NYU Scholar Accused of Harassment Assails Rush to Judgment as Sign of ‘Sexual Paranoia’

The emails between Avital Ronell and her advisee, Nimrod Reitman, were florid and campy, filled with expressions of affection that seemed over the top and inappropriate to the investigators who would scrutinize them years later.

Ronell, a professor of German and comparative literature at New York University, believes that her writing is what ultimately did her in, causing her to be suspended for a year without pay after being found responsible for sexually harassing Reitman.

It was, she said in an interview on Friday, a rush to judgment in an era when legitimate concerns about sexual harassment can veer off into “sexual paranoia.” Silenced until now by a confidentiality agreement with the university, she said she was tired of being portrayed as a predator when in fact, she insisted, there had been no inappropriate physical contact between herself and her doctoral advisee, and the communications he objected to were freely reciprocated.

During an 11-month Title IX investigation, “I was in a kangaroo court, and now I look completely like a caricature of predatory aggression, which is a joke to anyone who knows me,” Ronell said. In another day, “people would say, ‘That’s Avi. That’s how she talks.’”

Not so, says Reitman, who sued his former adviser and NYU on Thursday for what he described as a three-year ordeal that started with the excitement of working with a superstar in his field and ended up with “continuous and unabated sexual harassment, sexual assault, and stalking.” He declined to talk to The Chronicle on Friday, referring a reporter to his lawsuit and the Title IX investigation’s findings.

In 2017, two years after receiving his Ph.D. from NYU, Reitman filed a Title IX complaint against Ronell, submitting as exhibits dozens of emails and voicemails from her. They were proof, he contended, of a “fictitious romantic relationship” she had created.

“My astounding and beautiful Nimrod,” one read. “Please get over here, come home, and read to me so that I can find some repose in you. Sweet kisses & champagne.”

In others, Ronell, now 66, referred to him with pet name like “baby love,” “my sacred,” or “most honey bunny.”

Reitman, now 34, never indicated that he felt oppressed by such talk, Ronell insisted, and freely doled out similar expressions of affection. Both Reitman and Ronell are gay, and playful and over-the-top banter is how she talks with her friends in Manhattan’s West Village, she said.

A ‘Thanatophile’ and a Healer

The Title IX review concluded that the use of pet names and statements that are intimate or sexual is inappropriate with students and violates university policies. The investigation found her responsible for verbal and physical harassment but cleared her of other charges, including sexual assault and stalking.

The evidence for the physical harassment, she said, was largely based on emails in which she talked — figuratively, she said — about stroking Reitman’s head or kissing him. They were sent at a time when he was depressed and needy, she said, and she wanted to comfort him.

“He calls himself a thanatophile, which means he’s drawn to death,” she said in the interview. “He’d turn to me with his despair and his extreme anxiety. He’d say no one loves him. I’d write stupidly, because I had nothing to hide, ‘I love you.’ If he had a migraine, I’d say, ‘Let me stroke your head, calm you down.’ He’d say, ‘That’s magical — you’re a healer.’”

His family was grateful for the attention she was giving him, she said.

“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,” Ronell said.

She and the scholars who support her have been subjected to a barrage of hate mail from people who claim Ronell and the others expect special treatment for feminists, she said.

Holding her up as an example “allows for patriarchy to say, ‘See, there’s a predator woman — they have libidos, too — so now leave us alone so we can go around and have our encounters with 18-year-old girls,” Ronell said.

Those who know her wouldn’t be surprised by the language she used with Reitman, she said.

“When I’m in my little cockpit writing in my so-called ivory tower all day, I like to let loose with language,” she said. “I don’t impose my zany, affectionate, over-the-top kind of sheltering gestures on people who don’t seem to require or ask for that from me.”

Moreover, Reitman initiated much of the playful banter, she insisted. In one correspondence she cited, he wrote, “Mon Avital, beloved and special one … I don’t know how I would have survived without you. You are the best, my joy, my miracle. … sending you infinite love, kisses, and devotion, your —n.”

Reitman counters, in his lawsuit, that he wrote the flowery prose she cited in her defense only because she had insisted that he address her that way. Ronell got angry and refused to work with him when he wasn’t affectionate enough, he says. He told his friends and family that he was feeling harassed and uncomfortable with the attention, the lawsuit says.

In a news release issued on her behalf on Thursday, Ronell said Reitman “persistently wrote to her with expressions of ‘love and infinite gratitude,’ exalting her intellectual powers, and she lobbed back similar appreciations. These mutual emails, devoid of any sexual language or context whatsoever, provide the sole basis for the Title IX findings,” it said.

Her advisee, it continued, “saw in this use of language an opportunity to manipulate Ronell by adopting and encouraging a tone between them while simultaneously denouncing her in starkly vicious terms to others.”

In that communication, he referred to her with such terms as “witch,” “evil,” “psychotic,” and “bitter old lady,” the statement said.

