The Funny Thing About the Response to Colorado

There are two comments over on a post at NewAPPS on the APA Committee on the Status of Women's site report from CU that are worth highlighting in light of the remarkably tone deaf reactions to the report on other blogs about the profession. (The responses are tone-deaf either partially [note Leiter's reference to "re-education"(?!?!); I reacted here] or fully, [note especially Mohan Matthen's reference to "puritanical lip-pursing;" WTF? (EDIT: SEE THE FULLER QUOTE BELOW)].)

The irony of the concern trolling about the committee's actions and report in light of the committee's description of CU's faculty "[spending] too much time articulating (or trying to articulate) the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior instead of instilling higher expectations for professional behavior" was not lost on me and definitely not on the following commenters (emphases added).

Anon. 10:14:

So many things here are simply so counterproductive. 

I am exceptionally concerned that this post and so many others seek to undermine the usefulness of the APA site visit program. Not to say that the program is beyond critique, but the pattern of critique emerging from Colorado's report is a deeply ironic one: message boards have targeted the APA for not ensuring confidentiality (its transparent policies notwithstanding), and others like this one undermine the APA team by questioning their assessment because the report is too vague for us to make our own--let's be honest here--ill-considered judgments. We have both too much information and not enough, and somehow it is all the APA's fault. 

On the critique that the APA's report is too vague: minimal reflection should reveal that vagueness is necessary to protect victims and those who were willing to speak with the site visit team at all. And, for that matter, to ensure due process for the accused in the event complaints are ongoing. I grow weary of the skepticism based on vagueness in the report, when there are very good reasons for vagueness. I grow weary of skepticism based on faulty arguments (e.g. just because the author and Leiter have never heard of Colorado's problems, does not invalidate the claim that Colorado has a bad reputation.) And I'm am tired of seeing the much needed work that the APA site visit provides being undermined because, for example, the APA did not mention specific countries when they used the term "international". 

With the APA's site visit program we now have a new way to address the profession's very serious climate problems. Let's see what we can do to support this effort instead of sowing distrust and anxiety. We have enough of that.

Anon. 11:00:

I am tempted to say that much of the analysis in this post serves as a good example of the kind of "pseudo-philosophical analyses" the report calls out. The report does not identify individuals and does not recommend punishments (unless training counts as punishment, which it shouldn't). Receivership is a significant step, but does not punish any individual member of the department. (Including, I think, the replaced chair -- administrative positions are shifted around for a variety of reasons.) So why would "forensic expertise" be a requirement on the investigators? What is pseudo-philosophical is the expectation that a real-world attempt to address a problem should meet some arbitrary standard chosen by the critic. If only everyone brought this level of rigor to their personal interactions -- there would surely be much less ogling. 

Members of less powerful group B are being harmed by some members of more powerful group A. A fix is proposed that doesn't punish members of A in any realistic use of the term "punish", but A's hairs will be ruffled. A-folk will have to experience some unpleasant feelings, and maybe even hear some unpleasant things said about them (probably not to their faces, but maybe in blogs, and in comments on blogs). They will have to go to some boring meetings. And A-folk don't like that -- they feel that if anything they have to put up with too much of that stuff already! (After all, A-folk don't see themselves as powerful. They think they have much less power than they should have, given their great merit.) So the fix is rejected by A-folk in favor of some ruffle-free, as-yet-unidentified future fix. And nothing happens, and the harm to members of B continues. Such a shame there's no good fix.

Shorter: Per the committee's report, we need to start thinking about "instilling higher expectations for professional behavior," i.e., taking the report seriously, rather than subjecting it to the very same "pseudo-philosophical analyses" the report criticizes. (For a similar, more nicely put point, see Schliesser, whose presence at NewAPPS I now especially miss, here.)

 -- Jaded, Ph.D.