A rally that started at Harvard College’s Science Heart Plaza was attended by lots of of scholars yesterday (February 14), the most recent occasion in a scandal that has engulfed the campus group.
The protest—one of many largest such gatherings on the college lately, in keeping with The Harvard Crimson—was organized to indicate assist for 3 graduate college students who filed a lawsuit towards Harvard College final week alleging that the establishment had did not act on allegations of sexual harassment {and professional} misconduct by anthropology professor John Comaroff.
“This case just isn’t about three of us. This case is about all of us,” plaintiff Lilia Kilburn mentioned on the rally, the Crimson stories. “This case is about Harvard’s failure to offer the immediate and equitable course of for coping with claims of harassment and discrimination that’s required by regulation.”
The scholars’ go well with, filed final Tuesday (February 8), describes years of alleged harassment of Kilburn by Comaroff, and claims that the professor took actions to wreck the profession of Kilburn and two others who spoke in her protection. Comaroff, who was positioned on unpaid depart final month after the college’s personal investigation concluded that he had engaged in verbal conduct that violated its insurance policies, just isn’t named as a defendant.
Even earlier than the college’s investigation concluded, Comaroff had already spent greater than a yr on paid administrative depart after an article in mid-2020 within the Crimson described allegations by three feminine college students of nonconsensual touching and harassment. In an announcement issued by his legal professionals in response to the go well with, Comaroff rejected the accusations towards him, saying that he “categorically denies ever harassing or retaliating towards any pupil,” WCVB stories.
The choice by some school members to talk out in assist of Comaroff in current weeks has solely widened the fallout. In late January, 38 college professors signed an open letter calling him “a superb colleague, advisor and dedicated college citizen” and saying that they had been “dismayed by Harvard’s sanctions towards him and anxious about its results on our potential to advise our personal college students.”
Nearly all of these signatories retracted their assist inside days of the brand new lawsuit being filed, with many claiming that they weren’t conscious of the total extent of the allegations. Historian Maya Jasanoff, one of many signatories, tells The Boston Globe in an e mail: “I signed the letter with out correctly contemplating its influence on college students and, clearly, with out fuller data. This was a severe lapse in judgment and I apologize unreservedly for my mistake.”
Lawyer Russell Kornblith, who’s representing the plaintiffs, tells the Globe that the case towards Harvard “is about energy”—that of the college, of graduate pupil advisors, and of educational tradition extra typically. The college letter in assist of Comaroff reveals “the facility of networks in academia, the facility of networks at Harvard,” he says.
Harvard denies the claims within the college students’ lawsuit, which seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, saying in an announcement that the allegations “are on no account a good or correct illustration of the considerate steps taken by the College in response to considerations that had been introduced ahead, the thorough critiques performed, and the outcomes of these critiques.”
