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Wednesday, October 11, 2023
Multiple sexual misconduct allegations against a Middle East Studies professor arose in the 2000s. 15 years later, the department still feels the effects. SOPHIA LEHRBAUM, JULIAN WRAY & NIRALI PATEL
Focal Point Managing Editors & Focal Point Senior Editor
On Oct. 12, 2022, an anonymous email was sent to the University of Michigan’s Department of Middle East Studies faculty listserv with the subject line, “Your Colleague the Rapist.” The letter, obtained by The Michigan Daily, was attributed to an anonymous graduate student in MES and described misconduct concerns regarding Yaron Eliav, associate professor of Rabbinic literature and Jewish history of late antiquity. “(Eliav) sexually harasses his students,” the letter read. “I am one of them.” The letter claimed Eliav’s alleged misconduct was so widespread that neither Eliav nor anyone else would be able to discern the author. The Daily was not able to identify the author of this letter. “Don’t fool yourselves: this is no one-off,” the letter read. “I am so far from alone in this experience that Yaron would have no idea which former student / colleague / woman around campus I actually am.” The public accusations drew renewed attention within MES to Eliav’s previous history of sexual misconduct. A Daily investigation found four allegations Eliav engaged in sexually inappropriate conduct with faculty and students in the early 2000s, including a 2008 case in which he was arrested for soliciting prostitution services from a U-M student. According to court documents obtained by The Daily, the University investigated all of these allegations against Eliav and claimed Eliav exhibited a pattern of misconduct between 2004 and 2008. In an interview with The Daily, one of Eliav’s alleged victims described feeling a lack of institutional support when she brought allegations to U-M administrators that Eliav repeatedly harassed her. This source requested anonymity, citing fears of retaliation. In this article, she will be referred to as Laurie. “I was completely on my own,” Laurie said. “I felt very manipulated by the institution.” Several MES faculty members said they have raised concerns about the department’s climate over the last 15 years since the 2008 case became public, which they believe has suffered as a result of Eliav’s alleged misconduct. These concerns have gone largely unaddressed by the University, these faculty alleged. Two faculty members in MES described a culture of silence in the department, where attempts to discuss Eliav’s behavior were shut down by MES leadership due, in part, to fears of legal retaliation from Eliav. This article is based on interviews with nine current and former faculty members and graduate students, as well as an extensive review of court records, emails and other documentation. In an interview with The Daily, Eliav said he believes he has learned from his past conduct. He pointed to a lack of recent formal complaints against him as evidence of his rehabilitation. “I’m trying to change and have made major changes in my life,” Eliav said. “I have not done anything inappropriate for 17 years.” The University’s Equity, Civil Rights and Title IX Office was investigating concerns within MES as recently as October 2021,
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according to emails obtained by The Daily. Laurie, who met with an investigator at the time, said ECRT was looking into a matter related to Eliav. In an email to The Michigan Daily, University spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald wrote the University takes misconduct allegations seriously. He declined to comment on the specific allegations against Eliav, per U-M policy. “The University of Michigan takes action to respond to every allegation of behaviors that are inconsistent with the policies of the University,” Fitzgerald wrote. “There is a problem that needs to be addressed” In April of 2008, a U-M student filed a police report against Eliav after he solicited prostitution services from and allegedly physically assaulted her. Eliav was arrested and initially charged with a misdemeanor and assault and battery following the incident. Reporting from 2008 indicates Eliav pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of using a computer to commit a crime and received 12 months probation. The assault and battery charges against Eliav were dropped in 2008, and the misdemeanor charge was dropped after the successful completion of his probation. In his interview with The Daily, Eliav admitted that he hit the student during the incident. “I engaged in something that I myself consider inappropriate,” he said. “During that engagement, another human being was hurt. I hurt her.” The University tasked former LSA dean Terrence McDonald with pursuing disciplinary measures against Eliav following his