The (alleged) Sexual Assault at Harvard Anthropology is Shocking, but Not Surprising
Originally published on the blog on June 2, 2020
Sexual harassment and gender discrimination in Harvard Anthropology
On Friday afternoon the Harvard Crimson published the results of an eight-month long investigation into sexual harassment and gender discrimination in Harvard’s anthropology department.
Extract from an email sent to a female grad student by one of the male professors (who was in his mid-60s at the time)
It focused on three very senior men: Gary Urton, an Andean archaeologist; John Comaroff, a socio-cultural anthropologist who was at UChicago for most of his career; and Theodore C. Bestor, an anthropologist of Japan.
Comaroff is one of the most influential and famous anthropologists alive today. But I’m focusing on Urton because he intersects with my own area of expertise: namely, the culture of Andean Archaeology as a scientific community.
As a science-studies ethnographer who studied the community of Andean archaeology for many years, I only met Urton once or twice. But because I knew this community well through my research, I feel like I have some perspective on why it was so easy for him (and men like him) to carry out these kinds of assaults for so long — probably thinking all the time that he was not doing anything bad.
Some straight-up ‘sex for grades’ bullshit that is honestly so cliched it’s almost hard to believe
The accusations against Urton are shocking because they involve outright assault of students, that nobody on the outside could misconstrue.
Urton complimented her paper and said she showed “a great deal of promise” in anthropology, according to her affidavit, which she provided to The Crimson.
Saying he could help her achieve her goals, Urton suggested a private meeting to discuss her career further, the student wrote in her affidavit. He then moved around his desk and placed his hand on her knee.
“By the position of his hand, I knew he meant a sexual exchange,” the student wrote in the affidavit. “In a routine tone of voice without any apparent concern, he suggested that I meet him at a hotel and room which he would designate. He told me he would bring wine.”
James S. Bikales,The Harvard Crimson, 29 May 2020
Others have come forward (with evidence) via social media, to say that they were also ‘invited to a hotel room’ by Urton. The rumor mill whispers that this has been going on, and presumably known about by some people, for 40 years.
“A culture of impunity for misbehavior”
I appreciate that the Harvard Crimson‘s reporting situates these individuals’ actions and attitudes within a wider departmental culture that fails to take women and people of color seriously as colleagues. And worse, puts them in danger of assault.
Something I know from both my personal experience and my ethnographic research studying Andean archaeology: This is not unique to Harvard. This is endemic in US anthropology.
What’s different in this case, is that the evidence has been put out there in public by a journalist. Rather than ‘the whisper network’, or men quietly having their teaching duties removed but keeping their tenured jobs, it’s all out there (gross emails included) for everyone to see and judge.
Have no doubt: this kind of thing happens all the time, and in front of witnesses. The unusual thing here is that 1) the propositioning was done over email, rather than in person at a field/conference party, and 2) a journalist cared enough to report it.
For that reason, we need to look for blame not just at the ‘bad apples’. But rather the whole damn culture of archaeology, anthropology, and possibly US academia.
Drinking culture and performative informality
In an article for American Anthropologist due to come out later this year, I examine a concept I call ‘performative informality’ within the context of archaeology’s infamous drinking culture.
With performative informality, I’m trying to grasp and understand that sense of archaeology as more ‘fun’ than other disciplines; to take seriously the consequences of the idea that Andeanist are one big family, who love to hang out and shoot the shit with each other over a beer.
I argue that this culture of informality (inadvertently) creates a space for subtle but persistent discrimination, because the ability to perform ‘cool’ and ‘fun’ in the correct way depends on a person’s ability to inhabit or perform a white, male, middle-class heteronormative version of ‘fun’ that is specific to the US.
The result is what one woman recently described to me as a form of gaslighting. You keep being told that these people are fun, laid back, and cool, and that in archaeology – unlike those other stuffy disciplines where professors don’t go out drinking with their students – everyone is welcome.
But then, every time you try to ‘hang out’ and chill with the guys, you seem to be doing it wrong somehow. Worse, your attempts to be ‘cool’ are interpreted as flirtation, with alarming results.
In my paper, I argue that this dynamic is an extension of the myths of meritocracy that serve as the foundational ideology of the US, and particularly its education system and understanding of class mobility. But in light of this recent debate about Harvard, I’ve been thinking about a more raw exercise of power.
It’s not about being sexy, it’s about power
For years, as I worked among Andean archaeologists and participated in the drinking culture, I never once got hit on, flirted with, or backed into a corner by a guy twice my size drunkenly suggesting I continue the party in his hotel room.
