Ghosts of Eastman Past

Spoiler alert: Everybody knew.

When I first started raising concerns about the process for reporting harassment at Eastman, I naïvely thought that nobody knew. Because—surely—if anyone knew about a system this ineffective, this unsafe, this harmful, somebody would have done... something.

Spoiler alert: everybody knew.

The DMs started pouring in. Faculty started quietly suggesting that this was not... unexpected. That situations like these... happen. These were the responses of the tenured faculty, of the "good" faculty—emphasis on the scare quotes.

When I first sounded the alarm, I thought the system was broken. It quickly became clear that the system was working exactly as intended. I didn’t understand yet that the failures I was witnessing were features, not bugs—enabled through decades of carefully calibrated inaction.

In 2017, sixteen women came forward reporting harassment by UR science professor T. Florian Jaeger. The university's response? Grant him tenure.

UR never claimed Jaeger’s actions were acceptable. They called them “inappropriate,” “unprofessional,” and “offensive.”

But they insisted his behavior didn’t technically violate policy. They cited their commitment to fairness and due process—a commitment so fierce they were willing to face international condemnation and defend a known harasser just to uphold it.

How admirable.

Less than five years later, the university’s own investigation found that another tenured professor—Neil Varon—had, in fact, violated harassment policy in his conduct toward me.

But—curiously—he, too, remains employed at UR.

Even curiouser—I was expelled, and Eastman leadership practically lit the handbook on fire to get away with it.

It's bizarre behavior from a university that was so deeply. committed. to. policy. just a few short years ago.

The list of nauseating hypocrisy goes on so long that I had to add an entire appendix in my DHR report to catalogue it.

In the 90s, William VerMeulen pressured a student into sex by threatening to have her expelled. (Clearly not an empty threat.) He was on Eastman's roster until last summer, when his dick-pics showed up on the internet.

Then he quietly disappeared. “Nothing to see here” was Eastman’s official response. (Though I’m guessing the students who got his self-portraits saw more than enough.)

In the 10s, Douglas Humpherys threatened to make a student's life "a living hell" for reporting harassment—in a recorded conversation. Eastman said there was nothing they could do. They gave Humphreys a teaching award the same year he was sued by a student for sexual harassment.

In the 20s, Neil Varon—Eastman's director of orchestras for decades—harassed me and screamed at students until they cried. Eastman protected him and expelled me.

And those are just the accounts that are on public record. Eastman's history is littered with the kind of abuse that is only discussed through private channels.

The policy is theater. The ideology is real—and it is a long, cherished tradition at UR and the Eastman School of Music:

Protect men behaving badly. By any means necessary. And at any cost.

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The text below is taken directly from my complaint against the Eastman School of Music, submitted to the New York State Division of Human Rights under penalty of perjury. I filed the complaint after being illegally expelled from the school with no process, warning, or prior disciplinary action.

Paragraphs are numbered as they are in the original filing. Redactions and clarifications are marked in brackets. Some pronouns may be changed for anonymity.

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58．This level of institutional insularity has created a closed ecosystem—one in which loyalty and familiarity allow total disregard for compliance, accountability, or legal risk. This extends to faculty—particularly in the conducting department, where decades-long appointments, combined with thinly veiled discrimination and harassment, have functionally excluded women for decades.

59．The department’s four senior figures—Neil Varon (appointed 2002), Mark Scatterday (DMA ’89, faculty since 2001), William Weinert (appointed 1994), and Brad Lubman (appointed 1996)—have each held long-term, near-total control over the department, with no structural oversight.

60–63．[Redacted]

64．The conducting faculty are only a small subset of a much larger pattern. As detailed in Appendix B, numerous Eastman faculty across departments have engaged in documented misconduct, often repeatedly, without consequence.

65．These faculty are protected by administrators who came up through the same institutional ranks—Eastman alumni recycled into leadership roles who sustained, rather than corrected, the system they inherited.

I told UR in writing that Eastman has no functioning Title IX Office—and it’s even less safe under its first female dean.

66．These behaviors are not limited to Eastman. The University of Rochester has faced this crisis before. In the widely publicized case against T. Florian Jaeger, sixteen women reported sustained inappropriate conduct by a tenured professor—a case that ended in a $9.4 million settlement for the plaintiffs and international condemnation for UR.

