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*In light of the May 30, 2023 New York Times article about Michio Hayashi's sexual harassment, we have updated the text of this petition (which was originally written in 2019), listing the names of the harassers and sexual predators in the Faculty of Libaral Arts Department at Sophia University. 

*In March 2023, Professor Choo received a settlement from Sophia University as promoted Associate professor and her lawsuit has ended. However, Sophia University still has not acknowledged nor have they apologized for the bullying. They settled matters by paying money. After reading the court documents, we learned about how cruel the bullying of Professor Choo was, and we are shocked at the lengths that Sophia University went through to hide the bullying. We will continue this petition until Sophia University issues a public apology.

What is this petition about

Sophia University has a culture of silencing harassment and siding with the aggressors. Multiple professors and students (both inside and outside of Sophia) have reached out to us, describing similar instances of harassment at Sophia University. We are surprised to find out that Professor Kukhee Choo was severely bullied, and that there were many other professors who had similar experiences. This is a human rights violation and we urge Sophia University to rectify its mistakes and create a safe campus environment.

Professor Choo, a full-time faculty member who taught at the Faculty of Liberal Arts (FLA) department at Sophia University from 2014 to 2019, has also been an active protector of women’s rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, and students’ safety on campus to ensure that Sophia students can safely pursue their studies on campus.

She has helped Sophia students who were sexually assaulted, bullied, and harassed, and has guided them through their difficult times. We believe that Sophia University would be hard-pressed to find a professor as dedicated and passionate in the growth, development and protection of their students as her.

Professor Choo just ended a lawsuit aiming to get her job back at Sophia University, but instead of reinstating her position, Sophia University paid money to settle the matter.

Sophia University needs strong professors like her.

Through Professor Choo’s classes, students have learned what true “progressive thinking” is and what Sophia’s motto “Men and Women for Others, with Others” means. It is a great loss for both students and the university to lose a teacher who thinks about her students and has been enthusiastic about the university such as Professor Choo due to bullying in the FLA department.

University professors and students from all over the world are still calling for support for Professor Choo. Teachers and students who were previously harassed at Sophia University are also speaking out. Harassment at Sophia University is a serious problem and embarrassing for Sophia University.

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Despite claiming that Sophia University is an "international" and "progressive" university, it has recently come to light that it has been committing terrible power harassments and academic harassments to professors for many years. In addition, the sexual harassment lawsuit brought forth by a former FLA student against the former Dean of the FLA department, Michio Hayashi, has recently come to light. Even The New York Times recently published an article about Michio Hayashi’s sexual harassment case. Michio Hayashi was also the Dean of FLA department when the bullying started against Professor Choo, who was a whistleblower of sexual harassment within the faculty.

Professor Choo used to have a permanent position at Tulane University, one of the top universities in the United States, but she left that position to fulfill her dream to nurture Japanese female students to play an active role on the world stage. She joined Sophia University in September 2014 as a permanent non-term limited (無期、muki) Assistant Professor.

She was informed by the then Dean Michio Hayashi that she could be promoted to Associate Professor in 2 years owing to her outstanding achievements as a researcher. On the first day of her job at Sophia University, Professor Choo was forced to sign a memorandum that stated that if she wasn’t promoted within 5 years, then her duty in the Faculty of Liberal Arts Department would be terminated. When Professor Choo asked Dean Michio Hayashi about the memorandum and expressed concerns that the condition was different from what she was told when hired, Dean Michio Hayashi told her to “not worry” and that “everybody gets promoted” and that it was only “formality” to state that in the memorandum. However, despite having applied for promotion 4 times over the next 5 years, Professor Choo was denied promotion and was forced out of her job. 

The FLA department constantly hindered Professor Choo’s promotion based on unreasonable reasons and false accusations. In fact, her 3rd promotion application was actually approved by the FLA department in November, 2017. However, this promotion was immediately withdrawn by the new Dean Koichi Nakano.

• 1st promotion application Spring 2016 (under Dean Michio Hayashi): Postponed due to internal dispute within the review committee

• 2nd application Winter 2016 (under Dean Michio Hayashi): An evaluation report with false information was presented to the FLA faculty by the Promotion Evaluation Committee Chair Koichi Nakano just before blind-voting, and promotion was rejected because more than 2/3 of the approval votes were not obtained.

• 3rd application Winter 2017 (under Dean Koichi Nakano): Even though the promotion was initially approved by the entire FLA department, the promotion recommendation was suddenly withdrawn by a department committee consisting of several professors who were bullying Professor Choo. So we thought. In the court documents, however, it was revealed that Dean Koichi Nakano retracted the promotion on his own in February 2018 since there are no records of the faculty deciding the retraction. On the other hand, there are records that the faculty voted months after the retraction.

