We Need to be Talking About the University of Minnesota as Part of the Prof. Brad Carlin Problem

In December 2017 I was made aware of the issues at the NIPS conference and Kristian Lum’s Statistics, We Have a Problem post on Medium through the Women in Machine Learning/Data Science (WiMLDS)Twitter account. In summary, Prof. Brad Carlin made sexist remarks in front of 1,400 conference attendees while his band, the Imposteriors, were playing and got called out for it publicly on Twitter. That led to the Medium post, and presumably the other 4 ongoing investigations into Prof. Carlin’s behavior.

I’ve attended WiMLDS meetups in Chicago. I personally was incensed, happy that someone had come forward publicly since so few women do, and was aware of my position of privilege as someone outside the academic community and therefore not subject to its retaliations. There’s a wonderful tool that the public has to help investigate wrong-doings with their tax dollars called the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) so I filed a FOIA request with the universities where each of the professors who were part of the Imposteriors band work. My goal was just to find out more because, in my experience, where is smoke there is fire and because I believe strongly in accountability and supporting those women with the strength to come forward on sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. Whereas I have to be more careful in the tech community about what I do publicly, in academia because I’m not a part of the system, I have more freedom to take on the system. This seemed like a great opportunity to exercise this particular privilege of mine.

Some of the band members work at private schools which are not subject to FOIA, but Prof. Brad Carlin works at the University of Minnesota (UMN) and there is another band member who works at the University of California Berkley — both of which are public institutions.

The University of California Berkeley is dragging it’s heels on releasing their documents including not acknowledging the FOIA request I made on 12/18/17 until 1/16/2018. They estimated 10 weeks to get me the documents as of that 1/16/2018 date which passed us on 3/13/2018. (If any lawyer wants to help me on this, please reach out.)

I got the responsive documents to my FOIA request from UMN on March 28th (five days ago) and read through them immediately but was waiting to do anything until I could more carefully consider what to do with them. However, since the Pioneer Press in the Twin Cities has already gone public with the fact that he was officially reprimanded in April 2016 for inappropriate comments and has 4 pending investigations against him — I will also release what I found.

• Within an hour of being emailed by the Bloomberg reporter on December 14th about Kristian Lum’s Medium post he emailed Susan Rafferty, the HR Director at the School of Public Health at UMN. Ms. Rafferty is the one the Dean CCed on his 2016 letter of reprimand. Prof. Carlin specifically told her: “When you call me (cell) I will fill you in on other details so the U can be protected”. That protecting UMN was his first thought I believe speaks to, among other things, what the main priority is at UMN. That his first email about this was to HR but he subsequently directed the Bloomberg reporter to his interim boss for university comment is also interesting to me, but I’m not sure what it’s indicative of.
• Based on the released, redacted emails of Prof. Carlin’s only 1 person wrote him to insinuate the allegations against him were false. It’s another white male Biostatistics professor at a different university. In other words, there’s no clamoring of support for him internal to UMN as we recently saw with Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s FOIAed emails. Not proof of anything, but I personally find it telling.
• On Nov. 9, 2017 at 5:02 pm the President of UMN, Eric Kaler emailed a report to (I assume from the prepared nature of it) the entire university community entitled “Report on the President’s Initiative to Prevent Sexual Misconduct”. At 7:21pm, less than 3 hours later while Prof. Carlin is on sabbatical he emailed: “*requires* training for all faculty and staff? any idea what this might be?” Why would Prof. Carlin be incredulous or trying to get out of sexual misconduct training? Note, this is a year and half after Prof. Carlin’s required 4 hours of diversity training associated with the letter of reprimand in his file. Perhaps he thinks policies or laws haven’t been updated in that time? Assuming of course that a diversity training covered sexual misconduct in the first place. (And I hope it didn’t — they’re 2 separate topics. Both of which require training.)

Prof. Brad Carlin seems incredulous that there would be required sexual misconduct training for staff and faculty.

• In correspondence about his band playing a university alumni function Prof. Carlin states: “In particular many of the Biostat students I recruited to help you schmooze the alumni from 5–530 are coming largely to hear the band at 530 pm; most cannot stay past 6 pm (Connor Jo actually has football practice that night!). So if you don’t let us play until 7 pm, they will miss the band I’ve already promised them :(“ Maybe I’m too jaded or cynical, but I worry about what level of coercion by Prof. Carlin and/or attempt to gain favor with Prof. Carlin those students felt.
• Prof. Carlin stated to the Bloomberg reporter that he wasn’t supposed to comment on an ongoing investigation, he also made that point to the NA Biostats Chair leadership team of individuals across academic institutions when he was resigning from it on January 3, and in FB posts, yet he continues to make comments. Specifically, those comments insinuate that there’s more to the story, as if he has no fault.

UMN’s handling of this situation, based on the relatively little I’ve seen of it, passes the minimum due diligence test and it probably is actually a better response than what would have happened at most universities. (Isn’t that terrifying?) However, it also serves as a classic example of how institutions protect those who are inappropriate and unwelcoming at great financial cost to themselves. I think instead of focusing our feminist anger at Prof. Carlin, we should probably also devote some attention to the University of Minnesota itself. The system allowed it to get this bad and this far, so the system needs to feel the full brunt of the impact so that the system gets fixed instead of allowing this to happen again.

