students to the same restaurant as a prelude to try to date them). Over the next year or so, he kept up a flirty banter and because he was on my committee and I was writing part of my MA thesis under his supervision, I went along (he had also started openly dating another "ethnic" female grad student, younger than me). Then one day, at a party at another faculty member's home, I made a joke and he flipped out: told me to f**k off in front of other grad students, grabbed my arm and shook me. I was shocked but pretended to take it lightly because everyone knew he was "crazy". The following week during class he calls me down to his office and proceeds to scream at me for 20 minutes while pacing up and down the office looking furious. He called me a "spoiled brat", who the hell did I think I was, etc. It made no sense but I was terrified and thought he was going to hit me. I kept looking at the door to run out. When he finally let me go, I went straight to the common room and burst out crying. My male friends, also grad students, and my male advisor, who was a good mentor but very non-confrontational, all told me to let it go and avoid the guy in the future. I ran into this man in the hallway that same afternoon and he acted like nothing had happened. He ended up on my dissertation committee and used the parts of my MA thesis that I wrote under him as a resource for his own work without ever giving me any credit. Years later, he was suspended for both threatening colleagues and sexual harassment. He is still employed by the university and routinely gets described as "irreverent" and "colorful" in interviews. He's a jerk. 2) At a post-conference pub night, filled with conference goers, a much older, very senior faculty member corners me to "talk" and proceeds to stare at my chest in such a pronounced way that my (male) friend comes over with two beers and stands between the guy and me. My friend pretended I had asked him to get one for me, but he actually did it when he saw my face because I looked so uncomfortable. | PhD student | Very senior | Other R1 | Anthropology | None at the time, years later one of these men was suspended for other incidents. | He was suspended, eventually retained an affiliation but left on his own to another institution. He remains influential, invited to give talk, interviews, etc. | None | Several months of anxiety, after that it was mostly discomfort whenever he was around. | It has made me much more conscious of the issue of sexual harassment and how it can derail someone's career. I ended up switching careers for different but somewhat related reasons, but I'm still doing research in something related to my field. It's not that way for everyone. | Man | |||
2416 | 3/5/2018 15:13:01 | I was at a symposium (a few weeks before graduate school started) with members of the IU Anthropology community. The first night, the professor approached me and asked me to get a drink with him, he insisted on buying the drink. It was just him and I for the majority of the night, and I was super uncomfortable after leaving the hotel bar. The next night, he asked me to go downtown with him and play pool and get drinks with him, to which I declined. Now that I've started graduate school, I see him from time to time and he makes me very uncomfortable. | Graduate Student | Full Professor, one of the, if not the only, Native American professor at IU, former director of FNECC | Other R1 | Indiana University | Anthropology | N/A | None yet | Changing my outside minor | Panic attacks, imposter syndrome, distrust of senior male academics | Being uncomfortable at departmental events, especially without a trusted male present | Man | ||
2417 | 3/5/2018 18:52:27 | I was an undergraduate doing an independent study (on the philosophy of evil in the writings of Avicenna.) It was emphasized that as an undergraduate I was extraordinarily lucky to have this opportunity. I had to meet privately with the professor. It was a small office. We would sit at his desk and he would keep moving in on me until I was pinned to the wall. He would lean, brush, rub, and touch all the time, with many parts of his body. He doodled pornographic pictures on my notes. He would make odd noises. He set out cushions on the floor and tried to get me to sit there (I wouldn't) and stay the night (I didn't.) He would talk about my looks/body/hair. I usually dressed 'like a boy' in baggy work shirts, sweaters, and jeans anyway but I started wearing more layers and tying my hair up. I was inexperienced and naive. I kept to my studies and did not have girl friends to ask about problems. My Mom was working two jobs so I could go to college and I did not want to worry her. I just tried to ignore him, pretend it was not happening, and tried to do my work. It was the 1960s and there was no context to say anything. One day I went to the office and he swiveled in his chair and greeted me by wiggling a big banana which he was holding in his crotch. I ran away. When I calmed down, I told my advisor , who had arranged the project, that I did not know what to do - I did not want to disappoint him or create any awkwardness, but I was upset. (I later heard rumors that this professor recruited students for threesomes with his wife, also a professor. I recalled that a few times they both showed up at my dorm dining hall - he knew which dorm I was in - like they had been waiting for me and then invited themselves to have dinner with me. It seemed odd at the time ... but it might have meant