• 4th application Winter 2018 (under Dean Koichi Nakano): FLA department refused to even evaluate the promotion material.

And then Professor Choo was fired in September 2019.

During her first semester in 2014, Professor Choo became the whistle-blower of a sexual harasser in the FLA department when she informed her art history colleague Noriko Murai about witnessing their male colleague James Farrer forcefully kissing an undergraduate student (in her own court statement, Noriko Murai acknowledges disregarding Professor Choo’s report about James Farrer’s sexual harassment).

Immediately after that, several FLA professors including Dean Michio Hayashi, Associate Professor Noriko Murai, Professor James Farrer, Professor David Slater, Professor David Wank, and the current Dean of FLA Professor Angela Yiu started bullying Professor Choo. It is undeniable that their bullying led to the obstruction of her promotion.

The most problematic interference of Professor Choo’s promotion was the 3rd promotion application in 2017. Professor Choo was finally promoted to Associate Professor by the FLA department the 3rd time, but for some reason the promotion recommendation to the university was withdrawn by Dean Koichi Nakano.

The reasons FLA department Dean Koichi Nakano gave for withdrawing the 2017 3rd promotion recommendation for Associate professor:

・After the promotion was decided, Professor Choo returned home abroad during winter break for her family member who has cancer. Dean Koichi Nakano said that this travel was not justified and was a ‘non-urgent trip’ because said cancer was not serious enough (Dean Koichi Nakano refused to accept the medical records submitted by Professor Choo).

・Professor Choo reported in advance to Dean Koichi Nakano about her family situation and that she would travel during winter break. Additionally, even though she had taught the make-up classes that would cover her absence, Professor Choo was accused of “pretending to have taught” the classes.

・When it became clear that she had given proper make-up classes, suddenly Dean Koichi Nakano changed his claim to that she "had been absent for more than 30 days without telling anyone”. This period of 30 days included a two-week winter vacation and Saturdays and Sundays, which are not counted as work days.

・During the retraction of her promotion, Dean Koichi Nakano told the FLA department faculty that he was not informed by Professor Choo about her travel plans and said that he had no idea why she traveled back home during winter break (however, after retracting the promotion, Dean Koichi Nakano changed his story and admitted that he was in fact informed by Professor Choo about her family situation and travel plans ahead of time.)

・Professor Choo submitted three times the number of articles required for promotion and got the promotion recommendation from the FLA department based on those publications. However, Dean Koichi Nakano later claimed that Professor Choo did not have enough publication and withdrew her promotion recommendation (without going through the proper procedure).

Harassment by other FLA faculty members include:

・Being labeled a liar due to the lies spread about her by Michio Hayashi​, Koichi Nakano​, Angela Yiu​, David Slater​, David Wank, and Noriko Murai.

・Michio Hayashi told Professor Choo that she was "slow" in learning the hierarchical human relationships of the department and therefore, could not get promotion (she did not know who to curry favor with). Michio Hayashi even accused Professor Choo as being racist against Japanese.

・Art history colleague Noriko Murai blamed Professor Choo for making her feel uncomfortable because Noriko Murai could no longer look at the sexual predator James Farrer in his eyes (ironically, as mentioned earlier, Noriko Murai acknowledged in court documents that she did not take Professor Choo’s report about James Farrer seriously).

・Art history colleague Caroline Hirasawa (currently teaching at Waseda Faculty of International Research and Education, School of International Liberal Studies) made the inhumane request to Professor Choo to submit a picture of her family member in their hospital bed to prove that her family member was indeed in a vegetative state. When Professor Choo desperately sought advice from Caroline Hirasawa on what to do after her promotion was retracted, Caroline Hirasawa simply said one sentence, “smile more”.

・David Slater told Professor Choo that bullying was FLA department’s ‘culture’ for decades, and thus something she had to accept. David Slater also reprimanded Professor Choo for grading students’ papers without looking at their names (blind grading) and said that this was unprecedented and unacceptable practice in the FLA department and therefore, Professor Choo could not get promoted.

・David Wank said that if Professor Choo were to report the FLA department’s harassment to the university, it would affect her promotion. Additionally, David Wank blamed Professor Choo for problems that were caused by students and spread false information to the department about investigating student problems that did not exist, sabotaging Professor Choo’s promotion review by damaging her reputation within the department.

・Noriko Murai claimed that Angela Yiu (FLA department Dean as of 2023) is known to be a bully who treats the faculty like a “dog”, and told Professor Choo that “You’re a dog in training" and that she had to put up with the bullying from Angela Yiu to get promotion. 

・FLA department faculty ignored Professor Choo in the hallways and the elevator for years and when they saw Professor Choo, they would run away in the opposite direction.

Professor Choo was subjected to a variety of unfair treatment that can be seen as a denial of her human rights.

