‘My Professional World Has Gotten Smaller’

The shadows cast by sexual assault and harassment loom long after the behavior itself stops. That message has echoed across the #MeToo movement, and it has resounded with particular clarity in academe. Women who have experienced harassment have described its often-invisible professional repercussions — skipped conferences, spurned research opportunities, fractured personal networks.

The Chronicle spoke with three women about how harassment and assault have altered their professional paths. They outlined the practical steps they have taken to navigate fraught situations, and explained the personal toll of coming to terms with what they have experienced.

Janet D. Stemwedel, a professor and chair of San Jose State University’s philosophy department, has described being sexually assaulted during graduate school on Twitter. As part of the governing board of the Philosophy of Science Association, she is working to develop an antiharassment policy for its biennial conference. “When I go to conferences,” she says, “I have to look at the program to see whether the session I want to go to is one where my harasser is one of the speakers.”

Seo-Young Chu, an associate professor of English at Queens College of the City University of New York, says she was raped by her first graduate adviser at Stanford when she was 21 years old. “I spend 80 percent of the time in a panic thinking I have to flee this profession,” she says, “even though I know I love so much of this job.”

Whitney, who asked to use only her first name for fear of online attacks, left her graduate program in the fourth year after a professor kissed and touched her, she says. Immediately after the incident, she says, “almost every professor treated me like a pariah.” She now works outside of academe, but teaches an online class and keeps up with philosophy, her field of study. “I do not have my Ph.D. yet,” she says. “It’s something that I still really want.”

While the women spoke of opportunities sacrificed and careers rerouted, they also expressed optimism that the reckoning caused by the #MeToo movement will have a lasting impact. “We’re going to be pretty hard to dislodge from the power structures in our discipline,” says Stemwedel, “and we’re going to fight like hell to make things better.”

Julia Schmalz is a senior multimedia producer. She tells stories with photos, audio, and video. Follow her on Twitter @jschmalz09, or email her at julia.schmalz@chronicle.com