So Tom Ashbrook, who hosted On Point, a first-rate, in-depth, call-in show on NPR, has been dismissed by Boston University’s WBUR for having created “an abusive work environment.”
But what does that really mean?
You — I know I did — probably thought for quite a while that Ashbrook was just one more in a long line of male abusers or harassers of female staff working for him.
Yet the two consulting firms hired by BU that investigated the allegations against Ashbrook concluded he didn’t do anything to violate the university’s sexual abuse or harassment policies.
So what exactly did Ashbrook do? The Globe story linked above doesn’t provide any details. I had to go to the comments in the story, which were largely supportive of Ashbrook, to find that he had apparently crumpled up a news script in anger in one instance, and used a vulgarity in referring to a guest on the show at another point.
I completely support the sacking of men who have committed real abuse, whether it is Harvey Weinstein or Roger Ailes or Mark Halperin or, I would hope someday soon, Donald Trump.
But it seems we have entered a realm of blurred ethical values when people like Tom Ashbrook, Al Franken and Garrison Keillor get lumped in with those real abusers.
Like all revolutionary movements, the “me too movement” appears to have shown itself capable of being hijacked by ideologues who fail to make distinctions between truly reprehensible conduct or unjust conditions, and conduct or conditions that have simply made their lives inconvenient.
I’m not saying Ashbrook was an easy boss to work for. He probably was a very difficult boss. But he also put out an excellent product.
It seems it has been all too easy for people in positions of power at BU and WBUR to subvert “me too” by turning it into “get him too.”
In that vein, I don’t really blame the ideologues. I blame the administration at BU and management at WBUR that appear to have failed to exercise common sense in this matter. Their first mistake may have been in hiring consulting firms to essentially make their ethical decisions for them.
I’m all for using consulting firms for providing technical advice. But when it comes to deciding who is a good employee and whether they should be promoted or demoted, administrators and managers should make those decisions themselves and not hire consultants to do their thinking and soul-searching for them.
I don’t really see what “I liked his radio show” has to do with whether or not it’s true that he was creating an abusive work environment, and I don’t really see why you’re so sure you’re better positioned to judge that than WBUR’s HR department.
Sexual harassment is not the only kind of abuse of power.
(Moreover, listing Keillor and Franken makes me wonder if you actually paid attention to the substance of the allegations against them, or just decided a priori, based on already liking their work and perhaps on _their_ accounts of their respective cases, that those allegations had no merit. Listen, I get it, I liked Franken too, I wanted him to run for President before I knew about his history of harassment and assault. I wish I could still feel that way.)
Things have changed at BU since John Silber was running the place. But if Ashbrook gets a nickel each time someone falsely lists him as a sexual miscreant . . . .
Keillor and Franken groped women for years. This was well documented and I am somewhat shocked to see someone still defend them. Particularly someone as dedicated to protecting the vulnerable from powerful institutions as you are Dave.
As for Ashbrook, his employers determined that the 60 employees, male or female, who no longer wanted to work for him mattered more than the face of their program. That’s the way business works. He had due process, two different firms were hired to investigate his program, and they concluded he was a tyrant to work for and the harassment allegations were not enough to fire him, but still problematic.
The era of powerful untouchable white men is over. I say let us welcome the new reality. I’ve had too many relatives, friends, and colleagues subjected to this kind of work environment. It is time we all say enough is enough. Zero tolerance means that the rapist, the groper, and the merely problematic boss are all out of work. I say good riddance. This will result in a work place culture that respects and values women as equals. If it is a culture where men think twice before asking colleagues on dates, as Caitlin Flanagan and others are terrified of, so be it.
You just proved all the reasons zero tolerance so quickly morphs into zero common sense:( Now you’re suggesting that colleagues shouldn’t even ask each other on dates? Why have you become such a witch-hunter in this regard?
When a pig in power rapes or assaults someone close to you, you will feel as I do. It has happened to numerous female colleagues, family members, and friends. It has happened to your friends, family members, and colleagues too. Just as racism has happened to your black friends, family members, and colleagues. It is your job to listen to those voices and challenge your own assumptions that come from a place of societal privilege you cannot even begin to realize you have until you see it with your own eyes. When that day comes, and it will, you will feel as I do.
Now to your second point, obviously I think co-workers dating is not the same thing as sexual assault, nor should it be banned. I did work in a law firm where the firm adopted a zero tolerance toward co workers dating in reaction to an assault incident that happened at an office party a few years before I worked there. It was incredibly difficult to enforce and most of us knew who was dating whom in the office and did not report it. So that is another extreme. It is a policy I bristled at at the time as corporate big brother rearing its ugly head, but I am far more sympathetic to my former employer now that we have all seen this ugly culture of harassment in rear its head. In some cases, he was ahead of the curve on this. That said, its not a workable solution.
