Thank you for taking the trouble to hear my version of the story. Let me begin by acknowledging that I misjudged the interpersonal situation in two conversations, one in 2018 and the other in 2021. In doing so, I took what I then thought was a reasonable next step, but I miscalculated. Both instances consisted of a single statement. In each case, I apologized and withdrew my statement, did not repeat the statement, and did nothing else in that zone. In 2018, an architect from France who was not a UVic student or an employee (i.e., no power-over), had visited my lab the year before. As we were planning accommodation by email for a forthcoming conference that we and my lab members would be attending, the architect wrote some quite personal things, such as, “I miss you a lot,” and “I look forward to spending time with you,” and “I am enchanted by the hotel you chose.” Only then, after those statements, did I make the very qualified suggestion that maybe we might want to share a hotel room. As a (woman) department chair said to me later, “Someone has to suggest the next step, or no relationship would ever begin!” The architect did not complain other than to say that that was not what she meant; it was a cultural misunderstanding. We continued to work together (no money involved, just a nerdy hobby project) for five years. The 2021 mistake was with a graduate student. After a long pleasant reunion conversation at the end of Covid, I said that I was attracted to her. In the halls at that time were university posters that read “Consent…It starts with a conversation.” I neither said nor did anything beyond that one statement. However, the student was offended and left immediately, before I could apologize in person (I did so very soon afterward, by email), and went to the authorities. I suggested professionally mediated discussions toward a reconciliation, but that was rejected. I agree that my two statements were mistakes and that some discipline was justified. The University of Victoria argued that even one unwanted statement constitutes sexual harassment, and it used that to terminate my employment in June, 2024. The faculty union said that termination was excessive discipline, and filed a grievance. The university rejected the union’s grievance.
I believe that the university had a different reason to get rid of me. The student incident had already been resolved a few years earlier, and thus was not the cause of the investigation and 2024 termination. I had been leading a letter-writing campaign that protested the closure of a wonderful community-oriented program called the Speakers Bureau, which provided thousands of free talks by professors for over 35 years to seniors, schools, and community groups (I was a charter member). My letter, with 100 faculty signatures, was sent to the administration shortly before it dug seven years back into my email to find the exchange with the French architect, who did not complain when I made my invitation. Was the investigation a coincidence? I don’t think so.
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