66.a Note: When Hain threatened me with a defamation suit, he did so via a cease-and-desist letter issued by his personal legal counsel, J. Morgan Levy. Levy was UR’s Title IX Coordinator during the Jaeger case. According to the EEOC complaint, Levy said, “in reference to Jaeger sleeping with students, that it was not uncommon for less powerful women to seek more powerful men for sexual relationships.”

Levy alarmingly doubled down on the remarks after they were made public and, in my case, assisted a man accused of misconduct in aggressively threatening legal action against the complainant.

67．At that time, the university did not defend Jaeger’s behavior. On the contrary, they called it “inappropriate, unprofessional and offensive,” narrowly admitting that it was “in the nature of sexually harassing acts.” However, then-president Joel Seligman said of Jaeger’s actions: “The question is, ‘Do they rise to a level where they are actionable under our standards?’”

UR granted T. Florian Jaeger tenure—even though sixteen women reported him for harassment.

The university’s core defense? He didn’t violate policy.

68．That became the university’s core defense: that offensive, unprofessional behavior did not necessarily breach policy. It is because of UR’s so-called commitment to policy that T. Florian Jaeger is still employed there, while the women he harassed were forced to move on.

69．Less than five years after reaching that multi-million-dollar settlement, the university’s own investigation found that a tenured professor violated harassment policy in misconduct against me. He remains employed in spite of policy violations. I was expelled in violation of all published policy.

Five years later, UR’s formal finding was that Neil Varon violated harassment policy.

He remains employed—in spite of violating policy.

I was expelled—in violation of all policy.

70．In one case, the university claimed to have narrowly followed their own policy. In another, they bypassed policy entirely. The end result of both was the same—men engaging in misconduct at the University of Rochester remain. The women who report them are forced out.

108．Eastman’s faculty and administrators not only abused power—they willfully misrepresented the power they were genuinely entitled to. Across nearly every domain of the case, institutional actors claimed legal or procedural constraints where none existed, while misrepresenting their actual policy obligations when they found them inconvenient.

The result is the same.

Men who engage in misconduct at the University of Rochester are protected.

Women who report them are forced out.

This conduct would be unacceptable in any academic setting. In the context of a known history of harassment and abuse at Eastman, it created conditions that were not just unethical, but dangerous.

109．This was how the institution responded to a doctoral student with professional experience—who raised documented violations and proposed concrete resolutions in real time.

Given the uniquely vulnerable position Eastman students face, in intimate training conditions in a hyper-competitive field—these actions raise serious questions about how much abuse Eastman’s leadership has enabled or, worse, actively engaged in—especially in cases of students who lacked access, support, or documentation.

110．These concerns are not new. In 1997, a federal filing against William VerMeulen—then at Rice University, and later a Visiting Professor of Horn at Eastman—alleged that he pressured a student into sexual activity while “continuously reminding her…of his ability to have her expelled.”

According to the complaint, J. Morgan Levy—UR’s Title IX Coordinator at the time—dismissed harassment reports about Jaeger.

She said it was not unusual for women to sleep with men in more powerful positions than their own.

111．Nearly three decades later, VerMeulen was still employed by Eastman. Students were still passing warnings about him through whisper networks. The school removed him only after his explicit self-portraits—allegedly shared with students—were posted online. I was expelled shortly after publicly condemning Eastman’s protection of him, after an extensive article about his abuse and institutional protection broke.

112．My expulsion proves that VerMeulen’s threat—or a threat by any abusive faculty member—was not empty. It clearly demonstrates that Eastman’s leadership will not only fail to stop abuse—they have no hesitation about actively participating in it.

113．If this is what happened to a student who followed every process, what happened to the ones who didn’t—or couldn’t?

Levy later sent me written legal threat on behalf of John Hain—one of the men I reported.

APPENDIX B: ADDITIONAL FACULTY/STAFF MISCONDUCT

A. [Redacted]
¶1–8.a [Redacted]

B. [Redacted]
¶9–24 [Redacted]

C. [Redacted]
¶25–31.a [Redacted]

D. William VerMeulen
32. In late May 2024, William VerMeulen, Eastman’s Visiting Professor of Horn, was exposed for taking explicit images of himself—apparently shared with students—along with pervasive abuse and harassment.

33. During my first year at Eastman, [a faculty member] warned me not to attend one of VerMeulen’s classes.

A 1997 federal filing alleged that William VerMeulen—Eastman faculty through 2024—pressured a student into sex by reminding her of his ability to have her expelled.

