University of Washington Sexual Harassment and Bullying Investigation

For the last 6 months, the UW Allen School of CSE has been investigating the toxic and sexist environment in the systems and networking labs. Nine doctoral and postdoctoral women were in the lab or joined during the investigation; out of these, two left academia and two are now at other schools. The others remain at UW but avoid the lab by working from MSR or other labs. All have lost up to a year or more of their PhDs to harassment. Despite this impact, no one has faced any consequences or repercussions.

Instead, the university has chosen to blame me for the situation, gaslight the women, and continue to fail to provide a safe learning environment. This outcome is not surprising (see: DARVO); what is surprising is how many times the Allen School administration could have de-escalated the situation for the mutual benefit of the women and the school but instead let the men manipulate them and use the system to further harass the women. The remainder of this post is about my personal experience with the situation (usual disclaimers apply).

I’d like to thank my management chain at MSR for being supportive while I was involved in this situation. Generally, Microsoft seemed to take the stance that working with students is part of my job, and I should be able to do my job without experiencing inappropriate behavior. As a result, they also took it very seriously when my husband received threatening emails about the situation. I expect to get more after this blog post.

Overview

On July 12, 2024, seven women sent a letter to the systems and networking faculty (Tom, Baris, Simon, Ratul and Arvind) detailing three harassment incidents and asking for, among other things, a lab code of conduct and sexual harassment training. They wrote this letter at the request of the grad counselors, after the men had reported them repeatedly to the advisors for making the lab an “unwelcoming” space by talking about “women’s issues”, including women’s access to medical care.

UW hired outside legal counsel to conduct a 6 month investigation, which resulted in this publicly available report. While the report finds that none of the incidents involving the three men rise to the level of “harassment” by a narrow legal definition, it would be difficult to imagine that the incidents described would be allowed at any company. For example, several of the incidents detailed in the report are explicitly banned by Microsoft’s sexual harassment policy.

Almost 9 months after sending their letter to the advisors, most of the women have still not rejoined their labs or returned to lab activities. The Allen School is now finally working on sexual harassment training and a code of conduct.

Edited to add: I’ve posted a perspective from one of the women on my involvement.

My Experience

I became involved in the situation around the time of OSDI 2024 because the harassers were following the women around the conference. I only became involved because:

1. The situation did not seem serious enough to require much of my time. It was inexplicable to me why the advisors were tolerating the kind of behavior discussed in the report.

2. I personally knew many of the faculty. I have known Simon, who advises one of the men, since 2008 and I have known Baris since 2020 when I chaired EuroDW with him. I’ve also known and worked with Tom since 2012.

3. The women had already attempted to talk to the faculty for months and even asked another female faculty member to talk to the faculty in the lab (as there were no women faculty in systems or networking at the time).

The seven women that wrote the July 12 letter clearly had no effective advocate among the faculty. One of them had already dropped out of the PhD program, and I was worried more of them would quit. My primary goal was to protect the women from further harm and de-escalate the situation, while repairing the relationship between the women and their advisors.

After the HR investigation started, the faculty and students were instructed not to speak about the situation. Thus, I became the only person that could support the women and speak out. I only chose to speak publicly when:

1. I was forced to explain the situation and support a new woman joining the lab. No one at UW explained to her why there were no women in the systems lab or that it might be unsafe for her to be around the men under investigation.

2. I heard another credible report of harassment from the same men of a woman in another lab, as well as, concerning incidents of physical violence and intimidation (which are detailed in the report).

3. Magda (the school director) refused to implement any changes unless the women made a formal complaint to Title IX. As the harm perpetrated by university Title IX offices is well-documented (and the women sent an email with the research on that to the administration), I expected the reporting process would be traumatic and not let the women rejoin their lab any time soon.

These three things happened in quick succession about one month after the women sent the letter to faculty. I had thought the issues were limited to the systems lab and would be fixed quickly, but it became clear to me that the issues were more severe and pervasive than I thought. I chose to resign my affiliate faculty position and posted to Twitter, Facebook and the uw-systems mailing list to ensure that other women did not find themselves in the same position.

HR Investigation Subjects

Edited to add: The university administration has asked me to remove the men’s names, but as I believe there is no legal basis for them to censor me, I have left them here.

No one has instructed me not to share the men’s names, so I will name them here: Pratyush Patel (Iota in the HR report), Tapan Chugh (Theta) and Anish Nyayachavadi (Eta). Per the HR investigation, most of the bullying came from Anish, while the incidents of physical violence were Tapan, and Pratyush was emotionally abusing and stealing ideas and work from women. Since many of the events in the report did not happen on campus or between “friends”, they were not counted as harassment. Pratyush’s academic misconduct was considered to be outside the scope of the report. There are more details and evidence (e.g., slack messages, emails, text messages) in the report.

I feel that it is important for me to disclose the men’s identity because, while the women are easily identifiable in the report, the men are not because there are vastly more men than women in the lab. Furthermore, as the men will continue to be in our communities without consequences, I do not want women who are not privileged enough to be part of the whisper network to suffer harassment from them. I am inspired by women that named names, including Dana Moshkovitz and the women that spoke out about the University of Michigan case.

I also stress that their behavior was enabled by their advisors, especially Ratul Mahajan (Omicron in the HR report) who advises or works with all of the men. Again, I want to ensure that all women can make informed descisions about grad school and advisors and not just those who have the privilege of knowing who is problematic and who is not. It is clear from their actions even now that the advisors prioritize the men’s careers over the women that left, and over the mental health and careers of the women that remain.

Lessons Learned

If you experience a similar situation in your department, do not make the same mistakes as the Allen School. While by no means comprehensive, some easy things for other CS departments to do:

1. Make expectations of appropriate behavior clear. If inappropriate behavior pops up, deal with it swiftly and aggressively.

2. Expect harassment when advising women. Statistically, all women in grad school will experience harassment; be prepared to spot it and help deal with it.

3. Be aware (if you are not already) that university processes protect the university and not marginalized students. If at all possible, resolve the situation without university administration involvement.

4. Find an advocate and a support system for victims. They will generally not want to talk to administrators or faculty unless they know they can be trusted. Most people are not explicitly trained to intake harassment reports, so the reporting process itself can often compound trauma.

It basically boils down to this: do not recruit women and other URM to your lab if you have no plan for how to keep them safe. There are plenty of experts and researchers who study these things (e.g., Nicole Bedera), read their books and educate yourself before you become a cautionary tale. This podcast is a great starting point.