CW: Sexual harassment and assault.
GEO stands in solidarity with the victims of Professor John Comaroff and all students who have endured harassment from professors. The events surrounding Comaroff bring into sharp relief dynamics that are all too familiar to graduate students:
- the ease with which faculty can manipulate, bully, and gaslight us;
- other professors’ willingness to enable abuse by remaining silent or actively protecting abusers; and
- college and universities’ interest in ignoring or suppressing complaints against faculty.
Comaroff’s abuse gained national attention when 38 Harvard faculty members, including prominent scholars of oppression and inequality, wrote an open letter protesting the investigations into and sanctions against his behavior. A group of non-Harvard faculty issued a second letter defending Comaroff. In these professors’ view, Comaroff was “an excellent colleague, advisor and committed university citizen,” one of Harvard’s “finest” who was the victim of “a Kangaroo court”.
This rendering not only downplayed the seriousness of that particular incident, but also conveniently omitted the fact that Comaroff was a well-known serial sexual harasser. Three brave graduate students subsequently filed a lawsuit against Harvard. The suit provides a thorough and devastating picture of a university where graduate students were exposed to serial sexual harassment and assault with no recourse.
These allegations, while shocking, might have been more surprising if they did not so strongly resemble abuses committed here at U-M. Survivors of American Culture Lecturer Bruce Conforth recently filed a lawsuit against U-M for failing to protect them. The suit states that the university knew about Conforth’s behavior as early as 2008 (Conforth retired in 2017) but did not act, allowing him to continue sexually harassing and assaulting his students. Conforth is just one of a horrifyingly long list of sexual abusers at U-M that has grown depressingly familiar: Robert Anderson, Martin Philbert, Stephen Shipps, David Daniels, Walter Lisecki, Peter Chen, Jason Mars.
Abuse in higher education is rampant partly because the “work” and “workplace” are so ill-defined. As Professor Paula Chakravartty recently wrote in an analysis of the abuse she suffered from Professor Arjun Appadurai, one of the signatories of the second letter defending Comaroff:
The physical and emotional violence of sexual harassment deserves notoriety and redress, but we must remember that if the sexual harassment in question happens in the diffuse workplace of the academy — whether in offices, classrooms, conference hotels or in bars and coffee shops — then the sexual harassment is by definition workplace harassment. … While the hierarchy of faculty rank translates to significant power differentials in everyday work life, our senior colleagues are not formally our bosses or our supervisors, which means that there are few channels for reporting when we face workplace harassment that is not expressed sexually.
The academy’s heavy reliance on the judgment of tenured professors gives them incredible power over both untenured professors and graduate students. As Chakravartty points out, we depend on professors for grants, fellowships, publications, conference papers, and jobs. This dependence makes graduate students easy targets for both intentional or unintentional abuse.
Students marginalized by race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability are particularly vulnerable. GEO’s recent membership survey found that 15 percent of women respondents and 21 percent of LGBTQA respondents had experienced discrimination or harassment, with an additional 14 percent and 20 percent, respectively, reporting that they were “unsure” of whether they had. In addition, 35 percent of Black respondents and 37 percent of Latinx respondents reported experiencing racial discrimination. Five percent of disabled respondents reported ableist discrimination, with another 12 percent being unsure. These rates are far, far too high.
GEO is committed to making U-M a workplace where all graduate students are safe, healthy, and able to thrive. In the course of our last bargaining cycle, the Feminist Caucus signed a memorandum of understanding with Academic HR to form the Joint Committee on a Workplace Free From Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, and Sexual Misconduct. The Committee must meet at least two times per year for the duration of the contract with three representatives from GEO, our contract administrator, one representative from the Office of Institutional Equity and one representative from the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center. While this was an important gain, we continue to recognize that trust in institutional offices and processes has been eroded over time, and are especially concerned that Tamiko Strickman, Director of U-M’s Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX office is currently embroiled in ongoing lawsuits related to her handling of Title IX complaints during her previous role at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The Feminist Caucus supports a harm-reduction, survivor-centered framework within the misconduct complaints process, and continues to work within the Committee for change on our campus. If you would like to get involved with our ongoing work, please contact feministchair@geo3550.org.
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