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University of Colorado Boulder Chancellor replaces chair, suspends grad admissions, and makes other moves to ensure new culture for Philosophy Department after APA report finds sexual harassment and discrimination

January 31, 2014

Earlier today, the campus announced that Professor Andy Cowell will head our philosophy department at CU-Boulder. Professor Cowell is a professor of French literature and a former chair of two departments, French and Italian and linguistics. This change was made to improve the climate in philosophy for our faculty, staff and students and, specifically, to improve the climate for women.

We have made these changes based upon the recommendations of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in a recent report that we are making public today, as well as on evidence gathered from faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students in the department. That evidence points directly to the need to create a stronger, more inclusive environment in the department for women as scholars and students, that prevents acts of sexual harassment and discrimination, and that allows faculty to work together in a collegial environment of mutual respect.

Under Professor Cowell’s direction, the department will take key steps to improve the overall climate in philosophy. These steps include mandatory training on issues of sexual harassment; bystander intervention training to aid individuals in confronting acts of discrimination when they are observed; and focused, facilitated workshops to improve faculty collegiality and the scholarly climate in philosophy. In addition, we will assist graduate students in the processes involved in allocating resources.

I want to make it clear that we cannot allow patterns of misconduct and breaches of integrity to go unchecked. I expect this campus to operate at the highest levels of personal and professional integrity in everything we do. As we move ahead, we must stay on the course of creating an inclusive campus that fosters student success, improves retention and progress toward graduation, and that elevates the university’s reputation in all ways, at all times, with all our key stakeholders.

Philip P. DiStefano, chancellor
University of Colorado Boulder

Posted in APA, Feminism, Improving the philosophy profession, John Protevi, Women in philosophy

68 responses to “University of Colorado Boulder Chancellor replaces chair, suspends grad admissions, and makes other moves to ensure new culture for Philosophy Department after APA report finds sexual harassment and discrimination”

Nicole Wyatt (@nwyatt)

February 2, 2014

My concerns about the “public shaming” arose in light of the passage in the report that rebukes senior administration for past attempts to reform the department. In particular the following line struck me:
“The Provost’s Office and Dean’s Office are not providing (sufficient) support or resources for the Philosophy Department to address these issues. Threats tied to additional ODH reports originating in the Philosophy Department motivate department members to avoid reporting additional incidents.”
The administration it seems has a past history of encouraging the department to cover up problems rather than solve them. Now we have a big media storm, but apparently no one in the department is being fired.This kind of publicity potentially also creates incentives for the department to engage in a lot of public mea culpas and handwringing and policy writing and attending of educational sessions to fix the environment. These things have value, but if you have chronic harassers in the department it is unlikely this will lead them to come to Jesus, if you’ll excuse the phrase.
My concern isn’t that the administration is trying to shame people, as if that was a moral offense in its own right. The department should feel ashamed. My concern is that it won’t work, and indeed may backfire, assuming the goal is to improve the department.

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John Protevi

February 2, 2014

Another relevant FP post, on the release of the report, makes two points: 1) if administrative offices are part of the request for the visit, they receive a copy of the report, though they do not have to release it. However, 2) Freedom of Information laws may mandate the release of the report (should proper channels be followed): http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/confidentiality-of-apa-site-visits/
From the campus newspaper story (http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_25035043 ) here is the admin’s rationale for releasing the report. The reference to CU as a “public university” might allude to FOI requirements (in other words, the local newspapers could sue to get the report released, so they might as well do it now):
“Leigh, the Arts and Sciences dean, said by making the report public and by being transparent, the university is giving Cowell, the new department chairman, the best chance to succeed. CU paid $25,000 for the review with funds from the provost’s office, the dean’s office and the philosophy department. “We have work to do in this department, and so bringing in (Cowell) to chair the department without any explanation or any background is not acceptable,” Leigh said. “It doesn’t put him in the circumstance that he needs to succeed.
“Frankly, we’re a public university and we can’t just sort of sink this report and not worry about it ever again. Looking at the report as an action plan, ‘Here’s what you need to do,’ I think it needs to be public.”

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John Protevi

February 2, 2014

Follow-up: as Ed says at 43 above, you always have to read admin talk as exercises in CYA behavior. So I’m not saying we should accept Leigh’s remarks at face value, or as not open to an analysis of (at least partial) blame-shifting. I’m just saying that these remarks should be considered now as part of the public record when discussing the release of the report.

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Matt S.