And I thought this was because I am not particularly good looking.
Honestly, I’m not saying this to fish for compliments. Quite the opposite. Early in my career I grew to bless my decidedly homely face and dumpy figure, when I realized that my more attractive female grad school friends were constantly balancing the need to be ‘fun’ at informal events with the ‘joking’ flirtation directed at them by senior men.
I’m ashamed to admit that I believed this for so long. As if my looks – or my friends’ looks – had anything to do with it.
But sexual abuse is not about sex; it’s about power.
What I have only just realized is that the difference between my female friends and I was not that I wasn’t as pretty. It’s that I was not actually an archaeologist; I was an ethnographer. I was experiencing this little community as someone who didn’t actually have a stake in it.
I didn’t need any of these guys, in terms of my career.
Also, perhaps they realized I wasn’t that impressed with their work. (To cut a long story short: my background is in a very different kind of archaeology, both methodologically and theoretically.) I like to think I was subtle about that, but it probably showed.
All of which is to say: my relationship to these senior, male gatekeepers was completely different than those of other female grad students my age, who were all forging careers as Andean archaeologists.
But I had no reason to look up to these men. I didn’t need them. That, more than my mediocre looks, is what made me unattractive.
Btw, I doubt any of the guys I interacted with were unconscious of this, when their eyes skimmed past me to land on someone else. I myself wasn’t conscious of it until this weekend.
What future do anthropologists want?
So what can anthropology do, if it really wants to weed out all those ‘bad apples’?
During a Metafilter debate about the allegations against Joe Biden,* and the sad reality that we apparently have to accept a potential groper as the Democratic presidential candidate, this comment stood out:
This [the sexual assault allegations] was one important reason I thought the democratic party should steer well away from those old men. One thing is that Biden’s issue has been known for ages, and I really can’t understand it hasn’t been discussed more.
The other thing is, I know so many men from that generation through my work, and only very, very few are not creepy. Even guys where you wouldn’t imagine it for a moment. Guys I thought of as friends and who never did anything inappropriate when I was there. I get the impression that it was part of how they were socialized. Think of all the rapey stuff in popular culture from the 50’s and 60’s and further back, and heck, even up to the 80’s (and probably later some places where I don’t know). …
NB: I’m not saying all old men are creeps. I’m saying it’s simpler to just elect a woman than to thoroughly vet those guys. Or alternatively, a younger man with more contemporary values.
Comment posted by mumimor, April 14 2020, on a Metafilter discussion of Joe Biden
The same is true of our academic community. People (men) who are in power today began their rise during a period of time when the performance of power was intertwined with misogyny.
We should seriously consider asking of those who flourished in such an environment, enough to still be here (and on top) today: Did they participate? Did they protect those who bullied, disrespected, or harassed women by confining their criticism to whispers and slaps on the wrist?
If we truly want to reform anthropology, we’d have to get rid of all them all. All those old white men, and all the people (including women) who enabled them.
Because these people came to power, then held onto power, at the expense of everyone else. How do we know that the people who got to stay in their jobs were the best for those jobs, if so many women and people of color were pushed out? There is a whole world of unknown scholarship out there, lost because it wasn’t conducted by white men.
Imagine if we did this! Several generations of scholars skimmed off the top of the discipline… It would mean the retirement of most senior US anthropologists holding tenured positions today.
A daunting prospect, but is that such a bad thing? It’s not like we don’t have enough anthropologists left in the world to fill the gaps. Not when there are 200+ applications for every tenure track position…
If we culled all the abusers and enablers, the profession would lose a lot of people who hold institutional knowledge. The people who, for decades, have steered the professional societies, the journals, the prestigious departments, and the grant funding committees. We’d lose all the accumulated knowledge they have built up over the many, many years, of how to run these things properly.
I’m beginning to wonder if that’s not a good thing. The problems are structural. Let’s dismantle that structure and experiment with a new one.
Because, like the commentator on Metafilter said, if you want to avoid the guys who have rapey racist pasts, you can spend forever trying to vet all the old guys. Or, you can just pick people who are less likely to engage in egregious sexual and racial abuse: women, and specifically women of color.
And here I’m reminded of that meme, ‘This is the future that liberals want‘. What do we have to lose? Frankly, an anthropology led by women of color would be awesome.
*If this makes you sigh heavily, go listen the Call Your Girlfriend podcast on Biden (part 1 and 2), for a brilliant analysis of the way he is forcing us all to be complicit in his abuse.
…or read more on the Dispatches From The Wrong Side Blog.