I continue to follow this case and read your interesting tweets and posts, and it occurs to me that this must be a real "is the dress blue or gold" illusion scenario. You seem to have a sincerely held belief that the investigation is garbage and David is in the right. I feel from your comments - and the other folks' who engage with your tweets, etc. - that you and they are sincere. Yet, personally I feel just as sincerely that the investigation looks to be well done and the investigator's comments are spot on. I know there are others who agree with my point of view, just as sincerely as you have folks on your side. The way I see it, at one point, the investigators wrote that Sabatini appeared to have a "general attitude of non-compliance and disregard for Institute rules." I feel that hits the nail on the head 100% and is the crux of the problem, manifesting itself in many ways, some egregious like the hookups at the office and not reporting his relationship. He actually wrote, "I don't give a flying fuck about the safety people" -- literally, he wrote that. What strikes me is that you see it one way (harmless, just his opinion) and I just as sincerely see it another (failure of leadership, dangerous). I suppose we'll all see how it plays out in court.
My job is in the legal field and I can objectively tell you ( outside of how one feels about the case) that this investigation violated about 15 basic principles of fairness and if it had to do with a public court and not a private institution, the people involved would be charged themselves with abuse of power.
As for the rest, neither Sabatini nor Knouse disclosed their relationship and whatever "leadership failure" he displayed, so did Knouse who is the head of her own lab. You seem to forget that there are two people involved in this, whatever this is.
These investigations do NOT seem designed to provide fairness or due process in any way. Throughout the report they rely on the Title IX standard of "preponderance of evidence," not "beyond a reasonable doubt."
It does not make for a fair investigation or conclusions.
We're glad you're still with us! And agree with you that this is analogous to the dress scenario you recall. In fact, this is why we see this case as so interesting--there are facts, and then there are the opinions OF the facts...but they are not the same thing.
Further complicating this case? There are lies.
Let's start with the lies at the beginning of the case. The framing of their relationship--which clearly broke policy (that is a fact)--as harassment seems to have been a lie, or at least a very big ex post facto stretch of the truth or revisionist history (i.e., a relationship Knouse seems to have participated in enthusiastically got reframed as harassment by her after it soured). Then there are the lies proffered by her proxies in the DEI survey: Sabatini's sexism, an alleged affair with an undergraduate, and retaliation against his employees. All of which were not actually found to be the case: The investigation found no examples of him impeding women's careers; the anti-woman comments allegedly made by Sabatini only seem to be alleged by Knouse but NOT his trainees; and they found no explicit threats or acts of retaliation.
A through-line in the report that seems to be an increasingly common theme in gender politics and workplace adjudications is this: FEELING at risk is the same as BEING at risk (or in the words of younger folks, "words are violence"). Indeed, what I see when I read this report is not a majority of people in the lab concurring that the lab culture was threatening. Indeed, the letter signed and published by trainees in the Spring of this year attests completely to the contrary. What I see in this report is the conflation of workplace conflicts and the feelings that result with a threatening and unsafe environment.
Allow me to draw an analogy: In many cases of police murdering people of color, once in court many officers have been able to escape prosecution for murdering unarmed people while on duty because they FELT threatened. In so many cases of this, the murdered individual had no weapon and posed no or minimal threat to an armed police officer. I think that this is completely wrong (despite having family in law enforcement whose safety I care about very much). FEELING threatened is not the same as BEING threatened.
Let's take Cake-Gate, for example. Postdoc 6 FELT that she was being blamed, and it seems clear that members of the lab made jokes about someone in the lab alerting HR to the gathering in question. But it does not seem that anybody harassed her, confronted her, bullied her, belittled her, etc.. So the central question in this scenario boils down to: Does Postdoc 6 FEELING attacked constitute an attack? If we are going to conclude that the lab environment was so noxious that Sabatini's career is worth destroying, I happen to feel very strongly that the bar needs to be higher. It's not that I don't care about Postdoc 6's feelings, it is that one individual's interpretation should NOT be conflated with the environment. In other words, weather ain't the same as the climate.
