[Changed headline and URL from this morning.] See here, here and here for news articles. 3:20 pm, CST, 11 Feb. We are opening comments. We will moderate closely. See our comments policy. From the news stories, we know the following facts:
1. The student is suing Northwestern, not suing Ludlow.
2. The lawsuit alleges that the original complaint was upheld by the NU Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention. Their wording is alleged to have been that Ludlow “engaged in unwelcome and inappropriate sexual advances.” [Per the news articles, it is a fact that the lawsuit contains this allegation. It is not a publicly available fact that this was the wording of the OSHP.]
3. The lawsuit alleges that a disciplinary committee recommended firing Ludlow. [Similarly, it is a fact, per the news articles, that the lawsuit makes this allegation. It is not a public fact that the disciplinary committee made this recommendation.]
4. The university did not fire Ludlow. [Update, 3:50 pm: it's better to say that Ludlow is teaching courses this term at Northwestern.] [Update, 9 am, 12 Feb: see here for more information on Ludlow's teaching schedule.]
5. Through his lawyer, Ludlow denies the allegations in the original complaint.
6. The university changed its policies in January, claiming that these changes would put it in a position to be in better compliance with Title IX.
[Update 9am, 12 Feb: 7. The Chicago Tribue reports: "This was not brought to our attention by either the candidate or his employer," said Rutgers spokesman Greg Trevor. "We are looking into this matter thoroughly, including requesting all relevant information to fully evaluate his candidacy."]
New APPS 
83 responses to “Student sues Northwestern for alleged failure to act on sexual misconduct finding against a philosophy professor”
Now that he has signed a contract with them, I wonder what actions or measures are available to Rutgers in determining the extent and boundaries of Ludlow’s teaching/service there? This seems like a worrying development for a school that has taken such pains to create a safe climate. (Is it naive of me to think that Rutgers wouldn’t have known anything about this before hiring him?)
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I know of a somewhat similar case of a prospective faculty member. This person had been found guilty of a crime in a court of law, it was discovered. That was said by lawyers to render the contract null and void. Whether Rutgers can do that might depend on the findings in this case, and the authority of the finding body. Whether it wants to do so is another matter, of course.
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It disturbs me that the response to these reports about Ludlow is significantly tempered and sluggish compared with the response people had to McGinn in roughly the same time-frame (after the Chronicle article, but before McGinn’s insane blog posts).
The evidence/allegations of misconduct, at this stage and in the early stages of the McGinn affair, are similar in at least the following respect: All that we (the general public) have to go on at the moment is (a) the content of the student’s allegations, and (b) the fact that a committee of university officials have investigated the matter and found evidence of misconduct that substantiate, at least to some degree, the student’s allegations, and (c) made recommendations/decisions about how to proceed on the basis of those findings (in McGinn’s case, a request for resgination; we don’t know yet about Ludlow).
Yet despite these similarities, from what I have seen so far on social media and in my department today, people are reacting tentatively to the findings, or have been even more inclined to question the student and committee’s report.
I suspect (though can’t prove) that this is due in no small part to the fact that Ludlow is considered still a very respected member of our community, whereas McGinn has been known for years to be a bully, and to be, shall we say, ‘past his prime’ philosophically.
If this is true, it is worrisome. We should not be less inclined to believe that someone is guilty because we have great respect for his/her philosophical work. And by the same token, we should not be more inclined to believe that someone is guilty because his or her nasty character traits.
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I agree entirely with what C.L. says in #3. This article is apposite: http://gawker.com/woody-allen-is-not-a-monster-he-is-a-person-like-my-f-1518291644
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I very much share those concerns.
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Well, I haven’t said anything about this case today (which is when I learned anything of it) on fb or elsewhere, because all I’ve got left in me at this point, after McGinn, CO, and now this is– oh. my. god. I suspect others are feeling beyond words.
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I strongly agree with the general moral you draw, but I’m not really seeing how it applies to these cases.
