So there's this Nobel laureate who was trying to become Oxford University's professor of poetry. http://mhpbooks.com/mobylives/?p=6330
During Derek Walcott's job application process or campaign or whatever you'd like to call it, some unsavory news became public. It seems the gent was accused of sexual harassment at Harvard in 1982. A student alleged that he made inappropriate suggestions to her, and when she refused his advances, she received a C grade in his class.
It seems like 27 years is a long time...but when Walcott was under consideration for this new professorship position, Oxford staff received 100 photocopies of a book page detailing the 1982 accusation.
The news reports are calling this a "smear campaign." On first glance, I assumed that it couldn't possibly be a smear campaign, because the guy sexually harassed someone. If he actually did it, making the news public isn't a smear campaign; it's telling the truth. But if one accusation 27 years ago was the only time he was accused of sexual harassment, and he didn't officially get into trouble for it, is he still a sexual harasser?
I'm inclined to think that someone accused of sexual harassment probably did it. Maybe that's unfair. I suppose it's possible that the accuser was angry about a bad grade and found a way to punish the man. But I'm also inclined to think that if he were a chronic sexual harasser, and this news was coming out as he was trying to get one of the most prestigious academic jobs in this country, someone else would have stepped up to say she had also been harassed.
Final conclusion: I obviously don't know if this guy sexually harassed someone. I also don't know if he's the right person for the job of Oxford's professor or poetry. But I don't think this was a smear campaign, if it's just bringing up actual evidence of previous events. I think a smear campaign has to be based on exaggerated or invented events. What do you think?
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I have never heard the phrase smear campaign, but I do know what you are saying. I in general because of the Patriarchal society that I grew up in at home am always first to believe that the woman is lying and that the man is always in the right.
reading stories about sexual harrasment, especially seeing it first hand many times to the women in my life, has been a touch subject for me.
There is a part that says, well she is making it up. Of coarse she is making it up, hearing that being said by my elders many times for many occasions. There is a part of me though that has changed, especially through this last year on this subject.
We quickly jump to a term with the word smear in it, when something like this comes out. IT is not easy for a woman to say she was sexually harassed, you know why? Most of the population does not believe her, that is hard enough with out adding on the rest of her emotional triggers that she may have about disappointing men, not being an equal to men, or even not being worthy enough of a human to be heard. These are speculations, you could put a number of different things that add to the challenge of coming out about sexual harrasment.
When someone robs a bank, it is on their record. I am sure that you can say to a degree their character is smeared, but if I get the meaning of what you are saying right, smear means trying to tarnish with scandalous speculations. Just as a Man or a Woman would have to own up to a bank robbery, that no one would naturally question if it was a robbery or not, should it not bee the same with a matter like this?
I do not wish to be taken wrong here either... Sexual harassment, and sexual abuse is traumatic, and has many far immediate graver emotional, psychological and physical consequences then say lifting a T.V. from best buy (which that does have many don't get me going on the Congo). I am not meaning to reduce it to anything, rather support that it should be taken as fact.
Can you tell I have been out of school for a bit... Writy MC Gee over here with the opinions.... geesh.
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