“He asked me point blank whether I wanted to have sex with him”: victims of the VUB professor dismayed about the attitude of the university

11 comments

  1. >What the women do not know at that time is that more than ten years earlier similar complaints had already reached the top of the university. Some doctoral students then stepped to the then dean of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, but no action is taken. The complaints are always the same: D.T. sends inappropriate messages to students and shares personal stories. Sometimes this ends in a sexual relationship. Those who refuse his advances are intimidated and made to feel uncomfortable.

    Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

  2. The attitude of the rector in this is just unbelievable: “The rector said we should keep quiet, that people deserve a second chance”.

    Something tells me she won’t be offering that second chance to the women that got their academic career ended, because they didn’t feel like prostituting themselves.

  6. Pretty upsetting to hear that the female rector knew about it and then told the women to keep
    It silent. ….. and then lying to the press that she didn’t know. Especially as a woman, you should know what this kind of behaviour does to a person.

  9. >Volgens de vrouwen is het rector Caroline Pauwels zelf die meerdere vrouwen op het hart drukte dat absolute discretie is geboden. “De rector zei dat we moesten zwijgen, dat mensen een tweede kans verdienen”, zeggen meerdere vrouwen. Voor hen was het vooral belangrijk dat er geen nieuwe slachtoffers werden gemaakt.

    >Pauwels legt uit: “Een universiteit is geen rechtbank. Wij kunnen en mogen andere werkgevers niet zomaar contacteren en waarschuwen over wat is gebeurd. Er is een einde gesteld aan zijn activiteiten aan de VUB, dat is een heel serieuze beslissing.”

    I’m extremely puzzled by this part.

    Either she acknowledges but doesn’t even rebuke the whole “I knew, but you need to shut about it” part, or she does rebuke it, but by going “we aren’t supposed to judge our own people, even if we have created a method specifically to report individuals who commit crap like this”?

    I’m sorry what?

  10. Unbelievable. The structural problems at this university is really getting to me. I’m finishing up my bachelor here and i can say that 70% of the professors and courses i’ve had were garbage. Plethora of reasons: course contents are useless as shits, professors don’t give a flying fuck about their students (do the bare minimum) list goes on. 50% of my exams is just reciting LISTS of BULLSHIT. Lists as in voor en nadelen, functies etc. With questions like recite 4 functions of bla bla bla. Yesterday i had an exam full with spelling mistakes in the questions written by the prof. No joke this was what he wrote “Show hand en grap the profit/loss of a put option”

    The skillgap between vub students and other universities is massive. Most of my colleges agree with me. If you’re planning on studying at solvay faculty RUN

  11. Sure, VUB acted late and maybe Pauwels her comments could be more carefully worded towards the victims …but at least they acted.

    The sexual intimidation scandal at UGent from 2016 blew over. The main perpetrator is fully restored to his position as tenured professor. Others were never publicly named. Almost all non-tenured research staff in that research group weren’t retained following the period this story hit the press so they ‘could let go of painful memories’ (it also made sure that nobody leaked further stories).

    From old colleagues at other humanities/arts faculties I heard similar stories about ‘rotten apples’ protected by omertas to protect the reputations of research groups. It’s not surprising that humanities faculties are sensitive to these issues. Research opportunities in arts/humanities outside academia are rare and grading can get a bit (to quite) subjective. Young people with passion for their field are easy prey for ill-meaning people who gatekeep career opportunities and know that output financing guarantees them a constant supply of precariously employed people.

    It’s a bummer that the debate following these incidents never delves into how universities can professionalize career mgmt in specifically humanities faculties and how they can ensure basic respect for non-established colleagues. Instead it’s all dramatic headline screeching potentially dissuading future whistleblowers to come forwards and dissuading future uni admins to act.

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