34-35. [Redacted]

36. After the explicit photos were made public in summer 2024, Eastman quietly removed VerMeulen from their website without comment.

37. A February 2025 article by Riya Misra confirmed three decades of harassment allegations against VerMeulen in his primary post at Rice University, including legal action by students. The article said students who reported harassment were treated as “collateral damage.”

38. After the publication of that article, a federal complaint—demanding a jury trial—was made public. In it, Carey Potts, former VerMeulen student, alleged that he pressured her into sexual activity, and that he “continuously reminded her of the tenuous nature of her involvement in the program and his ability to have her expelled from it.” The filing was from 1997.

39. In 2025, I was expelled—without process—shortly after speaking up about VerMeulen. In those public disclosures, I explicitly noted that, in addition to his post at Rice, VerMeulen had a significant presence at Eastman, where students had concerns about him as recently as one year prior.

My expulsion proves that threats like VerMeulen’s are not empty.

If this is what happened to a student who followed every process, what happened to the ones who didn’t—or couldn’t?

E. Douglas Humpherys
40. Joseph Irrera, former student, sued Eastman and Humpherys for harassment and retaliation and spoke on record with multiple media outlets.

41. Irrera alleged that Humpherys caressed him and rubbed his crotch against Irrera in a lesson, told another faculty he was “in love” with Irrera, and made suggestive gestures at Irrera, advances which Irrera rejected.

42. As Humpherys was entering Irrera’s recital to adjudicate it, he told another professor, “it will not go well.” Irrera received a failing grade for the recital. In scheduling Irrera’s second recital, Humpherys gave Irrera unusually short notice and another failing grade.

43. Irrera was later rejected for 28 different university positions—not receiving a single interview invitation—which Irrera alleged was due to negative references from Humpherys.

According to a federal complaint, Eastman professor Douglas Humpherys threatened to make a student’s life “a living hell” for reporting sexual harassment.

The conversation was recorded.

Eastman declined to intervene.

44. An opinion summary by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals states,
“Humpherys told Irrera in a recorded conversation that he ‘would never get a university professor job’ and threatened to ‘make his life a living hell’ if he made any written report of sexual harassment.

An Eastman Dean, Marie Rolf, told Irrera that she expected that ‘future employers would call, email or otherwise contact Humpherys to get feedback regarding [his] abilities to perform in his primary instrument’ that ‘she received calls all the time even though not listed as someone’s reference’ and that ‘we cannot get [Humpherys] out of your life.’”

44.a Note: Rolf’s claim is disingenuous. Had Eastman terminated Humpherys’s employment in response to a recorded conversation in which he threatened to make a student’s life “a living hell” for reporting harassment and assault, it is unlikely that employers would have continued contacting Humpherys as a reference. Eastman repeatedly and willfully preserved harassers’ credibility and power—enabling retaliation in this case and many others.

45. The court granted Irrera’s appeal noting that retaliation was “plausible” given that Humpherys “warned his student that he would make his life a ‘living hell’ if he made a written report of the teacher’s sexual advances”

It 2016, Eastman gave Humpherys an award for “excellence in teaching.”

It was the same year he was sued for sexual harassment.

46. In 2016—the same year Irrera filed his federal suit—Eastman awarded Humpherys the Eisenhart Award for Excellence in Teaching. He remains in his post at Eastman.

F. [Redacted]
¶47–50 [Redacted]

G. [Redacted]
¶51–55 [Redacted]

H. Institutional Silence
56. I also received a 2020 petition—attached to this appendix–in which 46 faculty and over 300 students called for change in the school’s approach to harassment and assault, indicating that the issues are longstanding and known to the school.

56.a. Note: Reinhild Steingröver was the first signature on the faculty petition. She later contradicted and disregarded my reports of faculty misconduct, denied my grant proposal while under investigation, and participated in my expulsion without process. (See Full Chron. ¶321, 414, 450, 477-481)

She specifically notes her affiliation with the Susan B. Anthony Institute in signing the petition.

57. [Redacted]

58. In December 2024, after the OEI opened a second investigation, I reported to the University of Rochester—in writing—that Eastman has no functioning Title IX Office, is failing to meet its legal obligations to protect students against sexual and gender-based harm, and is even less safe under Kate Sheeran—Eastman’s new dean and the first woman in the role—than under the previous administration.

(End of DHR excerpt)

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