An English professor at the University of Michigan is suing the university for racial discrimination, gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. If the article in the Michigan Daily is accurate, the charges sound entirely spurious, the bitter reaction of a woman professor of color seeking what revenge she can against a department whose "abuses" resulted in a delayed application for tenure (yes, that's "delayed," not "denied": the plaintiff is suing despite winning tenure in 2001).

The suit alleges that the English department exploited Betty Bell, the plaintiff, when it asked her to create a Native American Studies Program and then did not provide adequate mentoring, administrative support, or financial compensation (no matter that Bell was the highest paid assistant professor in the department between 1994 and 2001, when she resigned from her position as program director). The suit claims that the onerous and excessive responsibilities associated with the program interfered with Bell's ability to do the other work expected of her as an assistant professor, and culminated in a leave of absence for emotional distress. Bell claims that her career and reputation were harmed, that she lost earnings, and wants $25,000 in damages.

Bell also names two other UM English professors as sexual harassers. One apparently made the odd insensitive comment (when she refused a drink at a party, for example, he allegedly said, "What kind of Indian are you?"). The other apparently did not comport himself perfectly after they broke up. The suit alleges that he--horrors!--insulted her and gossiped about her.

There may be more to this than the Daily reports, and I'll try to see if there is. But on the face of it, this looks like a petty, contrived attempt to humiliate Michigan's English department, and to do particular, lasting damage to the reputations of two older white male colleagues in exchange for possibly imaginary, possibly deserved, certainly small personal slights.

The English department contends that no one forced Bell to undertake the work of creating a Native American Studies Program, and that she did receive considerable support while she was involved with the Program. I cannot adjudicate this--but I can say that Bell's absurd harassment charges speak loudly--and poorly--for the credibility of her claims of institutional exploitation.

The drinking comment--which, among other things, was not sexual--was almost certainly deliberately misconstrued: it was made by a fellow Native Americanist, an eighteenth-century scholar who has long been a devoted student of Native American literature and culture. As for the insults and the gossip: that's what comes with the territory of the acrimonious breakup. If you sleep with a colleague, odds are it will bite you at some point (odds are, too, that you'll do some backbiting of your own). That's unpleasant, but it's hardly harassment, and it's hardly worthy of a lawsuit.

I'm grieved to read about such a mess at Michigan's English department. I earned my Ph.D. there between 1990 and 1995; I took a course from one of the "harassers" (he's NOT a harasser); and I remember well the excitement that surrounded the hiring of Betty Bell. A cynic would say that UM is reaping what it sows: that spurious but damaging suits that convert minor annoyances, personal baggage, and psychic fragility into epic tales of oppression and discrimination are the just desserts of a campus atmosphere organized around racial preferences and all the inequity and intellectual dishonesty that comes with them.