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The Philosophy Department at the University of Colorado Boulder…

… is the focus of this address by the chancellor to that university’s community; his larger subject is a culture of sexual harassment and assault on campus. The significant history at CU Boulder has to do with the football team ten years ago, but these new allegations are broader than that, and seem to touch on all aspects of the campus.

So far the philosophy department has gotten a lot of attention.

The university has begun dismissal proceedings against one of the department’s tenured professors. He’s accused of retaliating against a female student who filed a sexual assault report with the university against a male philosophy grad student. The professor was the grad student’s mentor, and he decided to launch his own investigation of the incident.

[Professor David] Barnett, who is not the alleged sexual assailant, is accused of compiling a 38-page report painting the victim as “sexually promiscuous” and alleging she falsified the report of the assault, according to a notice of intent to sue CU filed by the victim last month.

The university has settled with the victim.

Margaret Soltan, August 7, 2014 6:53PM
Posted in: professors

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4 Responses to “The Philosophy Department at the University of Colorado Boulder…”

  1. Sean O Says:

    What’s the point here? Sexual harassment is bad, but there is little check on false allegations.
    The philosophy prof may be correct in his assertions or maybe not. More details need to be known about the case.

  2. Sean O Says:

    $825 Grand. Nice payday. Why not as u say go for $1 million or $25 mill.
    And sexual harassment of one grad student of another. Where’s the necessary power differential?
    They sound like equals. Wonder if paydays like this might encourage scheming or manipulation?
    Worth a think, I think.

  3. Sean O Says:

    Read the full article. Smells bad, at least the format. Female grad student makes accusation, then everybody is supposed to adopt a grave tone but as no questions or learn about context of the incident or the nature of the participants in the “incident”. Seems very one-sided & unfair to me.
    Camille Paglia talks about morning after or buyers remorse sex turning into rape in the minds of some woman. Real sexual intimidation & rape is terrible. But mild discomfort morning after regret cannot be lumped in with those serious crimes.

    We need to be very careful. We went off the rails with recovered memory & satanic abuse hokeum before.

  4. Jack/OH Says:

    For a different view of relations between the sexes (not genders) at university, see the relations of physicist Lise Meitner and chemist Otto Hahn, circa 1914. Antiquated Wilhelmine/Victorian uptightness and all that. If my memory’s okay, Hahn was fastidious about making sure he and Meitner were never alone in the laboratory to give wagging tongues an opportunity. (I wish I had a reference, but I don’t.)

    Sean O, allegations of improper sexual conduct occur here where I live at my local Podunk Tech. Some of them seem substantive, most not, but I’m not sure how much time anyone has on the planet to sort out the completing assertions.

    I’m fairly confident there’s likely someone at our Podunk Tech who put out for a do-nothing job, just as I am confident there are 50 women who ran like hell when a farty old piece of shit with a bullshit degree and insider skinny promised them a steady job in exchange for regular blow jobs.

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