Add molecular biology to your list of fields that have a sexual harassment problem. A biologist at the University of Chicago (where only a quarter of the senior faculty are women, the article points out) has resigned in the midst of some damning accusations.
The professor, Jason Lieb, made unwelcome sexual advances to several female graduate students at an off-campus retreat of the molecular biosciences division, according to a university investigation letter obtained by The New York Times, and engaged in sexual activity with a student who was “incapacitated due to alcohol and therefore could not consent.”
Furthermore, there was some murky stuff in his background before he was hired.
Before he was hired, molecular biologists on the University of Chicago faculty and at other academic institutions received emails from an anonymous address stating that Dr. Lieb had faced allegations of sexual harassment or misconduct at previous jobs at Princeton and the University of North Carolina.
“Both U.N.C. and Princeton launched investigations,” the email read.
Yoav Gilad, a molecular biologist at Chicago who was on the committee that advocated hiring Dr. Lieb, said he and his fellow faculty members knew that in February 2014 Dr. Lieb had abruptly resigned from Princeton University, just seven months after having been recruited from the University of North Carolina to run a high-profile genomics institute.
You cannot refuse to hire someone because of an anonymous email. It can stimulate you to look more deeply, but you need something more substantive than that to reject someone. And to their credit, Chicago did look into it, and tried to find out what went on with that mysterious sudden departure from Princeton, only to be met by the traditional stony wall of silence, and a refusal to discuss what happened back there in New Jersey.
That’s a problem.
That a serial harasser can bounce from job to job to job, leaving a trail of disruption behind him, while the institutions work diligently to hide his trail, is one of the reasons this problem persists.
Why is the title “It’s not just astronomers”? For those of us not in the know can you explain the situation surrounding astronomy and sexual harassment?
So, according to the university’s investigation he raped a student. And he was allowed to resign. As opposed to, I don’t know, being fired? Prosecuted?
There has been a recent rash of sexual harassment cases in the astronomy community. Look up Geoff Marcy for one prominent example, or just the #AstroSH hashtag.
OK thanks, will look that up.
Sadly the title could quite accurately be “Its just every work place”.
@2 Joey Maloney
From the first line of the article:
Looks like he resigned before they could fire him.
I was wondering why his departure was allowed to be framed as a “resignation”?
The situation in academia is starting to smell a lot like the Catholic church debacle. Abusers have been getting shuttled around from one institution to another.
@ 2 Joey Maloney
So, according to the university’s investigation he raped a student.
Well, yes.
Any sign of the police? Oh wait this is Chicago
Pair that with angry legions of obsessive rape and sexual harassment apologists – how long before we run into idiots (I am looking at you, Dawkins) moaning about how another ‘great scientist’ has had his ‘life and vital research’ ruined by ebil feminazis? – and an ongoing general disinclination to take accusations of sexual assault seriously in our society (a status quo MRAs, PUAs and their fellow travelers work hard to maintain) and you are all too easily looking at a perfect storm of circumstances and social systems that facilitate this kind of abuse and turn academe into a playground for predators.
I find myself agreeing completely with Dondueed @ 7 – this whole business is getting an all too familiar stench about it, where protecting a high status institution is the over riding concern with no thought given to the well being of the rape survivors or targets of harassment. It seems that religiosity (while likely an exacerbating factor) is in no way a necessary ingredient in this phenomenon.
Has there been enough research been carried out on how the catholic church went about committing and covering up sexual assault in order for us to say that another organisation is practicing the same behavior?
For example in the UK it seems our entertainment business has been rife with sexual assault for quite some time and yet we have failed to properly investigate what went on and how/why it was ignored. I don’t know if I can compare the entertainment business and the catholic church because we have failed to research what went on in both cases.
At this point, I think we can simply conclude that If a group gives fancy titles to people, it has a predator problem.
@ 2 Joey Maloney
@11: I think there is an even more fundamental problem: We can’t trust people to police themselves. No matter how fancy their title, no matter how respectable or apparently altruistic their profession, no matter how smart they are. People are just crap at policing themselves and external control is needed or there will be a predator problem. We can’t rely on hiring committees and university administration to sort these people out.
I am trying to understand why this s.o.b. is not being charged with rape. But I guess the most likely reason, aside from the same old same old separate universe that is a university is that the victim is not pressing charges (?) That would explain it.
He is not being charged with rape because universities are not the proper institution to prosecute criminal charges. That would require that victims (or others) bring it to the attention of the police, who would then presumably take action.
There are a lot of assumptions packed into that word “presumably”.
Not fancy titles, power/authority over others.
I think that it’s a matter of the psychology of authority and lack of accountability and consequences. You see similar things in sports and politics. The military has a rape problem, prisons have a rape problem. It’s independent of religion the way we normally think of it, unless you pay attention to how atheists and the religious are the same like I do.
It turns out that in mice the same circuit that controls mating in both sexes controls aggression in males.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23663785
As tempting as it is to make some Evo psych statements rhetorically unpleasant for people who usually do the same for female people, I’ll just point out that both male and female humans likely have this sort of programming and our culture advantages males.
So, according to the university’s investigation he raped a student. And he was allowed to resign. As opposed to, I don’t know, being fired? Prosecuted?
You don’t “allow” someone to resign; they just do it. In the case of a (presumably) tenured professor firing is not going to be instantaneous. In this case a provost made the recommendation to fire, so they were presumably going down that road, and he decided not to wait around. This obviously doesn’t preclude prosecution but that’s not up to the university.
