dietram a. scheufele

David’s life’s work was a disposable prop for MIT to market its virtue to a woke audience. Some are even arguing that David deserved to lose his career because he was romantically involved with a woman in the workplace. That is an absurd and hypocritical justification for what MIT did to him. Reducing the destruction of his career to a workplace relationship policy violation is grotesque hypocrisy. A romantic relationship at work is an ordinary part of academic life for administrators and an excuse for destroying a laboratory when it involves someone they don’t like. His relationship with Knouse even began before Whitehead updated its relationship policies in August 2018. If a workplace relationship warrants professional destruction, MIT and all universities, for that matter, have a great deal of firing to do. Erin O’Shea, who was instrumental in firing David from HHMI, dated and married someone who earned his PhD in her own laboratory. Ruth Lehmann, who forced David out of Whitehead, has a long-time partner who was a fellow scientist at NYU, where she worked. MIT’s president, Sally Kornbluth, is married to an MIT biology professor. These administrators know perfectly well that scientists form romantic relationships within their professional communities. Scientists spend enormous portions of their lives in their laboratories and around other scientists. They develop relationships within that world because they devote themselves to their craft and have little social life outside it. Universities know this, and so do their administrators. The court also rejected Knouse’s claim that she experienced quid pro quo sexual harassment from David. The court found that David did not condition professional benefits or consequences based on sex. She directed her own lab and she went on to obtain a tenure-track position at MIT. Invoking a poorly defined “power imbalance” does not erase the court’s rejection of her claim. people.com/mit-scientist-dav…