February 2, 2014

Mark –
Sometimes, it is easy to read what you write as openly hostile to people with whom you disagree. It appears to me that you have adopted a mocking tone and have assumed that I am stridently opposed to your views. You describe what I write as a caricature, and as an expressive performance. You accuse me of thinking of others as weak-minded. Fine rhetorical moves meant to discredit what I say, and so not at all generous in word choice and tone. Is that necessary?
Oh well.
If you re-read my posts you will find that I wholeheartedly endorse the report. In fact, I think that this reveals one of the excellent new activities of the APA. My complaint is with the release and widespread dissemination of the report.
The APA report does not name names or point fingers at specific people (and that it is the right thing to do). Instead, it diagnoses a problem the runs through the whole department. Since the report was written for the department, presumably the members of the department can properly contextualize the charges and fill in the blanks of where the complaints are underspecified. So, for the authors and the initially intended audience of the report, the report is excellent.
But, for the rest of us, we are left with questions. How many people were involved in harassment? How intransigent was the faculty in addressing harassment? How many people blocked forward movement on the issue? What was the nature of the resistance? Which faculty are responsible and which were running away? And so on.
The reason Jenny Saul (was it Jenny Saul? I will assume so.) did good in posting what she posted on FP is that LOTS of people were not being careful in how they answered these and more questions. She was reminding all of us, because she is an honest and very decent person, that our justified rage at what had been revealed might lead us – or some of us – to assume the worst about everyone associated with that department. I doubt that she wrote her post thinking of the “weak-minded” or as an “expressive performance.”
I am no Jenny Saul, as you will surely rush to point out, but I was simply trying to make a related, albeit slightly stronger, point. The point is this: The release of a report like this might lead some to make assumptions about what they do not know (as the poster on FP implied in her post’s title), and we should be very careful about that. In particular, it would be better if we worked hard to release reports that are both (i) as specific as morally appropriate; and (ii) as supportive as possible of the good people who are caught in the center of the bad situation.
So, in response to your specific question and Ed’s specific question, here’s an off-the-top-of-my-head riff that I think would have been better to release a report that stressed that most of the faculty, grad students, and staff at CU philosophy are good people who are committed to gender equality and a welcoming work space. It is worthwhile to note that they have made some mistakes but that at least some of those mistakes are excusable failures of nerve in the face of a complicated political situation.
Furthermore, it should be emphasized repeatedly that the broader philosophical community should join in supporting those good members of the CU department in both condemning harassment and in building a new, and healthy environment. Common cause is the goal and there are many members of the CU department, including brand new grad students and faculty without any connection to this harassment, who should explicitly be given our support.
etc. etc.
My point has been throughout that in addition to critique and justifiably pissed-off demands for change, there are ways to explicitly lend support to those within the community who wish to rebuild it.
I hope that you do not think I’ve caricatured the report here – I’ve not once criticized the report – or have assumed that people are soft-brained.

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Ed Kazarian

February 2, 2014

Worth recalling, re: that Leigh claim, that Jenny Saul’s Feminist Philosophers post linked on the front page explicitly contests the $25k price tag claim.

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Mark Lance

February 2, 2014

Matt:
Yes, I am sometimes openly hostile to people I disagree with. For example, I am openly hostile to people who I feel to be trivializing very serious issues and engaging in various forms of bad behavior around issues we ought to take more seriously. (There are other defensible categories of hostility, and sometimes indefensible ones. When the latter have been pointed out, I have tried to apologize and correct my behavior in the future.)
Now look, you ask me to re-read your posts and claim that I will find that you wholeheartedly endorse the report. So let’s start with this: “Why are you reading what I am saying so uncharitably? I am not saying that we should never criticize the institutional climate or systemic conditions anywhere. I am saying that we should do it carefully and sensitively. Simply releasing a report that effectively says, “Institution X is terrible!” is not a particularly good way to go” right. That’s whole-hearted endorsement? Reducing it to “institution x is terrible?” Please, just stop. It is a denunciation and a caricature.
You then go on to compare the report to calling for burning the system down.
OK. So I was not wrong to say that you caricatured the report.
As for talk of the “weak-minded” I don’t know that you think of someone who draws utterly unwarranted conclusions from the report that way, but I do. Read my claim as de re: you want the report not to be released on the grounds that there are people – in fact weak minded people for this reason – who will engage in Humean association and infer from a premise that the institutional culture is bad to the conclusion that every member of the institution is bad. As I said, if that is an argument, then it is an argument against any release of any report ever. So here too I did not in any way misrepresent you.
Now for this new counter-proposal about what should have been done. I don’t really know how to assess it because I don’t know enough of the relevant facts. You say “I think would have been better to release a report that stressed that most of the faculty, grad students, and staff at CU philosophy are good people who are committed to gender equality and a welcoming work space.” (Notice that here too you are criticizing the report, not merely its release.) Perhaps, if that is true. I take it that “committed to” here must have some substantive force. It is not just a matter of feelings, but of actions, right? Well, if most of those in the department are engaging in reasonable actions to work for gender equality and a welcoming work space, then I agree that this should have been featured in the report. I gather the visiting committee did not think so.

