ACADEMIC PREDATORS

UNIVERSITIES WERE LARGELY SPARED THE #METOO RECKONING THAT HIT THE ENTERTAINMENT AND MEDIA INDUSTRIES IN 2017

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As emails and documents from the estate of the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein continue to surface, the revelations have embarrassed many prominent men and, in some cases, toppled them from their positions.

But the disclosures have a wider significance, because they require us to reflect on the frameworks, particularly within academia, that enable the systematic exploitation of young women.

What stands out in the email exchanges between Epstein and renowned economist Larry Summers - a former US Treasury Secretary and president of Harvard University, where he is currently University Professor - is the predatory dynamic in which professional support is implicitly traded for what Summers bluntly calls "romance/sex." For a young academic, such support can change the course of a career.

Universities were largely spared the #MeToo reckoning that hit the entertainment and media industries in 2017. But academic women of my generation know that this was not because professors and administrators were models of good behavior; rather, it was a matter of timing and the absence of a single, catalyzing scandal.