NEW YORK -- A friend wrote to say that a professor both of us know was summarily fired on charges of sexual harassment. Not long afterward it was found that the accusation had no basis, but by then it was too late. Our friend had moved out of the region with his family.
As it happens, I wrote a report on sexual harassment in 1998 when the U.S. Supreme Court decided on two cases -- two of what Joanna Grossman would later call "a trilogy" in her entry on the subject in "The Oxford Companion to American Law" (2002): Burlington Industries v. Ellerth and Faragher v. City of Boca Baton. (The third, Kolstad v. American Dental Association, which came out the following year, clarified when punitive damages may be levied against the employer.)
At the time some regarded this legal concept -- if it is one -- as ill-defined and thought the decisions would simply increase the burden already placed on the employer in this regard. I agreed. Now, six years later, I think the decisions have helped to create a police-state atmosphere in the workplace.