Let us now turn to the other lies in this case: the external lies. Once terminated, and when he was pursuing employment with NYU, media sources that did less-than-fastidious fact checking and social media accounts alleged that Sabatini had "harassed multiple victims." This was conveyed as "decades of unchecked harassment" which was interpreted by many as an out-of-control professor who was wantonly sleeping with his own trainees. The truth? The initial "victim" was in a longstanding relationship with Sabatini that is memorialized in copious texts, as we have seen. Whether one believes that consent is revokable after the fact, the texts between them indicate a mutually consensual relationship (that broke policy). In other words, we personally do not buy the narrative that Knouse was victimized by Sabatini. "Multiple victims?" There were none. There were two allies of Knouse who were alumni of the lab, who magically happened to approach HR about their time in the lab (well after leaving), who made vague complaints of "bro culture." At the very worst, these individuals were "former employees with complaints," not victims. Both of them have successful scientific careers and none of their complaints included Sabatini doing anything sexually inappropriate with or to them.
Apologies for the length of this reply, but your comments are insightful and we appreciate civil discourse in a case that has been anything but civil!
Returning to your comments:
1. Your interpretation of the facts are perfectly valid so long as we are interpreting the same facts--indeed, that is the central thrust of our entire project. We feel that the public discourse around Sabatini in the media and on Twitter sounded so deranged that it seemed divorced from the facts and the person we encountered when we interacted with Sabatini during our time at WIBR and MIT (that said, those of us in this project were peripheral to the lab, not intimately involved with it). Hence, we endeavored to acquire documents that are rooted in facts, not opinions.
2. We are sincere! Reading this report, we are struck by how many innocuous comments that we ourselves make in life could be weaponized against us in a workplace dispute adjudicated by an external legal firm. For example, in the section of the report titled "the pregnancy barrier," the investigators claim that Sabatini saying he returned to work a few days after his son was born as somehow messaging to women that they had to return to the bench as soon as humanly possible after giving birth. While this is certainly possible...what's missing from this section is a woman who was pregnant in the lab saying that she felt that that put any sort of pressure on her. It is simply not there. An offhand comment with no malicious intent behind it is turned into some sort of oppressive and broadly culture-defining edict.
3. Did Sabatini have a "general attitude of non-compliance?" With respect to safety issues, Sabatini didn't plan the birthday gathering--in fact, it was a surprise. Within the lab? We personally care much more whether Sabatini was making his employees unsafe by disregarding biohazard rules around things like BL2+ handling of lentivirus, etc--we just don't see bickering over the amount of film being used in the developer as a pressing issue of safety or a failure of leadership. With respect to the non-compliance of their relationship....we agree with you, but note that there were two folks in the relationship, both of whom were PIs and both of whom were obligated to not engage in the relationship and to report it if it happened.
4. You seem to sincerely care about the rules governing their relationship, but not very concerned with the application of those rules to Knouse. There is absolutely no provision in WIBR's policy about whether the older and more experienced PI is responsible for declaration of the relationship or responsible for terminating the relationship. The policy is that PIs at WIBR cannot be involved with any other WIBR employee.
5. A good question here is this: how should institutions handle it when a leader fails? For example, if Sabatini is somehow violating safety issues, the extent should be assessed and then corrective measures applied (education, etc.). If Environmental Health and Safety was concerned with anything in the lab, it certainly isn't mentioned in the report (and, given the topics covered in the report, we assume that if there were serious EHS concerns that it would have been incorporated into this report!). Do I personally think that writing "I don't give a flying fuck about the safety people" is professional? Of course not--but I think that things like that should be first addressed with corrective measures, not destruction. Especially when the careers of so many trainees are on the line.
6. With respect to your last line--how it plays out in court. This is a very relevant comment that points to one of the other cores of this project. The court case is not even about whether the investigation was valid or not--we assume it will be covered in court, but only to give context for the more central defamation claim.
The real thrust of the case is this: Did Lehmann and Knouse defame Sabatini? In terms of terminating Sabatini over a broken policy around relationships, the answer would be no. However...Knouse's lawyer calling and threatening NYU's legal counsel if they should hire him and telling them that he is a sexual predator? That likely contributed significantly to the destruction of his pursuit of employment at NYU, i.e., constituted defamation per se and tortious interference. If Lehmann did similar things--which discovery will likely find if it is there--then she may be on the hook for defamation as well.
