Naomi Wolf writes about sexual harassment (and turning a blind eye) at Yale

Parents Forum
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<p>Bloom was responsible for his sexual misconduct and of course should have been disciplined. If I understand correctly he’s still there and still teaching? Therefore I respect Wolf’s desire to ask Yale to demonstrate their current procedure for dealing with harassment before she in any way endorsed Yale. Imho this was a reasonable expectation on her part. </p>

<p>Her own judgment and naivete at the time she was 20 is a separate issue to some extent. I agree with other posters, it’s important to remember how we were way back when…but as I said yesterday here, I’d be quite upset if my daughter permitted this scenario with a professor like Bloom in her apartment.</p>

<p>She defines the misconduct as sexual encroachment, not harassment but then discusses it’s impact on her academic life in a way that sounds like it consumed her. I can’t question her veracity, because it is possible for it to impact her as she said, but to me it sounds a bit like she didn’t do as well as she hoped and is able to use that as her reason. There’s no way to demonstrate cause and effect but she is assuming this.</p>

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<p>if the word “or” wasn’t in there, then this was in no way sexual harrassment. However, I would say that his behavior created an offensive working environment. He refused to see her, continually referrred to having drinks together, and told her she was “troubled” when he left. </p>

<p>I’m not sure if any of this is important, since she never brought charges, never wanted to bring charges, and was simply talking about an attitude and event from her past which impacted her. She never uses the word sexual harrassment, but, she is well aware of libel, and it is highly unlikely she would tell this story unless it was true to the best of her recollection.</p>

<p>As for whether or not my own daughter would invite a professor to her apartment for an intimate dinner? I doubt it. But, let’s face it, he was only offering to critique her poetry under those kind of circumstances. Seems problematic to say the least.</p>

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<p>On the one hand, I see why Wolf might have thought it would be cool to read poetry by candlelight with a bottle of sherry. It’s part of the poetry experience, maybe. (I’m conjuring up fantasies of what ivy leagues might be like.) And the other people left so they could go over the assignments.</p>

<p>On the other hand, Calmom is right, this could be easily misinterpreted as “changing the context” of the relationship from professional to personal. </p>

<p>On another note, it’s a shame that mythmom’s career was stunted because some big shots decided to abuse their power. Actually, it’s hard for me to even fathom. I’ve never seen anything like it up close, though I’m probably about 20 years younger than most posters on this thread. Also, I think these types of situations happen more often in the humanities than the sciences.</p>

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<p>Yes, the link that Emeraldkity provided in post #27:
[Naomi</a> Wolf Makes Much Ado About Nuzzling At Yale | The New York Observer](<a href=“http://www.observer.com/2004/03/naomi-wolf-makes-much-ado-about-nuzzling-at-yale/]Naomi”>Naomi Wolf Makes Much Ado About Nuzzling At Yale | Observer)</p>

<p>I’d note another irony. After responding by email to Wolf’s inquiry, Brodhead went to Duke, where he took a very prompt an aggressive response to an allegation of sexual misconduct by members of the LaCrosse team. He issued a strong statement condemning their actions, cancelled the remainder of the playing season, and forced the resignation of the team coach. </p>

<p>Of course it turned out that the accusation was false and the accused team members were innocent. </p>

<p>Sometimes a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted.</p>

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<p>Have you thought to tell your son how to protect himself from the risk of false accusations? Because that is one area where young men can be very vulnerable, and I hope that you can see from your own reaction to the Wolf article that once an accusation is made, it is very, very difficult for an innocent person to get anyone to pay much heed to his side of the story.</p>

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Apparently, no one ever complained. </p>

<p>We have a principle in this country called “due process”. It means that people don’t get “disciplined” based on rumor or innuendo or newspaper columns. Certainly not newspaper columns written 21 years after the purported incident.</p>

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<p>The fact that Naomi Wolf suffered so much from the incident says something about her. The fact that Yale has ignored complaints about Bloom says something about them.</p>

<p>And I think the damage to women’s academic careers is real, perhaps in this case more to the point than the damage to our psychological health.</p>

