As administrators and faculty find ways to instruct professors in the physics department how to deal with accusations of sexual harassment, several professors said they remain unhappy with the University's actions and particularly with the Office of Institutional Equity.
OIE has been involved in individual cases and has also worked with Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences William Chafe on a number of initiatives, such as sensitivity training, discussion through letters and e-mails, a standing committee to hear complaints and a speaker who will come to Duke later this spring.
Sally Dickson, vice president for institutional equity, said she could not comment on specific cases for ethical and legal reasons, but said the University is committed to making each academic department comfortable for everyone.
But she said OIE still needs to find out what exactly can be done to achieve that goal.
"What are gender issues on campus? We don't know," Dickson said. "We don't have an idea of, one, what are people doing on gender issues and, two, what is the climate?"
Dickson arrived in June 2000 from Stanford University, just as Duke formed the Bryant Committee to examine harassment and discrimination in the department. Robert Bryant, professor of mathematics and committee chair, filed a report later that summer detailing past and present allegations.
"This predates me," Dickson said. "That topic had been discussed for at least three years. It came out of a discussion of harassment of a whole group." Dickson emphasized the confidential nature of sexual harassment claims.
Confidentiality was broken last summer, when a faculty member distributed a letter from OIE clearing him of a sexual harassment claim to the entire physics department.
Lawrence Evans, professor emeritus of physics and former department chair, said he did not believe OIE could prevent people from discussing those matters.
"They expect a level of perpetual secrecy that is absurd," he said. "If I'm accused of something that I was not found guilty of, I'm going to tell people."
In another case, a female graduate student complained that a classmate had made an offensive comment, prompting an OIE investigation.
"They made a royal mess of anything they touched," said Ronen Plesser, associate professor of physics. "Everyone's reasonable conclusion is that whenever there's an issue of any delicacy, those people should be kept out of it."
President Nan Keohane, who created OIE in 1995, said the office remains the best place for harassment cases to be heard.
"Decisions about discrimination almost inevitably leave some parties to the matter dissatisfied because their perspective has not prevailed," Keohane wrote in an e-mail. "Sometimes, in fact, all parties are dissatisfied, if the resolution is not clear-cut.... The people at OIE do their best to provide outcomes that are fair and in accordance with our legal and ethical guidelines."
Evans reserved his main criticism for the efforts of Chafe and Arts and Sciences. He said he did not know whether there was a serious problem with sensitivity in the department.
"There is obviously one person in the department who thinks the department has a serious problem," he said. "If you talk to her and maybe some others, you might get the idea the department could use more sensitivity. I'm personally pretty cynical about the value of sensitivity training in general."
Evans said he disagreed with the Bryant Committee's five-year mandate to explore possible cases of sexual harassment. "What the story is, is kept secret. But were supposed to believe there's a bunch of dirty stories there. It seems to me that's an absurd violation of due process," he said. "Tell us what you've got or go away. Don't sit there as a repository for dirt."
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