They also said she created a "chilling effect" on students' ability to report sexual misconduct.The suits were eventually investigated and dismissed, and she responded with a second Chronicle of Higher Education article, responding to her critics and outlining what happened after the suits were filed.

well, I wouldn’t say “well.” With two such relationships making recent news in the discipline of philosophy alone, for some of the older generation of professors (again, mostly male), the grad students are still a dating pool—and vice versa.Laura Kipnis, a professor in Northwestern's School of Communication, criticized her school's policy in a controversial essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, arguing that the ban assumes that professors are predators, and also that these policies infantilize students.Her essay was met with outrage by some students, two of whom filed a Title IX suit against her, claiming Kipnis was retaliating against students at her school who had filed a complaint against a professor.It’s not just a matter of two consenting adults’ hearts wanting what they want.Because not only are these relationships almost always an unacceptable abuse of power, they also affect the dynamics of departments, entire fields, and the very act of academic mentorship altogether.