Tony Judt, a well-known historian, has written an engaging essay called “Girls! Girls! Girls!” for NYRBlog, The New York Review of Books blog, about how our stance towards sexual behavior on (and, by implication, off) campus has changed over the years. I don’t agree with everything he says–and he would probably say it’s because I am a product of my (and his) times–but what he says is thought-provoking. Here are some snippets, which, taken out of context, may lose some of the irony that informs them in the original:
Shortly after I took office [in 1992 as chair of NYU’s History Department], a second-year graduate student came by. A former professional ballerina interested in Eastern Europe, she had been encouraged to work with me. I was not teaching that semester, so could have advised her to return another time. Instead, I invited her in. After a closed-door discussion of Hungarian economic reforms, I suggested a course of independent study—beginning the following evening at a local restaurant. A few sessions later, in a fit of bravado, I invited her to the premiere of Oleanna—David Mamet’s lame dramatization of sexual harassment on a college campus.
How to explain such self-destructive behavior? What delusional universe was mine, to suppose that I alone could pass untouched by the punitive prudery of the hour—that the bell of sexual correctness would not toll for me? I knew my Foucault as well as anyone and was familiar with Firestone, Millett, Brownmiller, Faludi, e tutte quante. To say that the girl had irresistible eyes and that my intentions were…unclear would avail me nothing. My excuse? Please Sir, I’m from the ’60s.
***
[T]he anxieties of contemporary sexual relations offer occasional comic relief. When I was Humanities dean at NYU, a promising young professor was accused of improper advances by a graduate student in his department. He had apparently followed her into a supply closet and declared his feelings. Confronted, the professor confessed all, begging me not to tell his wife. My sympathies were divided: the young man had behaved foolishly, but there was no question of intimidation nor had he offered to trade grades for favors. All the same, he was censured. Indeed, his career was ruined—the department later denied him tenure because no women would take his courses. Meanwhile, his “victim” was offered the usual counseling.
Some years later, I was called to the Office of the University Lawyer. Would I serve as a witness for the defense in a case against NYU being brought by that same young woman? Note, the lawyer warned me: “she” is really a “he” and is suing the university for failing to take seriously “her” needs as a transvestite. We shall fight the case but must not be thought insensitive.
So I appeared in Manhattan Supreme Court to explain the complexities of academic harassment to a bemused jury of plumbers and housewives. The student’s lawyer pressed hard: “Were you not prejudiced against my client because of her transgendered identity preference?” “I don’t see how I could have been,” I replied. “I thought she was a woman—isn’t that what she wanted me to think?” The university won the case.
***
Here as in so many other arenas, we have taken the ’60s altogether too seriously. Sexuality (or gender) is just as distorting when we fixate upon it as when we deny it. Substituting gender (or “race” or “ethnicity” or “me”) for social class or income category could only have occurred to people for whom politics was a recreational avocation, a projection of self onto the world at large.
Why should everything be about “me”? Are my fixations of significance to the Republic? Do my particular needs by definition speak to broader concerns? What on earth does it mean to say that “the personal is political”? If everything is “political,” then nothing is. I am reminded of Gertrude Stein’s Oxford lecture on contemporary literature. “What about the woman question?” someone asked. Stein’s reply should be emblazoned on every college notice board from Boston to Berkeley: “Not everything can be about everything.”
Full disclosure: One reason this piece engages me as much as it does, is that I have the same response as Judt to the question he poses at the end of his post:
So how did I elude the harassment police, who surely were on my tail as I surreptitiously dated my bright-eyed ballerina?
Except in my case she was a dark-haired and compellingly dark-eyed woman from Iran. And I have made the answer my title.
This looked interesting until I hit the random transphobia in the pull quote. Shocker, cis jury sides with cis professors over trans student. Don’t forget to put victim in scare quotes, along with her pronouns.
Although I’ve admired other articles by Judt, I thought this article was an anti-feminist piece of crap, frankly. Oh, the poor, suffering white male professor, no longer able to innocently declare his love for a student he has chased into a closet! How he suffers!
I do think there are real issues here. But Judt’s article is so one-dimensional and thoughtless that the real issues are buried under his unquestioned, unexamined privilege and his asshattery.
No woman would take his courses? That is a huge red flag. It suggests that he was a giant creep toward young women in general, not just the student he confronted in a closet. Even with knowledge of the closet incident, most female students in the department probably would have continued to take his classes unless he had a majorly scary vibe.
Also, I’m dismayed by the term “harassment police.” Actually, I feel sick to my stomach reading it, because it suggests a power over their professors that young women simply do not have. It’s a reversal of the true power imbalance, in which young women eager to build their careers submit to unwanted sexual advances to avoid offending the men who are important in their field.
I’d wager that for every suffering white professor denied tenure because of improper advances in a closet, there are dozens of young women who faced sexual harassment from professors with no recourse.
A talented female acquaintance of mine in college (in the 2000s) was sexually assaulted by a professor in her field. Afterward, she wondered if the other men in the field had encouraged her to pursue her studies because she was truly talented or because they wanted access to her body. This doubt led her to wear baggy clothing and to work on her studies for excessive numbers of hours each day. She eventually complained about the assault to the chair of the department. He said dealing with the assault was not his responsibility. When female students complained to the university’s Title IX officer, she said there was not enough evidence to do anything about it. Male students in the department, hearing of the complaint, suggested that female students don’t understand what sexual assault is and suggested my acquaintance didn’t realize that the professor’s touching was a normal part of instruction. The professor is still teaching in the department, and many female students still take his classes. My acquaintance left the field.
My experience has been that 1) sexual harassment policies are not often resulting in ruined careers for poor, innocent professors who chase students into closets and that 2) in fact, university policies are not enforced and not effective at curbing real abuses.
So yeah, basically f*** you, Judt.
I’m horrified by these pull quotes, and doubly horrified, as sqrrel says, by the unexpected transphobia, theoretically here quoted as “interesting.” Pretty appalling.
the punitive prudery of the hour
Why is wanting to be able to work and study with men without being harassed “prudery”? I like sex as much as the next person but not when the offer is coming from my professor or supervisor. And I hope I misunderstood RJN’s reference to his own situation because it sounds appalling.
Amp:
I too, for example, was disturbed in this piece by the scare quotes that sqrrel pointed to and all that they imply (though I did not pick it up immediately as transphobia and I am grateful to have it pointed out to me as such), as well as what clearly seemed to me a nostalgia for a time when it was “easier to be a guy,” but I’m not sure this is fair. First, Judt doesn’t indicate that the faculty member was white, nor does he suggest that there was nothing wrong with what the professor did. As I read the passage you are responding, Judt’s mixed feelings had more to do with whether or not the punishment that he knew was likely to come–censure and a ruined career–would fit the crime, and I think that is a fair question.
Granted, I am assuming that Judt’s characterization of what the professor did is accurate (meaning that all the guy did was to “declare his feelings”); I am also assuming, though I think the passage implies it, that this was a first offense; and I am also taking into account the fact that the professor did not try to hide what he did, or justify it (at least in Judt’s account).
I want to be clear, though, I am not justifying what this professor did, nor am I suggesting that there should have been no consequences to his actions. Following a graduate student into a supply closet to declare one’s feelings is not an innocent action; there are ways he could have shared his feelings that did not have the implicitly and explicitly coercive element of an enclosed space. But did he deserve to have his career ruined, especially if there was no quid pro quo? I wouldn’t say absolutely not, since I don’t know all the facts, but based on the facts I have, I am not so sure he did.
ETA Dianne: A short explanation: I did not start to date the woman who became my wife until she was no longer in my class, but we met when she was my student.
Whoa! inviting the student ur dating to see Oleanna? That takes balls.
Richard, it’s mainly that Judt said that there was “no question of intimidation” which got up my nose about that. How can there be no question of intimidation, when we’re talking about a professor getting a student in a closet to declare an apparently unwanted love for her? Maybe if I knew the full circumstances (she was a black-belt who testified on a stack of bibles that she didn’t feel intimidated for even a microsecond), but I can’t help but suspect that there was a question of intimidation, which Judt doesn’t have the empathy to appreciate. It suggests to me that Judt’s accounts may be leaving something out — if not through deliberate deception, then through Judt’s obviously biased thinking.
I agree with you that there are real questions; I’m sure that there have been cases where punishments have been disproportionate, or accusations untrue. (Just as there are cases where entirely justified accusations get ignored or dismissed.) I just don’t see this article as raising those questions in a useful way.
I am assuming that Judt’s characterization of what the professor did is accurate (meaning that all the guy did was to “declare his feelings”);
There are certain situations in which it is utterly inappropriate to declare one’s romantic or sexual feelings for another person. It is wrong for a doctor to declare his/her love for a patient. It is wrong for a supervisor to declare his/her feelings to an employee working under him/her. It is never right for a president to declare, much less act on, his desire for an intern. And it is wrong for a professor to declare his/her desire to a student. Regardless of the lack of explicit quid pro quo, regardless of whether there was any overt harassment involved. The implicit power relationship is such that it is simply NEVER right to become involved.
In a sense, the situation is a bit like pedophilia. Yes, both people are adults but one has enormous explicit and implicit power over the other and this makes a fair, egalitarian, adult relationship simply impossible. Get over it and move on.
ETA: Any professor who can not see the wrong in declaring his love or desire for a student, much less declaring it after he’d cornered her in a closet, is not competent to teach. He should be terminated for cause as much as if he knew nothing about his subject or didn’t show up for lectures he was expected to give.
I did not start to date the woman who became my wife until she was no longer in my class, but we met when she was my student.
I apologize for misjudging you.
S pulled this quote
I read this very differently than you did: that women refused to take his class after he was censured, that the censure was the reason women wouldn’t take his class, which is why I thought this might have been a first offense. Your reading is also possible, in which case I would withdraw what I wrote in my response to Amp.
I’m inclined to agree with S – the fact that no women took his course after this incident sends up red flags that there’s more hear than meets the eye. I could understand an incident like this sending a reasonable guy up the river – he might be an oblivious sort of person who is obsessively specialized in his field (which isn’t really rare in higher education) who had no idea of how bad his proposition was and the locale he’d chosen for it. I disagree with Dianne’s hard-line stance, since I remember my favorite profs being the sort of imbesciles would could do something equally bad, and they were all brilliant teachers and incredibly knowledgeable in their fields.
But the fact that no female student would take his class afterwards is very informative… because as powerful as academic gossip is, it isn’t _that_ powerful. One awkward moment in a supply room (if reading the news online has taught me one thing, it’s that a closet is never a closet) would not destroy his career unless everyone knew about worse moments, or that moment is worse than is being let on.
Silenced is foo:
It can be if you’re in a small enough department with a small enough number of female graduate students.
I remember my favorite profs being the sort of imbesciles would could do something equally bad, and they were all brilliant teachers and incredibly knowledgeable in their fields.
Would you be as tolerant if they were cornering men in closets and declaring their love? ETA: In other words, how would you feel if you were (potential) target of their inapprorpiate behavior? What if they were reputed to be in the habit of acting vendictively towards anyone who refused them?
No matter how brilliant a person is in their field, they have to meet certain minimum social requirements to be a professor at a legitimate institution. They can show up to lectures oddly dressed but they must wear clothes. They can’t assault students. And they can’t be in the habit of coercively propositioning their students. It’s just part of the definition of an acceptably competent professor along with knowledge in their field, a good publication record, and ability to tolerate departmental meetings.
[T]he anxieties of contemporary sexual relations offer occasional comic relief. When I was Humanities dean at NYU, a promising young professor was accused of improper advances by a graduate student in his department. He had apparently followed her into a supply closet and declared his feelings. Confronted, the professor confessed all, begging me not to tell his wife. My sympathies were divided: the young man had behaved foolishly, but there was no question of intimidation nor had he offered to trade grades for favors. All the same, he was censured. Indeed, his career was ruined—the department later denied him tenure because no women would take his courses. Meanwhile, his “victim” was offered the usual counseling.
