The Cover Letter I never expected to write
How Faculty Harassment Got Me Expelled from Eastman,
How to Do Better,
and
What’s Next
(4 min. read)
First, let me acknowledge the obvious: these are high-stakes conversations, even if you’re on the right side of them.
They’re loaded. They’re complicated. They have a way of putting people into panic-mode.
Talking about a harassment complaint, an expulsion, press coverage, legal filings in a selection process—much less leading with it—is nobody’s first-choice professional strategy.
Certainly not mine.
But circumstances like this leave no good choices—only murky tradeoffs.
What makes the decision clear—for me, at least—is this:
Real music-making, real work, and real relationships—the only reasons I have stayed in this field at all—require a shared commitment to safe, ethical, and inclusive principles, even when it’s difficult or inconvenient.
A career that depends on accepting anything less just isn’t one I’m able to build. So, for me, the benefits of sharing this story consistently and openly far outweigh the risks.
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A very brief recap, if you haven’t already seen the story on social or in press:
In 2023, I started my doctorate in orchestral conducting at the Eastman School of Music. Six weeks into my first semester, I reported my advisor for inappropriate comments and privacy concerns.
A university investigation would later conclude that he violated harassment and privacy policies and that Eastman grossly mishandled the case.
I got no protection or recourse. Not after I reported. Not after the university’s formal finding. And the retaliation spiraled out of control.
I received a lawsuit threat from Eastman’s Title IX Coordinator—the very person hired to protect individuals who report.
Some Eastman students started an ugly online smear campaign. The school told me—directly—that they limited my performance dates because I reported.
Finally, I was abruptly expelled from Eastman after notifying the school that I intended to file a complaint with a state human rights agency.
The expulsion violated every policy on record. There was no warning, process, or appeal. I was immediately barred from the premises.
The men found responsible for policy violations remain employed at Eastman.
A staff member at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)—a nonpartisan civil liberties organization that has put substantial backing behind the case—told me it was one of the worst cases they had ever seen.
Eastman has ignored multiple formal letters from FIRE asking for an explanation.
I have submitted detailed statements to the New York State Division of Human Rights under penalty of perjury.
Those proceedings are ongoing.
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On the one hand, the story is shocking.
On the other—it isn’t.
Abusive men are often protected at any cost in the classical music industry. Even within my own career, this wasn’t an isolated incident—just the most extreme.
And when the shock value fades, the professional theft remains.
Eastman was the place where I planned to build professional value and momentum. Instead, every facet of my professional life—my resume, my portfolio, my professional relationships—was damaged.
My mental and physical health bore an enormous toll. I lost hundreds of hours to reporting processes, legal inquiries, and more.
I’ll never know what I might have accomplished without the bad behavior of one guy and the many, many people who protected him.
These kinds of losses are rarely made visible in this industry. But they are extraordinarily common—and costly.
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And the harm doesn’t end with the initial incident, or even the initial fallout. It compounds each time a disrupted professional record is evaluated as if it were produced under normal conditions.
Since this happened, I’ve spoken with so many women who have worked or studied in similar circumstances.
The pattern is undeniable: silence becomes a survival strategy, driven by the belief that simply telling the truth will make them unemployable.
But even the silence isn’t cost-free. It often creates unexplained résumé gaps, lost time, and shattered networks. It always leaves eroded confidence, capacity, and ambition in its wake.
The inevitable choice for survivors is to accept diminished work—or no work at all. All through no fault of their own.
Not every wound can be prevented. But if we want to work in spaces that are robust, creative, and safe, we have to find better ways to stop the bleeding.
It starts by making the damage visible, without apology. And by building professional cultures in which it is safe for everyone to do so.
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Here you’ll find links to my professional materials.
They may or may not look like what you expect—or even what you’ve asked for. This site is a living document that I hope will expand and change as I decide what I want to put into the world at this moment.
Figuring out how to move forward—at all, in any direction—in the aftermath of all of this might be the most challenging problem I’ve ever tried to solve.
But it’s also led me to ask important questions: what kind of work do I want to build? what do I have to say? what am I willing to risk?
And, honestly, the whole field might be better off—from our humanity to our musicianship to our bank accounts—if we asked artists to prioritize those questions as a matter of course, not just in an existential emergency.
Thanks for taking the time to engage with these kinds of conversations.
It’s the first step toward all of us doing better.
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