What I am proposing is far more moderate than you think it is. Simply an environment where colleagues really think long and hard before asking their female co workers out, and when those co workers say no, they drop it and move on. You’d be surprised at how many women have to repeatedly say no until men get the hint. That’s another example of the double standard women in the workplace are subjected to. It also undermines their trust that a colleague or superior values them as a colleague, instead of as a potential partner.
Its an issue I’ve never had to think about since I’m a straight white guy whose been happily married or otherwise in a relationship with my wife my entire professional life. I’ve never been asked out or hit on by a superior or a colleague and have never viewed any superior or colleague as a potential partner since I’ve been in a relationship. That said, when it happens, even the asking out or what we think are innocent comments can be viewed in a darker light by the woman on the receiving end. Remembering that context at all times is an important way men can change the culture.
There is a reason Trump said ‘locker room’ talk, since it was a way to immunize what he said as part of that culture we once normalized. Where guys in an all male environment, an elevator or around the water cooler or on a bus going to a sporting event or yes even a locker, might say things around each other they would not say if a woman were present. I am definitely guilty of saying homophobic, transphobic, or sexist things in those kinds of environments especially in high school. Being part of after work conversations after a few beers where female co workers were ranked on their looks. This is not nearly as bad as what Trump said, and certainly not as bad as what he is accused of doing, but it is part of a culture that has to change and that I will not take part in anymore. It is just unprofessional. As soon as we all agree that it is unprofessional than the culture changes.
I really wish you would stop assuming what I know and don’t know about what has happened to people I know. I just think there is a spectrum between ideally shouldn’t happen and worthy of a federal case. Your first paragraph is the poster child for what happens when you ass-u-me.
BTW, when did I ever suggest that instances of sexual assault or racism don’t happen – that’s just silly.
You repeatedly suggest that things black people and women consider to be either racist or assault are not so. You dismissed the groping as not a big deal and insisted Franken stay on, and insisted Conyers stay in initially. In both cases you were valuing the voting records of men over their records of misconduct with women. You always give the police the benefit of the doubt and insist on the same color blind approach to race advocated by members of the Federalist society. I think these are both areas where you have a blindspot, and along with drugs, are where you have a conservative streak. There is nothing wrong with that per se, but do not act shocked when other progressives call you out for it, as has repeatedly happened on this blog. As they call me out for my conservative streak on Russia, China, Snowden, Manning, and Assange. As they used to when I had a conservative streak on abortion.
Even insisting that the matter should have gone to the compromised Ethics committee is by default, making a federal case out of it since that is a federal body of law makers. So really, you want to do the right thing. Zero tolerance means zero tolerance. That is the policy women are demanding and we should listen to them. Zero tolerance towards racist policing and other racist social structures is what black lives matter is demanding, and we should listen to them. In both instances it is a time for white men to listen and let people who experience the daily indignities of being a woman in a sexist society or being a black person in a white society do the talking.
I generally do give anybody the benefit of the doubt when accusations first come to light – that is very progressive in my view, not to mention basic Golden Rule ethics. You are still putting words in my mouth and thoughts in my head. It is possible to simultaneously hold the following opinions, for example:
Franken should not have groped women.
Franken should stay in the Senate.
You mischaracterize my stance towards racist policing too. I have repeatedly said that such is completely uncalled for and have expressed bewilderment that such does not just go without saying in 2018.
You actually cannot hold those opinions simultaneously without making the judgment that a man’s continued service in the Senate matters more to you than the ways he harmed women. In that case you are in fact valuing a mans right to hold a public office he choose to campaign for and occupy over a culture where women do not have to experience that harassment. Without accountability, there can be no change. The Democratic Party took a great leap out of the shadows of the Kennedy and Clinton era by saying enough is enough and putting the #MeToo ethos as a litmus test for our officeholders. Gillibrand’s courage in calling Franken and Clinton out put her at the top of my list of 2020 contenders and was one of the reasons I rejoined the party. We are finally cleaning our own house before rocks at the Republicans. Yes that in fact means holding our own to a higher standard. There is no way you can say you are a feminist and argue that Franken should stay. A line in the sand has to be drawn, and I believe the Democratic women in the Senate drew a firm one.
