Am I Alone in Standing Up for Student Safety?
I have been thinking a lot lately about the vulnerability of survivors and advocates for survivors of sexual violence. On us falls the emotional and practical labour of confronting sexual misconduct in our universities, where a recent Ontario survey reported that 63% of students are sexually harassed. Many more, of course, are not disclosing because of their fears of the consequences.
I talk frequently with students who have been sexually harassed, or worse, by a professor or graduate supervisor, both at my own university and elsewhere. I see up-close their trauma and fragility. I hear the fear in their voices when they speak about what this might mean for their future careers. About how difficult it was to come forward, and how often they have regretted exposing themselves to insensitive university procedures that do little or nothing to protect and support victims (another finding of the Ontario survey). Procedures that ask them to constantly restate and explain what happened to them. That drag on for months or even years. That often end with a slap on the wrist for the professor, and a year or more of ruined and wasted education for the student who complained.
And it doesn’t end with the university process. The many students affected by my former colleague at Windsor Law, who was terminated for sexual and other misconduct, continue to fear him and what he might do to them — stalking them online, bringing bogus legal action against them, messing up their burgeoning careers. Like many predators, he has a long history of revenge and retribution. Students who crossed his path at Windsor Law do not want to expose themselves to the risk that he might come after them — like he has come after me (I am the subject of a “defamation” suit brought by him after he was terminated for sexual and other misconduct, and given a non-disclosure agreement by the university to enable him to be hired by another law school with no knowledge of the reasons he “left” Windsor.)
A consistent theme of my conversations with students about faculty sexual misconduct is the lack of open and explicit faculty support. This is the case at the University of Windsor.
Students at other Canadian universities with whom I have worked have repeated this observation to me many times. And it was a theme of conversations this past weekend with graduate students from the US whom I met at a conference on Faculty Sexual Misconduct.
Why aren’t faculty stepping forward to support students?
Faculty have similar fears to those of the students — they don’t want to attract the attention of a vengeful predator who may hold more institutional power than they do. This is easy to understand where the faculty member is untenured, and/or where they already deal with marginalization within the university as a faculty member of colour, or an indigenous faculty member, or an LGBTQ faculty member.
It is less easy to understand when the faculty member is tenured and established and part of a privileged group — still mostly the white men, although I have been astounded at how apparently effortlessly feminist colleagues also ignore this issue. There are few jobs on the planet more safe and secure than a tenured professorship, which is part of the reason it took so much time and effort to dismiss my former colleague. Unlike students, our careers are already well established. It is still possible for faculty to be victimized of course — I am living proof of that — but I have been outspoken on this issue for a long time. The consequences for students are much more immediate and tangible.
One way of understanding “privilege” is that it means that you do not have to take any responsibility for or interest in an issue because it does not affect you or your power in any way. This is clearly the case for tenured faculty who are part of a dominant group when it comes to standing up for students experiencing faculty sexual misconduct. Turning away and going tone deaf is not a problem for them. But it is for the students.
It’s lonely being a whistleblower
I am grateful for the personal support I have received from faculty in other universities, two professors from faculties other than Law at the University of Windsor, and from students everywhere. But colleagues in my own faculty — with a few exceptions — will not speak up for me.
Being isolated makes whistleblowers incredibly vulnerable. If my former colleague had believed that my university and my colleagues would defend me, he would not have sued me. He went after me because I am isolated. Our students who experience abuse of power and sexual violence from faculty members have exactly the same experience of isolation as I do, and they are yet more vulnerable.
I am a senior academic and have been a law professor for 38 years. I have an international reputation and have been recognized with many awards, including from my own university. But the reality of my experience is that even powerful, privileged women like me can experience reprisal — because my university knows my colleagues are not going to stand up for me and so I am easy to bully.
I don’t regret for a second my decision to tell the truth about my former colleague to other law schools that reached out to me when they were considering hiring him. I cannot make sense of any other response aside from telling the truth and placing the safety of their students above everything else. What I cannot wrap my head around is why my colleagues think that it is OK to ignore what is happening and rest on their privilege. And why do many students tell me the same story — that faculty will not speak up in support of them, but instead hide behind their office door.
This is one of the loneliest experiences of my life. And my experience is replicated many times over and with even worse consequences for students who step forward to report faculty sexual misconduct.
To support Julie in her defamation lawsuit and to end NDAs in sexual misconduct cases, contribute to the GoFundMe campaign here (https://www.gofundme.com/EndNDAs).
