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    YoutooStassa Edwards
    6/20/16 5:46pm

    I took a class with Professor Pogge at Columbia in the late 80's. I was a Barnard student, and he "joked" that all the Barnard students would drop his class within two weeks, the idea being that we were dumber than Columbia students. His teaching sucked. I got my first migraine in that class from stress. Luckily my brother's girlfriend at the time explained all of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the book we were studying, in about fifteen minutes at a barbecue. Pogge wasn't able to explain anything in an entire semester. I got an A. But I dropped philosophy as my major. I hate that guy.

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      PorscheWidowYoutoo
      6/20/16 6:05pm

      Wait, you mean you learned more from a 15 minute conversation with (gasp!) another female, than you did in an entire semester with this esteemed asshat? (I really need to invent a font called sarcasm).

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      E=MC HammeredYoutoo
      6/20/16 6:19pm

      It sounds like Pogge can’t cant kant.

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    story645Stassa Edwards
    6/20/16 5:46pm

    while a university turns a blind eye

    Is it a blind eye when it’s an open secret at a university and the better supervisors warn their students when they’re in the creep’s radius?

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      KeevaSstory645
      6/20/16 5:50pm

      Yes, because the school itself ignored the situation for as long as they could. An “open secret” and supervisors knowing about it and even warning students is not the same as an official action by Yale. By their inaction the school endorsed this creep’s activities.

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      fundamentalsstory645
      6/20/16 5:58pm

      why use ‘blind eye’ when ‘accessory’ has such a nice ‘lock you in jail for a while’ ring to it?

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    SoundsGoodinTheoryStassa Edwards
    6/20/16 5:51pm

    As one of the signatories, I am so glad to see that Jezebel is covering this.

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      Nate SSoundsGoodinTheory
      6/20/16 6:28pm

      Thank you for signing the letter.

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      HotforLogicSoundsGoodinTheory
      6/20/16 6:50pm

      I’m heartened to see several former colleagues have signed on.

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    BlueStockingBStassa Edwards
    6/20/16 7:11pm

    Philosophy PhD candidate here — It’s hard to overstate the extent of the climate problem in philosophy. I’m delighted that Pogge is finally being more publicly shamed, because we’ve all known about him for quite some time. It goes way beyond him though. Every time I meet a new woman grad student, the conversation at some point turns to “who do you know who is a sexual harasser/assaulter?” And every time we each have something to share. There’s a whole grapevine warning system because universities just aren’t doing much to sanction that kind of atrocious behavior. (I’ve had several traumatic experiences myself from professors, and despite reporting them to the university, with documentation, nothing has changed.) At the same time, there IS a lot being done by other philosophers, especially the feminist philosophers, to make things better. I’m deeply grateful for all the extra work those people do. I’m continually impressed by how much has changed in the 6 years since I started grad school — so I’m hopeful that eventually this kind of behavior won’t be so common and expected and normalized. But also: fuck Pogge and all the many, many, many protected asshats who use their power to abuse the people they have authority over.

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      burner1000000BlueStockingB
      6/20/16 10:35pm

      I am sorry. I hope you can be a part of changing the climate and holding your colleagues accountable. When I was an undergrad I studied philosophy until I couldn’t anymore. One of the profs who crossed lines with/groomed my friends and me went on to make headlines later at a different University for the same disgusting behavior, defending it all the way. I was a teen when it happened and these guys were older than I am now.

      Is it always ethicists?

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      BlueStockingBburner1000000
      6/20/16 10:43pm

      Oh hell, that’s AWFUL. I’m so sorry you experienced that.

      It’s not always ethicists! Lots of other philosophers are terrible as well! Though I have found that folks who think they’re “beyond” such things as sexism are often the worst offenders, and usually it’s something about what they work on that lets them think they could never *possibly* be guilty of such things.

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    CaliforlifeStassa Edwards
    6/20/16 5:45pm

    - All of the public allegations against Pogge have, notably, been made by women of color. ALL. ALL. ALL. ALL. Fire his ass now.

