If he is the actual perpetrator, then it would not be surprising if there were additional unreported sexual assaults at UIUC during the previous school year (note that police say that evidence indicates that there may be additional victims in the area near his home town).
My D1 works for a company that does a lot of surveys and research for colleges. She says they do tons of work on sexual assault on campus, but she had not really seen any requests for studies or best practices on faculty harassment of students. The focus is much more on student v. student, or overall campus safety. Wonder if they will start getting more questions in this area – I hope so.
NeoDymium, Even when a university has gender balance overall, white males are far more likely to be in the highest positions commanding the most money. It is a gender issue. And, perpetrators of this sort of harassment are far more likely to be male. It is mostly about gender. It is about white males being able to treat others atrociously with no or few consequences and seemingly with the institutions blessing.
I don’t think that sexual harassment specifically is the most interesting part of this story; it’s about power imbalances and how the student victims are not capable of doing anything about a professor in a high position of power who acts improperly towards them. And that power is granted almost solely on the ability to bring in money for the university, which makes it irrelevant whether or not they are minority groups. And among others, I’ve seen plenty of powerful professors of the underrepresented groups, who had high-quality research contributions, who consistently got away with some pretty morally disgusting behavior because they brought in good money for the school.
Unfortunately, “get rid of them” is not always the correct answer. The world has many instances of top-class contributors to the advancement of science who were personally very morally repugnant people. But for all their faults, we’d be worse off if they didn’t have a chance to do their work.
You may not think sexual harrassment is the most interesting part of this story (guessing you are male, so don’t have to experience it). I personally think it is integral to the story. Female profs & department heads aren’t doing this in any measurable quantity. But men behaving badly for their sexual gratification? That is at the core of this.
The power imbalance part of the story is not just personal power. He had the power of status as a tenured faculty member where the systemwide policy of faculty discipline and dismissal tended to be protective of the accused’s rights and defense (perhaps because the policy was written by faculty in the past). So the initial result looks like a “plea bargain” between the campus administration (which found him guilty under other policies and procedures) and him resulting in the probation.
^They start early, too. My D was at a summer program for STEM. She was furious with d***y guys in the program the entire summer. At her home institution, she didn’t experience that much. It made her rethink about continuing in the field. She has calm down a little now and will continue for a couple more years and reevaluate.
" it’s about power imbalances and how the student victims are not capable of doing anything about a professor in a high position of power who acts improperly towards them."
Yes it is about power imbalances but it interacts with discrimination and other issues such that women and people of color and other marginalized groups are far less likely to be in power. And, this conduct is one way that white males have kept the power. Look at the disparity in promotions across groups. Who are the Distintinguished and Full Professors? White males. Even in gender balanced universities. Further those professors from these other groups who found a way to become Full or Distinguished often got there by actively or passively supporting these behaviors and those who perpetrate them. So they are more likely to be disinclined to act or speak out against egregious conduct of colleagues. And who is more likely to be stuck at the Associate level? Those who were victims! They were victims and have no clout to call out Perps. Well they can call out Perps but nobody listens. God knows I know about that (others do too but they remain mute which makes them hypocrites and lying creeps-how’s it that the places of study that should be transparent are often the most corrupt?!). Other victims never make it to the tenure decision. And others who speak out are marginalized. So yes, it is about power imbalances and it is about the fact that universities are still largely controlled by white male bigots (and that is true even when the letterhead shows a female name at the top).
Maybe they are not all bigots. But those that rule tend to be white males. When others make it to high levels it is often because they are married to or have had the protection of a white male with clout. And then they don’t necessarily help speak out against harassment because they view themselves as having made it in that climate and aren’t necessarily interested in helping others or in outing those in high levels who are Perps.
You are, however, making the assumption that the morally repugnant top-class contributors are irreplaceable. I would argue, first of all, that there are plenty of morally upright* top-class contributors out there, and secondly that the contributions of the morally repugnant aren’t so overwhelming that they can’t be simply dismissed and gotten rid of.
