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Academic norms around romantic relationships with power imbalances?

In our June “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

I have a question about academic norms around romantic relationships involving power imbalances, especially in the U.S., though I would also be interested in how this differs across countries. Clear cases are easy: most of us would say that a professor should not pursue a student, or that a TA should not pursue someone currently in their class, because of the power imbalance. But in practice, many cases seem much more ambiguous.

For example, if a PhD student is over thirty and has no research overlap with a professor in the same department, would it still be inappropriate for that professor to pursue them? Or if a TA repeatedly invites students in the class to meals or private conversations in a way that seems intended to build romantic intimacy, but never explicitly says so, and then confesses only after the course ends, is that acceptable? Another case: if a married professor privately and repeatedly tells a female student that he and his wife have no real emotional relationship and that he remains married only for the children, but never explicitly proposes an affair or sends sexually explicit messages, is that still inappropriate?

I am trying to understand how academic communities judge these gray areas, especially when the person’s intentions are never explicitly stated. (I should add that I am not asking this as a purely abstract question. I am currently one of the students in situations like these, and my friends and I have repeatedly encountered similar incidents.)

Thoughts from readers?

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7 responses to “Academic norms around romantic relationships with power imbalances?”

  1. Anonymous

    I’ve been one of the students in situations like these. It sucks, and I’m sorry that it’s happening. It shouldn’t be.

    Some (most? all?) of these cases seem to me like breaches not only of academic norms, but also…norms of being a decent person. That is: there’s a question about how to parse the ‘power imbalance’ dynamic (and in all these cases I think there are relevant academic/professional norms being violated), but even power imbalances aside, in all these cases the person is additionally just being a creep even before we adjudicate power-imbalance.

    Like, the married professor privately and repeatedly talking about his marriage problems to a female student? Super inappropriate. And it’s super inappropriate for him to talk that way to any woman who isn’t a close friend (assuming he’s straight). It’s a standard and sleazy way for married folks to ‘test the waters’ to see if they can cadge an affair, or line up another partner, before they leave the security of their spouse. Ugh. I get that the question is about academic norms specifically, in particular what ‘student’ adds, but it bothers me to think that we even have to get to the level of parsing out the ‘power imbalance’ topic before recognizing that this guy is a creep.

    Similar reactions to the other cases. Power imbalances can be complicated to analyze (although I think these are reasonably straightforward cases as they go), but ‘not being a sleazy person’ is often fairly theoretically straightforward. And apart from any issues about power imbalances, I think it’s reasonable for you to expect that the people who surround you not behave in a sleazy way. It’s reasonable for you to expect that from your fellow students, and it will be reasonable for you to expect that from your colleagues once you’re no longer a student.

    Reply
  2. Anonymous

    I think actually that it’s precisely when intentions aren’t explicitly stated that people get into trouble.

    I think your first case is, potentially, acceptable, depending on the broader context. (E.g., maybe they don’t overlap research-wise, but what if the professor is set to be the chair, or a placement director, or some other position that might involve decisions that will affect all of the department’s graduate students?) Even when it was acceptable, though, part of what would make it acceptable is that the nature of the relationship was clear to both parties and not hidden from others in the department.

    The other two cases as described strike me as dangerous. If you’re willing to wait until the end of the semester to explicitly pursue a student, then you should be willing to wait until the end of the semester to implicitly pursue them. Obviously you can’t control things entirely — you’ll make it clear from your interactions that you enjoy their company, etc. — but you should refrain from flirting where you can, and certainly from inviting them to outings that have any romantic purpose, spoken or unspoken.

    The last case is clearly inappropriate. It certainly puts the student in an impossible position, which is bad enough, but it’s arguably already something of a betrayal of the spirit of the marriage to talk about it this way to an outside party, and inarguably so if the outside party is someone that the person is in any way romantically interested in. The person doing this is not stating their intentions because they know that those intentions are wrong, pure and simple.

