Thread by @studentactivism

More than half of the 38 Harvard professors who signed an open letter backing an accused sexual harasser on the college's faculty now say they no longer stand by the statement. bostonglobe.com/2022/02/08/met…

Twenty of the 38 signers have withdrawn their names. This after two of the twenty released a statement saying that the letter wasn't intended to say what it very clearly said. thecrimson.com/article/2022/2…

Four more Harvard profs removed their names from the Comaroff support letter overnight, bringing the total to 24 withdrawals out of 38 signatories. bostonglobe.com/2022/02/08/met…

What's striking to me about the Harvard letter isn't just the professors' willingness to sign on to the talking points of Comaroff's defense team as if they were objective fact. (Though that is itself striking. Scholarship, evidence, and so on.)

What really jumps out at me in the Harvard letter is this sentence: "We are dismayed by Harvard’s sanctions against [Comaroff] and concerned about its effects on our ability to advise our own students."

A tenured Harvard professor is one of the most secure, most well-protected employees on earth. The power they have over their students is immense. And yet the premise of the letter is that the signatories—not just Comaroff, but all of them—are precarious, marginal, at risk.

There's such a widespread belief among older tenured professors that their colleagues are being removed from their positions willy-nilly for entirely benign behavior. It's not true, but it's almost impervious to factual rebuttal.

And here's the thing: It's possible that the lawsuit against Comaroff is without merit. The claims against him in the filing that was made public after the letter dropped are really ugly, but they're just that—claims.

But the open letter doesn't just call for due process, or question Harvard's procedures. It makes specific factual claims about Comaroff's behavior, in particular regarding an incident to which there were no witnesses.

(We're up to 26 recantations out of 38 signatories to the Comaroff letter. At this rate the letter will be a retroactively anonymous one by mid-afternoon.)

One other thing about this: I would NOT be shocked to learn that Harvard bungled the investigation in multiple ways. Comaroff's accusers allege that their due process rights were violated, and that kind of thing doesn't always flow in just one direction.

So congratulations, letter-signing dipshits. Not only did you tank your own reputations and make the allegations against Comaroff a national news story, you trampled all over your own due process claims.

(BTW, I haven't seen any public statements from the letter-signers yet, other than the one short quote in the Globe piece. If anyone comes across any, I'd be grateful for a heads-up.)

Ah, here we are. A joint statement from 34 (!) of the 38 original signatories, retracting their signatures. (One of the 38 declined to retract, 3 were unreachable.)

https://twitter.com/arthomason/status/1491471938023272451

There's some stuff in this retraction I find pretty obnoxious, but I have to go teach. More later.

On second reading, I think the retraction letter is actually pretty good, all things considered. A couple brief things as to why.

The most obvious omission from the retraction letter is an apology, and that omission absolutely doesn't seem like an accident or an oversight.

Two of the profs to retracted their support for the letter yesterday both gave apology quotes to the Boston Globe.

Mariano Siskind: “I deeply regret having signed the letter."

Maya Jasanoff: “I signed the letter without properly considering its impact on students and, obviously, without fuller information. This was a serious lapse in judgment and I apologize unreservedly for my mistake."

I have a hunch Jasanoff may have been involved in writing the retraction letter, given her statement's similarity to this passage: "We failed to appreciate the impact that this would have on our students, and we were lacking full information about the case."

At any rate, it absolutely looks like some of the signatories wanted to apologize, others weren't willing to, and they decided to leave the apology out in order to get the longest list of signers they could. Arguably not a great reason, but I get it.

But the thing I actually like about the retraction letter is the way it quoted from—and endorsed the logic of—the open letter that other Harvard faculty released in response to original 38. thecrimson.com/article/2022/2…

To quote from that letter in that way isn't quite, "you were right, we were wrong, you convinced us," but it comes pretty close. And it does it while collecting the signatures of 34 of the 38 profs, no small feat.

(I find the phrasing of "we failed to appreciate the impact that this would have on our students" weirdly vague and personal, though, and would have liked to have seen a more explicit acknowledgment that the original letter improperly endorsed Comaroff's account.)

I hope that more of the profs involved will speak out as individuals, but as joint retractions go, this one could have been a lot worse.

The Crimson has a new story up with longer statements from Siskind and Jasanoff, and word that a 35th professor is repudiating the original letter. thecrimson.com/article/2022/2…

Mariano Siskind's statement in particular is a strong one: "I deeply regret having signed the letter I don’t know John Comaroff personally. Initially, I signed because I agreed with the need to establish transparent, fair, and effective Title IX procedures." (1/3)

"However, when I read Dean Gay’s response and considered more carefully the letter’s potential effect on those who had experienced sexual-based misconduct, I realized I had made a terrible mistake." (2/3)

"I want to apologize to my students and I want them to know that I fully support all students facing the difficult decision to come forward with Title IX complaints." (3/3)

Just to tie this up with a bow, I think the point of the retraction letter was to acknowledge collective error, and begin to undo damage done collectively. Beyond that, explanations and apologies will be most meaningful when offered individually.

So yes, I think the retraction letter did more or less what it should have done, but since it could never be an actual apology or explanation, it'd be reasonable for students and colleagues of the signatories to want them as well.