Failure to Act: Second Verse, A Little Bit Louder and A Little Bit Worse

HAPPY 10th ANNIVERSARY to this long-standing session that has given platform to so many voices and inspired studies that have floodlighted an uncomfortable reality. The description for this session invites abstracts pertinent to many dimensions within the topic of equality, diversity, and inclusivity. Bravo to the convenors session description which includes the invitation: “Reports on situations that you may have experienced considering recent socio-political changes and attacks on EDI activities are encouraged.” One of our deepest holes and most challenging items within EDI is the courage to publicize personal experiences, and yet, this is one of the most powerful fronts available to us. The perpetrator is betting their victims will remain silent, based on fear of Revenge, Retaliation, Retribution, Requital and Reprisal, what we dub the R-Quintic factor. Telling the most recent chapter in my story puts fear where it belongs – on the perpetrator.

We learn about a university department head, whose actions against a female scientist escalated from harassment to verbal and attempted physical abuse, to plotting and carrying out contamination of her lab facility, to ultimately firing her and her research team without cause. The latter action left another female professor without the lab facility she depended on for her research, thus forcing her departure, and left a new female assistant professor without the collaborating lab partnership she planned on. The university failed to act and protect. Three years later, a federal warrant was filed for the female scientist’s arrest by the university police. She was jailed on re-entering the US. She thought it must be something related to EDI, or perhaps the word “climate” in her publications. A criminal lawyer readily assembled the facts and proved unlawful arrest. The case was dismissed and sealed. Here we discuss how the university’s failure to act and protect served to further embolden a bully.