Judt describes a disturbing incident. It might sometimes be possible for a professor and a student to overcome intrinsic power imbalance and have a non-coercive love affair, but it wouldn’t look anything like this.
Red flag 1: The professor begins with a declaration. Not an invitation.
Red flag 2: Following somebody into a closet in order to get her alone is intimidating.
Red flag 3: The professor wanted to keep his behavior secret from his wife. He was doing something he knew he should be ashamed of, not trying to start the kind of relationship Richard has with his partner.
Red flag 4: Afterwards, no women would take his courses. Based on my experience of grad school in the 1990s, a lot of women think they’re clever or tough enough to deal with minor harassment or creepiness. (Especially female grad students, who are young and ambitious and put up with a fair amount of shit.) If they were ALL driven away, he had a more disturbing reputation.
Judt’s attempts to treat the whole thing as silly and trivial make me distrust him.
It’s not “comic relief.”
The young man did quite a bit worse than “behaved foolishly.”
It’s insulting to refer to his “victim” in sneerquotes. Judt doesn’t think she was victimized, but he doesn’t address the question directly; just pushes into the background as if it doesn’t matter.
Leaving aside the “comic relief” of professors stalking their students for a moment, consider Judt’s behavior. He did not, like Richard J Newman, offer a relationship to an ex-student whom he found attractive after their teacher/student relationship was at an end. Instead, he propositioned a student coming to him for the first time, at the start of her career, the moment when she was most vulnerable and least free to tell him forget it if she wasn’t interested. He then put his proposition in terms that might easily have made her think that her academic career was at stake if she refused him.
This quote is also troubling: “To say that the girl had irresistible eyes and that my intentions were…unclear would avail me nothing.” In other words, it was her fault: she tempted me. Perhaps he’d prefer that his students wear a burka so that he wouldn’t be tempted by their eyes? And what “intentions” does he think could possibly justify his behavior?
Granted, I am assuming that Judt’s characterization of what the professor did is accurate (meaning that all the guy did was to “declare his feelings”);
That’s probably because you’ve never been the subject of harassment, unwanted attentions, stalking, or other such behaviors. To women and men who have been cornered by harassers like this, there is nothing innocent about it. Cornering someone in a **closet** to “profess your feelings” is incredibly scary, and when those “professed feelings” are unwelcome, that can be downright threatening.
In addition, you (and Judt) seem to be laboring under the misconception that the student was unaware of the professor’s feelings, that he acted respectably up until that moment. I have to say, I find that unlikely, again as someone who’s been in similar circumstances. You don’t just randomly corner a student in a closet one day without having attempted more standard ways of getting to know hir.
And I won’t even go into the transphobia. Overall, this article made me feel icky.
Dianne:
Without disputing that Judt’s behavior crossed a line that shouldn’t have been crossed, I do think it’s important to remember that this woman had been a professional ballerina. She was not, in other words, a 23 year-old woman just out of her undergraduate years, with little or no experience in the professional world, etc. and so on. I don’t think we need to make her more vulnerable than she was–and I am not saying she was not vulnerable; but I have had plenty of experience with students coming to school after having had other careers; they are rarely vulnerable in the way that new graduate students are–in order to criticize Judt for having crossed a professional line.
Huh. I would have guessed “creepy old man romanticizes sexual harassment” would be the kind of article Alas would deconstruct, not quote approvingly.
I have had plenty of experience with students coming to school after having had other careers; they are rarely vulnerable in the way that new graduate students are
Certainly an older person may have more experience and understanding of his/herself and his/her desires and boundries than a younger one. However, I don’t think you can say that she was not vulnerable simply because she was older and had had a prior career. Perhaps she had had to give up ballet because it had become too physically strenous as she aged and she was feeling uncertain physically and therefore susceptible to compliments about her looks. Perhaps she went out with him out of gratitude that he saw her as an attractive woman, not an aging ex-ballerina.
Be that all as it may, he had power over her. He could have destroyed her career at NYU at least and, depending on the size of the field, possibly her hopes of any career in her chosen area. His refusal to take her seriously as a student likely adversely affected her future career regardless of her acceptance or refusal. And, it seems that she became his wife. Perhaps also his unattributed co-author? He does not say who is wife is. Is this out of respect for her feelings or embarassment that he stole her academic career?
Dianne,
I didn’t say she was not vulnerable, just that we ought not to make her sound like a new graduate student, which is how I (mistakenly, I guess) read what you wrote.
Ethyl,
For now, all I will say is that your assumption that I have never been the object of sexual harassment or stalking on the job is wrong.
To All,
Clearly, my language in introducing the excerpts from Judt’s article was not clear. I should have said that I objected quite strongly to, not simply that I disagreed with, much of what he said; and I should have stated those objections in the post. I stand by my characterization of the essay as thought-provoking, though, because I think that dismissing it, simply, as Stentor does, as “creepy old man romanticizes sexual harassment” is reductive. It may be full, as Amp says, of privilege and unexamined assumptions; but that fact does not mean it doesn’t, or can’t, raise questions that are worth exploring.
I can imagine circumstances where his behavior (viewed in context) would not be bad enough to justify the punishment and outcome.
I can imagine circumstances where his behavior (viewed in context) would be so bad that the punishment and outcome were wholly insufficient.
And I can imagine circumstances where it was an even match.
The problem with this discussion–and almost all of these discussions–is that we don’t know and can’t know what the context really was. All we can do is to project possibilities and behaviors onto both parties, biased as always by our own internal selves.
The best we can hope for is to come up with general statements. Here’s mine: based on the description, it sounds fairly likely that the punishment was acceptable. It might have been too harsh; it might have been too lenient. Clearly we all can think of both situations.
I don’t see how anyone can argue conclusively about it, since any such argument would have to be based largely on a guess.
For now, all I will say is that your assumption that I have never been the object of sexual harassment or stalking on the job is wrong.
I’m sorry you’ve had such experiences, but I hope you can see how my assumption might have been arrived at. You stated that you are accepting Judt’s accounts of things as basically factual, and that this is an assumption on your part. This acceptance relies on a sense of trust that Judt wouldn’t misrepresent the facts, but neglects that Judt is not a reliable narrator given his very very clear privilege on display. The acceptance of these facts at face value is clearly something with its feet in male privilege, especially seeing as how myself and several other posters did not accept the facts as presented and saw in them something sinister and threatening. I hope you can think about your experiences as a victim of harassment and use them to gain perspective on the matter.
Edit to add: And Sailorman, who posted while I was typing, said it quicker and better:
“All we can do is to project possibilities and behaviors onto both parties, biased as always by our own internal selves.”
“But did he deserve to have his career ruined, especially if there was no quid pro quo? I wouldn’t say absolutely not, since I don’t know all the facts, but based on the facts I have, I am not so sure he did.”
I don’t get this thread. It’s like we’re on different planets – I can’t even see the need for debate. Why do we need an esoteric analysis of harrassment?
If no woman will take your courses then you’re a crap teacher. It’s that cut and dry – just as if you’re a mechanic and no one will let you fix their car you’re not going to be a very effective mechanic. If as a teacher you let a situation get to the point where a substantial number of students refuse contact with you then it’s over. You have ceased to be an effective teacher and you remaining in the job is destructive. The alleged harrassment and what he ‘deserves’ has got nothing to do with it.
” As I read the passage you are responding, Judt’s mixed feelings had more to do with whether or not the punishment that he knew was likely to come–censure and a ruined career–would fit the crime, and I think that is a fair question.”
No, it is not a fair question. You think censure would be too much. Really?
And as to the ruined career, well, he should have thought about that possibility before chasing his student into a closet.
This whole line of thinking is ridiculous. Women have spoken (finally) over the last 30 years and the consensus is clear – we would like to be able to work and study in peace without having to fend off advances from men who are in a position to fuck up our future (academic, career, whatever) if we refuse. It is because that power dynamic is at play that men need to step the hell back and think about what kind of position they’re putting women in if they hit on them in those situations.
Sorry if it means you have to practise some impulse control and actually take other people’s feelings into consideration, guys. You had a nice long run of not having to treat women like people, and now it’s time to move on.
Also, the argument that maybe what this particular professor did wasn’t so bad is kind of undercut by the fact that women didn’t want to take his classes. Unless he was simply a terrible teacher, that sounds like a pretty good indication that the incident in the closet probably wasn’t an abberation. During my college years there was only one professor whose classes I avoided, and we called him Dr Hands.
I’m curious what these questions that could be worth exploring that you thought this article might raise were, because honestly Stentor’s assessment was pretty apt. And notice that every single woman in this discussion read it that way, and that the only people not reading it that way are men (and not even all men, just some of you). Don’t you think a pretty much universal female reaction of “oh hell no, not this shit again” might in fact be the answer to those questions?
(I am usually a lot more polite than this to people who post on this blog, but right now I’m feeling downright stabby. As someone said above – who ever thought we’d see someone recommending an article reminiscing for the good old days when women didn’t complain about harrassment on Alas as a source of insight? All this article gives insight into is the minds of men who don’t think of women as real people, and I already have a pretty good idea of how they think, thanks all the same.)
“And notice that every single woman in this discussion read it that way, and that the only people not reading it that way are men (and not even all men, just some of you). Don’t you think a pretty much universal female reaction of “oh hell no, not this shit again” might in fact be the answer to those questions?”
I didn’t really want to enter the conversation as such, but so often I read assumptions about what I think or have experienced, that to see one stated so unabiguously made me think I should comment. Although it’s true that every woman participating in the discussion up until this comment had read it that way, not all women reading the discussion did, ie. me.
However, I am frequently wrong about “these things”* and am considering that I was wrong in my initial thoughts due to the weight of opinion from other people with experiences and points of views that seem to align more closely with the common view/experience. My initial thoughts, before discussion – the punishment sounded like it was too much, the section about the transwoman sounded dodgy regardless of the exact details of the story (ie. I aggreed with everyone there), and I personally wouldn’t find being propositioned in a “closet”** any worse than anywhere else. I have always thought that in a car would be worst, because there’s no way to extract oneself even from an awkward conversation, let alone a dangerous situation, short of making things significantly more dangerous.
*”these things” being pretty much any experience that is common to women
**my definition of “closet” is not something one person could fit into, let alone two, but obviously I’m assuming it’s a small storeroom.
Well, I have, deservedly, received quite a drubbing here for posting something I should have filed for myself as “notes to a post.” As if my reasons for choosing them were of course so obvious that they needed neither exposition nor explanation, I allowed to speak for themselves excerpts that should have been framed very differently and made the object of serious scrutiny, and so–while I still disagree with some of the points people in this thread have argued–what I wrote certainly sounded like I was sympathetic to Judt’s nostalgia and apologia in ways that I most decidely am not. It serves no purpose, therefore, to continue to respond to people’s critiques, either of the original post or of the comments I have made in the context of that post–except to apologize more explicitly for not having caught the transphobia–because I think it will only devolve into a self-defensiveness that will, in the end, prove nothing. The post is as bad as the post is, and no amount of arguing “what I really meant” or of responding to people’s accusations of my own insensitivity towards women, or people who have been harassed, etc. to “prove my credentials,” so to speak, will change that.
I do, however, want to say something very brief in response to this, written by CassandraSays:
The business of teaching and learning is often far more emotionally, psychologically and erotically messy than we like to admit–on both sides of the professional lines that we all agree professors, male or female, should not cross. I teach at a community college. I am married to a former student, so is one of my male colleagues; two of my female colleagues are married to their former students; a gay male colleague is “married”–which I put in scare quotes only because it is, unfortunately, not a legal marriage–to a former student aide. Two of my former male colleagues were forced into retirement because they were known to sleep with their students and one, at least, if the information I have is correct, did so for grades; I know of one female colleague who was falsely accused of sexual harassment; one female colleague who slept with a student while he was still in her class, and I know of at least two other colleagues, one male and one female, who have slept with former students.
