Prominent Harvard anthropologist put on leave

doi:10.1126/science.368.6496.1172

GSTDTAP > 气候变化

DOI	10.1126/science.368.6496.1172
	Prominent Harvard anthropologist put on leave
	Ann Gibbons
	2020-06-12
发表期刊	Science
出版年	2020
英文摘要	On the morning of 30 May, anthropologist Jade Guedes read an article in the online issue of The Harvard Crimson in which a former student alleged that anthropologist Gary Urton had propositioned her. The story triggered Guedes's memory of an incident in July 2012: She had been a Ph.D. student at Harvard University, and Urton, who was soon to be department chair, had invited her to a “tête-à-tête” to discuss her research. Guedes, then 32, had felt “really great—this big professor is interested in my work.” Then she got an email from Urton: “I wonder if you would be interested in something more intimate? … what if I got a hotel room and then we got a bottle of wine and spent an afternoon in conversation and exploration? … I do hope this is not shocking to you, or disturbing.” Guedes panicked, consulted friends and a mental health adviser, and turned Urton down. She did not report his solicitation, but now, reading an account that in some ways paralleled her own, she was filled with rage. A tenured anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, she posted Urton's 2012 email on 1 June on Twitter. The next day, she filed a complaint of sexual harassment against Urton with Harvard's Title IX office. Urton, now 71, an anthropological archaeologist and scholar of Andean culture, said in a statement to Science : “As much as I would love to respond to the false allegations that are circulating and destroying my professional reputation, I have been advised not to do so at this time, other than to say that I am truly saddened by the allegations and hope that some day I will have the chance to clear my name.” The Harvard Crimson has reported that Urton apologized for his behavior to Guedes in a statement to the paper on 2 June. Guedes wasn't the only one flooded with unwelcome memories last week. “I spent the day shaking; I haven't been able to sleep,” says anthropologist Carrie Brezine, a data analyst at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a former Ph.D. student of Urton's. “I'm so sick this happened to other people.” In conversations with Science , Brezine alleged that Urton seduced her at a remote field site in Peru in 2003, when she was 32. She says Urton had hired her to create a database of examples of khipu, complex knotted textiles that the Inca used as a numerical recording system. Brezine says she and Urton had an affair from 2003 to 2009 while he was her employer and later her Ph.D. adviser. She alleges that her work and research on khipu depended on Urton's good will, which was conditional on sex. She is contemplating filing a complaint with Harvard's Title IX office. The Crimson article, by rising junior James Bikales, has triggered an earthquake in Harvard's anthropology department, long dominated by a small group of senior men. And it has begun to topple Urton, who “until last week, was one of the most respected researchers in the world,” says archaeologist Luis Jaime Castillo Butters at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Urton, a world authority on khipu, has received a MacArthur “genius” grant and a Guggenheim fellowship. He and Castillo Butters, also a former minster of culture in Peru, worked together at the San José de Moro field school in Peru in recent years. Castillo Butters says that “in all fieldwork trips there has been no incident, no complaints.” On 2 June, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Claudine Gay put Urton on paid administrative leave pending a full review of the allegations. In a statement on 4 June, Gay said Harvard's policy is to not comment on Title IX investigations. She added that “Harvard is deeply committed to providing an environment for all members of our community that is free from sexual harassment and misconduct. … We encourage any member of our community who has experienced inappropriate behavior to come forward.” Also on 2 June, the anthropology department removed Urton as director of undergraduate studies, a post he had held for 2 years after being department chair from 2012 to 2018. On 4 June, 25 faculty members in the department sent Urton a letter calling for him to resign. “The strong evidence put forth in these allegations has destroyed our confidence in your ability to be a teacher, colleague, and productive member of the department,” the letter said. As the Crimson article noted, questions about Urton's conduct had emerged in a 2015 lawsuit filed by medical anthropologist Kimberly Theidon, now at the Fletcher School of Tufts University, Medford. She alleged she was denied tenure in 2013 because of gender discrimination and in retaliation for her advocacy for students alleging sexual harassment. In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston ruled against her. However, as evidence of harassment in the department, Theidon's lawsuit brought to light the account that infuriated Guedes. In an affidavit filed in 2016 as a later addition to the lawsuit, an anonymous