[UPDATE: We won! After we started this petition, Asimanshu received a new letter with a guarantee for funding at least until the end of Fall 2021. When we stand together, we can show powerful institutions at Brown the importance of treating workers with respect. Thanks to everyone who signed this petition to bring attention to Asimanshu's story – your willingness to put your name down is what made the difference. We'll keep fighting together for safety at work, fair funding, and union rights for all workers. – GLO]

IN BRIEF - Third-year Engineering Ph.D. student Asimanshu Das faced verbal abuse, intimidation, and harassment from his former advisor during the pandemic. While Asimanshu has been attempting to switch advisors, Brown won’t promise funding for him to work in another lab in the fall, in spite of their 5-year funding guarantee for graduate students. Even worse, Brown administrators are demanding that Asimanshu continue to meet with his advisor to hand over his own research and writing, threatening to expel him if he refuses. Federal law guarantees a right to union representation, but Brown has stonewalled union representatives from meetings, and as a result, Asimanshu has had to face threats of termination and legal action alone. Asimanshu’s visa depends on his job at Brown. Now Asimanshu may be forced to leave the United States – all because he tried to protect himself from a hostile advisor.

In negotiations for our contract, Brown agreed that abusive behavior in the workplace was a problem. Now that a real case is in front of us, Brown needs to hold to its commitments in our contract, and address toxic work environments in higher education. Asimanshu shouldn’t be kicked out of school and face deportation for switching away from a hostile work environment.

Please support Asimanshu by signing our petition: Brown University needs to honor its commitment to address workplace abuse by offering Asimanshu bridge funding to a safe advisor until the end of Fall 2021, and respect his right to union representation.

PETITION

This winter, Asimanshu realized that he needed to get away from his advisor. His academic career was off to a good start – he had published research about COVID safety which received recognition in the New York Times and brought positive press to Brown – but there had been incidents of extreme discomfort in the lab. His advisor had installed a spy camera in the laboratory without informing any lab workers, and when pressed about it, claimed it was just for testing network connectivity. At another point, the advisor demanded that Asimanshu call him every day, multiple times per day, to receive instructions. But then, the treatment became much worse: his advisor yelled and cursed at him, asked probing questions about whether Asimanshu was drinking and partying instead of working, and physically intimidated him by hitting the table.

Asimanshu told Brown administrators in February about his advisor’s hostile attitude. Transferring labs should have been simple. But in January, the advisor had changed Asimanshu’s academic standing from good standing to warning status. Asimanshu’s warning letter said that if Asimanshu did not improve his work, he would face expulsion. Since Asimanshu is an international student, expulsion doesn’t just mean leaving Brown; because of visa rules, it would mean leaving the United States. International graduate students are especially vulnerable to abusive advisors because of the extreme power dynamic created by the threat of deportation. At this point, Asimanshu’s career was in his advisor’s hands. 

In April, the advisor further used his power to infringe on Asimanshu’s intellectual property. He demanded that Asimanshu hand over his own writing for a co-authorship. The advisor claimed authorship of a shared document which he had not even opened for several months – in fact, his access link had expired in January from lack of use. The advisor demanded a new link so that he could add his name to the paper. When Asimanshu refused to let his work be stolen, Brown administrators stepped in – and took the side of the advisor.

On May 14th, Asimanshu received a new warning letter from the School of Engineering. This time, he was threatened with expulsion by the end of August, unless he met his advisor’s demand: frequent communications and meetings with the advisor, “meeting a minimum of every week,” to transfer lab data. Asimanshu prepared the data with extensive documentation in order to avoid a meeting, but no matter what Asimanshu did, the advisor demanded a Zoom meeting to discuss it further.

On May 20th, we, the graduate labor union at Brown, GLO, invoked our contract with Brown to obtain immediate protections for Asimanshu. This part of our contract was developed to handle this exact situation: in cases of alleged abuse, our contract says that a graduate student may request an immediate transfer of advisor, no-contact order, and an extension of funding. Asimanshu found a professor who was excited to work with him, and the only thing necessary was the extension of a line of funding from the Graduate School, an option described explicitly in our contract. The response from Brown was supposed to be immediately forthcoming. Two weeks later, on June 2nd, all of GLO’s requests were denied. GLO was told that there had been no finding of abuse, because there had been no investigation.

In those two weeks when Asimanshu was waiting to hear back about whether he would be safe from his advisor, he was told by administrators to meet with his advisor twice, and was subjected to three meetings with administrators at which he was denied union representation. Federal law enshrines the rights of workers to have a union representative present in investigatory or disciplinary meetings. In addition, our contract with Brown guarantees that, when protective measures are requested, the student may have a union representative present “at any point.” Administrators broke both federal law and our contract by removing a GLO representative from these meetings. Without union representation, Asimanshu was told conflicting information about what kinds of funding and health insurance he could receive in the fall, and then threatened with legal action concerning the disputed data. This is the basic substance of what union rights are for – but that didn’t matter to Brown, because Brown was more interested in protecting a manipulative professor than a graduate worker in need of a safe working environment.

At this point, Asimanshu has tried to reach informal resolutions with his advisor directly, with administrators, and through union representation. The amount of money needed to fund one graduate student for a semester is a drop in the bucket for a wealthy university like Brown. If Brown won’t reach an agreement with Asimanshu which protects his rights to safety and union representation, the only remaining recourse will be through arbitration or labor law. But our hope is that Brown can be made to understand that workers’ rights need to be valued and protected.

Safety, intellectual property rights, and union representation need to be respected – especially for graduate student workers, who are so often treated as disposable cogs in the University research machine.

Please support Asimanshu Das by signing our petition: Brown University must offer bridge funding to a safe advisor until the end of Fall 2021, and honor the right to union representation.


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Note: a previous version of this petition included the name of the advisor; we have since removed it.