Thread by @sophie_e_hill

ok #poliscitwitter, i know there's *something* happening on TV right now, but i need your attention for a MINUTE.

A thread on the latest fallout from the #Dominguez scandal at Harvard:

A 1-tweet recap: Jorge Domínguez was a professor in the Government department at Harvard. At least 18 women have come forward about being sexually harassed by him, from 1979-2015. A recent internal Title IX investigation resulted in him being banned from campus for life.

But there are still so many unanswered questions.

In particular: why did Harvard continue to promote Domínguez to even more influential roles within the university, when Terry Karl had already warned them in *1983* that he had harassed her and multiple others?

So, even though Domínguez is gone, we felt that our community could not begin to heal until we actually understood how this happened.

That's why grad students, undergrads, staff, and faculty all came together to ask Harvard to conduct an External Review of this case.

And we got it!

It wasn't easy.

We held meetings. We wrote letters. We signed petitions.

And when that didn't work, we papered the Gov department with Terry Karl's face 👀👀👀👀

When Harvard finally announced that it would hold an External Review into this case, it was a big relief!

Finally, we could go back to doing what grad students do.

(Scavenging for free food, teaching, and occasionally trying to write a dissertation.)

Just kidding!

This being Harvard, they have managed to screw up literally every possible aspect of this External Review before it even started.

So we (a bunch of Gov grads) have written an op-ed in @thecrimson explaining our concerns and asking the External Review committee to publicly address them.

thecrimson.com/article/2019/1…

1⃣ We asked for an EXTERNAL Review because Harvard can't investigate itself. The administration agreed.

And then they appointed a committee that includes someone who was literally *President of Harvard's Board of Overseers* a couple of years ago.

President Bacow, if you're reading this, perhaps this will be a helpful resource for you:

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ext…

2️⃣ President Bacow said that the committee was NOT being asked to look at "the behavior or decisions of individual members of the Harvard community in regard to the Domínguez matter".

So... they should investigate the case without... investigating the case?

Bacow, hun, these are mixed messages.

3⃣ And this is where my snark ends, because I'm legitimately furious about this: the External Review committee is barely making any effort to meet with survivors, who say they've been sent a "message of disinterest".

thecrimson.com/article/2019/1…

Several of these women offered to *fly to NYC at their own expense* to meet with the committee.

Apparently they were too busy 🙃

Instead, the committee offered TWO dates for the rest of the year, one of which coincides with the committee's previously scheduled campus visit.

So, just to be clear: the committee thinks that it can receive input from Gov graduate students, undergrads, faculty, staff, members of the Weatherhead Center, administrators, AND survivors in the course of... a single day?

To the External Review committee: if you're reading this, I'll tell you what I tell my students.

We KNOW when you wrote your paper in one crazy all-nighter. It's EXTREMELY obvious and it's embarrassing for both of us.

We conclude our op-ed by making some demands that are SO REASONABLE they're verging on milquetoast:

🔘 Be transparent (like, tell us what you're doing?)
🔘 Be impartial (maybe try to mitigate those conflicts-of-interest?)
🔘 Be thorough (hint: this is more than 1 day's work!)

Over the last 18 months, I've had the honour of getting to know some of the women who came forward to share their stories.

I have been inspired by their courage, their persistence, and their kindness.

Seriously.

"What would Terry Karl do?" is now my personal motto.

#WWTKD

So it's genuinely heartbreaking to me that Harvard is STILL failing to even *listen* to survivors of sexual harassment.

This is the 👏 lowest 👏 possible 👏 bar 👏 !

If this committee shows up on campus next month without having extensively gathered input from survivors first, the External Review will become a joke.

If this committee starts trying to talk about "culture" and "climate", we will have to remind them that Terry Karl has documents that prove what the university knew and when.

As we said in the op-ed:

"We have dedicated countless hours to lobbying the administration for this review. To say that we are deeply invested in its success would be an understatement. But we will not participate in a whitewash."

So, #poliscitwitter, please read our op-ed not just to understand this case, but to understand the massive institutional inertia that survivors of sexual harassment and assault face, even with the help of overwhelming evidence and national media scrutiny.

thecrimson.com/article/2019/1…

Finally, a shout-out to my op-ed co-authors and External Review Working Group teammates:
@ManuelMelendezS, @Reva__D, @owoldemik, @amyren10, and @lauraroyden!