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The accusations were lies, but could we prove it?
- captncraig 7y agoI would love to read this, but keep getting blocked by paywalls.
- throwaway894345 7y agoSame here. If someone could summarize instead of downvoting, it would be helpful.
- jv22222 7y agoA Crazed Academic Weaponized Title IX Against a Rival Professor Whose Job He Wanted (Title of the reason.com post linked above)
- dang 7y agoIf there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20paywalls&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
- throwaway894345 7y agoSorry for the confusion. I didn’t mean to suggest the post violated the rules; I was only trying to request more information (my comment was the second in this thread—no one had posted a summary or workaround at the time). Thanks to everyone who summarized or referred me elsewhere.
- ur-whale 7y agohttps://archive.is/oZhy4 https://archive.is/oZhy4
- phyzome 7y agoFor NYT, put https://archive.is/ https://archive.is/ in front of the URL.
- johnr2 7y ago> I would love to read this, but keep getting blocked by paywalls. Have you tried blocking JavaScript? It works fine here in Firefox with NoScript and in Dillo (which has no JS support).
- SilasX 7y agoThis was submitted a few days ago, and thaumasiotes linked this article[1], which I endorse as being much more information-dense. The NY Times one is one of the usual droning long-form pieces that takes way too long to say anything relevant. [1] https://reason.com/2020/03/18/title-ix-arizona-state-university-viren-tecedor/ https://reason.com/2020/03/18/title-ix-arizona-state-univers...
- alexandercrohde 7y agoUnfortunate that a bad investigator made a professor's life difficult. I liken it to a bad boss who can make one ultimately lose one's job for entirely unclear reasons. Without any evidence that this is a systemic problem, I wonder why it would justify my attention.
- SilasX 7y agoI view this more as like a publication of a vulnerability: "Hey, one major university believes they have to thoroughly investigate even the most bad-faith accusations against academic rivals for the same job, which is ripe for abuse." It doesn't matter that only one (publicly known) case has happened, if there's the potential of others latching on.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoBecause it is quite clear from the article that the investigator was motivated to be "bad" by incentives baked in to Title IX.
- virtuous_signal 7y agoThe author makes the point that the investigator was sympathetic, but had to follow policy. It's the policy that is defective: >Melanie also hadn’t been able to locate a current student named Rebecca James in Marta’s department, but she said that the name could always be an alias, and she was still obligated to investigate Marta now that a “credible” accusation had been made. >“Good question,” Melanie responded, her voice bright again. “Because of the funding that we receive through Title IX, we’re required to investigate everything. And with that we want to really run everything to the ground.”
- Chris2048 7y agoYet, all of a sudden: > in the future, anonymous accusations would be fact-checked before new investigations were opened policy allowed for this..
- jedharris 7y agoWhy didn't the investigator subpoena the details about the accounts sending the accusations? That would have shown right away that the accusations were not "credible" and the university could have just dropped the investigation right away. By the second go round, when the "y'all" message arrived, the credibility problem was obvious but the investigation didn't address it. This sounds to me like a very limp bureaucratic response by someone just going through the motions, with no real effort to resolve matters.
- neonate 7y agohttps://archive.md/oZhy4 https://archive.md/oZhy4
- pstuart 7y agoMy understanding is this is being used to try to dismantle Title IX (Devos and company are against it). The article shows a very troubling abuse of the system, but it should be a prompt to fix it rather than destroy it.
- Chris2048 7y agoBut why do universities get special treatment in the first place?
- strstr 7y agoProbably the mix of 1) Ubiquitous government funding 2) Student-teacher power asymmetry 3) Strength of tenure
- Chris2048 7y agoBut Title IX also applies to student-to-student claims, doesn't it?
- manfredo 7y agoThe same could be said of a plethora of other industries that are government funded. Defense contractors, utilities, etc. Furthermore, the last two points would make sense if Title IX only applied to teachers. But that's not the case. Even between students Title IX still applies.
- strstr 7y agoFrom the article, it does not sound like much needs to change to prevent abuse of this level. Requirements of at least one non-anonymous source would do it. Dismantlement seems pretty unnecessary.
- downerending 7y agoWhy? Universities don't really want to act as a parallel judicial system, and it turns out that they're not very good at it. We have real laws and courts. Let them work.
