Professor Steven Hayward, the inaugural visiting scholar in conservative thought and policy at CU Boulder, recently chimed in on the controversy that hit the institution’s philosophy department, which has been accused of rampant sexual harassment and bullying.
In an op-ed in The Daily Camera, he pokes holes in the report, which was full of vague accusations.
The determination of what occurred in the Philosophy Department deserves more transparency that it received, and it is possible that the sweeping characterizations of the department are unfair and unjust …
One of the few meager facts in the APA report is that there have been “at least” 15 formal complaints to the University’s Office of Discrimination and Harassment (ODH) out of the Philosophy department. “At least” 15 complaints? Is the actual number higher? Over what time period? How does this compare with the rate of complaints from other departments? How were these complaints disposed? How many were regarded as serious offenses? The report nowhere says, beyond a few vague hints that a handful of instances drew reprimands of some kind …
Likewise the report’s finding that “some male faculty have been observed ‘ogling’ undergraduate women students” should require something more substantial than was offered. Count me as shocked, shocked, that faculty ogling would occur. I am sure this has never happened before. Is there a relative scale for judging degrees of “ogling,” by the way? Is “ogling” a more or less serious offense than a leer? I get it that the “power relationship” of a professor over a student makes this kind of behavior more serious than the normal private behavior of frat boys on a Saturday night, but are undergraduate women presumed to be so helpless or defenseless as to be unable to process and fight back against the lecherous leers of an analytical philosopher? …
Likewise the APA report punts on offering any details about “bullying” in the department because it would “reveal… the perpetrators.” Instead it offers general characterizations of a department that could easily be confused with the Miami Dolphins locker room, with an after-hours culture that is a poor imitation of Monty Python’s “Philosopher’s Song.” Is the majority of the department faculty complicit in this, or just two or three bad actors? If the latter (as most people strongly suspect), why not name them? And rather than require the entire department to submit to a re-education camp, why not make it easier for the department or the administration to fire the bad actors? …
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