Under the strong urging and support from Professor Thierry Robouam (the Jesuit Priest in the FLA department), who called the FLA department bullying against Professor Choo “hysteria against Koreans”,  Professor Choo consulted with the Sophia University Harassment office since 2015 regarding the ongoing bullying and power harassment in the FLA Department.

She also reached out to the university Harassment Countermeasures Committee in 2018 to resolve the promotion interference. However, records show that the Harassment Countermeasures Committee did not even check the submitted documents or recorded evidence.

Another example of the severity of harassment is regarding the incident when David Slater told Professor Choo that, “I’m not sure if we can work together," while yelling and repeatedly using the F-word. The Harassment Countermeasures Committee made a surprising conclusion that David Slater’s foul language was simply his manner of speaking that there was no problem with it. This is a prime example showing how the Harassment Countermeasures Committee abandoned their obligation to investigate any harassment on campus.

The Harassment Countermeasures Committee concluded that the bullying actions of the members of the FLA department was “determined not to be harassment" and Sophia University then dismissed Professor Choo.

Sophia University chose to get rid of the sexual harassment whistleblower Professor Choo rather than facing and solving the serious harassment problem. This was a decision that only perpetuates the toxic harassment culture at Sophia University.

Sophia University has also made efforts to suppress the voices of students who hoped to shed light on the harassment against Professor Choo. 

The Sophia Times Newspaper attempted to raise awareness of the harassment on campus to the general student population, and interviewed a few FLA students at the time. However, the Center of Student Affairs Office not only threatened The Sophia Times Newspaper, but censored their article as well.

The "progressive" Sophia University threatened students, saying it would shut the newspaper down, and in doing so blatantly ignored the freedom of speech and thus human rights of students and professors. Considering Michio Hayashi's sexual harassment lawsuit and the cover up of James Farrer’s sexual harassment, the proliferation of deep-rooted harassment culture is an extremely serious problem. (Additionally, one of our Sophia alumni is openly stating in public that in order to get her job, she had to sleep with David Slater when she was a student. Therefore, among Sophia graduates, knowledge about the sexual predators in the FLA department are not limited to Michio Hayashi and James Farrer.)

(On a separate, but related note, this is not the first time Sophia University has taken the side of the aggressors. On June 20th, 2019, a symposium titled “For a Campus Without Sexual Harassment/Sexual Violence ~Suggestions from Students~” was held at Sophia University. At this event, the representative of Sophia University, again from the Center of Student Affairs Office, made some problematic remarks. He defended the actions of sexual harassers when he said “I still think that understanding the perpetrator is also extremely important.” Making such comments defending rapists in a room full of rape victims is not only extremely inappropriate, but alarming.)

Having viewed the evidence, we are stunned at how Sophia University has systematically created a culture of silencing the victims of harassment, their supporters, and those who fight against harassment. We, the students and alumni of Sophia University, are calling for support to end this vicious cycle of perpetuating harassment at Sophia University.

An environment where harassment is rampant is not a healthy learning environment. If Sophia University really cares about students, they should respect the opinions of students and alumni seriously.

Many local and international students anticipated in taking Professor Choo’s classes, but the harassment culture at Sophia University robbed those students of their learning opportunities.

What we aim to achieve and demand from Sophia University:

1. Now that Michio Hayashi's sexual harassment lawsuit has come to light, Sophia University must re-examine the Faculty of Liberal Arts department’s bullying, sexual harassment allegations, and the promotion obstruction of Professor Choo and admit that what happened was harassment and take responsibility.

2. Paying settlement to Professor Choo as Associate Professor is not enough. Sophia University must also reinstate her position as Associate Professor so students can take her class.

3. Sophia University and the FLA Department must acknowledge that they have threatened the students and issue an official apology.

4. Sophia University must issue an official apology for harassing, intimidating and scaring the students and faculty members, and seriously deal with harassment among faculty members as well.  

5. Outsource harassment investigations to a third-party organization that has objectivity that will prevent future reoccurrences.

6. Create a system to protect whistleblowers from all forms of harassment.

In order for future Sophia students to receive meaningful education in a safe environment without harassment, we need a teacher like Professor Choo, who does not give in to the system and cares about and protects students.

Please sign this petition to support our fight. Thank you!

** The information provided here has been updated based on court evidence such as Professor Choo’s audio recordings. If you are interested, please request materials at the Tokyo District Court (Tel. 03-3581-5411, Court case #31229) to find out more about harassment at the Faculty of Liberal Arts department, Sophia University.

**The photo used in this petition is from 2019, when Professor Choo was fired. Sophia students voiced their support for her and posted Post-it notes on the door of then-Dean Koichi Nakano's office.

**For those who want to contact Sophia University directly

Sophia University: Tel. 03-3238-3111

Sophia University Chancellor: Augustine Sali (august-s@sophia.ac.jp)