We are often led to believe that “academia” is the one environment, the one place, where there is a higher level of social consciousness. It is certainly the setting where sexual harassment does not exist, right? Apparently, neither assumption is correct.
The Graduate Student
In graduate schools across America, there has been a spike in sexual harassment claims. Schools, where graduate students have called attention to harassment, include none other than prestigious Harvard.
At the University of Oregon, a survey of graduate students found that about 40 percent of females in the graduate program reported sexual or gender-based harassment of some kind. In fact, in a comparison of a 2015 survey to a 1985 survey it was found that the percentage of harassment had not changed.
In terms of current numbers, about 58 percent of graduate students are female however, most of the tenured professors are male. As has long been noted, this creates a strong “asymmetry” of power. Traditionally, tenured professors represent “power,” and graduate students are traditionally powerless.
In June 2019, Boston University Provost Jean Morrison commented before lawmakers on Capitol Hill about sexual harassment of women in sciences. She noted:
“Faculty do most of their teaching and research within the context of a department, and those departments are led by a department chair who’s been elected from among the group. They are isolated from broader structures and they have a tremendous amount of autonomy.”
It means that there may be broader patterns of sexual harassment, abuse and bullying but as one department e.g. Biology may not be comparing notes with English Literature, the patterns are not as clear as they could be.
Wellesley College President Paula Johnson said:
“The cumulative effect of sexual harassment includes a negative impact to the integrity of research and a costly loss of talent in science, engineering and medicine, which has consequences for advancing the nation’s economic and social well-being and its overall public health.”
Indeed, Johnson noted that talented graduate students doing potentially breakthrough work have been bullied and harassed right out of programs. Who knows what they may have contributed to the sciences?
It Comes Down to Ethics
There are accounts stating that some female graduate students literally pass around informal lists of male professors who other female graduate students recommend they should not be alone with in a classroom or research setting. If it has gotten that serious at prestigious universities where there is “awareness,” what does this say about more remote campuses? Or, could be that there is no correlation, that sexual harassment is a problem across the academic spectrum?
Part of the problem of sexual harassment on campuses is that the same dynamic that has existed between professors and graduate students that has historically existed (we’re educated, we’re more aware, we’re elite), could also be its downfall.
It is an opportunity to commit harassment and abuse within a bubble where there is no oversite.
Are the needs of power-hungry professors, whether sexual needs or the need to express dominance, any more or less than the desires of an executive, politician, movie producer or physician? I think not.
As graduate students vie for recognition, academic excellence or even the need to try to gain employment, predatory professors may rationalize that graduate students being harassed is merely a rite of passage. They are the dues to be paid for acceptance into the academic fold. Is it a sick rationalization? Absolutely.
What stops such rationalization? Ethical training. Ethical training does not care about credentials, it cares about doing the right thing and about the norms that a civilized society expects.
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