Three Harvard graduate students sued the University for its “deliberate indifference” to sexual harassment by a venerated anthropology professor, John Comaroff.

The suit, filed by three graduate students in the Anthropology Department, alleges that Harvard mishandled Title IX complaints and allowed Comaroff to intimidate students who threatened to report him, including the plaintiffs.

The suit — filed by Margaret G. Czerwienski, Lilia M. Kilburn, and Amulya Mandava — charges that Comaroff committed physical and verbal sexual harassment, including unwanted kissing and groping. In the 65-page filing, the students took sharp aim at Harvard, which they allege “watched” as Comaroff retaliated against accusers and “allowed its investigatory process to be used in service of Professor Comaroff’s campaign of professional blacklisting.”

Contrary to the way many saw this action, this isn’t a suit against Comaroff, but against Harvard for failing to protect the plaintiffs from sexual harassment based on gender discrimination. And while the allegations against Comaroff are damning, they don’t stop at Comaroff but attack the anthropology department as a whole.

A Harvard committee tasked with examining the climate within Harvard’s Anthropology Department recently concluded that the Department is plagued by a “longstanding pattern of sexism, misogyny, and sexual and gender-based misconduct” that “has gone largely unchecked by a predominantly white, male faculty.” ² In a survey, about a third of the graduate students in the Department reported harassment. Students rarely speak out about harassment or sexual misconduct, because when they do, they risk their education and their careers. In short, the report concluded, Harvard has condoned a “culture in which the abuse of power is normalized and accommodated.

² Harvard University Anthropology Department, Standing Committee for a Supportive  Departmental Community Final Report 10 (2021).

Prior to the suit, Title IX complaints were made against Comaroff and concluded, with the school conducting two investigations, ultimately finding Comaroff engaged in “engaged in verbal conduct” that violated school policy. He was “put on unpaid leave for a semester and barred from teaching required courses or taking on new graduate-student advisees through the next academic year.” Then came the suit against Harvard.

In reaction, an open letter was signed by 38 Harvard academics in support of Comaroff.

On January 21, 2022, the Harvard Crimson reported that Professor John Comaroff had been placed on unpaid administrative leave for one semester and prohibited from teaching required courses in 2022-23, among other sanctions. Harvard’s Office of Dispute Resolution (ODR) found that Comaroff had “engaged in verbal conduct that violated the FAS Sexual and Gender-Based Harassment Policy and the FAS Professional Conduct Policy.” Although Comaroff had been accused by three students, only one allegation was found by Harvard’s Office of Dispute Resolution to have any merit. Based on the student’s account in the Chronicle of Higher Education (August 25, 2020), the allegation concerned Comaroff’s advice that openly traveling as a lesbian couple in a particular African country where homosexuality is illegal could lead to sexual violence. Since we the undersigned would also feel ethically compelled to offer the same advice to any student conducting research in a country with similar prohibitions, we are perplexed. How can advice intended to protect an advisee from sexual violence be itself construed as sexual harassment? What rules of professional conduct are broken by informing students of the risks of gender-based violence in the multiple locations around the world that do not recognize the rights of women and LGBQTIA+ individuals in the same manner as in the United States? As concerned faculty we seek clarification of Harvard’s professional criteria for us as advisors.

And then things got interesting.

On Wednesday, almost all the letter’s signatories reversed themselves; in The Harvard Crimson, one professor called signing a “terrible mistake” and another apologized for a “serious lapse of judgment.”

When the open letter was issued, the plaintiffs used it to bolster the argument about the “reach” Comaroff has in the academic community, and the damage it could cause the plaintiffs for bringing suit and besmirching Comaroff. Michelle Goldberg saw another potential motivation to sign the letter.

It shows us some other things as well. I find the letter fascinating because it demonstrates how some of the most revered writers and scholars in America are deeply anxious about what they see as #MeToo overreach, student hypersensitivity and campus kangaroo courts. In their retraction, 34 of those who signed the original letter said they were “lacking full information about the case.”

This isn’t wholly surprising; there are real examples of professors who’ve been subject to grotesque campus inquisitions. And yet what we know of this case — including the existence of the letter itself — shows that the deck is still very much stacked against those challenging powerful men.

She concludes that either way, the academics’ motives in rushing to sign a letter before knowing the allegations were nefarious.

Maybe they did that because of an imaginary microaggression. But why would some of the smartest and most highly credentialed people in this country find it so easy to jump to that conclusion? Perhaps professors’ sense of their own vulnerability to rampant snowflakery has obscured to them the actual workings of power. Maybe they thought they were standing up against woke illiberalism. What they were really doing was closing ranks.

What eludes Goldberg is that everyone is in a rush to take a side, whether for self-protection or to promote a cause, without any trust in a university to be capable of conducting a fair and impartial Title IX investigation. They can’t wait. There is a rush to “believe” the accusers. There was a rush here, at least, to defend the accused. Notably, almost all the Harvard profs signing off on the open letter “retracted” their signatures as soon as the nasty (and they were nasty) allegations became public, which shows that they aren’t quite as firm in their closed ranks and “power” as believed.

More importantly, Harvard conducted not one, but two, investigations of their complaints, and yet here they are, untrusted, unbelieved and unable to overcome either side’s rush to take a position and then flee from it out of fear, loathing and confusion. Yet, this is the system that’s deemed adequate to destroy lives when it comes to male students who can’t muster 38 scholarly signors, even if they run at the first sign of backlash.