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At Harvard, Details About the Handling of a Harassment Case May Spill Into Public View By  Nell Gluckman April 10, 2023 Addison Y. Liu, The Harvard CrimsonStudents protest Harvard University’s handling of sexual-misconduct allegations against anthropology professor John L. Comaroff.

At Harvard University, the public may get a rare glimpse into one of the most opaque corners of its institutional operations: how it investigates alleged sexual harassment.

Last week, a federal judge denied most of Harvard’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit by three graduate students who claim that the university failed to protect them against harassment and retaliation by an anthropology professor. That brings the lawsuit one step closer to discovery, which would likely involve the disclosure of documentary evidence — like emails, texts, and other internal communication — on both sides, along with depositions. Harvard, which has found itself maligned in recent years for its handling of sexual harassment, may find itself under an even harsher spotlight. (A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on the judge’s orders.)

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At Harvard University, the public may get a rare glimpse into one of the most opaque corners of its institutional operations: how it investigates alleged sexual harassment.

Last week, a federal judge denied most of Harvard’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit by three graduate students who claim that the university failed to protect them against harassment and retaliation by an anthropology professor. That brings the lawsuit one step closer to discovery, which would likely involve the disclosure of documentary evidence — like emails, texts, and other internal communication — on both sides, along with depositions. Harvard, which has found itself maligned in recent years for its handling of sexual harassment, may find itself under an even harsher spotlight. (A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on the judge’s orders.)

“As much as possible, Harvard’s policies and practices need to be a part of the discussion and the public’s understanding of this case,” said Russell Kornblith, a lawyer for the students. His clients want to understand, he said, how the university handled their complaints against the professor, John Comaroff, whether officials complied with Harvard’s own policies, and what those policies are.

The three students, Lilia Kilburn, Amulya Mandava, and Margaret Czerwienski, sued Harvard in 2022, alleging that the university did not investigate complaints about Comaroff’s alleged behavior until stories about him appeared in the press. Around the time that Comaroff joined Harvard, the students alleged, at least one Harvard official had been warned about his behavior at the University of Chicago, where he had worked for years.

The lawsuit came about a month after the dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Claudine Gay, who was recently named the next president of the university, placed Comaroff on one semester of unpaid leave, saying that an investigation revealed he had violated the college’s sexual-harassment and professional-conduct policies. Comaroff has denied all the allegations and accused the university of opening a “kangaroo-court process” against him after its first investigation failed to find him responsible for the alleged behavior. He is not a party in the lawsuit, and his lawyer did not respond to a request for comment about the case’s most recent development.

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Harvard investigated the students’ allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation against Comaroff in 2020, around the time that The Chronicle first reported on the substance of several of those claims. Kilburn alleged that, among other things, Comaroff kissed her and touched her in ways that made her feel uncomfortable on a number of occasions. Mandava and Czerwienski reported that when they learned of Comaroff’s behavior toward students, they tried to warn others, only to have their careers threatened by Comaroff. (The Chronicle’s reporting followed an article in The Harvard Crimson about sexual-harassment allegations against three anthropology professors, including Comaroff.)

The allegations against Comaroff and Harvard’s response to them divided the university’s faculty members. One group of professors wrote a letter admonishing the university’s process for punishing Comaroff and saying he was an excellent colleague and university citizen. Another group of Harvard faculty members responded with concern that the first letter would discourage vulnerable people from coming forward with allegations of bad behavior by powerful people. Then came the students’ lawsuit. Quickly, many professors in the first group retracted their signatures from their letter.

The turmoil did not dissipate. The Crimson reported that 15 Harvard anthropology professors, or about three-quarters of the department, called on Comaroff to resign. When Comaroff returned to the classroom, students staged a walk-out in protest. The protests have continued as recently as March, when dozens of students occupied a university building. A student organizer said they were planning more action in the future.

Then, at the end of March, the departing head of the anthropology department at Harvard, Ajantha Subramanian, told the Crimson that a major reason for her move to the City University of New York was Harvard’s delayed response to faculty losses in her department. That lack of support seemed related to “the tumult in our department caused by faculty misconduct leading to three publicly disclosed Title IX complaints,” she told the student newspaper, referring to the complaints not just about Comaroff, but also about two other anthropology professors.

“These experiences suggest that Harvard’s primary concern is to avoid litigation, especially by faculty,” Subramanian wrote to the Crimson. “This predisposes the institution to protect the rights of the accused over those of accusers.”

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The litigation, nevertheless, continues.

In two separate orders, Judge Judith G. Dein denied Harvard’s request to dismiss nine out of 10 counts. Those nine counts can proceed to the next phase.

The first order, filed on March 27, denied Harvard’s motion to dismiss Kilburn’s allegation that Harvard obtained and disseminated her personal therapy records without her consent during its investigation into her claims of harassment.

Then, in an 81-page order filed last week, Dein dismissed one count, a claim of gender discrimination under Title IX, but rejected Harvard’s other attempts to throw out the graduate students’ complaints. She sided with the students, for example, in their argument that the statute of limitations had not yet passed on their claims. In another example, students made a claim that Harvard had created a hostile work environment by maintaining a policy or practice “of deliberate indifference to a known overall risk of sexual harassment, retaliation, and gender-based disparate treatment against graduate students in the anthropology department,” the judge wrote. Harvard had argued that Comaroff’s alleged threats against the students were not sufficiently “severe and pervasive.”

But Dein wrote that at this stage, “Harvard’s argument does not reflect a fair reading” of the students’ complaint. She noted the power Comaroff had within the anthropology department and the allegation that two of the students had to change their studies in order to avoid him. The students “have plausibly alleged that Comaroff’s threats, while limited in frequency, were sufficiently severe and pervasive under the circumstances to detract from their educational experiences,” the judge wrote.

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Additionally, the students alleged that Harvard’s policies and practices “enabled powerful professors to victimize female students and those who spoke up on their behalf.” They argued that Harvard fails to adequately train faculty members to report sexual harassment and that the university does not investigate reports of sexual harassment unless students file a complaint with the university’s Office for Dispute Resolution.

“At this stage,” Dein wrote, “these allegations are sufficient to support their policy-related claims.”

One of Comaroff’s lawyers’s, Ruth K. O’Meara-Costello, told the Crimson that the case against Harvard will fall apart during discovery.

“The decision on the motion to dismiss does not reflect factual findings by the court, merely that the court believes the case against Harvard should proceed to discovery,” she wrote, according to the newspaper. “As the case moves forward, we believe the evidence will show that professor Comaroff did not engage in any of the activities he’s been wrongly accused of.”

Lawyers representing the students said it’s hard to predict what exactly will come from the discovery phase of the case, or how long it will last. They acknowledged that civil cases rarely make it to trial.

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“This is about more than just our clients,” said Sean Ouellette, a staff attorney at Public Justice, a legal nonprofit. He said it is “about systemic issues about how a university handles complaints.”

Kornblith said his clients want to reform Harvard’s processes, which he acknowledged is not something universities generally like to do through litigation. That could make it difficult, he said, to reach a resolution.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication. Campus SafetyGraduate EducationLaw & Policy Nell Gluckman Nell Gluckman is a senior reporter who writes about research, ethics, funding issues, affirmative action, and other higher-education topics. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at [email protected].