www.fgks.org   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
">
 
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
September 1, 2017 Dear Members of the University of Rochester Board of Trustees: It is with the deepest sadness that we have come to this point: the filing of a formal complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [“EEOC”] against the University of Rochester [attached] for failing to act appropriately against a faculty member who has engaged in sexual harassment and has created a hostile environment for graduate students, and for retaliating against those of us who filed and pursued a complaint through university procedures. As the two senior faculty involved in bringing this case forward, we are also representing five of our junior colleagues and the many students who have been negatively affected by the events described in the EEOC complaint. Arriving at this point is especially tragic because it could easily have been  prevented with appropriate action by the UR administration. Instead, the administration has inexplicably failed to defend its most vulnerable citizens – its students – and put future students at risk by failing to act appropriately on their behalf; and it has retaliated against the faculty members whose only motive was to defend these students. Some of these actions by the University were illegal and others unethical. To be clear, we take the present action because our experience with the current system for reporting harassment and retaliation revealed a university process that is biased and broken. Our concern is to identify and remedy the defects in how this matter has been handled by administrators and the repetitive failures of the University’s offices of legal counsel, Title IX officer, and those responsible for investigating harassment and protecting victims. We want the university to support – not retaliate against – those who report sexual harassment and other acts that create a hostile environment for students and faculty. For over one year since we first discovered the behavior of the faculty member in question, we have acted in good faith to follow the existing University procedures for filing a complaint, exhausted all appeals, interacted with every level of the administration, and hoped that in the end the University would do what the law requires it to do: ensure the safety of our students and the respectful treatment of our female colleagues. One of us met personally with President Seligman to explain why the UR legal office of counsel exercised bad judgment that put the President, the Provost, and the overall reputation of the University at risk. The response was silence. Then Provost Clark chose to double-down and praise the faculty member who was under investigation while chastising those of us who brought the case forward. Thus, after an incomplete investigation, internal examination, and attempts to force us to “move forward,” the University chose to filter, distort, and cover up the facts, to deny the veracity of the complaints of 7 faculty members and 11 students, to disparage those of us who brought forward the complaint, and then to further retaliate against us when we refused to back down – all with the purpose of protecting a serial harasser, we assume  because the University finds his conduct unobjectionable or does not have the will to take him on. Even a cursory review of our EEOC complaint will confirm that this characterization of the events is accurate. There are a number of broader consequences of these failures. It is already widely known that the UR has condoned the harassing faculty member’s behavior. That knowledge will become more widespread with the filing of our EEOC complaint and the resultant airing of these concerns in the press. The mishandling of this matter has resulted in the loss of some of Rochester’s best faculty and will undoubtedly lead to more, as well as a loss of the ability to recruit the best faculty and students to replace them as this story spreads through the academy and the press. The University has lost key scientific grants due to these departures and will lose even more as additional faculty leave to escape the hostile work conditions and retaliation they have suffered, despite their efforts to protect UR, the department, and the student community they serve. For those of you who do not know us, it is important to point out that we are not short-term faculty members who have an agenda to damage the University. On the contrary, we are two of the most loyal servants of the University of Rochester it has ever had. Together we have 57 years of service on the faculty.
•
 
Both of us were department chairs (for a combined 15 years).
•
 
One of us was Dean of the College and Vice Provost for Arts, Sciences and Engineering for 5 years.
 
•
 
Both of us played central roles in establishing and building the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) -- the department that has been destroyed by this case.
•
 
We both served many years on Faculty Council, Faculty Senate and Faculty Senate Executive Committee, the College Curriculum Committee, and numerous commissions and special committees.
•
 
We both served on (and in some cases chaired) search committees for the president and other high-level administrative positions.
•
 
We have been awarded honors from the University (Goergen Award, Garnish Award, Graduate Mentoring Award).
•
 
Both of us are members of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipients of many other academic honors (with our departures, there are only 3 other NAS members on the UR faculty). We are also experienced enough in administration to know what a University can (and should) do in cases such as these. That is why we are so profoundly distressed with the UR’s failure to do what is right and with its effort to  perpetuate a system that looks the other way when an egregious case is reported. Despite our best efforts, the  present situation must be viewed as a colossal failure of UR leadership at all levels. Here is what we are asking for:
•
 
We want the University to take responsibility for its failure to protect victims and to reform its processes.
•
 
We want public accountability that ensures that the system will work as it is supposed to and that those who come forward in the future to complain will be treated with respect, not retaliated against.
•
 
We want the University to institute a comprehensive examination of its policies and procedures, using a set of external evaluators and benchmarks to ensure that in the future the University exercises best  practices (and hopefully becomes a leader in setting the bar well above current standards). The outcome of this examination must be widely disseminated to ensure transparency and follow-through.
•
 
Key among these changes is a revamping of the current system, which allows the counsel’s office to represent simultaneously the alleged victim and the alleged perpetrator, while also protecting the University’s interest in minimizing risk from whichever of these sides is judged to be more powerful. The current system clearly contains inbuilt conflicts of interest that beg for an adjudicator who is not beholden to the University administration and a victim’s advocacy office whose job is to investigate, defend, and  protect potential victims over alleged perpetrators.
•
 
We want the University to formally apologize to the witnesses and victims and provide damage claims to those of us who have been retaliated against. Sadly, the University has given us no recourse but to file the attached EEOC complaint. We understand that your first response might be anger at us for doing this. But we urge you to read the complaint carefully, to judge for yourself whether we have done the right thing and whether the University has or has not acted in ways that you are proud to defend. We believe that we have acted at every step on behalf of the University, its students, and the values that the law upholds and that bind us as a community. In light of our failure to achieve a proper outcome within the University, we view action with the EEOC as the best we can do to ensure that the University acts as it should, so that it will face the future with the highest values and with processes that adequately defend them. We are ready to work with you to rectify the structural problems that exist at UR and to resolve this complaint quickly and decisively so that UR is protected to the greatest degree possible. We invite you to work with us to  protect the university’s legacy. Sincerely, Richard N. Aslin, Ph.D. Elissa L. Newport, Ph.D. Formerly William R. Kenan Professor Formerly George Eastman Professor Brain & Cognitive Sciences Brain & Cognitive Sciences
Sign up to vote on this title
UsefulNot useful