OT: Michigan Daily reporter Sammy Sussman saying that Schlissel is planning to stay on as tenured professor
BREAKING: As of now, sources say Mark Schlissel returning to @UMich faculty as tenured prof. of microbio & immunology, molecular, cellular & developmental bio and internal medicine. I'm told official announcement on Friday. He's back on the website. @michigandaily pic.twitter.com/GUdBxaY2lj
— Sammy Sussman (@Sammy_Sussman) January 27, 2022
January 27th, 2022 at 6:47 AM ^
U-M: We will make it deeply uncomfortable and embarrassing for you to stay here.
Schlissel: That's my fetish.
January 27th, 2022 at 6:49 AM ^
Geesh, I sure hope isn't allowed any subordinates in this position
January 27th, 2022 at 7:11 AM ^
....only those who like a good knish and read the New Yorker.
January 27th, 2022 at 7:29 AM ^
He’ll have have plenty of students even without the subordinates.
January 27th, 2022 at 8:19 AM ^
If he gets off on being humiliated, all of this has been very good for him.
January 27th, 2022 at 9:17 AM ^
He gets off on $$$. To him the $$$ trump the humiliation.
January 27th, 2022 at 10:22 AM ^
He can sit on his ass, teach a class, and check his mailbox twice a month for a paycheck. Oh yeah, free health care, too.
Your local Michigan tax dollars at work.
January 27th, 2022 at 12:05 PM ^
The first part is correct, but the second isn't. Most public universities nationwide get most of their revenue from undergraduate tuition ... on average 15% of our state taxes go to state public universities. So U Michigan gets a percentage of that 15.
January 27th, 2022 at 10:03 AM ^
I'm thinking he'd stick around so he can continue to do productive work.
At Michigan he has a tenured job, but tenure would be tough to get as a new hire.
January 27th, 2022 at 10:57 AM ^
His wife has been off in California this whole time, right?
Seems like Mark might have it better as a tenured prof with his side action in A2 than go deal with that.
January 27th, 2022 at 7:15 AM ^
Can he coach defense?
Too soon?
January 27th, 2022 at 10:43 AM ^
....not against the Regents he couldn't.
January 27th, 2022 at 7:19 AM ^
Academia is impossibly broken.
January 27th, 2022 at 7:28 AM ^
Agreed that academia is broken. Schlissel sticking around is not, IMO, an example of that. He has paid the price for the violation of his own policies. Reading the emails, a most tedious exercise, clearly show that the inappropriate relationship was consensual between two adults. Schlissel's termination as president was fully justified. His complete banishment from campus would not have been. Why he would choose to stick around after all this is another matter.
January 27th, 2022 at 7:31 AM ^
How do you just declare yourself a tenured professor if that wasn’t already your job here?
January 27th, 2022 at 8:16 AM ^
A long time ago I was the graduate student representative for the LS&A Deanship search committee. All external candidates under consideration had to have a "home" department, and that department had to sign off on that candidate as both tenurable that they would be willing to take him/her.
I believe this was the case with Mary Sue Coleman and the chemistry department. So when Schlissel was hired it is highly probable that med school had already signed off on him.
January 27th, 2022 at 8:42 AM ^
I think that's pretty common for administrative positions that are filled by people who come up through the faculty ranks. My grad school advisor went that route, and eventually became a college president. He was forced to resign over some mismanagement or something like that, but he kept his position on the faculty. Now, if the issue that leads to someone being fired or resigning is really terrible, I'm sure the institution would take steps to revoke tenure as well. It probably comes down to several factors--the particular tenure policies at an institution, how much the various parties want to fight vs. how much they want the issue to disappear, public relations concerns, etc.
January 27th, 2022 at 8:16 AM ^
You don't. Generally, when hired as President, it includes a provision of tenured professor too. The thought is the President's role is a service administration role that persons sacrificed their research and teaching careers for, to serve the greater university, so they negotiate to return to their prior positions. Even if he never worked as a tenured professor at Michigan, he had previously.
January 27th, 2022 at 11:20 AM ^
Because he was tenured faculty in a home department, just like pretty much all university presidents. I believe Mary Sue was in chemistry and would still teach a class from time to time.
January 27th, 2022 at 8:29 AM ^
The 'consensual' part is a red herring. This is about a power disparity between a manager and a subordinate. If somebody wants to have a relationship with a subordinate then one of the two should resign.
It's not right to diddle the staff.
January 27th, 2022 at 8:35 AM ^
Yes you could end up in law textbooks for all the wrong reasons
January 27th, 2022 at 8:40 AM ^
I would suggest that they should make it public. If it is public, the power disparity is minimized. E.g., the cost of retaliation or playing favoritism will be high for the supervisor. That is the policy at my organization and at UM, I believe.
