PZ Myers updates his story about the threatened false rape allegation made against him

PZ Myers has responded to part of my recent post about what would happen if he judged others’ sexism as he judges himself.

He responded in a comment on his blog, complete with his now familiar personal abuse (he calls me a fuckhead, an asshole and a demented fuckwit) and misrepresentations of what I have written (he mistakenly says that my report of his own words on his own blog were “straight from the slymepit”, and he mistakenly says that I claimed what he did was sexist).

In his response, PZ ignored five of the six examples that I gave of behaviour by him that other people might consider sexist if they used PZ’s own standards — telling a conference host to do her belly dance and to get off his stage as he has work to do, linking to pornography involving women and octopuses, writing about a dream in which he turned his students into mermaids, publicly joking about rape, and endorsing a pornographic book that includes rape fantasies.

Instead he has focused only on my report of his own story about a student threatening to make a false rape allegation against him. He has written several times about this since 2010, and I am assuming that everything that he has written about it is true. He has now made two new assertions about the incident.

• Firstly, PZ now says that he went to the chair “to invite an open investigation”, not to prevent one. Previously he had written that he “had to work fast” because “it could get dragged out into an investigation that would easily destroy my career,” and also that the woman had not gone to the authorities because he had brought in witnesses “to make her effort futile.”
• Secondly, PZ now describes the investigation and says that he followed proper procedure. Previously he had written that this involved only the student, and not PZ himself, being questioned for only ten minutes about the severity of her accusation. I compare this below with the University of Minnesota’s official procedures for dealing with incidents of sexual assault and sexual harassment.

In my opinion, PZ’s various descriptions of this story do not reflect poorly on PZ’s behaviour during the incident. I do not expect anyone to be impartial when defending themselves against a serious false allegation.

But they do reflect poorly on PZ’s reluctance to judge other people’s behaviour equally charitably, and they do raise questions about the procedures that the University (whichever University it was) used to investigate the allegation when it was brought to their attention.

Before I address the implications of these two new assertions by PZ, I will clarify his misrepresentations of what I wrote about this issue.

1. PZ’s most recent misrepresentations

Firstly, PZ describes my report of this incident as being “straight from the slymepit,” and said that it “has no relation to reality.” Actually, my report was based solely on what PZ himself wrote, and I linked to the source pages.

Here is what PZ says I took “straight from the slymepit” and “has no relationship to reality.”

“6. PZ has written three times about how he prevented an investigation into a threatened false allegation of rape against himself. He says that when a student threatened to make the allegation, he asked someone else to sit with her while he (zoom) went straight to the chair of the department to explain the situation before it could get dragged out into an investigation that he said could destroy his career, no matter that she was lying.”

And here is where I actually took it from, a quote by PZ himself on his own blog.

“Zoom, I was right out the door at that instant; asked a female grad student in the lab next door to sit with the student for a bit, and went straight to the chair of the department to explain the situation. I had to work fast, because I knew that if it turned into a he-said-she-said story, it wouldn’t matter that she was lying, it could get dragged out into an investigation that would easily destroy my career, no matter that I was innocent.”

Secondly, PZ says that I described what he did as sexist, adding that I have become a demented fuckwit. Actually, the very first sentence in my post was:

“I don’t believe that PZ Myers is sexist.”

And I concluded:

“I am not condemning PZ for any of this behaviour. I am asking him and his colleagues to act ethically consistently when judging others.”

PZ has missed the whole point of my post, which was to point out what would happen if his own behaviour was judged as uncharitably as he judges the behaviour of others. Or, from the reverse perspective, what would happen if PZ judged others’ behaviour as charitably as he would like others to judge his own behaviour.

Well, we now know how PZ reacts when he (mistakenly) thinks that someone is judging his own behaviour uncharitably. He seems aggrieved and angry, calling me a fuckhead, an asshole and a demented fuckwit. Why would he expect others to react differently when he (actually and unambiguously) judges their behaviour uncharitably?