Before McGinn’s blogging started there was significantly more public information with the released e-mails covered by the Chronicle of Higher Education and elsewhere, as well as on-the-record interviews with philosophers who were involved. People did converse on the internet about what was then a matter of public record. Then almost immediately McGinn began his blogging, and the overwhelming amount of discussion concerned the claims he publicly made (“the genius project” etc.).
Moreover, for what it’s worth, there are lots of people in the philosophy of language and linguistics who have very serious problems with basic aspects Ludlow’s work. Debates involving phrase structure, compositionality, and computational viability are far, far, far uglier and vituperative than anything in the philosophy of mind, and have been for over thirty years (read Harris’ “The Linguistics Wars” for a taste). So, again, I can’t see that animus towards McGinn’s philosophy and supposed lack of animus towards Ludlow’s could be relevant.
Maybe there is some general difference of esteem in the field (I would have no way of knowing if there were), but doesn’t it seem more plausible that the differences in the two cases explains the differences in how they’ve been discussed on the internet? That is, we have no idea of what actually happened in the Northwestern case and shouldn’t speculate. But we do have a very good idea of what happened in the McGinn case, and thus haven’t needed to speculate.
Forgive me if I’m misinterpreting you.
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Yes, I resist the suggestion that my responses to items of bad news ought to be consistent. Why should they? If the answer is, to avoid the appearance of bias based on prestige, then this is an uninteresting response to me, as I do not know and never accorded these colleagues varying amounts of prestige.
Like Jon Cogburn, I saw more available to discuss in McGinn’s case, which I didn’t pay attention to until he called attention to it on his own blog. I found his blogging about himself fascinating! Ludlow has done no such thing.
The news out of Northwestern is very bad news. I wonder how the student is doing.
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I have just unpublished two comments. Please note that this is not a moderated blog, and I’m told by the people who know something – I’m filling in for John here temporarily – that we cannot set individual posts to moderation But we all agreed to keep a tight leash on this discussion. We are not going to include speculation on guilt or innocence in this discussion. Nothing of value can come from that, and plenty of disvalue can. So please, no baseless speculation about motives – of either the student or Ludlow. Let’s stick to issues that we either know about or can discuss reasonably in the absence of knowledge.
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Oh, sorry. That last post was by me – Mark Lance – using John’s account here so that I’m able to unpublish. Sorry for the confusion. (This one will look like John also.)
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@Kate Norlock: I wasn’t making a comment about you, or any specific individual for that matter. This is a comment (admittedly speculative) about an entire body of (so far) seeming non-responses. But in response to your question:
“I resist the suggestion that my responses to items of bad news ought to be consistent. Why should they?”
Responses ought to be consistent, I would think, if it is true that what we know at this point in time is broadly the same as what we know about McGinn. This is an application of the principle that if your evidence is the same in two cases, your responses ought not differ.
However, I do allow that the situations may not be as analogous as I have portrayed them. But from what I can tell, so far, they are analogous in the relevant respects.
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What Peter Ludlow is accused of doing is a felony: the sexual assault of a college freshman. It is both shocking and grotesque. The parallels to the McGinn case–deplorable as McGinn’s behavior was–seem only to be that they are both philosophers. Again, Ludlow is not accused of “misconduct”; he’s accused of sexually assaulting a drunk college freshman. It’s hard to imagine him having a place in polite society, let alone in a university teaching students.
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ML Again: If people want consideration in this thread, it would also be very much in your interest to post from a real email address. In my hour of playing moderator here I’m going to be especially quick to ban folks who use fake emails.
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@Jon Cogburn. My response to you was taken down by the moderators (presumably because of my reaction to AB). But basically, what I wanted to contest was simply the point you made that we know little in this case compared with the McGinn case. We do have, as a matter of public record, a fair amount of information concerning the student’s allegations (more than, if I recall correctly, what we knew in the McGinn case):
http://evanston.suntimes.com/news/nusuit-WIR-02102014:article
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That’s right CL. I tried to email you about it.
John is now back in his rightful role. I’m going to exercise and eat.