Of the instances I have just listed, there are some which clearly cross the line; in other cases, I know personally that they did not; and in others, I just don’t know. In fact, for the purposes of what I am interested in, what Judt’s piece made me think of, whether or not the line was crossed is sort of irrelevant. Not because it doesn’t matter to the people involved–obviously, there need to be consequences if a professor sexually harasses a student–but because in both kinds of situation, those where the ethics are unimpeachable and those where the unethical nature is clear, as well as in situations where the ethics are gray, the desire that is at stake arose in the context of teaching and learning. Judt’s piece, with all its flaws, brought me back to that as an issue worth taking on, both for what thinking deeply about it might reveal about desire and for what it might reveal about teaching and learning.
My own haste and laziness resulted in a post that was about something entirely different.
Richard, in light of your latest response, I’m not going to pile on you—CassandraSays said everything I would have said in just about exactly the way I would have said it, and Dianne did so in a way I found incredibly polite. When I read the piece, I had the same “WTF??!!” moment most readers were having, and what stood out to me was:
1. the cornering in the closet and the “don’t tell my wife” meant that the professor was well aware he was crossing boundaries, and,
2. he was a-ok with crossing those boundaries, and,
3. keeping in mind Sailorman’s note that none of us really know what went on, if we take as our premise that there had been no long-term dating relationship between the professor and the student, how inappropriate is it to “declare your feelings” to someone you don’t know that intimately? Think about it—it’s difficult enough to declare your feelings to someone you’ve been dating awhile if the other person hasn’t been very forthcoming with their own feelings about the relationship. That the professor did so with a person with whom he was not already intimate—that’s the biggest red flag of all. That’s not just entitlement, that’s stalking behavior, and dangerous. And yes, I read it that way because (as Sailorman put it above), I’m filtering this written experience through my own experiences.
4. it’s probably also worth mentioning that I’m really bothered by the repeated characterization of the professor as “young”. It’s a common trope to characterize sexual harassers as “young” in order to excuse their behavior via youthful inexperience or unawareness; considering that this professor was old enough to not want his wife to find out about the closet incident says that he was definitely old enough to know better.
This comment I found quite interesting, Richard: the desire that is at stake arose in the context of teaching and learning. What makes you especially interested in desire that arises within the context of teaching and learning?
I ask because I don’t see it that way. I don’t see desire in the context of teaching or learning as being any different, in quantity or quality, than desire in any other intimate setting. Is it the intimacy that goes along with a (good) teacher/student relationship that intrigues? Is it the inherent power imbalance that by design is supposed to result in a power balance (meaning: good teachers teach their students to be their equals and colleagues)?
I do think that would be a good conversation, and I’m glad you clarified that. You just picked the worst possible example to start the conversation—the ‘desire’ in one instance being clearly one-sided, and the ‘desire’ in the second instance (Judt’s marriage) crossing all kinds of ethical boundaries.
LaLubu;
It’s not that I think that desire in the context of teaching and learning is in itself different. Desire is desire and once you feel it, you feel it. But I do think the way you phrase your questions about the intimacy of the teacher/student relationship and the paradox–at least at the graduate level–that “good teachers teach their students to be their equals and colleagues” are precisely to the point. What’s interesting to me are the ways in which teaching and learning invite participants in that process to (and towards) desire, which at first may not even be sexual or erotic in any narrow sense, but has more to do with wanting to connect with someone whose intellectual passion engages yours, because you find in that engagement affirmation and growth and all the other things that students and teachers get from each other when the relationship clicks.
Richard, another reason this piece is so clearly creepy is Judt’s flip remark about “I’m from the ’60s.” Meaning, he’s from an era where getting to fuck your female students was considered a perk of being a professor, along the lines of having a really good assigned parking space, and now all the mean frowny harassment police have spoiled it for him.
I think one of the reasons you’re getting so much blowback is that you seem to be conflating desire, period, with desire that is expressed in a coercive, entitled way. You waited until you didn’t have coercive power over your student to express your interest in her. Judt and the people he talks about in his article did. You have no reason to see yourself in them and try to justify their behavior on some level.
But did he deserve to have his career ruined, especially if there was no quid pro quo?
Yes.
I mean, I’m sorry, I could be wrong here, but I’m trying to imagine a situation where “married professor follows a female student into a supply closet and announces he wants her” is simply an understandable lapse that any of us could make, and I’m just really failing. Any thoughts?
Mythago, depending on the details of the situation, I think there might be some middle ground to find between “no consequences at all” and “end of his career forever.” There may be instances where restorative justice — in which the professor would be made to own up to what he did and work collaboratively with all the stake-holders to find a way to make restitution — would be an appropriate approach.
I don’t think it’s “simply an understandable lapse that any of us could make.” I do think that all of us have more to us than our worst moments, however. And if there’s a way to both provide justice and security for those with less power, but still have some mercy, then I’m in favor of it.
Thoughts about what is LIKELY? Or what is POSSIBLE?
I mean, come on. Just imagine some bad fiction.
…He pushed in behind her, standing inches away in the cramped closet, blocking the door. She could feel his breath on her neck. “I want you,” he said.
…He held the door for her as she pushed the cart in, and slouched against a counter as she worked down the supply racks with her list. The bright lights were giving him a headache. She was on the other side of some shelving, out of sight and loading a ream of paper, when he got up the nerve to ask. “I want to go out with you,” he said, sort of hoping she wouldn’t hear it.
See? The world is a complex place. Some people are skeevy, others are pushy, others are slimy, others are shy. Some people like to be hit on. Others detest it. Others (and I have known both sexes to do this) like to play power games, where they convince people they’re interested and then reject them. Others seem to enjoy seducing people in relationships. Others seem to enjoy cheating on their partners.
There’s no reason to grant either party all the benefit of the doubt, I don’t think. Seems like generally speaking, he fucked up. But “fucked up” includes a pretty wide range of things, ya know.
Mythago,
In general, what Amp said. One of the things I learned when I served on my college’s Sexual Harassment Task Force was just nuanced the question of consequences really is. Leaving aside, for the moment, behavior that is criminally actionable, like rape, and things like the explicit demand to exchange sex for grades (which may or may not be criminally actionable, but is certainly cause for termination, as far as I know), there is not only a whole range of behaviors that can qualify as sexual harassment, some of them more egregious than others, but there is also the question of whether someone is a repeat offender (which, of course, is why it’s important that systems be set up to encourage anyone who feels he or she has been harassed to lodge a complaint; so that (in my case) the school administration will know if something is a first offense or not), whether or not the harasser admits to what he or she has done, understands the seriousness of it, expresses remorse both in words and deed, etc. and so on.
To apply to every situation the most extreme standard of consequence, it seems to me, is simply not just. I, for example, was harassed by a female colleague over a period of several months–it included what would sound unequivocally like stalking behavior were I to describe it in detail, unwanted touching and more. I chose to deal with it personally, and I successfully confronted the woman and got her to stop what she was doing. I don’t, for a variety of reasons, want to go into more detail than this, but suffice it to say that, despite how egregious what I am talking about might sound, and would sound were I to give you all the details, given the particular circumstances of the situation, it would have been entirely unjust for her to have lost her job had I made a formal complaint.
“I think one of the reasons you’re getting so much blowback is that you seem to be conflating desire, period, with desire that is expressed in a coercive, entitled way. You waited until you didn’t have coercive power over your student to express your interest in her.”
It doesn’t work like that, there isn’t a line you can draw between coercive vs. non-c0ercive, just a gradient. There’s always going to be some sort of power present – his student could still need an academic reference, even a long time after she’s left, for example.
A lot of the formal elements of the job make people worry, I actually don’t think that’s a concern if an institution’s properly run. Take awarding grades for an examples, I don’t believe there is that much arbitrary power present in marking now. Take that students could be failed for not going along with a professor’s advances. I don’t think it would happen – there are simply checks in grading policy which would stop it: papers can reviewed anonymously, by third parties, and external examiners.
It’s the informal stuff that matters. Extra help with academic work, references, guidance, and job advice. And that’s never going to disappear once you stop being enrolled at an institiution.
“I mean, I’m sorry, I could be wrong here, but I’m trying to imagine a situation where “married professor follows a female student into a supply closet and announces he wants her” is simply an understandable lapse that any of us could make, and I’m just really failing. Any thoughts?”
What if they were already married before she enrolled?
There is an extremism with the talk about relationships with a power imbalance which is reflected in Judt talking about ‘harrassment police’. Let’s be clear: there are people who would ban pre-existing relationships, there are people who would think it appropriate to ask people to meetings at work and enquire who they are sleeping with outside of working hours (from an employee rights prespective, I think this is clear cut sexual harrassment). They simply have no right to know. What matters is how you behave in the workplace, that’s all. You shouldn’t proposition people, I’m very firm on this (and I do include students propositioning professors too, people can’t refuse to teach classes they’re assigned to). But I don’t really think it’s a concern who you’re in a relationship with. What you do in your time is your business, that’s why I have some sympathy with Richard here.
You know, I’ve heard these sort of comments that the academic environment lends itself to erotic connections before, but what’s interesting is that these comments almost always come from professors, not students, even grad students. I’ve know quite a few female grad students, and only one of them ever had any sexual interest in any of her professors, and it was nothing to do with a connection forged through learning – he was just really good looking.
I think there may be a whole lot of projection going on here on behalf of the professors. Just because they feel a connection and then an attraction towards some students doesn’t mean that the feelings are mutual, and assuming that they must be mutual seems like classic male privilege at work, combined with the situational privilege.
In other words, a female grad student who keeps turning up at your office to talk about 17th century literature may possibly find you attractive, but it’s more likely that she just really wants to talk about 17th century literature and you happen to be the most knowledgable person she knows. If she actually is interested in you as a man and not just as a source of cool information, she’ll find a way to let you know. If she doesn’t do that you should probably just keep assuming that she’s simply really enthusiastic about her studies, rather than attempting to turn your wishful thinking into reality.
CassandraSays:
Having been propositioned over the years by enough undergraduate students who knew me only in the context of the classroom–and so there was no way that their desire did not emerge in the context of teaching and learning–I know from experience that the dynamic I was talking about above also occurs. (This all took place when I was considerably younger than I am now and I was close enough in age to some of my students that, had we met outside the classroom, we would have met, essentially, as peers.) My point, though, is not to play tit for tat with anecdotes, because I agree with your underlying point: even if a student initiates some kind of flirtation, proposition, or whatever, for a professor to act on that while the student is in her or his class is for that professor to project onto the student a status and agency that the student cannot, by definition, possess at least until the class is finished–and even then, assuming the two try to enter into a relationship, it takes time to get past the teacher-student dynamic, and one of the reasons such relationships don’t work, when they don’t work, is that the couple, usually the professor (at least in the cases I have heard), cannot get
past that dynamic.
I also agree with you, if I read you correctly, that claiming the academic environment lends itself to erotic connections (which is your phrasing; it’s not precisely what I wrote) in order to present inappropriate teacher-student relationships as an unavoidable and unfortunate fact of academic life is irresponsible at best. The fact that I agree teachers ought not to cross professional boundaries, however, does not mean that the connection between desire and teaching and learning is not worth thinking about and writing about, both to critique the easy justifications people give and to see if there is anything worth learning from it.
@ Richard – Maybe you should try to write a post articulating the point that you really wanted to make, because clearly it didn’t come across in this one.
I’m not convinced that academia is particuarly unusual, though. There are always going to be attractions that come up in any workplace, and that’s why we have clear policies in place to deal with people who respond to those attractions in inappropriate ways. Also what you’re describing, which I’ve never personally observed, sounds a lot like rock groupiedom, which I have observed (I’m a journalist who often covers music). If that’s what’s actually going on, young women feeling admiration and need for approval and expressing that through offering the objects of their admiration sex, it’s even more inexcusable for the professors to act on it.
Richard, probably you’ve already seen this post from Hugo, but if you haven’t you may find it interesting.
Thanks, Amp. I hadn’t seen it.
I wonder how much of that depends on the “young” modifier there. And applying it to people in general rather than just women:
an 18-year-old who is sleeping with a 37 year old professor is a very different thing than is a 30 year old graduate student sleeping with that same professor, or that 30 year old graduate students sleeping with a 30 year old TA. The younger student is presumably less able to separate the connection between academia, respect, and sexual attraction. The older student is not.
