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When, and How, To Speak Up?

September 28, 2011, 12:50 pm

By Gene C. Fant Jr.

Let’s say a new hire is made on campus in an area other than yours and the announcement is made in a campus-wide e-mail. You are mildly interested in the appointment because, well, a university is a learning community and you want to know the other people in the community. The announcement includes only a brief biography, so you decide to plug the new hire’s name into a search engine and you are shocked to find that the results include many unsavory hits. Not petty issues, mind you, but substantial issues that should have informed the search committee if it had performed due diligence in the search. The person, however, has been hired and is now happily working on campus.

The risks in pointing out these issues will vary depending on the position the person holds relative to the position that you hold. If it’s an entry-level person and you are an administrator of some rank, the risks are fairly insubstantial, but what if it’s a newly hired senior administrator (or even a new president) and you are an untenured assistant professor or an adjunct instructor?

So, what should you do? Follow institutional protocol and speak with your supervisor? Speak with the chair of the search committee? Speak with the director of human resources? Go to the person’s supervisor? Send an anonymous printout of the links to the student newspaper? Start an anonymous Web site making the information known? Just assume that the Internet being the Internet, the information will come out in ways that do not include you?

When, and how, should one speak up in such a situation?

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  • dpmccain

    I would caution those who use search engines to conduct background checks.  I did a search on myself, and in my age bracket there were at least 25 people with the same name, and the identical spelling.  When I used my entire name, only one hit came up, a book review.

    To encourage search engines as valid in background checks is not responsible. 

    Some of the students at my former employer were encouraged to keyword instructors’ names to conduct a search.  The students would come to class, gloat about whatever they thought they knew, and regardless of truth, spread it around.  I remember remarking to one student, “You might have conducted a more effective “investigation” had you spelled the Dean’s name correctly; I did not supply the correction. 

  • mkt42

    That’s a crucial point.  WhitePages.com e.g. reports that it has info on five people named “Gene Fant” in the US and Canada alone.

  • samusa

    It’s dangerous and unfair to fully rely on such searches. If you do find something unsavory, you must do a very thorough investigation before you open your mouth. Out of curiosity, I used Google and other search engines on my name. The first reference displayed, “my name, a wanted criminal…” I was so embarrassed because I have never committed a crime albeit speeding. After scrolling down 6-7 names, I saw several references that correctly described me. This happens when you have a common name.

  • tdb489

    Obviously, the correct thing to do to quote Nancy Reagan is to “run, go tell someone.”  The real world doesn’t work like that though.  In academia, you will be fired for your efforts.  Please excuse me, but I want to know what to do when the search engine turns up negative information about a university.  The previous article about the University at Stout was so distressing, that I have added them to my “do not apply” list which is extremely long.  I try to thoroughly research a university before accepting an appointment, but they are very tricky about keeping secrets.  How do you avoid universities with “dirty little secrets?”

  • 115thDream

    my (probably misguided) initial reaction:
    In the proposed scenario, “The person, however, has been hired and is now happily working on campus.”   Even if we set aside the potential unreliability of your “new” information, and the assumption that no one *whose job it was to hire the person* performed this simple check, the person has been HIRED.  Unless the “evidence” is more credible, there is a plausible reason why those responsible would have missed it, and it is specifically grounds for revoking a hire (eg, fake degree), you don’t have an obligation to speak up.  In fact you have an obligation not to.  This person is no longer being evaluated for hiring, and never was by you.  They’ll be evaluated again, and if you are going to involve yourself in that process, do it in a way that makes you accountable.   

  • icedgreentea

    The suggestions to do things anonymously are cowardly.  I also wouldn’t assume the search committee did not know about what I so easily found.  Perhaps they did know, confronted the applicant, and accepted the applicant’s explanations.  I would have to be seriously concerned about safety, particularly the physical safety of the students, before I would take any action.  As noted, the person has been hired.  Perhaps the person is trying to move beyond a past mistake. 

  • MChag12

    One shouldn’t. The search committee messed up.  You can gossip with your friends, but otherwise keep your mouth shut.  Beyond causing problems you can do nothing about, you are inviting a lawsuit.  This comes from experience with terrible search committees, but fortunately, not my own experience as a whistle-blower.  It is amazing how many things out there are illegal to make public. Just watch and bear it.  I’ve learned that if the person is as bad as he/she may seem, they will give themselves enough rope quickly enough.

  • hlfuller

    In searches where I work, we are cautioned *against* using the Internet at all during the vetting of candidates; if a search turns up evidence that the candidate is a member of a protected class, and the candidate is subsequently not hired, there is an argument to be made that this evidence cost the candidate the position. All kinds of legal liability… 

  • oatmeal

    Search engines on the internet are notoriously unreliable (as others have stated). Most institutions run background checks these days and it not the role of a faculty member to dig into unsavory issues. Also, the statement is too vague and needs to be specific. What are the “substantial” issues? This is important. Maybe the person served time for their “issues” or repented? Who knows. If you think it is something terrible, then own it and tell your “supervisor” (not a term faculty like to hear). But you should be ready to hear from the person in question’s lawyer. The anonymous way seems cowardly and if you are wrong then you have ruined someone’s career and life. Why approach the search chair? The appointment has been made. It is not the responsibility of a chair to run background checks, it is the institution’s responsibility. 

  • 11301218

    So, this person (who is supposedly working happily on campus) is to be blacklisted for the rest
    of his/her life because of an Internet search?  Leave them alone, and mind your own business.

  • anonytrans

    But why would one assume the search committee hadn’t also used the Google machine? They may have already investigated and dealt with the issues in question.

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