Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Roger of Invisible America's avatar
  2. Brian Kogelmann's avatar
  3. RMD's avatar
  4. Textbook Author's avatar
  5. New Author's avatar
  6. J. McKenzie Alexander's avatar
  7. Terence Rajivan Edward's avatar

How should a history of sexual harassment/misconduct factor into hiring decisions?

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 10–MORE DISCUSSION WELCOME

Philosopher Cheyney Ryan, Director of the Human Rights Programs for the Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict at Oxford University (who taught previously at the University of Oregon), writes:

The University of Oregon recently settled a case against it for almost $1 million brought by a young woman who had been assaulted by one of its basketball players. The basis of her suit was that the University knew or should have known that the player had been involved in a sexual assault incident at his previous university but still admitted him and did nothing to address the potential danger to others. Her suit cited other instances where universities have been held responsible for admitting students with histories of sexual assault/harassment. The new U of O president, a distinguished law professor, thought there was enough merit in the argument to settle the case immediately.

I should think that universities would evidence the same level of concern towards professors with such histories. Yet the impression up to now is that the Yale Philosophy Department was entirely too passive in this regard, in the Pogge matter. This impression is now confirmed by the remarks of Seyla Benhabib in the New York Times.

The article states, 

"Professor Benhabib, who served on Professor Pogge’s selection committee, said that she and other committee members had heard about the Columbia case but did not discuss it.

“I didn’t think it was my place to go searching into his history at Columbia,” she said. “Everybody slips once. That was our attitude.”

One can only hope she was misquoted. Otherwise, her remarks are absurd. "Everybody slips once"– was this really the search committee's attitude about acts of harassing/assaulting female students?  

If Pogge had been involved in an incident raising a weapons charge, would it then have been her place to go "searching" into his history? (How many "slip ups" would have been permissible in a gun violation?)

It's a matter for serious discussion how such histories should factor into a hiring decision. But progress in providing a safe environment for students will only be made when departments treat these matters as of more than casual importance.

I, too, was astonished by the "everybody slips once" comment attributed to Prof. Benhabib.   What do readers think about the issues raised by Prof. Ryan?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

18 responses to “How should a history of sexual harassment/misconduct factor into hiring decisions?”

  1. Matt

    " “I didn’t think it was my place to go searching into his history at Columbia,” she said. “Everybody slips once. That was our attitude.” "

    To my mind, it's the conjunction of these two that is problematic. Whether it is a person getting out of jail for theft applying for a retail job, or a philosopher who has engaged in sexual harassment, the idea that a single instance of wrongful behavior should result in the person never being again considered for a job strikes me as unreasonably harsh, at least if there is evidence of a lesson learned and not of a patter of problems and on-going bad behavior. (I will admit that it is a strong belief of mine that people who cannot imagine themselves doing something quite bad, and then needing a second chance, are almost certainly fooling themselves.) But, this does imply a duty to look into things, to try to make sure that the person in question has learned something, and that the bad acts in question are not likely to continue. At the least, this is a duty owed to students and colleagues at the hiring institution. It seems like this duty was ignored in this case. Even if we think (as I do) that people ought to be given second chances, even when they have done quite bad things, this isn't, or ought not be, a free pass. That, to my mind, seems like the most serious and significant initial failing on Yale's part. (The subsequent failings may well have been worse.)

    Reply
  2. US Correspondent

    Good issue.

    I agree that the Yale search committee ought to have followed up on this. In general, for *any* apparently credible allegation of what may be a serious violation of professional or academic standards, a search committee or admissions committee should look more closely into the matter. In cases where they see something negative that could affect their deliberations, they should of course give the candidate a fair chance to address the concerns before they jump to any conclusions. It's interesting that in Cheney Ryan's story, it's not a hire but a student's being admitted that led to a complaint. Admissions committees should surely look at a student's disciplinary record, too.