I’m certainly aware of the power dynamic. But I’m not willing to deny the agency or autonomy of everyone who happens to be taking a class. expressing your like or admiration for someone through an offer of sex can be a perfectly appropriate response.
To use legal terminology for a moment: That sort of relationship bears a presumption that it’s inappropriate. But it’s a rebuttable presumption. Just the same way that a relationship between two random adults bears a rebuttable presumption that it is acceptable, even though we know that plenty of non-work relationships are problematic.
Is there anyone on this thread who would look at a relationship between two random adults, and use the lack of a built-in power differential to suggest that it was automatically perfect, no matter what? Of course there isn’t… and therefore it makes equally little sense to suggest the reverse. “Probably,” “Sometimes,” and “Always” are three very different things.
You can still have strict rules in the professional setting. Arguably it makes more sense to just ban all of those than to try to allow for exceptions and figure out a way to process them. But that’s an issue of regulatory convenience, not absolute morality.
Is there anyone on this thread who would look at a relationship between two random adults, and use the lack of a built-in power differential to suggest that it was automatically perfect, no matter what? Of course there isn’t… and therefore it makes equally little sense to suggest the reverse.
Huh? Setting aside that I don’t think anyone on this thread would assume that any random relationship without a power differential is therefore “perfect” (whether because of the lack of power differential or not)….
I don’t follow your argument that the reverse (that a relationship with a power differential is automatically problematic) isn’t true. “Power differential” isn’t an abstract concept like “love” or “respect”….it’s quantifiable. Measurable in the real world. Do you really think that a random relationship without a power differential is just as likely as a random relationship with a power differential to have problems relating to….conflict of interests? exploitation? abuse of power? communication difficulties? I don’t. Power differential in and of itself introduces elements into the relationship that complicate matters even if the parties involved have the best of intentions for one another….relationships between people of equal power do not have those added obstacles (regardless of whether or not those relationships are “perfect”, whatever that means).
It’s probably also worth mention that romantic/erotic relationships don’t happen in a vacuum. When the power differential also involves a concurrent professional or educational relationship, there are other people involved besides the two parties. That’s why those strict rules exist. Human beings are not very good at compartmentalizing relationships or being completely objective. (correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you an attorney, Sailorman? Have you handled any cases where a judge had to recuse her- or himself because of a conflict of interest? Or where certain jurors have been excused from duty because of their personal relationships to other parties in the case?) The fallout to others from the skewed dynamics of such relationships aren’t worth it. And if the relationship doesn’t work out, the fallout to the person without the power is definitely not worth it—he or she will carry the burden of “sleeping hir way to the top” throughout hir career. Not to mention being in the precarious position of having to get professional or academic recommendations from a jilted lover.
Relationships all have their challenges. Relationships that can cause one’s future or current employers to doubt one’s credentials or abilities, and thus impact a person’s ability to provide for one’s self, have added challenges. Breakups suck for everyone. Breakups that also impact one’s academic or professional career, and thus one’s ability to financially provide for oneself—-suck worse.
But I’m not willing to deny the agency or autonomy of everyone who happens to be taking a class.
Neither am I. That’s why I think the compromise should be either: 1. wait until the professional or academic relationship no longer exists, or 2. wait until the two parties are on equal footing—say, when both are professors (or when both have the same title and/or pay grade). Neither party is losing agency or autonomy under those conditions—they just have to make a choice. That’s not a denial of agency, but a recognition of the actual conflicts of interest.
Good. That’s my point: A lack of a power differential makes a normal relationship more likely, but by no means guaranteed. A power differential makes a normal relationship less likely, but by no means impossible.
See above, assuming that “automatically is problematic” is similar to “always problematic.”
Me neither. And seeing as you’re now using “likely” instad of “automatically,” then I’m not sure we’re even disagreeing.
Sure, I agree. That’s pretty much what I was addressing in my last paragraph.
Well, actually that’s a very specific limitation of conflict of interest, it’s limited to certain situations, and it’s nowhere near as relevant as you may think. I had a case against someone who was well known and popular in the district. The judge knew him, the court staff knew him, and most of the jurors knew him. Hell, Scalia has gone duck hunting with attorneys, right?
This can be a problem, and a big one. But it’s not necessarily as much of a problem as it sounds like. How many professors have you taken courses with? How many have you actually used as a reference? More than 10%?
Yup.
Although, it’s not entirely clear that the student carries all the risk. Right? For example, this article doesn’t address whether this particular student had her career ruined or not, but it seems pretty clear that there was a big impact on the professor’s career. I’ve known some similar relationships which, when ended, went much worse for the “more powerful” one. Not usually,of course. But sometimes.
my point is that ‘no equal footing’ relationships happen ALL THE TIME. In some people’s view they probably happen in 100% of M/F relationships, given patriarchy. Your rules don’t address equal footing; they only address one particular aspect of it.
Look, I have no problem with strict, easy to interpret rules. They do a great job in certain settings. But it’s important to remember, I think, that those rules are not models for actual life. Life has shades of gray.
So when I see people say “enforce the rules!” that makes sense. When I see them say “it can never be OK to date between boss and student” then it seems to be imposing a false dichotomy on life.
We’re not talking about “every situation”. We’re talking about a particular situation, and it’s rather dishonest of you to play the rhetorical trick of exaggerating someone’s argument in order to attack it as extreme and overbroad. We’re also talking about a situation filtered through the perception of a narrator (Judt) who has shown himself to be a pouty, entitled asshole who thinks that “she had irresistible eyes” is a perfectly understandable justification for a professor trying to start a relationship with a current student.
While I agree with you and Amp that, depending on the situation there is a whole range of appropriate consequences, you’re spending a lot of time not merely justifying that range but propping up Judt’s analysis, and I find that deeply off-putting.
(Amp, on restorative justice, while it’s a nice concept, it seems to me often about as effective as telling a battered spouse to ‘work it out’ in medication with the abusive spouse. For it to be effective you’d need an actual and accurate determination that the wrongdoer really wasn’t malicious and is open to change. As I’m sure I don’t have to point out, asshats a la Judt are very good at pretending.)
Sailorman, if I recall correctly you’re an attorney, so I assume you’re familiar with the rejoinder “Of course it’s possible; anything’s possible, Counsel.” It’s true that something that walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and eats duck chow is actually the rare Brazilian Duck-Walking Myna Bird. It’s not likely.
Mythago:
As I said in comment 27, given how egregiously lazy, and therefore offensive, my presentation of the Judt piece was, I decided not to respond any further to critiques of the post or of my comments in the context of either those critiques or the post itself; and so, when I responded to your “Any thoughts?” query, I was not thinking about what I wrote in response to you as a response to or comment on Judt’s telling or analysis of the story, nor was I thinking about it in the context of anything I had written before, except in the sense that I continue to believe that precisely because we don’t know the full details of what happened, it is a fair question–independently of Judt’s asking of it–whether the professor he wrote about deserved to have his career ruined (though I certainly agree that there needed to be consequences for what the man did).
Now that I have gone back and read your comment again, though, I realize this was not fair to the way you asked your question, which was in the context of my original response to Amp’s first comment on the piece.
All of which, I guess, is a very long-winded way of saying that I was not trying to exaggerate your argument in order to make it seem extreme or over broad. I have no problem with the notion that, indeed, the guy in Judt’s story may have deserved everything he got, though I continue to disagree–especially given the experience I talked about in comment 33— that we can come to that conclusion categorically on the strength of the evidence people find in Judt’s telling of it.
ETA: I posted this and went to do some house cleaning and realized while I was picking things up that I still haven’t offered you much of a response to your question, but I am not interested in debating whether what I am about to write could or could not apply to the “young professor” Judt wrote about. I don’t see the point in arguing analytically over a text that has been as poorly framed as I framed it and that we all agree was written by someone who is less interested in presenting facts than in making a point. But people become romantically/sexually obsessed and do all kinds of stupid things for all kinds of reasons: their marriage is falling apart; they are, for whatever reason, profoundly and despairingly lonely; they are depressed; etc. Those reasons do not excuse harassing behavior and they certainly should not be used as a reason not to impose some kind of consequence on the person doing the harassing; but if someone in a circumstance like that is a first time offender–and what they have done is not, for example, rape or demanding sex for grades, or something equally egregious–then, yes, I am not so sure that the first step in the process of dealing with what they did should be to impose consequences that ruin their career. Once they are no longer a first offender or if other forms of consequences don’t work, then it becomes a whole other question.
“I’m certainly aware of the power dynamic. But I’m not willing to deny the agency or autonomy of everyone who happens to be taking a class. expressing your like or admiration for someone through an offer of sex can be a perfectly appropriate response.”
Wait, what? First of all, the phrasing I used was quite deliberate. “Offering” someone sex is a different thing than “wanting to fuck someone”. Secondly, wanting to fuck someone because you happen to like them? Cool. Offering someone sex as an expression of admiration? Well, it’s legal, but it sure as hell isn’t very emotionally healthy. Accepting sex that is offered as a sort of tribute? That’s using people, not having a relationship.
but if someone in a circumstance like that is a first time offender–and what they have done is not, for example, rape or demanding sex for grades, or something equally egregious–then, yes, I am not so sure that the first step in the process of dealing with what they did should be to impose consequences that ruin their career.
Hold the phone. We don’t know if that is indeed the reason this professor was dismissed. The reason given in the article was that women wouldn’t take his classes. As several women (who are also very much against the infantilizing of women in regards to being able to handle them(our)selves) pointed out, this speaks to the likelihood that this was not a first offense, and that the reason they weren’t taking his classes probably has nothing to do with the closet incident (if indeed potential students have even heard of the closet incident). The greater likelihood was either that this guy was a lousy teacher, or that he was like CassandraSays’ example: “Dr. Hands”. For crying out loud, I’ve been dealing with men propositioning me for sex since I was eleven years old! The only time I’ve deliberately physically avoided men—not just brushed them off verbally—is when I feared for my physical safety. If this guy had a reputation, it more than likely was for something more serious than asking for sex in a supply closet.
Which brings me to: expressing your like or admiration for someone through an offer of sex can be a perfectly appropriate response.” Well, yeah—in a singles bar. In the supply closet of your college, from your teacher? Ehhh…no. I mean, apropos of what? Most folks don’t proposition other folks under such circumstances. There isn’t a tacit understanding that such circumstances are an appropriate place to offer sex. Rather, there is a strong cultural understanding that such circumstances are absolutely the wrong place to offer sex—and most colleges have this as written policy (don’t fuck your students! albeit expressed in more polite language).
It’s also completely disingenuous to not acknowledge the sexual double standards for women, and the long fight women have had to be taken seriously in the academy as students, and not as the “sex class”. That “offer of sex” by a professor is taking place against that backdrop. Again, the classroom is not a professor’s personal “little black book”. Agency, schmagency. It is breathtakingly easy to avoid asking your students for sex. It is breathtakingly easy to say “no” if one of your students asks you for sex. It’s a great, big world out there, filled with people who could be potential sexual partners. To avoid the small portion of them that represent your students, for the time that they are your students, doesn’t strike me as a burden.
When I see them say “it can never be OK to date between boss and student” then it seems to be imposing a false dichotomy on life.
Ok, you’re talking theory. Bring it down to a concrete example. Under what circumstance is it ok for a professor and a student to be a couple? The only possible one I can think of is if they are already married (or an LTR couple) prior to the classroom relationship. I can’t think of any other circumstance where it would be acceptable. And I’m not so sure that a college would be wrong in preventing a student from taking classes from his or her significant other. Do you have other examples in mind?
Under what circumstance do you think it would be appropriate for a professor to proposition a student for sex, since you think of this as a “false dichotomy?”
