The years-long campaign to defame and destroy the career and reputation of respected Harvard professor of anthropology and African and African-American studies John L. Comaroff collapsed on Wednesday with the dismissal “with prejudice” of a civil suit brought by three graduate students against Harvard University. While the settlement does not require the plaintiff to pay court costs and associated legal expenses, the outcome discredits their campaign and effectively proves Professor Comaroff right.
When a case is settled “with prejudice,” it means the case is permanently closed and plaintiffs cannot file another lawsuit with the same claim. This finality means that the lawsuit brought by graduate students Margaret G. Czerwienski, Lilia M. Kilburn, and Amulya Mandava – who alleged without facts or evidence that Professor Comaroff was guilty of sexual harassment and sued the university for failing to take action to remove him – was fundamentally flawed and without merit and cannot be brought again.
The aspect of being free of charge only alleviates the financial burden, but does not reduce the negative legal consequences of termination without notice.
The disgraceful end of the trial, which should never have been brought, is another major blow to the #MeToo campaign of recent years. Since 2017, this campaign, which goes against essential principles of a fair trial, has been destroying people’s careers on the basis of unproven allegations and insinuations.
In response to the failure of the smear campaign against Comaroff, the three graduate students’ law firm, Sanford Heisler Sharp, issued a flippant statement on Wednesday: “We are pleased that our clients can now move on with their lives and careers.” In other words, after wreaking havoc with their vindictive and selfish witch hunt, they are now free to embark on their next adventure.
For Professor Comaroff, however, the smear campaign resulted in his resignation from Harvard on June 30 without receiving emeritus status, an honor bestowed upon most professors in the School of Humanities and Sciences upon their retirement.
John Comaroff was born in South Africa and attended the University of Cape Town, where he began his studies in anthropology. He taught at the University of Chicago for 34 years with his wife, Jean Comaroff. The couple came to Harvard in 2012.
In May 2020, after a scandalous article by Harvard CrimsonThe university administration has placed Professor Comaroff on leave pending an investigation into allegations of “unwanted touching, verbal sexual harassment, and professional retaliation.”
In an email to the allegations filed by students with Harvard University’s Title IX office, Comaroff wrote that he “denies all allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation” and said the Harvard administration’s actions against him were “prejudicial to the fair adjudication of all allegations” and “a violation of the confidentiality rules of Harvard University’s sexual harassment policies and procedures.” He was also asked by the anthropology faculty not to teach a course.
At the end of the investigation, the university found that Comaroff was “solely responsible for verbal sexual harassment that arose from a brief conversation during office hours. The advice he gave concerned the student’s physical safety during field research.”
According to the investigation details, Comaroff had tried to explain to a lesbian student that traveling with her partner in Cameroon, where homosexuality is illegal, could lead to sexual violence. His lawyers said the professor insisted “that it was not only his right but his moral duty to advise her in this way because her plans were objectively physically dangerous to her. Investigators concluded that he had no sexual or romantic intentions.”
The investigation found that the evidence did not support the allegation of “unwanted sexual contact” and found him “not responsible for any the allegations of the other two complainants.”
In response to the witch-hunt atmosphere, the university administration launched a second mock court-style investigation, which found that the professor “was responsible for allegedly unprofessional (but entirely non-sexual) conduct in another office hours session.” On January 20, 2022, Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences Claudine Gay placed Comaroff on unpaid administrative leave.
The sanctions against the professor were so egregious that 38 professors signed a protest in defense of Comaroff on February 4, 2022, including Shakespeare scholar and cultural historian Stephen Greenblatt, literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., historian Jill Lepore, and law professor Randall Kennedy.
At this point, the civil suit against Harvard was filed, which was dismissed this week. A witch hunt was launched and almost all of the professors who had supported Comaroff shamefully retracted their statements.
