A former graduate student has filed a federal lawsuit against the University of Miami, saying that it mishandled her sexual-harassment accusations against a leading philosophy professor on its faculty, reports the Huffington Post. The student also sued the professor, Colin McGinn, and one of his former colleagues.
In the lawsuit, which was filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, in Miami, the graduate student accuses the university of violating Title IX, the federal gender-equity law, by inadequately investigating her sexual-harassment allegations against Mr. McGinn and by not preventing him from retaliating against her. The lawsuit also accuses Mr. McGinn of sexual harassment, civil assault, and defamation.
The accusations against the university parallel a complaint the student, then anonymous, filed last year with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In the lawsuit, she identifies herself publicly for the first time, as Monica Morrison.
Mr. McGinn, who has denied sexually harassing Ms. Morrison, resigned in 2013 under university pressure for breaking a rule that requires professors to report romantic relationships with students they supervise. Ms. Morrison has maintained that their relationship, in 2011-12, was not consensual, and the Huffington Post cites many sexually explicit messages that it says the professor sent to the student among hundreds of pages of emails and texts that it recently reviewed.
A lawyer for the university declined to address the specifics of the lawsuit but told the Huffington Post that Ms. Morrison’s accusations “were investigated thoroughly and a very swift and decisive action was taken.” A lawyer for Mr. McGinn told the Post that the professor “denies the claims, and we will vigorously defend against them in the appropriate forum.”