You’re right that relationships that do not have an equal footing happen all the time. That’s why we generally recognize such relationships as inherently problematic. There are plenty of real-world, concrete, nontheoretical, provable, quantifiable examples of just what that power imbalance does in a relationship, and to the party without the power (I’ll be frank—I don’t give a damn about the person with the power. More power means more agency. He or she is better positioned to make noncoerced decisions). I can’t think of any reason why a person with the power to assist or detract from someone’s academic career should also be fucking his or her student. I don’t have faith in that person’s objectivity after having been to bed with a student. People are notoriously nonobjective regarding their sexual partners.
Fair question. Here’s a slightly modified response, the first one I could think of:
In the context of a typical lecture class (of which I have taken many,) it would seem theoretically possible for a professor and a student to date without a whole lot of fuss. The possibility is increased when other things come into balance: blind grading, which is common; auditing or pass/fail; no class participation or attendance grade, which is not especially uncommon; older, professionally experienced students; younger professors; the degree to which that particular class or field is relevant to the student; etc. (That last one is obviously important. Dating the chair of your major department carries a lot of weight. Dating your Basket Weaving professor, while you fulfill your one-semester art requirement, is different.)
La Lubu:
Just to be clear: I stated explicitly in the comment to which this is a reply that I was no longer referring to Judt’s article or the professor Judt wrote about, and I also said that I was not interested in debating whether or not my example could or could not apply to him.
ETA: Sailorman wrote:
But it’s the Basket Weaving professor who would date a student currently attending her or his class in the first place who is the problem, not the theoretical student who is (and I hope people will allow me this shorthand) “mature enough” to handle the situation. Even granting, and this is a huge assumption, that there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the professor in question can, without question, date a student without compromising anything ethical in the teacher-student relationship–and I want to be clear that I find it impossible to imagine a situation in which this is possible, but I am willing to grant it for the purpose of what I am about to say–there is no way this professor can know beforehand with any kind of certainty that the student is indeed “mature enough” to handle it. I don’t care how well the professor thinks he or she knows the student, that knowledge always only exists in the context of the teacher student relationship and the jump from that relationship to dating is huge, huge, even if, as in my case, they don’t start dating until after the class is over. In other words, a professor who allows her or himself to date a student while the student is in her or his class is–in my opinion anyway–by definition projecting onto the student what he or she wants to see there, and there is no way for the professor to find out if he or she was wrong until the dating has already begun, and if it turns that he or she was wrong, then the damage has already been done.
I had written before, except in the sense that I continue to believe that precisely because we don’t know the full details of what happened, it is a fair question–independently of Judt’s asking of it–whether the professor he wrote about deserved to have his career ruined (though I certainly agree that there needed to be consequences for what the man did).
For the single, isolated act of propositoning or overly explicitly complimenting a student in a supply closet, maybe, maybe not. It might depend on circumstances we don’t know. However, consider the wider information about his behavior that we do know:
1. He did not express any remorse or understanding that he did something wrong or bad for the student. His only concern was that his wife might find out, not that he’d damaged the student’s ability to work or even damaged his professional relationship with her. That’s a major problem because it suggests that even if this is his first offense it is very unlikely to be his last. Still, as others have pointed out, this is NOT why he was denied tenure.
2. No women were willing to take his class. That means that he was an ineffective teacher, at best. Regardless of the reason for this refusal. If his course was required or effectively required for a certain path of study then he effectively made it impossible for women to specialize in his area at NYU. Which means that NYU will lose promising female students to other institutions. That is not something a university would or should tolerate. His tenure denial was common sense as well as the right thing to do.
In the larger question of whether it is ever appropriate for a professor and student to date, I’d still have to say no. LaLubu’s scenario of a pre-existing LTR comes closest, but then should then student have really taken that class knowing the conflicts that will, inevitably, arise?
It can get messy, particularly with the graduate student/mentor situation. A professor mentoring a graduate student is supposed to “fall in love” with the student to some extent and want to spend time with him/her. But the relationship should really be closer to that of a parent and child than lovers. (Yes, I know that that model is problematic as well, but it is closer-not perfect but closer.)
In the end, I think that it is a bit analagous to a doctor/patient relationship as well. We were taught in medical school that we would, at some point, be attracted to a patient and that to be so is normal and nothing to beat yourself up over. However, acting on that attraction is absolutely out of the question and if you can’t avoid acting on it…get a different job. (Again, an ex-student or ex-patient is a much murkier situation and if the dependent relationship is definitely over and never to return then I’d say it’d be ok, at least in some circumstances. Dating your high school teacher or pediatrician right after graduating or aging out would be a little creepy.)
Dianne:
To me, Judt’s bias, the sketchiness of his narrative and what, to me anyway, feels like the affected tone of much of his rhetoric makes the story an unreliable source of evidence if we are talking about the professor as a real person in the real world. There is just too much that we don’t know. If, on the other hand, we are talking about the professor as the character that Judt’s narrative constructs, and we consider him only within the confines of that narrative, I would tend to agree with pretty much all of the condemnatory things people have been saying about him.
And this will be, I hope, the last thing I have to say about Judt’s “young professor.”
Like a number of other posters here, I have to doubt the veracity of Judt’s account to the extent that he tells us that no female students would take the professor’s course simply because of that single incident of unrequited love in the closet. This claim seems to stem from that overused sexist trope that females have a hive mind and immediately gang up as one on any male who offends one of them by, well, just being a guy (even a nice guy). As other posters have noted, this is far removed from reality: if no women would take his course, that means that either (1) the incident in question was a lot more serious than the way Judt describes it; or (2) the guy had a long and well-known history of creepy and intimidating behavior — or a little bit from column A, a little bit from column B.
This story reminds me of two different older male professors I knew in college, both very popular with students. One of them — let’s call him Professor I — at one point found himself formally accused by several female graduate students of sexual harassment. The allegations in that case were far more serious than in Judt’s anecdote. For example, one of the accusers claimed that Professor I entered her hotel room with a spare key while on a conference abroad, and she spent several hours locked in the bathroom crying and begging him to leave her alone, while Professor I was just outside declaring his feelings over and over. Despite the fact that the harassment proceeding, with all its sordid detail, was a public matter, and Professor I was excoriated in the college press, there was still a waiting list to take his courses, and lots and lots of women took them. Because, surprise surprise, women don’t all think as one. Sure, some women probably decided not to have anything to do with him because he was a creep. But others figured that he was a brilliant scholar who taught some great courses, and as long as they didn’t work closely with him as research assistants, they were in no danger. Still others thought he was just being a red-blooded male and those graduate students were just teases or prudes (because, from my experience, reactive misogyny is quite common among college-age women). I really can’t think of what a professor could do so that NO female would take his course, but I imagine he would have to openly engage in pretty sick behavior.
Now, the other guy — let’s call him Professor II. He flirted with all the female students quite unapologetically. And, in his views, I have to say he also tended to be a bit sexist. Just a little tiny bit. But I went to his office hours and sat with him behind a closed door without any fear that he would come on to me, intimidate me, or demand favors in exchange for grades — nor, as far as I know, did anyone else ever feel this way about him. For all his bad-boyish affectation, there was no way this man would corner someone in a hotel room, a supply closet, or anywhere else, because underneath all that, he was a decent guy with morals, who respected you as a human being. And you know what? Despite teaching for over 30 years in a department that was heavily female, and being an outrageous flirt, he never found himself on the receiving end of a sexual harassment complaint. Because despite feminists often being thought of as oversensitive, humorless prudes, most people can tell the difference between innocent flirtation and sexual harassment.
This is not to say that a man can’t fall prey to an opportunist or simply a crazy person — but those women in Judt’s story can’t all be opportunistic or crazy.
I clicked through to comment on this because of the casual transphobia, which has already been addressed above.
I went to a women’s college for my undergrad. There were some profs who reputations for harassing students. People still took their classes. It was a small school. If they were teaching one of your required classes, you were taking it. Some students thought they were good teachers. If a teacher really had no women in his classes, then he was either teaching none of the required classes at all, or he had behaved badly enough that his reputation was seriously terrible. I presume that the author is being terribly sloppy in his language here, but this claim is a huge red flag. The women students I know make decisions based on a number of factors and a single censure alone would not necessarily deter them from taking a course. Shockingly, women have also heard of the idea of a young prof making a single error and would be willing to cut him some slack if they’d never heard of anybody else having a problem with him.
I suspect the author is trying to pile on the irony, that the women who accused him is not a woman at all! Ho ho ho, the irony of the department women being duped by a transvestite! The prof’s career ruined for a “she!” Oh how we miss the good old days when men were men and women were barred from most educational institutions!
I’m really surprised to see this posted on Alas.
Also, the notion that instruction is “erotically charged” is a lot of bullocks. Adults are sometimes attracted to each other. This is not different than in other fields.
When I was getting my MA, there was one prof that most of the grad students found attractive. Ze wisely dated people from other institutions.
The prof I’m dating now doesn’t teach at the uni where I study. I don’t see how it’s such a terrible chore for academics to find appropriate people to date? Maybe we could even have relationships with people not involved in teaching or learning! Librarians! Or people who don’t even work at universities! (Oh, but god, the 60’s would finally be dead.)
The link that Amp provided to another article summed up what I was thinking about this. In his comments, Hugo admits that his liaison with a student was viewed by other female students with “disgust” and “disillusionment”.
The important thing that stands out to me (in the comments here and otherwise) is that to students, and to many women, ANY relationship with a student is perceived as an abuse of power. That perception can be mitigated (such as by not dating while you’re in classes) but it’s still there. I think this is a pretty important consequence, and one that should be at the forefront of a professor’s minds should they pursue a relationship with anyone attending the college.
As a side note, I’ve had professors who were lecherous, and I’ve despised every one of them for the same perceived power difference and potential for abuse that’s been brought up here. I don’t think it’s uncommon.
@ Les – Bollocks indeed, and depressing to see so many supposedly progressive men clinging to this particular self-serving delusion.
Look, guys, it’s really simple. There will at various points in your professional lives be women to whom you are attracted, but with whom it would be totally unethical for you to act on that attraction in any way, even just by letting the woman know that it exists. In fact, given that you’re legally not supposed to act on it, why the compelling need to let the woman know?
This but what if, maybe sometimes it could be OK, love must find a way narrative is, as Les says, bollocks. There are plenty of people in the world to date with whom one does not have a professional relationship that would make dating them wrong. In an academic (or any other work, but particularly academic since people are very often required to spend time alone together) environment, if the person in a position of power attempts to introduce an “erotic” element, it creates an uncomfortable environment for students. Which is not helpful to their learning process, which makes the person creating that environment bad at their job.
The Sixties are over. Deal with it, and move on. If Hugo can learn to move beyond the delusion that this whole idea of fucking one’s students is harmless and start to see things from the student’s point of view, including the need to sometimes be the older, wiser person who says no, so can the rest of you. Grow up and stop being so selfish.
I have to just say, as a former female grad student, I definitely do think a lot of the experience can lend itself to desire. We all have our own buttons to push, and the mentoring relationship is one of mine. I’ve always had infatuations with teachers, male and female, and the occasional fantasy involving younger male professors that inspires a bit of slash fiction. I’ve gotten a lot better at keeping the boundaries even in my mind that I always observed in the exterior world, but the feelings haven’t changed much.
I am notsaying that it’s appropriate to act on those feelings or that the situation is qualitatively different from other relationships with power imabalances that make dating inappropriate, such as mentoring in other work settings.
Les wrote:
Then, agreeing with Les, CassandraSays wrote:
I just want to point out that Hugo does not argue that instruction is not erotically charged; indeed, he argues precisely the opposite. Rather, his blog post is about what a teacher ought to do in response to that erotic charge when it manifests itself.
I agree with Hugo’s personal responsibility argument but not his one that instruction is erotically charged. It may be for some people, but that’s not an automatic thing, and it certainly wasn’t the case for me.
Also, whether it is or not doesn’t really matter in the end. What matters is what one does with sexual feelings if/when they appear.
Coming to this late, sorry, but I thought it was interesting enough to comment despite lateness.