The WSWS wrote at the time (in “The concerted, cowardly #MeToo attack on Harvard professor John Comaroff”):
Under the pathetic headline “We retract,” the 34 present no evidence of wrongdoing by Comaroff, but simply apologize for their original concerns, which “concerned transparency, processes, and university practices that go beyond the merits of any one case.” Why do they retract their earlier views? “We did not appreciate the impact this would have on our students”—in other words, they underestimated the anger among hysterical identity politicians that their protest would provoke—”and we lacked comprehensive information about the case.” What “comprehensive information”? The professors won’t say.
The WSWS was the only one to defend Comaroff, who has consistently denied all allegations and basic democratic rights. In a long and detailed analysis of the lawsuit published on March 15, 2022, “The Politically Motivated Campaign Against Harvard Anthropologist John Comaroff,” the WSWS wrote:
A case has been constructed against Comaroff that has no basis or substance. There is nothing even remotely resembling proof of wrongdoing. Rather, there are a series of allegations, many of them wild and absurd, that are not supported by any evidence. Acceptance of allegations without verifiable evidence is the hallmark of a witch hunt.
The WSWS analyzed the alleged “facts” presented in the lawsuit and uncovered the motives behind them. We wrote:
The Comaroff controversy could only take place in a degraded intellectual climate that values irrationality over reason and emotional appeals over factual analysis. Decades of postmodern sophistry, subjectivism and linguistic “deconstruction” that dominate the humanities have played their part, weakening attention to objectively existing, lawful processes and shifting the focus to various forms of racist, feminist and “left” myth-making, to the self and identity and one’s own “narrative” (and inevitably hurt feelings), whether it is true or not. The spirit of Nietzsche has had considerable influence: “The falsity of an opinion is for us no objection to it.”
A climate of fear has emerged on college campuses that is in some ways worse than that of the McCarthy era. Anyone who dares to stand by those under attack is put under enormous pressure. This has created an atmosphere of humiliating retractions and escalating attacks on academic freedom and democratic rights.
While the trial was underway, various groups on campus, including the UAW graduate student chapter, staged provocations to prevent Comaroff from teaching. In September 2022, the Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality released a statement titled “Defend Harvard Professor John Comaroff Against the Right-Wing Witch Hunt!”
In response to the direct intervention of the White House and the Biden administration on the plaintiffs’ side in the case, the statement said:
The government’s involvement in the Comaroff case helps to highlight the political and class dynamics at work here. The White House and Democrats have a significant stake in the campaign, using it to refocus political attention on gender and identity politics and use them against a growing working-class movement.
The White House and Democrats have a significant stake in this campaign, using it to refocus political attention on gender and identity politics and use them against a growing working-class movement.
The statement continues:
The deceptive, underhanded actions of the anti-Comaroff forces must be exposed as fully and thoroughly as possible. Faculty and students have a responsibility to objectively investigate the facts. Such an investigation will inevitably lead to strong, vocal opposition to the ongoing witch hunt.
In March 2023, Comaroff’s accusers launched a right-wing provocation on the university campus entitled “Our Harvard Can Do Better.” They called on the administration, among other things, to declare a state of emergency “to address the crisis of sexual violence on campus.”
In a statement titled “The ‘Our Harvard Can Do Better’ Smear Campaign Against Professor John Comaroff,” the WSWS wrote:
Comaroff is not guilty. The accusations against him are completely baseless, as extensive investigations have shown. The wild slanders of Our Harvard Can Do Better, supported and abetted by the Harvard Crimson and the unprincipled leadership of the Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU) – UAW Local 5118, are just that: slanders.
An indication that the court had concluded that the allegations in the lawsuit were not in fact proven came in November 2023, when U.S. District Judge Judith G. Dein referred the lawsuit to Justice of the Peace M. Paige Kelly for alternative dispute resolution.
The final settlement, which dismissed the lawsuit “with reservations,” is a rehabilitation of Comaroff and an exposure of all those who participated in the right-wing, undemocratic campaign against him.
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