<p>A friend of mine had two classes with the same professor and just didn’t show up for end of year tests, evaluations and did not graduate (it was her last semester.) She was too embarrassed to address these issues. Twenty years later I helped her negotiate her degree.</p>

<p>I am made of tougher stuff, but certainly the “encroachment” of my professors has been a factor in my professional life. I did not get the support to enter the competitive job market that many other (read male) colleagues did. And it was not that I did not do well enough. I passed my orals with distinction (only 10% of candidates do) and as I said, received a major national award for my dissertation. The latter came as quite a shock after my own advisor campaigned against my receiving my degree. (My topic encroached on traditional male areas of expertise and took a radically different read that was common.)</p>

<p>As for my comments on Summers, I will agree they were slightly exaggerated for pith, but I will not agree that they were grossly exaggerated or reasonable in context. To my mind they were grossly sexist and remain so. Either Harvard agreed or enough other folks agreed because Summers was removed. Harvard know has a female president I believe.</p>

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<p>No one ever complained?</p>

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<p>What evidence is there of any complaint being made? Wolf admitted in her article that she didn’t tell anyone about the incident for 21 years, and she didn’t cite to any other examples that involved the same professor. Brodhead said that in his 11 years at Yale, there had been 4 complaints brought before the grievance committee; he couldn’t identify the prof because of privacy concerns, but there’s no particular reason to assume that any of those 4 were directed at Bloom.</p>

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<p>Bloom’s behavior was not exactly a secret at Yale. My thesis director, who had gotten her PhD from Yale mentioned it to me along with the general misogyny in the English Department at Yale. Of course that doesn’t constitute proof that any of those complaints was against Bloom, nor is rumor proof of anything.</p>

<p>It is fair to note that a certain level of demeaning behavior is not likely to be reported, just as I never reported Kott’s actions to me in 1976. What could I have said?</p>

<p>I am not sure of Wolf’s goal, but mine would be to ensure that professional success wasn’t entwined with gender and/or sexual attractiveness or willingness. That might be possible to assess with post-docs, grants, grad school placements. Bloom’s alleged behavior may not be particularly threatened or egregious for any old man off the street, but it may be when professional success is involved.</p>

<p>I think Wolf wants the entire area discussed at Yale, but I may have misread her intentions.</p>

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<p>It doesn’t matter how notorious the prof is, if no one lodges a formal complaint. I suppose it is the sort of thing that would come up in when a prof was being considered for tenure… but once he has tenure, it would be that much harder to get rid of him… though I suppose at a certain point he could be nudged into retirement.</p>

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<p>Well yes. That’s why I wrote what I did. If academic outcomes are the focus a lot could be done without discipline a particular prof at all. My understanding of Wolf is that she wants this ISSUE addressed.</p>

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<p>Harvard does indeed have a female president. The faculty hated Summers for his high-handed ways and they certainly trumpeted his remarks around and twisted his words. I’m not a fan at all of Summers and didn’t mind seeing him go, but those remarks were the least of it. </p>

<p>As to the original subject, I’m pretty much with Calmom on this. My recollection is that student/professor relationships were frowned on, but they seemed to happen remarkably often, generally consensual as far as I could tell. I can’t imagine in Wolf’s circumstances thinking being alone with Bloom with a bottle of sherry and collection of poetry could possibly end well. I also think Yale should have tried harder to squash Bloom. </p>

<p>Thankfully, the world has changed even if behavior hasn’t and I think people at least know what the expectations are for behavior even if they don’t always follow through.</p>

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<p>Calmom, you are right that if no one lodges a complaint, nothing can be done on rumors. </p>

<p>In my law school, there were furious rumors about a certain professor, and it took years, but eventually some his victims came forward and he was out. It was not because the university said so, though. He was “cleared” of harassment. A student protest and new charges following the “clearance”, led him to resign, I believe. Now whether the evidence was on his side or whether it was a courtesy that he was released from the charges, covering for their own, we can not know. I was not among the chosen, so to me they were just that - rumors. I had even heard that he had left a previous law school because of similar charges. Of course, in law, there must be adequate proof. However, proof and the truth, unfortunately are not always in sync. My own belief on that case is that he did it - many many many times. You either have to believe that or that all these women had a vendetta against him for no reason at all. As to how he behaved to me - perfect. I just don’t think he was that way to everyone.</p>

