• @cdb_77
    CDB_77

    Bij hoogleraar B. moesten de vrouwen hakken dragen

    Onderzoek machtsmisbruik en wangedrag Een hoogleraar werd een half jaar geleden gedwongen te vertrekken bij de UvA. Wat speelde er de afgelopen jaren bij de sectie arbeidsrecht? Zijn bijnaam was ‘Een acht voor een nacht’.

    ►https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2019/05/14/bij-hoogleraar-b-moesten-de-vrouwen-hakken-dragen-a3960238

    #harcèlement_sexuel #violences_sexuelles #université #Pays-Bas #Amsterdam #Université_d'Amsterdam #UvA #impunité #sexisme #Prof_B

    Avec ce commentaire reçu par email :

    NRC est le quotidien du soir (plutôt de droite) qui a fait une enquête. Le type a dû démissionner mais pas de procédure formelle.
    Il a fait un procès pour que le journal ne publie pas son nom et le juge lui a donné raison (la presse ici ne publie que les initiales dans les affaires juridiques). Ils ont mis le titre d’un de ses articles donc l’est facile à retrouver.

    Et aussi reçu par email :

    Everybody, and I mean absolutely everbody, must read it!!!!

    I knew that much was wrong at the UvA, but this goes beyond what even I could imagine. If you read this story, you can label as pure cynicism everything the CvB has said in recent years about the importance of diversity, and taking discrimination and abuse of power seriously. With this article, the hypocrisy of the whole system blows up in our face, including how the top-down hierarchy feeds abuse of power and contributes to a culture in which the powerful are always protected, regardless of their behavior.

    It is UvA’s Weinstein case, and we should all treat it as such.

    Our current CvB has done NOTHING in reaction to this case. They did not properly inform the academic community. WE STILL DON’T KNOW HOW MANY WOMEN WERE HARMED AND EXACTLY IN WHAT WAY! WE STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPEND TO THESE WOMEN AFTERWARDS. They did not demand further investigation into how it was possible that such things could happen for more than 15 years (see last quote).

    They reacted to the recent reports about abuse of power at Dutch universties by simply pointing to our “Vertrouwenspersonen”.

    They did not include anything about complaint procedures in the latest policy papers on diversity.

    The conclusion of this piece about the UvA can only be: Nobody who is abused, humiliated, discriminated against or sexually or otherwise harassed can count on the University of Amsterdam for any kind of protection.

    It is all so utterly ridiculous and depressing.

    Edgar du Perron, who was our hope in 2015, who had the trust of the whole academic community, also contributed to keeping these things under the carpet. Edgar du Perron. If he is part of a system of abuse, we need much more then committees and demonstrations to end it.

    What do people of colour have to endure, if this is normalized behavior towards white women?

    Here are some quotes from the piece that I have translated into English. Enjoy!

    "Women must wear high heels, have long and painted fingernails, B. thinks. To colleagues without make-up he says: “Are you sick?” or “Don’t be so boring. Or are you pregnant?”

    To female colleagues he has said:

    “You should do position 69 some time” (Dutch: “Je zou het eens op z’n Frans doen.”

    “I jerked off above you.”

    “Among students B. had the nickname ’An eight for a night’”

    “A number of colleagues receive porn images and films from him. It leads to unease and tense relationships with some female colleagues who don’t know what to do any more. A complaint about indesirable behaviour toward a male superior leads nowhere.”

    "A female colleague who reports that B. had groped beneath her clothes in her pubic area is not taken seriously by the executives among whom Verhulp. The university physician (bedrijfsarts) and the UvA head of HR are not impressed, either. “It’s your word against his”, they tell her."

    "There is a low willingness to file a complaint among other female colleagues. The fear of B. is simply too big. “I rather quit myself than file a complaint against him”, one of them says."

    “Even the knowledge that B. sends porn pictures to men and women does not incite the superiors who do know about it to take action. This is why they don’t discover that he also spreads audiovisual material of him in an aroused state. The individuals receiving the material sometimes suspect that they are not the only ones, but don’t talk about it. Fear and shame prevail, sometimes because they have fallen for his advances (in the past).”

    “His behavior at the UvA but also at conferences inside and outside the Netherlands leads to a continuous stream of rumors, reaching also the receptions (borrels) of the board of directors of the UvA. But only extremely rarely does anybody call B. to order, not even if somebody has complained. Regardless if the dean or the head of department is called Paul van der Heijden, Jit Peters or Edgar du Perron; no executive calls B. into his office to talk to him about his behavior. Let alone start an investigation.”

