Sex Offenders
thusspakezuska | June 21, 2010I know I'm supposed to be posting installment three in the work-life balance series - and it's coming tomorrow, I promise - but I was distracted by this post by Isis's new co-blogger. I think there's a relatively strong consensus that this invention is clearly a bit of Technology Gone Bad.
In a really old Saturday Night Live sketch, Gilda Radnor and Dan Akroyd play a befuddled couple at home in the kitchen, arguing over Shimmer. It's a floor wax. No, a dessert topping. But wait! Spokesperson Chevy Chase pops in to tell them it's BOTH!!!!!
What does this have to do with understanding…
thusspakezuska | February 24, 2009It's certainly a tragedy when anyone takes their own life. I feel very sorry for the surviving family members and colleagues affected by the suicides of two U. of Iowa professors accused of sexual harassment who took their own lives last year.
And yet. I have little patience with this Chronicle of Higher Education article about them. You can file it under the category of "but he was such a really wonderful person! There's just no way he could have done these things!" Or, alternatively, "Those TERRIBLE women RUINED the lives of these WONDERFUL men!"
In the case of Arthur H. Miller…
thusspakezuska | August 14, 2008You are a university president. You naturally wish to avoid scandal and negative publicity during your administration. The time to make it mandatory for all faculty and staff to undergo training in how to avoid sexual harassment is:
A: When you take office, or shortly thereafter.
B: After one of your professors is caught emailing female students a quid pro quo: A's if they would expose their breasts and allow him to fondle them.
If you are University of Iowa president Sally Mason, you will, of course, pick option B.
If this is only the first time the esteemed Professor Miller has engaged…
thusspakezuska | September 12, 2007So I'm skimming along in Google Reader, thinking it's the year 2007, when whoa! I happen upon this post by Female Science Professor. Did he actually call her "science lady"? WTF? What millennium are we living in?
And this is the kind of response you get from the authorities when you are calling about a long-standing, well-documented problem of stalking/harassment. But hey, she wasn't actually physically assaulted by the stalker, so what's the big deal, right? Plus, she was asking for it.
What if she was physically assaulted and was actually unable to ask for it at the time - i.e…
thusspakezuska | December 4, 2006The Chronicle of Higher Education's news blog has a little item on Joseph Schlessinger. You may know him as the "internationally known researcher and head of the pharmacology department at Yale University" famous for his "his work in figuring out how information flows between a cell surface and the cell -- studies credited with laying the groundwork for several treatments for cancer".
Or you may know him now as the jerk-ass who allegedly sexually harassed his secretary so frequently and so long that she eventually had to quit her job to get away from him.
The secretary, Mary Beth Garceau,…
thusspakezuska | November 20, 2006Following up on my entry on Joanna Russ's book, How to Suppress Women's Writing, and its application to women in science and engineering...
In discussing "prohibitions", Russ notes"
First of all, it's important to realize that the absence of formal prohibitions against committing art [or science] does not preclude the presence of powerful, informal ones.
These include poverty and lack of leisure, the latter arising from overwhelming duties to family and home. Even our heroines had to overcome this latter prohibition:
Marie Curie's biographer, her daughter Eve, describes her mother's…
thusspakezuska | September 6, 2006So, what would be an example of someone creating a hostile environment in the workplace or educational setting?
An example of "frequent, non-trivial acts of a sexual nature" might be, oh, say repeatedly raping your lab assistant nearly 80 times. The rapist in this case was R. Igor Gamow, "a prominent inventor and chemical engineer who was fired by the [University of Colorado] in 2004 for 'moral turpitude.' " The multiple rapes took place between 1995 and 1998. (See The Chronicle of Higher Education daily news, May 5, 2006.)
Or, as Kay Weber alleges in Weber v. Fermi National Accelerator…
thusspakezuska | September 6, 2006It was Faramir in The Lord of the Rings who described Frodo's task as "a hard doom and a hopeless errand". I must confess to feeling that way myself about my own self-imposed task of reporting to you about the pond scum of academia, those who discriminate and harass, the bilious lechers and sexual abusers of the young. And yet it must be done. Because if I don't do it, who will? And these miscreants must not be allowed to slither away into the dark recesses of our classrooms and buildings, attempting to rehabilitate their reputations or escape scandal altogether. No, they must be publicly…