2. What PZ now says about the incident and his response

In his latest response, PZ says that:

“In that incident, I went straight to the chair to invite an open investigation — that’s what you do when there’s an accusation. If I’d not gone to university officials immediately, and had instead tried to cover it up, there would be an appearance of guilt. Suddenly, in the minds of these fuckheads, reporting an incident becomes preventing an investigation.”

2(a) What was the false allegation about?

PZ has described the false allegation in three ways: as sexual harassment, a sexual encounter, and rape.

In 2010 he wrote:

“I was also subject to accusations of harassment, once upon a time. A female student came into my lab when I was alone, unhappy about an exam grade, and openly threatened me — by going public with a story about a completely nonexistent sexual encounter right there.”

In 2013 he wrote:

“I’ve been threatened with a false rape accusation, one that could have totally destroyed my career.”

It is not clear why PZ has used these different descriptions. By coincidence, he described it as a sexual harassment when he was commenting on a post about somebody else being accused of sexual harassment, and he described it as rape when he was commenting on a post about somebody else being accused of rape.

It is also not clear whether the threatened false allegation was about an incident that was alleged to have happened “in my lab, when I was alone… right there”, or whether it was alleged to have happened elsewhere and the student threatened to go public “right there”.

2(b) Why did PZ go to the chair of the department?

PZ now seems to be suggesting that, when he originally wrote in 2010:

“Zoom, I was right out the door at that instant; asked a female grad student in the lab next door to sit with the student for a bit, and went straight to the chair of the department to explain the situation. I had to work fast, because I knew that if it turned into a he-said-she-said story, it wouldn’t matter that she was lying, it could get dragged out into an investigation that would easily destroy my career, no matter that I was innocent.”

And when he later wrote in 2013:

“and if that woman had gone to the authorities (she didn’t, because I immediately brought in witnesses to make her effort futile) I would sure as hell hope they’d treat both of our positions with equal seriousness.”

That he actually meant to convey, as written in 2014:

“In that incident, I went straight to the chair to invite an open investigation — that’s what you do when there’s an accusation. If I’d not gone to university officials immediately, and had instead tried to cover it up, there would be an appearance of guilt. Suddenly, in the minds of these fuckheads, reporting an incident becomes preventing an investigation.”

Now, I doubt that I am alone in seeing a difference between these three accounts.

In his 2010 description, PZ says that his response was designed to prevent the possibility that the allegation “could get dragged out into an investigation,” and in 2013 he adds that he had successfully made futile the student’s efforts to go to the authorities herself. But in his most recent description, PZ says that he “went straight to the chair to invite an open investigation.”

How could these three accounts be consistent? Here is one possibility.

PZ might have gone to the chair to invite one type of investigation (into the student for making the allegation), but in a way that it could not be dragged out into a different type of investigation (into his own behaviour as alleged by the student).

This interpretation is consistent with another post by PZ about the incident, in which he wrote:

“One thing not mentioned in the story: when I went to immediately report this incident, I was not questioned. No one asked me if I’d led her on; no one thought I was making up a story to hurt a young woman; I was taken seriously and the complaint was addressed seriously. In part it was because I acted promptly and got witnesses, but let’s have no illusions — as a man, my word counts for more.”

It is hard to see how his own combined descriptions tally with inviting an open investigation into whether the original allegation itself was true or false (which PZ and the student both knew, but the University didn’t know, and which the University should have been concerned about investigating).

3. What PZ has said about the investigation itself

In his latest response, PZ says that:

“As it was, the chair, a woman faculty person, and a woman grad student met with her, she recanted and apologized, and I declined to pursue further official action. I followed proper procedure, was completely open about the incident to all involved, and now asshole Nugent is happily embracing slymepit lies and distortions to claim that what I did was sexist? Disgusting. He’s become a demented fuckwit.”

We can know something of the nature of the investigation by combining various things that PZ has written about it in various posts and comments.

