How Sexual-Harassment Charges at U. of Rochester Spiraled Out of Control

When Celeste Kidd filed a federal complaint against her employer, the University of Rochester, she worried that she might be committing career suicide.

A young assistant professor in the department of brain and cognitive sciences, she had twice failed to persuade the university that a senior member of her department, T. Florian Jaeger, was a sexual predator who had to be stopped. Twice it had investigated him and found insufficient evidence that he had violated university policy.

With the federal complaint, Ms. Kidd took her grievances a step further, joining a growing group of allies in accusing the university of retaliating against them.

On Friday, she and eight other current and former professors and students at Rochester took the next step in their battle to prove that the university not only was wrong about Mr. Jaeger, but that it had violated their rights by portraying them as gossips and liars.

The challenge came in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court against the university, its president, Joel Seligman, and provost, Robert L. Clark.

The nearly 200-page lawsuit is the latest damaging headline for the university over its handling of Mr. Jaeger’s case. The suit has raised questions about how a case involving one professor can spiral so quickly out of control, leaving a group of women to feel that they have no recourse but the courts, and creating an expensive public-relations nightmare for the university.

The president issued a statement on Friday to trustees and members of his cabinet informing them of the lawsuit and reminding them that “many of the allegations were thoroughly investigated by the university and could not be substantiated.”

“The university, too,” he added, “is interested in the truth, and is now free to respond vigorously and publicly to the claims that have been made against us.”

He said that he was saddened by “the damage this controversy has caused” to the university, and that he hoped the justice system can resolve the issues raised in the lawsuit “so that our community can begin to heal, and can once again focus fully on what we are all here to do.”

‘Silence Breakers’

Under normal circumstances, a university might be pleased to learn that two of its professors had been featured in Time magazine. But the article that came out last week featured two of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit — Ms. Kidd and an associate professor in her department, Jessica F. Cantlon. They were among the “Silence Breakers” whom Time selected as its 2017 “person of the year” for speaking out about sexual harassment. The two have been at the forefront of efforts to convince the university that Mr. Jaeger had slept with or pressured students for sex, used illegal drugs with students, and regularly crossed personal and professional boundaries while insisting, incorrectly, that his bosses condoned the behavior.

The magazine’s recognition was a sign of how much has changed in the months since the Harvey Weinstein scandal mobilized women to tell their stories of sexual harassment through the #MeToo movement. And it was empowering to Rochester undergraduates whose chalked complaints on a campus sidewalk in September about the university’s handling of the Jaeger case had been washed away and rechalked, Ms. Kidd said in an interview on Friday.

“Students had been feeling very demoralized after an entire semester had gone by with no meaningful changes,” she said. “For them to see the world cares about these issues and that women in academia are fighting for them has been a large morale boost.”

Ms. Kidd began her fight in 2007, when she was a 24-year-old graduate student working with Mr. Jaeger, who she said had pressured her to rent a room in his apartment and then made her life miserable with persistent sexual harassment. Now, she said, as an assistant professor in his department, she’s fighting for her students so they’ll be able to work in a harassment-free environment.

Richard N. Aslin said that was his motive, too, when he and Ms. Cantlon came to the defense of Ms. Kidd and others with similar complaints.

Mr. Aslin, one of the most prominent and respected researchers in the department, had recruited Ms. Kidd to Rochester. After he and Ms. Cantlon filed a sexual-harassment complaint against Mr. Jaeger, the university sided with Mr. Jaeger, finding that he hadn’t violated university policy on harassment and discrimination. The professors appealed, and the university upheld its decision.

But Rochester administrators made a few missteps that contributed to a sense that they were being insensitive to the accusers.

While the case was still being investigated, the institution promoted Mr. Jaeger to full professor — a fact that he broadcast on social media. Mr. Seligman later said it was a mistake to promote him before the investigation had been completed.

The president also apologized for raising questions about the complaints by bringing up the discredited Rolling Stone article describing an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia.

Mr. Jaeger has declined to comment on the lawsuit. A university spokeswoman said on Friday that the university would withhold further comment until an independent investigation is completed. Led by Mary Jo White, a former U.S. attorney, it will examine the issues involved in the federal complaint, including the original allegations, the university’s response, and its policies and procedures involving sexual harassment and misconduct, according to a statement by a special trustee committee.

About 115 current and former students, faculty members, and administrators have cooperated, the committee said. The investigation should be completed by early next month and its report published in full by January.

Strong Accusations

The plaintiffs argue that the investigation may not be comprehensive or balanced, because it won’t include testimony from many of the primary accusers. As long as their legal case against the university is pending, they say, they can’t be subjected to open-ended interviews by lawyers who are being paid by the university and report to its trustees.

Read the full lawsuit against the U. of Rochester here.

The lawsuit suggests that the president and provost might have been slow to find fault with Mr. Jaeger’s alleged sexual relationships because of their own histories.

While president, Mr. Seligman was “intimately involved” with a woman who was then an associate dean at the business school, the plaintiffs noted. They married in 2013.

The provost, the lawsuit contended, is similarly involved with someone who works for him.