    I hope it goes without saying that this practice of screening applicants to a university must not be skewed toward the trendy but brainless obsession toward seeing sexual harassment as the most significant, or even the only, important transgression of university standards. There are many token instances of academic dishonesty, corrupt research practices, non-sex-related exploitation of the vulnerability of students and contingent employees, and disruptive behavior that surely have far worse consequences than many milder token acts of sexual harassment. Indeed, plagiarism and academic fraud at most universities is reaching epidemic levels, bringing the integrity, functionality and reputation of those universities and indeed the entire US higher ed system into jeopardy, but for some reason we hear very little about that on the blogs and little seems to be done about it.

    I would hope that all search or admissions committees do the following when they consider a new addition to their university:

    1. Make at least some attempt to find out whether the candidate has engaged in some violations of professional or academic standards, and follow up on any leads by getting an official statement from the previous school.

    2. Ask the candidate directly about any alleged violations, and listen with a critical but open mind to the candidate's explanation.

    3. Take into consideration the severity of the particular alleged act or acts. Acts that are deemed to fall into a category, like academic dishonesty or sexual harassment, can range from the very serious (like repeatedly pressing a supervisee into a sexual relationship) to the mild (like making a risque comment during Q and A at an APA session). It should be the severity of an infraction, and not its category, that determines how seriously it should be taken.

    4. If the allegation is disputed, then assess the credibility of the accusation. Among important considerations here:
    4a. Was the allegation confirmed by an official adjudicating body?
    4b. If so, then was the adjudicating body under any outside pressure to come out with one verdict over another? For instance, the judgment of an adjudicating body that heard a complaint of sexual harassment before the reinterpretation of Title IX should be taken far more seriously than one that made its assessment after the reinterpretation, since committees and universities working after the reinterpretation have so much to lose by a false judgment of innocence and virtually nothing to lose by a false judgement of guilt.
    4c. Did the adjudicating body allow the accused the presumption of innocence, the ability to fairly hear the case against him or her and challenge the evidence and testimony against him or her, etc.? If so, its verdict should be taken seriously. If not, then (depending on how unfair the proceedings were) it should probably be taken much less seriously.

    5. If it seems that the person really did perform the violation or violations, consider objectively what evidence there is that he or she has changed and is unlikely to reoffend.

    6. If there is pressure from a coordinated group or mob of protesters to block influence the proceedings, keep scrupulously aloof from their pressure and make the ultimate decision on the basis of the evidence at hand, not the pressures of the mob. To do otherwise would be a great disservice against the candidate, the university, and the cause of justice.

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    I wonder if US Correspondent's seemingly rational suggestions are, in most cases, impossible:

    1. Will most schools, fearing the chance of litigation, issue an "official statement" or release personnel records in response to mere search committees? (My college, for instance, will only confirm dates of employment.)
    2. Many "violations" have been covered by non-disclosure or non-disparagement clauses with very specific exceptions (e.g., a subpoena); what can be done about these instances?
    3. Many "violations" have never been worth adjudicating in a court of law for reasons of expense and time. Is it realistic to always look for definite "confirmation" or "exoneration?"
    4. Contractually, many adjudicating bodies in colleges have very few guidelines that they must legally follow. For example, my college has only vague mentions of "investigate" in its employee contract. There are mentions of "hearings" without any definition of what a "hearing" must consist of. What to do when the adjudicating body is opaque or never even released a report?

    I am writing because much commentary after the Kipnis affair wondered about Title IX investigations that nobody would ever hear about, perhaps at much smaller institutions than Northwestern. Generally speaking, if one is unfairly denied tenure or renewal or terminated as a result of such an investigation (or a similar investigation), the legal advice would usually be to quietly resign with at least neutral references and a cleared personnel file and seek to continue one's career elsewhere. Has this now suddenly become very bad advice?

    Reply
  4. US Correspondent

    I think those are good questions, Anonymous. Here's my best attempt at them.

    1 and 2. My understanding is that it is always possible for a former employee to request that copies of old personnel records be sent to anyone of his or her choosing. If this is right, then it seems appropriate to me for a search committee that has heard some negative stories about some alleged transgression that was supposedly investigated by a university to ask that candidate to produce such documents. But perhaps I am mistaken about the legal facts here.

