How Colleges and Organizations Can Stop the Cycle of Faculty Sexual Abuse

This spring nearly 1.5 million women across the country were expected to earn a bachelor’s or advanced degree. The #MeToo movement has revealed that they have done so amid shocking abuses of faculty authority and responsibility. This commencement season can represent a new beginning, but only if those with the power to correct the practices that perpetuate sexual harassment of students by faculty members are committed to doing so.

The scope of sexual harassment, assault, and violence on campuses is difficult to accurately quantify; nonetheless, the evidence that we do have supports the need for action. In a survey of students at 27 elite research universities in 2015, 5.9 percent of female undergraduates and 22.4 percent of female graduate students reported sexual harassment by a member of the faculty. Among 305 cases reported in the media, in Title IX enforcement actions and in termination cases, 10 percent of female students reported sexual harassment ranging from unwelcome sexual touching to forcible rape by a faculty member. Of these reports, 53 percent involved repeat offenses by the same faculty member, and the frequency of a single faculty member harassing multiple students increased with the severity of the incidents.

One factor that enables the perpetuation of these abuses is the firewall between faculty personnel actions and investigations and findings of sexual harassment, violence, and assault. As a result, faculty are retained and even promoted despite disturbing patterns of behavior, and known harassers can escape complaints by moving to a new institution.

As a woman whose life has been transformed by the opportunity to earn an advanced degree, I am deeply saddened that others have had their paths cut short. As a member of the professoriate, I am embarrassed by the behavior of some in my profession. As an administrator, I am determined to do my own part to make the campus environment safer for our students. And I am proud to be a part of an institution that is committed to studying these complex and difficult issues and to taking action to move us on a positive trajectory forward.

I’ve learned that many components of the firewall are not required by law, despite that pervasive misperception. That means it can be dismantled with changes in current policies and practices.

To achieve this goal, clear policies, training, notification, and progressive disciplinary actions should be enacted to hold faculty members accountable for unacceptable behavior. Only when transgressions are matched with proportional disciplinary actions, and rehabilitation and reintegration are acceptable outcomes, will we create a system that encourages reporting to promote a safer educational environment. Here’s how we can do that:

• Colleges should ensure that they are hiring faculty members who do not have documented histories of sexual harassment. For example, they could ask applicants to sign a release, as a condition of employment, allowing prior employers to certify that the applicant is not the subject of an ongoing investigation related to sexual harassment or assault and was not previously found in violation of the institution’s sexual-harassment policy. This document should contain language releasing prior employers from potential liability for providing such information. In situations where an applicant had a violation, the release could include a request for a redacted copy of the investigative file or other documents that may clarify the situation.
• At the time of their hiring, faculty members should be required to acknowledge awareness of the college’s sexual-harassment policy, and with each policy update, they should be required to acknowledge that they have reviewed and understand the change. When progressive discipline is indicated, clear notification of the specific violation and resulting sanction should be given to the faculty member.
• During tenure and promotion evaluations, faculty contributions to the research, education, and outreach missions of the college are assessed, but conduct is typically not considered, to protect academic freedom. However, sexual harassment negatively impacts students’ personal well-being and professional success, so colleges can reasonably question, in this context, the candidate’s contributions to the educational mission of the institution. To do so, the evaluation process must include access to relevant information, which is not routinely shared between the faculty-affairs and equal-opportunity processes at many institutions. Despite the deference to privacy protections, I am not aware of any legal barrier to considering conduct in these personnel actions because faculty are employees of the college.
• If the severity and/or frequency of the infractions rise to the level of termination and due process has been followed, colleges must be willing to follow their own guidelines. Termination remains a rare and lengthy process despite the statistics on sexual harassment of students by faculty members. While it is true and essential that tenure guarantees employment to protect academic freedom, membership in the academy is also associated with standards of professional ethics, including, as specified by the guidelines of the American Association of University Professors, the avoidance of “any exploitation, harassment, or discriminatory treatment of students.” Employers, including universities, can and should play an important role in preventing these outcomes by following policies and practices known to be effective.

These policy changes are significant enough to put colleges that take the bold step first at a competitive disadvantage. Indeed, many are reluctant to even share statistics on sexual harassment. To promote more rapid change, influential professional associations, such as the Association of American Universities, the AAUP, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine should support these changes as best practices. Federal funding agencies, such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, can require the hiring institution to certify that it has received information on compliance with the sexual-harassment policy at the previous institution to approve the transfer of funding, one of the incentives driving recruitment of established faculty.

There will be no easy fixes to the problem of sexual harassment of students by faculty members, but little progress will be made if the practices and policies that allow unacceptable behavior to continue are not re-evaluated. The #MeToo movement represents a constellation of exceptional acts of bravery; it’s time for those in power to follow that example.

Tricia Serio is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and dean of the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own.