Just a month ago I shared my reflections with Berkeley News on the 2015 film Spotlight and the history of the Vatican cover-ups of clerical sex abuse of young children and adolescents over the past decades. A few weeks later, Spotlight got its much-deserved Oscar for best picture of the year. Meanwhile, another Oscar contender, Lady … Continue reading »
sexual harassment
The paradox of over and under punishment: Reflections on President Napolitano’s recent measures
The revelations regarding lenient treatment to senior Berkeley administrators who violated the University’s sexual harassment policy underscores one of the great contradictions of our time: we are a society of both over and under punishment. Toward those on the economic margins, U.S. federal and state criminal law and criminal justice policy, as well as administrative … Continue reading »
A dean’s reflection on campus sexual misconduct cases
Co-Chair, UCB Coordinated Community Review Team on Sexual Misconduct At this year’s Academy Awards Vice President Biden asked all of us to no longer be silent bystanders to sexual assault on campus. So here we find ourselves at Berkeley watching from the sidelines, in a silence that speaks volumes to those around us. Fleming, Marcy, … Continue reading »
Berkeley’s handling of sexual harassment is a disgrace
What more is there to say? Another case where a senior member of the Berkeley faculty, this time Berkeley Law Dean Sujit Choudhry, was found to have violated the campus’s sexual harassment policy, and was given a slap on the wrists by the administration. Astronomer Geoff Marcy’s punishment for years of harassment of students was a … Continue reading »
For women in science, it’s still chilly out there
Biological anthropologist Kate Clancy — who is getting media attention for a poorly acknowledged fact of life in field science: the chilling effect of sexual harassment — writes as follows: Survival in field-based academic science can’t just be about who can put up with or witness abuse the longest – that is not an appropriate … Continue reading »