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C.L.,
The original June 4th Chronicle article is on line at http://www.mit.edu/~shaslang/GE/McGinnCHE.pdf . It was discussed I think first at Feminist Philosophers at http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/mcginn-leaving-miami-due-to-improper-emails/ .
Maybe there are real reasons to criticize those pre-McGinn blogging discussions, but it just seems clear to me that what came out in the Chronicle article is not analogous to the public record at this point with respect to the Northwestern case. The Chronicle reporter got two Miami professors saying inconsistent things about the case in ways that raised what seem to me important issues that were worth discussing. Then when McGinn began to blog this of course changed everything. I don’t have the date for when he did begin, but my memory is that it was less than a week after the Chronicle article broke, and that the vast majority of the discussion on the blog were occasioned by what he publicly wrote.
I realize that I might be wrong about this, and as I noted before I think that the general point you are raising is really important and worth discussing. So please have the last word (with respect to me) as far as the discussion with respect to the two particular cases.
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As far as I can tell, that would be relevant if we were publicly trying to determine whether the accusations were valid. I don’t think that people did this with McGinn. The pre-his-blog-posts debate concerned things that fellow professors were telling reporters, and post-his-blog-posts there was no issue at all about determining the validity of the accusations because he admitted their truth and then offered bizarre rationalizations defending what he did and attacking his accuser.
O.K. That’s really the last on that from me on this. We talked past one another because of the other post that got yanked.
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Perhaps the analogy is not air-tight. As Jonathan noted, it certainly isn’t insofar as the charges against Ludlow seem more serious.
I just thought that the amount of info we had about the students’ allegations were broadly similar (my memory is fallible, however). But actually the more disconcerting thing is that, in both cases, the allegations had been investigated by a committee and (to some degree) substantiated. Yet today I’m seeing a lot more skepticism about the Ludlow case: about the student’s motives, about her ‘mental stability,’ etc. It is sickening and hypocritical, since these come from the same people who danced on McGinn’s grave.
To the moderators:I’m sorry, I didn’t know that my email had been disabled. I am using what I thought was a still-existing email because all of my email addresses reveal my identity, and on this particular subject, I need to remain anon. If that means I can’t participate, that’s ok and I respect that. I’ve said what I wanted to say.
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Thanks so much for expanding on the point. Sorry if I was being thick earlier.
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it is ok to participate, but as we say in our general notes, we give less leeway if we can’t be in touch with you. fwiw, we are very strict about maintaining confidentiality of those who post anonymously, but I understand your reluctance in a case like this.
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One thing that separates Ludlow from McGinn is that people like Ludlow as a person and they don’t want this to be true of him. People loathed McGinn before his scandal broke, so they were only all too happy to believe the allegations.
The senior philosopher with a penchant for young women is a common trope in philosophy and I don’t understand why more people don’t speak out about it. I’m betting that most contributors to this blog can think of such cases. People seem to be fine looking the other way as long as the relation doesn’t lead to scandal. However, when it does have bad results, everyone wants to act surprised and tsk.
[Edited to remove rumor.]
Please, those of you with the protection of tenure, start speaking up.
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I haven’t seen anyone address this question, so perhaps I’m missing something obvious–why wouldn’t there be a police investigation here? Why is this just a university and civil matter?
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What CL says @11 seems just right to me. Each individual can give particular reasons for the differences in their behaviors, but there is a noticeable difference in the community’s reaction in the aggregate that is indeed palpable.
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As far I know, this news broke today. Judging reactions may be premature. Also, I haven’t read anyone expressing skepticism/ blaming the accuser etc. Could be I’m on the wrong blogs. So far the reaction seems to be shock and real concern.
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Count me among those with nothing to say that brings much to the table: there’s the obvious, that it looks beyond horrible if true, especially for the victim and any previous ones, that it is crushing as a member of the profession to see news like this, …
But I’m posting anyway because, echoing the first comment, I would love to see a discussion, whether here or elsewhere—or a link to one if it already exists—about the diligence a hiring department should take to avoid hiring someone who might compromise the climate (even in ways that don’t end up all over the news).
