Addressing Sexual Misconduct in Statistics

The cultural revolution from the recent #metoo movement has demonstrated that sexual harassment and sexual assault are far too common and often go unreported in professional settings, including in the field of Statistics. In response to this, I have organized a late breaking session at the Joint Statistical Meetings on Addressing Sexual Misconduct in Statistics on Monday July 30, 2018 2-3:50pm in Vancouver, Canada.

The focus of this session is to bring together seven panelists to discuss how sexual misconduct can negatively impact the careers of the victims and how we as a community can make positive changes. Our goal is to open the dialogue on recognizing and condemning predatory sexual behavior, and provide support and inclusion to all members of the statistics community.

This session will be a positive discussion to address this topic and will offer perspectives from conference participants, elected leaders of professional societies, academic journal editors, academic department chairs, and program committee members. In addition, this session will also include the perspective of individuals who have been directly impacted by sexual harassment or assault, which is particularly relevant to other individuals in the audience who have also been impacted by sexual harassment or assault, but may not have discussed it publicly. Keegan Korthauer will chair the session and our panelists will include:

• Leslie McClure is the Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Drexel University, the Chair of the American Statistical Association’s (ASA) Task Force on Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault and the Associate Director for Diversity for the Statistical and Applied Math Sciences Institute (SAMSI). She will discuss the purpose and goals of the ASA Task Force, her experience dealing with sexual harassment and assault as a victim, as well as her experience communicating about sexual harassment and assault as a department chair.
• Emma Benn is an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics and Director of Academic Programs at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, co-founder of the Biostatistics Enrichment Summer Training (BEST) Diversity Program, co-chair of the Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society (ENAR) Fostering Diversity in Biostatistics Workshop, and a member of the ASA Task Force on Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault. She will share her experience championing diversity and her experience promoting an inclusive and welcoming environment in the field of statistics and data science for women, racial/ethnic minorities, and individuals from the LGBTQ community. 
• Dianne Cook is a Professor of Business Analytics in the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics at Monash University, an ASA Fellow, elected member of the global R Foundation, member of R-Ladies Melbourne, and the current editor of the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics (JCGS). She will discuss her efforts to promote diversity in her role as editor of JCGS and her effort to promote gender diversity in the R community at large. 
• Kristian Lum is the Lead Statistician at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) and author of a blogpost titled “Statistics, we have a problem.”, where she calls for our community to stop tolerating a culture of harassment with the hope that her story will help other women come forward who have been affected by sexual harassment or assault. She will discuss why she wrote the post, some things one thinks about in terms of consequences of reporting, how the community could have better structures in place so that reporting along official channels is a reasonable alternative to a very public report. 
• Kerrie Mengersen is a Professor of Statistics at Queensland University of Technology and the former President of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA). She will discuss how ISBA is addressing the topic of harassment, give an overview of similar efforts in Australia, comment on her experience as a manager of students from diverse backgrounds, and review changes in perceptions and actions over the course of her career.  
• Brian Millen is a Senior Director in Global Statistical Sciences at Eli Lilly.  He launched the first JSM Diversity Workshop in 2009, and served as Chair of the ASA Committee on Minorities in Statistics from 2009-2012.  Dr. Millen is a Statistics leader and advocate for diversity and inclusion. He will share suggestions on the roles men can play in creating an inclusive culture which combats gender bias and sexual aggression.
• Lance Waller is the Chair of the Biostatistics Department at Emory University, an ASA Fellow, and served as President of ENAR in 2009. He will discuss his experience as both a department chair of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at Emory University, and an advocate for women and minorities in statistics and data science.

If you are planning on attending #JSM2018, I invite you to join us.