Firstly, I want to back up standgale because I agree with her. (And generally, I think it’s not awesome to say things like “hey! all [X] on this thread agree with me, so I must be right!” I mean, at the very least there’s sample bias to consider.) I think I generally have a higher “tolerance” for sexual harassment than many women (not that anyone should have such a tolerance, or that such a tolerance is desirable, just that … I seem to have it), which is why I tend not to comment on these things, but I couldn’t sit by and see someone saying “Look! No women on this thread disagree with me!” without speaking up.
Secondly, the most interesting question here, I think, is: “What exactly is lost by disallowing professors from proposing love to their students at all ever?” At first I figured, not much, because as others in this thread have pointed out, you can always wait for a student to graduate and then, if you’ve still got those feelings, I think it’s reasonable to act on them.
But then I thought about women’s unfortunate biological limitations (in that we can’t have kids past a certain age, or at least that doing so becomes more dangerous). Suppose that two people in one of these professor-student equations are really crazy about each other and would legitimately date if they hadn’t met in their current context. Now suppose that the woman involved will pass childbearing age during the professor-student period. If children are important to one or both of the parties, then barring the two from being together during their professor-student time could actually cost them both something really important.
Childbearing is the only example I’ve thought of here, but there may be others.
Also, CassandraSays:
“Offering” someone sex is a different thing than “wanting to fuck someone”. Secondly, wanting to fuck someone because you happen to like them? Cool. Offering someone sex as an expression of admiration? Well, it’s legal, but it sure as hell isn’t very emotionally healthy. Accepting sex that is offered as a sort of tribute? That’s using people, not having a relationship.
… nnnngg …. Your phrasing really squicks me out here and, I think, leads me to what really bothers me about this whole debate. I don’t think it’s okay for anyone to make rules about what’s emotionally healthy for other people that they may not even know. Ever. That’s where we get much of the anti-kink lobby, for example.
@ Clarisse – Um, you might wish to note that what I actually said was that at that point every woman in the thread was expressing basically the same opinion. Not that no women anywhere might have a different opinion and that I am the official representative of Class Woman, Everywhere. I know it’s fun to jump straight to outrage, but it’s usually helpful to read properly first.
Also, sorry, but I stand by my comment about it being unhealthy to offer sex as a sort of tribute because you think someone is admirable. And guess what? I am a kinkster, and that is still my point of view. In fact, I think being involved in BSDM has made me a lot pickier and more careful about consent issues and the deeper issues behind them than I would otherwise have been. I’m a domme – I think that imposes on me a responsibility to be really, really sure that if people seem to be offering me consent to something it’s genuine consent, and coming from a healthy place emotionally.
As an official kinky person I’m getting really tired of seeing any objections to sexist relationship dynamics dismissed as “well you just don’t understand kinky people”. I DO understand kinky people, and if anything that makes me more concerned, not less so, because the stakes are higher and there’s more potential risk once kink gets involved.
Oh, also – if you personally are less bothered by harrassment than most women then hey, cool, it’s up to you to set your own boundaries. But can you see how going, well, I’m more open to it than most women, and I know that I’m unusual in this, but still, maybe we should go with what I personally am comfortable with rather than what the majority seem to be comfortable with…can you see how that’s a problem from a practical POV? For safety’s sake we more or less have to set the official guidelines in a way that protects the majority. That may be inconvenient for the minority whose sense of boundaries is different, but hey, if you want to interact with your professors in a sexual way you can always find a way to let them know that, and if it’s you initiating it that’s fine.
The official boundaries, though – those need to be set to best serve the needs of the majority.
I mean, to give an example – I used to have a coworker who would slap me on the ass when we were out drinking. I had no problem with that – we were buddies. But I would not let him do that in the office, because that creates a potentially uncomfortable environment for other people. Even if I’m OK with it, I can’t assume that everyone else is, and it would be unfair of me to go “but I like it when he does that, no fair that those HR meanies won’t let him”.
@CassandraSays —
Um, you might wish to note that what I actually said was that at that point every woman in the thread was expressing basically the same opinion. Not that no women anywhere might have a different opinion and that I am the official representative of Class Woman, Everywhere. I know it’s fun to jump straight to outrage, but it’s usually helpful to read properly first.
Which one of us is outraged? Look, if you didn’t mean to speak for All Women, or even All Women On This Thread, then that’s fine. But if you think some members of Class X might disagree with you, then it’s disingenuous to imply that you can represent all members of Class X because none of them have disagreed with you so far.
Also, sorry, but I stand by my comment about it being unhealthy to offer sex as a sort of tribute because you think someone is admirable. And guess what? I am a kinkster, and that is still my point of view. … As an official kinky person I’m getting really tired of seeing any objections to sexist relationship dynamics dismissed as “well you just don’t understand kinky people”.
When did I say that you don’t understand kinky people? Which one of us is outraged again? I said that I see parallels between your statement and the anti-kink lobbyists who say things like “these relationships can’t ever be healthy”. Do you disagree that there are parallels?
That may be inconvenient for the minority whose sense of boundaries is different, but hey, if you want to interact with your professors in a sexual way you can always find a way to let them know that, and if it’s you initiating it that’s fine.
It is my understanding that if I initiate a consensual relationship with a professor, then if we are discovered, the professor will be in the same amount of trouble under the current model as if he initiated it.
Even if I’m OK with it, I can’t assume that everyone else is, and it would be unfair of me to go “but I like it when he does that, no fair that those HR meanies won’t let him”.
I agree, and I’ve made this point a lot about an industry I used to work in (gaming). But I’m not sure why you think I’m advocating changing the official boundaries. Where did I say that? I stated that I have a different tolerance in order to explain why I don’t usually comment on these matters, which would seem to back up what I just said about agreeing with you, right?
…
I feel like my actual points are at risk of getting lost in this scuffle. I’m trying to get at some of the more complex and nuanced aspects of this discussion by posing my pregnancy example and by noting that I don’t think it’s okay to decide how “emotionally healthy” other peoples’ relationships are on their behalf. Those are the questions I’m interested in. If anyone is willing to discuss those questions, I’m all ears.
Clarisse,
I think CassandraSays did answer your question, though maybe she didn’t direct it specifically at your pregnancy example. The problem in the situation, as in every similar situation, where one might imagine mitigating circumstances that ought to exempt a professor-student relationship, while the student is in the professor’s class, or otherwise under the professor’s direct supervision, from the ethical considerations people are talking about here is that, at the very least–and certainly from the point of view of the professor’s role and responsibilities–the situation is never only about only those two people. Someone else sitting in that same class, for example, should not have to trust that the professor and student can “handle it” such that their relationship does not in any way interfere with the professor’s ability to behave ethically and fairly, etc. towards all the other students. Not because professors are inherently untrustworthy, but because we are human and human beings make mistakes and fuck up in all kinds of unexpected ways, perhaps especially when it comes to our emotional lives.
I also think the question of whether it is ever healthy for someone to offer sex as a tribute, out of admiration for someone, is almost an irrelevant question, at least in the kind of situation we are talking about here. Once, after a class had ended for the semester, a student told me that she was convinced that she needed to sleep with me, that she knew that having sex with me would resolve something in her that needed to be resolved, that she’d been thinking about it all semester and she was sure she was right. Leave aside for the moment the fact that the person she was convinced she needed to have sex with was someone she’d constructed out of who I was as a teacher, not who I would actually be in bed and/or in any other kind of relationship that might have formed between us. (In other words, she wasn’t really interested in sleeping with me; she wanted to have sex with her fantasy of me.) Imagine, for a moment, that she had told me this while the class was still in session. It would have been irrelevant whether or not she was right about my being the person she needed to have sex with, about whether or not, in other words, it would have been healthy for her to do so; it would have been wrong to have sex with her under any circumstances while she was still in my class.
(And just for the record, since I am not interested in discussing any further details of this story online: I did not have sex with her.)
Now suppose that the woman involved will pass childbearing age during the professor-student period. If children are important to one or both of the parties, then barring the two from being together during their professor-student time could actually cost them both something really important.
It looks to me as though it forces them to decide what’s most important. The most obvious ways forward in that situation are: give up the relationship and find someone else, stop being professor-student early by dropping out, changing institution etc, give up on having children. All the possibilities have their drawbacks, but you don’t really get through life without having to make that kind of decision at some point.
I don’t think it’s okay for anyone to make rules about what’s emotionally healthy for other people that they may not even know. Ever. That’s where we get much of the anti-kink lobby, for example.
So because some people describe any behaviour they don’t like/don’t understand as emotionally unhealthy, it’s never appropriate to point out damaging dynamics? I think the slope has more friction than that.
Sigh. You know, when someone in an Internet conversation starts claiming outrage in response to a perfectly calm unemotional comment, that doesn’t usually lead to my taking them very seriously. Just an observation.
And no, I don’t see the parallels you’re drawing. Because they’re not actually there. Ethics are a complex area, not nearly as simple as you seem to be suggesting they are. (See Nick’s comment, it was a good example)
Richard is right though – even if we put aside the question of the morality of accepting sex that someone may be offering for sketchy reasons, there are still a whole lot of reasons not to accept sex offered by a student. Even if you took ethics out of the argument completely, there are still practical reasons why it’s a bad idea. (For the record though, I agree with Richard’s assessment – usually when someone is making that kind of offer, it’s about a fantasy they have about the other person, not the actual person. Which is another good reason to say no, especially in situations where there’s a professional reason to do so. )
Nick is right too – the idea that we can’t ever point out any relationship dynamics as problematic without opening the door to unacceptable intrusion into people’s private lives is…well, kind of silly honestly. Most people are better thinkers than that. There are plenty of things that get called out as categorically unacceptable in terms of sexual ethics (rape, sex with children, etc) without that turning into a pogrom against kinky or otherwise sexually outside the norm people.
@Richard — Someone else sitting in that same class, for example, should not have to trust that the professor and student can “handle it” such that their relationship does not in any way interfere with the professor’s ability to behave ethically and fairly, etc. towards all the other students. Not because professors are inherently untrustworthy, but because we are human and human beings make mistakes and fuck up in all kinds of unexpected ways, perhaps especially when it comes to our emotional lives.
Instinctively, this argument feels persuasive to me … yet I’m having trouble coming up with a rational reason for that, and so I feel wary about it. And, simultaneously, it sounds to me like it has parallels with arguments about (for example) gay people and why they “shouldn’t” express their relationship in public, at all, ever, because it makes others uncomfortable. Which makes me feel warier.
I’m not convinced that outsiders should have the “right” to control others’ relationships simply because they “feel uncomfortable” that those relationships are occurring. If a professor is hitting on you and ignoring your boundaries, that’s one thing. If a professor is having an affair with that student over there, yet he always acts professionally towards you and the rest of his students, and the relationship never impinges on class time, then I’m not sure why the perspectives of students who don’t like the relationship should be privileged to such an extent.
To draw another gaming example, a lot of people will say that it makes for an uncomfortable situation when the GameMaster is dating a player. And yeah, I’ve been there when that’s happened (sometimes I’ve been the guilty player dating the GM, in fact). But I’ve also seen a lot of gaming environments in which a player and GM were dating and it was just fine. This seems pretty similar to me.
Basically, I’m just not convinced that all this “under any circumstances” stuff is true, and I’m seeing a lot of arguments from singular cases. You end your singular example about the student who really wanted to sleep with you by saying “it would have been wrong to have sex with her under any circumstances while she was still in my class”, and while that may have been true with that particular student — I wasn’t there — that doesn’t prove that it’s wrong to have sex with any student under any circumstances while they’re in your class.
@Nick — All the possibilities have their drawbacks, but you don’t really get through life without having to make that kind of decision at some point.
Maybe, but you haven’t really articulated an argument about why they should have to choose a possibility with such drawbacks when they logically could (maybe not according to their institution’s harassment policy, but it is possible that they could) have children together and remain at the institution as they were.
So because some people describe any behaviour they don’t like/don’t understand as emotionally unhealthy, it’s never appropriate to point out damaging dynamics?
I didn’t say that. I said that making rules about others’ behavior in these areas isn’t okay, especially when you might not even know the people involved. If you have a good friend who thinks she’s involved in a damaging dynamic, and you agree, and you have an excellent grasp on the damaging dynamic, then point out the damaging dynamic all you want. The point that I start thinking it’s not okay is the point at which you universalize her experience.
