DISHONEST ACCUSERS Rule. Prof. Accuses Wesleyan of Failing to Protect Him From ‘Slanderous & Vicious Personal Attacks’ Falsely Labeling Him a Sex Offender
On Nov. 16, 2016, Wesleyan University professor Michael McAlear received a baffling phone call from one of his colleagues who asked if he could come to his office and talk about posters students had anonymously distributed around campus. “I thought what posters?” “And then he showed me them and I said, Oh my God.” The posters featured photos of McAlear and two other Wesleyan professors with headlines that accused the three men of being sex offenders, sexual predators and promoters of sexual violence. McAlear has never been accused by the university of sexual assault or harassment. For nearly three years, McAlear, an associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry, has been trying to get the university to hold the students accountable for what he says are “slanderous and vicious personal attacks” that have damaged his professional and personal reputation.
…One day in November 2016 as McAlear was walking on campus a group of protesters stopped him and said that “Wesleyan faculty…were sexual predators and promoters of sexual violence.” The students had covered walls with banners and “posters depicting the names and faces of several faculty and administrators as sexual predators.” McAlear told the students that their protest was “over the line and slanderous.” Five days later, McAlear’s face appeared on the posters and he, too, was labeled a sexual predator.
McAlear alerted the university immediately to the posters. The students then distributed flyers with the same accusations about McAlear at campus events, including graduation and WesFest. McAlear also said his teaching evaluations began to reflect the accusations on the posters. Initially McAlear believed the administration was doing everything in its power to help him, and find the students responsible. But he eventually realized that very little was being done. “Over the course of the year, I discovered that the administration was being dishonest with me, and that they did know who the students were, and that they were giving them resources to produce and make copies of the posters all along.”
“Students have the right to say I am a terrible teacher… That right does not extend to calling me a criminal, there were many times and many actions the university could have used to intervene,” McAlear said. “They failed to uphold my rights, and it left me with two options. Shut up and be forever labeled a sex offender online, or file a lawsuit.” In May, he filed a lawsuit.
“My case is about the limits of free speech, but it is also about hypocrisy,” McAlear said. “Hypocrisy of a small group of students who purport to be working against harassment but are actually engaging in vicious harassment themselves. Hypocrisy of an administration who purports to value, respect and enforce its standards of conduct, but who are actually willing to overlook them when convenient, or when enforcing the standards of risks running afoul of a small group of militant students.”
courant-Kathleen McWilliams
