Letter of Rec for Research Early Career Grants to Include Sexual Harassment?

[tenuredcovid]

I'm a junior faculty member in STEM at an R1. I'm currently in a grant writing group virtually and many of us are submitting NIH and NSF early career-type awards. A lot of our group discussions are about strategy and dealing with the extra challenges of COVID.

A member of our group is going to ask her former advisor to include in a reference letter for her grant that she was the the victim of sexual harassment by another faculty member while she was a postdoc to account for some lack of publication productivity during those years. I strongly advised her not to ask for this, but I'm actually not sure if that's what other people would say. I will also mention here that I was sexually groped by a male scientist in my Ph.D. program, but I don't feel completely comfortable having this documented in a federal grant application for the rest of eternity.

Would the mention of sexual harassment be advised in a letter of rec for an early career-type award? If my colleague does this, then technically I feel conflicted about whether I should also have that understood in my application (and yes, it DID negatively impact my mental health and ability to get as many papers in my Ph.D.) On one hand, NIH has supposedly been public about their support of victims, but this gets tricky when other scientists will know and potentially then guess who the predator was.

All opinions and thoughts are welcome.

[Parasaurolophus]

Given the way I've seen these discussions play out, I would be pretty worried that mentioning it would be held against the applicant, rather than helping to explain what might look like a slow start or a lapse in productivity. I think it would be best if the letter did not specifically name sexual harassment at all, but rather used something more general and euphemistic.

That's neither good nor fair, but I strongly suspect that's the way the world is at the moment. But I may well be wrong. And I'm not in the sciences, so it's not like I have a good read on attitudes there.

(I can tell you that when I reported my harasser a few years ago, it didn't go down too well. And I would expect retaliation from uninvolved people in my discipline if it was mentioned in my letters, even though the asshole is a nithing and still just a graduate student, and thus has zero power or influence.)

[polly_mer]

Retaliation is a huge concern, especially if the original complaint did not lead to dismissal of the harasser or criminal charges.

I would not want those details mentioned in a formal recommendation letter.  I would be concerned regarding current mentoring if I read details like that in a recommendation letter.

[fizzycist]

There really shouldn't be any reason to have this in a letter.

The applicant already has a tenure track faculty position so obviously their publication record is pretty strong despite the harassment.

For all NIH and NSF (and frankly, all private foundation too) early career grants I am familiar with, the evaluation hinges on the quality of your ideas going forward and how you will leverage your grad, postdoc, and any other expertise to realize them. It is wholly inappropriate to evaluate based on how many papers you got as a postdoc.

I'm not saying mention of postdoc productivity will never happen in individual reviews, but it is rare and will not play well during panel discussion.

So I would say no, it is not the appropriate place to air the sexual harrassment. I doubt it will hurt the applicant much but it will look peculiar and take some airtime away from what matters here which is what the applicant will do going forward.

[Hegemony]

Yes, it will look very peculiar. And there are many valid reasons that a person might be slowed down for a while: health issues, caretaking issues, sexual harassment, being the subject of stalking ... all kinds of things. But mentioning specifics just distracts from the larger picture, I think. A recommender could possibly allude to a period of lesser productivity due to outside issues, but now her energetic productivity has resumed, as can be seen by [publications or whatever]. But any more specifics I think would be more distracting than helpful. I would urge her not to try to get her recommender to mention specifics, and I would think that any recommender with good judgment would not mention specifics, but would be helpfully vague.

[Ruralguy]

If there is some sort of obvious gap in the Cv and it is very recent, perhaps Hegemony's solution is best.

I think most younger reviewers would take this in stride and see it as a straightforward and acceptable explanation, especially if there are rules saying so. Some older reviewers might be more likely to wonder why she didn't just stick to science and not get recommenders to talk about these issues. Gender differences regarding response by reviewers may be even more significant.

[polly_mer]

Some older reviewers might be more likely to wonder why she didn't just stick to science and not get recommenders to talk about these issues. Gender differences regarding response by reviewers may be even more significant.