- virtuous_signal 7y agoHow easily could this story* happen in other fields besides University faculties? Could this all be avoided by just not telling anyone that you are in the running for a job, until you have the written offer in hand? *(1:frenemy finds out you are a candidate for a job; 2: frenemy anonymously send unsubstantiated rumors to decisionmakers; 3: decisionmakers take the rumors seriously)
- jbullock35 7y ago> Could this all be avoided by just not telling anyone that you are in the running for a job, until you have the written offer in hand? Probably not in U.S. academia. When a U.S. department is thinking of hiring you as a professor, you give a public talk in front of that department's faculty. At that point, it becomes more or less public knowledge that you are in the running for a job.
- fennecfoxen 7y agoPrivate individuals at businesses have incentives and the opportunity to exercise basic judgment, ask the accuser for more facts, or ask the accused for his or her side of the story. On the other hand, from 2011-2017, most schools reading the federal Title IX guidance were not only discouraged from listening to the defendant, they found themselves discouraged from listening to the victim. Thus you see a black athlete Grant Neal who was expelled from Colorado State University-Pueblo for raping a trainer, despite the trainer saying that she was fine and not at all raped. (You can't believe her! She's a battered woman.) Of course, when Betsy DeVos announced changes in 2014, all the commentary you could find was "this is rape culture at work!" but if you're willing to actually look at the cases she cited, I can point you at https://reason.com/2017/09/07/devos-title-ix-example-cases-rape/ https://reason.com/2017/09/07/devos-title-ix-example-cases-r...
- JackFr 7y agoWell, sometimes the Senate needs to confirm you.
- jimbob45 7y ago100% can’t. Schools have their own secret police for investigation for no reason that make stories like this possible. If they just deferred to the normal police like literally every other profession, then everything would be fine. Instead, universities made what happens off-campus into their business. I’m sure there’s a conspiracy theory to be found here.
- at_a_remove 7y agoTitle IX has always had these problems and has had these abuses since inception. Numerous lawsuits have been brought about this kind of thing and even won. Why is this case different? No, really, I am asking. Why is the New York Times writing about it now? Why for these people?
- thaumasiotes 7y agoOne difference from the usual is that the accused parties in this case are women.
- miscPerson 7y agoBingo! Title IX isn’t supposed to convict women or provide rights to downtrodden men. It must be a miscarriage of justice when men benefit from civil rights!
- MrStonedOne 7y agoWomen were victimized by a system that was designed to help women. In this case it's even more juicy because its gay women. Even better because its a gay man as the perpetrator. This gets reads, this gets people's attention, and its less common then the typical case of abuse, making it interesting. It helps that they have more concrete proof the accusations were a lie, so the news paper doesn't have to worry about being on the wrong side of a sensitive topic. but don't forget about the empathy gap. Not in the news paper, but in society at large. The idea of an innocent man getting caught up in the system is uncomfortable, but people push that thought to the back of their mind and subconsciously rationalise it away as a necessary evil to protect women (and some men) because they can't think of a way to protect the falsely accused that doesn't make it easier to get away with abusing women. In this view the potentially abused women gets more empathy over the potentially innocent man.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> In this case it's even more juicy because its gay women. I think in this kind of story, where the accused are women, they're pretty much always going to be gay women. Not for reasons of any particular animus, but because that means the putative victims are female, which people will take a lot more seriously.
- oh_sigh 7y ago> And as part of a settlement, they are prohibited from publicly naming him. That would be a non-starter for me. I think I would burn about half my net worth to let the world know about a scumbag on the level of "J".
- awinder 7y agoI’m a bit ratted by their inability to press criminal charges. They got a lot of hard evidence and I’d be really amazed if someone crazed enough to do this is going to be an outstanding citizen for the rest of their life. There’s a public interest in that person being named, having this history attached to their name, and restitution to be paid.
- DangitBobby 7y agoI was just thinking... the state pays ungodly amounts of money to put away criminals. How is this different? Why are these two financially on the hook for justice to be served?
- bigtones 7y agoTwitter thread identified him from court filings: https://mobile.twitter.com/chick_in_kiev/status/1240497113177391104 https://mobile.twitter.com/chick_in_kiev/status/124049711317...
