My heart and respect go out to Dr. Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin – broadcaster, lecturer at University College Dublin who dealt with years of sexual harassment on campus. As those of you who stop by here regularly know, I’ve written often on the subject of sexual misconduct, including a Harvard Business Review article describing the Spectrum of Sexual Misconduct to help businesses, government, academia, groups and individuals define levels of sexual misconduct, particularly as it pertains to women as the target.
Despite much writing on this subject and the MeToo movement, systems often don’t effectively respond. Women are told speaking up will ruin their careers, they’ll be labeled for life or the process will be a hassle they don’t need. There can be costs. But there are even greater costs to letting sexual harassment and abuse continue.
Some years back, I wrote the Harvard Business Review reprint bestseller case, “The Memo Every Woman Keeps In Her Desk” followed by They Don’t Get It, Do They? Both focused on what women can do to deal with sexual harassment. Other articles followed as did two novels, Shadow Campus (2013) and Damned If She Does (2020). These crime mysteries reveal what happens in academia. Yes, they’re fiction, but informed by reality.
The Irish Times conveys Ní Shúilleabháin’s views on the need for attention to this problem in academia:
Today, Ní Shúilleabháin says that while there is growing awareness regarding harassment and other issues for students on campuses, “we also need to make sure those same supports are there for staff, and particularly early-career researchers. Those are the people who are on precarious contracts, temporary contracts, who are maybe doing a post-doc which is one or two years, who might be very afraid to rock the boat because it will impact, potentially, on them getting another contract.
“That’s why I wanted to talk about it. The first thing we need to do is recognise that it’s a problem, and after that we need to look at what are the many ways we can address it.
“I’m not saying that I’m going to change the system. There’s a lot of people working on that. But I actually just think being more open about it and speaking about these incidents is really important because we have to stop sweeping them under the carpet. That carpet is getting very, very bulgy now.”
Ní Shúilleabháin spoke up repeatedly. For that, women in academia are surely thankful. Her experience is shared by many female academics. It’s promising to see Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris responding to Ní Shúilleabháin’s courage with a clear directive to university presidents that there will be zero tolerance for sexual misconduct.
What happened to Ní Shúilleabháin could have gone even further — to assault — as it does in Damned If She Does. She feared for her safety and fortunately kept speaking up. The rest of us need to be equally courageous, especially to protect young women who can be quietly edged out of academia unless more senior academics, female and male, refuse to let that happen.