Harvard Extension School student wrote that in 2011, she asked Urton for a letter of recommendation before she received her final grade in his class. In response, Urton suggested she join him in a private meeting to discuss her “promise” in anthropology. According to the affidavit, Urton instructed the Extension student to go straight to a room he had booked at the Sheraton Commander Hotel near Harvard on 29 December 2011. “I drank the wine he brought and became intoxicated. He in fact made unwelcome sexual advances and I submitted to his advances,” she wrote. She then began a “consensual affair” with Urton that continued off and on until she moved out of the state in 2013. “I would have completed my education at Harvard except that I met Gary Urton,” she wrote in the affidavit. In an interview this week, the Extension student, now 52, says she moved out of the state in 2013 because the affair with Urton was “very traumatic.” She says she became severely depressed, was hospitalized, and became suicidal. She quit her job at Harvard Medical School and stopped taking classes. “I knew I would not survive if I didn't leave [Harvard],” she told Science . Her affidavit says that in 2016 she contacted the office of then–Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust to tell her about Urton “preying on me as a graduate student. … I wanted to be on record to prevent him hurting other people.” She did not file a complaint but later provided the affidavit in support of Theidon's case. She told Science she believed Theidon's advocacy for women had influenced how Urton, then department chair, had handled Theidon's tenure case. The alleged interactions with the Extension student happened the year Brezine got her Ph.D. and moved away. Brezine, a weaver, had majored in theoretical math at Reed College. Urton hired her in 2002 as a research assistant to create an important online database on khipu. Brezine traveled with Urton to a remote field site in Peru, where, she alleges, they began an affair. “I thought Gary thought I was special, that I had good ideas, that I could make a contribution to the field,” Brezine says. With the backing of Urton's letter of recommendation as well as a Science paper on khipu co-authored with him ( Science , 12 August 2005, p. [1065][1]), she entered Harvard's Ph.D. program in anthropology. She continued to work for Urton and hoped to do her thesis on khipu. But she says she changed her project because Urton controlled access to the khipu in Harvard's collection as well as the database, a key resource. She feared he would withhold access if he got angry at her. “If you knew my passion for Inka khipu and wondered why it wasn't in my dissertation, the condition of access to the khipu database was sex,” Brezine wrote in an email to Science . “Gary made it clear that he could and would revoke my access at any time if I did not perform adequately.” After “years of sexual requests” from Urton, Brezine eventually consulted Harvard's Dean for Graduate Student Affairs Garth McCavana. She recalls that McCavana emphasized that formal complaints rarely worked out in the victim's favor. Complicating her case, Harvard did not prohibit faculty from having sex with students or employees until 2015. (Many other universities banned such relationships years earlier.) Brezine says she appreciated McCavana's honesty, and decided to do her dissertation on colonial textiles—materials she could access from other researchers—instead. Urton remained her adviser. She left Harvard in 2011 for a postdoc in anthropology at Michigan. “It's difficult for me to overestimate the costs” of her affair with Urton, she says. McCavana did not respond to requests for comment. Brezine has decided to speak up and be named because “I am so upset with myself that I didn't pursue it because other people might not have had to go through it. I just didn't know that this was his habit. I thought I was unique.” Theidon argues that Harvard should have followed up on any complaints about Urton and others, even if they weren't official. “I just can't bear it,” she says. “How many more students do you think may have been harassed? They are the missing women in the field.” Today, three of the 12 tenured anthropologists in the department, or 25%, are women. The American Anthropological Association reports that 45% of tenured anthropologists are women. Last week, the Harvard department's new leadership convened a committee to investigate how its culture may be problematic for women and to propose recommendations. “We are committed to repairing our relationships and fostering a more supportive, safe, and equitable departmental culture,” the department's website says. [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/309/5737/1065
领域	气候变化 ; 资源环境
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文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/274444
专题	气候变化资源环境科学
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Ann Gibbons. Prominent Harvard anthropologist put on leave[J]. Science,2020.
APA	Ann Gibbons.(2020).Prominent Harvard anthropologist put on leave.Science.
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