Thread by @sophie_e_hill

Update on Harvard's "External" Review into the Dominguez sexual harassment case:

1⃣ 2/3 external committee members have significant ties to Harvard
2️⃣ all meetings are being scheduled by Harvard Deputy Provost Peggy Newell
3️⃣ ER staff = Harvard employee

Here are the 🧾:

As we (Gov grad students) wrote a few weeks ago, 2/3 committee members that Harvard appointed to conduct an External Review have significant ties to Harvard.

One of them recently served as President of Harvard's Board of Overseers! 🧐

thecrimson.com/article/2019/1…

Harvard Deputy Provost Peggy Newell, who along with President Bacow was responsible for appointing the External Review committee, has continued to be intimately involved with the actual undertaking of the review - e.g. scheduling meetings between the ER committee and survivors.

There is NO reason for Harvard's Deputy Provost to be involved with scheduling these meetings, except for the Harvard administration to influence and exert control over what was supposed to be an independent process.

Who the committee chooses to meet with - or not meet with - goes to the very heart of this review.

And so far, the survivors who came forward say they've been sent a "message of disinterest".

thecrimson.com/article/2019/1…

Finally, we have been told that the External Review committee has a staff person working for them who is a Harvard employee.

Harvard has a $40 billion endowment. They can afford to give the External Review committee some $ to hire their own independent staff member!

By forcing the committee to use a Harvard employee as their staff member, the administration has created serious concerns around disclosure/confidentiality.

Any information submitted to the committee via email *will be read by a Harvard employee*. Not only does this raise concerns about retaliation, it also means that disclosures relating to sexual harassment and assault will have to be reported to Title IX.

We have come up with a way to avoid this issue for current members of the Govt department (using sealed envelopes). But this obviously will not work for the majority of participants who are no longer here.

The email address that has been created for individuals to submit information to the External Review committee is literally a harvard.edu account!!

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And the administration wonders why grad workers are on strike demanding an *independent* grievance procedure for sexual harassment??? @hgsuuaw #NoCarveOut

Even in this case, where Harvard *acknowledges* that its own internal systems failed - they still won't allow a genuinely independent process to uncover the truth.

Because this external review is not about getting to the truth. It is about minimizing Harvard's liability.