- overgard 7y agoThis is why the idea that it's never ok to question an accuser is really dangerous. "J" obviously discovered something that way too many people have now discovered: if you drape yourself in the cloak of the victim, you make yourself socially impervious to any critical inquiry. We can and should be disgusted by "J", but it's less about an individual and more about a vulnerability in our system: mob justice and crucifying people outside of the legal system is a very very bad idea. And no, I'm not suggesting we should never take victims seriously, since in discussions of this nature people always want to create strawmen. But I don't think we should just take anonymous commentary with no contact with actual law enforcement seriously. There's a really good reason we have an innocent-until-proven-guilty system. False accusations can be just as harmful as actual crimes.
- lkrubner 7y agoYou've got it backwards. All non-anonymous accusations should be taken seriously. The problem in the story described by this article was the weight being given to anonymous accusations, which should not be given much weight. As a general rule, justice is well served so long as the accused have certain rights, in particular: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense." Anonymous accusations have not played a very large role in the more dramatic cases we've seen over the last two years. Amber Anderson is a real person. Kate Beckinsale is a real person. Angelina Jolie is a real person. All of them made public accusations against Harvey Weinstein. E. Jean Carroll is a well-known journalist who accuses President Trump of raping her. Andrea Constand is a real person. Her accusations against Bill Cosby were not anonymous. Most of these people are well-known, and are putting their reputations on the line by accusing Weinstein, Trump, and Cosby. Such accusations need to be carefully investigated. In the past, these accusations have not been taken seriously and a new seriousness on these matters is overdue.
- 7y ago
- macawfish 7y ago"j" is for "jerk"
- Causality1 7y agoFucking amazing that a "credible accusation" can be made under a provably false name. I know more than one person whose life has been destroyed by baseless accusations of campus sexual misconduct. The only difference was that the people I knew weren't respected faculty members with the financial resources to hire a lawyer and the connections to speak personally with the president of the university, and they lost a lot more than a single job offer.
- mtnygard 7y agoIt's an odd definition of "credible" isn't it?
- ivalm 7y agoThere is a twitter thread that looked into public court documents: https://mobile.twitter.com/chick_in_kiev/status/1240497113177391104 https://mobile.twitter.com/chick_in_kiev/status/124049711317...
- netsharc 7y agoAh, it's so visceral, but there's people with virtual pitchforks screaming for his head on Twitter, and it's satisfying to watch... Edit: I wonder if Ms. Viren planned for the discovery by Twitterers. I'm sure (and hope) she cleared the article with their lawyer. If that is the case (that she knew there's a way for the public to get person's name through hints in the article), that is an amazing way to get back at the accuser.
- michaelmrose 7y agoFirstly these court documents are exactly as described on twitter. http://www.superiorcourt.maricopa.gov/docket/CivilCourtCases/caseInfo.asp?caseNumber=CV2019-003027 http://www.superiorcourt.maricopa.gov/docket/CivilCourtCases... Second I submitted a complaint to university where the perp teaches. No response so far.
- netsharc 7y agoLooking around Twitter, someone tweeted his faculty page got taken down, so the university is presumably aware of what's happening.
- jedharris 7y agoCould the university investigation subpoena the information behind the email accounts? If not, why not? This seems like a basic investigative move, and unless they are not allowed to do it, makes me doubt very much that they were serious about the investigation.
- DirkDiggler69 7y agoWhy is the NYT allowed to be linked here? They are shitty pay-walled articles.
- DirkDiggler69 7y agoWhy are NYT links allowed here? The articles suck and they are pay-walled. As long as it's a liberal publication nothing else matters?
- michaelmrose 7y agoAs our founders knew there is no way to reconcile justice with anonymity. Any accusation that is to be taken as credible must necessarily provide the information needed to obtain physical evidence or names of individuals who can be questioned. Without a way to credibly proceed such investigations should be expeditiously closed and sealed. With an avenue to proceed they should be investigated with intelligence and diligence. With that said although author isn't allowed to name J I suggest that the populace is under no such constraint. I will not herein speculate nor suggest such but I have to hope that the interests of justice will be better served in the future than they are presently.
- Barrin92 7y agoLots of people commentating on the innocent/guilt dilemma and who to believe, but what I have noticed that a lot of these cases that are incindiary, in particular in the United States seem to emerge from the university system and I don't think this is an accident. It seems outright byzantine to me. There appears to be a parallel justice system at work where complaints about serious crimes are brought to faculty or peers or title IX compliance officers rather than state authority directly. There are countless of informal relationships between students and teachers and people who are economically dependent in ways that are ripe for abuse. There appears to be a culture of brushing serious crimes under the carpet on one hand and a reaction of vigilante justice as a response.