As for the racial arguments you were very reluctant to ascribe racist motives to police at the beginning of that controversy, unless I am mistaken. I am certainly mistaken in assessing where you are today, and I welcome your evolution to that position. If that has always been your position, than it is one area where you are being color conscious and recognizing that the race of a person does in fact matter when it causes their mistreatment at the hands of a criminal justice system that is decidedly not color blind or racially neutral in how it doles out justice. I still think there are other areas such as school and housing integration where you have not yet made that epistemological leap. But I welcome it in both areas. This is an ongoing conversation where I will continue to challenge your perspective in the hopes of widening it. Where I have been uncharitable or uncivil I apologize, since that is not my intent.
Gillibrand went down in my estimation for the same reasons and really lost me when she wanted to rehash Bill Clinton.. When our own side does that the VRWC has won. I stand by my comments about Franken and reject your with us or against us attitude. Otherwise all it takes is an accusation which IMO should be litigated somehow.
I am indeed always very careful about ascribing motives, but I think you continue to misinterpret what I mean by colorblind. It doesn’t mean never acknowledging that race was a factor in someone else’s actions. It means making a commitment that it never be a factor in my own and advocating that everyone else make the same commitment. For me, that makes it even more upset at those who treat others differently on the basis of something as superficial as skin color. In this case, if more cops in particular were colorblind we wouldn’t need to be having these discussions. Also, it has been a long time since I have suggested society is colorblind. Growing up I may have been under that impression, but there’s too much evidence to the contrary to sustain that unfortunately.
Again the VRWC did not tell Clinton to harass his subordinates or engage in problematic affairs with them. That conduct would be unacceptable in any workplace today and we should be grateful for that. I’ll also add that Frankens conduct is also unacceptable in a workplace and we should be grateful he is no longer in the Senate hurting our credibility on this issue. Gillibrand is a bold leader willing to take on the men in her party who vote like feminists and act like chauvinists. We need more leaders like her. We will not be talking about Franken this time next year, we will still be talking about Trump’s far more egregious allegations. Let’s focus on the fight ahead and leave the ghosts of the past in the past.
Part of why I became a Dem is that the GOP were hypocritical moralizers while the Dems knew the difference between a public record and private actions. Clinton was no saint, but the impeachment over a consensual relationship (discovered by the conflation of a harassment claim and a failed real estate deal, allegations in both cases highly questionable at best) remains the biggest political outrage of my lifetime. It is another example as to why sourcing and motivation absolutely does matter as pointed out in another current diary about how we came to learn about Franken. Public office isn’t just a workplace and it is for voters to decide except in cases of extreme criminal activity whether they should stay at regular intervals. Presidents have had affairs, including while President, including good Presidents, including Presidents we like. When Cleveland ran against Blaine the former had personal issues, but was an anti-corruption crusader; the latter had a stellar reputation for personal morality yet was corrupt as all getout in politics. I know which I would prefer as President and which as Pope. Part of me longs for the days when the press left JFK alone over his personal life.
I hate to bother with this yet again, but there is no evidence that Mr. Clinton harassed his subordinates. None. In fact, there are not even accusations that Mr. Clinton harassed his subordinates. The only thing “problematic” about his affair with Monica Lewinski was the relentless effort of Ken Starr and the GOP to make it into something it wasn’t.
I find it striking that you, like so many other men, ignore what Ms. Lewinski herself said then or now. Ms. Lewinski was victimized by Ken Starr, by the failed impeachment machine, and by a “friend” her betrayed her by secretly recording what Ms. Lewinsky thought was a private conversation.
Of all the accusers of Mr. Clinton, the only one that is remotely credible is Juanita Broadrick. That alleged episode happened in 1978, during a gubernatorial campaign in Arkansas. It has nothing AT ALL to do with the presidency of Bill Clinton.,
Even Ken Starr was unable to make even a “probable cause” determination that anything happened. Ms. Broaddrick was ignored because even the GOP partisans striving to impeach Mr. Clinton knew that there was absolutely no evidence to support her allegations. Further, there was rather strong evidence that several of the “facts” she offered were inconsistent with independent written documentation (such as schedules and appearances of Mr. Clinton).
The fact that Ms. Broaddrick actively supported Donald Trump in 2016 tells me all I need to know about her credibility, especially in view of her lifelong history of telling different stories about the same alleged episode.
We agree about Al Franken. I categorically reject your lies about Bill Clinton.
