When Academics Defend Colleagues Accused of Harassment
A famed professor. A student claiming they were sexually harassed. A months-long internal investigation.
Many of the particulars of the case against Avital Ronell, a professor of German and Comparative Literature at New York University who an internal investigation found responsible for sexually harassing Nimrod Reitman, a former graduate student of hers, are familiar. Reitman accuses Ronell of kissing and touching him repeatedly, as well as sending inappropriate email messages, among other things. After its investigation, the university found that Ronell’s conduct was “sufficiently pervasive to alter the terms and conditions of Mr. Reitman’s learning environment,” according to The New York Times, and suspended her for the upcoming academic year.
In the #MeToo era, versions of this story have played out with other prominent. But the responses to Reitman's accusations against Ronell from her fellow academics in some ways echoed the defenses that male scholars, from MIT’s to Boston University’s , have gotten when faced with similar accusations, and is a striking example of the power structures at work in academia.