And that’s even aside from the fact that the actions of the morally repugnant top-class contributors appear to be driving potential top-class contributors away from the field—and if each morally repugnant top-class contributor drives out two morally upright top-class contributors, that’s a huge loss for humanity as a whole. (In fact, I’d argue it’s a pretty big loss if each morally repugnant top-class contributor drives out just one morally upright top-class contributor, since it’s better to have someone providing positives in both spheres rather than in just one.)
Is this the best antonym for repugnant here? Regardless, that's what I'll use in this post, but if you can think of a better word, please feel free to mentally replace it.
I agree with cutting ties with him. However, removing his lectures seems like a pointless appeal to the crowd looking for justice that only really harms students. We don’t censor “Elements” or “The Principia” because their authors hold views that are totally unacceptable nowadays, and we don’t criticize Feynman’s nobel prize because he was a notorious womanizer. I understand that Lewin’s behavior is entirely reprehensible but I would expect that MIT is above such petty attempts at retribution.
I agree that wiping out past work isn’t conducive to good science. Feynman used to hit on the wives of his male grad students – there is another angle on this, thinking how powerless the male grad students must have felt when that happened. But should we pull the Feynman Lectures on Physics out of circulation? No… but the guy was a cad.
Unless there are clear sexual overtures in the lectures (which I highly doubt, considering this story remained under wraps for years), I think a brief warning in the video description could easily let viewers know that the professor a repugnant human being who they shouldn’t approach “expecting a student-teacher relationship.”
Of course, most universities wouldn’t want to publicize the fact that they employed a morally repugnant human being for a not inconsiderable period of time. I suspect that’s the reason they’re removing Lewin’s lectures - out of sight is generally out of mind, and by scrubbing as many references to him as possible from the school’s sites, college administrators may be hoping that most people (and especially most applicants) won’t remember this business in 5 years’ time. That would certainly be consistent with (sarcasm alert) the integrity, sound judgment, and concern for students that a number of the college administrators involved have displayed in trying to shield their beleaguered institutions from bad press.
Then again, what do I know. I’m just an uninformed stranger on the internet.
Wow, had never heard of this aspect of Feynman or Lewin. But then everything I knew about them was through their lectures and their books - “For the love of Physics …” from a technical perspective and “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman” from an autobiographical one are two of my favorite books. And I can’t remember how much time DS and I spent listening to the OCW lectures and Feynman lectures on CD. Agree that their work shouldn’t be removed, and totally shocked about “the rest of the story”. But then again, I’m the guy who always thought Cosby was this Huxtable-type guy and even liked some of his political positions. Life is rarely all cut and dry, I guess.
By the way, the online student who was harassed by Lewin and who made the complaint didn’t contact him. He contacted her. she had a Facebook group for students in the online class (or something like that) and he messaged her.
MIT doesn’t want to put lectures on its site when they know that the lecturer will seek out attractive women working through the lectures and ask them to send him naked pictures of themselves. Is this any surprise?
In “Surely You’re Joking…”, he says he never bought a woman a drink without first asking if he could sleep with her. He was quite open about his treatment of women, and saw nothing wrong with it. The particular example of the grad student’s wives might not have been in there, but maybe even he had a boundary of what to admit in his autobiography.
@NotVerySmart, Lewin’s work is not wiped off the internet completely. You may very well be able to find his lectures elsewhere. You just will no longer find them on edX which is the delivery vehicle for MIT’s MOOC’s. Once they were put on notice of his transgressions, they really had no other choice but to revoke his use of the site. How could they ethically or legally allow him to use an Institute sponsored site to harass students? My D attends MIT and the consensus among her friends, both male and female, is that MIT stepped up and did the right thing.
As far as Feynman is concerned, his legacy is secure. Neither my opinion nor anyone else’s is going to change that. But I will say that there are few women I know that could read the chapter “You Just Ask Them?” in his book “Surely You’re Joking” and come away with any respect for the man.
I could be wrong, but I would imagine it’s possible for MIT to deny Lewin access to the list of students watching his lectures (and, of course, cancel any courses he might currently be teaching), without taking down lectures that have already been posted online - which, in and of themselves, are a resource like any TED talk or documentary.