<p>I think that there is still an underlying problem with women and men in academia, along the lines of what mythmom notes. I think many women, myself included, went off to college hoping for actual intellectual exchange with professors. Although this can be achieved, and many have had trusted mentoring and advising, this can also fall flat on its face. A wise gentleman much older that me at the time said that at lunch there is always a bed in the soup. Now maybe it is not always “always”, but today we advise women to be careful of where and how they meet with a man, alone. I don’t think we did as well back in the day. People make mistakes today anyway in spite of all the open discussion.</p>

<p>If you took the NW story at face value, where she went “wrong” was chasing the guy down, nearly harassing him to meet with her. He “obviously” wasn’t that interested in seeing her work. Why did he agree to the independent study? A lot of teachers and professors would agree to facilitate the “independent” study, not to be a personal guru. Unfortunately, she was looking for a personal guru, and he was not it. Herein lies another offense. This is what I see as the heart of the offense to NW. Not only did he not want to see her work, but he saw her as a sexual object. Do I also believe that he was a sloppy drunk and a complete boor and a perv when it came to “hitting” on women? Youbetcha. But that is just my opinion reading what others have said.</p>

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<p>This is fascinating to me, because I was an English major at Yale (class of 1980), and I don’t remember ever hearing anything about Bloom like this–but I’m male. But I do think it’s true that 1983, while not exactly ancient history, is long enough ago that attitudes about liasons between faculty and students have changed significantly since then. A common response to what Bloom did might well have been disgust and avoidance, but not formal complaints. (We just watched Animal House the other night–1978–and it shows a student-professor affair.) This doesn’t make what Bloom did right, but it may explain why others didn’t do much about it.</p>

<p>The other thing is–I’m also a lawyer, and I can’t help thinking about things like this in terms of proof problems. Naomi Wolf’s account is just too old to be entirely credible, even if she believes it to be true. The details are important in a case like this, and details can change quite a lot in 20 years. Your mind tends to edit out the details that don’t make you look so good. There is no corroborating evidence, as far as I know–no contemporaneous documents, no evidence of harm to her career or anything else. This is why we have statutes of limitations in law, after all.</p>

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<p>It’s all so complicated, but not all of it is complicated.</p>

<p>What Bloom did was wrong, to Wolf and to others. I don’t remember anyone thinking it was OK back in the day, not even misogynists. (And, poetgrl, it may be that no one talked about this stuff where you were back then, but at Yale people talked about it all the time, or at least they did five years before, when I was there. In part because of the lawsuit, and because Catharine Mackinnon was a law student and then law professor there, it was something that was being debated everywhere. Also, Susan Brownmiller’s book on rape came out in 1975 and sparked a lot of discussion about sexual coercion.)</p>

<p>I do think there are degrees of wrong, though. As far as I know or heard, Bloom never did to anyone what Kott did to mythmom – withhold support as punishment for refusing his advances. Over the years, there were a number of women he supported professionally, and the likelihood that any of them had a sexual relationship with him is slight.</p>

<p>That’s not to say he didn’t do harm. Young women who were desperate for his attention and validation couldn’t be sure they could get that without accepting his advances. And in lots of cases, maybe all cases for women, tolerating his advances, and figuring out how to reject them without poisoning the relationship, WAS the price of his attention. That’s a tough game to play, and not every 20-year-old junior with a portfolio of poetry can play it well, or wants to play it at all. (Some of Bloom’s most successful female graduate students were openly gay, which was one way to deal with it.) </p>

<p>Mostly what happened, at least with undergraduate women, is that they wound up feeling uncomfortable and conflicted, and so limited their contact with Bloom – not talking to him out of class, not taking his courses, etc. And that’s not OK. It meant Bloom the Great (and he really was great) was teaching men more than women.</p>