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Matt S.

February 2, 2014

Mark –
Come on. Context matters. And you are cherry picking quotes.
Throughout my posts I expressed very strong support for the APA report. You willfully ignore that.
I did not compare the report to calling for burning down the system. I actually wrote this:
I doubt you think that the maximalist approach is best: Where there is systemic wrongdoing, immediately try to burn the whole system down!
My reason for saying that was to point out that we need to be sensitive to what it takes to build a better community in addition to what it takes to dismantle systemic wrongdoing. That was the point. If I was unclear, that is my fault. But unclarity is not the same thing as asserting that the report called to burn the whole system down. Or were you drawing somewhat unwarranted conclusions from what I had written? Maybe just uncharitable conclusions.
Finally, I did write “Simply releasing a report that effectively says, “Institution X is terrible!” is not a particularly good way to go.” I now regret this since it was read so unbelievably uncharitably. I was writing in a flippant manner that I assumed would be contextualized within what else I had written, namely my praise for the report.
On the other hand, the report was very critical of the CU department and the interpretation has been to treat the report as saying that the department is rife with harassment and unwillingness to address the issue. But since being rife with harassment and unwillingness to address harassment is a serious form of bad behavior, to paraphrase you, then we can fairly say that the report claims that the CU department is filled with a serious form of bad behavior. Does that make the report say that the department is terrible or bad? No. But, it does make the department out to be a somewhat bad place.
So, while perhaps once I once slightly caricatured the report, given the context it seems clear that a charitable reading of what I said would have glossed over that.
As far as the weak-minded claim: what do you make of the FP post which cautions people to be cognizant about what is and is not known? Do you attack that post in the same way you attack mine?
Mark, am I “trivializing very serious issues and engaging in various forms of bad behavior around issues we ought to take more serious”? No. I repeatedly am calling for things to be done.
But, I am also aware that there are some very good people at CU philosophy who struggle to live in a morally upstanding fashion – people who are praiseworthy for the way they enact their excellent ethical commitments – and those people ought to get our support in their efforts to improve their department as much as the bad people deserve our condemnation. That is all I’ve been saying all along.

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Mark Lance

February 2, 2014

Matt: If you want to take back what you said, that’s fine. I’m happy to let anything go, having certainly said things without sufficient thinking myself. On the other hand, there was nothing uncharitable in my reading of what you wrote. Nothing. You characterized the report as saying nothing but a claim that the dept is terrible. Nothing you say here in any way makes that look more reasonable as a summary.
FP did not say that the possibility of bad readings was a reason not to release the report, which is what I’m criticizing. You simply cannot reasonably compare cautioning against bad readings and saying that bad readings will be frequent and therefore we should not say things.

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Ed Kazarian

February 2, 2014

I’d just like to point out that MattS is doing a nice job of derailing the conversation by shifting its focus away from the question of how the situation of those who have suffered harassment might be improved and toward concerns over the feelings of those members of the department who weren’t being harassed.
Given the nature of the problem, I find that unhelpful in the extreme.
Assuming that the report is correct in diagnosing an overall climate of hostility, any solution to this that goes deep enough to make a meaningful difference is going to have to involve the recognition on the part of a number of people who currently don’t think of themselves as part of the problem that, as a matter of fact, there may have been ways in which they could have done more or better to alleviate it, and that their perceptions of the nature of the situation and of the various participants in it and their actions (including their self-perceptions) have been materially inadequate. I say this with some confidence because, unless those things are true, you generally don’t get persistent, systemic climates of hostility where even the ‘good people’ don’t manage to put any kind of effective stop to what’s going on.
So in this case, exaggerated concerns about how all of this is somehow deeply unfair to the rest of the department–especially when those concerns effectively drown out conversation about the plight of those who were actual victims here–are simply counter-productive.
Of course, this is also grossly insensitive to the real victims here, and in that respect more than a bit distasteful.