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We’re going to go to pre-moderation for the time being. Be patient and your comment will appear when approved.
JP
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The lawsuit alleges that the professor made the student drink with him even though she was underage, then ignored her requests to take her back to campus, then kissed her while she was blacked out, then when she came to and “begged him to stop” told her that it was “inevitable” they would have sex, then had his arms around her when she woke up. And then when she confronted him the next day he told her he would pay her money or be her mentor if she didn’t tell anyone (the student attempted suicide a day later).
If these things are true, the professor should be in prison. Why isn’t he being criminally prosecuted?
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why wouldn’t there be a police investigation here? Why is this just a university and civil matter?
I can’t say anything specific about the particular case (I know only what’s public) but the most plausible reason would be if the student didn’t, for whatever reason, file a complaint with the police. Prosecutors can decide to bring criminal charges without a victim’s cooperation, but it’s often very hard, perhaps especially in cases like this. (They might not have even known about it, of course, if no one told them.) It’s possible that a complaint was brought and a prosecutor decided there wasn’t enough evidence to go forward with charges, but the first option seems more likely to me.
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For sexual assaults and rapes that occur because someone was incapacitated by alcohol, it’s generally extremely hard to meet the evidentiary standards required for a criminal conviction. Most survivors choose to not pursue it because of this.
Most universities (thankfully) use a standard lower than “beyond reasonable doubt.” In addition, since many universities have policies forbidding consensual relationships between students and faculty, a university, but not a criminal court, might be able to impose some sanctions without concluding whether or not there was consent. That doesn’t seem to be the case here, since the university apparently concluded that it was unwelcome, but it’s another reason a student might choose to pursue something like this solely through a university.
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Does anyone know how common it is for sexual harrassment claims to be upheld and then not have the university take the recommended (or any) action? That is, are there data available about such things?
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In reply to APS: It seems as though Rutgers is looking into the matter.
http://dailynorthwestern.com/2014/02/12/campus/day-after-lawsuit-ludlows-role-at-northwestern-unclear-moving-forward/
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I think the difference in response is due to the fact that the allegations are more serious. This is, or ought to be, a criminal matter, and different standards apply. Given we don’t know what was substantiated by the university, we shouldn’t know what to say.
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I think part of the reason that people’s responses are different in this case is that people are having a mix of emotions that are hard to express (or at least this is true on my part). I am in a state of shock about the nature of the allegations against Ludlow and deeply disheartened by these allegations particularly after the McGinn incident and the recent information about the climate at CU Boulder. However, I am also pleased that there is more public discussion of these types of situations and that more serious attention is being paid to these issues. Perhaps, we are beginning to create a culture of non-tolerance in philosophy. This is something to be positive about, but at the same time it is something to be rather sad about. This is something to be positive about because it seems like genuine progress is being made in the discipline. It is sad, however, that these issues are still (in this day and age) something to be overcome. It is also sad that we have only made very minimal progress in philosophy (i.e., that we are only now coming to talk about such things and to view them negatively).
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You might want to add this to the list of facts: Rutgers claims not to have known about the assault allegation or Northwestern investigation when Ludlow was offered a position and the offer is now under review. That’s according to this Chicago Tribune article (see last few paragraphs)–http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-northwestern-sex-lawsuit-met-20140212,0,7472417.story
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So the university committee uses an evidential standard lower than that expressed by “beyond a reasonable doubt” in reaching its findings of misconduct. Does anyone know what that standard is? This would help us assess the relevant probabilities – as well as the actions that Northwestern and/or Rutgers took.
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A column in the NU paper from Laura Beth Nielsen … an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Legal Studies, Northwestern University, and research professor at the American Bar Foundation: http://dailynorthwestern.com/2014/02/11/opinion/guest-column-protecting-students-and-ensuring-justice-on-campus/
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A genuine question: Why is Ludlow’s name being excluded (in what seems to be a deliberate way — but perhaps I’m wrong) from blog headlines? Your post title says, “Student sues Northwestern for alleged failure to act on sexual misconduct finding against a philosophy professor.” The post title at Feminist Philosophers says: “More On The Sexual Assault Case Involving A Prominent Philosopher.” Leiter has: “Northwestern student files lawsuit against university, claiming it failed to act after she was sexually assaulted by a philosophy professor.”