We're sorry for the long response--but your comments are insightful and you know we're happy to engage with civil discourse :-)
I continue to follow this case and read your interesting tweets and posts, and it occurs to me that this must be a real "is the dress blue or gold" illusion scenario. You seem to have a sincerely held belief that the investigation is garbage and David is in the right. I feel from your comments - and the other folks' who engage with your tweets, etc. - that you and they are sincere. Yet, personally I feel just as sincerely that the investigation looks to be well done and the investigator's comments are spot on. I know there are others who agree with my point of view, just as sincerely as you have folks on your side. The way I see it, at one point, the investigators wrote that Sabatini appeared to have a "general attitude of non-compliance and disregard for Institute rules." I feel that hits the nail on the head 100% and is the crux of the problem, manifesting itself in many ways, some egregious like the hookups at the office and not reporting his relationship. He actually wrote, "I don't give a flying fuck about the safety people" -- literally, he wrote that. What strikes me is that you see it one way (harmless, just his opinion) and I just as sincerely see it another (failure of leadership, dangerous). I suppose we'll all see how it plays out in court.
My job is in the legal field and I can objectively tell you ( outside of how one feels about the case) that this investigation violated about 15 basic principles of fairness and if it had to do with a public court and not a private institution, the people involved would be charged themselves with abuse of power.
As for the rest, neither Sabatini nor Knouse disclosed their relationship and whatever "leadership failure" he displayed, so did Knouse who is the head of her own lab. You seem to forget that there are two people involved in this, whatever this is.
These investigations do NOT seem designed to provide fairness or due process in any way. Throughout the report they rely on the Title IX standard of "preponderance of evidence," not "beyond a reasonable doubt."
It does not make for a fair investigation or conclusions.
We're glad you're still with us! And agree with you that this is analogous to the dress scenario you recall. In fact, this is why we see this case as so interesting--there are facts, and then there are the opinions OF the facts...but they are not the same thing.
Further complicating this case? There are lies.
Let's start with the lies at the beginning of the case. The framing of their relationship--which clearly broke policy (that is a fact)--as harassment seems to have been a lie, or at least a very big ex post facto stretch of the truth or revisionist history (i.e., a relationship Knouse seems to have participated in enthusiastically got reframed as harassment by her after it soured). Then there are the lies proffered by her proxies in the DEI survey: Sabatini's sexism, an alleged affair with an undergraduate, and retaliation against his employees. All of which were not actually found to be the case: The investigation found no examples of him impeding women's careers; the anti-woman comments allegedly made by Sabatini only seem to be alleged by Knouse but NOT his trainees; and they found no explicit threats or acts of retaliation.
A through-line in the report that seems to be an increasingly common theme in gender politics and workplace adjudications is this: FEELING at risk is the same as BEING at risk (or in the words of younger folks, "words are violence"). Indeed, what I see when I read this report is not a majority of people in the lab concurring that the lab culture was threatening. Indeed, the letter signed and published by trainees in the Spring of this year attests completely to the contrary. What I see in this report is the conflation of workplace conflicts and the feelings that result with a threatening and unsafe environment.
Allow me to draw an analogy: In many cases of police murdering people of color, once in court many officers have been able to escape prosecution for murdering unarmed people while on duty because they FELT threatened. In so many cases of this, the murdered individual had no weapon and posed no or minimal threat to an armed police officer. I think that this is completely wrong (despite having family in law enforcement whose safety I care about very much). FEELING threatened is not the same as BEING threatened.
Let's take Cake-Gate, for example. Postdoc 6 FELT that she was being blamed, and it seems clear that members of the lab made jokes about someone in the lab alerting HR to the gathering in question. But it does not seem that anybody harassed her, confronted her, bullied her, belittled her, etc.. So the central question in this scenario boils down to: Does Postdoc 6 FEELING attacked constitute an attack? If we are going to conclude that the lab environment was so noxious that Sabatini's career is worth destroying, I happen to feel very strongly that the bar needs to be higher. It's not that I don't care about Postdoc 6's feelings, it is that one individual's interpretation should NOT be conflated with the environment. In other words, weather ain't the same as the climate.
