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Harvard University has ignored professor’s allegations of sexual harassment for years
A lawsuit against anthropology professor John Comaroff alleges that he kissed and caressed the student and “threatened them to interfere with the student’s career if they complained.”
Three graduate students have sued Harvard University, claiming that the university has not repeatedly dealt with sexual harassment by prominent anthropologists in their faculty. The proceedings filed in federal court in Massachusetts on Tuesday focus on John Komarov, a professor of research and anthropology for African and African-Americans who took an unpaid leave from Harvard University last month. According to the student newspaper The Harvard Crimson, he had previously taken a paid vacation in August 2020.
The move took place almost five years after three undergraduate graduate students (Lilia Kilburn, Margaret Czerwienski, and Amulya Mandava) began reporting harassment from him. But even when the university put Komarov on unpaid leave, the university couldn’t admit Komarov’s worst crimes, student lawyers say.
Amulya Mandava, Lilia Kilburn, Margaret Czerwienski. From left: Amulya Mandava, Lilia Kilburn, Margaret Czerwinski. Lena Wanke Photo
As a result of the investigation, Harvard University was involved in oral conduct in which Komarov “violated the FAS [Faculty of Arts and Sciences] sexual and gender-based harassment policy and violated the FAS [Faculty of Arts and Sciences] occupational behavior policy.” I concluded. According to Crimson, Claudin Gay of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences said in an email. The findings are from reviews conducted by Harvard University’s Dispute Resolution Department and outside fact-finding investigators. The University of
does not hold Komarov liable for unwanted sexual contact, which the proceedings filed on behalf of the three females describe as “rampant.” Career when they complained. ” “We are categorically denying that we have ever harassed or retaliated against students,” Komarov’s lawyer said in a statement. Harvard University, which has not published most of the findings, refused to comment on the proceedings. Three student lawyers
claimed that Komarov’s improper behavior against Komarov began before she entered Harvard when she went to campus in 2017, and he kissed her mouth. I am. The litigation states Czerwienski and Mandava reported to the university Komarov’s behavioral patterns towards other students just to threaten his future employment prospects.
All three students said they filed complaints against Comaroff with Harvard’s Title IX officers, who handle sex discrimination complaints, Czerwienski and Mandava in 2017, and Kilburn in 2019. Harvard showed a “deliberate indifference” to the complaints, the lawsuit says, and did not launch an investigation until 2020. The investigation dragged on for more than a year, it added. A key exchange Much of the focus stems from an incident on Kilburn’s first day of graduate school, when she met with Comaroff, who had then become her adviser, and expressed to him that she wanted to study in Central Africa.
“During the meeting, Professor Comaroff repeatedly described various ways in which Ms. Kilburn would be raped and killed in South Africa — approximately 3,000 miles away from Central Africa — because she is in a same-sex relationship,” the suit says.
Comaroffs attorneys acknowledged the conversation he had with Kilburn about fieldwork abroad while traveling with her samesex partner, but they said going over the risk of sexual violence was a “necessary conversation for her safety.” His attorneys slammed Harvard’s Title IX investigation for finding the advice constituted sexual harassment when, they said, it came from a place of concern for her wellbeing.
“Professor Comaroff vehemently disputes this conclusion, which would cripple faculty members’ ability to use their best academic judgment in advising students about essential safety issues,” they said in their statement. Initially, some faculty members had agreed. The day after Comaroff was placed on unpaid leave, 38 faculty members signed an open letter calling him an “excellent colleague” and expressing dismay at Harvard’s decision, adding that they would feel “ethically compelled to offer the same advice” to a student considering studies in a country with such prohibitions.
But on Tuesday, after the lawsuit provided more information, many said they wanted to remove their signatures, The Boston Globe reported.
Hearing outcome will determine whether Russias Kamila Valieva can keep skating in the Beijing Olympics The lawsuit accuses Harvard of allowing Comaroffs behavior toward Kilburn to go unchecked for two years, “subjecting Ms. Kilburn to a continuing nightmare that included more forced kissing, groping, persistent invitations to socialize alone off-campus, and coercive control.” When she tried to avoid him, the suit continues, he forbade her from working with any other advisers.
Comaroff denied through his attorneys that he would not allow Kilburn to work with anyone else and said he did not kiss or touch her inappropriately at any time.
When Kilburn filed a complaint in May 2019, the office “took no meaningful action — except to admit that Harvard had known about Professor Comaroffs behavior for years,” the suit continues. Carolin Guentert, one of the attorneys for the three graduate students, said the lawsuit aims to show the extent of the alleged abuses by Comaroff, which she said Harvards investigation did not do. With regard to Kilburn, focusing only on verbal sex discrimination, she said, is “really a quite narrow finding.”
“That really ignored the much larger context of kissing and groping and harassment here,” she said.
She said Harvard also placed an undue burden on students to report harassment. The lawsuit claims that the university did not take any initiative in taking disciplinary steps or even in launching its investigation until 2020 when The Harvard Crimson and The Chronicle of Higher Education started reporting on the allegations. Even then, the investigation initially allowed Comaroff to continue teaching “after a slap on the wrist,” according to the suit.
The university also stalled Czerwienski and Mandava, the two other plaintiffs, in their efforts to stop Comaroff, the suit says.
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