Last week 38 Harvard professors signed a letter in support of their colleague John L. Comaroff, who the university found had violated its sexual-harassment and professional-conduct policies.
Now they want to take it back.
Of the 38 scholars, 34 have endorsed a new statement, shared with The Chronicle on Wednesday morning, expressing a wish to retract the original letter.
The new statement comes one day after three Harvard graduate students sued the university, alleging that it had failed to protect them from sexual harassment and threats of retaliation from Comaroff, a prominent anthropology professor. The 34 faculty members had lauded Comaroff for his reputation as “an excellent colleague, adviser, and committed university citizen.”
“We failed to appreciate the impact that this would have on our students,” the professors wrote on Wednesday. “We were lacking full information about the case.”
The professors wrote that they “share the sentiments” of their colleagues who, in their own letter, condemned the fact that Harvard professors were expressing support for a colleague without knowing all the facts of the case.
“Our concerns were transparency, process, and university procedures, which go beyond the merits of any individual case,” the 34 professors wrote.
In an email, Ingrid Monson, a professor of music and of African and African American studies, said that only one professor declined to retract his signature: the Harvard law professor Randall L. Kennedy.
“The initial open letter indicated deep concern, based on available information, about the university’s treatment of Professor Comaroff,” Kennedy said in an email to The Chronicle. “Of course the signatories did not know about everything that might be pertinent. If complete knowledge was a prerequisite for voicing concern, there might well be no suitable occasion for doing so. No new information about which I am aware erases the worries that prompted me to sign the letter in the first place.”
Monson — who was one of the letter’s authors, along with Kay Kaufman Shelemay, also a professor of music and of African and African American studies — said that the other professors had not yet said whether they wanted to retract their signatures.
“We are devastated by what we learned yesterday,” Monson said by email.
Early Wednesday morning, Lucie White, a Harvard law professor, told The Chronicle that she had wanted her name to be added to the retraction letter, though it hadn’t been included. Meanwhile, according to The Harvard Crimson, the Harvard law professor David W. Kennedy did not want his signature on the letter, though it had been included in the version the letter writers shared with The Chronicle.
Many of the allegations made by the three graduate students in the lawsuit were also shared with The Chronicle in 2020. The letter cited The Chronicle’s reporting and highlighted one of the allegations made in the article, but did not mention the students’ other allegations, including that Comaroff had tried to kiss one of them, had touched her inappropriately, and had threatened to retaliate against two of them.
Through his lawyers, Comaroff has denied all allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation.
More than 50 scholars at other universities also signed a letter condemning Harvard’s investigation.
Daniel Herwitz, a professor of comparative literature, art history, and philosophy at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, was the chief writer of that letter. In an interview on Wednesday, he said that retracting the letter would be “unconscionable” because it targeted a specific phase of the procedure that Harvard used in determining whether to sanction Comaroff. He stands by that.
“Harvard has overreached,” Herwitz said. “Whether John Comaroff has a large pattern of sexual harassment or not was not part of the letter.”
He added that he couldn’t speak for other signatories, but that Twitter had been a “nuclear element” in this case. He suggested that the Harvard professors may be feeling pressure because of the support the lawsuit has received on that platform.
The Chronicle reached out to 39 of the more than 50 signatories of that letter — all for whom contact information was available — to ask whether they regretted signing it, and heard back from only four.
Three affirmed their signatures, and one replied that she regretted it. Gabrielle M. Spiegel, a history professor at the Johns Hopkins University, said in an email that she did not remember signing the letter. Two others, both at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, requested through Herwitz that their names be removed from the letter: Patricia Spyer, an anthropology professor, and Rafael Sanchez, an emeritus professor.
Abbi Ross contributed to this article.
