A letter to a colleague who harassed a student
Tags: Academia, University, Mentorship, Sexual Harassment, Professionalism

Dear Male Colleague,

Thank you for ruining my relationship with an undergraduate student with whom I worked closely. I was going to write “my student” but the possessiveness of that rubs me the wrong way. This is not my story to tell but there is a parallel story that is my story, or at least a story that I can tell from my perspective. I do not want to focus on your actions towards this student and you were always appropriate and collegial with me. I do, however, want to focus on the ripple effects of your actions on other relationships. I also want to stress that the informal systems that academics have in place to protect our students and ourselves, the whisper network in particular, often do not work. Or we come to know about perpetrators after the fact, when it is too late, when we go to the whisper network ourselves and hear our whispers repeated back to us.

I worked with an undergraduate student, I will call her R here, who became a formal research assistant after she enrolled in two of my classes. She is incredibly bright, kind, and motivated, the kind of student that most faculty dream of mentoring. We worked on a paper together and were invited to a small conference, where we met you. R was the only undergraduate student at the conference. She was excited to be there, thrilled to meet all of the conference participants and nervous about being the only undergraduate present. We were surrounded by luminaries in our field and potentially R’s future field. You had really productive and helpful things to say about our paper; it seemed like you “got” what we were trying to do.

At the conference dinner, I sat next to you and we had relaxed and personal conversation, you told me about your children and your graduate education, which you completed at the institution where I currently work. We also talked about anxiety, professionalization, and a lot of other things. I thought to myself “What a nice person!” I kept an eye on R, checking to make sure she was also eating and chatting with people.

After dinner, R and I walked back to the hotel together and discussed the day’s events. I made sure she returned to her room safely, said goodnight, and we planned to meet for coffee in the morning, before the second and final day of the conference. The next day, we finished the conference, took a group photo, and R and I flew home together. I asked her to text me after she got home, because we landed late and took separate taxis home. I worried until I heard from her as it really was late and I felt responsible for her, even though she is and was an adult. I even called our on-call undergraduate Dean the next day to ask what the protocol was if, God forbid, I was not sure if she had arrived home safely.

A few days after the conference, R told me that you had offered to introduce her to your graduate advisors, who are both extremely well-known scholars. She forwarded me an email that you sent them in which you told them that she was a wonderful future graduate student. R was excited and I was touched that you had done this for her. Clearly, you thought that R was a remarkable student too.

A month after the workshop, you visited my university to give a talk. You sent me the announcement about the talk and asked me if I wanted to meet for coffee. I was unable to come to your talk, but we met for that coffee. I thanked you for being so supportive of R. You said: “Of course,” and commented that R and I were a great team. You also said that you were interested in leaving your current institution and would love to come back to mine, that you liked it here.

Later that day, I chatted with a colleague and asked her if she thought you would be a good fit for our department. She said that you were problematic, that you had “problematic sexual behaviors.” I had not heard this before and slightly alarmed, I asked if she thought it was OK that you were mentoring an undergraduate student. She said she thought it was fine.

But then later that day, R came to my office for a research meeting. She was in tears. I asked her if she wanted to talk and she said no. I offered her a tissue, she took it. We continued to talk about work. I did not know what to do besides offer her the space to talk if she needed it.

A week later, R was in my office again as we had a presentation that afternoon and were going over it. She was still upset. She finally asked me if she could tell me something and if I would promise not to tell anyone. She prefaced what she was about to tell me by telling me that the person involved was not a faculty member at our institution.

R proceeded to tell me about someone who she considered to be a mentor, who she considered to be brilliant and accomplished, who had started sending her sexually explicit messages. She revealed that he had asked her to meet privately and sent other messages about her appearance and intelligence and an imagined future together. She wondered why this person was doing this to her. She commented that she was over half his age, and that she felt violated. But then she also did not want to hurt this person’s career.

Somehow, thinking about the timing and my colleague’s comment, I thought it might be you. I asked her and she confirmed it. She did not want me to do anything or tell anyone, she felt ashamed, she said. I sat with the information and did not know what to do with it. I decided to call the Title IX office at your institution. The director pressed me for information and wanted R to come forward, while also noting that R was not formally your student nor a student at your institution. In any case, R did not want to go through the Title IX process, she was graduating and trying to forget about what happened. She blocked your phone number and email address.

I understood why R did not want to talk to the Title IX officer and how coming forward would be potentially traumatizing and make R vulnerable — even though she did have messages which the Title IX office was eager to get their hands on. And, again, R stressed that she did not want to hurt you or your career.

I decided to talk to senior colleagues at your institution and elsewhere. They all thanked me for telling them and for using the “whisper network.” What flabbergasted me was that everyone I talked to knew about you. Advisors warn their students about you at your institution. You have been unofficially banned from various conferences. You have a reputation for being a sexual predator and for grooming female students. However, I did not know this (before).

This “whisper network” that we often speak about in academia failed me and R. This network is not foolproof. In article after article in the Chronicle of Higher Education we read about students and faculty warning each other about particular faculty members. However, what happens when the whisper network misses someone?

When I told this story to a senior colleague at my institution, he replied that it was such a trope, a cliché, and he asked me: “Haven’t you heard such stories before?” I said that of course I had, but I had never been so close to one, I had never experienced the collateral damage, the afterworlds. I was stung by his dismissiveness.

My purpose in writing this letter to you is to let you know that you did not just harm R but you also damaged my relationship with R and you also potentially foreclosed the possibility of R entering into a graduate program in our discipline.

I did not know what to do with the information that R gave me. I felt that listening was not enough. I wanted to tell people. I was also upset that this happened under my watch, so to speak. I felt responsible.

R was upset that I talked to people, she had asked me not to do so. Even before I told people, I felt that there was something new and potentially poisonous in our relationship: Did R blame me? Could I have done more to protect R when this was happening? What were my responsibilities towards R? What were my responsibilities towards other students who could potentially be harmed by you? I felt incredibly anxious.

In the aftermath, I worried greatly about R. At one point she disappeared (on me) and I wondered if I should show up at her workplace, contact her parents, or check her Instagram to see if she was OK. (I did none of these things and I also did not know that younger people apparently do not often check their voice messages). R currently attends graduate school, but not in our field. I wondered if her decision not to pursue a graduate degree in our field was a casualty of your actions. If our field is now repugnant to her, I understand why.

I am furious not just for what you did to R and to countless other students, but for what you did to my relationship with R and how helpless it made me feel. And institutionally there does not seem like there is anything that I could do besides engage the whisper network, the same network that failed R and I.

Sexual harassment has ripple effects. It harms other relationships and forecloses possible futures as well. R and I are no longer a great team and I blame you. I also blame the structure of academia that makes it so that we have to rely on the whisper network, that Title IX is unable to protect peoples’ anonymity and confidentiality, and a system of tenure that makes it so that you are seemingly structurally invincible.

Sincerely,

Your colleague