The inability for even well-known universities to hold accountable their own is well-documented and discipline-independent. Whether pertaining to sports, sexual assault, or plagiarism, universities muster an incredible institutional inertia that smothers and insulates the university from any claims of wrongdoing, no matter how blatant.
To be fair, though, I've seen horror stories that work in the opposite direction as well.
As a tenured prof thinking hard about how to make a career transition out of academics into a slightly different field, I have plenty of stories of corruption and rewarded incompetence. This essay is a good read, but at this point I'm kind of desensitized to it.
However, universities are cautious for the same reason that justice often moves slowly and deliberately, and sometimes the guilty are not punished: because the innocent are also falsely accused.
I'm not saying this to defend universities that protect pervasively corrupt individuals or communities, which does deserve criticism. But for every story I've heard like this, where you have researchers taking credit for work not theirs, or plagiarizing, or falsifying data, or engaging in physical or sexual assault, I'm aware of other stories, where someone has falsely been accused of sexual harassment or assault, or is the victim of slander or lies. I've had colleagues who had their research labs wrongly entirely shut down because of attention-seeking behavior from another faculty member, wanting to play the role of savior. In situations like those it doesn't matter if some lawsuit procures some settlement or compensation, because a different, more pernicious type of damage has been done.
Because of things like that, I think universities often tread very lightly, because if someone comes forward with a claim it's difficult to know where it will lead. Administrations have their own problems (especially with being top-heavy) but they should be cautious, given the crap I've seen.
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The inability for even well-known universities to hold accountable their own is well-documented and discipline-independent. Whether pertaining to sports, sexual assault, or plagiarism, universities muster an incredible institutional inertia that smothers and insulates the university from any claims of wrongdoing, no matter how blatant.
To be fair, though, I've seen horror stories that work in the opposite direction as well.
As a tenured prof thinking hard about how to make a career transition out of academics into a slightly different field, I have plenty of stories of corruption and rewarded incompetence. This essay is a good read, but at this point I'm kind of desensitized to it.
However, universities are cautious for the same reason that justice often moves slowly and deliberately, and sometimes the guilty are not punished: because the innocent are also falsely accused.
I'm not saying this to defend universities that protect pervasively corrupt individuals or communities, which does deserve criticism. But for every story I've heard like this, where you have researchers taking credit for work not theirs, or plagiarizing, or falsifying data, or engaging in physical or sexual assault, I'm aware of other stories, where someone has falsely been accused of sexual harassment or assault, or is the victim of slander or lies. I've had colleagues who had their research labs wrongly entirely shut down because of attention-seeking behavior from another faculty member, wanting to play the role of savior. In situations like those it doesn't matter if some lawsuit procures some settlement or compensation, because a different, more pernicious type of damage has been done.
Because of things like that, I think universities often tread very lightly, because if someone comes forward with a claim it's difficult to know where it will lead. Administrations have their own problems (especially with being top-heavy) but they should be cautious, given the crap I've seen.