arrest. In an interview with The Daily, McDonald explained the University’s 2008 investigation into Eliav’s conduct. McDonald said he knew about the initial assault and battery charges, but the University only had the power to enforce one violation of the University’s policy: Eliav’s use of a U-M computer to engage in illegal activities. “A University machine had been used to (solicit prostitution services),” McDonald said. “That was the (only) ground on which the University could take action.” Eliav signed an agreement for several disciplinary sanctions outlined in a 2008 letter from McDonald. He accepted that he couldn’t be nominated as a chair in any U-M programs for five years, and resigned from his committee positions and endowed professorship in the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies. Eliav retained his academic rank as an associate professor of his department. In the 2008 letter, McDonald referenced a separate misconduct complaint filed against Eliav in 2006 by an undergraduate employee in the Near Eastern Studies Department, which was renamed to Middle East Studies in 2018. “This is the second time you have been involved in difficult matters of a similar type,” McDonald wrote. “The subject matter similarity of these two incidents is of very serious concern to me.” As the prostitution case drew local media attention, concerns over Eliav’s conduct arose among faculty and students. In 2009, multiple faculty members in Judaic Studies and the Frankel Center sent a letter to Deborah Dash Moore, their program’s director at the time, McDonald and Derek Collins, former associate dean of LSA. In the letter, the faculty members expressed fear for their safety
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when working with Eliav. The Daily obtained a draft of the letter. It is unclear how many faculty members contributed to the letter. “Many of us, particularly those of us who are women, simply do not believe that we can safely work with him,” the faculty members wrote. “We mean ‘safe’ literally. We have good reason to believe that he has been physically violent toward others … We have fears that this will only escalate.” The letter also expressed concerns that the unsafe environment created by Eliav’s alleged misconduct would impact the academic success of the department. “If his behavior is allowed to continue … none of us will be able to attract graduate students to our programs,” the letter said. Collins could not be reached for comment. In an interview with The Daily, Dash Moore recalled the writers of the letter felt she wasn’t taking enough action to discipline Eliav. But, Dash Moore said, she moved master’s students off of Eliav’s committees and reassigned students to different mentors to protect them from Eliav. She said she also removed Eliav from the Frankel Center entirely, though she didn’t have the authority to impose additional sanctions outside of what McDonald had outlined in his letter. “I wanted to protect (students),” Dash Moore said. “I tried to do some things that I subsequently learned that I didn’t really have the power to do … Maybe I would have signed (the draft) letter if I hadn’t been director.” Following Dash Moore’s disciplinary actions, Eliav filed a grievance within the University. He temporarily regained his appointment in Judaic Studies in 2009, but Judaic faculty voted him out of the center in 2011. “A pattern of inappropriate behavior” Eliav agreed to the disciplinary sanctions outlined by McDonald after the 2008 prostitution case. But three years later, in April 2012, he filed a lawsuit against the University for breach of contract. The Daily reviewed more than 1,000 pages of depositions, motions and other court proceedings from this lawsuit. Eliav alleged the University
breached his sanctions contract when he was stripped of his membership in the Frankel Center, and that faculty of the Frankel Center had engaged in a “campaign designed to disparage” him by accusing him of sexually harassing U-M students. His efforts backfired. The University argued any damage to Eliav’s reputation came as a result of his own actions, revealing earlier concerns over his conduct with students and colleagues. They presented five separate misconduct allegations against Eliav, which had previously been investigated by the University, in an April 2013 motion for summary disposition in their favor. The University described four instances in which Eliav “(exhibited) a pattern of inappropriate behavior with students and colleagues,” ranging from inappropriate touching of an undergraduate student to sexual propositions toward faculty members. The 2008 case was included in this pattern. In one instance in the winter of 2004, Eliav allegedly professed romantic feelings to a research assistant. “The research assistant replied, ‘aren’t you married,’ to which (Eliav) responded, ‘aren’t you?’ ” the motion read. This research assistant reported the incident to U-M administrators in 2009. She wasn’t comfortable asking Eliav for a letter of recommendation after the incident transpired, the University’s motion said. Eliav told The Daily he does not view his conduct in this instance as inappropriate. “Opening up and saying you have feelings for someone is not the easiest thing to do,” Eliav said. “I’m actually very proud of how I acted there.” The University’s motion also detailed the 2006 allegation mentioned in McDonald’s letter to Eliav. In June of that year, Eliav allegedly invited an undergraduate student into his office to help him unpack some books. “While assisting (Eliav), the student reported that he touched her inappropriately on her shoulder and buttocks, and pressed his body against hers,” the motion read. “She further alleged
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that (Eliav) made comments to solicit sex.” The University said they mandated Eliav receive sexual harassment training after the student reported this allegation to U-M administrators. This training was conducted by Anthony Walesby, former senior director of the Office of Institutional Equity (now the ECRT), according to McDonald’s sanctions letter to Eliav. Eliav denied that any physical contact with the student was intentional or sexual in nature. In a sworn deposition given in March 2013, Dash Moore recounted a 2009 meeting in which faculty discussed Eliav’s alleged misconduct. “Did that allegation come up during that meeting, that Professor Eliav was some kind of problem in the classroom with his students?” Eliav’s lawyer, Marian Faupel, asked Dash Moore. “At that meeting there were several people who spoke of Professor Eliav as a sexual harasser of them personally,” Dash Moore said. “There’s something rotten here” One allegation that arose during the course of the lawsuit came from Laurie, a faculty member who worked with Eliav in the 2000s. Certain details of Laurie’s experiences with Eliav and court documentation have been omitted to preserve her anonymity. In a sworn statement provided to the court, Laurie alleged Eliav sexually harassed her on three separate occasions in the early 2000s. She described instances in which Eliav made sexual comments and overt advances toward her. A colleague of Laurie’s, who worked at the University at the time of the alleged harassment, told The Daily that Laurie informed them of these events soon after they occurred. Laurie was a junior faculty member at the time of this alleged harassment. She told The Daily she feared how her career might be impacted if she filed a complaint against Eliav, an accomplished male professor at the University. In 2008, Laurie reached out to Walesby, the OIE investigator who had conducted Eliav’s sexual harassment training in 2006. She
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wanted to gauge what his response would be to a potential complaint against Eliav. The Daily obtained email correspondence between Laurie and Walesby, which confirmed this meeting occurred. “ ‘What would you do if I told you this?’ ” Laurie recalled asking Walesby. “My biggest concern was retaliation, so I essentially told the story of what had happened, but (as if it was) a friend of mine.” According to Laurie, Walesby revealed to her that the University had conducted previous investigations into Eliav’s conduct. But, Walesby told her, OIE couldn’t establish a pattern of misconduct because they did not find that Eliav violated U-M policy in these previous cases. In an interview with The Daily, Title IX attorney Laura L. Dunn said the University can, in fact, use previous formal complaints to constitute a pattern of misconduct, according to U-M and U.S. Department of Education policy. In Laurie’s case, the previous 2006 complaint and the other complaints Walesby allegedly mentioned could have been used to support her claims if she had filed an official complaint. But Walesby did not inform Laurie of this aspect of the policy, she told The Daily. She would be on her own if she chose to pursue a formal complaint against Eliav. “(Walesby said) ‘The only way I can protect you is if there’s a pattern,’ ” Laurie said. “And he knew there was a pattern … there’s something rotten here.” Laurie later learned about the 2006 complaint against Eliav made by an undergraduate student, and realized it could have supported her own allegations. “I eventually found out about (the 2006 complaint) and I was so fucking angry,” Laurie said. “It really felt like he lied to me and sabotaged my ability to make a (formal) complaint … He was basically trying to make me go away.” “Actions (were not) followed by consequences” Eliav’s lawsuit against the University concluded in 2014 when the court found no cause of action and ruled in favor of the University. Read more at michigandaily.com
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