A tenured Harvard professor announced Tuesday he will resign after receiving 18 sexual harassment allegations.
Harvard placed government professor Jorge Dominguez on administrative leave Sunday while it investigated the sexual harassment accusations that have spanned decades of his tenure at the school, reported The Washington Post. Dominguez stepped down from administrative responsibilities Tuesday, will not teach during the spring 2018 semester, and will retire fully by the conclusion of the semester, according to an email he sent to faculty colleagues and obtained by WaPo.
The school found Dominguez guilty of “serious misconduct” in 1983 after female professor Terry Karl claimed he made unsolicited sexual advances, including groping and attempted kisses, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Dominguez had been a tenured Latin American studies professor, while the female colleague did not. She eventually went on to Stanford where she holds tenure.
“A quiet retirement is unacceptable,” said Karl to WaPo. “After more than three decades of harassment, the university must carry out a full, fair and transparent investigation of this professor’s conduct, and there must be clear and visible consequences. Harvard also owes a transparent explanation for his continued promotion to positions of greater power when the university knew or should have known that his conduct was an abuse of power.”
When Dominguez and Karl met Rafael Caldera, the former president of Venezuela, at a Harvard dinner, Dominguez reportedly introduced Karl as his “slave”. Dominguez reportedly kissed and groped the female professor later that night while informing her he would be the new department chairman, review her book, and determine her promotion.
Dominguez allegedly said “this would be a nice place for a rape” while walking through a wooded area of Harvard with Karl on another occasion.
“I want to be very clear that Dominguez’s forthcoming retirement does not change the full and fair process of review that is currently underway,” Harvard dean of arts and sciences faculty Michael D. Smith said. “He remains on administrative leave until it is concluded.”
“[I] sought to behave honorably in all my relationships,” Dominguez told the Chronicle.
Several of Dominguez’s former students or colleagues alleged that the professor inappropriately touched them. Junior professor Ethel Klein claimed that Dominguez hugged her and pressed his crotch against her while saying she did not receive a promotion.
“I may well have hugged her, because I was trying to comfort her,” said Dominguez to Chronicle about the incident, but regarding the description of sexual contact, said he would be “horrified if anything like this happened.”
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Leon H. Kesten, the Harvard employee’s attorney, declined comment for Dominguez in an email to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
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