Within the Confines of the University: Healing from emotional trauma inflicted by the doctor

The final art history examination:

Art and Belief

The famous "Scream" of Edward Munch portrays the person who has HEARD the scream, not the person who screamed.  In the painting we the viewers hear it, too, and also see the effect it has on the hearer, whose eyes express pure shock, terror; mouth pain; and hands covering his ears as well as clasping his head as if to say that "I can't get believe my ears.  I can't get over this."

And sky, land, and water swirl in response.too.  The scream has set in motion, like waves, the entire lurid landscape.

History:  A history:  The truth will out:  Even 20 years after the facts,

People will often speak of sexual misconduct in academia but rarely about psychological abuse by professors.

So I think the time has come...I and will come out of the closet.

I was emotionally and verbally abused by a professor in graduate school at the University of Kansas, a certain Marsha Haufler, who flew in a rage and screamed in my face for a full 5-6 minutes--and she was strawberry red in the face.   Apparently what set her off was a remark to a faculty member in which I stated that I "found her as hard as nails.  But very knowledgeable."

At the time I went to the university counseling center and was given medication.  I told several faculty members about what had happened and about my distress and anxiety.  None of them suggested making an appointment to see someone in the administration of the Graduate School.  They all seemed to take the experience entirely "normal."  

I felt badly "damaged" in the days and weeks and months after this experience.

In fact,  still get nightmares in which I try to stand up for myself and not allow myself to be screamed at, docile, silently, dumbly enduring the red-hot tongue lashing.

The exact things that she said, and the manner in which she said them, are too painful still for me to want to try to recollect in detail.  I believe that physical beatings and verbal abuse are in essence the same thing, just different in form.

At the time and for the next decade I never told anyone in the university administration what had happened to me. I feared that Professor Haufler (Weidner) would put roadblocks in my career path. As it turned out, she prevailed upon the other professors in the department to have me "banished" from the department and not allowed to take any further coursework.

All that was said to me by other faculty members in the department was simply, "Well, what are you going to do next?"

I was so shaken by the experience anyway that in the remaining six weeks of the semester I prepared to transfer out to practically any institution that would accept me, stupidly taking the M.A./Ph.D. qualifying examination--thus stepping into a piege. I could barely breathe in the hallways or in the classroom.

Alas, in those days we did not have cellphones or digital recorders.

Somehow the scar has slowly healed. I don't know how. But if academia teaches its future professorship that it is O.K. to accept being abused as part of the price of joining its ranks, then the tradition continues from generation to generation.

People like Ms. Haufler are not nice people, to put it mildly. They don't know what they have to done to others, and, frankly, they don't care. They are, in a word, ruthless.

As a classmate corroborated, she grades examinations subjectively:  grading harder those she dislikes, and easier those who "get along with her."   One classmate of mine came to this conclusion after we went over sentence by sentence Marsha's grading of three students's (including my own) examinations.

The memory of Marsha's "pet" student" trembling his eyes darting back and forth between her face and his as he tried to ascertain her reaction to his seminar presentation, his voice fluttering in weird sinusoidal ups-and-downs of pitch and intonation, is an indelible one. Was this a heart-felt hommage to pedagogical respect?

In dealing with others less powerful, she adhered to a strict Stalinist line:  "Do What I Say Or Else [the Gulag...]."   Twenty years I can state unequivocally that Haufler was, by far and away, the most amoral, meanest person I met in academia (or elsewhere, for that matter).

Michelangelo Merisi (Caravaggio), 1597.  Oil on leather shield.  Uffizi "Gallery. 

Méduse symboliserait « la perversion de la pulsion spirituelle » qu'est « la stagnation vaniteuse » et sa chevelure de serpents manifesterait « le tourment de la culpabilité refoulée ». La quête de Persée est universelle en tant qu'elle consiste pour tout homme à affronter sa propre vérité intérieure en reconnaissant sa vanité coupable et refoulée : « Méduse symbolise l'image déformée de soi […] La pétrification par l'horreur (par la tête de Méduse, miroir déformant) est due à l'incapacité de supporter objectivement la vérité à l'égard de soi-même. Une seule attitude, une seule arme, peut protéger contre Méduse : ne pas la regarder afin de ne pas être pétrifié d'horreur, mais capter son image dans le miroir de vérité.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9duse_(mythologie)

Why is it that total failures as human beings can succeed in academia?

* * * * *

Unfortunately, there are others like her in academia, unfortunately.  Tyranny in the Ivory Tower: You bet.  

Academia, in the humanities, does not necessarily produce better people.  Not in my experience.

My second-grade teacher who wrote the "[I] always tries his best" had a more profound influence on my education than Ms. Haufler, who, from hindsight, was definitely the worst teacher I have ever had, being the worst role model for a human being than I can scarcely conceive of.

But she did teach me these things:  the inverse correlation between instilling fear (as well as inflicting mental pain as "punishment") and learning, the difference between appearance and subtler states of reality.  But she did not kill my love of learning or my natural curiosity.

This may have been said before, but I doubt that this gets much discussion in the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education or in faculty committees of the Graduate Schools of Arts and Sciences.

It may indeed be much easier to maintain academic integrity than personal integrity.  But Marsha Haufler obviously sacrificed one for the other, although I cannot even guess at how many other individuals on whom she has inflicted pain and terror.

(My definition of integrity:  You leave people whose paths you cross in better shape, not worse, than before your paths crossed). 

And, Ms. Haufler, you cannot now cause me any more pain than you already have.

If I had to go through this again, I would never have crawled on all fours and allowed you to tear into me and beat me up, psychologically.  No sentient being deserves this treatment.  I do not do this to my two cats, no matter how annoyed I might become at their behavior.

I don't believe a teacher should beat up her students, for whatever reason.


* * * * *

Don't let it happen to you.

Bring a recorder with you when you visit someone like her.

Protect the ones you love, and yourself, too.

And speak up, if it happens to you!  Don't be silent, speak, whatever the price.

Because the damage will be greater if you don't.

Listen.
See.   

Speak.

* * * * *

The Queen of Bullies

"Je suis petit mais je ne suis bas."    

Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir

Caravaggio, St. John the Baptist.   Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Buddha Preaching the First Sermon or The Turning of the Wheel. in Dharma-charkra-pravertana mudra (turning the wheel of law,) Archaeological Museum in Sarnath, India.  Fifth century C.E. (475).