1. The first known additional costs to UMN regarding Prof. Carlin’s conduct was in 2016 for dealing with an investigation, letter of reprimand, and special diversity training for Prof. Carlin. Presumably it took some work since his comments were reportedly made on Feb 22, he had an official conversation with his boss about it in March, but the letter of reprimand wasn’t written until April 12.
2. After the letter of reprimand about inappropriate comments he made as part of a search process he was allowed to continue to head a division of the school where he would have been a part of other search committees, not to mention managerial responsibilities including staff and faculty oversight with nothing more than 4 hours of training. A search process, for those of you who aren’t familiar with academia, is a hiring process. The letter of reprimand specifically states: “The search process is a setting where it is critical that no protected class information influences the hiring decision; while there is no indication that you asked improper or illegal questions of the candidate, it was very poor judgement to even bring up topics such as ethnicity in this manner and in this setting.” It also states that Prof. Carlin’s behavior “calls into question your ability to continue being an effective colleague and leader” but then also states the only follow up is going to be confirming he had his 4 hours of diversity training. Nothing about follow up or oversight to make sure he doesn’t infect another hiring process or anything about making sure his behavior isn’t negatively impacting those who already work for him.
3. It was only when issues related to him became public knowledge that he was taken out of the division head role. His removal as Division Head was either January 2, 2018 according to the announcement email internal to UMN or January 3 according to Prof. Carlin’s personnel file, or (in an unfortunate-for-the-university case of missing a web page to update) still is according to this particular UMN directory page. The consequence only in response to public sunlight is a serious red flag that UMN cares more about the public perception of their workplace than the actual safety and inclusiveness of their workplace for their staff and faculty.

Prof. Brad Carlin is still listed as the Head of the Division of Biostatistics on this one particular UMN page.

4. Now, UMN has more investigations to do — 6 total for Prof. Carlin (2 closed, 4 pending). The date of the other closed investigation on him is unknown so it’s unclear whether the one in 2016 that resulted in the letter of reprimand is the first closed case or the second closed case. Either way, it must not have resulted in any disciplinary action as there was no record of it given in response to the FOIA request.

5. UMN is now doing a national search for a new division head (announced in the same email that removed Prof. Carlin as division head). National searches for division heads aren’t cheap.

6. The negative PR that UMN has gotten from being associated with Prof. Carlin will also have financial implications. I think a great follow-up piece on this is going to be whether and how much student applications drop to the School of Public Health at UMN and the Division of Biostatistics in particular.

7. I’d also like to point out that Prof. Carlin was made aware of my FOIA request and that the universities procedure was for him to search his own email for what I requested instead of having their IT department doing the search before notifying him (so he couldn’t delete any relevant information). Based on the UMN public records official telling him that “if you could have everything to me by the end of January, that would be sufficient.” I believe he opted to search his own email. I don’t object to informing him of my FOIA request, indeed in some cases it’s required by law, and generally when bad actors find out there are people watching them they behave better. However, I can’t imagine why the university would open themselves up to issues surrounding not complying with the law if he chose to hide information. For the record, I’m not accusing him of hiding information — I’m just saying I think it was an inappropriate risk for the university to take to allow for the possibility. Especially when the subject of the request is someone who has a history of bad behavior and is the subject of current, ongoing investigations. As a matter of especially bad policy the university “will then send you a copy of the final redacted file for your review prior to release to the requestor.” It’s unclear at this time whether Prof. Carlin was able to influence what got redacted from his emails.

8. Prof. Carlin’s emails reveal his band has played for Alumni functions in the past. There’s correspondence around his band possibly performing at an event called Celebration of Giving on April 24, 2018. Why has the university not publicly committed to not having his band perform at official functions again?

9. After telling Prof. Carlin not to comment on the ongoing investigations, Prof. Carlin continues to do so. I really hope to see the letter of reprimand on his file about that in a future FOIA request.

10. My FOIA request did have a limited scope and of the 52 pages of redacted emails I got from Prof. Carlin’s email box the page counts in their footer range from X of 498 to X of 334 to X of 21 to X of 27 to X of 75 to X of 234. There is more to this story that I believe falls under the can’t-release-information-about-ongoing-personnel-investigations umbrella.

I have no idea if these issues are limited to the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota or are university-wide. I honestly don’t think that’s the point. UMN just happens to be the university this situation happened at, but that their situation became public instead of some other universities was just the luck of circumstances and timing. I don’t want to vilify any one person or institution. Just like using the word racist to describe a racist lowers your odds of making them not a racist, I just want institutions to do better. I don’t even want perfect, because that is unattainable — I just want better and ongoing improvement. I don’t know how else to make them better without doing research, asking questions, writing analysis, and following up. So that’s what I’m doing, and if anyone else has better ideas, I’m all ears.

I also don’t think that any department chair or division head or other leader who is found to make inappropriate remarks or take inappropriate actions should automatically lose their leadership position. That’s not the point either. The point is to have accountability within systems, in this case academic ones. I do believe in handling each case as a unique situation, but we -the public and under-represented people-need to do that with trust in the accountability and oversight of that situation.

Do you have information about someone in an academic institution harming an under-represented group but don’t want to face retaliation? My Twitter DMs are open, or it’s pretty easy to find me online. Happy to file a FOIA request so that information comes out with a minimal (but not 0) chance of revealing who you are. Even if you’re at a private institution not subject to FOIA there’s nothing stopping me from sending the request, the institution denying it, but the institution starting their own investigation based on the request. If you’d like to have a more in-depth conversation about the risks as I understand them, I’m happy to do that too.

Follow me on Twitter at alison985.