@CassandraSays — Just an observation.
What a coincidence. I totally agree!
There are plenty of things that get called out as categorically unacceptable in terms of sexual ethics (rape, sex with children, etc) without that turning into a pogrom against kinky or otherwise sexually outside the norm people.
I should have qualified my statement by saying that “I don’t think it’s okay for anyone to make rules about what’s emotionally healthy for other people that they may not even know, as long as those people are behaving consensually. Ever.” Rape is non-consensual. Children can’t meaningfully consent. But adult students …?
If consent is our gold standard (and it’s certainly mine), then my problem could be restated this way: I’m having trouble seeing why professor-student relationships are by definition dubiously consensual. I’m not having trouble seeing that professor-student relationships have on occasion been dubiously consensual; I’m having trouble seeing that they’re always so. And thus I’m unwilling to categorically condemn them. Simultaneously, I can see compelling reasons why a professor and student might wish to date, and I can see legitimate problems that might arise if they feel that they can’t do so while professor and student. If your perspective is that “those potential problems don’t matter as much as making a universal law that prevents professors and students from dating in order to protect the people who might be harmed in the absence of such a law,” then fine. I’m just not sure I agree that such a universal law is desirable.
Basically, if you want to tell people they can’t have consensual relationships because others must be protected? I’m not on your side.
@Nick — All the possibilities have their drawbacks, but you don’t really get through life without having to make that kind of decision at some point.
Maybe, but you haven’t really articulated an argument about why they should have to choose a possibility with such drawbacks when they logically could (maybe not according to their institution’s harassment policy, but it is possible that they could) have children together and remain at the institution as they were.
That argument has been made pretty thoroughly upthread – I think CassandraSays’s hostile environment comment expresses it best. As I understand it, you were claiming that the potential loss to the people involves outweighs that, and I was suggesting this isn’t really the case.
I said that making rules about others’ behavior in these areas isn’t okay, especially when you might not even know the people involved. If you have a good friend who thinks she’s involved in a damaging dynamic, and you agree, and you have an excellent grasp on the damaging dynamic, then point out the damaging dynamic all you want. The point that I start thinking it’s not okay is the point at which you universalize her experience.
Generalising isn’t the same as universalising, and it’s not making rules to suggest that a certain behaviour isn’t likely to be coming from a healthy place. Or are you just objecting that it was expressed as fact rather than extreme likelihood?
Clarisse–
You seem not to want to allow that the professional context of teacher-student relationships imposes on the teacher an ethical responsibility to all her or his students, and even, depending on the circumstances (a very small graduate school department, for example) that transcends the individual circumstances that could theoretically apply between her or him and any specific student. If that’s the case, then there is no point in discussing this further, since it means there is a fundamental difference of perspective at the level of “we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
Neither gay people nor a game master–unless, perhaps, in the latter example, the game master is being paid by the people in the game he or she is “mastering” (I don’t know enough about how gaming works to say this with any certainty)–have the same kind of ethical responsibility to the people who might be uncomfortable with the kind of relationship we are talking about. And I think that is the point: no one is talking about mere discomfort on the part of other people in the class, or department, where a teacher and student are dating.
Also, no one is arguing–at least as far as I can tell–that it is not theoretically possible for an adult student to consent, fully, willingly, knowingly, to a sexual relationship with a teacher, especially in a situation where that adult student initiates things, while the student is in that teacher’s class. What I am suggesting to you, what I think other people here are arguing, is that the professional circumstance, and the responsibilities those circumstances impose on the teacher, transcend the possibility of that consent. In other words, I am not arguing from individual situations. Rather, I have given examples of individual situations in the context of that general principle.
It really sucks being forced to take context into account, huh? Ethical arguments are so much easier when made in the abstract.
In other words, what Richard and Nick said.
I took some time to step back from this (and consider what the discussion would look like without Cassandra’s continuous snideness) and I concluded that I haven’t been clear, partly because I felt frustrated but partly because I wasn’t 100% sure what I actually thought. So, sorry about that — both being frustrated, and being unclear. I’ve done my best to refine my opinions more carefully:
@Nick — As I understand it, you were claiming that the potential loss to the people involves outweighs that, and I was suggesting this isn’t really the case.
Yes, you’re right that this was the most important point I wanted to make. However, I don’t feel that you’ve made a compelling argument that it’s not really the case.
Your proposed solutions (I’ve put in some numbers):
The most obvious ways forward in that situation are: 1) give up the relationship and find someone else, 2) stop being professor-student early by dropping out, 3) changing institution etc, 4) give up on having children. All the possibilities have their drawbacks, but you don’t really get through life without having to make that kind of decision at some point.
1) This has historically been a pretty unbearable “solution” for people who are in love. I mean, I’m not saying it’s not possible, but I don’t think it’s very realistic. (Do all professor-student relationships take place between people in love? No, but surely some do.)
2) I can think of all kinds of reasons dropping out would be really difficult and/or unpleasant! For example, what if your chosen career demands a graduate degree? Should people be expected to give up their chosen career for the sake of a generalized relationship rule that is not, in their situation, protecting anyone?
3) I can also think of all kinds of reasons switching programs or departments would be really difficult and/or unpleasant. For example, aren’t some programs really prestigious and wouldn’t it be a professional setback to drop out of those?
4) I think it’s obvious why this is a pretty draconic demand for a relationship. Couples who are in love and have been together for a long time break up all the time over this, for example.
In short, I don’t think that the “solutions” you suggested are solutions at all — they’re potentially extremely difficult and painful costs that people might be required to pay for the sake of their relationship, and that sucks. (Sure, they could be easy for some people, but surely they’re difficult for many.) So you’ve done a good job of listing what could potentially suck about falling in love with someone in your department … but that just seems more like agreeing with me than disagreeing with me.
Or are you just objecting that it was expressed as fact rather than extreme likelihood?
Yes, that’s a problem too.
Which brings me to:
@Richard — What I am suggesting to you, what I think other people here are arguing, is that the professional circumstance, and the responsibilities those circumstances impose on the teacher, transcend the possibility of that consent.
As I tried to make clear in my initial comment, my initial goal wasn’t really to challenge the existence of these rules, but more to clarify what the potential losses resulting from the rules is. So far, those losses seem to be:
1) Barring people from having totally consensual romantic relationships, or
2) Only allowing people to have consensual romantic relationships under very difficult and/or sad circumstances.
(Along the way, I noticed that I feel that the discourse has a tone that feels unwholesome to me, in that it seems to assume things about other peoples’ consensual relationships that may not always be true. That’s where my comparison to the anti-kink lobby came from, for example. However, this is arguably beside the point.)
Now, your argument seems to be that none of the potential losses to individual couples resulting from these rules (or professional expectations, or professional circumstances, if you prefer) are bad enough to justify changing the way we think about the rules (or professional expectations or professional circumstances). Is that a fair reading of what you’re saying?
I’m very grateful to have been brought into this discussion, and have another response today
Clarisse:
Yes, I suppose this is my argument, because the potential losses to individual couples do not outweigh the real damage that teacher-student relationships do to the fabric of classroom and campus life. (I am paraphrasing what Hugo said in the post he linked to above.) The teacher in a classroom is a public person, a public servant even (at least in the context of the campus/classroom), in the way that the student he or she might be having a relationship with is not. When a teacher has an affair with a student, even under circumstances that everyone will agree–because, say, they are student initiated–are not coerced, are entirely, unambiguously consensual, that teacher has violated the implicit and explicit trust of everyone else that he or she is serving, first because of the obvious questions that will arise about her or his treatment of the students he or she is not sleeping with, but also because if it is okay for this teacher to be sexual with students, then how is it not okay for every other teacher to do the same? And if it’s okay, then why is it not okay for teachers, when they “know” that the object of their affection is mature enough to handle it, to make sexual advances–which is, by definition, a messy, messy situation I wouldn’t even want to contemplate, since we know how easily students can feel coerced by such advances, even when no coercion is intended.
Now, this doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be teachers and students who meet and start affairs in class, who fall in love and end up in fulfilling relationships, some of which might last for years, might end in marriage, etc., and good for the people in such relationships; but, as Hugo pointed out, the damage to the social fabric of the classroom/campus has still been done.
I find it interesting that the discussion started personally: ethical violations by a teacher; ideas that this was never appropriate; ideas that this sort of relationship could never be consensual; etc.
Now it’s changed into a systemic process issue: that irrespective of the individuals in question and their particular situations, from a systems/average perspective it makes sense to censure all such relationships. I.e., that the overall harm exceeds the overall benefit.
That’s a discussion I can get behind. It’s also one which–to some degree–could theoretically be investigated, by looking at settings with differing levels of teach/student interaction, and seeing how well they all work. Does anyone know of any papers on it?
@ Sailorman – Huh, I assumed we were talking about systems/averages right from the beginning.
@Richard — Now, this doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be teachers and students who meet and start affairs in class, who fall in love and end up in fulfilling relationships, some of which might last for years, might end in marriage, etc., and good for the people in such relationships; but, as Hugo pointed out, the damage to the social fabric of the classroom/campus has still been done.
1) How much damage would this rule have to do, for you to question it?
2) Can you imagine a teacher-student relationship that you would not disapprove of? If so, what would it look like? (Presumably, if it exists, then the participants would keep it completely secret from everyone else on campus.)
At heart this seems to be one of those discussions about sacrificing individual issues for the common good. Either we are trying to impose a rule to protect the individuals concerned because we “know what’s good for them,” or we are trying to impose a rule to protect third parties from the collateral effects of a relationship.
Generally speaking, I think it is dangerous for society (or us) to start making too many conclusions about what relationships are “acceptable,” outside a really compelling need to do so. I am therefore likely to fight against restrictions. That carries through to most other areas as well. I acknowledge that there are opposing views, and that many people feel society should have more restrictions.
This may simply be one of the areas where the various parties have to agree to disagree. As an example, I know from other areas that Hugo and I appear to have significant differences regarding the appropriate balance between individual freedoms and group desires.
Clarisse:
I don’t understand this question in relation to the portion of my comment that you quoted.
Sure, one, like mine with the woman who is now my wife, that did not start until after the student has left the instructor’s direct and/or indirect–like in graduate school, where faculty in a department can still have power over a student in that department, even though the student is not in the teacher’s class–supervision. And just to be clear: the attraction/interest/desire was there while she was in my class; we both knew it; we were able to communicate it to each other; but we did not act on it until after the class was over; and it is the acting on it that is at issue here, not people’s feelings.
@Richard — I’ll try to rephrase.
You are essentially saying, as far as I understand, that your preferred policy does more harm than good. You say this even though you seem to accept that some harm could be done by your preferred policy — am I wrong?
So: how much harm would have to be done by your preferred policy, for you to question its wisdom?
As for question 2, can you imagine a teacher-student relationship — taking place while the two remain teacher and student — that you would approve of?
Clarisse,
I assume that’s a typo. RJN is saying that his preferred policy does more good than harm, not the reverse.
My own question for RJN and the others would be slightly different:
Assuming that you think your preferred policy is overall beneficial, how far from “flipping” are you? Are you way out towards the end, or do you see your position as subject to change?
Clarisse:
I don’t know how to answer this question because I don’t know how one would quantify harm; more, I think harm is such an amorphous term, especially when you are talking about weighing the interests of one couple against the interests of the larger group (other students, etc.), that the question is, essentially, meaningless.
Not if the relationship did not pre-exist the teacher-student relationship. And even then, the circumstances under which, for example, my wife might have no choice but to become my student, are so far fetched–not impossible, but far fetched–that I would think you’d have to take situations like that on a case by case basis.
But let me ask you a question: Suppose the judge in a court case in which you had an interest started dating one of the attorneys involved, or one of the litigants, or–far-fetched as it might seem–a member of the jury, while the trial was going on. Would you be willing to grant the judge and her or his partner the benefit of the doubt that their relationship would in no way compromise the judge’s impartiality? I certainly would have a hard time doing so.