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From experience with hiring discussions, when enough information is in place, people in a department do what they can to block bad actors or people who will negatively affect a deparment’s climate from getting a position. But the people motivated to act based on such concerns have to have the relevant information. Perhaps in Rutgers’s case they didn’t. What I find deeply troubling is the possibility that information about a potential hire’s conduct could be ignored or hidden—I am unable to rule out that that can or does occur in philosophy.
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1) The lawsuit is between the student and Northwestern, so that should I think be the focus of the headline.
2) His name appears in the first numbered point above.
3) I don’t think anyone reading this blog would be in any doubt as to whom the student named in the original complaint.
4) I don’t have perfect self-knowledge nor perfect recall as to what I was thinking in composing our headline. I would say now that perhaps I was wanting to connect this case with the other recent cases (Miami, CU Boulder), but I honestly can’t say what was my motivation in writing the headline the way I did.
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I’d like to address just the question why people’s reactions to the news about Ludlow is so different from their reaction to the news about McGinn. I think the answer has almost been stated above, but not as clearly as necessary.
What made the McGinn story noteworthy were several things. First, what he was accused of doing is utterly common. It goes on all the time, in a very large number of departments all around the world. It was exactly the sort of behavior that has been the subject of so much discussion recently. The sort of behavior that makes far too many departments and other areas of our profession unpleasant or even “hostile” places for women to try to work.
What isn’t common is that someone actually gets caught and held accountable. That was the initial reaction to the story, as I recall. It wasn’t that people were shocked that McGinn might have done such a thing. It was easy to believe he might have done such a thing because, as I said, it is so common, and, by itself, it doesn’t make him a “bad person”.
What was amazing was that the administration at Miami had actually pursued the complaint, against one of their “star” professors, mind you, to the point that McGinn chose to resign rather than defend himself against that complaint. Things became even more interesting once McGinn outed himself, essentially admitting to the substance of the allegations. But what was most fascinating, to me, was the window he gave us into the mental gymnastics people use to justify such behavior.
What Ludlow has been accused of doing is entirely different. He is accused of sexual assault and quite possibly rape (depending upon how the distinction is drawn, legally, in Illinois and upon what, exactly, is alleged to have happened). That is not (I hope!) something that is unusually common in the philosophical world, and it is not easy to believe (i.e., accept) that one of our colleagues might have done such a thing. Not that it doesn’t happen, obviously. But someone I would regard as a friend turns out to be a rapist? That is very different from learning that someone is a sexist, or even a sexual harrasser.
Nor (I hope!) is it true that sexual assault, or fear of sexual assault, by teachers or colleagues significantly contributes to the shortage of women in philosophy. In that sense, this is a story about a philosopher, but it is not a story about philosophy. There are no lessons for us here as we try to reform our profession, so, in that sense, there is nothing for us, qua philosophers, to dicuss.
My own reaction is personal and only personal. I do not know what to think. I do not doubt this poor woman’s story, but nor do I accept it as fact. I have no basis on which to make any such determination. There are statistical reasons to think it unlikely she would have concocted such a story, to be sure. That makes me profoundly sad, and concerned about Ludlow, whom I would, as I’ve said, regard as a friend. And if the accusations are not true, then that is even sadder.
All I can do, then, is pray that justice will be done, whatever that might be in this case, and admit that I have no idea what that might be.
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Does anyone know what that standard is?
The normal standard in civil law trials is “more likely than not”/”preponderance of the evidence”. I suppose a school could use a higher standard than this but less than “beyond a reasonable doubt”, but I would be slightly surprised if that were so. (This would be the standard in the suit against Northwestern.)
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No kidding. The difference in response is glaring. It is made more so because McGinn’s actions, while obviously totally inappropriate, do not appear to have been nearly as bad as what Ludlow is charged with.