nothing.) | Undergraduate | Professor, director of my independent study project. | Other R1 | Harpur College SUNY Binghamton | I was an Anthropology Major, putting together a specialization in religious studies. This was in the Philosophy Department | I was given the option of continuing the independent study project with the professor, entering a regular class mid semester with the same professor (not having done the classwork, homework, or tests), or getting an F for the semester. I was on scholarship and work-study and had to graduate on time. I entered the class. | None that I am aware of. I Googled him recently. He has bounced around the SUNY system. He is quite eminent in his field. His student evaluations note his "creepiness to women students" - he must be in his 80s! | I did not pursue an academic career. This experience played a role, but the deciding factor was bias against women in my Major department (Anthropology). I was explicitly warned against continuing (by male graduate students who saw how women students were treated and how women applicants for positions were badly treated and not hired.) I completed a semester of graduate school at Binghamton, but was not brave, confident, or imaginative enough to think I could overcome the bias (which was there in my brief experience - it was mainly the chair of the department who seemed to see field work and teaching as for men.) | After a few years, I thought I had entirely put it out of my mind. It seemed a relatively minor thing - I wasn't attacked or raped, I got a passing grade. Then the professor turned up at another institution I was working at (in administration) and it was upsetting. I never talked about it. It was there in the back of my mind, but I did not think much about it for decades. When #MeToo happened it came back, with a context and designation, and I have been sad about it - as an old woman thinking back to the young woman I was. What a creep this guy is and how I was forced to sit in his class and see him twice a week and worry about my grade for the semester. And that he seems to have just kept on. | I was very very lucky in finding a career in curatorial work in museums and then as a conservator. I got to do research, write papers, study, and develop technical skills in this niche between art and science. So changing my trajectory, although at the time was frightening, worked out very well. | It is horrible that this man has persisted in treating students, women and men, badly. Thank you for allowing me to contribute. I don't participate in social media, but I did write to the Chronicle of Higher Education recently. | Man | |
2418 | 3/6/2018 8:28:44 | My graduate school professor had long been mildly inappropriate with me (comments on my body, disparaging remarks about my partner, wanting to discuss sexual preferences) but I always laughed it - and the other rumors and complaints against him - off as him being my "friendly grad school professor". Until he raped me, after offering me a very lucrative consulting job at his company. | Grad student (after graduation) | Tenured professor | Small Liberal Arts College | Business | Significant. Still in therapy (two years later). Still have panic attacks and flashbacks. | Significant. Feel very limited knowing that he would have been one of my strongest references in a very niche business market and also in a specific geographical region. | Man | ||||||
2419 | 3/6/2018 9:40:30 | Professor I was interested in working with and needed for my committee constantly tried to get my alone, see me socially, stroked my face, and sent me a lewd email. | Senior PhD candidate | Retired but still active Professor Emeritus | Elite Institution/Ivy League | University of Michigan | History/Law | I reported to a trusted mentor. She did not follow the University mandatory report procedures but rather, without my permission, shared the information with the Dir. of Graduate Studies and Chairwoman. The Chairwoman, a so-called feminist scholar, told me the scholar had donated a lot of money to the department and was probably just getting old/senile (in which case, why was he allowed to continue to sit on committees?). I left it at that, was too scared to escalate because I needed to finish my degree. | None | Much wasted effort in trying to work with this professor. Burnt bridges/strained relations with my mentor and the departmental leadership because of their defense of him and violation of University procedures regarding mandatory reporting. Unable to look at his comments on my work. | Major emotional distress--involuntary crying when I would walk past his building; persistent fear he would show up at my house. Lack of trust of authority figures and those who claim to be "progressive" or "feminist" in their scholarship but behave very differently in practice. Especially because my confidentiality was violated. | Did not apply for a fellowship I wanted because of his association. Did not apply for academic jobs because of difficulty in getting letters under these conditions. | I am guessing this man is listed in other entries here. | Man | |
2420 | 3/6/2018 19:48:23 | Propositioned | PhD student | Full professor, project leader | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | Social Science | Indifference | None | Minimal - he wasn’t in my department or field | Disbelief, Anger | Made me never want to work anywhere near him | Man | ||
