An account from Tracy Neumann, associate professor of history at Wayne State

In January 2017, Barrett and I had an email exchange that I now recognize reflects patterns described in other testimonies on this site: he tried to use a graduate student to mediate between us, he took no responsibility for his violent outburst and instead acted as though it was a mishap for which no one was at fault, and he entreated me to tell others that I bore no ill will toward him.
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Clay Walker, current faculty at Wayne State University (and graduate of the PhD program in Composition and Rhetoric at WSU)

As a first year graduate student, I had no idea how to respond to someone of Barrett's stature and position; I felt intimidated by him every time I saw him around the department and I worked to evade walking by his office as much as possible.
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Account from Bryan McCann, former assistant professor at Wayne State, current associate professor, LSU Dept. of Communication Studies

But my primary motivation for contributing to the powerful work on display here is to confirm that everything other people have shared from personal experience resonates strongly with Watten’s reputation. By the time I arrived at Wayne, his verbal attack against his colleague Kathryne Lindberg was still very much a topic of conversation. One longtime member of the faculty shared with me that he and many of our colleagues believed Watten's treatment of Lindberg contributed to her suicide. I also learned from another colleague that Watten had taken to bragging that, after Lindberg’s suicide, all his major adversaries in the department had either left or were dead.
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Account from Danielle Aubert, Associate Professor, Wayne State

We were prepared for hostility from Barrett based on emails that had been exchanged. There were about 6 or 7 of us around a table. Barrett made it difficult to have a discussion by talking over people loudly, for a long time. I said something like, “I think you are acting like a bully to get your way.” He abruptly rose out of his chair, leaned across the table toward me and shouted at me not to call him a bully. His face was reddish purple, he was extremely angry.
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Account from Richard Grusin, Former Wayne State Department of English Chair, Professor at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

"I am extremely troubled, as I presume you must be as well, by the fact that in just over a year of your tenure as interim chair, Barrett Watten has engaged in three instances of verbal and emotional violence against women in the department--a staff member, a graduate student, and a full professor, the last of which you witnessed yourself. These incidents have created a hostile atmosphere in the department, particularly but not exclusively for untenured female faculty."
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An account from Donnie J. Sackey, former faculty member in the Wayne State Department of English

One of the most humiliating experiences as a faculty member was how he and another faculty member attacked me and another colleague (a woman of color) during a meeting. The other white faculty members sat quietly. Some reached out afterwards to talk about how racist it was.
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An account from Jonathan Flatley, professor in the Wayne State Department of English

"The most frightening and concerning part of the interaction was Barrett’s angry, aggressive and threatening bodily posture and facial expression, even more than his also upsetting and offensive angry verbal outburst. The whole event was disturbing and distressing to witness."
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Account from Nick Fleisher, former faculty member in the Wayne State Department of English

I was only at Wayne for three years, as an assistant professor on the other side of the department, so my encounters with BW were relatively limited. In my third and final year there I chaired the department’s Policy Committee, and BW had some issue he was very angry about, which caused him to draft a lengthy and strident email to the faculty list . . .
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