A Scholarly Group Had Avoided Talk of Harassment in Its Midst. Now It Seeks to ‘Start Anew.’

Erin Brethauer for The Chronicle

The topic of harassment had been on people’s minds but was never really talked about at past meetings of the Latin American Studies Association. Members of the group said they had known about allegations against their past president, Jorge Domínguez, a Harvard University government professor. But no one confronted it head-on.

Now the association is taking what it believes to be a strong stance against harassment of all kinds.

“This is the first LASA event that I’ve ever been in that I didn’t have to constantly think of the 500-pound gorilla in the room that no one’s mentioning,” said Philip Oxhorn, provost at McGill University, who earned a Ph.D. in government at Harvard. He spoke about his experience at Harvard at the Latin American Studies Association annual meeting here last week.

The group’s leaders wrote a new policy calling for “an environment free from all forms of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation,” and created an anti-harassment task force that will investigate harassment of all forms among its members. The seven-person group will conduct surveys and study other organizations’ harassment procedures, and report its findings and recommendations at the annual meeting next year.

Lynn Stephen, an anthropology professor at the University of Oregon and the association’s new president, announced the task force and policy at the annual meeting, which was attended by about 7,000 scholars. She emphasized that the group would look into harassment of all kinds, not just sexual harassment.

“We wanted to make a very strong statement,” Stephen said. “It’s not just a one-off for one year.”

Terry Karl, an emeritus professor at Stanford University, who in 1983 filed a complaint against Domínguez, said she was pleased with how seriously the association had taken the issue. She gave a talk at the conference on sexual harassment, urging a room of about 200 Latin America scholars to hold their colleges and professional organizations accountable for ensuring that students and employees can safely file complaints.

“Go to your universities and ask them what their procedures are, what their policies are,” Karl said. “Make sure that they have some validity to them, that they’re effective, that they’re fast, that they’re able to be used.”

The discussion came three months after The Chronicle published an investigation showing that many women had been groped, kissed, or subjected to other inappropriate behavior at Harvard by Domínguez. Though he declined to talk specifically about Karl’s case, Domínguez said he had “sought to behave honorably in all my relationships.” He was placed on administrative leave and has since announced that he will retire early.

Domínguez was president of the Latin American Studies Association in 1983, the year Karl filed her complaint against him. In 2016 the association was offered a prize in Domínguez’s name, but Oxhorn and others worked behind the scenes to scuttle it. Still, members of the association said they could have done more.

“The truth is that we did not say anything, and we are equally liable, in certain ways, of a silence,” said Marysa Navarro, an emeritus professor at Dartmouth College and a past president of the association. “We are going to start anew.”

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.