The opinions expressed here in the documents that I have written are emphatically mine, and mine alone.
They should not under any circumstances be attributed either to the Philosophy Department as a whole, or to any other members of it.
1. The Report & the University SummaryA very important issue is whether the site visit was requested only by the Philosophy Department, or by Dean Steven Leigh and Provost Russell Moore as well. Both Valerie Hardcastle and Peggy DesAutels have claimed that the visit was also requested by Dean Leigh and Provost Moore – a claim that the University Administration has also made. (The other member of the site visit team, Carla Fehr, has not responded to a letter, and as far as I know has made no public statement on the matter.) To this point, all requests that I have made to the members of the site visit team for documentation in support of that claim have been either ignored or rejected.
I also made two requests for all written and email correspondence between either the Provost or the Dean and any of the three members of the site visit team. The result was that there was no correspondence prior to the site visit on September 25-28. Indeed, the earliest correspondence occurred when the Site Visit Report was sent to the Philosophy Department, the Provost, and the Dean on November 18.
Meanwhile,
Peggy DesAutels continues to assert – according, for example, to the
Inside Higher Education article available below – that the site visit
to the Philosophy Department of the University of Colorado at Boulder
was requested not only by the Philospohy Departmetn, but also by the
Dean and the Provost. But she offers no evidence for this claim, nor
does she state when the Dean and the Provost made those requests, nor
how those requests were made. But then, of course, she will say,
no doubt, that strict confidentiality prevents her from doing any
of this.
This issue is important because if the site visit was requested only by the Philosophy Department, then the distribution of the Report to Dean Leigh and Provost Moore, which in turn resulted in the public release of the Report, was in violation of the confidentiality agreement between the Philosophy Department and the site visit team.
Finally, the agreement between the Philosophy
Department and the site visit team stated that the Site Visit Report
would not be provided to "institutional administrators." Thus even if,
contrary to fact, the Provost had also requested the site visit,
providing him with the Report would have violated the agreement
governing the site visit.
1. Two Violations by the Site Visit Team of its Agreement with the Philosophy Department
3. The Agreement between the Philosophy Department and the Site Visit Team (Html Page)
The Agreement between the Philosophy Department and the Site Visit Team (Download Original Document)
4. My Correspondence with Valerie Hardcastle
5. My Correspondence with Peggy DesAutels
7. My Correspondence with Amy Ferrer Concerning Her Statement on the Leiter Report
8. Result of a CORA Request - Provost Russell Moore and the Site Visit Team
10. An Inside Higher Education Article
It is possible to write to the Office of Discrimination and Harassment requesting a letter indicating, for example, whether one has ever been found guilty of sexual harassment, or in violation of any other University policy. The process is, however, less straightforward than it should be, for reasons set out in the document below, I do not know how many of my colleagues have requested such a letter. Moreover, some who have done so may not want to post that letter for fear of being subjected to the "Methinks he or she doth protest too much" accusation!
In addition, there are other serious problems involving the Office of Discrimination and Harassment. The most serious ones, perhaps, concern their actions in the case of Professor Patricia Adler, but I shall not go into that matter here.
In the case of the Site Visit Report, the Office of
Discrimination and Harassment provided the site visit team with access
to the personnel files of members of the Department, and once the Site
Visit Report was released to the public, the Office of Discrimination
and Harassment could see that the site visit team had deliberately
suppressed information that was favorably to the Department. The
Office of Discrimination and Harassment could have reduced the harm done
by the public release of the Site Visit Report, but it deliberately
refrained from doing so.
1. Some Problems Involving the Office of Discrimination and Harassment
2. Philosophy Profs: CU-Boulder Shouldn’t Have Shared Private Info, by Sarah Kuta
3. Shine the Light on the Office of Discrimination and Harassment, by Ron Laughery
4. My Letter from the Office of Discrimination and Harassment
5. Colleagues' Letters from the Office of Discrimination and Harassment (Not yet posted)