January 27th, 2022 at 9:04 AM ^
The idea that power disparity is the end all of a potential relationship is really incongruent with independent thought.
By this logic, the only way to have a relationship that is truly equivalent in power would mean it is two parties of the same age (otherwise one has an age advantage), with the same familial history and socioeconomic background, and the same sex.
All that to say, every interpersonal relationship has a power dynamic. The idea that two coworkers can’t work for/with one another and maintain any type of personal romantic relationship and that one should resign if they truly want to have the relationship is also fraught with power dynamic. Who has to quit? Why does one have to sacrifice their job for the other?
Schlissel should have been fired for having an inappropriate relationship, I don’t think anyone argues that. What makes it inappropriate is how he went about it and the fact that this was his side piece and he was not open about it along University policy, as well as using University property to conduct personal business. There was nothing criminal about the relationship. The fact the relationship was consensual is of paramount importance.
January 27th, 2022 at 9:58 AM ^
How can this be negged? It is as lucid a description of this situation as any posted on this board.
January 27th, 2022 at 10:10 AM ^
No. This is about the work place, not whether some 40 year old guy can date the 18 year old he met at the bar, church, Walmart or swingers' club event.
The policy isn't written to preclude equals in the organization from dating. It's written to preclude a relationship between somebody who has the power to grant or withhold money, perks, employment and a person who has no power in the organization.
In this case, one is the university president and the other is a minion.
January 27th, 2022 at 12:00 PM ^
The only person that knows if the power disparity was an issue is the woman involved.
Nothing in the emails showed him mistreating her in any way. They looked like the emails of some really really boring people that were secretly dating.
The rule/policy is in place to avoid abuse of the power dynamic. That doesn't mean Schlissel actually DID that. It just means he broke the rule/policy. Only the woman can tell us whether it was consensual or not. If she said it was, then I believe her.
January 27th, 2022 at 12:34 PM ^
I mean, that EXACT idea - that workplace relationships should always result in one of the parties resigning - is why anti-fraternization policies were largely abandoned in the 80s and 90s. Because when those policies were still in effect, it was almost always the woman who resigned. Those policies were profoundly sexist in application and pretty sexist in conception (based, as they were, on the idea that allowing women, and thus the potential for romantic encounters, into the workplace would be inherently destabilizing). They're not getting better with time, now that a new generation of prudes is demanding (again) that workplace romance be strictly forbidden.
There's already a robust legal infrastructure to deal with superiors who abuse their position to pressure or force subordinates into sex - that's what sexual harassment law is for, in part. There's no need to completely ban workplace romances, too. Based on what we've seen so far, it sure seems to me that the most objectionable thing about Schlissel's behavior was that he was cheating on his wife. That's her business; it's not mine, and it's not U of M's, either.
January 27th, 2022 at 9:18 AM ^
Why would he stick around?
For the $$$, the retirement package, the benefits.
January 27th, 2022 at 9:21 AM ^
The reason for the policy is not to prevent two adults from having a consensual relationship. The point is that you cannot have a consensual relationship when the power dynamic is clearly skewed to one individual. Maybe they would have bumped into each other in a coffee shop and hit it off anyways. But you can never know that when both parties know that if she makes a wrong move, he can just fire her and replace her. The fact that the entire set of emails show HIM constantly reaching out to her and turning normal daily emails into flirting makes this even more clear.
January 27th, 2022 at 10:14 AM ^
Can we please stop with trying to justify why the woman in this case was victimized and was therefore incapable of truly understanding what she wanted or what was best for her? You state "you cannot have a consensual relationship when the power dynamic is clearly skewed to one individual." Emphasis on cannot. So, it is therefore impossible? And therefore the person on the short end of the power dynamic is not capable of wanting to be there? Or is completely delusional about having a relationship? Or is incapable of, or are to be denied, personal agency?
The emails clearly show she was a willing...dare I say enthusiastic?...participant. And that is clearly her business. Not ours. The only fact here is the relationship was in violation of clearly stated policies enacted by Schlissel himself. So Schlissel had to be fired.
January 27th, 2022 at 12:50 PM ^
And that's a profoundly paternalistic way of thinking. I can see its wisdom when you're talking about the teacher-student context, but I really struggle with applying it to full-grown adults. Because at a certain point, you are literally just telling the subordinate - the woman in this case - that no, she doesn't know her own mind, she's not REALLY consenting to this. Why in the world is that something we should want employers doing?
The bit about him firing her is a red herring, because that's what sexual harassment laws are for. You don't need to also ban workplace romances in order to deter or punish that behavior.
January 27th, 2022 at 2:06 PM ^
Nah. Consent doesn't have a bearing in this. The problem is it is in the work place and it does not just impact the two dating. It impacts everybody who knows about it. If everybody knows this will adversely effect the morale and efficiency of the organization.
Some examples...
