Harvard professor on leave over sexual harassment accusations

WASHINGTON, Mar. 7 — U.S. well-known university Harvard
announced Sunday night that Jorge Domínguez, a professor in the government
department at Harvard, had been placed “on administrative leave” as 18
women came forward to accuse him of sexual harassment in the past three
decades.

Domínguez has been placed “on administrative leave, pending a full and fair
review of the facts and circumstances regarding allegations that have come
to light,” Michael Smith, the dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and
Sciences, said in an email to the Chronicle of Higher Education newspaper.
The first sexual harassment allegation began in 1979 and the latest from
2015, according to the investigation by the newspaper.  “It wasn’t just the
kisses on the cheeks and the hugs. It was also the requests to get drinks
after work, the flirtatious emails, his asking one of them to sit next to
him during a meeting,” said the Chronicle report.  In the wake of a
Chronicle investigation revealed last week that found 10 women who say
Dominguez made them uncomfortable, more have come forward. The number is
now 18, including women from all areas of university life: graduate
students, undergraduates, fellow professors, and staff members, said the
newspaper.  A statement on the website of the Harvard Weatherhead Center
for International Affairs, where Dominguez is a faculty associate, said
that the center “is unambiguously committed to the policy and practice of
zero tolerance of sexual harassment or gendered disparity of treatment.”The
professor was found guilty of “serious misconduct” by Harvard in 1983 after
Terry Karl, a junior professor in the department, reported that he had
repeatedly groped, kissed, and propositioned her. – XINHUA