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I’m actually quite happy about this shift — in discussing issues related to the Miami case, I refrained from using the name of the victim (always) and the perpetrator (in all but one instance, where it was required for clarity of response) because the issue here really are not the specifics of the individual cases, but rather the pattern of systemic injustice(s) that are making these cases possible. It is appropriate to name the institutions because this is where the locus of responsibility for establishing policy and precedent lies.
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I am not sure it is right to say that the situation is “even sadder” if the accusations turn out not to be true, Prof. Heck, not unless you’re weighing things according to a seriously distorted set of priorities. I think the saddest situation should unquestionably be the one in which a young woman is raped by her professor and the University takes no action against her rapist.
The harms of being falsely accused of rape seem unlikely to rival the harms done to the survivor in the circumstances of this particular case, should her allegations turn out to be true – let’s not forget that she attempted to take her own life as a result of her experiences.
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Nor (I hope!) is it true that sexual assault, or fear of sexual assault, by teachers or colleagues significantly contributes to the shortage of women in philosophy. In that sense, this is a story about a philosopher, but it is not a story about philosophy. There are no lessons for us here as we try to reform our profession, so, in that sense, there is nothing for us, qua philosophers, to dicuss.
This statement seems quite wrong to me. Rape emerges out of a culture, and one can assume that [if these allegations are true] a fifty year old professor willing to get a freshman woman drunk and then physically assault her has negative attitudes toward women that probably emerge in lots of ways that fall short of criminal assault. The fact that th[e] professor [named in the original complaint] is an insider in philosophy’s ‘old boys club’ also seems potentially relevant to broader attitudes in philosophy. Certainly if people were discussing whether a corporation had negative attitudes toward women reflected in e.g. promotion policies or that produced a hostile environment, and it then came out that a senior executive physically assaulted an intern, that would be seen as very relevant.
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[John Protevi — sorry for the anon email but unfortunately I must remain anonymous on this issue as I know too many of the people involved, including possibly moderators.]
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In response to Roberta Millstein at #30: Excellent question, right on point. We have anecdotal data which suggests it’s extremely common for a claim to be substantiated without meaningful action — or worse (e.g., an offer of a voluntary severance agreement with a non-disclosure clause, which effectively rewards the perpetrator). I can name/describe more than a dozen cases myself. But we don’t have clear data from the only agency that could reasonably provide it, the Office of Civil Rights, which is responsible for investigating Title IX complaints. Hopefully we’re moving in that direction, though. On January 29, thirty-nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter to the Office of Civil Rights, requesting, among other things, greater transparency and the creation of a central public database of campus agreements: http://www.scribd.com/doc/203276038/Campus-Sexual-Assault-Letter-Speier-Mahoney
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Not a philosopher, I understand. I approved your comment but I did however edit it. I want everyone here to stick to the language of “allegation” and hypotheticals based on allegations.
Let me repeat what Mark says above at 20: we will never release an IP address or email address.
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Matt: Thanks for the info. Do you happen to know how burdens of proof are distributed in university committees of the relevant sort? Is it, for example, evenly distributed (as in civil courts, IIRC)?
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In response to Richard Heck’s comment as reported by Not a philosopher: “Nor (I hope!) is it true that sexual assault, or fear of sexual assault, by teachers or colleagues significantly contributes to the shortage of women in philosophy. In that sense, this is a story about a philosopher, but it is not a story about philosophy. There are no lessons for us here as we try to reform our profession, so, in that sense, there is nothing for us, qua philosophers, to dicuss.”
Sexual assault and fear of repeated sexual assault by faculty led me to leave philosophy for 15 years. And repeated incidents of being groped by drunken colleagues or receiving inappropriate “here’s my very private phone number” emails from colleagues I haven’t seen for 20 years have led me to seriously contemplate leaving again. But, oh, right, I’m just ONE woman. Of course my departure wouldn’t be a “significant contribution” to the shortage of women in philosophy.
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