1. Subordinate takes a week off. Co-workers wonder if her time card actually reflects that he or she took PTO or did the boss in the relationship just code her as present for work in ADP or whatever software. You know...so the subordinate has more PTO to cash in if he or she leaves the organization.
2. There's a manager or supervisor in the chain of command between the boss and the subordinate. Manager knows they are dating. Does manager rate the subordinate better than he or she should be on the the annual review, because he doesn't want to piss off the boss? Is compensation (a pay increase) directly related to the annual review? Co-workers could wonder if the subordinate is getting preferential treatment on the reviews.
3. Maybe the boss gets to take one of his or her team to a conference? Whether the subordinate is the right person to go to the conference or not, if the boss takes her or him you'll have issues..."I guess if you sleep with the boss, you get to go to conferences."
4. Subordinate gets to sit in a cube facing a window. Those not sleeping with the boss are sitting in inner cubes with no view. Is this because the subordinate is sleeping with the boss?
5. Everybody on the team is in a meeting except for the boss. Do the subordinates who aren't sleeping with the boss muster up the courage to tell the subordinate who is sleeping with the boss that his or her solution to a problem won't work out of fear the subordinate will tell the boss and there being retribution for those who spoke up?
So if you want to date your subordinate in violation of the policy or in absence of a policy, go right ahead. Just remember all the knock on effects that can and or will hurt the organization.
January 27th, 2022 at 3:10 PM ^
Every single example you give works just as well if you substitute "drinking buddy" for "subordinate sleeping with the boss." Yes, favoritism sucks. It is also impossible to eliminate the possibility of favoritism via policy. The solution is not to ban personal relationships between co-workers, romantic or otherwise. It's too insist that people act professionally and not let personal feelings play an inappropriate role in work situations.
January 27th, 2022 at 3:21 PM ^
Sleeping with a subordinate is certainly more egregious than having a drinking buddy. Neither is good if you are the boss, but the sexual relationship will cause more problems all around.
January 27th, 2022 at 3:25 PM ^
"It's too insist that people act professionally and not let personal feelings play an inappropriate role in work situations. "
What you're smoking: I want some.
January 27th, 2022 at 10:48 AM ^
I just don't get it. PR isn't that hard and we're having in impossible time with it
January 27th, 2022 at 7:42 AM ^
Completely fine with this. He should be removed as President, but his relationship was a consensual adult one.
January 27th, 2022 at 8:45 AM ^
But he violated the rule by keeping it a secret. I don’t know if that is high enough to take away his tenure. In any case, I am pretty sure that he just wants to get paid to disappear.
January 27th, 2022 at 9:23 AM ^
You cannot have a consensual relationship when the power dynamic is clearly skewed to one individual. Maybe they would have bumped into each other in a coffee shop and hit it off anyways. But you can never know that when both parties know that if she makes a wrong move, he can just fire her and replace her.
January 27th, 2022 at 9:43 AM ^
This is utterly a bastardization of the word consensual. If there were threats of job loss or other direct power play then it would be sexual harassment/abuse and not consensual. Just because there is a power imbalance doesn’t mean it’s not consensual. He has to act on that power balance to make that case. Now it may still be against school policy and a fireable offense based on at will employment, but there is no legal way to argue that this wasn’t consensual.
January 27th, 2022 at 9:51 AM ^
Has she made a statement calling it consensual? (I haven't followed every detail.)
January 27th, 2022 at 10:28 AM ^
That’s fair. My last sentence went too far as I don’t know the specifics either. Not sure many people know them all. The point I was trying to make is that power imbalance does not always equal lack of consent.
January 27th, 2022 at 11:36 AM ^
I'm not a fan of the idea that women are victims in any and all situations like this. I think you have to assume that the woman knew what she was getting into and willingly got into it, which would make it consensual. If he pressured her into having the relationship to begin with, then it wouldn't be consensual. Or if he had used his position to make her stay in the relationship when she didn't want to, that would be non-consensual. If he fired her, then she might have a case that he abused his position of power, which would be harrassment. But I still think this is consensual.
January 27th, 2022 at 7:45 AM ^
The guy is a meme now, so hopefully hes taking advantage of the NIL
- m
January 27th, 2022 at 7:56 AM ^
I wish I had tenure in my job -- it would make me work so much harder and make the right choices.
January 27th, 2022 at 8:45 AM ^
Haha--I do have tenure, and I think it's a good and necessary system, but this made me laugh.
January 27th, 2022 at 8:06 AM ^
DEVELOPING: Disgraced Creeper Optimistic That Faculty, Staff, Students Can Put Differences Aside
January 27th, 2022 at 9:37 AM ^
You say "disgraced creeper" like it's a bad thing.
Some of us have feelings, you know.
January 27th, 2022 at 8:08 AM ^
failing up. America!
January 27th, 2022 at 8:12 AM ^
disgraceful
-m