Let us now turn to the other lies in this case: the external lies. Once terminated, and when he was pursuing employment with NYU, media sources that did less-than-fastidious fact checking and social media accounts alleged that Sabatini had "harassed multiple victims." This was conveyed as "decades of unchecked harassment" which was interpreted by many as an out-of-control professor who was wantonly sleeping with his own trainees. The truth? The initial "victim" was in a longstanding relationship with Sabatini that is memorialized in copious texts, as we have seen. Whether one believes that consent is revokable after the fact, the texts between them indicate a mutually consensual relationship (that broke policy). In other words, we personally do not buy the narrative that Knouse was victimized by Sabatini. "Multiple victims?" There were none. There were two allies of Knouse who were alumni of the lab, who magically happened to approach HR about their time in the lab (well after leaving), who made vague complaints of "bro culture." At the very worst, these individuals were "former employees with complaints," not victims. Both of them have successful scientific careers and none of their complaints included Sabatini doing anything sexually inappropriate with or to them.
Apologies for the length of this reply, but your comments are insightful and we appreciate civil discourse in a case that has been anything but civil!
Returning to your comments:
1. Your interpretation of the facts are perfectly valid so long as we are interpreting the same facts--indeed, that is the central thrust of our entire project. We feel that the public discourse around Sabatini in the media and on Twitter sounded so deranged that it seemed divorced from the facts and the person we encountered when we interacted with Sabatini during our time at WIBR and MIT (that said, those of us in this project were peripheral to the lab, not intimately involved with it). Hence, we endeavored to acquire documents that are rooted in facts, not opinions.
2. We are sincere! Reading this report, we are struck by how many innocuous comments that we ourselves make in life could be weaponized against us in a workplace dispute adjudicated by an external legal firm. For example, in the section of the report titled "the pregnancy barrier," the investigators claim that Sabatini saying he returned to work a few days after his son was born as somehow messaging to women that they had to return to the bench as soon as humanly possible after giving birth. While this is certainly possible...what's missing from this section is a woman who was pregnant in the lab saying that she felt that that put any sort of pressure on her. It is simply not there. An offhand comment with no malicious intent behind it is turned into some sort of oppressive and broadly culture-defining edict.
3. Did Sabatini have a "general attitude of non-compliance?" With respect to safety issues, Sabatini didn't plan the birthday gathering--in fact, it was a surprise. Within the lab? We personally care much more whether Sabatini was making his employees unsafe by disregarding biohazard rules around things like BL2+ handling of lentivirus, etc--we just don't see bickering over the amount of film being used in the developer as a pressing issue of safety or a failure of leadership. With respect to the non-compliance of their relationship....we agree with you, but note that there were two folks in the relationship, both of whom were PIs and both of whom were obligated to not engage in the relationship and to report it if it happened.
4. You seem to sincerely care about the rules governing their relationship, but not very concerned with the application of those rules to Knouse. There is absolutely no provision in WIBR's policy about whether the older and more experienced PI is responsible for declaration of the relationship or responsible for terminating the relationship. The policy is that PIs at WIBR cannot be involved with any other WIBR employee.
5. A good question here is this: how should institutions handle it when a leader fails? For example, if Sabatini is somehow violating safety issues, the extent should be assessed and then corrective measures applied (education, etc.). If Environmental Health and Safety was concerned with anything in the lab, it certainly isn't mentioned in the report (and, given the topics covered in the report, we assume that if there were serious EHS concerns that it would have been incorporated into this report!). Do I personally think that writing "I don't give a flying fuck about the safety people" is professional? Of course not--but I think that things like that should be first addressed with corrective measures, not destruction. Especially when the careers of so many trainees are on the line.
6. With respect to your last line--how it plays out in court. This is a very relevant comment that points to one of the other cores of this project. The court case is not even about whether the investigation was valid or not--we assume it will be covered in court, but only to give context for the more central defamation claim.
The real thrust of the case is this: Did Lehmann and Knouse defame Sabatini? In terms of terminating Sabatini over a broken policy around relationships, the answer would be no. However...Knouse's lawyer calling and threatening NYU's legal counsel if they should hire him and telling them that he is a sexual predator? That likely contributed significantly to the destruction of his pursuit of employment at NYU, i.e., constituted defamation per se and tortious interference. If Lehmann did similar things--which discovery will likely find if it is there--then she may be on the hook for defamation as well.
We're sorry for the long response--but your comments are insightful and you know we're happy to engage with civil discourse :-)