    3. If there has been a legal adjudication, then my understanding is that it is always possible to obtain the transcript (Brian might know otherwise, but I note that he always seems able to obtain them for this blog). If there hasn't been a legal adjudication, then I presume the candidate could request that some document explaining the finding of the investigation be sent to the committee, together with some details of how the investigation was carried out. If this is not possible, or if there was not even a university-based investigation, then it seems to me the best a search committee could do with a rumor of wrongdoing is to ask the candidate about it.

    4 and conclusion. I am personally aware of at least one occasion in which a department member was ideologically at odds with his or her departmental colleagues and was pushed out of the university by them. Their means of doing so was to continue to pester the dean about the 'problem' until the dean launched an investigation into the actions of the lone wolf. Though the lone wolf had not done anything wrong, the investigator came up with something critical to add to the lone wolf's record about his or her being 'problematic' or 'uncooperative' in a way that corresponded with something in the university's contractual agreement. Apparently this is often done as part of an effort to resolve otherwise insuperable tensions between department members, and it is (I've been told by a union rep) always done in such a way that the larger crows is exonerated. The reason for this, apparently, is that it's easier to get rid of one person than five or six. In the case I'm most familiar with, the lone wolf was asked to apologize to his colleagues and perform various other acts of contrition and redemption. Instead, he agreed to resign his position, so long as this letter of warning was removed from his personnel file. It was, which I take it was only possible because everyone understood that he hadn't really done anything wrong and was just being used as a tool to get him to back off his position or else quit. I don't think, but I may be mistaken, that the personnel office would be as quick to eliminate a note about a really serious offense. But if it's that easy to clear one's personnel file so that nobody else ever sees it, I hardly think it's fair to blame the new hiring university for neglecting to notice what was in a file they could never see.

    Reply
  5. Cheyney Ryan

    I agree that this has been a helpful discussion on a difficult issue. I would add two observations.

    Where sexual harassment of students differs from other problems is that it involves students. My experience is that when someone is considered for a position a lot of attention is paid to their teaching abilities, or more generally their dealings with students, some of it by informal inquiry. So if it's perfectly appropriate to ask around about someone's dealings with students, it's perfectly appropriate to look into whether they sexually harass their students– by simply asking their colleagues, for starters. Hence, if the Yale department took teaching seriously it's surprising they wouldn't look into concerns about sexual-harassment in the same way they might look into concerns about, say, abusive behavior in the classroom, wildly erratic grading, etc. In all these cases, of course, judgment must be exercised about what one hears.

    Formal findings are generally confidential, and in my experience useless, dictated more by institutional considerations than concern for students. But it doesn't follow that the only alternative is hearsay, since if someone engages in sexual harassment of a student chances are others in the department know that student. In a case at Oregon a few years ago, I knew one of the students quite well that brought a formal complaint. I've felt perfectly free to talk about it, with her permission of course, especially after her complaint was completely ignored. If someone asked me about it from another department, for reasons of hiring, I would simply direct them to the student herself.

    Reply
  6. US Correspondent

    Hi, Cheney. Your proposal sounds reasonable as far as it goes, but I'm not sure how it would work out in practice on most occasions. Suppose I'm on a search committee (or admissions committee, mutas mutandis) and have a promising candidate A about whom we've heard a rumor of wrongdoing from B. So we follow up with B down the branch of the grapevine until we come to the student, who has the complaint against A. We ask the student for his or her story, and then (to be minimally fair) we have to ask A for his or her response to the story I got from the student. Then, we make our assessment about what really happened and how serious it is.

    All well and good. But won't it happen in a significant majority of cases that the student won't have agreed to have his or her name passed along? Or if it is passed along, won't the student typically (according to the stories I've heard) be unwilling to have his or her version of events reported to A?

    If you don't think so, then what you propose sounds right to me.

    Reply
  7. Mohan Matthen

    I wonder whether it would be feasible to ask every candidate for a job to declare whether they have ever been found guilty of sexual harassment, or possibly something broader—whether they have ever been found guilty of any violation of university codes of conduct. (I don't know what the correct wording would be.) This would be a simple matter if applications were made online. There could be a box to check. ("I have been found in violation of university codes of conduct" Yes or No. If yes, please give details.")