    “On wednesday, October 31, the UvA receives the final report. The conclusion: B. is guilty of transgressive behavior en because of him there was a unsafe working climate for a long time. But an army of lawyers of the UvA and of the external partners Boontje Advocaten don’t see the ultimate proof to fire B. immediately.”

    “The university and B. quickly agree that the name of the professor will not appear in the communication of the UvA about his departure. This causes a lot of irritation among many concerned persons. This irritation increases in the following months when it becomes clear that the university does not try to get in touch with former executives or other persons involved in order to learn from the past.”

    CDB_77
    • @cdb_77
      CDB_77

      Témoignage d’une enseignante-chercheuse à l’Université d’Amsterdam...
      Elle raconte son expérience. C’était 2013. Elle ne parle que maintenant.
      Et elle accuse l’institution, l’UvA de ne l’avoir pas mise en condition d’en parler, de dénoncer :

      So there’s been a lot of talk at my institution recently about harassment and the lack of response from the institution

      Le thread, que je copie-colle, on ne sait jamais :

      There is now much collective hand ringing, promises of more robust complaints procedures, and we are being urged to report incidents.
      They will be taken seriously. We are told.
      I have never spoken about what happened to me, I am embarrassed about it. Ashamed. It isn’t really that bad I tell myself. It is part of the job I tell myself. I should be able to handle it.
      This is what happened to me and why I am not convinced about the promises of my institution for change. This is my story. My story involves a student.
      It is the end of my first year on a tenure-track job. It is July 2013. We have moved countries and I am happy to finally have a permanent tenure-track job that pays enough to live.
      I am succeeding in academia.
      The only training I have ever received was at my previous UK university where we were always told to never close the door of your office.
      However people seem to do things differently here. There seems to be more of a culture that the students and faculty are equals. We are all adults and can you know sort stuff out. Have a coffee, a chat, reach a compromise.
      It is the end of my first year of my new job. My fourth year of supervising MA dissertations. This is not my first rodeo, I know what I am doing.
      I have one student who has struggled throughout. I have done more than I should. I have given him a question, an outline, a literature review. I have refined his project.
      I think this is what I am supposed to do, rather than say this student is not good enough I feel it is my responsibility to carry him over the line.
      Throughout the process the student has sought my attention for the smallest thing, sending email after email with irrelevant and often intimate information.
      I tell myself this is normal. How things are done here. People are open. They share. This is part of my pastoral role. My colleagues seem very involved with their students too.
      The student hands in his thesis. It is not good enough to pass. I am not surprised by this. The student has the chance to re-write over the summer.
      I invite the student to my office to explain that he has not passed and that he has the possibility to re-write. I am handing him a lifeline. I am saving him and his MA. I think.
      I carefully go through what he has to do to make the thesis passable.
      But I have to tell the student that he cannot have the same amount of input from me.
      The re-write is supposed to be unsupervised and anyway we are going on the first holiday we have had in three years. It is the summer.
      The student gets angry. He blames me. He says it is my fault. He says I haven’t supervised him properly.
      My immediate desire is to do what women are conditioned to do and to make myself small. Make the raised angry voice stop. To please.
      However my sense of professional respect kicks in and I try to calmly explain to the student what the role of a supervisor is.
      I tell him an MA thesis is an independent piece of work. That I have already done more than I should to get him this far.
      The student pushes back, getting angrier and angrier, growing larger and larger, redder and redder, sitting across my desk from me.
      I then say something that I have for years berated myself for saying although I also now know this is what I am conditioned to do, blame myself.
      To try and get my point across about the role of a supervisor I tell this student my job is not to be his mother.
      At this he leaps from his chair and starts screaming down at me that I am his mother. “You are my mother! That is your job! Your job is to be my mother!”
      Over and over again. “You are my mother! That is your job! Your job is to be my mother!”
      “You are my mother! That is your job! Your job is to be my mother!”
      He stands there bellowing down at me sat in my chair. 1.90m tall and 100kg. I ask him to leave.
      “If you are going to behave like this and shout at me I would ask you to leave” I manage to say.

      ▻https://twitter.com/PollyWilkins/status/1134043467863265280?s=19

      CDB_77
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