The graduate student protest centers on the selection of Dominguez to co-teach one graduate-level course with department Chairman Putnam.

The course, Government 2105, "Field Seminar in Comparative Politics," is the only such offering designed to prepare students to take their general exams in the popular field. Students say that makes the course "de facto required."

In other words, 15 or so students each year, they argue, will have no choice but to associate with a professor charged with sexual harassment.

The course instructors vary from year to year and are not named ahead of time. This means that students do not know who will teaching the course in any given year.

The issue, more specifically, is that of "disassociation." Certain graduate students argue that, for five years after a finding of sexual misconduct by a faculty member, they should not have to take courses from such instructors nor face them on an exam board.

The disassociation proposal, which the eight-student Government Department Sexual Harassment Committee drafted shortly after Dominguez' discipline came to light, appears to have gained momentum since his return to Harvard. The committee was convened in the wake of the Dominguez incident.

In an attempt to extend the protest to undergraduates, Elaine K. Swift, a sixth-year graduate student and member of the department's sexual harassment committee, distributed a three-page photocopied history of the Dominguez case to about 70 students attending an early lecture of one of his courses, Foreign Cultures 18, "Comparative Politics of Latin America."

Students interviewed after the lecture say the leaflet would not affect their decision to take the course, though many say they had not been aware of the sexual harassment case.

During the last two weeks, the Graduate Student Council, Women in Science, and the Radcliffe Union of Students have all formally endorsed a proposal upholding a student's right to disassociation on the grounds of moral objection to sexual harassment. The University defines such misconduct as "unwanted sexual behavior such as physical contact or verbal comments or suggestions, which adversely affects the working or learning environment of an individual."

Don't Second-Guess

The Government Department for two years has steadfastly rejected the disassociation proposal. "The department can't be in a position of trying to second-guess the University or of running our own separate investigative proceedings. Unless a professor is removed from the classroom, we can't be in the position to say 'you can't teach,"' says department Chairman Putnam.

Yet some graduate students charge that the department has, in fact, bent over backwards not only to disregard their request that Dominguez not teach the effectively required course, but also to shed a favorable light on the professor.

One graduate student, sexual harassment committee member Claire Laporte, charges that the department's decision to pair department chairman Putnam with Dominguez in teaching Gov 2105 represents a calculated decision "to legitimate Dominguez's presence, to say, 'Here, he's rehabilitated."'

Putnam vehemently denies the charges, saying, "The department is not in the business of giving or taking legitimacy from anyone. The assignment of courses to professors is done purely on the basis of the expertise of instructors, particularly in the case of field seminars."

Laporte counters that professors in the past have been discouraged from teaching certain courses for reasons other than their expertise. For example, she says, poor lecturers are often encouraged not to teach introductory courses.