2421 | 3/7/2018 14:15:22 | I was at a conference dinner at a restaurant and assigned to sit next to a professor I knew from a different university. We had been at a conference organized by the same agency once before and he'd been very supportive of my research then. He again expressed strong support for my research agenda, and we discussed it in great detail for over the next hour or two. Towards the end of the conversation, however, he began to ask personal questions. He asked me how old I was, if I had a boyfriend, invited me to drink with him in bars when I came to his city, and hugged me as we left the dinner. He may have been drunk because he nearly followed me into the women's bathroom before someone pointed out the correct way to the exit. I felt stunned and a little afraid. I have since been at a conference with him again and made sure to avoid him the whole time. He did not acknowledge me or attempt to talk to me again. | Graduate student | Senior faculty at a different university | Other Research Agency | Economics | I did not tell the organizers of the conference about the incident partly because he is very close to the organizers and their agency provides one of my funding sources. When I saw that this professor and I were both invited to another unrelated conference, I let the organizers of that conference know about the incident. They assured me they would watch out for me and make sure no incident occurred. | None | So far, none | As the conversation progressed and took a personal turn, my stomach began to sink. Until that moment, I felt I was speaking to a mentor, someone I intellectually looked up to, who valued my work and my ideas. Towards the end of the conversation I began to doubt whether anything that was said before about the quality of my research had any meaning whatsoever. I felt like I had gone from a genuine colleague to someone reduced to my sex. | This person works in my subfield, and I will likely have to be at the same conferences as him again and again. Since I plan to avoid him so as not to have the situation arise again, I may miss out on connections that could be made that may be useful for my career. | Man | |||
2422 | 3/8/2018 11:38:52 | I finished my PhD in November 2017. I for the first 3 years of it, I refused sustained and strenuous 'romantic advances' by two senior male members of staff in my department: one my PhD supervisor, and the other the Head of Department. The (I suppose) inevitable consequence was that I found myself excluded from teaching (despite previously great feedback), from giving research presentations and from the department social life. What was really shocking was the part played by their senior female colleague, then Head of Teaching and my supervisor’s wife's best friend, who became openly hostile towards me. It was so distressing and toxic that I became really depressed, and I went to the University's counselling service for advice, but they were no help at all. It actually got worse over the last two years of my programme, because my supervisor totally withdrew supervision - he put ridiculous conditions on meeting, ignored my emails, lied, gaslighted, belittled me and my work, and didn't read my thesis at all. I tried to get my second supervisor to take over, but she pulled away too, after speaking to Supervisor No. 1, and she didn't read my thesis in the months before submission either. I didn't take any formal action, for which I'll always kick myself. This was because the counselling service had been so useless, because I hoped that by keeping a low profile I'd limit the damage and stand a chance of getting references, and because my supervisor’s behaviour had become so unrestrained that I had begun to suspect he might be a psychopath. I'm so traumatised and angry. But the fact is that in that situation you have to focus every ounce of survival on getting the PhD. The system does not support students against staff where there is such a power differential, and in any case those students have no control over what is being said about them in the staff room. | PhD student | One was my PhD supervisor; the other was the Head of Department | Other R1 | Arts (music) | Three of my department's most senior staff were involved in it. The counselling service did not want to get involved, despite my email evidence. I felt that the only action I could have taken would have been to move to a different institution, but I was a single parent and so that was out of the question. | None | I cannot ask either of my supervisors for a reference, which is really distressing since I was a popular teacher, gave wholeheartedly of my time before it all fell apart, and produced a worthwhile dissertation. I have not yet managed to get a job. | I became more depressed than I would have believed possible. My PhD was a horrible, horrible time and I still feel thoroughly traumatised and angry - I feel ill to think about it. | The practical obstacles of trying to get work against such odds are significant, if not insurmountable. I have no idea what was being said about me, and in any field that sort of thing is hard to defeat, particularly added to the odds that we all face these days. These people set out to destroy my chances in academia because I didn't want a relationship with either of them. It's horrific that anyone is happy to wield that power over anyone, and that there are still set-ups where it's possible for them to get away with it. | Principally two men, backed up by a woman | |||