Re: Christopher
I categorically disagree with the idea that groping scores of women without their consent is similar to any kind of consensual activity. Nor do I want to go back to the days when a male only press corps enabled this kind of behavior. It’s fairly hard to read the first hand account of JFK taking that interns virginity without wondering if she really was mature enough to consent to the matter or if she gave the right verbal cues indicating she wanted to go further. Under the new “yes means yes” standard that has embroiled Aziz Ansari, Kennedy certainly committed activity approaching assault. There are also accounts of him forcing his tongue down women’s throats and them physically forcing him off. I think that activity is distinct from the run of the mill adulterous liaisons you are thinking of.
Re: Tom
By today’s standards there was a tremendous power imbalance in that relationship that undermines her ability to give consent. Particularly has an at will unpaid intern. Do I think Clinton would have fired her had she said no? No. Do I think she initiated the relationship? Yes. Was it worth a massive congressional investigation? No. I do know that if my principal slept with one of our volunteer interns from Northeastern he would probably be out on his ass, and rightly so. Private sector workplaces have changed and Washington is playing catch up by a long shot. We can disagree on Lewinsky and agree that more protection and oversight would be expected of such a relationship today.
As for Broderick her detractors are making the same arguments Moore’s defenders made. Why did this take so long? Why did people lie about it decades ago? Why are the actively working with his opponen? None of those things matter. Either we believe women or we believe men in power. I choose to believe women. It’s certainly an allegation that deserves a fair hearing.
JFK, Clinton, Moore, Trump, all birds of a feather when it comes to their attitude towards women, as are so many men. Those days are changing. I can’t make excuses for any of them and those that do, seem to only do so along party lines………and that ought to tell us something about them.
I’d like to remind us that some things are true and some things are false. There are facts that simply are either true or false, and are not subject to the whims of time and interpretation.
We agree that Mr. Clinton’s relationship with Ms. Lewinski was not only consensual, but was initiated by her — when she was 24 years old. That is a fact. I remind you that Mr. Clinton did not sleep with her, so your attempt to conflate this with the behavior of your principal misses the mark on even its most simplistic determination.
The standards that guide a secondary school in 2018 are completely different from those that guided the Oval Office in 1992. Among other things, I remind us of the common-law tradition of ex post facto.
The accusation that you leveled against Mr. Clinton had two parts, both false:
1. That Mr. Clinton harassed his subordinates, and
2. That Mr. Clinton engaged in problematic affairs with them
The facts that we’ve already agreed on support neither of these false accusations.
The fact that Mr. Moore’s defenders make the same arguments as Ms. Broaddrick’s defenders is completely irrelevant. The accusers of Mr. Moore are credible. Ms. Broderick is not. The accusers of Mr. Moore were reluctant to come forward and do stand to make any personal benefit. The accusers of Mr. Clinton — especially Ms. Broaddrick (and Ms. Jones) — have spent a lifetime seeking at least fame and notoriety, if not direct financial gain, from their accusations.
I didn’t ask why Ms. Broaddrick worked for Mr. Trump, she says so herself. I said, instead, that her support of Mr. Trump destroys whatever credibility she might have had.
How can a woman who claims to be fighting men who abuse women possibly support Donald Trump? The accusers of Mr. Moore supported a Democrat who has spent his professional life defending civil rights. There are no video tapes, broadcast across the land, where Mr. Jones brags of grabbing women by their p****y. There are broadcast interviews of Mr. Jones explaining how he visits the locker rooms of beauty contests, watching naked young women.
You are turning handsprings to make an absurd argument.
Mr. Clinton is not Roy Moore. Mr. Clinton is not a harasser or abuser. Mr. Clinton is not even Al Franken. Mr. Clinton is not Donald Trump.
We have been giving Ms. Broaddrick a “fair hearing” for decades. Her story is no more credible now than it was when it was new.
It doesn’t sound as though we disagree, at all, about the facts of Mr. Clinton’s affair with Ms. Lewinsky.
So long as men and women work together, men and women will be attracted to each other. Women and men each have a right to sexual “agency” — the ability to appropriately express and perhaps act on their desires (given a willing partner). Women and men each have a right to say “no”.
I don’t care how widespread various workplace policies are or try to be — any policy that attempts to deny this fundamental reality will fail.
Should be:
“The accusers of Mr. Moore were reluctant to come forward and do not stand to make any personal benefit. “
These comments demonstrate how far #MeToo needs to go. Tom, I hope you’re open to that education.
Let me first retract the entirely hypothetical example of a hypothetical principal at my school engaging in some kind of misconduct. For one thing, in real life we do not have college aged interns working at our campus. For another, no principal or staff member has ever been accused of that behavior in the two decades our school has been open. It was a bad analogy and I immediately regretted making it and retract it now for the confusion it caused.
