FEATURE
A KNOWN SECRET
ACADEMIC POWER STRUCTURES AND IMPUNITY By Qing Qing Pan and Akbota Saudabayeva Content Warning: Mentions of sexual misconduct, rape, and abuse
T
hree graduate students in the Harvard Anthropology Department filed a lawsuit against the university on February 9 for mishandling years of Title IX complaints of sexual misconduct related to Professor John Comaroff, a renowned scholar of African and African American studies and Anthropology. His wife, Jean Comaroff, also a professor in the same departments, enabled retaliation efforts against the students. The Comaroffs are distinguished husband-wife intellectuals who have amassed a powerful network of colleagues, having mentored hundreds of students who have since become professors themselves. This network, along with the star-status of the Comaroffs, protected them against allegations of abuse for decades. Less than three miles from their Cambridge offices, the Tufts Anthropology Department knows the Comaroffs well. Their research is taught and discussed across gateway and upper-level seminar courses, as well as commonly cited in student and professor papers. For many anthropology students, the Comaroffs are among the first scholars they familiarize themselves with. Given the Comaroffs’ wide-ranging influence in academia at Tufts and beyond, the Comaroff case reveals how academic structures exacerbate power inequalities between students and professors, as well as prevent 2 TUFTS OBSERVER FEBRUARY 28, 2022
students from seeking support when faced with power-based harassment in a constrained academic job market.
ALLEGATIONS AGAINST COMAROFF AND FACULTY RESPONSE
John Comaroff ’s harassment allegations were first publicized in May 2020 by Harvard’s undergraduate student-run newspaper, the Harvard Crimson. The student plaintiffs initially filed their complaints with the Harvard Title IX offices and were reluctant to go public with their stories. However, Harvard faculty and decision-makers at the highest level continually disparaged the university’s Office of Dispute Resolution (ODR) process, and encouraged students to contact the press rather than the administration in order to see action taken. The following fall, The Chronicle of Higher Education detailed further allegations. In the article, the student plaintiffs described almost a decade of discrimination, sexual abuse, and retaliation while working under Comaroff. In one episode of verbal harassment, Comaroff had musingly detailed and listed places in Africa where Lilia Kilburn, a lesbian graduate student under his advising, would be subject to rape and murder if her sexual identity was discovered. Kilburn said this description was made in reference to the practice of
“corrective rape,” which sometimes occurs in regions of South Africa; however, she noted that Comaroff used “a tone you would use if you were talking about a movie you liked.” After the publication of the Crimson and Chronicle articles, Harvard reopened the investigation on the plaintiff ’s allegations and placed Comaroff on paid administrative leave. In Spring 2021, Comaroff ’s administrative leave was made unpaid, and he was banned from teaching required courses and taking on additional graduate students for a year. In response, 38 Harvard faculty members issued an open letter on February 4, titled “Open Letter from Concerned Faculty,” to defend Comaroff against the 2022 – 23 sanctions. The letter questioned the allegations against Comaroff’s descriptions of “corrective rape” to Kilburn and said it was “advice intended to protect an advisee from sexual harrassment.” The signatories criticized Harvard for opening a second investigation after these allegations. In response, on February 10, another open letter titled “Anthropologists’ Response to Harvard Sexual Harrassment Stories” was drafted by Queen’s University Ontario Professor Sarah Shulist and New York University Professor Sameena Mulla to condemn the original letters defending John Comaroff. This letter was signed by three professors from the Tufts Anthropology Department: Department Chair
