New Online Database Documents Widespread Sexual Harassment in Academia

In the wake of widespread sexual harassment allegations in politics, the media, and entertainment industries, Karen Kelsky, a former professor at the University of Oregon and the University of Illinois who now serves as an academic consultant and produces the blog The Professor Is In, has created a public spreadsheet that lists incidents of sexual harassment and assault in academia. The document doesn’t name names but lists what happened to the victims.

The spreadsheet was established earlier this month and already has more than 1,000 entries. The most entries have been filed by graduate students, although there also are a large number of complaints from undergraduates and faculty members. The academic fields in which the most posted incidents occurred were English and history. Nearly 400 incidents occurred at an elite college or university or an Ivy League educational institution.

Dr. Kelsky is the author of Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams (Duke University Press, 2001) and The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide To Turning Your Ph.D. Into a Job (Three Rivers Press, 2015). She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Hawaii.