Sexual harassment in academia

I let sexual harassment slide because of my university's financial struggles 

When cuts are threatening every department, it’s hard to put your job on the line to stand up against discrimination

The very fact of teaching at a vulnerable college made me less able to fight back.’ 

Photograph: Alamy 

I tried to pack the memory away like the cream polo neck I had worn under a tweed blazer, an outfit I had carefully selected because I imagined it projected authority. A tenured senior staff member had cut me off at the department meeting, laughing: “I wasn’t listening because I was so distracted by your breasts.”

I shrank down in my chair and pulled my blazer tighter around me. It was the lack of reaction from other staff around the table, men and women, that chilled me most. Instead of getting an apology, I was told that this professor would be writing in support of my tenure application.

I was surprised because I was teaching at a US college that was supposed to be a leader in gender and women’s studies. But, like so many liberal arts colleges, it didn’t have hefty endowments and was entirely dependent on tuition, facing declining enrolments.

Wealth and power often mask and exacerbate toxic professional situations, as we have recently seen in Hollywood and beyond. In academia, desperate financial times can push an institution to betray its mission to keep the doors open.

When I was sexually harassed, the very fact of teaching at a vulnerable college made me less able to fight back.

The professor who harassed me also made crude comments about junior staff members’ bodies and sexual orientation in front of other staff, administrators and students. Other colleagues I spoke with relayed stories not just of jokes and innuendoes, but of being harangued at home and of intrusive visits during office hours. Yet he was never held to account for his behaviour.

The dismal job market changed our responses to harassment and made it easier for the institution to cover up such behaviour. In better financial times, I might have felt more confident in walking out of that department meeting, or in filing a complaint, of confronting the situation instead of letting it fester while I scrambled to go back on the market and find another position.

I might have been a more vocal ally for others who did make complaints, and I might have felt more confident that those who witnessed my harassment would speak up. But any time staff are stretched thin, fighting for scraps, wondering whose department will be next to face cuts, it becomes harder to work up the courage to file a complaint or to go out on a limb to back up a colleague.

At financially strapped institutions, staff may also fear that any bad press that impacts on enrolment or accreditation might trigger a cut or closure that could leave their colleagues out of a job.

This sort of culture can also provide cover for punishments – last-minute schedule shifts and revoked funding are already the norm. So, for example, when a staff member who filed a complaint at my institution was abruptly laid off, this was blamed on budget cuts. And with constant turnover in HR and administrative staff, it was easy to blame errors and missteps in the handling of complaints on someone already out the door.

During my time at the institution, two professors were quietly forced out after sexual harassment complaints and two other professors had formal complaints filed against them. Those are the incidents of which I have direct knowledge. For a small school, that number seems worryingly high.

Sustainable systemic change that would make academia more welcoming to women isn’t possible while institutions are fighting for their basic survival. Any reckoning with the #MeToo movement in academia needs to involve a recognition that tough financial circumstances can, and do, silence women just as effectively as six-figure non-disclosure agreements.