Students Protest Amidst Harvard Sexual Harassment Scandal

Hundreds of people turned up to show solidarity with three grad students suing the university over a professor’s alleged misconduct, while faculty who had previously spoken in the professor’s favor walk back their support.

Written byCatherine Offord
| 2 min read
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A rally that began at Harvard University’s Science Center Plaza was attended by hundreds of students yesterday (February 14), the latest event in a scandal that has engulfed the campus community.

The protest—one of the largest such gatherings at the university in recent years, according to The Harvard Crimson—was organized to show support for three graduate students who filed a lawsuit against Harvard University last week alleging that the institution had failed to act on allegations of sexual harassment and professional misconduct by anthropology professor John Comaroff.

“This case is not about three of us. This case is about all of us,” plaintiff Lilia Kilburn said at the rally, the Crimson reports. “This case is about Harvard’s failure to provide the prompt and equitable process for dealing with claims of harassment and discrimination that’s required by law.”

The students’ suit, filed last Tuesday (February 8), describes years of alleged harassment ...

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Meet the Author

  • After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.

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