    In some senior appointments, no application is ever made. In this case, appointees could be asked the question in writing when their appointment is being processed.

    This would put the onus on the candidate to reveal their past history, and would give the university the right to discipline or even fire them if they were later found to have falsified their application.

    Reply
  8. David

    I am not a lawyer, and I'd love to hear one chime in, but…

    I'd be very careful about trying to conduct an independent investigation of rumored bad behavior as a member of a search committee.

    I think you're in the clear if there's a criminal conviction, as such information will come up in a normal background check.

    But if the harassment is only a matter of rumor (as it will likely be in the case of most investigations that remained internal to an institution):

    If a candidate is applying for multiple jobs, should each search committee try to contact all relevant parties?

    Regardless of the psychological consequences for the alleged victim?

    With no counseling or legal training or supervision?

    Our HR department (not a big institution) wants us to be sure, as much as possible, and at least till they're on campus, to present the same set of questions — including informal inquiries — to each candidate, lest we, for example, rule somebody out because of a rumor but fail to follow up on a rumor we should have heard about the candidate whom we hire.

    At a minimum, I would consult with HR regarding rumors to make sure I didn't expose myself or the institution to legal liability for acting upon improper information.

    Reply
  9. anon phd

    I agree that formal findings, for the reason you identify, may be of limited value. However, the suggestion that hiring committees ought to ask a candidate's colleagues strikes me as a bad idea. From what I've gathered, some, perhaps many, departments contain a fair amount of bad blood. Can we expect that a candidate's colleagues will offer an unbiased evaluation? Not having been a faculty member myself I should refrain from opining, though I am somewhat skeptical that the answer is 'yes.'

    Another worry is that if asking colleagues is appropriate for more senior hires, it stands to reason that one should ask the colleagues of recent PhDs. Here the problem is even worse. Faculty at the candidate's program are presumably concerned about their placement rates, and so will be unwilling, except perhaps in the most egregious cases, to offer up this information. A candidate's fellow graduate students may be in competition for the increasingly limited number of jobs, and thus are incentivized to offer up rumor, innuendo, etc.

    A final worry is that some of our colleagues seem to be defining down what counts as genuinely offensive behavior. Don't get me wrong, the McGinn and Pogge cases are genuinely offensive. But in other cases, (such as that described here: https://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2015/05/14/how-not-to-advertise-a-philosophy-conference), it would be absurd to rely on the judgment of a candidate's colleagues.

    Overall, while it would be helpful to have more complete information, we should be wary of finding a remedy worse than the disease.

    Reply
  10. Cheyney Ryan

    My understanding is that in the Yale case people were apprised of the problems but did not pursue them. This is actually parallel to the Oregon case I cited, where the school was aware of a student's prior sexual assault problems but chose not to inquire further. There too, by the way, there was no formal finding because the student withdrew rather than go through the process; but the judgment still was that the university was obliged to look into it and mitigate any problems the student posed. I think where a department is aware of problems it is also obliged to look into them, to ensure it is not putting students at risk.

    The worry seems to be the potential bias etc. in asking the professor's colleagues. (I agree that grad students are a different case.) My point was that the problem here is no greater than when we informally inquire about how someone does in the classroom, how good a colleague they are, etc. (Not asking about these things means the only information we have is provided by the candidates and their friends, not an unbiased source either.) I agree that people have different ideas about offensive behavior, but people have different ideas about whats a good teacher or good colleague; we still inquire into this.

    But I also see nothing wrong with a point made above–just ask people if they have had any problems in this area.

