Two Zero Four: Weinstein

A story that remains a mystery---

A friend of a friend, someone who teaches Law and History at one of the non-Oxbridge British universities, is as they say "taking advice" in a post-Weinstein matter. He's consulting his solicitors over what amounts to a forced retirement at his job.

He's sixty-ish, I think, so he'd have had another ten years of teaching. Right now he's been suspended and the university administration is orchestrating a forced retirement. He's resisting and is, as best I can tell, planning to sue over the university's failure to follow its own procedures and give him the process written into his contract. My understanding is that it's all based on accusations of "inappropriate conduct", though I have no specifics.

He's at a British university and he's a bachelor, so the first thought his friends here had--- that I had, too ---was that this was about handsome young undergraduate males. That would be the usual British thing, no? But I suppose it could be girls. I know nothing of his preferences or kinks. He's a private enough man, and he did practice law for a while, so he's been trained to discretion. My friends and I agree that it's not particularly relevant what his tastes are, and it doesn't matter to us which team he plays for. We'd probably like to know, though, if only for purposes of gossip.

We have no clue what the specific accusations are. Part of his legal argument is in fact that he's never been given specifics or a chance to refute them.  I can't comment on what he's supposed to have done.  He seems ready for a legal action, for whatever that's worth. All I can do--- all his friends can do ---is watch from the transatlantic sidelines.

I note the story because this is the first brush I've had with the post-Weinstein era.  I was once a mid-semester replacement for a faculty member who'd taken to showing up drunk for his lectures and who'd drunkenly crashed a university vehicle while driving to some official meeting.  But I've never known anyone who was accused of "inappropriate conduct", whatever that might be.

The person in question should be financially okay even if he is forcibly retired. My understanding is that he'll have a pension from his university and that he has a fair amount of land and investments in Pennsylvania (where he's originally from). I'm not so much worried about him as I am intrigued with what the accusations are and what level of process he's entitled to under British law and his own contract.

I've always said that my own love life has been based on conduct as inappropriate as I can manage for these last few decades.  I'm not surprised that in the post-Weinstein world I'll have yet another level of  social disdain attached to me.