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    Yes, these are all inappropriate. They are inappropriate regardless of gender, by the way, and the marriage troubles one would be inappropriate even if the prof involved was simply venting. Grad students aren’t therapists. The TA’s behavior is also inappropriate, even if there is not romantic intent.

    “Sleazy” is a good term. I am glad the first response introduced it. I would also suggest “tacky.”

    FWIW, I don’t think all relationships between profs and grad students are always inappropriate. Or, if they start that way, they don’t necessarily stay that way. But I don’t think the exceptions are the sort of thing we can derive “rules” from. And I think these are all clearly inappropriate and most members of the profession would agree.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous

    All of these are inappropriate. Approach all academic environments like any other office job and the inappropriateness of things becomes much clearer.

    Part of the problem is that North American academic norms are such that you’re expected to think that your job is a part of your identity, and interviews in the US and Canada are always treated like this (multi days, dinners, etc.). These environments breed inappropriate behaviour and inappropriate expectations.

    Where I have worked in Europe, UK, and AUS/NZ, you feel more like it’s a job and once I left the US I realized how boundaries are blurred a lot in part because of cultural norms.

    This has been my experience and I am not claiming that all instances are like this.

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    These all sound horrid and very very inappropriate to me. My view is that you don’t do anything that would make the person with less power potentially feel uncomfortable or less than fully easily able to say “no thanks” without imagining any ramifications. In addition I think you also have a thumb on the scale for avoiding anything that could give the perception that the vulnerable person was somehow advantaged by potential interest (because it can undercut their esteem and make others think they don’t deserve any success they achieve.) That cuts out most relationships between people at different career stages, at the very least in the same department.

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    Shared interests, similar ages, similar projects, proximity…pretty standard ingredients for attraction of one to another, even for mutual chemistry. Meet a thousand people and there are bound to be some you think are attractive. I don’t think we should be surprised that these feelings come up. It does matter how we handle them.

    It is definitely true that asymmetrical romantic relationships can be harmful to the one who has less power, and that systems can help prevent those harms by preventing those relationships. Some things are simply beyond the pale–married professors discussing their failing marriage with their supervisee, for example, or a professor pursuing an undergraduate in their own department.

    I’m less concerned about cases where the ages are similar and there’s no direct authority. Love is a rare and wonderful thing, and we should be very reluctant to supervise other peoples’ pursuit of it for our own moralizing reasons. Adults have the right to construct their own lives, including choosing things that turn out to have been mistakes.

    In the case of the professor and grad student of roughly the same age mentioned by the OP, I say there’s no hard reason not to, but that they should be very cautious. Both should be aware that the existence of the relationship will cause awkwardness for others in the department even if there’s nothing technically wrong with it. (I was merely friends with a professor from a different subfield in grad school, and people were weird about even that. I was in a department for awhile where two of the professors had been married to each other since grad school and I’d say that wasn’t good for the department either since it greatly affects how everyone interacts.) The other thing to think about is that most relationships don’t last, and things could feel very bad around the department after the breakup. That might be the main reason to avoid that relationship.

    In the case of the TA and undergrad, these are young adults learning to navigate work and relationships both, and to prevent abuses of power/awkwardness for the undergrad, strict rules/expectations about this sort of thing need to be included in TA training. That responsibility falls on the university/department. The TA pushing the limits in the way OP described is not good, and I would explain to them why they should stop.

    To return to the case of the married professor discussing his failing relationship with a PhD candidate, that sounds definitely out of line on several levels, but sad and desperate people do all kinds of things that are less than ideal. Surely someone in their twenties or thirties, though, even as a grad student, knows to respond to the first step in that direction by saying something like, “I’m sorry that is happening to you, but that’s a topic I don’t feel comfortable discussing. Let’s get back to talking about this argument on page….”

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Surely someone with a PhD, even under marital stress, knows better than to use graduate students as outlets for that stress.

      Reply

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