Faculty Disapprove of Comaroff Returning

BY RAHEM D. HAMID AND ELIAS J. SCHISGALL CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

More than 50 percent of Harvard faculty who responded to The Crimson’s annual survey of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences indicated they felt Harvard should not have allowed professor John L. Comaroff — who has been publicly accused of sexual harassment and professional retaliation — back into the classroom.

The results come amid campus activism calling for the embattled African and African American Studies and Anthropology professor to resign. Allegations against Comaroff are also at the center of an active federal lawsuit against Harvard by three Ph.D. candidates in Anthropology, who allege the school mishandled years of complaints against the professor. Comaroff has repeatedly denied all allegations that have been made against him.

The Crimson distributed its survey to more than 1,300 members of the FAS and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, including tenured and tenure-track professors, non-tenure-track lecturers, and preceptors. The survey collected demographic information and opinions on a range of topics, including Harvard’s academic atmosphere, life as a professor, and political issues.

The anonymous 124-question survey received 386 responses, including 234 fully-completed responses and 152 partially-completed responses. It was open to new responses between March 23 and April 14. Responses were not adjusted for selection bias.

The first installment of The Crimson’s survey centers around faculty views on the controversy surrounding Comaroff, as well as Harvard’s Title IX policies and procedures and departmental culture surrounding sexual harassment.

Arts and Sciences Process for Denaming Spaces, Programs, or other Entities.

“The university has established a process for considering de-naming spaces, programs, or other entities. A proposal to de-name the Arthur M. Sackler Museum and the Arthur M. Sackler Building has been submitted and is currently under review,” Newton wrote.

The protesters are part of a larger group of activists who argue that members of the Sackler family who largely owned the multi-billion dollar drug company Purdue Pharma began the ongoing nationwide opioid crisis. Since 2007, local, state, and federal governments have claimed in an extensive series of lawsuits that members of the Sackler family knew

Purdue Pharma’s pain relief drug OxyContin was highly addictive, but they downplayed its dangers when marketing it to doctors.

In 2020, Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to three federal criminal charges related to its promotion of OxyContin and reached a $8.3 billion settlement with the Department of Justice — a move that dissolved the company. In 2022, members of the Sackler family agreed to pay as much as $6 billion in a settlement related to the opioid crisis, though they have never admitted criminal wrongdoing. Speakers at the protest cited examples of other neighboring institutions who

SEE SACKLER PAGE 4