When Rep. Jackie Speier first glimpsed a damning confidential report outlining a sexual-harassment investigation of Timothy F. Slater, conducted by the University of Arizona when he was an associate professor of astronomy there, the U.S. congresswoman was deeply disturbed.
Ms. Speier, a Democrat from California, said the problem wasn’t just his inappropriate conduct — which, according to the report, involved a pattern of sexually charged jokes and open leering at female students, and at least one lunchtime trip with a graduate student to a strip club. It was equally appalling, the lawmaker said, that Mr. Slater was still held in high regard in an academic setting and eventually won a prestigious job at another university.
In December an anonymous whistle-blower provided Ms. Speier’s office with the report on Mr. Slater, who spent seven years at Arizona. In 2005 the university found that Mr. Slater had violated its sexual-harassment policy. He was required to undergo training on avoiding offensive behavior.
He’s now in his eighth year as a professor at the University of Wyoming, where he holds an endowed chair in science education. Last month Ms. Speier gave a scathing speech on the floor of the House of Representatives in which she revealed details of the accusations against Mr. Slater and sharply criticized colleges for not taking harassment allegations against professors seriously enough.
Mr. Slater told The Chronicle last month that the lawmaker’s portrayal of him was unfair, given that there have been no recorded complaints about his behavior in 11 years and that he has since changed his ways. Wyoming knew about the accusations of sexual misconduct and hired him anyway, he said. Chad R. Baldwin, a spokesman for the university, confirmed that Wyoming officials were aware of allegations but said they did not have any details of the investigation.
Mr. Baldwin provided The Chronicle with an email sent to state legislative leaders in January, the morning after Ms. Speier’s speech. Christopher Boswell, vice president for governmental and community affairs at the university, wrote that before hiring Mr. Slater, officials had been advised by Arizona about “an issue with banter in the workplace” and told that it had been addressed. After the investigative report was made public by Ms. Speier, Mr. Boswell wrote, it became clear that Mr. Slater’s past conduct “was more serious” than officials had thought.
But Mr. Slater said in an interview that he had been as transparent as possible. He didn’t discuss specific allegations with Wyoming, he said, because they were confidential. He said he didn’t even know about some of the claims in the report, as he wasn’t asked about all of them during the investigation.
Congress has a role to play in combating harassment, Ms. Speier says, because colleges and universities receive billions of dollars — much of it research funding — from the federal government each year. She’s working on legislation, and one approach she says she’s considering would involve agencies like the National Science Foundation and the lucrative grants they disburse.
The Chronicle spoke with Ms. Speier about her focus on harassment in the sciences. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. You’ve crafted legislation on sexual-violence issues in the past, namely in the military. What led you to harassment in the sciences?
A. It really came to my attention because one of my staff members is a Ph.D. in oceanography, and she has a very ubiquitous network of colleagues. She brought this incident to my attention at the University of Arizona, and I was outraged by it.
Like many people, I assumed that in academic fields there’s the highest level of conduct. I was really disappointed with how the university handled the case and the fact that the professor moved on to yet another university.
Q. Since your office started paying more attention to these cases, what have you learned about the state of things when it comes to harassment and academe?
A. It’s worse than I had imagined. We’ve had more than 40 women contact my office directly to talk about incidents that they had endured. Experience tells me that academia is just tolerating it, just like they tolerated rape on campuses for decades. It isn’t until money’s at stake that they get serious about dealing with it.
Q. Do you get the sense that academe has a bigger harassment problem than other workplaces do?
A. There’s no question that it is both more prevalent and not properly investigated on college campuses. It’s a similar thing in the military. Both institutions follow a separate set of principles: There’s a uniform code of military justice, which is a separate law, and within academia, there’s a code of conduct at each campus. In many respects, I think they see themselves as not subject to the laws that apply to everyone else in civilian society.
Q. During your address on the House floor last month, you mentioned a plan to introduce legislation that would require colleges to share the findings of Title IX investigations when a professor accused of harassment is looking for a new job. What was your original thinking behind that idea?
A. It’s called transparency. I don’t think that it serves the public interest to investigate, determine that someone has conducted themselves in a manner that violates the law, and then put it in a lockbox.
But beyond that, we’re looking at exploring what’s probably the most effective way of dealing with this kind of conduct, and that is the flow of money. If the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the NIH — if the spigot of money was somehow turned off after someone engaged in sexually aberrant behavior, then universities would take this more seriously.
Q. Can you give me a sense of how you might “turn off the spigot,” as you said?
A. I can’t because we just haven’t devised it yet. We’re going to speak with the various agencies that presently develop the grant applications to do that.
Q. After your speech, Mr. Slater told The Chronicle that he had reformed his behavior since the incidents at the University of Arizona, which took place in the early 2000s. What’s your response to that?
A. I have no idea whether Professor Slater has reformed or not. People can make mistakes and learn from them. His comments since the report became public, however, do not reflect well on him. He has misspoken or misled reporters on a number of occasions in stories I have read. Again, he may say he was misquoted, but at some point you have to take responsibility for your actions.
Let’s just be clear here. We’re talking about conduct involving a student that is not befitting a professor. Now you don’t need to be in a college setting to understand how that’s inappropriate. But the presumption is that, intellectually, their level of development and education is more enhanced than the average person, who would see this as inappropriate conduct.
What’s also important to underscore here is that it absolutely destroys the lives of great young talent. They leave the study area completely, or they suck it up to be able to promote their careers. In any case, it leaves a lasting scar. So not only is it illegal; the government is funding the research of the individuals who conduct themselves in that manner. That’s something that offends me greatly, and I think offends most taxpayers.
Q. What kind of response have you gotten, if any, from the former Arizona students involved in the Slater case?
A. Responses from Professor Slater’s victims have been swift and filled with gratitude and relief. So many of them have been scarred for life. Many of them had lost faith in a system they had come to believe was rigged in favor of the perpetrator. They have renewed faith in the system.
Q. Getting any proposal through Congress would be an uphill battle. Could you see the research agencies acting on their own to curb harassment?
A. We want to see the culture change. There are lots of ways to change the culture. You can change the culture with legislation, with agency regulation, with university policies. I want to see all of that happening.
Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.