3(a) Only the student was questioned for only ten minutes

We know that the student was questioned in the office of the Department chair.

“She was immediately taken to the office of the department chair, with women faculty present, to discuss the severity of her accusation. She apologized. It was over.”

There is no reference to the student being asked about the truthfulness of her accusation, only its severity.

We know that PZ was not questioned about the possibility that he himself might have done anything inappropriate:

“One thing not mentioned in the story: when I went to immediately report this incident, I was not questioned. No one asked me if I’d led her on; no one thought I was making up a story to hurt a young woman; I was taken seriously and the complaint was addressed seriously. In part it was because I acted promptly and got witnesses, but let’s have no illusions — as a man, my word counts for more.”

We know that the questioning lasted only ten minutes:

“It is the only time that has happened in 25 years of teaching. And it didn’t go far at all: ten minutes of worry, and then the student recanted and apologised. She wasn’t punished, except for the fact that she did fail the course…but that was going to happen anyway.”

3(b) The role of witnesses

It is not clear whether the threatened false allegation was about an incident that was alleged to have happened “in his lab… right there”, or whether it was alleged to have happened elsewhere and the student threatened to go public “right there”.

For example, PZ says:

“Fortunately, I’d done the right thing by blowing it all wide open at the first hint of a threat, and getting witnesses on the spot.”

But in the same comment, PZ says:

“A female student came into my lab when I was alone, unhappy about an exam grade, and openly threatened me — by going public with a story about a completely nonexistent sexual encounter right there. Zoom, I was right out the door at that instant; asked a female grad student in the lab next door to sit with the student for a bit, and went straight to the chair of the department to explain the situation.”

If the allegation was about sexual harassment or a sexual encounter or a rape that happened in the lab while PZ was alone with the student, then there were no witnesses. At best, one person was a witness to part of what happened after the allegation had been made.

If the allegation was about sexual harassment or a sexual encounter or a rape that happened elsewhere, where there were witnesses present, then it seems unclear how these witnesses could have been interviewed within the ten minutes that it took to conduct the investigation.

3(c) Long term consequences

PZ also describes two long-term outcomes of the incident that seem to conflict. He recently wrote:

“I did not come away from this unpleasant occasion with the idea that all women are conniving “bitches”. I was able to recognize that this was an unusual circumstance with a desperate young woman who was not plotting against me, but on the spur of the moment tried an unlikely ploy to save her grade.”

Yet we also know that PZ now insists on having witnesses present whenever he meets with students:

“I won’t meet privately with students either — I always keep my office door wide open, and when I’m working with students in the lab, I find excuses to move out and let them work on their own if it turns into a one-on-one event. I just can’t afford the risk.”

On the face of it, that seems a disproportionate response to the possibility of such an unlikely event happening again. I wonder how PZ weighed up the disadvantages of his students not being able to benefit from the one-to-one teaching that they might get from other professors, against the advantages of PZ feeling safe from possible future false allegations of rape?

4. PZ’s University’s procedures for addressing allegations

Would the investigation have been conducted differently if it had been the student, rather than PZ, who had gone to the chair with her original allegation? We cannot know, because PZ — as he says himself — acted quickly to prevent that possibility from happening, and to make futile the student’s efforts to do so.

We also don’t know at what University the incident took place. However, if it took place at PZ’s current place of employment, the University of Minnesota, we can compare what happened with the University’s published policies for addressing allegations of sexual harassment and rape.

For context, PZ and the student both knew whether the allegation was true or false, but the University did not know this. Therefore the University’s procedures have to take into account the possibility that the allegation might be true or might be false.

This right to due process, to a fair and unbiased hearing for everyone involved, is a critical aspect of justice. PZ sometimes seems reluctant to recognise this when allegations are made about people other than himself or his colleagues.

Title IX

There is a legal requirement (called Title IX) for Colleges that are supported by the US federal government, to follow strict procedures when an allegation is made.