I’d be curious how the NYT got the letter. Since this is now public presumably investigation by a prosecutor is likely.
One difference is that the Holy Roman Catholic Church is one unified entity which appears to have deliberately shuffled offenders about to avoid inquiry. Universities are independent entities. Details of the currently-discussed situation show that independence coupled with privacy concerns inhibited the flow of information between those entities.
Yuuup. During my time in graduate school, I ran into two professors who were caught sexually harassing (possibly raping) students. One resigned and disappeared from academia, the other resigned and took a shiny new job at a different institution. I’ve recently heard rumors that he’s now being investigated by that institution, and I hope something actually comes of that.
As to the broader picture: it’s always faster for someone to resign than for university administration to fire them, and these people know when they’re being investigated, so they almost always have a chance to resign before being fired. What sort of mechanism can be put in place to warn future potential employers about past problems? It’s my understanding that most employers aren’t legally allowed to discuss the reasons an employee was fired or resigned. So that leaves us with an informal network of students and professors warning others to avoid certain people. But that is a poorly made bandage on a gaping wound.
engaged in sexual activity with a student who was “incapacitated due to alcohol and therefore could not consent.”
They couldn’t use the R-word?
My understanding is that employers can theoretically discuss the reason for dismissal, as long as they don’t violate the ex-employee’s right to privacy or libel the ex-employee. Since it’s hard to draw the line, employers tend to draw it at saying *anything at all*.
My last job, my boss isn’t even allowed to write me a recommendation.
Agree that there are some similarities between university sex scandals and Catholic Church sex scandals, but also some important differences. In the Catholic Church, almost every case in which a priest was sexually abusing people also had a bishop or cardinal in the background who knew what the priest was doing and actively abetted the behavior. That element of active hierarchical assistance to the abusers just doesn’t exist in universities, where the hierarchy would rather make the abuser go away – let him resign – than assist him in his abuse.
The better analogy for university sex scandals is Protestant church sex scandals.
Yes, a much better analogy. (Though the Catholic sex scandals don’t all involve parish priests; some have also involved various religious orders that are often somewhat less directly controlled by bishops/cardinals.)
Is there a field that is completely free of human involvement? That field probably dosen’t have issues with harassment.
I’ll goggle that for you:
http://www.science20.com/quantum_gravity/blog/neil_degrasse_tyson_accused_of_rape_astrosh_was_mainly_silent-164563
your welcome ;-(
Would the ‘university responsibility for charges’ issue be different for those universities that have a particular division of the police affiliated with the campus? I’ve seen a few, and I know that at least one campus had actual police (rather than ‘campus security’).
I think we can sum it up with society has a rape problem.
I agree with WMDKitty just above me (#28). I am a little nonplussed by the implied premise here — that there are only a limited number of scientific fields that include scientists who double as sexual harassers. I suppose such a premise evinces an admirable flavor of idealism, but I doubt that there are any scientific or non-scientific fields in the U.S. or abroad that are free of this solecism, just as I’d be amazed if one could show that there are fields free of bald people or people who collect Star Wars memorabilia.
seems the discussion is about “enablers” as a bigger problem than the rapists themselves.
[ugh, more coherently]: it is well known that R’s can be found in any group one examines. The real problem is that there are some groups that try to shield the Rs, enabling the Rs to continue the R’ing. What I think we’re looking for is the groups(s) that will expose its R members and (minimally) shame them, if not more; rather than just shuffle them around to shield them from discovery.
The reputation of an institution is much more important than the safety of some kid with no money or power.
mclarenm @10
The Australian Royal Commission on the topic is titled Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. They’re doing over all kinds of institutions one by one. Catholic Church, Anglicans, Jewish schools, sports organisations, orphanages and other children’s residential facilities, anyone and everyone that a victim has named. It looks as though the Catholic church might be the biggest organisation with this problem, but the problem itself seems universal.
Here’s the research program – separate from the hearings themselves the Commission has a team of researchers to back them up. Haven’t read any of this stuff (nobody’s paying me to be a commissioner) but it looks to be pretty comprehensive. http://childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/policy-and-research/published-research
This one might be a good start for looking into this stuff. http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/getattachment/3d61d8c9-452e-4dc7-b32f-d6a23ff93e1b/Hear-no-evil,-see-no-evil But the list of references at the end indicates to me that very little work has been done in this specific topic.
Related: I’ve mentioned this before, but: there’s a book by the late neurologist Harold Klawans titled Tales of an Expert Witness. In one of the cases in which he testified as to the malpractice of a surgeon, the surgeon did exactly what is suggested here: got in hot water at one hospital for (essentially) malpractice, lost his surgical privileges, bounced to another hospital, got in hot water for malpractice, lost his surgical privileges, bounced to a third hospital, and was being sued for malpractice for a very-questionably-necessary surgery the complications of which killed the patient. The hospitals were not required to report to anyone when a surgeon had been forbidden to operate (which basically translated into “when they were fired for malpractice”) or even to make this fact known, and of course none of them wanted anyone to know that they had been harboring a bad surgeon, so when new hospitals considered hiring the surgeon, the previous hospitals did not warn them of what had happened. This was in the state of Illinois; I have no idea whether other states have more stringent requirements (or whether Illinois has improved — the book was published in the 1980s, IIRC) but although the crime was different the mechanism by which the criminal was continually employed was the same.