The Site Visit Report
A Statement on Climate Issues within
the CU/Boulder Department of Philosophy
Our Department has been struggling with internal climate issues for
several years now. The public release of an external report about our
Department, along with the administration’s imposition of sanctions
such as the suspension of graduate admissions, makes it necessary that
we speak publicly about these matters.
The Site Visit Report is the result of a two-day visit to the
Department, conducted in Fall 2013, by a group of three external
evaluators. The Department itself requested this visit—indeed, the
faculty voted unanimously to do so—and at the time we took some pride
in being the first program in the country to be visited by the
newly-formed Site Visit Program. Among the many other measures we have
undertaken over the last three years are the creation of a climate
committee, two climate surveys, a department symposium on Inclusion in
Philosophy (with two outside speakers), and a series of detailed
resolutions, including a code of conduct, which the faculty voted to
adopt and pledged to adhere to. We have also, as a faculty, been
aggressive in reporting all known claims of harassment to the Office of
Discrimination and Harassment, and we have repeatedly urged our
students to do the same. These votes and actions over the last two
years show that a large majority of the department are strongly
committed to the highest professional and ethical standards, and have
also taken steps to improve the culture of the department and its
climate. We are determined to make this a safe, inclusive, and
welcoming place for men and women alike to work, teach and study.
The strict rules of confidentiality that govern these matters make it
impossible for us to know how many people have been accused of sexual
harassment and how many, if any, have been sanctioned after a full
inquiry. But from everything that we have been told by our
administration, it is a relatively small number of individuals and this
certainly coheres with our own experiences and understanding of the
matter. We believe that the vast majority of our faculty are decent and
highly professional people who care deeply about each other and the
welfare of their students, and have not engaged in objectionable
behavior of the sort that the report describes. We very much hope that
the reputations of innocent people—especially faculty and graduate
students in our department—will not be unfairly tarnished by the public
release of the report. At the same time, we want to emphasize that the
primary victims here are the people who have found themselves on the
receiving end of unacceptable behavior and that our primary focus will
remain—as it has been for the last several years—to do our best to
improve the situation in our Department for them and for all of us.
While we firmly believe that it is a relatively small number of
individuals who have generated the problem, we are adamant in our
belief that any number greater than zero is too many.
We particularly wish to stress that Graeme Forbes, our outgoing chair,
has been unfairly portrayed as being ineffective in remedying these
problems, or even as being responsible for them; on the contrary, many
of the initiatives the department has undertaken were done under his
leadership, and we feel that he has been steadily moving us in the
right direction. We are deeply appreciative of his leadership during
these difficult times.
The Site Visit Report contains constructive advice on how the
department can move forward. We have already implemented some of these
suggestions, and we expect to implement others in our ongoing efforts
to deal with the issues we face. We are grateful to our friends and
colleagues in the university and the philosophy community at large for
their help, support and understanding as we try to address these
problems — and as we try to make this a better place for people to
study, teach, and work, men and women alike.
Mitzi Lee, Associate Professor
Bob Pasnau, Professor
Co-Chairs, Climate Committee
Department of Philosophy
University of Colorado at Boulder