Where’s #Metoo? Feminist Professors Back One of Their Own When She’s Accused of Sexual Harassment
Somehow, when it comes to one of their own being accused of sexual harassment, some feminists discard their devotion to the #MeToo movement and blame the victim instead.
Case in point: after a famous NYU female professor, a Trump-hater who is a feminist literary theorist, was accused of sexually harassing a male former graduate student, a group of professors, including well-known feminists, leaped to her defense despite the fact that they admitted they had no knowledge about the findings of the Title IX proceedings against her.
After an 11-month Title IX investigation, Avital Ronell, 66, professor of German and Comparative Literature at New York University, was found responsible for sexually harassing Nimrod Reitman, 34, a male former graduate student and currently a visiting fellow at Harvard. As The New York Times reports, a colleague termed Ronell, “one of the very few philosopher-stars of this world,” but the investigation concluded she was “responsible for sexual harassment, both physical and verbal, to the extent that her behavior was ‘sufficiently pervasive to alter the terms and conditions of Mr. Reitman’s learning environment.’” Ronell has been suspended for 2018-2019; the Title IX report concluded she could not additionally be responsible for sexual assault, in part because there were no witnesses to the reported actions she had taken.
Reitman, who is gay, had charged that the alleged sexual harassment for three years from Ronell, who is a lesbian, had included her referring to him in emails as “my most adored one,” “Sweet cuddly Baby,” “cock-er spaniel,” and “my astounding and beautiful Nimrod.”
The Times delineates other details, including Reitman’s claims that before the school year in 2012, Ronell invited him to stay with her in Paris for a few days. (Read more from “Where’s #Metoo? Feminist Professors Back One of Their Own When She’s Accused of Sexual Harassment” HERE)
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