Yep, those older reviewers like me in their mid-forties (AKA almost all of them because early career folks don't get to review these proposals).

Yeah, gender might matter depending on personal experience and annoyance with wokeness that means sex is everyfreakin'where and somehow recent things that weren't bad enough to report and get consequences for the harasser should still count in the victim's favor. 

No, stick to the science unless this was already public as a case.

[polly_mer]

Probably relevant to this discussion from the American Physical Society on writing letters of recommendation for underrepresented groups in physics: https://aps.org/publications/apsnews/202101/backpage.cfm

Some of the issues we have seen in reviewing letters include the use of communal descriptors (eager, kind, nurturing), terms that are irrelevant to the award (overcame their background), or statements that offer comparison to the marginalized group rather than the broader community (e.g., 'given that there are so few of this marginalized group in physics, the nominee of this background, is a worthy candidate'). In contrast, the most effective letters focus on these candidates' accomplishments.

...

However, even comments that could have been intended as supportive like "She juggles her career and young family well" can be problematic. How often would such a phrase be in a letter for a male candidate? This remark also provides information that interviewers cannot ask for and is not relevant to the candidate's qualifications.

We can talk out of our hats about what should be or we can look to the research on what happens during review by the human readers.

[Ruralguy]

I get what you are saying, I think, but I don't think the point of briefly referencing a life event that might have impacted scientific output in the past is in any way negating the importance of the science. I highly doubt it would even enter the discussion unless someone brought up past output even though everyone liked the ideas in the proposal. It's up to the proposer to have the proposal take center stage and seem like it is worth approval. this would be a minor measure to help counter act biases against the proposer which weren't her or his fault. I don't necessarily strongly recommend including any info about past harassment, but if it is supplied, it should be taken seriously, but not as a big distraction from the science and quality of the proposal.

[soccer]

For NSF and DOE, any deviation from their letter of collaboration templates would lead to the proposal being declined without merit review.

As far as I know, NSF takes sexual harassment very seriously. NSF punishes bad people who are currently funded by NSF. However, this doesn't mean there is a compensation mechanism for victims.

When this person applies for taxpayer's money, the funding agency needs to determine if the proposer is capable of carrying out the research. They are not a social welfare agency to help victims of any sort of crime. So bringing up this case doesn't help at all. Any damage from this sexual harassment case would be addressed in that case.

I'm a junior faculty member in STEM at an R1. I'm currently in a grant writing group virtually and many of us are submitting NIH and NSF early career-type awards. A lot of our group discussions are about strategy and dealing with the extra challenges of COVID.

A member of our group is going to ask her former advisor to include in a reference letter for her grant that she was the the victim of sexual harassment by another faculty member while she was a postdoc to account for some lack of publication productivity during those years. I strongly advised her not to ask for this, but I'm actually not sure if that's what other people would say. I will also mention here that I was sexually groped by a male scientist in my Ph.D. program, but I don't feel completely comfortable having this documented in a federal grant application for the rest of eternity.

Would the mention of sexual harassment be advised in a letter of rec for an early career-type award? If my colleague does this, then technically I feel conflicted about whether I should also have that understood in my application (and yes, it DID negatively impact my mental health and ability to get as many papers in my Ph.D.) On one hand, NIH has supposedly been public about their support of victims, but this gets tricky when other scientists will know and potentially then guess who the predator was.

All opinions and thoughts are welcome.

[hazelshade]

Just FYI--the letter the OP is asking about for CAREER isn't the standard letter of collaboration; it's the department chair's letter of support (which has some specific requirements but is not anywhere near as formulaic).

