Recently, the APA appointed a new ad
hoc committee on sexual harassment in the discipline. I chatted with the
inimitable Kate Norlock (Trent University), who is chairing the committee,
about the committee itself and more generally about sexual harassment in academic
philosophy. There is much more to be said than we could fit into one
conversation, so I encourage discussion in the comments thread. (Although I will be using plenty of moderator's discretion on this one as needed!)
Rebecca: Why are we forming a sexual harassment committee now? Why are we
just now facing the fact that the discipline has a real sexual harassment
problem? How much of that has to do with the power of the Internet?
Kate: I recently looked back at the number of entries on the What is it Like to
Be a Woman in Philosophy? blog labeled "sexual harassment." In the word-cloud label on that blog
it's one of the biggest labels, and I count 71 entries so categorized. I
remember when Jenny Saul started that blog, she asked what labels she should
create for the different entries. I suggested that she wait and see what
patterns emerged, and the labels would suggest themselves. I don't think either
of us expected so many stories of harassment so early. I think the power of the Internet, and more importantly, the power of motivated and caring users, is
that philosophers who have experienced or witnessed harassment are finally able
to find each other on blogs like What It's Like. I'm dead grateful that women
in the profession like Jenny Saul have gone out of their way to provide gathering
places for collecting accounts of harassment.
Rebecca: In
your view, why it important that we, as a discipline, address sexual
harassment?
Kate: I think
the effects of harassment piggyback on the effects of a lot of other
marginalizations that are evident in philosophy. The experiences of minorities
in a field that is predominantly white, predominantly male, and predominantly
middle- and upper-class can be discouraging, and perpetuate imbalances in the
demographics of our profession. I think harassment amplifies that
discouragement.
Other
fields make it clearer in policy and organizational statements that harassment
of some sorts is a crime – that it's not just not-acceptable but illegal. We're
a bit behind in that respect. Some of the APA's more recent documents
discourage interviews in private hotel rooms and so forth, with the implication
that past practices are regrettable. But this runs the risk of making it seem
as though the culture of bad practices is a norm that we disparage, not an
unacceptable arrangement.
Rebecca: I
agree that we are behind! My sense is that philosophers are especially bad at
acknowledging that we need institutional guidelines for both preventing and
coping with harassment. Do you think that's partly because philosophers think
of themselves as 'above' cut and dried institutional rules? It seems to me that so
many philosophers think, hey, we are so cool and enlightened and informal in
this field, we can manage to deal with these issues without all that petty
bureaucracy.
Kate: I think
we often try to reject the errors of the past by just not talking about them
much at all. When I was a student we learned to ignore the sexist things that
past great figures said because it was not relevant or didn't matter. By the
same token, it's attractive to say we're past sexually harassing, so why do we
need a statement of best practices? Let's just look away, look away!
Unfortunately, that approach does not seem to help those who continue to
encounter harassment in the profession.
Rebecca: Let’s
talk about the committee itself. What exactly is its charge? What is it
supposed to deliver in the end?
Kate: Good questions! Let me start by saying what we're not charged
with doing: We are not asked to investigate particular allegations of sexual
harassment, or resolve pending harassment cases in the profession, or expose
scholars whispered to harass. Having said that, our duties DO include
developing a protocol to gather anonymous information about sexual harassment
in the profession. No one expects us to gather comprehensive data, because this
isn't a committee assembled in order to be doing social science either.
Instead, we aim to collect accounts of encounters with sexual harassment so
that our recommendations are reflective of what actually occurs. It could
otherwise be easy to make recommendations from our armchairs about what we
imagine to be the case. We aim to avoid that.
The
goal of the committee, ultimately, is to formulate a statement of best
practices in the philosophy profession in higher education. I joke to people I
know that the best practices could be summarized, "Don't do that."
More seriously, though, we are also tasked with researching what other fields
do to prevent it, to diminish its occurrence, and to make it clearer what
options exist for those who experience harassment. Our official "deliverables" are as
follows: "The Committee will produce a report recommending best practices
regarding sexual harassment in the discipline be implemented by the APA,
philosophy departments in which APA members are employed, and conferences and
other professional events hosted by either."
Rebecca: The
point about armchairs is really important, it seems to me, because sexual
harassment is a deeply messy affair, and what might seem like really straightforward
recommendations in the abstract may actually be unimplementable,
uninterpretable, or useless in practice. I think that hearing from as many
people as possible who have had to cope with harassment in their professional
life – and not just from victims – would be fantastic.
Will
you just be developing best practice recommendations designed to help prevent
harassment, or also for those trying to figure out what to do when they have
been harassed, or when a student or colleague or staff member reports
harassment to them? Honestly, I think that we are in desperate need of practice
recommendations for those who have been harassed and for those to whom
harassment has been reported; we don't just need prevention guidelines. When
harassment occurs – or seems like it might have occurred – in an academic
setting, it’s not at all obvious how to cope with that appropriately. The
dynamics of vulnerability, privacy, power, gender, age, collegiality, and so
forth all come into play; philosophers need the epistemic humility to
acknowledge that sorting all that out is hard and can’t just be puzzled out
without guidance.
Kate: Our
duty is phrased as one of collecting anonymous information, but it is not
limited to getting that information from victims of harassment. Some
departments and organizations already have better practices that we could all
benefit from hearing.
Our
focus is on prevention, but also one of our duties is the following: "The
Committee should seek legal advice to ensure that any procedures or policies it
recommends are legally sound. Departments are often unable or unwilling to seek
out legal advice; gaining information about legal constraints and obligations
and clarifying them in a report is a valuable service the APA can offer."
So although we're not empowered to create policies on responding to harassment,
we are in a good position to help departments modify their own responses.
Rebecca: Can
you tell me why you agreed to chair this, given that we are all way too busy?
Why did you personally feel that it was an important use of your time?
Kate: I agreed to chair this because I witnessed and helped with the
creation of the What Is it Like blog, and what was said there was extremely
consistent with previous experiences of my own. Harassment can be experienced
as both isolating and isolated. If there's one thing philosophers can do to
help each other, it is to call attention to a possibility that one is not
alone, that one's own colleagues and organizations can establish cultures in
which this is affirmed, and that there is even a possibility for a systemic
response, at least a small one. Shortly before I was asked to chair this, I did
a wee bit of work for the Canadian Philosophical Association Equity Committee.
A CPA poll showed that philosophers in higher education didn't know where to
look for policies and processes. Just making information available for those
who need it can help.
Rebecca: What
is the committee’s time line?
Kate: The work has already started, and different members of the
committee have different experiences with collecting data, with consultation
with legal sources, and with researching other organizations. We're only just
beginning, and will of course need to do the bulk of our work in the summer.
The deadline for our end-product is the November board meeting.
Rebecca: Thanks to you and the rest of the
committee for taking on this difficult and important task! Good luck!
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