2423 | 3/9/2018 7:14:01 | Sexual comments made by department chair and senior male professors about visitors and colleagues (even in writing in emails) and gender-based critiques during reviews and after teaching observations (not "warm" enough; not "enchanting" enough; "dull content but nice smile"; repeatedly called "girlfriend" by a senior prof; repeated instances of gender-based bullying and hostile treatment not experienced by junior male peers) | Assistant Prof (myself and two other women who experienced this treatment) | Department Chair and senior professor | R2 | English | Awaiting Dean's response. We hope the Chair is not renewed after first term, but he should be removed now. No visible consequences for the other prof involved. | May be removed as Dept Chair. | Chair tried to push me out in my 4th-year review but failed. He made my life miserable. I thought about leaving academia. Almost left the institution for another job in my 4th year. Decided to stick my neck out for other junior women who were being harassed since I didn't care if I stayed in academia anyway. The militaristic power imbalances permit bullying and abuse. | Insomnia and difficulty concentrating. Entered therapy. | I avoid the abusers as much as I can and relocated my office hours to another building so I don't have to see them. | Man | |||
2424 | 3/9/2018 13:15:31 | Full professor began an affair with a first-year graduate student and ultimately married her. She left the program. | Graduate student | Full professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Berkeley | political science | removed faculty member from prize committees when his girlfriend was applying for money | none | minimal on mine; significant effects on the girlfriend (though the relationship was consensual); generally contributed to a gross environment in the dept where this prof's female students needed to worry about being perceived as having inappropriate relationships with him. | Man | ||||
2425 | 3/9/2018 13:17:45 | Tenured professor made repeated sexual/romantic advances to a friend, stuff like inviting her out for drinks "with other people" and then -- surprise! -- it's just the two of them, trying to kiss her, getting sloppy drunk for plausible deniability. | graduate student | tenured prof | Elite Institution/Ivy League | UC Berkeley | classics | none | none | My friend left academia | My friend left academia | Man | |||
2426 | 3/11/2018 14:32:27 | The professor will lean back on his reclining chair, showing his groin to me, while I am discussing work with him. Then he would put his hand on his groin to adjust something. I had to look at his face and pretend that I did not see it. | Colleague | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Business | I tolerated it so that I can get my papers published and the project wrapped up. I spent years on the project. The cost was great for me. | Man | |||||||
2427 | 3/11/2018 19:46:35 | One colleague made jokes about other female colleagues body shapes and make statement about "women should bear many children even if they have full-time jobs, although nowadays it is none of my business," "there is no need for maternity leave for females. My mom went back to work after she gave a birth to me," and female professors are emotional and not research productive. He also made a threat that there is nothing I can do even if he made such statements because he is already tenured. | Assistant Professor | Associate Professor in the same department (recently promoted to the full professor) | Small Liberal Arts College | Psychology | It looked more like a "relational bullying" rather than "sexual harassment," so I first ignored it, but when situations became escalated, I verbally reported to the Dean. He said the person has had some "personality" issue, but at the same time he also said there is nothing much I can do because that person is "tenured." | Because the person is one of the few clinical psychologists and gets along with the admin, he was promoted to the full professor without almost any publications. Many people have experienced similar issues here and there, but they are afraid of speaking out, too. | Nothing specifics have been done on my career directly, however, it is possible that the colleague can do anything since he is practically a senior faculty in the same major. | It has been very stressful both physically and emotionally. Since his office is close to mine, he is doing his best to "give the hard time" to me by making other junior faculty members on his side. He is pretty much against almost every work I have done and makes a fun of my work in front of colleagues during the department meetings. | I'm now currently the fourth year, tenure-track faculty member. One good thing is, since the colleague is pretty much well-known on bullying others, other colleagues have been supportive. The Dean also recommended me to go up for the early-tenure review (which will happen in this December). However, even if I luckily get the tenure, working with the colleague will be extremely difficult, so I'm wondering whether it is a good time for me to find another job (In fact, I already applied one). | Thank you for doing this survey, Karen. I wonder whether my response can belong to "sexual harassment" or not, but I'm pretty sure many will experience some sort of "relational" bullying like me and have a hard time to report because of its nature. I am trying to get some professional advice here and there, so if you can provide me some tips, would you mind giving me the email to ****? Thank you! | Man | ||