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Kathryn Pogin

February 2, 2014

“But, I am also aware that there are some very good people at CU philosophy who struggle to live in a morally upstanding fashion – people who are praiseworthy for the way they enact their excellent ethical commitments – and those people ought to get our support in their efforts to improve their department as much as the bad people deserve our condemnation. That is all I’ve been saying all along.”
Matt, I’m not quite sure what your concern is. I mean, I understand the concern as written in the portion I quoted above, but it also seems to me that the report made this quite clear. For example (aside from what it says particularly about female graduate student concerns), the report cited that some faculty members face an over-burdened service load on account of various issues within the department and the department not receiving enough support to deal with its problems from the university administration. The report cited male graduate student concerns about the climate, about not wanting to work with people who have bad reputations, and some anger about coming to a department only to discover those problems once they were already in it. I don’t think that a department has a problem with e.g., “lack of ownership from top to bottom” should preclude us from thinking that there are very many people within it who are struggling to enact their excellent ethical commitments.

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Kathryn Pogin

February 2, 2014

Also, what Ed said.

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Michael Ashford

February 3, 2014

What bothers me is statements such as:
“Is anyone else bothered by the use of a normative ideal of the (bourgeois) family as a/the way to ensure that women are protected from sexual harassment?”
Women are being sexually harassed. Let’s end “clever” word-games and deal with that. The university’s actions are to be commended highly, and we hope they will be followed by stern action.

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Mike Ashord

February 3, 2014

Excellent points. One can see why releasing this report was exactly the right things to do!

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Mike Ashford

February 3, 2014

Yes, you are.

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Mike Ashford

February 3, 2014

Amusing how so many comments here actually confirm something in the report: people want to indulge in clever word-games, rather than deal with the real problem.
I have worked in a department where the sort of abuse in question went on. We had a review and a report. The report was kept confidential, supposedly so as to avoid demoralizing staff while efforts went into changes. Six years later, nothing had changed. Another review, another report. This one was made public. The resulting heat, within the university and from the community, made a huge difference.
The university did the right thing. Prospective faculty and students should know exactly what they might be getting into and make their choices accordingly. (Suspending graduate admissions until there has been a clean-up is an excellent idea.) The external community is not paying for people to booze it up and sexually molest students, so it too needs to know what is going on. And the existing faculty need to know that we are all watching, and they had better mend their ways. Don’t like “public shaming”, even though I don’t see anything like “X did Y”? Well, then, just behave yourself.

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anon junior

February 3, 2014

On the summer program:
As a (male) undergraduate, I went to the Colorado summer program about a year ago. I remember a lot of social drinking with some of the faculty members and some of what struck me at the time as dubious behavior. One faculty member invited a small subset of summer school students out for liquor and pool; more seriously, another pursued a female student at length, over multiple occasions. It wasn’t explicitly sexual, and of course my memory’s fallible, but it struck me as a clear abuse of power. Both faculty members are still there.
That said, I know a number of people who had great experiences there. But I’d definitely caution prospective students.

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anonymous socal

February 11, 2014

LogicFan —
I’m worried about generalized claims about the reliability of complaints, especially those that rely on administrative or legal outcomes for backing. For instance, a complaint that alleges terrible behavior toward a contractor might, for that reason, be outside the protection of some schemes, as might a complaint that alleges terrible behavior but is filed just one day too late. In neither case are those legal reasons that exciting for me here.
But, regarding the EEOC stats, I don’t think you should be too quick to turn to the EEOC’s judgment to relinquish the case (which is where I think you’re getting your 7.6% number). Some cases with serious bad behavior are relinquished for private litigation by the EEOC. That the EEOC did not find bad behavior during its investigation does not mean that a) no bad behavior was there nor b) that some more motivated private counsel did not immediately thereafter dig out better evidence of the extant bad behavior.
The EEOC’s data are precise, perhaps, but we should be hesitant to think them accurate for our purposes.

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Laura

February 12, 2014

LogicFan: “Consider the most recent data for sexual harassment charges. In only 7.6% of cases was reasonable cause found to substantiate the charges. Note, though, that this value understates things for our purposes, since some cases of bona fine harassment fall under “administrative closures” and “settlements” for the EEOC’s purposes. But in any case the proportion of genuine sexual harassment charges is quite low–around, roughly, 20%.”
FYI, you are badly misreading this data.

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