Of Academic Hierarchies and Harassment | by Paula Chakravartty | Feb, 2022 | Medium

I am an interdisciplinary Media Studies scholar, trying to focus on writing a book that brings some historical context about the violent history of U.S. political and economic interventions in the global South to what are often parochial debates in the U.S. about social media and the end times. This last week, my writing on these macroeconomic and institutional histories has been interrupted by a steady bombardment in my own micro social media world with updates about an unfurling #MeToo controversy that has hit me close to “home.” By “home” I mean the university — my place of work since I was a young graduate student in the early-1990s at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; beginning in 1999 I have been a professor across three such “home” universities — UCSD, UMass Amherst and NYU.

The controversy currently consuming academia involves allegations by women graduate students against the senior white male Anthropologist, John Comaroff. He is accused of engaging in sexual harassment over a long and celebrated career at Harvard University and, prior to that, the University of Chicago. The issuing of mild sanctions against Comaroff by Harvard led to the publication of two letters published in the Harvard Crimson and the Chronicle of Higher Education, signed by a total of 90 famous faculty from within and outside of Harvard. Both letters laud the equally famous Comaroff, as “an excellent colleague, advisor and committed university citizen” and “a devoted and accomplished scholar.” The majority of Harvard signatories, marquee names in the liberal media establishment, retracted their signatures from their original letter of support for Comaroff, stating that they had “failed to appreciate the impact that this would have on our students”.

The physical and emotional violence of sexual harassment deserves notoriety and redress, but we must remember that if the sexual harassment in question happens in the diffuse workplace of the academy — whether in offices, classrooms, conference hotels or in bars and coffee shops — then the sexual harassment is by definition workplace harassment.

This includes the hierarchies and cultures of stardom and bullying that define but extend beyond sexual harassment. That is, we have to recognize, as the letters of support for Comaroff do not, that there is a blurry line between the manifestations of sexual harassment that are non-sexual — the benevolent intimidation, the professional bullying, the explicit and implicit threats of reputational retaliation that are likely more common and certainly more insidious dimensions of workplace harassment. It is this very blurriness in the form that harassment takes that is not expressed in an overtly sexual manner and the cumulative toll it takes on one’s sense of confidence and competence that is distracting me from completing my book, a manuscript that, even before it is published will be reviewed by famous peers, that has already taken me much too long to write.

Many of the faculty who have signed this new genre of laudatory letters defending their famous tenured friends from complaints by unknown students may not have themselves committed sexual harassment. But maybe they have looked the other way when they have encountered the more quotidian dimensions of workplace harassment. The failure of many of these folks, at the apex of the rigid academic hierarchy, to consider how their actions “impact students” speaks to the very blurriness between sexual and workplace harassment maintained by powerful patronage networks. It is such networks that flash into visibility with the publication of such letters.

For me this blurriness and the institutional blinders that enable it are personal. One of the prominent signatories of the second (non-Harvard) letter of support for Comaroff published by the Chronicle last week, Arjun Appadurai, is a recently retired senior faculty member in a department where exactly 49% of my job at NYU is based. This is the Department of Media, Culture and Communication (MCC). While it is common for faculty in many universities to have appointments across multiple departments and schools, few have such an oddly configured percentage appointment. How to explain this difference of 1%? The answer would be that I am 1% shy of being a fully equal member of a department within my own field of expertise because exactly 10 years ago, Arjun Appadurai successfully and unjustly derailed my career by mobilizing colleagues in the Department of MCC to deny me tenure on the grounds that I was a nobody in his worlds. His worlds are Anthropology and Area Studies (South Asian Studies as opposed to Comaroff’s African Studies), both small tight-knit fields where “Senior” gatekeepers wield disproportionate power. I did not feature in either of these fields for him.