A Backlash

But what she describes as manipulative behavior by Reitman, others view as hints that his bubbly notes of affection felt forced.

Calling her a monster, for example, “would seem to support the plaintiff’s account that he felt pressured into behaving as Ronell wanted him to behave,” Brian Leiter, director of the Center for Law, Philosophy, and Human Values at the University of Chicago, wrote on Friday.

“Second,” Leiter wrote, “the statement effectively offers an explanation for why the plaintiff did not file a Title IX complaint with NYU right away: namely, that he was trying to secure a job. Having failed to do so, he no longer had any reason to take a ‘hands-off’ approach to the harassment he had endured.”

In June, Leiter exposed a controversial draft letter supporting Ronell on his widely read blog about philosophy. Ronell said she had nothing to do with the letter, which was written on her behalf by dozens of top scholars and urged that she be treated fairly. The letter may have actually hurt her cause because it left critics with the impression that the writers, many of them noted feminists, were demanding special treatment for Ronell and blaming her accuser.

“I feel guilty that people who exercised their minimal rights and said, ‘Let’s just respect due process and seriously accord someone in our community some dignity,” had to suffer such a backlash, Ronell said.

When she received a call from NYU’s Title IX office and learned Reitman had filed a complaint against her, she said she was stunned.

“My first concern was for him — what is going on? Is he unwell? I thought he was flipping out or something,” she said. He turned on her after he graduated and was unable to find a tenure-track position, she believes.

During the Title IX investigation, “it felt like Guantánamo NYU,” she said. With a confidentiality agreement preventing her from talking about her case, “I was utterly exposed and unsheltered. It was isolating.”

She decided to speak out, she said, because she’s “tired of the misogynist blowback it’s created.”

A Power Differential

The final report on the Title IX investigation, excerpts of which were obtained by The Chronicle, supports Reitman’s contention that he felt pressured at times to use effusively affectionate language in his emails to her.

“Contrary to Professor Ronell’s claims that her use of language with Mr. Reitman was consensual, Mr. Reitman has provided documentary evidence demonstrating that, at least on several occasions, (1) he tried to establish boundaries with Professor Ronell and (2) she nonetheless insisted that he use ‘flowery’ language with her,” the report says.

Such interactions, the report concludes, were inappropriate, particularly given the power differential between them and the influence and reputation she had in the field.

The report found sufficient evidence that unwanted physical contact had occurred between Ronell and Reitman. A number of witnesses said Reitman had told them that he had been subjected to unwanted kissing and hugging, the report says. Ronell’s communications with her advisee also referred to kissing him, stroking his forehead, and playing with his hair — words she said were merely “flamboyant” and did not indicate any actual contact had occurred.

The Title IX investigation concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support Reitman’s contention that any physical contact had become sexual. Reitman said that, on one occasion, Ronell had required him to lie in bed with her in a spooning position and had placed his hands on her breasts.

On other occasions, he said, she touched him on his buttocks without his consent. Ronell has denied any such contact occurred, saying in the interview that the allegations were “ridiculous.”

Literary Allusion

Diane Davis, chair of the department of rhetoric and writing at the University of Texas at Austin, is among the scholars who signed the letter to NYU on behalf of Ronell, attesting to her record of scholarship and her reputation as a caring mentor, and urging that she receive due process.

In an email, she said Ronell had called her and read some of her exchanges with Reitman at the time she was writing them because she was concerned about his well-being and wanted to reassure him. The exchanges were affectionate, often “gay-coded,” and frequently over the top, but not sexual, Davis said.

“Their exchanges were also often filled with poetic or literary allusions from works they had studied together,” Davis wrote. “So in one email, just for example, she says something about massaging his ‘little feet.’ That might raise eyebrows out of context, but it’s a citation: It came straight out of Flaubert, a scene in which the nanny is massaging the ‘little feet’ of Emma Bovary’s young child. And that is indeed the position she thought she was in vis-à-vis the accuser.”

She said Ronell would also use phrases like ‘I’m holding you,’ which she had said repeatedly to Davis and to her husband when his parents died. “When someone is fragile or indicating they’re not well, she makes this sort of linguistic intervention,” Davis said. “It’s very familiar to anyone close to her.”

“As a matter of policy, it would make sense for a professor to refrain from engaging in this sort of linguistic interaction with a graduate student, no matter what the circumstances,” Davis added. “Still, the intensity of graduate study really sets the scene for intimate friendships between professors and graduate students, so it’s complicated … She thought at the time that she was steadying him, making him feel safe and supported, and she worried a lot about how best to do it.”

Lisa Duggan, a professor of social and cultural analysis at NYU, said she’s disturbed by the backlash against Ronell and her supporters.

During her suspension, Ronell will be able to meet with students only while supervised. She has no objection.

“At this point,” she said, “I would welcome it, because I don’t want any more student fantasies to grow.”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.