    Reply
  11. Anonymous

    Regarding US Correspondent's replies:

    1. I do not think that employees are permanently legally entitled to their personnel files; they may be contractually entitled. Further, I believe that in many cases of resignations and non-disparagement/non-disclosure agreements, documents are removed from personnel files and likely only available through subpoena or (possibly) FOI requests.
    3. Again, I do not think that employees are always legally entitled to such documents from their employers. I do not think that employers are required to make and retain transcripts of disciplinary hearings unless such records are part of a contractual agreement.
    4. Your description is interesting if disturbing. In my understanding, at many institutions of higher education, there are very few meaningful due process rights for untenured faculty and staff in response to (for example) complaints from students or colleagues. I think that some version of the resolution that you describe–resignation and the waiving of the right to sue in exchange for neutral references and a cleansed personnel file–would be recommended by most lawyers unless this "lone wolf" had some sort of smoking gun, unlimited resources, or simply nothing to lose. This resolution would also likely come with a non-disclosure agreement. It is unclear how common this resolution is, but imagine a search committee having to deal with this.

    Reply
  12. Philosophy MA Student

    I share Dr. Ryan’s outrage over the “everyone slips once” attitude that allegedly guided the hiring process at Yale (the year Pogge was hired). It seems he is reading Dr. Benhabib’s comments to be justifying the decision to hire Pogge, but I understood them a little differently. I interpret her as being honest in an attempt to expose the troublesome reality that looking into a rumored history of someone’s sexual misconduct was not a priority for the hiring committee at Yale that year. Given her comment "in retrospect, maybe we should have done more", Dr. Benhabib seems to recognize that the lack of effort put into investigating Pogge’s history played a significant role in Lopez’ alleged trauma (assuming they would not have hired him had they learned the full story about his behavior at Columbia).

    Dr. Ryan raises an important question about whether or not Pogge’s history of misconduct would have been investigated if it had been regarding a weapons charge. The nature of his question leads me to wonder what course of action would have been taken by a hiring committee (at any university) if the professor with questionable history was not as widely recognized as Pogge? I have had many professors and classmates tell me that not only is applying out especially difficult if you’re not affiliated with a top ten program, but so is getting a job. It is disheartening to me (to put it lightly) that in some cases philosophers are at a severe disadvantage merely because of program affiliation, while other philosophers are accused of committing unlawful acts, yet accusations are overlooked and met with skepticism likely due to the person's notable reputation. I wonder if Pogge, or any of the big-name professors who have been under fire for sexual harassment, would have shamelessly engaged in such (alleged) grotesque behavior had they not believed that their reputation provided some kind of immunity? (Note how I say reputation not tenure. Don’t worry, I’m not going all Scott Walker and suggesting we wipe out tenure!)

    I think moving forward, one thing the philosophy profession should do is think critically about the influence non-epistemic values can have in any kind of reviewing process. Certainly departments should aim to strengthen their faculty, but not at the expense of student safety which is what Ryan seems to be getting at. Furthermore, we should do all we can to create a climate of accountability, where female students (particularly women of color) can enter programs with assurance that their safety comes first and even the most esteemed professors know they are not exempt from disciplinary action. Given that we are having these conversations on a widely read public forum, I am optimistic about the future of the field with respect to these issues.

    Reply
  13. Cheyney Ryan

    There are cluster of issues here, but a reason I began with the University of Oregon case was to raise a legal one.

    A background to that settlement was the case of Tiffany Williams v. The University of Georgia Board of Regents, decided in the 11th circuit Court of Appeals in 2006. The facts were similar to the Oregon case. Ms. Williams initially sued Georgia for $25 million, alleging that "school officials exposed her to danger by recruiting Cole even though they knew he had a history of sexual misconduct." The court seems to have agreed that this constituted negligence, and a six-figure settlement was reached immediately after. Obviously the University of Oregon did not want to go to court with this precedent.

    Recruiting a faculty member with a known history of sexual harassment would seem to present the same problem. In the Oregon case, by the way, the basketball coach acknowledged that he had "heard" of the player's problems but didn't think it was "his business" to inquire into them. The University obviously did not want to take this argument in court. My impression is that the Tiffany Williams case is only now beginning to impact athletic recruitment, and more generally background issues of students. I'm not aware of any discussion, prior to this blog's, of its potential import for faculty recruiting–an obvious question, I should think. Perhaps administrators in other universities are the clueless ignorant sexist fools they were at the University of Oregon, prior to the current president.

