As they were anthropologists....
Thinking about the whole hoohah about the lawsuit against the gross sexually harassing prof at Harvard -
- and we understand that by now I think a majority of the signatories of the letter of support, who signed without being in full possession of the facts (oh, come on!) have withdrawn their support -
- and I noted on Twitter there were certain suggestions that they, being similar Topp Profs at Elite Institutions, did similar things and woke up with the cold grue that such exposure might happen to them -
- but I wonder, given their sort of generation (though lo, I suspect most of them are a little younger than oneself), they regarded supervisors being Inappropriate as just one of the rites de passage involved in making one's way to an elite academic career, in fact Prof at the centre's wife said something like 'what happened to rolling with it?'
Which is that whole very dodgy 'never did me any harm' paradigm, right? used for all sorts of problematic trad practices.
When I reflect, I think I am awfully glad I did my PhD when I was In My Prime (like Miss Jean Brodie) rather than an impressionable young thing, and that my future career did not depend upon it, because I already had a career. Also, while it's not (except with some very specific collections) going to be possible for an archivist to hiss to an Academic Who Done Her Wrong or merely looked at her funny 'You'll never use manuscripts in this repository again!', the advantages of having an archivist who is well-disposed is of considerable benefit to the researcher.
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