October 11, 2017
An open letter to the UR community from the EEOC complainants
Meliora Weekend is an important landmark in our collective life as a University, when students,
faculty, parents and alumni come together to celebrate and to take stock. All of us who filed the
EEOC complaint are deeply committed to the success of UR, to which many of us have devoted most
of our working lives. It is precisely because we believe in the spirit of Meliora – ever better – that we
went to the EEOC. We want to explain briefly to the UR community where our case stands, and what
role we hope to play in improving the climate at UR in the wake of the Board’s decision to appoint a
Special Committee, and that committee’s statement today on the scope of its investigation.
In an important sense, the Board’s appointment of the Special Committee, and the President’s creation
of the Commission on Women and Gender, have validated our work. At first the University
dismissed our complaint as false, but that simply could not be sustained. An outpouring of support
and further information from students, faculty and alumni confirmed our account of the heavy burdens
imposed on female students here by sexual harassment and the University’s flawed processes for
dealing with them. More witnesses have since come forward, so that we know of at least 15 women
who altered their education at BCS to avoid or otherwise deal with Professor Jaeger, up from 11 in the
complaint. Other people have called us with worrying accounts of sexual harassment by other
University employees and flaws in the system for responding to it. President Seligman has now
admitted in public that it was wrong to promote Professor Jaeger in the middle of the University’s
investigation of him, contrary to his earlier view. He has also changed the policy that enabled one
aspect of the University’s retaliation against us – trawling through our emails to look for material to
use against us. This is progress, which we welcome.
The force of the media reaction has had an upside. UR has sparked an important national debate on
sexual harassment in academia and the sciences in particular. As loyal UR citizens and people who
would prefer to concentrate on our regular academic work, and knowing that the publicity has also
caused upset, we recognize there have been costs too. We never wanted to go public. But we tried to
get the University to take this issue seriously for over a year and were rebuffed every time. After our
formal complaints had been rejected, we emailed the President, Provost and other senior figures, held
meetings with them, were promised that things would be looked into – and nothing happened. The
University’s stonewalling left no alternative but a public filing.
Now the Board has said it wants to investigate what went wrong and why, using Mary Jo White and
her Wall Street firm to investigate. We endorse this goal and want to cooperate. The Special
Committee’s claim that we have declined to participate is false.
Rather, we simply pointed out that we cannot help the University’s lawyers in their private
investigation while they are still working to defeat us in court. We must file a federal court complaint
in just a few weeks or lose forever our ability to hold UR to account in an unbiased court for its
serious failings. We have had enough experience of being ignored and indeed belittled by multiple
University officials that it would be rash for us to assume everything will work out if we simply
disappear from the ongoing controversy. So far, UR has not substantively responded to our inquiries
about seeking to resolve our dispute. We hope that the Special Committee will meaningfully engage
with us. We want its inquiry to succeed, but cannot jeopardize our case if the University insists on
continuing to fight us.

 Additionally, many witnesses who provided vital information for our complaint have contacted us to
say they too feel in an impossible situation. Some are exhausted. Others are too afraid to identify
themselves to UR. But they are concerned that if they don’t come forward, UR will assume we made
them up. We don’t want to discourage witnesses from participating in the investigation, but we also
fully understand their concerns. This is why we chose the McAllister Olivarius firm to conduct an
investigation and to bring our complaint forward. They are specialists in this area. They know how to
treat victims of sexual harassment. They helped create sexual harassment law and have been
advocating for victims for over 40 years. Its senior partner, Dr. Ann Olivarius, was named by the
ACLU as one of the most influential people in the history of Title IX. Nelson Mandela said her work
had “courageously advanced the cause of justice, and improved life opportunities, for hundreds of
millions of women, blacks and disadvantaged, worldwide.”
The witnesses find reliving their experiences by giving testimony to be difficult, sometimes traumatic.
If they’re going to have to testify in court anyway, they tell us they don’t see great value in rehashing
matters just for Ms. White’s lawyers, who in any event specialize in corporate fraud.
Unless our claims are resolved, the Special Committee’s approach is like organizing a big wedding,
but deciding to exclude the bride and groom. If we are kept away from the investigation into
complaints that we raised, including retaliation that we experienced, we don’t see how its final report
will be as strong as it could be – and if the University is going to spend several million dollars on a
comprehensive inquiry by a Wall Street law firm, what’s the point of excluding us? How can Ms.
White's report achieve the finality that the Special Committee seeks if the same matters are being
litigated for another year or more?
We think working together is by far the best route to fixing the problems our complaint has brought to
light. We would much prefer to resolve our dispute with the University than continue in court,
thereby enabling us to cooperate in making the UR a world leader in preventing and fighting sexual
harassment.
We offer our cooperation sincerely to the University. After the Board meets this weekend, we hope to
hear that the University wishes to reciprocate.

Dr. Richard Aslin
Dr. Steven Piantadosi
Dr. Elissa Newport

Dr. Jessica Cantlon
Dr. Brad Mahon

Dr. Celeste Kidd
Dr. Ben Hayden
Dr. Keturah Bixby