The Professor’s Wife
I found Tony Judt’s January NYRB piece on nights alone with ALS profoundly moving, his October NYU speech a clear, vital statement about the health care fight and the state of things between the American right and left. He is profiled this week in New York magazine. If you read about him, it is likely to be as “feisty,” brave, insightful, magisterial, brilliant.
Yesterday the NYRB Blog posted his reflection on gender relations, specifically in universities:
Since the 1970s, Americans assiduously avoid anything that might smack of harassment, even at the risk of forgoing promising friendships and the joys of flirtation….
Nevertheless, the anxieties of contemporary sexual relations offer occasional comic relief. When I was Humanities dean at NYU, a promising young professor was accused of improper advances by a graduate student in his department. He had apparently followed her into a supply closet and declared his feelings. Confronted, the professor confessed all, begging me not to tell his wife. My sympathies were divided: the young man had behaved foolishly, but there was no question of intimidation nor had he offered to trade grades for favors. All the same, he was censured. Indeed, his career was ruined—the department later denied him tenure because no women would take his courses. Meanwhile, his “victim” was offered the usual counseling. […]
Judt has written elsewhere that anyone who hasn’t lived on a kibbutz has no credibility expressing an opinion about Israel. By this criteria, does anyone who hasn’t been followed, hasn’t fended off fevered declarations, hasn’t had “no” met with disbelief by someone physically able to take what he wanted by force, have any credibility on what is or isn’t intimidation?
Two summers ago a man repeatedly accosted me, first during the day, crossing a campus I won’t name, then at night. Other women eventually came forward with corroborating accounts. But for a time, I had, as the administration official said, “nothing solid. We know [name],” the official said. “He wouldn’t do anything.” Describing each encounter—there were by that point a half dozen—I felt my face flush. The details sounded so innocuous, what had happened, and hadn’t. “But I know when I’m being followed,” I said. I sounded pathetic. “Has he threatened you?” the official said. “Not in so many words,” I said.
It’s never in so many words.
Why did I go to the administration rather than asking my admirer to desist? Because I’d done everything but. (And does anyone really believe asking in so many words would have had a different effect, or elicited anything but offended denial?) I’d rudely exited conversations, left rooms hurriedly. If you’ve been in this situation, you know.
The “joys of flirtation” implies not only mutual interest but recognition of the other person’s interest. (Isn’t that the joy part?)
What do you do when someone doesn’t care whether their interest is returned?
In Judt’s piece, I’m perhaps most interested by what he has to say about the wife of the supply closet professor. That is: nothing further.
You see, I’m writing a story in which one of the characters is a female professor in international relations. At NYU. I’d been wondering about her husband.
I think I’ve got it now.
