Avital Ronell is Returning to the Classroom. Some Grad Students Want Her Gone.

Avital Ronell, a high-profile New York University professor who was suspended after the university found she sexually harassed a graduate student, is returning to the classroom. But the graduate worker union wants to keep her out.

In an open letter circulated this week, the union and NYUtoo, a campus advocacy group, called for Ronell’s termination, as well as for broader reforms to the Title IX reporting process and to the student-professor power hierarchy.

The university’s decision to continue employing Ronell, a professor of German and comparative literature, is “an attack on survivors of sexual abuse,” the letter says, “and contributes to a hostile learning and working environment.”

In 2018, Ronell was found responsible for sexually harassing her former advisee, Nimrod Reitman. Reitman, who is now a visiting fellow at Harvard University, filed a Title IX complaint claiming that his adviser repeatedly kissed and touched him, and called him pet names such as “baby love angel,” “cock-er spaniel,” and “awesome warrior angel,” The Chronicle previously reported.

The investigation found Ronell responsible for verbal and physical harassment. Her conduct was “sufficiently pervasive to alter the terms and conditions of Mr. Reitman’s learning environment.” She was suspended for a year without pay. (Ronell, who did not respond to an email seeking comment, has denied that she harassed Reitman. “I’m heartbroken that my fast and loose and exuberant and stupid and childish use of language can somehow be gathered up to be a viable weapon against me,” she previously told The Chronicle.)

In April, Andrea Long Chu, a graduate student in comparative literature who wrote an essay for The Chronicle about her experience working with Ronell, posted a flier on Twitter that advertised a graduate course Ronell would teach in the fall. It’s called Unsettled Scores.

News of her return was reason to mobilize, said Kate Storey-Fisher, a graduate student in physics and union representative. “It’s a labor issue,” she said. Graduate students are workers, and “it’s violating our rights as workers to be forced to work in environments with people found guilty of sexual harassment.”

Ronell’s interactions with students will be monitored to ensure that “she has absorbed the lessons of her misconduct” and that “she has rectified her behavior and that her interactions with students are in line with NYU’s professional expectations,” John Beckman, senior vice president for public affairs and strategic communication, wrote in a letter to the graduate union, which he provided to The Chronicle. (Beckman did not respond to a follow up email asking for clarification on how Ronell would be monitored.)

Ronell or any other faculty member who could not conduct classroom duties professionally would not be allowed in the classroom, Beckman wrote.

There are some graduate students who don’t think Ronell should be fired, said Zach Rivers, a graduate student in comparative literature and a union representative. But there’s a sense of “exhaustion” around the whole ordeal. Speaking for himself, Rivers said Ronell’s return “creates a toxic atmosphere, because for someone to return after being found guilty of this type of behavior, there is a trust that’s broken. The level of feeling safe in your workspace is gone.”

The letter also listed eight broader reforms intended to right the power imbalance between advisers and graduate students, as well as erode barriers that prevent people from coming forward to report misconduct. Among other things, the union demanded an annual report on all Title IX complaints, including the university’s response to them, restorative-justice options for sexual misconduct, and in-person, rigorous trainings for faculty, staff, and students on “anti-harassment, sexual respect, racial sensitivity, and bystander intervention.”

“We wanted this petition to be not solely focused on Avital,” said Rivers, “because Avital is a symptom of a larger structure.”

Beckman’s letter says that the graduate students’ letter overlooks “a number of important steps” the university has already taken. University employees already complete online training annually on sexual-harassment prevention, he said.

And the university responded promptly to Reitman’s original complaint, investigated it thoroughly, and imposed a “substantial sanction and ongoing supervision,” Beckman said.

Contacted by The Chronicle, Reitman’s lawyer, Alexandra Harwin, rebuffed that notion.

For years, the university failed to take the action necessary to protect Reitman from “egregious discrimination and retaliation from senior professor Avital Ronell,” she said in a statement. The campus community “is right to be outraged about the university’s conduct.”

“Institutional reform is necessary and overdue.”

Emma Pettit is a staff reporter at The Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter @EmmaJanePettit, or email her at emma.pettit@chronicle.com.