Tenuredcovid, I'm really sorry to hear about your colleague's experience (and your own). If she were my faculty member (I'm a grants officer), here's what I'd advise:

• Avoid including the incident in the letter without first running the idea past the program officer. If she's nervous about doing that, her grants officer can reach out to the PO and frame it as a more general question (so that she's not identifiable).
• If the incident derailed her productivity to the extent that it's impeding her ability to obtain further funding, consider looking at the NSF's Re-Entry to Active Research program if she's in chemistry. The program is meant to help people get back on their feet after their research has been seriously disrupted, whether that's because of a life event (illness, caregiving, something like this) or aspects of their job (e.g. a stint in administration). For now, the program is only for chemists (and it only recently expanded beyond CBET) but folks in the policy office have indicated that they're considering expanding some of their back-in-the-pipeline programs like RARE and Mid-Career Advancement.

[Kron3007]

Just to chime in, I would not mention it.  The only exception to this may be if charges were laid and the offender was convicted.

For the letter, I would agree with Hegemony that it could be appropriate to allude to some struggles that could have reduced productivity but focus on what came next and the current trajectory.  I would assume that for this type of award they will be much more interested in what you have accomplished as an independent researcher rather than your postdoc work.     

[PScientist]

Just to chime in, I would not mention it.  The only exception to this may be if charges were laid and the offender was convicted.

For the letter, I would agree with Hegemony that it could be appropriate to allude to some struggles that could have reduced productivity but focus on what came next and the current trajectory.  I would assume that for this type of award they will be much more interested in what you have accomplished as an independent researcher rather than your postdoc work.     

I am typically asked to do an ad hoc review for NSF once or twice a year, although I've only been sent one CAREER so far.

I agree that I would not mention it.  I would also avoid alluding vaguely to previous struggles, which would only plant a negative idea in the reviewer's mind.  If other reviewers are like me, they are not combing through publication dates on a CV to look for gaps.  If the proposal effectively presents the case that the PI has the expertise and resources to execute the research and broader impacts plans, that's normally the end of the question.  But, if the chair's letter hints at a productivity problem, it might raise a concern that wouldn't have been there otherwise.

[Vid]

Workplace harassment is a special kind of ugly. We hear significant cases of female students/faculty sexual harassment or any other type of discrimination, yet our academic society isn't ready to react or take any positive action. I was told by a female faculty about a horrible sexual harassment and how she went thru serious mental problems.  This tragedy will keep repeating again and again as long as the victims keep being quiet.

I wish I had some recommendations about if getting a letter will eligible the PI for certain grants, but I would encourage the victim to SPEAK UP and file Title IX for both sexual harassment and sexual violence. This is SO IMPORTANT.

We need more gentlemen in academia and maybe an academic #METOO movement!

Be safe. 

[fizzycist]

Workplace harassment is a special kind of ugly. We hear significant cases of female students/faculty sexual harassment or any other type of discrimination, yet our academic society isn't ready to react or take any positive action. I was told by a female faculty about a horrible sexual harassment and how she went thru serious mental problems.  This tragedy will keep repeating again and again as long as the victims keep being quiet.

I wish I had some recommendations about if getting a letter will eligible the PI for certain grants, but I would encourage the victim to SPEAK UP and file Title IX for both sexual harassment and sexual violence. This is SO IMPORTANT.

We need more gentlemen in academia and maybe an academic #METOO movement!

Be safe.

I take it you are at a small isolated institution and do not browse through academic twitter?

The academic metoo moving has gone strong since the very beginning of metoo. Title IX has some downsides, and the question of how to handle reporting is best left to individuals in close contact with other survivors and trusted friends/colleagues... not us randos on an internet forum with 4th hand vague info.

The question here is whether to list it in a support letter for a CAREER type grant application, and I think the answer is pretty clearly no, for the same reasons you probably don't want to disclose for most job applications. It distracts from the thing you are selling: your expertise and your outstanding ideas for the future.

I suppose a possible exception could be if your education/outreach portion was on victim advocacy, academic culture reform, etc. But this is not the stated reason in OP. And if you did disclose, you should probably do it in the project description--dont think you would not want a letter writer to frame it for you.