This Professor Was Accused of Bullying Grad Students. Now He’s Being Banned From Teaching.

A Wayne State University professor whose alleged bullying and verbal abuse of graduate students was first reported by The Chronicle in May has been banned from teaching classes.

Barrett Watten, an English professor and poet, was found to have “engaged in a hostile environment/sexual harassment against” one graduate student; sent inappropriate emails and voice mails to another; and “engaged in targeted hostility” toward a third, Stephanie Hartwell, dean of Wayne State’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, wrote in a letter to Watten last month.

The claims, Hartwell wrote, had been verified by an independent investigation commissioned by Wayne State, which came “in the context of a much longer history of incendiary behavior.” In addition to being relieved of teaching responsibilities, Watten was barred from working with graduate students on their thesis or dissertation committees. His office, Hartwell wrote, would also be removed from the university’s English department, though he would retain his pay.

Hartwell allowed Watten to continue serving as chair of two dissertation committees but requested that he relinquish his position on two other committees.

For Watten’s accusers, the dean’s decision comes as a vindication, an official acknowledgment of what they say was a pattern of abusive behavior that the university had allowed to run unchecked for years. But to Watten, the letter capped off an unjust process that was weaponized when his accusers posted the document online.

Watten said he could not comment on specific details of the investigation’s findings due to Ferpa, the federal privacy law covering students, but added that the Wayne State chapter of the American Association of University Professors had filed a grievance against Hartwell’s decision on his behalf. The union’s grievance argues that “there has been no hearing or finding” that Watten had violated university policy. It also requests that Hartwell’s letter be rescinded and that Watten “be restored forthwith to his office and all teaching and other duties, including new duties as may be assigned to faculty.”

In an interview with The Chronicle, Watten faulted the findings described in Hartwell’s letter as “false or inaccurate as represented” on procedural grounds.

Watten said he had been interviewed twice by the independent investigator, who did not follow up on supplementary documentation that he had sent her. “The due process here was completely deficient,” Watten said. “I did not have any opportunity to comment on her conclusions or assertions about this.”

Watten’s methods have long been controversial. Colleagues previously told The Chronicle that he was known to launch into profanity-laced tirades that were made all the more ominous by his imposing physical stature. Watten sees such critiques as rooted in a misunderstanding of his approach to his discipline. “I teach the avant-garde, and am challenging in class. All supposedly good things,” he wrote in an email to The Chronicle. He said that cultural and disciplinary fault lines in Wayne State’s English department have worked against him since he arrived at the university, in 1995.

Joseph A. Golden, Watten’s lawyer, also acknowledged his client’s reputation in previous Chronicle coverage.

“Wayne State knew about Barrett, knew about his character and his personality when he was tenured,” Golden said. “That was fine with them, but now they have their head in the sand when it comes to protecting him, a tenured professor.”

Not Informed

Molli Spalter, a graduate student in the English department whose complaint resulted in a finding that Watten had engaged in hostile-environment sexual harassment, said that while she wishes Watten were not allowed to remain on the faculty, she is largely pleased with Hartwell’s decision.

“Although I am satisfied that he is not allowed to stalk the hallways of the English department at Wayne State, I am deeply upset that there is no mechanism for removing him completely from the university and from getting him off of the payroll,” Spalter told The Chronicle. “I didn’t want another woman to fall prey to his behavior. And it seems now that at least in one arena, he will not be able to terrorize women anymore.”

Spalter said the message she had received from Watten and university administrators before the investigation was that “his behavior was normative within the academic community.” Wayne State officials, she said, had tried last spring to quell public complaints about the professor.

Also filing a complaint against Watten was Spalter’s husband, Isaac Pickell, whose allegations resulted in a finding that Watten had engaged in “targeted hostility” against him. (Pickell tweeted in May that he had been charged with nonacademic misconduct for removing papers from the wall near Watten’s office.)

This fall the university told Spalter, Pickell, and others who had filed complaints that Watten had been found guilty and that it would soon make a decision on what consequences would follow. Spalter was told she “would not be informed of those consequences because they were private.”

Spalter turned to her union, the Graduate Employees’ Organizing Committee, or GEOC, an affiliate of Michigan’s American Federation of Teachers.

The union had already been heavily involved in the Watten case, said Spalter and Sarah Walker, the union’s president. GEOC called for a formal investigation of Watten, provided meeting space for Spalter and others, and established connections with Wayne State and AFT Michigan officials.

Walker and GEOC supported the independent investigation, and intervened to ensure that Spalter and other students who’d filed complaints against the professor would have access to its findings. “It was a little up in the air as to whether that was something that would happen,” Walker said. Searching for answers, the GEOC filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Wayne State, and on November 19 received a response: a copy of the decision letter Hartwell had sent Watten, dated November 12.

Spalter later tweeted a highlighted copy of Hartwell’s letter, writing that “what began as a campaign fueled by fear has become one delivering justice.” Hartwell confirmed the letter’s authenticity to The Chronicle but declined to comment further. A Wayne State spokesman provided The Chronicle with a copy of the letter.

Barrett Watten was found guilty of violating policies & principles & “a much longer history of incendiary behavior” over the course of two decades and has been permanently removed from teaching & advising. What began as a campaign fueled by fear has become one delivering justice. pic.twitter.com/IyS1ZjKKYl

— Molli Spalter (@molli_spalter) November 26, 2019

A Public Airing

Two weeks later, Watten contested the university’s decision to provide GEOC with details of disciplinary action taken against him, arguing that it was a violation of FOIA law. “Wayne State’s decision to provide it is capricious and arbitrary, the result of biased interpretation of its own guidelines,” he wrote to Hartwell in a letter, dated December 10, that he shared with The Chronicle. “The publication of your confidential letter by the student was an outrage,” he wrote, “to me and to Wayne State University.”

Watten also took issue with Spalter’s subsequent publication of Hartwell’s letter on Twitter. The tweet, he argued, was an example of “cancel culture” and should not be treated by Wayne State as protected speech.

“Even though the students believe they can say anything they want about me on social media, on the blog, to The Chronicle, etc., I am limited by privacy issues in terms of what I can say about them,” he wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “So it is not really a ‘free speech’ situation — only one party gets ‘speech.’”

The tweet, he wrote, marked “a malicious act of personal vindication that is defamatory, harassing, and an exceptional violation of privacy. It substantially interferes with my ongoing right to defend myself from its accusations — in the absence of any formal charges against me, adequate opportunity to respond to its false statements and conclusions, or my own cross-examination of witnesses. Uploading it online is a statement of personal triumph in the current media environment, an act of malicious destruction of my work and reputation that bears no consideration for its personal effects outside Wayne State University.”

Watten then requested in his letter that Hartwell “make a public statement of regret for this unreasonable action.”

In response to a request for comment from Hartwell, Matt Lockwood, director of communications at Wayne State, provided a statement to The Chronicle via email.

“Wayne State received a FOIA request for the dean’s letter and responded as required by law,” Lockwood wrote. “Once a document is released pursuant to FOIA, the university has no control over its distribution. Wayne State did not share the letter publicly.”

Megan Zahneis is a reporting fellow for The Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter at @meganzahneis, or email her at megan.zahneis@chronicle.com.