2428 | 3/11/2018 20:28:14 | A department chair had a relationship with a newly hired professor. When it went awry, he retaliated by falsely altering her personnel files, among other things (according to her lawsuit against him). Graduate and undergraduate students were caught in the middle, with some called upon to make statements for the lawsuit, and one graduate student leaving academia due to the fallout. To complicate matters, the chair's ex-wife and ex-lover were also faculty members. | M.A. student | My department chair and class professor. He wrote me a recommendation letter for a doctoral program. | Other R1 | Humanities | None (he was backed by the board). She won her civil lawsuit but left academia. | Very few, in fact a major conference celebrated his career. | I had to walk on eggshells as an M.A. student to navigate the faculty tensions, so a department's overall health became my priority in choosing my Ph.D. program. | It shook me up, especially because it resulted in two women leaving academia. | I've been fortunate to have had job choices in academia, and in each case the overall "health" of a work environment has been key to my decision. | Man | |||
2429 | 3/12/2018 22:08:17 | Berkeley is well-known for having a sexual harassment/assault issue, and the Math Department in particular. Heard many stories from women who said they quit this department in particular due to the sexual harassment. The general sentiment is that female undergraduates/graduate students are expected to endure the harassment and submit to the sexual advances of male professors (i.e. non-consensual). | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Berkeley | Mathematics | None-Widely known but no disciplinary action | None | Man | |||||||
2430 | 3/13/2018 11:17:41 | My friend told me the harasser engaged in aggressive courting, heavy charm & manipulation immediately after he met her. Then he became emotionally abusive & would psychologically torture her. She thought this was his cycle. He would brag about having sex on his desk w/grad students. She said he has a 'reputation.' I saw his picture online. Meh. | She was Adjunct Prof | Tenured (?) Prof | Other R1 | Indiana university | Forget which dept he is in. This cozy rltp w/the admin might allow him to get away w/his sexually & emotionally exploitative behavior. | None. His 'reputation' for creeping on women & emotionally toying w/them was widely known but never addressed. | Not sure. | She was very emotionally disturbed by the incident. She couldn't handle his emotionally abusive behavior in an aggressive, forthright way for fear of retribution to her own career. | Far more leery of male academics now. | Man | |||
2431 | 3/16/2018 14:29:22 | The dean at my university, during a department meeting, said to the female faculty In general, “Didn’t I see you down on 4th St. last night?” That was where the prostitutes in our city congregated. (He was also known for “joking” about faculty members’ Judaism, African American dark skin color, and Japanese ancestry. | Assistant professor | Dean | R2 | University of Nevada -Reno | Education | None, not reported, everyone afraid of him | None at the time, faculty got him removed from position several years later | None | Sense of intimidation | I lost my job there because of him but not related to sexual harassment | Man | ||
2432 | 3/17/2018 11:01:59 | Senior Prof asked me to go "watch a movie" with him at his home when his wife was away. He put his hands on my shoulders when he asked. I said "no". He was my on my MA committee. Soon after that, the day of my thesis defense, without notice, he dropped himself from my committee. He said that he didn't respect the work and could not be on the committee. If another senior professor had not been willing to step up and stand in for the harasser I would have not been able to graduate. I was not protected by my other committee member and main advisor, who was a junior male. | MA Student | Senior Faculty | Other R1 | UGA | Anthropology | I didn't tell anyone except my other advisors | Man | ||||||
2433 | 3/17/2018 11:02:49 | Senior Prof put his hands on my back as I was sitting at a lab computer. I shot up, turned around, and said "don't touch me" and he grabbed my shoulders. I pushed him as hard as I could across the room. | PhD student | Senior Faculty | Other R1 | Rutgers | Anthropology | I didn't report this | Man | ||||||
2434 | 3/17/2018 11:03:46 | Junior Prof cornered me in the elevator at the AAA meetings in Atlanta in 1994. He rubbed his penis against me and wouldn't let me out of the elevator. I got out and avoided him the rest of the conference. It was my first AAA. | MA student | Junior (untenured) prof | American Anthropological Association | Anthropology | Man | ||||||||
2435 | 3/17/2018 11:05:04 | Various. 1. Endless starring at my breasts and not my face when speaking to me or listening to me speak. 2. Commenting on my appearance (e.g. woman faculty member said to me "Oh, you will be fine, being pretty will get you far") and / or not taking me seriously because of my appearance --e.g. once was publicly questioned my ability to gather data in my intended field site because a junior man said I was too attractive for people to take me seriously. 3. When I was a PhD student some post docs started a rumor that I was sleeping with my advisor (I was not, did not, would not, do that). They talked about it so widely that it got back to all of my committee and everyone else in my graduate program. | PhD / MA | Mostly junior faculty members and post docs | More Than One Institution (feel free to elaborate in "Comments") | Various incidents with people of different genders | |||||||||