This article outlines some of these requirements, including:

• Title IX a landmark federal civil right that prohibits sex discrimination in education. It also addresses sexual harassment, gender-based discrimination, and sexual violence.
• Schools must be proactive in ensuring that your campus is free of sex discrimination.
• The school should conclude its own investigation within a semester’s time (the 2011 Title IX Guidance proposes 60 days as an appropriate timeframe).
• The final decision should be provided to you and the accused in writing and both of you have the right to appeal the decision.
• Schools may not retaliate against someone filing a complaint and must keep a complainant-victim safe from other retaliatory harassment or behavior.
• In cases of sexual violence, schools are prohibited from encouraging or allowing mediation (rather than a formal hearing) of the complaint.

University of Minnesota

This is from the administrative procedure for responding to incidents of sexual assault at the University of Minnesota:

Any University of Minnesota student or employee who has been sexually assaulted or physically harmed is strongly encouraged to contact the police department for the location where the assault occurred.

Victims/survivors are also encouraged to contact the campus or local victim/survivor service office and/or counseling and health care services.¹ These services are strictly confidential.

The University strongly encourages individuals to report sexual assault and relationship violence to appropriate officials because it is the only way that action can be taken against an alleged violator of the policy.

Victims/survivors are also encouraged to contact University officials for appropriate action. Specific contact information is contained the Contact section above, but in general…If an employee is accused, report it to the campus’s Equal Opportunity officer.

University Employees, when informed of an incident of assault, will (among other things):

Encourage Prompt Reporting to Police. If the assault was against an adult, encourage the victim/survivor to report the incident to the police.

Make Appropriate University Reports. If you are a University employee with supervisory or advising responsibilities, contact your campus student conduct office, or Equal Opportunity office, to inform them of the reported assault and to obtain guidance on next steps. You may also contact your campus’s program against sexual violence for guidance on responding to the report. Once informed, appropriate University offices will work to assist the victim/survivor, including by providing guidance in reporting to law enforcement, obtaining counseling or other health or academic services, and filing a complaint with University conduct offices.

The Equal Opportunity Office will (among other things):

Encourage the victim/survivor to report the incident to the police, and assist in making the report if requested by the victim/survivor.

If the person accused is an employee, promptly investigate, and make recommendations for action, as appropriate (in many cases the police may conduct the investigation).

Allow the victim/survivor and the person accused to have a non-participating/non-witness support person present for interviews.

This is from the administrative procedure for students reporting incidents of sexual harassment by a staff member at the University of Minnesota:

Report to Office for Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action (EOAA) on the Twin Cities campus or the campus in which you are enrolled… or via UReport (Anonymous on-line reporting system).

Action taken:
• Interview the target of the sexual harassment, the alleged perpetrator and any other relevant witnesses.
• Analyze the facts and review any relevant documents.
• Provide coaching and/or informal problem-solving
• When informal processes do not resolve the situation investigate and issue a findings letter as to whether or not there has been a violation of the University policy against sexual harassment and make recommendations to the responsible administrator or in situations involving students make recommendations to OSCAI for addressing the potential sexual harassment including, reassignment, organizational change, education and discipline (up to and including termination or in the case of a student: suspension, expulsion, probation, class reassignment or counseling.)

Summary

PZ has written several times about this incident since 2010, and I am assuming that everything that he has written about it is true.

In my opinion, PZ’s various descriptions of this story do not reflect poorly on PZ’s behaviour during the incident. I do not expect anyone to be impartial when defending themselves against a serious false allegation.

But they do reflect poorly on PZ’s reluctance to judge other people’s behaviour equally charitably, and they do raise questions about the procedures that the University (whichever University it was) used to investigate the allegation when it was brought to their attention.

Finally, PZ’s arguments are not helped by his misrepresentations of what I have written about this, or by him calling me a fuckhead, an asshole and a demented fuckwit.