In his statement to his cabinet and trustees, Mr. Seligman said he was personally disappointed “by certain assertions made in the lawsuit about Rob’s and my personal life. I will not engage in a point-by-point refutation here, but I will say that we plan to vigorously defend ourselves against all false allegations.”

While the lawsuit is aimed at top officials of the university, it also makes strong accusations against Mr. Jaeger. “Among other things, Jaeger had slept with graduate students, pressed others for sex, took them to hot tub retreats where drugs were used, asked graduate students to procure sexual partners for him, and made frequent overtly sexual remarks in professional settings,” the lawsuit claim. Because of the “threatening and hostile” environment he created, at least 16 women altered their academic trajectories to avoid him, missing out on educational opportunities, it said.

In September, Mr. Jaeger apologized for the “emotional turmoil” he said his undergraduates must have been feeling after reading about the complaints against him. That month he was placed on leave, and the university appointed the special counsel to investigate its handling of the claims against him.

Meanwhile, the department of brain and cognitive sciences, known as BCS, is bitterly divided, with some researchers saying privately that the lawsuit has not only damaged morale but also hurt their ability to recruit students.

The plaintiffs said they went public with their complaints only after exhausting all internal appeals over an 18-month period.

In August, eight current and former faculty members and graduate students filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the university, Mr. Jaeger and other officials.

The complaint referred to Mr. Jaeger as a “narcissistic and manipulative sexual predator” whose behavior had caused 11 women to alter their career paths to avoid him. That number grew to 16 in the lawsuit filed on Friday.

“In the three months since the EEOC complaint was filed, little has improved at BCS for women,” the lawsuit states. “Jaeger, on paid leave, continues to work at BCS, move around campus and interact with students and faculty apparently as if nothing has happened.”

The professors who complained about his alleged behavior, the lawsuit says, were retaliated against by administrators who read their private emails without permission and selectively pulled from them to portray them as “gossips and troublemakers” who were out to smear Mr. Jaeger’s reputation.

“Some have been forced out of BCS. Others, knowing they have no future there, are seeking to leave.”

‘The Whisper Network’

After the EEOC complaint was filed, university officials said it was based largely on hearsay.

“Some of the allegations [in the complaint] are totally false,” Mr. Seligman told Mother Jones magazine, which first reported on the EEOC complaint. “Some of the allegations, I believe, are probably true. The question is, do they rise to a level where they are actionable under our standard?”

Amid campus protests and a hunger strike by one student, public furor continued to mount. Alumni withheld donations, and an online petition calling for Mr. Jaeger to be fired has drawn nearly 40,000 signatures.

Last month more than 400 faculty members at colleges across the country and abroad signed an open letter to Rochester trustees, condemning the university for its handling of the case. The signatories said they “cannot in good conscience” encourage students to work or study at a university that supported a “predator” and intimidated his accusers.

Among those who said Mr. Jaeger’s presence disrupted the course of her career was Kristen S. Gorman, a graduate of Rochester’s department of brain and cognitive sciences. The open letter, she said, was simply a way for scholars to say out loud the kinds of things she had been quietly warned about when she was applying to graduate schools. Certain programs had a reputation for harboring harassers, she said.

“The best way I can explain it,” said Ms. Gorman, “is that this is the whisper network screaming.”

In a column in the journal Nature last month, a former graduate student, Laurel Issen, described how she and other graduate students in Mr. Jaeger’s department had avoided him because of “frequent sexual innuendos, pressure to have intimate relationships, and other unprofessional behavior.”

She said that Rochester had been given her name as someone who had experienced harassment, but that it didn’t contact her until after it had cleared Mr. Jaeger and its decision had been appealed.

“Administrators can reasonably assume that, if they ignore claims for long enough, they will never be held to account,” she wrote. “People like me graduate or leave without a degree, the statute of limitations passes, and the harassers get promoted.”

In a series of email exchanges obtained by The Chronicle, faculty members in the department expressed growing frustration with the administration’s failure to discipline Mr. Jaeger. Administrators, meanwhile, urged his critics to put the matter behind them after two investigations had cleared him of any violations.

In a memo in November 2016, the provost, Mr. Clark, reiterated that the university had made its decision, and that it was final.

Mr. Jaeger is “a valued member of our faculty,” wrote the provost, who has achieved “tremendous academic success … including being promoted with tenure in 2013 and his promotion to full professor in 2016.”

That was the final straw for Mr. Aslin, who said he resigned in protest the following month after 33 years of working at Rochester and helping building the department.

Given the sensitivity over allegations of sexual misconduct, universities should take extra precautions to treat complainants with respect and acknowledge the bitter feelings that are likely to result from decisions they disagree with, say higher-education experts.

“You can’t expect people to put down the sword and say, ‘Oh, well, we lost,’” says Peter F. Lake, a professor of law and director of the Center for Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University.

He expects more responses like the open letter, especially if accusers feel they’re being ignored.

With the fallout from the lawsuit adding to the friction at Rochester, Ms. Kidd says she is looking for another job.

“I was afraid people would see me as a troublemaker and that I’d never get another job in science,” she says. But, she says, she has job interviews lined up and is feeling optimistic about her future.

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.