Chanting Harvard students walk out of lecture by professor accused of groping and harassment

Harvard University students staged a walk-out from professor John Comaroff’s class on Tuesday over allegations in a lawsuit that he groped and harassed three female graduate students.

More than 100 students entered Mr Comaroff’s classroom as he prepared to deliver his first lecture of the semester and began chanting “justice for survivors”, according to a report in the Ivy League university’s student-run publication The Harvard Crimson.

Mr Comaroff, a professor of African anthropology, was placed on administrative leave by the university last year after three students alleged they had been subject to forcible kissing and groping.

The three women filed a lawsuit last February alleging that Harvard had ignored complaints about Mr Comaroff’s sexual harassment and allowed him to intimidate students by threatening to hinder their careers.

Mr Comaroff is not named as a defendant in the suit and has vigorously denied the claims in a statement issued through his lawyers last year.

He returned to teach classes in  African and African American Studies and Anthropology last June, and faced similar protests and classroom walk-outs, The Crimson reported.

Footage of Tuesday’s walk-out posted on YouTube and Twitter showed protesters confront Mr Comaroff in class chanting “no more Comaroff, no more complicity”.

The marchers then proceeded through the university grounds chanting “time’s up”.

The three plaintiffs, Lilia Kilburn, Margaret Czerwienski, and Amulya Mandava, accuse Mr Comaroff of making “unwelcome sexual advances” over a period of several years and threatening to sabotage their careers if they complained.

The suit filed in the US District Court in Boston lists Harvard University, its president and the Fellows of Harvard College as defendants.

Ms Kilburn alleged that she was subjected to unwelcome kissing and groping from as early as 2017.

On another occasion in 2017, Ms Kilburn said she met with Mr Comaroff to discuss her plans to study in an African country, and was told she could be subjected to violence in Africa because she was in a same-sex relationship, the lawsuit said.

The plaintiffs lodged complaints with Harvard’s Office for Dispute Resolution in July 2020 claiming that the school was in violation of Title IX, the federal law that bars gender discrimination in education, according to the Associated Press.

Ms Czerwienski and Ms Mandava, said when they reported Mr Comaroff’s behaviour to university administrators, he retaliated against them.

“Harvard’s continued failure to act on repeated reports of harassment against Professor Comaroff —until spurred to do so by the media — demonstrates an institutional policy of indifference: a system designed to protect the university, its reputation, and the faculty who sustain that reputation at the expense of its students,” the lawsuit said.

Harvard did not respond to a request for comment by The Independent.