I also think–in your comments here and on Hugo’s blog comparing objections to teacher-student relationships to people’s objections to kink, etc.–that you are conflating professional roles with personal identities. Someone who is gay or into BDSM, etc. is not entering a professional role that she or he leaves when he or she leaves the workplace; each is intimately tied to sexuality and identity in ways that it would be wrong and oppressive to deny. On the other hand, when my class is over, the people who were my students are no longer my students and I am no longer their teacher, and so the boundaries that attach to the professional roles of teacher and student no longer apply.
And I have to say, Clarisse, that I think this discussion is reaching the point where it is probably wiser to say that we will have to agree to disagree, since I feel like I am repeating myself, and so are you.
Sailorman:
Here, too, I am not sure what the point of the question is. Professional ethics are professional ethics, and policies are written to give clear and unambiguous guidelines for a reason; and for me the line we have been talking about–that teachers ought not to sleep with students who are taking their classes–is a very, very clear one. I recognize that this does not mean it doesn’t happen, and I recognize that sometimes, when it does happen, it may all be good for the couple in question. The fact that there no negative consequences does not mean that, in the broader scheme of things, there was no ethical lapse; it means that the couple was fortunate to have avoided the potential consequences not only to themselves as individuals/a couple, but also in terms of the rest of the students in the class and the instructor’s responsibilities to those students.
To clarify the strength of your belief.
You appear to acknowledge that there are costs to your approach, and you have implied that you feel the benefits exceed the costs. OK, makes sense.
But that’s only one yes/no datapoint (“does benefit exceed cost?”) on an infinite sliding scale. I’m trying to figure out whether you’re in the “well this is better, but admittedly not by much” category, or whether you’re in the “this is so obviously better that I think it’s hardly worthwhile to discuss different options” category, or something else.
For example, although at the moment I would classify myself as not on your side, I’m quite close to the line. It’s not difficult to imagine that others could feel differently, or that i could change my mind on it.
Sailorman:
I think I have answered your question several times over: there is no situation in which I think it would be ethical for a teacher to enter into a relationship with a student currently under her or his direct supervision.
@Richard — I also think–in your comments here and on Hugo’s blog comparing objections to teacher-student relationships to people’s objections to kink, etc.–that you are conflating professional roles with personal identities.
It’s funny … I’ve noted before that I have serious doubts about the “orientation model” of sexuality, not because I don’t think that for some of us our desires are innate, but because innateness shouldn’t be the argument for their morality; consent should be. If someone were just doing BDSM for fun, and would not “identify as BDSM” at the end of the encounter, I don’t think they have any less “right” to do it than I do; but the orientation model kind of implies that they do, because it implies that the acceptability of their sexuality is based on how much they “need” a certain angle on it.
In a way, I feel like you’re proving my point.
It sounds like you’re not interested in continuing, which is okay with me. I could respond to your point about the lawyer, but I agree that on that point I’d just end up repeating myself.
@Sailorman — I think your question is really interesting myself. I would say I’m pretty similar to you — I’m not on Richard’s side but am quite close to the line. I think that I’d be much more likely to be on Richard’s side if I felt like everyone were phrasing the argument as “some teacher-student relationships might be okay, but it’s too difficult to figure out which ones are fine and which aren’t, and therefore we should outlaw them”. That argument is still problematic, but at least I can see the wisdom of it — given non-infinite time to fine-tune our sexual harassment policies, and not-perfectly-fair tribunals to evaluate our cases.
But instead, almost everyone seems to be saying that “teacher-student relationships cannot be okay, ever, and therefore we should outlaw them”. That’s an argument I can’t see the wisdom of.
I’m sorry, because “OMG incest” really is kind of the Godwin’s Law of sexuality discussions, but society has said “relationships between siblings cannot be okay, ever” and “relationships between parents and offspring, even as adults, cannot be okay, ever” and though we’re rather lacking in consensus on where the line is (see: patchwork of laws about age of consent, including disparities by gender), there is some kind of consensus that “relationships between adults and underage people (whatever that means) cannot be okay, ever.” And there’s even modest consensus on “relationships between a superior and someone whom they supervise (command, evaluate, etc.) cannot be okay, ever.” I don’t get what the problem is, or why the emotional appeal to “but some people say this about gays and kinky people” (which, as has been discussed, is a false analogy that ignores contextual power issues) keeps getting raised as a stumbling block.
Mostly that (as far as I can see) the people in the “not OK ever” camp aren’t recognizing that there is only a modest consensus.
I don’t know how many people are in the “not ever” camp when it comes to supervisor/supervised relationships*. That isn’t clear from this thread. What is clear, however, is that many people are in the “the rule is ‘no'” camp when it comes to that sort of relationship. I think that the difference is significant.
(* Supervisor/supervised encompasses a lot more than just teacher/student)
This post by Hugo, in response to questions Clarisse has raised over at his blog, is interesting in light of Elusis’ comment above and Sailorman’s response. These two paragraphs seem to me especially apt:
This post, too, is relevant to the discussion going on here.
As both a therapist and a professsor (who teaches therapists), I can attest that there is some difference (my rule is once a client = always a client even though state laws prescribe a gap of various numbers of years (usually 2 or 3) between termination of therapy and the possibility of a relationship; I don’t know whether I would date a former student as it’s never come up but I don’t feel so clear) but while the power dynamic is in the present rather than the past? Yeah, no go in either case.
I think I have answered your question several times over: there is no situation in which I think it would be ethical for a teacher to enter into a relationship with a student currently under her or his direct supervision.
Really? I’m 42, divorced once, now single and independently wealthy. (The 42 part is accurate; for everything else, this is a let-say story.) I go to the local state university to get a second master’s degree. One of my instructors is a 25-year old PhD candidate.
You’re telling me I can’t ask her out because she has too much power over me? I spend more on coffee each month than she earns from her stipend, the degree she has the theoretical power to interfere with is something I’m getting for fun (and could get anywhere else I chose), I have lunch once a month with the dean of the business school because of all the donations I make (while she feels lucky that the department chair occasionally remembers her name), I have far more relational experience than she does, etc.
REALLY, she has all the power?
Robert, yeah, you can come up with a scenario in which a student has more power than the teacher. So what? That’s not the usual situation. You could probably come up with a scenario in which a White House intern had more power than a president, but does that mean that you shouldn’t have been disillusioned about Clinton’s sleazy immorality at sleeping with Monica Lewinski because, after all, it MIGHT be that she was as powerful as he?
In addition, Robert, much of the argument supporting “there is no situation in which I think it would be ethical…” wasn’t just about the power level of the two people, but about what the professor being in a relationship would do to how the class as a whole views their relationship with the professor. For instance, this, from one of Richard’s comments on this thread:
Let us suppose that the attorney is a millionaire, while the judge is young, just starting out, heavily in debt, etc etc. Would that change make it okay for the judge to be dating the attorney?
You could knock holes in that analogy, of course (as one can with any analogy). But my point here isn’t to make Richard’s argument for him, but to point out that there’s much more to his argument than just “professors are more powerful than students” full stop. So just pointing out examples of students who have more social & economic power than their professor isn’t a rebuttal of Richard’s argument. It suggests, if anything, that you haven’t fully understood his argument.
Robert,
In addition to what Amp said, I would also point out that the power you, in your example, have not to take her professorial role as seriously as other students might could work against her in all sorts of ways, not the least of which might be undermining her sense of her own authority, and that is not good for the class as a whole. In other words, the fact that you have that kind of power does not change her ethical responsibility to the entire class not to be in relationships with students that might compromise her in any way in relation to the entire class.
Richard and Amp, those are fair and thoughtful points.
But I’m still dating my professor if I want to.
I disagree, though you surely expected that ;)
In the case of therapists, lawyers, and doctors, you almost always have a one-on-one relationship in which the client is expected to share intimate and personal information, to accept intimate and private advice, and to deliver a level of honesty which would not ordinarily be required in the public sphere. You also have a situation, often enough, where the client has specifically sought out that individual, though certainly sometimes they are just looking for “a dermatologist” or “a drunk driving lawyer.” Finally, you have a situation where the client tends to develop a relationship with you personally and your understanding of their (private) information, not just with your skill set.
In the case of student/teacher relationships, you don’t have that with the same frequency. You do in many cases, of course–seminars, advisees, mentees, etc. But therapists, lawyers, and doctors don’t usually have anything akin to a “lecture class-level relationship” with their clients. (And if they did, then in many cases the relationship would be basically permissible. If I was representing 200 clients in a mass class action and my only contact with each client was an initial meeting and a few mailings, the bar association probably wouldn’t care much if I ended up dating one of them. If I was representing a single client, it’d be a different story. That sort of distant group representation is very rare for attorneys.)
And my blind-graded, TA-led-lab, TA-graded-multiple-choice-test, 150+ student, graduate-level, lecture-only, pharmacology class? It wouldn’t have made a shit’s worth of difference to me (or the class) if someone had been dating the teacher. Nobody asked questions anyway, nobody put their names on the test, and nobody talked to the teacher. Ever.
Obviously, that doesn’t hold true for all classes, or all professors, or all relationships. But it does for some of them.
Though it’s amusing to think of Hugo bristling, he shouldn’t have to. Actually, our laws are stricter because everyone hates us, not because we’re thought of as more important. (I do think we have a different average, as discussed above. But that’s not the only thing driving it.)
The public perception of lawyers is generally horrible; we’re one of the most disliked professions in the entire country. So bar associations tend to be extremely strict in an effort to raise our image. A fair number of regulations and enforcement issues spring from image awareness, not the existence of an actual problem.
As I pointed out above, there’s no particular reason for me to avoid dating some clients. And even if I was more intimately involved, the reasoning isn’t to protect the client’s emotions. It’s more that you may not be able to be entirely objective and therefore a good lawyer, so barring the relationship is an attempt to avoid that problem.
“Aha!” you may say. “But what about the objectivity of professors?”
Well: As I said, it could easily be an issue, in some situations. Or not, in other situations. What exact difference is that pharmacology prof going to have on the class, if she’s schtupping some 40 year old grad student?
Doctors and therapists are different; the former have “access to your body” issues and the latter have “access to your emotions” issues. Those are pretty much universal across the professions. To the degree that there are exceptions, I don’t see a problem. Dating your opthamologist may be fine, if all she does is prescribe you glasses every two years. It isn’t like dating your internist.
Sailorman:
We will, as I said above to Clarisse, ultimately have to agree to disagree, but your post made me think a couple of things:
Except that your professor, and no one else, is the final guarantor of the blind-graded, etc. nature of the class. He or she is responsible for making sure that all works the way it is supposed to; and if he or she is shtupping a 40 year old grad student in that lecture? Well, you know where my argument is going to go: that student has access the other students don’t have; there is no guarantee the professor will keep things blind when it comes to that student, etc. and so on, and there is no reason why any other student in the class should have to give the professor the benefit of the doubt about this. Not to mention that if he or she (the professor) can do it, it becomes tacitly okay for other professors to do it, etc. and so on.
Regarding the comparison between teachers and lawyers, etc., I don’t disagree that there are important differences between and among the professions. I understood Hugo’s overall point to be that, just as doctors and lawyers have established a code of ethics for themselves when it comes to sexual relationships with patients/clients that are intended to maintain the integrity of the profession, teachers, also being professionals, and teaching being no less a profession than doctoring or lawyering, also have a right and an obligation to establish a code of ethics and even if the reasoning behind the notion that it is unethical for a teacher to sleep with a student under her or his direct supervision is different from the reasoning applied in the case of lawyers and doctors, we are still talking about a code of professional ethics that has the same standing in terms of what ought to be its rigor, integrity, etc. as the codes that govern law and medicine.
I don’t know if that was entirely clear, but I am typing fast and I need to get back to work.
Still, I do think we have reached the point where agreeing to disagree is the logical thing to do.
Well, the traditional thing to do after having spent so much time debating something like this–at least among lawyers–is to get drunk. And, if necessary, settle it through pool/darts/poker.
It may not be the logical thing to do, but it’s more fun.
Much more fun, you’re right!