“He Thinks He’s Untouchable”

"Over the past year, several esteemed science professors have been embroiled in sexual harassment scandals. But Katze’s case is exceptional, partly because of his response. In December, he took the unusual step of suing the university in federal court for violating his rights as a tenured professor. In April, he sued UW and BuzzFeed News to block the release of the investigation documents, including more than 100,000 text messages, emails, and other materials. He lost both suits... 

When pressed about his treatment of employees, however, Katze told the university investigator: “My job is to get grants. I am singularly focused on training scientists. This kind of shit is completely unimportant to me.”... 

Messerle’s full log of texts and emails between Katze and the two employees from 2011 to 2015 shows that their relationship was complex; often, they reciprocated Katze’s overtures in friendly or flirtatious ways. But their texts to each other, as well as other friends, suggest that they felt they had to do so.

Mary occasionally made her objections explicit to him. “Another thing is that I feel is that I am receiving things or money from you in exchange for a bj,” she texted Katze in May of 2015. “I don’t want to do that and I am put in situations where I do it because I owe you.” At times when he felt she was distancing herself from him, she told the investigator, Katze would say that he didn’t know if they could work together anymore, and that maybe she should find another job... 

“One interviewee said that they would be able to cite ‘a bajillion’ examples of his cruelty; another described those incidents as ‘abundant’; one person said you needed to walk on eggshells around him,” Messerle wrote. “Dr. Katze told one employee they were ‘stupid,’ ‘a mumbler,’ and ‘a stutterer.’ Another person told me Dr. Katze called them a ‘weak sissy with a tiny dick,’ and others recounted complaints that Dr. Katze would tell people they were ‘fucking stupid’ or ‘fucking idiots.’”

Of the 26 former lab members and colleagues contacted by BuzzFeed News, none agreed to let their names be published in this article. Several insisted on speaking without attribution because they feared professional retaliation; one referred to serious concerns for her health and safety; another said that he was “traumatized” from his time working under Katze."

https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/michael-katze-investigation?utm_term=.yb2NM8Pvw&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Longform%2073&utm_content=Longform%2073+CID_52ac800ada5f4908a71b5a3689dc975e&utm_source=BuzzFeed%20Newsletters#.bdQmDWdwp

There is something about the academic environment in STEM than can protect behavior like this, especially if the perpetrator is successful in their science. The culture is still wary of both the personal and the political and still convinced that science is a socially-neutral activity, that a scientist sets their identity aside when they do their work - and that, in fact, a scientist is most competent when they lack identity outside of their work. 

But - but, we live in a culture that casts whiteness and maleness and heterosexuality as the norm, as almost non-identities as the background of more disruptive identities. We live in implicit assumptions that straight white men are impartial (unlike all other identities) and the physical embodiment of rationalism. Ergo, behaviors that fall into our expectations of SWMs encounter very little social friction and can go unchecked - especially given that checking them is a personal and political act that many STEM cultures see as foreign, disruptive, dangerous, and even anti-science. 

Luckily, the culture is changing, but slowly and in a way that often doesn't root put the places where it isn't. And in most places, it is changing too slowly to react to changes in the rest of society, and too slowly for the goals of anti-discrimination policies.