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      KaraNextWeekCaliforlife
      6/20/16 6:13pm

      It’s also probably the reason why he hasn’t been fired. Ugh.

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      EffieKaraNextWeek
      6/20/16 7:14pm

      It may be part of why. I can’t help but channel some Mark Ruffalo here: “they knew about it and they let it happen.”

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    DrWhoSoccerStarStassa Edwards
    6/20/16 5:36pm

    highly influential ethicist, Thomas Pogge

    Not sure if he’s fit for that title.

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      ReburnsABurningReturnsDrWhoSoccerStar
      6/20/16 5:43pm

      It is more important than ever that the title continue to be associated with him. You don’t think he relied on the “believability” factor anyone accusing a noted ethicist of sexual misconduct to get away with it?

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      goddessoftransitoryDrWhoSoccerStar
      6/20/16 6:10pm

      They’ve got to quit hiring faculty from Bizarro World on Opposite Day.

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    mathildadiehlStassa Edwards
    6/20/16 5:44pm

    I’m not familiar with this case, but I can certainly confirm that this kind of situation is a thing that happens all too commonly. I know that my department had its very own Dirty Old Man, who had a habit of sexually harassing female students, grad students in particular. Many complaints were made over the years, but the man had tenure and a big reputation in the field. He was also as old as the hills, so I guess people figured he’d be gone soon anyway and it wasn’t worth bothering with the situation. Of course, that sends the message that nobody cares and that we had to just take care of each other. So, we were careful to never leave anyone alone with him. Talk about a hostile work environment!

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      HellishHarlotmathildadiehl
      6/20/16 6:47pm

      My best friend is a grad student and works on campus in an advising department that also houses professorial offices and conference rooms, and there’s one of these guys there - totally inappropriate, makes gross jokes about women, is overly touchy. One day, another professor (this one typically very quiet and just stuck to his work and lectures, which my friend says he does so because he is an Egyptian Muslim and you know how kind Americans are to immigrants) was sick of hearing this dude and they got into a shouting match about how he needed to respect women and everyone in the office and all this other shit that had been transgressing. I was like holy shit as she’s live-texting me this shit. Not that it’s surprising that men in academia abuse their power, but that another man actually told him to shut the fuck up and grow the fuck up. We need more of that please, k thx!

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      frog4mathildadiehl
      6/20/16 7:00pm

      Yup! I went to a very small state school, and there was one ancient prof who’d been there for AGES. Terrible teacher, to start with. He also had a rep for hitting on female students, including an ex-student of his I worked with, who told me about her own personal experience with that.

      But! He was also the school’s track & field coach, and boy, did his teams have one heck of a winning record! So no fucking way he was getting fired over some minor little detail like harassment of women.

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    goddessoftransitoryStassa Edwards
    6/20/16 6:09pm

    YOU ARE ETHICING WRONG, ASSHOLE.

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      BurnedAtTheStakeStassa Edwards
      6/20/16 7:11pm

      So, does having a famous philosophy professor actually equal revenue? I mean, Yale has billions of dollars in endowments, and I cannot imagine revenue from the philosophy dept. contributing much.

      Is it revenue, or more marquee appeal - ‘we have this guy with a long list of articles in scholarly journals, plus he rocks a bowtie!’

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        MissouriBenBurnedAtTheStake
        6/20/16 7:28pm

        More of a branding thing than a revenue thing—schools want to brand themselves as having across-the-board scholarly excellence, so if he has a big pile of publications, it helps with that.

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        digbetteBurnedAtTheStake
        6/22/16 12:52am

        It’s marquee appeal. Having “old school” male academics on the roll makes a big difference to people looking for ‘an institute of good standing’. Quite often the professors either do very little teaching, or are not very good at it. Often they haven’t published in years. It’s a figurehead status of an outdated sense of gravitas.

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      thoughtsrightmeowStassa Edwards
      6/20/16 5:43pm

      Between this and the Stanford rape survivor’s letter, I’m pretty impressed with Buzzfeed lately.

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