2436 | 3/17/2018 12:24:20 | Hotshot, unmarried assistant professor, who was carrying the department funding/publications-wise, was rumored to crash student parties, do kegstands, and sleep at them overnight. His Grad students and undergraduates spread a story within the department alleging that he was carrying on a sexual relationship with a beginner graduate student in his group, directly under his supervision. After some time, when she broke up with him, they said he got angry and did everything he could to make life in his group unbearable for her and to end her career at Tulane. She transferred to another school and his career went onwards and upwards. His group members told me he took her name the manuscript drafts she had contributed to and ordered the other students in the group to re-do her experiments and replace the data points she had collected so she would have no claim to the papers. It was like she never had existed. After Hurricane Katrina he changed universities. | Student | Professor | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Tulane University | Engineering | Not aware of any | Not aware of any | The harassed student was ran out of town and had to restart her PhD elsewhere from scratch | not known | not known | Man | ||
2437 | 3/19/2018 4:29:31 | Sexual harassment via emails, text messages (SMS), phone calls Sexual assault - pushing his body onto me, forcing fingers into my underwear, grabbing | Honours student, PhD candidate | Senior lecturer | Elite Institution/Ivy League | Monash University, Melbourne | Sociology | Chose to blame me despite a stack of printed incriminating emails, creepy texts and my personal story | None! Moved to another Australian university (James Cook Uni) to escape repercussions | Dropped out from PhD for 6mths, ostracized from academia as perpetrator is powerful | suicidal and depressed since - have not felt same passion about work since he did this to me | drug and alcohol abuse, suicide attempts, made a bad personal life decision to sleep with a co-worker that I would NOT have otherwise, missed publication, did not finish original candidature (have since re-enrolled) | He ruined my academic career. I never saw this coming. I can't attend most Australian conferences now - either because of this creepy rapist or because of his friend who seduced me when I was stupid/vulnerable enough to succumb. I am so embarrassed and I want to die most days. I always dreamed of being an academic and these men destroyed me. | Man | |
2438 | 8/18/2018 | The woman is a heterosexual martial artist at the English Department. I am a gay-ish guy (I occasionally date women, but I have a much stronger preference for men). I reluctantly agreed to date the woman after she confessed that she had an erotic dream about me (9 March, 2015). It was initially consensual, but I felt upset that what we were doing was similar to adultery (she broke up with her long-term partner, J., in order to pursue this relationship). I told her in a clear language that I did not want to have sex. She attempted to rape me -- which isn't easy from an anatomical perspective since she is female and I am male, but she tried her very best. I removed her from a house party the next day, and I told her to avoid me except in a situation of life and death four days later. She was very violent and aggressive and she tried to destroy my reputation in revenge. She also accused me of sexual harassment because, in her own words, "he was manipulating my emotions and lying to me by telling me that he was not attracted to me." (So she basically accused me of sexual harassment because I spurned her advances). She also perjured herself under oath (i.e. her sworn statements directly contradicted material evidence and her previous statements). All in all, I don't think anybody believes her and the University kicked her out of my classes twice, but she received no real punishment partially because of the gender dynamics (gay guy accuses straight woman) and partially because of her corrupt and powerful lawyer. Note: a civil rights agency found my claims of sexual harassment and sexual assault against the woman to be "in good faith" and "objectively reasonable" on 7 December, 2017. | PhD student | PhD student | USC | USC | English Literature | She was kicked out of my classes twice, but she received no punishment otherwise. | Nothing. The "ladies network" in the English Department protected her. | A female professor tried to sabotage my dissertation at the last minute as a form of retaliation. There are other negative consequences (too long to list here). | I suffered privately, and I stopped eating for a while. The rapist is very efficient in terms of manipulating her audience and she relies on a network of allies. | The harassment, as well as the subsequent response of the English Department, persuaded me that academia is an unpleasant swamp to be avoided at all costs. | Women can rape men, too. I don't really know how often that happens, since there are conflicting stats out there. The credible cases that I came across usually involve some kind of power imbalance such as women raping disabled men, or the man being incapacitated for some other reason, or the woman being older and in a position of power. (I was recovering from a surgery at the time, and the woman is a martial artist). | Woman | |
2439 | Non-Binary |
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