<p>Why was it tolerated? Because people thought he couldn’t help it. He was a mess, he was in constant psychotherapy. This was only one of several dysfunctional aspects of his personality. (He was a terrible hypochondriac, too. And he overreacted to stuff all the time.) The only effective measure would have been to stop him from teaching, and that would have been cutting off your nose to spite your face, because everyone, including women who crossed the street to avoid him, thought he was a valuable teacher, and everyone liked the prestige he brought to the department and the university. So the basic social solution was to consider him a pain in the butt, but to protect him, and to provide lots of informal support to people who had to put up with the negative aspects of his personality. Wolf licked her wounds in silence, but in part I think because that was self-aggrandizing. If she had gone back to Hollander, she probably could have gotten tips on dealing with Bloom, and maybe even some private intervention, but she would have had to deal with the fact that she was a cliche, not a unique victim. And, I suspect, she might have had to deal with the ways in which she voluntarily put her sexual attractiveness in play in her search for professional success. (Just to be clear, everyone does that a little, and it doesn’t excuse sexual harassment. But Wolf did it more than a little over much of her career. She may not have felt as comfortable with that aspect of her own personality at 20 as she did later.)</p>

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<p>Yes, JHS, there is no doubt I was really obtuse about this kind of stuff when I was 20, but it also protected me, quite a bit. Looking back, now, I see several situations in which I was being hit on but completely unaware of the fact. (It’s rather comical, now, in a skit-type way, to me). But, a young woman could be back then, through no fault of her own. It was not willed.</p>

<p>I’m really ejoying your anectdotes about Bloom. I will admit to being quite a fan of his writing, and I would not remove “The anxiety of influence” from my bookshelves, now, either.</p>

<p>Back then, I could see why nothing happened, nobody reported him. But, I don’t believe that would happen, today. And I think that is one difference.</p>

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<p>JHS: FWIW I endorse your analysis. I am sad the toll this and my thesis advisors attitude took on my own self- confidence. They couldn’t have torally blackballed certain aspects of my career with other support I had. It was my reaction to the situation. Still, I did not get the seal of approval I earned, deserved and needed (in my case) to pursue an elite, high power career in academics.</p>

<p>At least for me, the sexual aspects if the situation were not disturbing and easy to handle, but every situation and individual is different. And I agree with JHS, some of my lack of drive is my own as was my inability to fight off my confusion about my academic worth. Accolades came two years later when my momentum was already destroyed.</p>

<p>It IS hard to to talk about these things because it sounds like sour grapes. That is why I salute Naomi Wolf, even if her account is not perfect. She has exposed herself to the disapproving scrutiny female victims are often subjected to. And no, we’re not perfect.</p>

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<p>I meant to add that Germaine Greer’s work on gender politics was also very important at the time.</p>

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<p>Actually, mythmom, I don’t find the way you talk about this to be sour grapes, at all. I don’t find NW’s concern to be sour grapes, either. </p>

<p>I am sorry you were trapped in that situation, and it WAS a trap, a double bind. You would need game theory to figure out a way out of that unscathed. And, the point is, you ought not to have to use that kind of thinking in order to escape a situation in which you should have been promoted and mentored and moved along. </p>

<p>You are clearly not the only one who ever had this situation occur in her academic (or other) career, and it is only through discussing it openly, including the effects, emotional, economic, intellectual, that we get to a point where it no longer impacts young women in that particular way.</p>

<p>There is a level of protection from this kind of sexual invasion for both young women and young men, these days. </p>

<p>Look at the reaction we are having, culturally, to the secret service debacle. People are as outraged that they only paid the prostitute $30 as they are that the secret service was bringing unknowns into a security situation. I think that is a big change in attitude, personally.</p>

<p>I believe your career was effected by this man. I also belive Naomi Wolf’s life was effected by Bloom. I think, now, it might not play out in the same way. Now, we all know these men CAN control themselves, just as we now know that boys don’t actually HAVE to fistfight on a playground to be boys. </p>

<p>You should write you memior.</p>