Pogge is still at Yale, directing the Global Justice Program
Another one of these: prominent male academic has a long string of allegations of sexual harassment, proceeds on his way regardless.
Thomas Pogge, a protégé, is a Name in global ethics and one of the few who actually has an influence on policy debates.
A self-identified “thought leader”…
Ok there’s one hint right there. If he calls himself a “thought leader” his ego is too big, and guys with hypertrophy of the ego tend to feel entitled to get women by whatever means necessary.
A self-identified “thought leader,” Pogge directs international health and anti-poverty initiatives, publishes papers in leading journals, and gives TED Talks. His provocative argument that wealthy countries, and their citizens, are morally responsible for correcting the global economic order that keeps other countries poor revolutionized debates about global justice. He’s also a dedicated professor and mentor, at Yale University — where he founded and directs the Global Justice Program, a policy and public health research group — as well as at other prestigious institutions worldwide.
But a recent federal civil rights complaint describes a distinction unlikely to appear on any curriculum vitae: It claims Pogge uses his fame and influence to manipulate much younger women in his field into sexual relationships. One former student said she was punished professionally after resisting his advances.
BuzzFeed made many attempts to get him to talk, but got no response.
The allegations against Pogge are an increasingly open secret in the international philosophy community, an overwhelmingly male field in which, many women say, pervasive sexual harassment is an impediment to success.
So many women say that. Check out What is it like to be a woman in philosophy? to read some of their accounts.
BuzzFeed says it has obtained some confidential documents.
In the 1990s, a student at Columbia University, where Pogge was then teaching, accused him of sexually harassing her. In 2010, a recent Yale graduate named Fernanda Lopez Aguilar accused Pogge of sexually harassing her and then retaliating against her by rescinding a fellowship offer. In 2014, a Ph.D. student at a European university accused Pogge of proffering career opportunities to her and other young women in his field as a pretext to beginning a sexual relationship.
Yale knew about the allegations. It offered Lopez Aguilar money to keep quiet, she says.
Eventually, a hearing panel did find “substantial evidence” that Pogge had acted unprofessionally and irresponsibly, noting “numerous incidents” where he “failed to uphold the standards of ethical behavior” expected of him. But the panel voted that there was “insufficient evidence to charge him with sexual harassment,” according to disciplinary records.
We know – it’s she said he said. Oddly enough there are no fingerprints or witnesses or bloodstains.
Professors and students elsewhere sent Yale further allegations but Yale said leave us alone.
Pogge is still at Yale, directing the Global Justice Program and teaching philosophy and international affairs classes on the New Haven, Connecticut, campus.
Because you know what? Global Justice matters – it’s Big and Important and suitable for men, especially men who are thought leaders. Women? Women don’t matter that way. Women are small and silly and trivial, and important thought leader men just can’t be bothered to respect them or treat them as equals or care about the way sexual harassment by an important thought leader might be damaging to them.
Lopez Aguilar filed a federal civil rights complaint last October.
From the article:
The men, no doubt, say that women don’t do thinky stuff.
Hahahaha. Of course someone can. I’m baffled that anyone intelligent — and the article goes on to quote some other philosophers who claim to be similarly shocked — could think that there’s any contradiction here.
It costs someone like Pogge nothing personally to “fight tirelessly to balance the inequities of global power.” I’ll grant you that some people who fight such battles are making some sacrifices of their time or earning potential. But Pogge’s doing just fine. And even if Pogge is making specific policy recommendations, and even if they were actually followed or implemented, they probably wouldn’t affect him in any direct or substantial way. He’ll still be making a comfortable living as a Yale professor even after the “inequities of global power” are fixed.
Asking Pogge to maybe lay off trying to fuck every young woman who comes under his power, on the other hand, totally cramps his style and is too much of a personal sacrifice.
It can unless the legal system makes it too costly to do so.
I know a lot of people don’t like using lawsuits to solve social problems, but I don’t think anything else really works on this one. As the article says, Pogge’s reputation was an “open secret” in the community for years. Yale didn’t give a shit, because the benefit of having a scholar of his supposed caliber exceeds the cost of a few traumatized grad students.
Employers have always found excuses for harassment and other bad behavior, at least if the perpetrator is considered a valuable enough employee. It’s only when they start asking “will this person get us sued?” that they begin to reconsider.
o.m.g.
I just realized the professor who discouraged me from pursuing philosophy as a major was likely trying to protect me from that. (He said he wouldn’t always be my professor (I’d said how much I enjoyed the way he explained things), and I had too warm a personality to be happy in it. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but was flattered because most people think I come across kind of cold, I think. And I really did take his opinions seriously, and given how tedious I’d found reading Kant, I could see it being an issue.
But “too warm a personality” now sounds kind of like “the creepy guys in the field will be drawn to creep on you, and you’re sensitive and would be really bothered by it”.
Samantha – *nods* It’s apparently common knowledge that philosophy the discipline is like that. Pathetic, isn’t it.
This seems to be entrenched in academic culture at all levels:
http://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/quarter-of-sydney-students-sexually-harassed-university-survey-finds/news-story/1cbacc484450a9866393b4c20f2aa3a9
My experience with sexual harassment cases at college has been that they usually don’t do much to the actual harasser. The pattern is generally that every member of the faculty is sent to sexual harassment training, and everything is hunky dory. That’s happened at more than one school I’ve been associated with, including the one I work for. We all got hauled into sexual harassment training because of one individual, who eventually retired with full benefits and tons of glory heaped on his head.
The one thing I never can get them to “train” us on, though, is how to deal with and defeat everyday sexism. If no one is getting groped, they seem to be fine with the status quo.
‘It claims Pogge uses his fame and influence to manipulate much younger women in his field into sexual relationships.’
It isn’t the fault of philosophy, any more than Cosby can be blamed on standup comedy. Older men using fame/influence to purchase access to young women is ‘normal’ procedure throughout the culture. Maybe this is another reason no one wants to accept that ‘sex work’ is inevitably exploitive and oppressive. Its Far Too Close to standard operating procedure.