Central Office To Hear FAS Faculty Sexual Harassment Cases

UPDATED: February 3, 2015, at 1:45 a.m.

All cases of alleged sexual harassment by faculty, teaching assistants, and researchers within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences will be investigated by Harvard’s central Office for Sexual and Gender-Based Dispute Resolution, rather than a separate body, according to the school’s recently approved sexual harassment policy and procedures.

The finalized FAS procedures, which remain largely unchanged from a draft version presented at December’s Faculty meeting, were released Monday. In addition to minor changes to the language of the procedures, the committee tasked with finalizing them created a frequently-asked-questions section that addresses faculty and student relationships and confidentiality agreements for faculty who are psychiatrists, among other topics.

By Zorigoo Tugsbayar

Alison F. Johnson, a History professor who led a committee to bring the FAS procedures in line with the University’s central standards, said she and the committee wrote the FAQ based on questions that they had heard over the past few months.

FAS adopted interim sexual harassment procedures last August after Harvard unveiled a University-wide policy to centralize its approach to handling sexual harassment. This policy had established a central investigative office, ODR, to handle cases filed against students—but not faculty and staff—across the University’s schools.

For months, the committee led by Johnson worked to expand the office’s jurisdiction to include alleged harassment by FAS faculty and staff. The FAS procedures that were released on Monday confirmed that ODR will now conduct these investigations, thereby replacing the Office for Faculty Affairs, the internal FAS body that had examined these matters under the school’s previous policy and under its interim policy.

Faculty cases were not moved to ODR when the office was established last year because the University felt that addressing the management of student cases was the priority.

But in the updated draft of the policy presented to the Faculty in December, Johnson and the committee recommended that faculty and staff cases be investigated by ODR.

The finalized procedures, whereby faculty cases are officially handed over to ODR, are dated Jan. 13, 2015, and the FAQ portion is dated Jan. 15.

In addition to expanding ODR’s jurisdiction, the new FAS policy explicitly forbids romantic or sexual relationships between faculty members and undergraduates. It also prohibits romantic or sexual relationships between faculty members and students, graduate or undergraduate, enrolled in their courses or otherwise under their academic supervision.

Cases of quid pro quo sexual harassment—the exchange of sexual acts for another benefit—within student organizations in the FAS are also prohibited, and will be subject to the finalized procedures.

In an interview in early January, Johnson said the committee had only altered some of the draft procedures' language since the December Faculty meeting, mirroring the finalized procedures released Monday. She said at that time that “the committee has more or less finished its work” and hoped the policy would be ready for FAS Dean Michael D. Smith’s review by mid-January.

Smith, for his part, said he and Johnson kept in constant communication while the procedures were drafted to ensure that the language would be clear for anyone reading.

“I was effectively a guinea pig for the rest of the Faculty, and the community, to say, ‘This is going to be read by a lot of people who aren't doing the day-to-day discussions on this,’” Smith said.

—Staff writer Karl M. Aspelund can be reached at karl.aspelund@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @kma_crimson.

—Staff writer Meg P. Bernhard can be reached at meg.bernhard@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @meg_bernhard.