Thus, what is usually a pro forma process for a faculty member coming with tenure from another institution, became political intrigue circling around Appadurai’s status and power. As Arjun Appadurai would admit to me in person later, his opposition to my joining the department as an equal had little to do with the quality or quantity of my research — indeed he barely knew what I studied or any of my written work; instead, his opposition had everything to do with my lack of “pedigree”. The pedigree question, always salient in elite universities, is of special salience for upper caste Indian academics like Appadurai who police their ranks with a ferocity that most of our American colleagues find mystifying and jarring¹. Appadurai couldn’t recognize me as a member of his world — I hadn’t been “trained” by someone he knew. My letters of recommendation came from people and departments, even universities, outside his elite and narrow frame of reference. How could I, a public university-trained South Asian woman outside his purview, working on media in South Asia (and elsewhere) be permitted entry into HIS department without HIS explicit blessing? How dare I presume to take up a position that could have been filled by one of the many young, qualified candidates whose success had been authorized through him, his friends and their powerful patronage networks?

Suffice it to say, I managed to arrive at NYU anyway and am thankful for my 51% appointment at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study where I have found both intellectual and social sustenance. Nevertheless, after my arrival at NYU, Arjun Appadurai continued to harass, bully, manipulate, and gaslight me both in public and private. Over the last 8 years, Appadurai has repeatedly dismissed me as irrelevant; I have been yelled at in faculty meetings and publicly attacked by him in outbursts on email lists and social media, even as he also privately humiliated me in emails and texts to colleagues. My “crime” has been my disobedience, my unwillingness to accept “my place.” For that I have been unimaginatively labeled “dangerous,” or a “witch” who simultaneously conducts “witch hunts.” Beyond the fury directed at me, graduate students in the Department have been threatened with the retraction of letters of recommendation if they wanted to put me on their committee, and far-flung colleagues have conveyed to me disparaging comments made about me out of the blue.

There are few avenues of redress for these modes of workplace harassment by rank, of say senior faculty over more junior and contingent faculty. Just as the institutionally opaque Title IX office consistently fails to hold most senior tenured faculty members accountable for sexual harassment, often protecting the interests of the university over claimants, it does very little in the way of accountability for workplace harassment of faculty by other faculty members. While the hierarchy of faculty rank translates to significant power differentials in everyday work life, our senior colleagues are not formally our bosses or our supervisors, which means that there are few channels for reporting when we face workplace harassment that is not expressed sexually.

I was not surprised when I saw Arjun Appadurai’s signature, alongside the many other famous names in support of Comaroff and against the claims made by the three women graduate students who have much to lose. I was and am angry. It has taken me 10 years to write about my experience publicly. Why, you might ask? One might logically assume it had something to do with shame or fear of #MeToo backlash and social media scrutiny. But much more than shame, I feel anger and exhaustion that I have held back because the power of these “famous” scholars has a long life in a profession where you are eternally evaluated by those who are situated above you in rank or whose name carries more weight than your own. This is precisely why the harm to the graduate students who face both sexual and workplace harassment is so life altering. Because the ill will of your “Senior” harasser poses an unknown danger at every turn — potentially through every grant or fellowship you might apply for, every conference you hope to attend, every article or book manuscript that you hope to publish, and of course every job and promotion you might ever seek. Should you make it through tenure, which gives you the unique privilege of being able to speak out on many injustices, as I have tried to do in my career in small ways, even speaking out publicly against a senior colleague, even a retired colleague, is risky and professionally unwise.

Sexual and workplace harassment is above all else, exhausting. It is exhausting to experience and, as feminists like Sara Ahmed have written, the bureaucracy of complaint seems designed to wear you down. In doing so, it affects your ability to do your research, to present your ideas to your peers, and to publish in your own authoritative voice. Instead, you are forced to document details, repeat your story, and you must write endless memos and in most cases all of it results in nothing or little more than the mildest of rebukes. This exhausting process explains why so many graduate students or contingent or junior scholars, who face both sexual and workplace harassment, drop out of the academy, and why those of us who contend with it later in our careers slow down or take different tracks. I understand the cost of this exhaustion has starkly different material outcomes for the much smaller percentage of us with tenure in the university. It is precisely why the letters of support siding with famous faculty against students triggers such palpable dismay for those of us who are inspired by this generation of students questioning the blurry lines of sexual and workplace harassment. Their bravery illuminates in a harsh light the behaviors that diminish all of our work at the university.

It seems that the time is right for us to do more than fight these battles individually on the legal and social media fronts. We must also organize collectively against sexual and workplace harassment within and across our universities to challenge the legitimacy and power of the pernicious patronage networks of “star” faculty.

Paula Chakravartty, Associate Professor, Gallatin School of Individualized Study & Department of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University