These procedures, which the Law School faculty approved on Dec. 18, were the product of a roughly two-month process that began when Law School Dean Martha Minow asked Law School professor John Coates to chair a faculty committee “to develop ‘local’ procedures for Harvard’s Title IX policy,” Coates wrote in an email. According to Coates, the committee met with law students, faculty members, and University administrators, including University Title IX Officer Mia Karvonides, throughout the two-month period.
Coates wrote that the procedures were shared with OCR during the drafting process and that he expects that they will be implemented in the coming months. The resolution agreement between Harvard and OCR, signed Dec. 23, stipulated that the office would approve or make additional recommendations to the procedures within 45 calendar days.
Minow, in an email to Law School affiliates Tuesday, wrote that she was “confident” that the new procedures comply with Title IX.
It is unclear whether other schools may depart from the University’s central sexual harassment procedures to the extent that the Law School has. When administrators first unveiled those procedures in July, they gave no indication that individual schools could or would break from them entirely.
University spokesperson Jeff Neal wrote in an emailed statement that the Law School’s “distinct pedagogical mission and longstanding reliance on a different adjudicatory system for resolving disciplinary cases” prompted its separation from the central procedures. Neal did not answer follow up questions about whether other schools with different pedagogical missions may similarly institute their own school-specific processes for investigating cases.
A committee at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, for its part, recently drafted revised procedures that incorporate ODR and would put staff and faculty cases under its jurisdiction in addition to students.
According to Neal, Faust was unavailable for an interview on the subject Friday. Karvonides did not respond to requests for an interview. An automated response from her email account said she would not be checking email while her office is closed from Dec. 24 to Jan. 2.
FACULTY DISCONTENT
The Law School’s pending procedural changes come after some faculty members voiced strong opposition to the University-wide policy and procedures. In October, more than two dozen Law School professors criticized them sharply in a letter to The Boston Globe, charging that they “lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process, are overwhelmingly stacked against the accused, and are in no way required by Title IX law or regulation.”
Among several concerns, the professors asserted that the University-wide procedures lack “an opportunity to discover facts” and to “present a defense at hearing,” as well as fail to ensure “adequate representation for the accused,” especially for those of lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The letter also took issue with the entire premise of ODR, a central office for investigating complaints “rather than an entity that could be considered structurally impartial.”
“Harvard undermined and effectively destroyed the individual schools’ traditional authority to decide discipline for their own students,” the professors wrote.
None of the professors who signed the open letter were members of the committee that proposed the Law School’s pending procedures, according to a list of committee members provided by Coates.
Karvonides, who oversees ODR in her capacity as Title IX officer, has previously said that she disagrees with claims that the central office would fail to be impartial in handling sexual harassment cases.
“In my mind, we fail in our work under Title IX if we are viewed as being biased or even advocates, or in any way that this isn’t a fair process,” Karvonides said in October. “If we’re going to make progress, people need to understand, to have trust and have confidence that this is an unbiased process.”
Still, Law School faculty members have continued to take issue with ODR’s approach. The committee that drafted the procedures was formed after Law School professors raised concerns about the University’s central policy and procedures, according to Janet Halley, a Law School professor who specializes in family, gender, and sexuality law and one of the Globe letter’s 28 signatories. She called the new Law School procedures a “big improvement” compared to the University’s central framework, which she argued is “severely and patently defective.”
Law School professor Jeannie C. Suk, another signatory of the Globe letter, wrote in an email that the pending Law School procedures “address the concerns with the [University] procedures that led me to sign the statement in the Globe,” adding that she hopes that Harvard and its other schools will follow the Law School’s example.
Harvard’s handling of sexual assault remains under review at the College, whose Title IX compliance OCR is currently investigating.
—Staff writer Theodore R. Delwiche can be reached at theodore.delwiche@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @trdelwic.
—Staff writer Andrew M. Duehren can be reached at aduehren@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @aduehren14.