Boalt Update

Erin O'Connor identifies Jennifer Reisch as the woman who accused Boalt Hall Dean John Dwyer of sexual harassment. O'Connor explains eloquently why the public deserves to know the accuser's identity. She also reports that I independently confirmed the woman's identity. This is true. I read O'Connor's earlier post describing how she used Google and the various facts that have been reported to identify a person who matched the profile and whom she was "90% sure" was the right person. I did more or less what O'Connor described above and came up with Reisch's name. I then approached a credible source who has been publicly involved in the story and this person confirmed Reisch's identity. I won't compromise the source by publicizing any more details, but I did share the proof with O'Connor. Now that Reisch's name is out on the blogosphere, I suspect that some of the Big Media outlets who have been protecting her identity will have no choice but to name her as well.

UPDATE (12/18): I have more to say on the source that confimed Reisch's identity
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Meanwhile Boalt Professor Linda Hamilton Krieger published an op-ed in today's San Francisco Chronicle. The paper is not only happy to protect Reisch's anonymity, but also to give a soapbox to her comrades so they can prosecute their extrajudicial campaign against Dwyer, and agitate for all manner of bizarre policy changes at Berkeley. Some of the most telling quotes in the op-ed (emphases mine):

As a teacher who sat with this student in my office as she wept, who watched protectively from a distance as she barely made it through her law school graduation,

It's barely credible to suggest that Reisch "barely made it through graduation". In addition to graduating, she also managed to pass the Bar exam two months later. She also somehow found the inner strength to serve on the board of directors of the Berkeley Law Foundation, to win an award for service to the International Human Rights Law Clinic, to obtain a fellowship at Public Advocates, Inc., to write an article about labor unions in Mexico, win and perform a summer fellowship [.pdf]. That's not bad for "barely making it through graduation".

as a sex-discrimination scholar and lawyer who last summer could not figure out, even after many phone calls and much Cal Web site searching, what I was legally required to do with this information if the student chose not to report, I have a really hard time viewing this as "the system working."

I don't think you need to be a law professor to realize that if an adult chooses not to report an incident, then there's not a whole lot that a third-party needs to do with information about the incident.

the university must determine whether members of the Boalt Hall community had information suggesting that our former dean had a propensity to engage in risky sexual behavior like that he has admitted to here. If some people did know, the university needs to find out why they did not offer that information when Dwyer was being considered for the deanship.

It's impossible to read this any other way except that Krieger is demanding that a candidate for dean must submit to an open-ended fishing expedition into one's most intimate affairs looking for any rumor about behavior that someone might find objectionable.

Given the tremendous power imbalances between students and faculty, and the psychological transference so often present in the student-teacher bond, can sexual relationships between students and faculty ever be truly "consensual," particularly in a gender-stratified environment like that at Boalt Hall? And why is the environment at Boalt still so gender-stratified anyway?

First of all what does "gender-stratified environment" mean in the first place? Is this a reference to the fact that the Boalt student body is 60% female? As I've mentioned before, my wife graduated from Boalt and I've gotten to know many of her female schoolmates. They are among the most intelligent and assertive women you will find anywhere. Most women who attend Boalt are at least in their mid-twenties and have a few years of professional work experience between college and law school. To suggest that they are incapable of making their own decisions about whom to form relationships with, and that they need to be protected from their professors is as demeaning as anything you might say about them. The reaction that my wife and a classmate had to this op-ed piece -- "ridiculous and offensive".

UPDATE (12/18) My wife and four of her classmates respond to Krieger in a letter to the Chronicle
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Naturally, this whole matter has recently been a major topic of conversation for my wife and her girlfriends from Boalt. These are women in their 30s who have gone on to careers in major law firms, corporations, the DOJ and the federal court system. They are mostly liberal Democrats, certainly more liberal than I am. This is not a group of people that would be sympathetic towards a sexual predator. Their overall assessment of Dwyer seems to be that he was an effective dean and a popular teacher "Half the women in the class had a crush on him" one said. But none of them have ever heard any rumors about inappropriate behavior, until the news of this one incident broke a few weeks ago. A lapse in judgment, but hardly severe enough to banish him from academia, as Reisch's attorney Laura Stevens has demanded. Overall, they have more sympathy for Dwyer than for his formerly anonymous accuser.
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My wife says this story has evolved and it's now about the press vs. the public. "I can't figure out why the press is protecting this woman, and effectively taking her side against Dwyer. She's trying to destroy a man's career. Her credibility should also be an issue. There's no good reason for her to be anonymous."

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 13, 2002 10:30 PM