    I should add that my knowledge of the Pogge and of Benhabib's response is entirely secondhand, so my concern was not to voice an opinion on that but to raise the issues it possibly poses for all of us.

    Reply
  14. US Correspondent

    Hi, Cheyney. Putting the threads together from the discussion so far, I get

    1. There is typically no way for a member of a search/admissions committee to make a reasonable adjudication of guilt or innocence in cases of rumored wrongdoing, or even to access the relevant materials.

    2. It is nonetheless unacceptable for a member of such a committee to neglect to make such an adjudication, particularly if it later turns out that confidential documents inaccessible to the search committee indicate that the person did something wrong.

    If that is right, then it seems there are two main options.

    a. Search/admissions committees should automatically disqualify all candidates about whom any rumors, however vague or vindictive or even groundless, have been circulated; or

    b. Search committee members who stumble across rumors about candidates, particularly when vague or difficult to investigate, should pretend never to have heard them in order to protect their schools from lawsuits.

    I'm also not sure why people who have been *disqualified* from consideration on the basis of vague rumors could not also sue the university. Is there one? Suppose someone starts a false rumor against Jenny, and as a result of this and search committees following a, she is never able to get hired anywhere. The committees don't even investigate her or ask her questions, for fear of a lawsuit. Hasn't Jenny then been dealt with in at least an unfair manner as she would have been if she had lived in an *extremely* sexist world in which women are systematically barred from consideration, everywhere? What difference is there for Jenny, job-search wise? Couldn't she sue? I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know. But I can't see how Option a can work.

    Reply
  15. Cheyney Ryan

    I'm not suggesting that anyone be disqualified for anything on the basis of "rumors". Quite the contrary, the reason for inquiring further, when there is reason to be concerned, is to make sure that it's NOT a rumor. I am suggesting that the Yale department should've done just this, and my sense is that Benhabib concurs with this in acknowledging, “In retrospect maybe we should have done more.”

    Your two main options (a) and (b) are silly to the point of trivializing an issue that deserves serious consideration just because it is complex. I guess it's fun to make cutesy remarks on blogs, especially when you're anonymous. But the question of hiring a faculty member who may pose a threat to one's female students does not deserve such jocularity.

    Let me add another level of complexity to the issue, somewhat absent from this discussion. This discussion has focused entirely on sexual harassment. But the issue of faculty student sexual relations is also regulated by policies of "conflict of interest", that do not fall under federal Title IX/sexual harassment policy hence but are subject to the discretion of each individual university. This is why these policies differ so much from school to school.

    These policies are also not subject to the same rules of confidentiality, so there is no reason to presume that if a faculty member has violated the rules about sexual relations with students there will be no way of finding this out. Quite the contrary, in the principal instance of this is at the University of Oregon when I was there, the president of the University sent an open letter to the department detailing how the faculty member had violated the policy and the consequences. (One of them involved no longer teaching one of the required courses.)

    So there is absolutely no reason to assume that in matters like these the only alternatives are unsubstantiated rumors or confidential formal findings. It will depend, again, on the case–which is why these things need looking into.

    Reply
  16. US Correspondence

    Cheyney, I'm not being 'cutesy' — I'm trying to cast light on what seems to be an impossible situation.

    I'd be interested in hearing your responses to the concerns raised by commenters 8 and 11 above, and also by me in previous comments.

    I'm also interested in what exactly it is that you're advising in some particular situation. There I am, on a search committee, and we're seriously considering Candidate A. Then we hear a rumor about Candidate A. We try to follow up on the rumor. Then, we find that the personnel files are inaccessible to us because of the privacy and nondisclosure issues mentioned before in this thread. What are you advising that we do then? Or perhaps we get somewhere, but at a certain point the sources of the rumors fall silent because certain parties don't want to be dragged into yet another investigation, this time conducted by a search committee at some distance from the events. What do you advise in that case? Or perhaps, in a very rare case, we trace the rumor back to its source and everyone involved is entirely willing to tell us, the search committee, their whole stories, and present us with some supplementary evidence or witnesses. Are you advising that, in that case, the search committee should engage in an independent readjudication of the case? And should all these things be done not only in making hiring decisions but also in admitting students to programs?