I think the workplace culture you describe where people are naturally attracted to each other is coming under immense scrutiny now. Especially when the initiators of contact are powerful men, married or not, who are taking advantage of people working underneath them. Glenn Thrush is unmarried and did not cheat on any wife or partner, but he was still demoted by the New York Times for taking interns out and trying to hook up with them. Charlie Rose, also unmarried, was fired from CBS and PBS for similar behavior. Some of the women who accused Matt Lauer of misconduct also had consensual relations with him during other occasions. Even some of Weinsteins accusers admitted to consensual relations with him after assaults had occurred. I am not comparing Clinton to these men, I am simply saying we have to re-evaluate that era from the prism of our new climate. One where victims are not dismissed out of hand for having consensual encounters with their predators. One where out of court settlements are not proof of innocence. One where women saying one thing under oath or under a consent decree and than retracting it decades later does not impugn their credibility. If we are going to give Rose McGowan, Argento, Ashley Judd, and some of Moore’s victims the benefit of the doubt in that regard we have to extend a similarly wide berth to Clinton’s accusers. If woman claim that Clinton harassed them or tried and pressured them into relationships I think we have to take them seriously and not dismiss them out of hand as partisan hacks.
Obviously, many criminal and civil investigations occurred at the time at the highest levels of the Justice Department and Congress and ultimately found nothing. Obviously some of the women who admitted to consensual affairs claim no misconduct occurred beyond unwanted scrutiny, loss of privacy, and adultery-all things that are more the result of the investigation than Clinton himself. I admit all of these things and still find his record on these issues to be profoundly uncomfortable.
Is he a criminal? No. Neither was Franken. Yet neither one of them should be spokesmen for the party going forward, and our standards for our party’s office holders going forward should be much higher. By definition a womanizer or attempted womanizer is someone who does not value women, their agency, or their equality. Someone who objectifies women and believes they are there to please him, even if they are subordinates, and even if his attraction is unwanted, is someone unfit to lead our party in Congress or the White House going forward. I think that is a clear place where we hopefully can agree. I will backtrack from refighting issues in the 1990s, I will say that the #MeToo movement makes future behavior like that from a Democratic President or office holder far less forgivable.
I don’t doubt that we may attempt to suppress the feelings and resulting behavior that happen in the workplace. I don’t doubt that we are attempting to suppress that now.
I suggest that this attempt will fail.
I enthusiastically agree that we must end the exploitation of women by men, especially in the workplace. When we do that, we must do it in a way that allows women the same agency as men.
None of the accusers of Bill Clinton have been “dismissed out of hand”. To the contrary, the changing and unsubstantiated accusations of Paula Jones were heard, repeated, broadcast, and used in court countless times. There was no there there.
I find words like “womanizer” sexist, insulting, and degrading to all parties. There is nothing wrong or immoral with a man choosing to have sex with a consenting woman or a woman choosing to have sex with a consenting man. That is what “agency” means. It has similar connotations to “slut” to describe a woman who chooses to have sex with more than one man.
There is a difference between protecting the rights of women and embracing the puritan hysteria that gripped our culture not that long ago. I do not want my grandchildren to live in a culture where they are required to use vocabulary like “white meat” and “dark meat” to refer to their favorite parts of their Thanksgiving turkey because “breast” and “thigh” are too salacious to repeat in public.
Adult women sometimes want to have passionate sex with men they do not love and have no emotional attachment to. They sometimes want to do that even when they are in a long-term relationship with another man or woman. Adult men sometimes want to do the same. Women who choose to act on those desires are not “sluts”. They are not “immoral”. There is nothing wrong with them. Men who choose to act on those desires are not “womanizers”. Those men are not immoral.
When we have a workplace populated by men and women, these men and women will frequently meet at work. These women will sometimes be more powerful or wealthy than the men they choose to tryst with. This is LIFE.
The more we embed these invasive moral judgements into law, the more we betray the freedom and liberty that we claim to hold dear.
You write this:
Of course this is true. The point is that this truism has nothing to do with Bill Clinton.
We agree that Al Franken did the right thing when he resigned. We agree that Mr. Conyers had to go.
Perhaps we can — and should — leave it at that.
To be clear I understand the groping wasn’t consensual, but neither does it rise to the level of throwing people out especially when it happened before the alleged groper held office. JFK had a lot of liaisons, to the point that when I read a biography once I concluded he had a serious problem (addiction?) that willpower itself couldn’t fix, but I wasn’t aware of any of them being his subordinates.
Read this account (https://newrepublic.com/article/100566/jfk-monster) from a noted progressive historian and commentator.
Wow – was not aware of that one!:(