    These are very serious problems, it seems to me. I'm not being glib or 'cutesy' about them. I'd sincerely like to know how you or anyone else proposes to deal with them. As you can see by my earlier comments, I'm in favor of this in principle, but I'm finding it harder and harder to figure out how it could ever be pulled off successfully. If you, too, are engaging in this conversation sincerely, then I hope you'll consider these issues and articulate for us your solutions to them.

    Reply
  17. Cheyney Ryan

    If credible concerns are raised about a candidate's history of sexual harassment or improper relations with students, is a search committee obliged to inquire into them (as it apparently did not in the Yale/Pogge case)? I think yes.

    Doing so raises serious problems, but they are no different from inquiring into credible concerns about, say, a candidate's abusive behavior in the classroom. (These arose in a senior-level search I once conducted.) We can iterate problems we might encounter, starting with determining whether the concerns are "credible". There is no formula here, but we all know the difference between, say, a fourth-hand rumor and the word of a respected colleague. (The source in the abusive behavior case.) I take it that Benhabib now feels the concerns were sufficiently credible that they ought to have been pursued. Yes, there may be no formal findings–there were not in the abusive-classroom-behavior case; but no one thought this meant dropping the issue, given the credibility of the concern. So we didn't. I don't think this constituted an "independent readjudication of the case" or an "independent investigation" (as (8) David suggests). I think it was exercising due diligence: after all, we were considering a life-time appointment–to teach students.

    As to all the other scenarios: I am a former law professor, and the first thing an attorney would say is that there is no general formula for addressing them. It depends on the particular policy, the relevant rules of confidentiality, etc. But at most, what they show is that inquiring into concerns about sexual harassment/inappropriate behavior may sometimes face insurmountable problems. (The same holds for the abusive behavior.)

    But it might not. (In the Oregon case I mentioned, no one would have had any difficulty establishing the professor's problems in this area.) In any event, we are obligated to find out. So I have no trouble envisioning how "it could ever be pulled off successfully", and see no reason why my only options are relying on every wild rumor or pretending I never heard them. I apologize if these suggestions were meant seriously.

    BL COMMENT: I'm going to let Prof. Ryan have the final word on this particular debate with US Correspondent. Commenters are welcome to discuss other issues related to the original post.

    Reply
  18. Sigrid

    I wonder if something similar to state licensing of teachers could be adapted to the university hiring situation. Typically, someone applying for a new or renewed license must fill in an application which, among other things, asks about disciplinary issues. If the applicant answers "yes" to any of the questions, there is a follow-up questionaire that asks for further explanation, including, where applicable, contact information of someone in an official capacity to speak to the situation. The licensing agency can then follow-up with that, if it seems relevant. If the applicant answers "no", but that turns out later to be false, that opens the door for a more expedited termination process than would otherwise be in place. None of these are automatic: there is room for considering the circumstances and ignoring the infraction, if they seem too minor or irrelevant. Some examples of what this looks like for licensing, which could be modified for hiring:

    – Have you ever been dismissed or dischared, or have you resigned in order to avoid discipline or discharge, by any employer?

    – Are you currentlyninder investigaton by any licensing agency or organization?

    – Has a licensing agency or organization ever initiated disciplinary proceedings, incluiding, but not limited to, suspension, revocation or annulment of your license?

    Modified for a university hiring situation, it could mean that a situation like this is possible: someone is sanctioned for, say, a harassment issue, but not terminated. They are warned that further similar issues will result in termination. This person applies to a new university and, per the application process, discloses this situation. The new university then might evaluate the situation, speak to referenced authorities, and not hire. Or they may still decide to hire, but with conditions similar to what was in place at the previous university, ie, not giving the new-hire a clean slate, but letting them show that they understand the expectations.

    It seems like this approach might help committees make informed decisions on when it's reasonable to hire someone who may have "slipped once" and when it is not.

    —–
    KEYWORDS:
    Primary Blog

    Reply

Designed with WordPress